I. The loss of Aharon’s position as spokesperson to and for the Jews in Egypt.
According to Midrash Tanchuma #24 on Shemot 4:13, before Moshe is sent to Egypt in order to intercede with Pharoah on behalf of the enslaved Jewish people, Aharon served as HaShem’s Prophet,[1] and therefore leader of the Jews. Such a role would have been natural for the oldest son of Amram, who, according to Sota 12a, was the previous “Gadol HaDor” (great one of the generation).[2] It is for this reason, Midrash Tanchuma suggests, that Moshe was so resistant to accept God’s Assignment to return from Midyan and his life with Yitro and Tziporra, in order to become involved in leading the Jews to freedom.[3] When Moshe implores God to “…Please send by the hand for him that You have Sent,” he is not only showing respect and concern for his older brother at this point, but that avoiding potential strife between himself and his sibling has been his motivation each previous time he has resisted God’s Command as well.[4] Consequently, in 4:14, in response to Moshe’s final objection, God assures him that not only will Aharon not protest being replaced as God’s lead Prophet in Egypt,[5] but that he will welcome Moshe’s arrival with joy.

Was Aharon completely sanguine about being replaced?
Is there room to wonder whether, at least in the back of Aharon’s mind, beyond his joy at seeing his brother and being relieved of what must probably have been a thankless and frustrating assignment, he was disturbed at being demoted, and having his younger sibling take his place? Even if we conclude in hindsight that since it was not as yet time for the redemption from Egypt—a certain number of years of exile and servitude had been predicted in
Beraishit 15:13, 16—and therefore it was not Aharon’s fault that his protestations and ministrations had fallen upon deaf ears, Aharon was not in a position to necessarily have known this. While Miriam initiates the negative discussion about some portion of Moshe’s personal life in BaMidbar 12,[6] Aharon does stand by silently, and rather than defending Moshe’s actions, listens without comment to their sister’s critique. Furthermore, as a result of the negative discussion regarding Moshe, God Condemns not only Miriam, although she is the one whom the verse explicitly describes as becoming afflicted with Tzora’at (a skin malady that is associated with evil speech—see Devarim 24:8-9) and therefore obviously considered most to blame,[7] but Aharon as well in BaMidbar 12:5, 8, 9. Are there intimations from Aharon’s participation in this incident that something from the past was continuing to irk him?

II. The Golden Calf
Aharon’s second mortifying experience was his involvement, however direct or indirect, willingly or reluctantly, in the fabrication of the Golden Calf. This incident brings him into open confrontation with Moshe in Shemot 32:21, and must have again served to undermine Aharon’s self-confidence and trust in his personal judgment and leadership capacities. Even according to those accounts that maintain that Aharon was attempting to at first discourage, and then at least delay the making and worshipping of the calf,[8] he appears to fail mightily in both regards. What would appear to be the strongest criticism of Aharon’s reasoning during this extremely difficult period appears in Sanhedrin 7a. Regarding the apparent non-sequitor in 32:5, i.e., the text states that Aharon “saw” something, but does not specify what it was that he saw, R. Elazar suggests that he saw Chur’s[9] resistance to making the Calf and his resultant murder at the hands of the mob. The Talmud  describes Aharon’s rationale for cooperating with rather than resisting the creation of the Calf in the following manner: If the people were to kill me (Aharon) as they did Chur, since I am both a prophet as well as a priest, there would be no way for them to atone from such a sin. It is better for them to engage in idolatry from which there is atonement, than in the murder of one such as myself, for which they can never earn forgiveness. Moshe’s sharply worded attack on Aharon in 32:21, “…What did this people do to you for you to have brought upon them this major transgression?” could only have been most embarrassing and consternating for Aharon. The text allows us to not only read what Moshe said to Aharon, but also what Moshe thought in terms of Aharon’s flawed leadership, when in v. 25 we are told, “And when Moshe saw that the people were in disorder, because Aharon had made them disorderly and now they would be considered a scandal in the eyes of their enemies.” It is hard to imagine that Aharon did not think similarly about what had happened on his watch, and therefore it must have been hard for him to live with himself and what he had done.

Wanting Aharon to be Kohen Gadol after the Golden Calf?
Aharon’s increasing lack of self-confidence may be the reason behind why Moshe is advised by HaShem that he will have to convince Aharon to accept the position of Kohen Gadol, as hinted at in VaYikra 8:2. The Tora uses the verb “Kach” (take) with regard to Aharon’s assuming this important position. In general, RaShI consistently interprets the usage of “take” when applied to people, in contrast to inanimate objects lacking any sort of will of their own, as signifying the need to convince them with reasoned argument, rather than physically coercing them, to do something against their will.[10] Would Aharon’s reluctance not only be due to personal modesty, but also because he keenly feels that he has been unable to successfully fulfill previous public roles, be they prophetic or administrative? And when he finally accedes to God’s Commandment to serve as Kohen Gadol, perhaps he was seeking by means of this role a way in which he could atone for and redeem his past failures and miscalculations. However, he could have just  as well obstinately refused to go back into public service in light of all that had happened to him. It is interesting to reflect on the call of duty that he obviously felt, and which allowed him to overcome his personal reservations and fears, and resume his service to HaShem and the Jewish people.

Considering the deaths of Aharon’s sons within the context of his previous experiences.
Aharon’s reaction to the deaths of his sons in Parashat Shmini is perhaps that much more understandable in light of what had happened to him previously first in Egypt and then at Har Sinai. Many commentators understand Aharon’s silence (VaYikra 10:3) as resulting from Moshe’s words to him, i.e., that HaShem had Predicted before this horrible tragedy that He and His Tabernacle would be Sanctified[11] by those closest to Him. Prior to Moshe’s reassurance, Aharon could have reasonably surmised that his sons had been obtuse sinners in some manner, and that their punishment coupled with his position as Kohen Gadol, was just more in the way of the public humiliation that seemed to dog his steps and his best efforts to serve God and His People.[12] Assuming that Moshe was not merely saying words of comfort and covering up the truth,[13] but rather that he was appropriately and honestly describing what had taken place, Aharon engaged at this point in the ultimate Tzidduk HaDin (justifying the Divine Decree that had been issued.) He is therefore confronting the fact that when one takes on responsibilities that stand B’Rumo Shel Olam (at the pinnacle of the world) there are attendant risks. But it is not for us to duck and run for cover, but rather to meet and embrace those challenges and demands with resolve and commitment, whatever the price. The attitude of both Moshe and Aharon is further clarified when, according to RaShI, Moshe tells his grieving brother, “I realized that God Intended to sanctify the Tabernacle with those who are closest to Him, but I thought that what was intended was that either you or I would be called upon to make that sacrifice. Now I see that they, Nadav and Avihu, were even closer and holier than either of us, and therefore God Chose them.” According to Moshe, the readiness for self-sacrifice and total devotion was shared by all four of these individuals, and that fact should not be lost upon us.

Conclusion
The story of the deaths of Nadav and Avihu is troubling and disconcerting. It is counter- intuitive that God should Wish to Make a point about holiness by taking holy people away from the world,[14] rather than allowing them to engage in Kiddush HaShem and serve as models for others throughout long and healthy lives. However, the readiness to sacrifice and take risks in the service of God and the Jewish people is certainly a quality that is to be admired and emulated.

[2] Shemot 2:1 is interpreted by R. Yehuda bar Zevina in Sota 12a as indicating not only the remarriage of Moshe’s eventual parents at the behest of their daughter Miriam, but also the signal to the rest of the Jewish population to remarry, as a demonstration of having faith in the Jews’ eventual redemption from slavery and the reversal of the decree to kill all newborn male children, commanded by Pharoah in 2:22. According to this approach, Amram, as leader of the Jews, had at first decided to demonstrate to everyone that it was wrong to bring children into a world where at least half of the newborns would meet death by drowning, and therefore took the lead in divorcing his wife, an action that was followed by all other Jewish men. It is at this point that Miriam argues with her father and finally convinces him to remarry Yocheved and father additional children, an action that in turn is emulated by the rest of the Jews, since they looked to Amram for guidance as to how to best cope with the situation in which they found themselves. (See RaShI on Shemot  2:1).  Suggesting that Amram was the leader of the Jews is also bolstered by the assumption appearing in Midrash Tanchuma Parshat VaEra #6, that the tribe of Levi was not enslaved during the entire period of Egyptian bondage. This may not only account for Amram’s and Aharon’s leadership positions, but also the resistance by members of this tribe to participate in the sins of the Golden Calf (Ibid. 32:26) and the Spies, as well as their eventual selection by God to replace the Bechorim (first born) and serve as the source of the Kohanim and Leviim for the Tabernacle/Temple Service (BaMidbar 3:45). Just as Moshe’s being raised in Pharoah’s palace prevented him from developing a slave mentality (see Ibn Ezra on Shemot 2:3), so too the entire tribe of Levi’s exemption from having to engage in slave labor provided them with a perspective and freedom of thought that would assist them to maintain their faith, despite all manner of pressure and danger.

[3] RaShI on Shemot 4:10 posits that Moshe’s resistance lasted for seven days. This inference is drawn from the words “Mitmol”-yesterday; “Shilshom”-the day before yesterday; “MeiAz Dabercha”-from then I Spoke to you, i.e., an additional day; the three “Gam”’s-also are traditionally viewed by Midrashic interpreters as inclusionary words in the sense that they are not just conjunctions, but in fact hint at additional information, in this case each “Gam” representing something additional to the words/phrases that they are modifying, or three more days, leading to a total of six, aside from the day that the conversation in 4:10 is taking place, resulting in a grand total of seven.

[4]The previous protests that Moshe mounts include: (3:11) his personal unworthiness for such a mission; (Ibid., 13) his unfamiliarity with God and His Attributes serving as a stumbling block for the Jews to believe him; (Ibid., 4:1) his lacking confidence that the Jews are capable of believing him when he tells them that God had Appeared to him; and (Ibid., 10) his poor communication skills.

[5] Although from this point on, in most cases when HaShem had something to communicate to Aharon, He would do so via Moshe, e.g., VaYikra 6:18; 16:2; 17:2; 21:17; 22:2,18; BaMidbar 6:23; 8:2, there are several specific instances when Aharon receives prophecy directly from God: VaYikra 10:8; BaMidbar 18:1, 8, 20.

[6]Whereas RaShI on BaMidbar 12:1 voices the position of most commentators, i.e., that the issue being discussed by Miriam and Aharon was Moshe’s abandonment of Tzippora, there are those like RaShBaM who opine that his brother and sister were objecting to Moshe’s having married another Kushite woman in addition to Tzippora, thereby diminishing Tzippora’s central role in Moshe’s family.

[7] Shabbat 97a cites a view that Aharon at least temporarily also was plagued with Tzora’at, perhaps due to the use of the prepositional object “Bam” (against them), but that his lesser role in sharing evil speech regarding Moshe resulted in the plague lasting only momentarily, as opposed to the more permanent state in which Miriam was placed.

[8] On Shemot 32:2, RaShI defines Aharon’s directive to obtain the gold needed for the Calf’s construction from wives and children to a delaying tactic, since he thought that they would be resistant to parting with their jewelry. The strategy was defeated when in v. 3, the men offer their own jewelry and avoid the domestic squabbles that Aharon may have been counting on.   It is difficult to interpret v. 4 in a way that would refute that Aharon actually formed the Calf from the gold that was donated. Since Aharon is the last proper noun mentioned at the end of v. 3, it is only logical to assume that it is he who is the subject of v. 4. Aharon’s protestations in v. 24 to the contrary, i.e., “I threw the gold into the fire” as opposed to “He formed the gold with a molding instrument”, it nevertheless appears that the earlier dispassionate account, rather than the version that Aharon tells a furious Moshe, is the more reliable sequence of events. According to RaShI, Aharon’s final attempt to stall for time so that Moshe could hopefully return and short-circuit the desire for some sort of symbol to replace him-see RaShI on v. 1-is suggested in v. 5 when he declares the next day as the occasion when  to worship the Calf. But alas this too turns out to be too little, too late.

[9]Chur is mentioned as occupying a leadership position at two different junctures in Shemot. First, during the battle with Amalek, Chur, along with Aharon, stands next to Moshe and supports his hands so that they would point upwards and inspire the people to realize that their military prowess originates from HaShem-see 17:12. The second and last occasion when Chur is mentioned in the text is before Moshe ascends Sinai for the first of his three forty day stays in 24:14. While Aharon is mentioned many times and continues to maintain his important role as Kohen Gadol, Chur never appears again, leading to at least the possibility that rather than volitionally withdrawing from public life, his life came to a sudden end. If when Moshe comes down from the mountain at the end of this first forty-day period to find the people worshipping the Calf, if Chur was still at his post, why does Moshe only complain to Aharon? Apparently Chur couldn’t share the blame because at least according to R. Elazar in Sanhedrin, he was no longer alive.

[10] Other examples involve Hagar (Beraishit 16:3), the tribe of the Levi’im (VaYikra 8:6), Korach (BaMidbar 16:1), and Yehoshua (BaMidbar 27:18).

[11]Commentators (see e.g., Tora Temima on VaYikra 10:3 #3) note that God was “Fearful” that the existence of the Tabernacle and the means by which to atone for sins via the offering of sacrifices, may lead the Jewish people to conclude that it was not important to strive to live a good and correct life, and that anything and everything will be forgiven. In order to demonstrate that His Standards and Expectations were extremely high, God Took advantage of the principle that He Holds the righteous to an astonishingly high standard-see e.g., BaMidbar Rabba 20:24-and when the first righteous individual erred in the Temple Service, even if the error ordinarily would have been overlooked, on this occasion the rules were literally and draconically enforced in order to encourage a state of mind of Yirat HaShem (the Fear of God) among the people.

[12] A pattern where children of the High Priest clearly abuse their privileged status for personal gain is described at the beginning of Shmuel I 2:12 ff.

[13]An extremely negative view of Nadav and Avihu is presented in Midrash Tanchuma Achrai Mot #7 where eleven different sins are offered as possible reasons for their deaths: 1) they were drunk, 2) they were not wearing the appropriate priestly garments, 3) they did not have permission to enter the Holy of Holies, 4) they did not wash their hands and feet prior to entering the Tabernacle area, 5) they offered a sacrifice that was uncalled for, 6) they brought fire from an inappropriate source, 7) they did not consult with each other or anyone else prior to their offering the sacrifice, 8) they never had children, 9) they never married, 10) they were eagerly awaiting the demise of their father and uncle so that they could become the leaders of the people, and 11) they were among those who saw God on Mt. Sinai while eating and drinking. While the Midrash claims that by delineating these sins, it would remove suspicions that they were guilty of something more nefarious, the generation of such a lengthy inventory would appear to cast considerable aspersions upon them, and at least by inference, upon Aharon as well. Similarly, some blame for Chafni’s and Pinchos’ iniquities is attributed by God to Eli in  Shmuel I 2:29, if for no other reason, than why hadn’t Eli opposed their actions more vociferously? Would Aharon’s tendency to prefer to avoid conflict—a quality that is eternally associated with him in terms of the manner in which he engaged in conflict resolution between husband and wife as well as acquaintances who had become estranged—get  him into trouble with regard to the Golden Calf, perhaps preventing  him from being the type of advocate that was necessary in Egypt, also cause him to look away from his sons’ inappropriate behavior and attitude, until it was too late?

[14] Can such an idea serve as the basis for the understanding of (Tehilim 116:15) “Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of His saints“? While the word “Yakar” could imply “precious”, “dear”, it could also suggest “difficult” “costly.” Here is another example of how a translation of a word serves as an interpretation as well.

In Beraishit 38, we learn about Yehuda’s marriage and his interactions with his children and daughter-in-law. Yehuda’s choice to wed an ostensibly Canaanite woman—38:2 “Bat Ish Canaani” (the daughter of a Canaanite man)[1]  —appears to fly in the face of the traditions that were begun by Avraham and continued down through subsequent generations of Avraham’s descendents. Avraham is quite explicit when he tells Eliezer (24:3) “Do not take a woman for my son of the Canaanite daughters among whom I live.”  Hagar, after their banishment from Avraham’s house, arranges for Yishmael to marry an Egyptian woman (21:21) rather than a Canaanite one.[2] When Eisav ignores the injunction originating with his grandfather, and marries two Canaanite women (26:34), the Tora lets the reader know in no uncertain terms how Yitzchak and Rivka react to their son’s decision: (26:35) “And they (the Hittite women) were a bitterness of spirit to Yitzchak and to Rivka.” Rivka exploits her and her husband’s extreme dissatisfaction with Eisav’s marriage partners in order to rationalize[3] to Yitzchak the need for Yaakov to leave home, lest he follow his brother’s example (27:46) and choose an unsatisfactory wife. Even Eisav eventually appears[4] to realize how negatively his parents felt about the women he married, and tries to at least partially appease them by marrying an additional wife from the family of Yishmael (27:8-9).   The fact that Dinah’s rapist was a Canaanite (34:2) probably added insult to injury.    Acknowledging this pattern of spousal preference – and recognizing the importance of maintaining the fledgling spiritual traditions that had evolved over the course of only three previous generations – would lead us to think that Yehuda would naturally follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, and not marry a Canaanite.  It is striking that this might not have been the case.

 Altering the literal meaning of “Canaani” to preserve the marriage tradition established by Avraham

Perhaps for the very reason that it seems so outlandish for Yehuda to marry a Canaanite, not only RaShI, who often incorporates Midrashic interpretations into his Tora commentary, but even someone as rigorously devoted to the simple, literal meaning of the text as his grandson, RaShBaM,[5] accepts Targum Onkelos’ understanding of “Canaani” in 38:2 as connoting “a merchant” rather than a member of a particular ethnic group.[6]   And while Ibn Ezra, another commentator who usually prefers literal textual interpretation, does mention that while it is possible that the text is declaring that Yehuda married an actual Canaanite, he includes the Rabbinic approach as well, i.e., Yehuda did nothing of the sort but rather married a merchant. Ibn Ezra does not always cite Rabbinic interpretations of the Aggadic portions of the bible, and the fact that he does so in this instance suggests that he too had strong reservations about conclusively asserting that Yehuda married “improperly”. RaDaK offers a literary indication that Yehuda must have married a non-Canaanite woman: When we look at the Tora’s genealogical list of the descendants of Yaakov upon the occasion of the family traveling from Canaan to Egypt (46:1 ff.), a particular description of one of the children of Shimon leaps out at us: (46:10) “Shaul, the son of the Canaanite woman”.[7]  If Yehuda, and possibly others of Yaakov’s offspring, married Canaanites, it would not make sense to single out only Shaul as having a Canaanite mother, and therefore, by implication, Shimon marrying a Canaanite woman. The Tora’s drawing attention to this case implies that it is the only case, and that all of the other brothers, including Yehuda, married wives in keeping with Avraham’s proscription.[8]

A Midrash that assumes that Yaakov’s sons were “between a rock and a hard place” when it came to finding women to marry in light of the rule established by Avraham.

RaMBaN explains that the view that Yehuda’s wife was not literally a Canaanite, is at least methodologically consistent with those commentators offering an additional alternative source of wives for Yaakov’s children in an argument recorded in a Midrash. Regarding 37:35 where the Tora relates how all of Yaakov’s children—including daughters (plural!)[9]—tried to comfort him after his concluding that Yosef was dead, the Midrash states the following:

Beraishit Rabba 84:21

R. Yehuda said that the tribes married their sisters…

R. Nechemia said that they married Canaanites…

 R. Yehuda’s view that for lack of appropriate candidates for marriage from outside the immediate family—it’s one thing when Avraham is faced with marrying off one son, Yitzchak,[10] or Yitzchak is concerned about whom his son (singular) Yaakov will marry; but when there are eleven sons, let alone forty-nine grandsons (see 46:9-24), how could there possibly have been enough marriage candidates among Avraham’s family to accommodate them all?[11]  One senses how repulsive and contrary to Jewish values Canaanite culture must have been[12] if we see that R. Yehuda  concluded that of the two taboos that would have prevented these individuals from marrying, the prohibition against literal Canaanites was stronger than limitations regarding marrying a sibling.[13]

An earlier marriage issue that foreshadowed the dilemma encountered by Yaakov and his family.

The assumption by at least one school of Rabbinic thought that intermarriage took place within this patriarch’s intimate family circle, hearkens back to an earlier problem in the Tora. Whether it should be assumed that daughter twins accompany the birth of sons in situations where suitable mates seem to be unavailable, is a question that was raised out of similar necessity at the very beginning of Creation. Consider RaShI’s comments on 4:1-2: “’VaTeled Et Kayin…VaTosef Laledet Et Achiv, Et Hevel…’ (And she bore “ET” Kayin…and she continued to give birth “ET” his brother, “ET” Hevel.) The three “Et”’s are inclusionary words, (i.e., words whose purpose is to indicate that more has happened or has been said than meets the eye; yet no overt mention of these events or statements will be recorded other than by means of a word connoting ‘more’, ‘additionally’).[14]  This is to teach that a twin sister was born along with Kayin, and two twin sisters at the time of  Hevel’s birth. For this reason the verb ‘VaTosef’ (and she continued) was employed.” [15] This perspective apparently assumes that rules of incest are waived prior to the giving of the Tora at Sinai, at those times when there are no other marriage partners available to Divinely Chosen family lines. Although ultimately what Lot’s daughters do in 19:31 ff. is discredited, since they were not the last people on earth but rather only the sole survivors of Sodom and Amora, had the former been the case, their actions as a means for the human race to continue to exist, could have been justified.

A curious context for the application of the term “Chesed” (kindness).

A further hint that points to the legitimacy of such a claim is assumed by some to be found in VaYikra 20:17: “A man who marries his sister, the daughter of his father or the daughter of his mother, and sees her nakedness and she sees his nakedness, it is ‘Chesed’ (compassion?!), and they will be cut off before the eyes of their people, he has uncovered her nakedness and he will bear his sin.” RaShI, after declaring that the simple meaning of “Chesed” within this context is “shame, embarrassment”, cites a Midrashic interpretation in Sanhedrin 58b, to the effect that in order to assure that Kayin would have someone to marry, God made available to him a sister,[16] constituting a fulfillment of Tehillim 89:3, “The world He constructed on the basis of ‘Chesed’”.

 Marriage choices for our children today.

In conclusion, while giving birth to a large number of children was necessary to be undertaken by Yaakov to assure the continuation and expansion of the Jewish people, the logistical challenge of finding marriage partners was daunting.  Worrying about whom one’s offspring will marry and how they will hopefully continue in the traditions of the past is not something that has decreased down through the ages. While choices today are happily broader than the extremely difficult situation that the Rabbis describe was confronting Yaakov and his wives,  parents continue to be concerned and hope and pray that their children will marry well and merit to build faithful and lasting families among the Jewish people.  

[2] While commentaries on 21:21 attribute Hagar’s choice of daughter-in-law to the fact that she herself is originally described as Egyptian (16:1), Chizkuni cites Pirkei D’Rabbi Eliezer, chapt. 29, which states that Yishmael originally married a Moabite woman, but divorced her due to Avraham’s critique of her personal attributes, suggesting that Yishmael’s father might have been opposed to particular cultural behaviors of the Canaanites rather than simply their national or ethnic identities.

[3] The Tora states that the true reason behind Rivka wishing Yaakov to leave home was out of fear of Eisav’s reprisal, once the elderly Yitzchak would die (27:41-2).

[4] It is unclear if Eisav does this simply to make a positive impression upon his father, in the spirit of RaShI’s comment on 25:28, or he agreed that his Canaanite wives left something to be desired. The fact that he merely marries an additional wife rather than divorcing the first two, contributes to his motives being ambiguous.

[5] See RaShBaM on the beginning of Parashat VaYeshev, 37:2 op. cit. Eileh Toldot Yaakov, where he describes a conversation that he had with RaShI, and attributes to him the sentiment that had he more time, he would have rewritten his biblical commentary paying more attention to the text’s simple meanings!

[6] A similar interpretive approach is applied to the identity of the father of Sholomo HaMelech’s chief artisan in the construction of the Temple.  Chiram is identified as the son of an (Melachim I 7:14) “Ish Tzori”. While this could connote a non-Jewish resident of Tyre—the fact that his mother is identified as Jewish (Ibid.) at least takes care of the fact that Chiram was technically Jewish—nevertheless both RaShI and RaDaK, insist that while a resident of Tyre, the father was actually Jewish. By extension, there could be non-Canaanites living in Canaan who would be called “Canaanites”, and conversely, when Eliezer is sent to Avraham’s birthplace to find a non-Canaanite wife for Yitzchak, who is to say that he might not choose a Canaanite who had relocated to Aram Naharaim? For this reason, Eliezer was taking a major risk when according to the sequence of events recorded in Beraishit 24:22-23, he gives Rivka gifts before asking her about her specific identity. How could he not have been more careful about clearly ascertaining her background before making any commitments in light of Avraham’s instructions? It would appear that even he recognized that he might have been too hasty when in his discussions with Rivka’s family, Eliezer reverses the sequence of events (24:47). The critique of Eliezer’s actions is so severe that Peshat-oriented RaShBaM on 24:22, claims that 24:47 was not merely Eliezer revising the story, but the true order of how things happened.

[7] RaShI explains, that like Yehuda, Shimon also did not actually marry a Canaanite. The commentator interprets the phrase describing Shaul’s mother as a reference to Dina, who, because she was raped by a Canaanite (34:2), could be referred to as a Canaanite herself. The fact that this then becomes an incest issue—Shimon and Dina are children of the same father (Yaakov) and mother (Leah [29:33; 30:21] appears to be a case of solving one problem (the identity of the mother of Shaul) by creating another (Shaul’s parents were full brother and sister). Furthermore, a Midrash (Midrash Aggada, Buber edition, Beraishit 41:45; Chizkuni on this verse) suggests that Osnat, Yosef’s wife, was not the biological child of Potifera, but a foundling whom they raised. In fact, she was the daughter of Dina and Shechem, whom Yaakov and his family left on Potifera’s doorstep, since they considered her the undesirable concrete reminder of the rape that Dina suffered. By linking the stories of Dina and Yosef’s marriage, yet another of Yaakov’s sons marries a blood relative, albeit a bit more removed—Yosef’s mother was Rachel. See the discussion of R. Yehuda’s position cited in Beraishit Rabba in the next section of this essay for a further discussion of the approach that assumes that brothers married sisters in Yaakov’s family.

[8] RaDaK’s logic is consistent with the underlying assumption of RaShI’s comment on VaYikra 24:11, regarding Shlomit bat Divri, the mother of the “blasphemer”. RaShI states that the Tora’s singling out this woman as having a child with an Egyptian man reflects her being the only Jewess of that generation who did so and that everyone else remained within the Jewish fold.

[9] The only daughter explicitly mentioned is Dina in 30:21.

[10] RaMBaN on 24:1 quotes Bava Batra 16b, where several interpretations of the phrase, “And God Blessed Avraham BaKol (in everything)” is discussed. Among the views expressed in the Gemora is that of R. Meir, who explains that the blessing was that Avraham did not have a daughter. Rather than simply dismissing this view as paternalistic, or even somewhat misogynistic, RaMBaN explains that whereas it could be insisted that a wife would have to come to live with the husband’s family, the reverse was not true. Consequently, if Avraham had a daughter, she would have gone off and lived with her husband’s idolatrous family, practically insuring her disconnection from the spiritual traditions that Avraham was developing. That was obviously not the case with respect to Rivka, Leah, or Rachel, although Yaakov stayed away from his family and their traditions longer than he probably should have. The example of Dina’s behavior (“going out to see the daughters of the land”) and her tragic misfortune (being raped by a Canaanite prince) further illustrates how R. Meir may have reached his point of view.

[11] The assumption that Avraham insisted to Eliezer that a member of his family, rather than someone who merely lived in Padan Aram, be found for Yitzchak, could be challenged based upon how 24:4 “But rather to my land and my birthplace you will go and take a wife for my son Yitzchak” is to be interpreted. Ibn Ezra, for example, does not mention Avraham’s family when he interprets this verse—“My land: this is Charan where he dwelled; My birthplace: Ur Kasdim.”

[12] See VaYikra 18:3.

[13] Should it be assumed that at least only“half-brothers” and “half-sisters” married one another, despite the example of Shimon and Dina who were full brother and sister? Perhaps this latter example was considered a special case in light of the following Midrash:

Beraishit Rabbati, Parashat VaYigash, p. 222. (Bar Ilan CD ROM)

 (46:10) “And Shaul the son of the Canaanite woman”—What is the meaning of “Shaul, the son of the Canaanite woman”? According to the one who said, “The ‘tribes’ (sons of Yaakov) married their sisters” (R. Yehuda), therefore this one is specified, that this one alone was the son of a Canaanite woman, and not the others. According to the one who said, “The ‘tribes’ married from the daughters of the land” (R. Nechemia), what does he do with “Shaul, the son of the Canaanite woman” (since it was possible that many of the children mentioned were sons of Canaanite women, why was this individual singled out)? They said this is Dina the daughter of Leah, because R. Huna said: When Shimon and Levi brought their sister Dina out of Shechem (34:26), she did not want to leave. She said, “Where will I take my humiliation (II Shmuel 13:13)?” (She refused until) Shimon her brother swore that he would marry her, and then she agreed to leave. This is the meaning of “Shaul, the son of the Canaanite woman”. R. Yehuda said: She acted like the Canaanites (the promiscuity that led her to go out and make herself vulnerable to Shechem’s advances.) R. Nechemia said: She was intimate with a Canaanite and therefore became herself considered as a Canaanite. Once she conceived, Shimon divorced her once he was no longer bound by the oath. (Apparently it was assumed that Dina’s concern was not so much whether she remained married, but would she ever have a child. Would this view similarly assume that even the half-brothers and half-sisters “married” only for child-bearing purposes, but otherwise would not continue to live together?) And when the family went down to Egypt, Yaakov gave her as a wife to Iyov…The Rabbis said that Shimon (never divorced her) but when she died, he buried her in Canaan.

Did Shimon make such an exception only because there was no other way to extract his sister from Shechem, and had there not been such a compelling contingency, he would not have done so?

[14] For a classical debate regarding this linguistic approach revolving around the verse (Devarim 10:20) “ET HaShem Elokecha Tira” (And you will fear the Lord, your God), see Pesachim 22:20.

[15] In the drama, Inherit the Wind, the character modeled after Clarence Darrow imperiously asks his nemesis, William Jennings Bryant, if we are to take the Bible’s account of Creation literally, then how and with whom did all the “begetting” take place following the births of Kayin and Hevel, in light of the fact that no female offspring are mentioned?

[16] The only other alternatives would be to assume that either Kayin’s own mother was the mother of his children, or that there were other female births that the Tora simply did not record.

An advantage given to Kayin that his parents never were afforded

 Although Adam and Chava also sinned (3:1-7) and suffered dire consequences as a result (v. 16-24), there apparently never was a prior opportunity for them to learn what is implied by a God-given Commandment.  Kayin’s parents originally received a single warning concerning eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil as well as a threat of mortal consequences in the event that the warning is not heeded (2:16-17).  They were not told about human nature’s susceptibility to temptation; neither were they instructed regarding the best means by which they could avoid error, nor the possibility of repentance following improper behavior.  Perhaps God deemed it “sufficient”[2] to threaten them with death (v. 17) as a necessary and effective deterrent against their ignoring the Divine Command.  Subsequent events, however, offer ample evidence that informing man of such a punishment, as dire as it sounds to contemporary man, proved ineffective. Perhaps because Adam and Chava could not imagine the state of death, something that with which they had no experience, directly or indirectly, rendered the threat moot. 

Comparing the Divine Warnings Issued first to Adam and Chava, and then to Kayin

It is consequently possible to view 4:7 – the words imparted to Kayin anticipating future desperate, drastic actions on his part – as a refinement and reworking of 2:17.   This time, life and death are not made part of the calculus concerning sin and redemption with which the Divine confronts Kayin. The lesson taught to him after the rejection of his sacrifice emphasizes the issue of free choice and the possible sequence of events, both good and bad, resulting from earlier actions.  Whether or not Kayin gives in to his feelings of anger and frustration, or rises above them, is posed as a portent for an entire series of profound choices throughout his life, where the individual is constantly tempted and tested. 

Challenges testing one’s moral fiber can arise as the result of even virtuous behavior 

It  is notable that the action that initiated the unfortunate chain of events that leads directly to Kayin’s slaying his brother Hevel, is an inherently positive one, reflecting admirable commitment and a proper religious sensibility. The Bible records no sacrifices offered prior to Kayin’s bringing produce as an offering to God. And obviously, Kayin therefore was also never explicitly told or could emulate others with respect to bringing the “best” when presenting a sacrifice to God.[3] Hevel, on the other hand, watched what his brother did, copied him, but also improved upon his brother’s actions by going out of his way to offer sacrifices of superior quality. Perhaps God assumed that since Kayin had been the first to offer sacrifices, and his brother had emulated him with respect to the general process, then he in turn would readily emulate Hevel.  On succeeding occasions, he would similarly not only sacrifice in general, but deliberately present his best possessions to God. It would appear that this was in essence what God attempted to communicate to Kayin in 4:7—one should always look to improve upon what one has done in the past, and in this manner become ever-uplifted. Something apparently in Kayin’s nature unfortunately prevented him from learning either from his brother’s example or from God’s explicit instruction. 

A possible barrier preventing Kayin in particular from being open to instruction and correction

 R. Yehuda Kil, in Da’at Mikra,[4] notes the literary parallels between God’s words to Kayin—“Im Teitiv Se’eit”, and what Yaakov tells Reuven in his final blessing to him (49:3)—“Yeter Se’eit VeYeter Az” (exceedingly uplifted and exceedingly powerful.) The commentator suggests that the term “Se’eit” reflects the special status of priesthood and being a first-born son.[5] An additional literary reference to the status of the firstborn in God’s message to Kayin is the usage of the word “Petach” (doorway, opening) in 4:7, which R. Kil understands as the opening of his mother’s womb that the Bechor accomplishes when he is born. The reason that “sin (especially ?) crouches at the opening of the mother’s womb” specifically with respect to the Bechor, assumes this particular child must be special. Consequently, from the moment that Kayin and Hevel, the first siblings on earth, interact with one another, the biblical story leads the reader to posit that the Bechor expects special treatment and status due to his having been first on the scene. While one way to read many of the stories of the Bible would be to understand them as a negation of primogeniture and inherited privilege – making the case that chosenness should be based upon merit rather than genealogy and birth order – it is equally significant and quite poignant to consider these stories from the point of view of the first-born children themselves, who are regularly stymied in their aspirations for leadership.   One might even ultimately conclude that being born first, with the accompanying expectation of entitlement and sense of superiority, is actually a handicap rather than an advantage! While 4:7 is a message relevant to every human being, it might be of particular importance to those who, like the first-born, have some sense of superiority of expectation of privilege. 

Kayin is the first of a long line of first-born who are stymied in their pursuit of privilege 

Just as Kayin’s  assumption that he by definition is meant to excel beyond his brother gets thwarted by his brother’s sacrifice being accepted and not his own, so too all of Leah’s children in general, and Reuven in particular, experience  a similar rejection when the latter is replaced by Yosef as Yaakov’s firstborn. (48:5. By Yaakov’s designating Yosef’s sons Efraim and Menashe into full fledged tribes, he in effect confers upon Yosef the double portion of the firstborn, which technically belonged to Reuven.) Yaakov’s justification for Reuven’s demotion, (v. 4) “Pachaz KaMayim Al Totar” (unstable as water, you shall not excel)—the verse then refers to Reuven’s impetuous interference with Yaakov’s conjugal life following Rachel’s death (35:22)—could be just as easily applied to Kayin in the sense that he is unable to pay attention to the Divine Instruction being given to him, but rather continues to wallow in his emotions of jealously and frustration leading to his violently ending his competitor’s life.  

Others may have been complicit in creating Kayin’s mindset 

The significance of the naming of Kayin further suggests that the attitude of specialness on the part of a firstborn is not something that exclusively resides in the   child’s mind, but rather that it is often aided and abetted by parents. In 4:1, Chava exults upon the birth of her first child, and proclaims, “Kaniti (I have acquired, brought into existence) a man together with God.” As for his brother, we are left to use our own imaginations and associations in order to account for why the name “Hevel” was chosen, particularly in light of its meanings including vapor, steam, and nothingness. MaLBIM even suggests that Hevel was Kayin’s twin, paralleling the births of Eisav and Yaakov, since the text implies not that she conceived a second time, but rather (4:2) “She continued giving birth…” Although the second child came forth momentarily after the first, he nevertheless paled in significance in the mind of the mother, for no other reason than he was second! This is also suggested by the description of the births of Peretz and Zarach, (38:28-30), where the child that extended his hand beyond the womb first, earns privileged status, even if his body enters the world after his brother’s. 

   Yishmael’s mocking disposition and possible teasing of Yitzchak (21:9) could be understood to stem from a similar feeling of the oldest being suddenly supplanted by a younger child upon whom the parents shower great displays of affection. The imagery of Yaakov’s name being given to him as a result of his holding on to his twin’s heel at birth (25:26) is not lost on Eisav when he cries out after Yaakov’s trickery in obtaining Yitzchak’s blessing, (27:36) “For this reason is his name Yaakov, for he has usurped me (held onto my heel and gotten unfair advantage) twice…”    

The Jewish people as a whole as first-borns 

In light of the experiences of Kayin, Yishmael, Eisav and Reuven,   when God tells Moshe to express the Jewish people’s specialness to Pharoah in the following manner: (Shemot 4:22) “Beni Bechori Yisroel” (Israel is My Son, My Firstborn Son), should this not only be a source of pride for us, but also an implied warning? Should Jews assume that their status as chosen people is inviolate, and therefore they will live lives of unabated privilege and favoritism? At least certain periods of Jewish history have appeared to not bear out such an assumption.  All first-borns, individuals as well as nations, must be careful not to sit back on their laurels and presume that they don’t have to actually continually earn their special status.  Such a cautionary tale could be understood to begin with the words directed at Kayin in Beraishit 4:7. 

2:15 Man’s responsibility to take care of the world, balanced by (1:28) man’s mandate to benefit from and rule over the world.

2:16-17 Man responding to a Divine Commandment entailing the restriction of his desires.

2:18 Man’s need for companionship/community.

Ch. 3; 4:10-15 Sin and its consequences.

3:7, 21 Man’s need to be clothed.

3:22 ff. Exile from a person’s home.

4:3-5 The impetus to bring sacrifices to God.

4:8 Fratricide/murder in general.

4:20-22 Seminal developments in the history of human civilization.

4:26 Origins of idolatry, polytheism.

5:22-24 A human being who develops an intensely close relationship with God.

6:1-4 A description of an imbalance among social classes leading to the exploitation of the weaker by the more powerful.

6: 5 ff. God’s negative Evaluation of the entire Creation.

[2] The issue of the interaction between God’s Omniscience and man’s free choice arises as soon as the first Commandment is given. Meshech Chachma on Beraishit 2:26 interprets “BeTzalmeinu” as God’s deliberate Intention to engage in “Tzimtzum” (a contraction of His Qualities) to the point where human free choice, “KiDemuteinu” becomes possible.

[3] The reason for Kayin’s sacrifice being rejected in favor of Hevel’s can only be inferred by the manner in which each of their respective sacrifices is described. Furthermore, only upon contrasting the two descriptions is anything negative implied about Kayin’s offering. Beraishit 4:3 “…and Kayin brought from the fruits of the earth an offering to God” appears to be perfectly respectable and appropriate. It is only when this verse is compared to the one immediately following, (v. 4) “And Hevel also brought from the first born of his flock and from the fattest thereof…” that the absence of comparable superlatives describing Kayin’s offering becomes noticeable. Consequently it could be concluded that this shortcoming was a subtle one, which one could easily correct, were s/he so disposed.

[4]Beraishit, Vol. 1, Mosad HaRav Kook, Jerusalem, 1997, p. 109.

[5] Originally, the Jewish priesthood was to have been comprised of the firstborn. Only as a result of the sin of the Golden Calf was Aharon and his descendants chosen to replace the firstborn in this role. See BaMidbar 3:12.

I would like to commend my colleagues and friends, Rabbis Brody, Klapper (here and here) and Rothstein (here and here) for their stimulating and substantive posts in the last few weeks, partially in reaction to my original post on two halakhic issues that have been raised regarding the issue of expanding women’s roles in communal and spiritual leadership in the Modern-Orthodox community. They are a model of how these issues should be discussed, i.e with sober reflection, dignity and respectful interaction.

Below are some comments on their postings.

1. R. Rothstein begins the process of sharing with the public his attempt to tease out some conception of the nature of “traditional Jewish womanhood” as “constructed internally from the sources”.  As R. Rothstein notes at the end of his piece he does not leave us with a finished product and clear outline of what “womanhood” looks like. He does feel, if I am reading correctly, that he has delineated key areas in traditional sources both from the Torah, Biblical law as explicated in the Oral law, and purely rabbinic law as codified in the halakha, which must be central to the discussion. And if I read him correctly, he points us in a specific direction that leans heavily toward a more traditional conception of women’s role in Judaism. He offers some tentative thoughts on what these sources imply but leaves us with a recognition that much more work needs to be done.
2. R. Rothstein at the beginning of his essay argues that some of his interlocutors reject the notion of taamei hamitzvot or that halakha has a telos in which the mitzvot attempt to direct us to behave and act in certain ways, become certain kinds of people and adopt certain ways of viewing the world. I cannot speak for others, but I certainly am a devotee of these exact notions and often have bemoaned that in much of the Orthodox community (both to the right and to the left) the halakhic system is perceived as a type of obstacle course that one must “get through” in life. I fully subscribe to the notion of the halakha as having meaning and purpose and telelogical goals that God is trying to convey to us. Indeed, these are some of the fundamental lessons I learned directly and from the writings of my teachers, shul rabbis, and colleagues such as the Rav zt”l, Prof. Eliezer Berkovits z”l, and yebadel lechaim tovim vearulim, Dr. Norman Lamm, R. Shlom Riskin, R. Saul Berman, R. Avi Weiss, and mori verabi, Rav Yehuda Amital and mori verabi, Rav Aharon Lichtenstein. The question is not therefore whether one accepts the notion of telos and goals but a) if one can always figure out the “unequivocal” nature of that message and goal or b) if there are sometimes conflicting messages and goals in one area itself that express itself in dialectical tension and nuance.
3. R. Rothstein surprised me by beginning his attempt to tease out the nature of “traditional Jewish womanhood” by immediately jumping to the distinction between men and women that emerges from the rabbinic exemption from certain time bound commandments. I believe that any discussion of womanhood must begin at the beginning and that is that each person, both male and female, was created in the image of God (Gen. 1) and that each person stands before God as a metzuveh  (Gen 2). That is, every human being, male or female, is endowed with the whole range of talents and abilities that come under the rubric of tzelem elokim including the capacity to think, to reason, to create, to conquer (in the best sense of the word) to achieve and to follow in God’s ways.

Secondly, every human being stands as a commanded being before the Almighty where avodat Hashem has to be central to their very being and purpose in life. This all has to come at the beginning before any discussion of distinctions, role differentiations or differences. R. Rothstein makes passing reference to Nehama Leibowitz zt”l. One of Nehama’s favorite comments in all of parshanut (she would come back to it over and over in her sheets and in classes) was the profound words of R. Isaac Arama commenting on Rachel’s complaint to Jacob that she was barren and Jacob’s rebuke to her, that women have two names in the Bible: Isha (derived from Ish) and Eve indicating the primary purpose which is to stress that “like man you may understand and advance in the intellectual and moral realm” while the role aspect of the woman as childbearer and nurturer of the family is the “secondary purpose”. Before we speak of distinctions we need to begin at square one.

4. R. Rothstein rightly notes many of the halakhic areas where men and women are distinct, including the area of marriage law: “while women are required by the Torah to make a commitment to one man…a man could marry several women”. R. Rothstein continues to speak about the reality that according to Torah law only men can initiate divorce. He then goes on to consider other aspects of the stark differences in halakah between men’s ability to play certain ritual and political roles from which women are excluded such as the priesthood and the monarchy.

 R. Rothstein, however, leaves out any discussion of the halakhic reality and sources that indicate that in some areas of ritual, marriage, and inheritance law, biblical and especially rabbinic norms (which R. Rothstein has included in his discussions as indicative of the meta-values of the system) clearly moved in the direction of narrowing some of the gaps between men and women. These include the Biblical recording of the bnot tzlofchad episode indicating God’s recognition of the need to tweak the inheritance laws; the various statements and takanot of Hazal in they which they spoke of “shakdu hakhamim al takanot bnot Yisrael”, “mishum igun akilu bei rabbanan”; the halakha that they permitted women to do semichat hakorban in the Temple-laasot nachat ruah lanashim; the limitations on polygamy and unilateral divorce by men codified by Rabbeinu Gershon etc… Hazal and the Rishonim seem to have been balancing certain clear distinctions that are inherent in the Torah legislation with other Torah values and principles that needed to be brought to the fore.  These Torah values appear to include the desire to protect the dignity of the woman, kevod haberiyot, the view that the ideal marriage relationship is one of “vehayu lebasar echod” and other meta-halakhic values.

        It is interesting to note that on the very topic of marriage and the fact that men can marry several women, R. Nachum Rabinovitch, the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Birkat Moshe in Maaleh Adumim (who R. Rothstein cites in a different part of his essay) has written that the sharp distinctions that are evidenced in Torah law such as that men can marry more than one wife are actually not the Torah ideal. The Torah ideal is reflected in the original Torah value of “they shall become like one flesh”m (Gen. 2) which bespeaks a more equal relationship. The various laws of the Torah that permit divorce and polygamy, etc.., are reflective of the realities and the slow evolution of transforming the nature of human reality and society in a more positive way. In R. Rabinovits reading, the rabbinic legislation of Rabbeinu Gershom eliminating polygamy and restricting the man’s ability to unilaterally initiate divorce in most instances:

 advanced the values already determined in Scripture [of a permanent covenant between husband and wife]. In the biblical era, however, the time was not yet ripe, and people were not yet ready, for the full realization for the full realization of that vision. Only over time, as a result of a life of training in the life of the Torah, were people’s hearts made ready and did it become possible to draw closer to the goal established by the Torah (Darkah Shel Torah, (Hebrew), Edah Journal 3:1, pg.8).

 This approach is consistent with much of the thought of Rav Kook zt”l in some of his writings on war and ethics, the writings of Prof, Eliezer Berkovits, and the recently published essay by Dr. Norman Lamm where he speaks of the reality of an “developing halakhic morality.”  In that essay, R. Lamm presents a nuanced theory about a developing morality that is based on rediscovering Biblical and halakhic values

that were always there in the inner folds of the Bilbical texts and halakhic traditions… That is whereas we cannot create a new morality to oppose the Biblical one, we most certainly are free to exercise our judgment and experience in searching out authority in Biblical and rabbinic traditions to identify elements in Judaism that support a limitation of or alternative to the original doctrine…we are free, indeed compelled to use our creative moral and halakhic reasoning to reveal the latent moral judgments of the Torah that may contradict what we have previously accepted as the only doctrine of the Torah. For instance, in the case of slavery, the opposing principle of ki avadei heim, that all humans are the servants of the Creator, and hence we must discourage slavery…The choice before us , in such cases, is the tension between the Torah’s explicit legislation versus the Torah’s implicit value system” (War and Peace in the Jewish Tradition, pg. 226-227).

In our context, while the Torah and halakha clearly rejects a total egalitarian ethos, the tensile balance between explicit distinctions and the ethos of recognition of the spiritual desires, needs, and personhood of women as halakhic and Torah values are part of how the system works through competing religious desirata in various eras. Thus the notion that we have clear, unequivocal guidance on any specific current hot-button issue is far from clear to me. The reality is that in evaluating any “innovation” or move, especially when we are not dealing with strict halakha, the pulls and tugs of the various meta-values inherent in the system, e.g. gender and role distinctions and “mesorah” versus desire to enhance people’s avodat Hashem, human dignity and tzelem elokim, nahat rua, etc…, will need to be carefully weighed and considered, with the real possibility that people of good will emerge with differing conclusions. (And that is before one even gets to the sociological and political dimension of any question, which may effect any decision as well.) 

5. Given these remarks, while I was fascinated by R. Klapper’s analysis of my original essay, I do not concur with his assessment of my view of the halakhot that contain distinctions between men and women as hukkim.  I believe that there are many competing meta-values and societal goals that the Torah and halakha wanted to achieve, some eternal, some societally conditioned, but ones that contain dialectical elements and competing values that need to be taken into account in any full-fledged evaluation of any of these critical issues.[1]  

Chukim and Mishpatim in Halakha and Hashkafa

             A core concept in popular Orthodox thought is the distinction between חוקים and משפטים as presented by Rashi.  In this view, mitzvot are classified by whether they do or do not have a humanly intelligible purpose.  This position is hashkafically alien to the Spanish philosophical tradition, and exegetically rejected by most traditional commentators, but it nonetheless is a powerful cultural influence with significant intuitive appeal.

            This apparently hashkafic position has roots and branches within Halakhah.  One branch is what the Bavli sometimes presents as a dispute between R.Yehudah and R. Shim’on as to whether דרשינן טעמא דקרא, whether one can use the rationales for mitzvoth as the basis for deciding halakhic issues within those mitzvoth – obviously doing so requires the claim that such rationales exist, and refusing to do so works better if one denies they exist.  One root is the tension between the בנין אב and the חידוש in Midrash Halakhah.  Some legal details can have their scope expanded, become paradigms – these are the ones that conform to our intuition; whereas others are חידושים or גזירות הכתוב, counterintuitive, and therefore אין לך בם אלא חידושם – they should be applied as narrowly as plausible, regarded as exceptions.

            On what basis do we choose to classify something as a חידוש?  Bava Metzia 11a seem to suggest that the rule אין שכחה בעיר is classified as a גזירת הכתוב if and only if an extra feature of the Biblical verse can be found to decree it; on Bekhorot 5b R. Eliezer declares that the limitation of פטר to donkeys is a גזירת הכתוב, but then goes on to offer a rationale as well; and on Sanhedrin 70a R. Shimon says that one should derive the law of the rebellious daughter by kal vachomer from that of the rebellious son, but that the Torah prevents this by saying “son”, an argument that could certainly be evaded if desired.  It seems that these are categories of degree rather than absolutes, and mutable rather than fixed. 

Can Halakhot Change Categories?

              The question then is whether halakhot can legitimately move from one category to another over time.  Thus laws regarding Canaanite slaves may once have seemed intuitive, but it is now popular to regard them as concessions to pre-Torah feudal morality.  This is a quasirationale, but a dangerous one – cannot all mitzvot be seen as concessions to past moral systems, if they seem out of place to contemporaries?   Nonetheless, I hope and pray that no one today would take the laws of Canaanite slavery as models for the treatment of minorities in Israel.  Practically, historicization has the same effect as declaring those laws to be chukim. 

            Another striking example is the mitzvah of erasing Amalek.  While the argument that anyone who allegorizes the mitzvah is expressing moral discomfort with it seems false to me – one allegorizes mitzvoth that one cannot fulfill, even if one wishes with all one’s heart to fulfill them – Rav Lichtenstein, and before him the Chofetz Chayyim, argue that mechiyyat Amalek is the quintessential chok, such that it may only be performed by someone who denies that it has a humanly discoverable purpose.  In this interpretation, Shaul loses the monarchy not for his failure to kill Agag, but rather because his failure to kill Agag revealed that he had interpreted Shmuel’s instructions in accordance with what he understood to be their purpose.  But to think that genocide has a humanly discoverable purpose is evil, madness, or both, and so Shaul lost his monarchy not for failure to kill, but rather for killing the rest of Amalek.  Yet none of the rishonim puts in a special requirement of kavvanah lishmoh with regard to Amalek.

            Categorizing a mitzvah-detail, mitzvah, or complex of mitzvoth as chok rather than mishpat has the effect of quarantining it from normal halakhic conversation, and indeed, it has the effect of stigmatizing anyone seeking to reintroduce it as lacking proper religious intuition.  Conversely, categorizing a halakhah as mishpat rather than chok effectively accuses those who quarantine it of closing themselves off to the full implications of G-d’s word. 

Framing the “Jewish Womanhood” and Rabbah Debate

             My contention is that the fraught but respectful dialogue between my friends Rabbis Helfgot and Rothstein (here and here) regarding the ordination of women is fundamentally about whether we view the set of halakhot differentiating men from women in terms of ritual obligation as chukim, or rather as mishpatim.  Rabbi Rothstein argues that they are mishpatim, and so the rationales that motivate them must be extended to cases they do not specifically cover.  My impression is that this is a religious tendency that also drives him to find rationales for Amalek, inter alia.  Whereas Rabbi Helfgot is comfortable viewing those laws as chukim, fully authoritative as Halakhah, but providing no guidance – perhaps quite the contrary – on matters they don’t directly cover.  I think much the same phenomenon can be found in many contemporary Orthodox discussions of homosexuality.

            In this frame, it is precisely issues that cannot be easily treated by formal halakhah that take center stage, because they expose the underlying presumptions best.

            It should also be clear that mishpat-advocates are right to be worried about slippery slopes, as each concession on their part makes the halakhah less reflective of their rationales and therefore more susceptible to “chokification”. 

            I have more to say on this subject, both about the specific question of women’s ordination and about the general question of how one decides which halakhic details are paradigms and which exceptions, and hope to write on those subjects soon.  But it seemed to me valuable to first create this fairly neutral frame. 

            I will say by way of self-disclosure that I do believe that the option of declaring something a chok is legitimate, and therefore disagree with Rabbi Rothstein to the extent that I think there is room for some non-conversation within the same halakhic community.  At the same time, I fully agree that this technique is highly susceptible to abuse through deception, including self-deception, and should be used only with great caution.  Finally, there may perhaps be some room for mishpat advocates to admit that we often shouldn’t have enough confidence in our rationales to impose their implications on others, and for chok advocates to admit that quarantining devar Hashem is a bold move that should be undertaken only as a last resort.        

You know that moment in a conversation where you begin to suspect that the two of you see the world so differently, it might not even be possible to have an intelligible exchange? I do, very well; I once, years ago, deeply offended a congregant and friend when, in the middle of a discussion of some faith issue, said, “Well, you can say that if you want, but then we can’t talk.”

Months later, I found out he thought I meant I would refuse to speak with him if he said that, when I only meant that there would be little for us to say, since I was operating from premises so radically differently from his that we could not bridge that gap.

Worryingly, I have recently had a similar feeling about comments I’ve made regarding how we conceive of opportunities for Orthodox Jewish women. In a post in this space, I argued that any assertions about the future of women in Orthodox Judaism should be based on a picture of womanhood constructed internally, built up from the guidance given us by God in the Torah and as elaborated by halachah. 

I was somewhat surprised to see how confidently and vigorously people opposed that idea in theory, saying that it could not be done, that any resulting suggestions would be “arbitrary and impressionistic,” and that we were better off adhering to each halachah we encounter, but not suggesting that those halachot build anything as guiding as a sense of what ideal Jewish womanhood (or manhood) would look like.

Part of my surprise stems from my sense that my premise is largely unchallenged in the Orthodox world, so that finding Orthodox people who are ready to reject it out of hand is both surprising and distressing.  Since at least the time of Rambam, virtually all rabbinic and halachic thinkers have accepted the premise that there are reasons for mitsvot, that mitsvot carry a meaning and message beyond the rote act itself. While someone who eats matsah on Pesach simply because the Torah said so has technically observed the mitzvah, the failure to consider the message that mitzvah is sending ineluctably means that the observance is significantly lacking.  As Rambam put it, the person who does so is turning mitsvot into exactly what the Prophet Yeshayahu bemoaned, a מצוות אנשים מלומדה, a rote, meaningless practice, not the vehicle to Godliness and God-relatedness God intended when giving them to us.

That means that halachot that show men how they must act, ideally ought to act, are discouraged from acting, and prohibited from acting, shape not only those specific actions but give guidance on areas not as explicitly codified by halachah.  The same would seem obviously true for Jewish women, except that many now bristle at the idea of an external force, even God, telling us what type of people we should be.

To form a systemically faithful view of where Jewish women go from here, I therefore repeat, would  have to involve building such a picture from within the sources of tradition, seeing where tradition makes unequivocal statements about what the role of women has to include, and seeing where we go from there.  By recalling the areas of halachah where God differentiated men from women, and without offering a personal view as to how to weave those together (since that will seem arbitrary and impressionistic), I hope to remind us that there the Torah provides a latent view (or, range of views) of womanhood that is not based on sociology or outmoded notions of what women are. The areas I note here are those that are universally and timelessly a part of Jewish law and practice, and in that very fact are meant to shape our view of the different roles the members of the two genders occupy in an ideal Jewish society.

A First Difference: Time-Related Obligations

Perhaps the most commonly referenced differentiation between men and women is women’s exemption from מצוות עשה שהזמן גרמא, obligations that have a time element to them.  There have been many explanations for this exemption (I have offered some thoughts on this issue as well, most recently at blog.webyeshiva.org, in post 17), but there are pieces to the puzzle I wish to highlight.

First, at least for these mitsvot, the Torah does not exclude women, it exempts them from obligation.  Women are welcome to wave a lulav, hear a shofar being blown, or perform almost any of the other of these commandments, and will clearly become closer to God by so doing; they just cannot manufacture an obligation to do so.  That lack of obligation has halachic ramifications, since it means at least that they cannot perform these acts in a way that will help someone obligated fulfill that obligation.

This distinction between obligated or not can be exaggerated or minimized, and advocates of improving women’s spiritual opportunities within Orthodoxy have done both.  The exaggeration would be to find oneself deeply offended by this distinction since, after all, women can perform these mitsvot.

The too-minimal approach would be to fail to realize that the Torah is sending a message here about how it views men and women.  What that message is would require an in-depth discussion of those mitsvot to try to understand why the Torah articulated this distinction.  One promising area of inquiry is the source the Gemara adduces for how it knows of that exemption.

The Source: Women’s Exemption From Talmud Torah

Although it is rarely remarked in discussions of why women are exempt from these mitsvot, bKiddushin 34a-b sources it in a comparison between tefillin, taken as a paradigmatic example of such mitsvot, and the obligation to study Torah.  The discussion gets somewhat convoluted, but the Gemara seems to see that as the general position of how we know that women are exempt from these kinds of mitsvot.  If so, any proper explanation of the exemption would have to base itself not only on perceived characteristics of those mitsvot, but also on how that connects to women’s being relieved of the obligation to study Torah.

That exemption, too, is often explained in distressingly sociological ways (e.g., in the Torah’s time, women were uneducated, so it would have been unfair, etc.).  I call those distressing because they seem to lose sight of the fact that we have a God-given Torah, articulating values and obligations that apply throughout history; had God wanted women to study Torah, I cannot imagine He (pardon the pronoun) would have refrained out of fear of the sociological difficulties, especially since God did obligate women in plenty of mitsvot that were also beyond the ordinary expectations of the time.

Without offering my own view, I would note that some of this is based on the partially erroneous assumption that the mitzvah of Talmud Torah refers just to the act of studying Torah. As I have noted elsewhere (Journal of Halachah and Contemporary Society, Spring, 2004), the mitzvah is actually an obligation to know, not just study, the entirety of at least the Five Books of the Torah, and possibly Scripture in general.

A proper explanation of the distinction between men and women in these areas of mitsvot, then, has to give some systemically plausible reason for why God would decide to exempt women from attaining this kind of knowledge (they are, after all, required to know how to be proper servants of God, however they gain access to that knowledge), and why that exemption should expand to include time-related obligations.

The Public Community

A second prominent distinction between men and women is that only the former are required to take part in the public community of the Jewish people. While this is more commonly known from women’s not being counted in a minyan, or being able to serve as שליח ציבור, the leader of certain congregational prayers, it comes up in simpler halachot as well, such as women’s exemption from giving the מחצית השקל, the half-shekel poll-tax used to finance the yearly public sacrifices. Women are allowed to give that tax, but not obligated to, a distinction that, as we saw above, has its own halachic ramifications.

Once again, the question is not only these halachot’s exact parameters, and what ways we might find to circumvent them, but what messages they send. I stress again that it is insufficient to say that in the Torah’s time women were not part of the public community, for at least three reasons. First, God can and did demand whatever was deemed important enough of women; second, God can make different obligations apply in different circumstances, and, finally, the Torah did require women to participate in wars when necessary.  The decision to exempt women from this role in the public community, then, is a set of choices God made, whose import we need to understand before we can properly apply them contemporarily.

Entry and Exit From Marriage

Another aspect of Jewish womanhood, and one that currently rankles because of the abuse of the system, is that women are required by the Torah to make a commitment to only one man, whereas, by Torah law, a man could marry several women.  I again fear that a sociological/historical reason springs to people’s lips, and would remind them that God made these laws for all times. This has numerous halachic ramifications, such as the fact that adultery in halachah involves a married woman; the man’s marital state is irrelevant.

A flip side of this issue is that the Torah does not allow women to initiate divorce. This, too, is often assumed to be a sign of the Torah’s distrust of women’s capabilities, a position belied by a simple comment Rambam makes in Hilchot Melachim 9;8. When defining adultery for non-Jews (also a capital crime), Rambam notes that non-Jewish divorce (by Torah law) can be initiated unilaterally by either the man or the woman. Unless we believe God and the Torah trusted Jewish women less than non-Jewish women, some other explanation is required to understand the message the Torah is sending.

Tzniut: A Lost and Misunderstood Value

Once we raise issues of public participation and marriage, the question of modesty necessarily arises.  Today, we often connect modesty to a form of dress, particularly women’s.  bMakkot 24a reminds us that that is a mistake, noting that despite these events generally occurring with great fanfare, the Prophet Michah tells us that God wants us to conduct ourselves with modesty.  The kal va-chomer, that all the more so should we conduct ourselves modestly in venues where it is generally assumed, is explicit in the Gemara.

That means that any properly traditional Jewish society must also articulate a sense of how that modesty expresses itself.  One such area, but by no means the only one, is sexuality and Judaism’s unceasing (and, in our world at least, seemingly quixotic) effort to restrict it to the only venue where it is relevant, the relationship between husband and wife.  One way was to largely segregate them, such as in the traditions that Avraham converted men to monotheism while Sarah did the same for women; or the Torah’s testimony that Miriam led women in a separate Song after the Splitting of the Sea. 

That is not the only way, but as I noted in my recent post about Purim, all versions of Jewish society, wherever they fall out on the mixed/segregated continuum, still have to account for safeguarding the Orthodox interest in a proper and appropriate sexuality.  This certainly can be done for many different versions of society, but it must be done in order to qualify as a plausible one.

Monarchy, Priesthood, and Marriage

Two more issues that I think would be necessary to address in articulating a vision of Jewish womanhood that could be both flexible in application and faithful to God’s wishes are the question of women’s exclusion from monarchy and the Temple aspects of the priesthood.  It is well-known, and perhaps overemphasized, that Rambam saw the Torah’s excluding women from monarchy much more broadly, as ruling out all positions of serarah, of coercive power.  Even if we do not adopt Rambam’s position, it is still true that the Torah excluded women from monarchy itself. 

Lest we dismiss that as irrelevant in our non-kingly times, or restricted to that one unique role in Jewish society, the Torah also excluded women from the Temple-related aspects of the priesthood.  I phrase it that way because many people assume that the Torah excluded women from all aspects of the priesthood.  As Rambam codifies it in הלכות בכורים, Laws of Bikkurim (and Other Gifts to Priests) 1;11, several of the gifts given to priests can be given to females of the clan as well (whom the Rambam terms כוהנות, female priests). Strikingly, at least two of those gifts, according to Rambam, can be given to a woman-priest even if she is married to a non-priest which, for other purposes, takes her out of the clan.

Incidentally, this last fact suggests another area for consideration, the makeup of the marital home and its character. For a long time, it was assumed that men set the tone for the home at least in religious aspects, such as which customs to follow. The process of marriage was seen as a woman leaving her parental home and joining her husband’s home (hence the יחוד ceremony at the wedding, the husband symbolically taking his wife into his home).  With changes in society, this is no longer as clearly true, and important poskim, such as R. Nachum Rabinovitch of Maaleh Adumim, are increasingly comfortable with a wife maintaining some of her own customs.

The question will be in what ways the Torah insisted on unity of custom in the home, and in what ways we are comfortable with recognizing and accepting continuing differences. In terumah terms, the woman who has joined a non-priestly household has left her parental home; for זרוע לחיים and קיבה purposes, she has not.  Defining which are which and why would seem to be an important part of understanding what the Torah saw as necessary and ineluctable aspects of creating a properly unified marital home.

There is probably more to be considered and said on these issues, but this seems a worthy start.  Finding the maximum possible room for spiritual development, for men and women, is a clear desideratum of Judaism or any religion; the question for Orthodox Jews is what counts as proper spiritual development and what as a mistaken adoption of ideas and ideals not consonant with the religion. 

And to understand that, much preliminary work needs to be done, as I hope I have laid out here.  I do not fool myself into thinking that the way I would understand those issues would be the same as those to the left or to the right of me, but success here, for me, would mean that we are at least back to having the same conversation, that we all recognize the questions we need to ask and answer, and move forward from a common base to find the most productive answers for all of Jewish society.

Why Do We Insist on Misrepresenting the Torah’s Attitude Towards Non-Jews?

by Gidon Rothstein

My previous post in this space generated a great deal more comment than I had expected. In broad terms, those comments felt that a) Judaism has always, and continues to, discriminate against non-Jews, the thrust of Torah Temimah’s comment and my piece notwithstanding, and b) that we should not discuss such matters in public, lest the non-Jewish world catch wind of it, to our great embarrassment.

I found the claims along the first lines particularly startling, for several reasons.  First, Torah Temimah based his comment on how unthinkable he found the possibility that the Torah would allow us to mistreat non-Jews such as those of his time.  I noted further that Ramban and Rambam were clear that dishonesty is problematic in general, non-Jews included.

Readers disagreed, and offered more examples of what they saw as Judaism’s discriminatory attitudes towards non-Jews.  My attempt to show how the permissibility of אונאה was not discriminatory (except in the sense that we hold ourselves to a higher standard with family than with strangers) was dismissed as “drei,” as casuistic or convoluted reasoning, without any real engagement with it. ¹    

Saving the Lives of All Humans on Shabbat

Let us try one more example, brought up in a comment to the original post, to show that what looks discriminatory might not be so.  Although this has not been followed or even contemplated in practice for centuries, the Talmud seems to prohibit violating Shabbat to save the lives of non-Jews. (How this fits with other Talmudic concerns about relations with non-Jews is unclear, a matter for historians of that era; however they put the two together in their times, the subsequent halachic history shows that it very soon became unthinkable to build a society of friendship in which Jews would not violate Shabbat to save non-Jews, and hence Jews have always, as now, treated the saving of non-Jewish lives on Shabbat as permissible.)  On its face, this Talmudic principle appears to furnish clear proof that we value their lives less than our own. 

The misunderstanding lies in assuming that we would surely violate Shabbat to save any lives we cared about, that Shabbat is clearly pushed aside for all equally valuable life.  That may be our halachic conclusion regarding Jews, but is not the tenor of the Talmudic discussion.  For one thing, the Gemara notes how several Tannaim struggled to find a source for the right to violate Shabbat to save a life.[1]  The most accepted of the Tannaitic opinions derived it from the verse ושמרו בני ישראל את השבת, adding on the logic חלל עליו שבת אחת כדי שישמור שבתות הרבה, violate one Shabbat so this person can observe many more Shabbatot.[2]  We end up rejecting that because it does not make room to violate Shabbat even in cases of doubt as to whether a life either needs to be or would be saved. 

The verse the Gemara promotes as the strongest source, וחי בהם, that the Torah tells us to live by its commandments and not die by them, is offered by R. Yehudah in the name of Shmuel, about a hundred and fifty years after the original discussion.² That derivation tells us that God decided that this commandment of Torah law did not require Jews to die for it.  The question of saving non-Jewish lives on Shabbat, then, is not one of how we value those lives, or even of how God values those lives.  It is, rather, a question of the parameters God set when commanding us to desist from exerting our usual mastery over His world, including acts that save lives.

One point to keep in mind is that God created the world and gives life, meaning He could easily have required us to refrain from saving even our own lives on Shabbat.  The sources that allow us to do so base it on how God set up Shabbat for us, not any idea that our lives are so valuable that God could never have stopped us from saving them.  (In other circumstances, we can recall, we are obligated to give up our lives instead of violating a Torah commandment or, sometimes, even a custom).[3]

Incidentally, this whole issue raises the question of how much we believe God could run the world Himself, if necessary.  We have such a long history of saving lives on Shabbat that we lose sight of the fact that the whole right to treat the sick (even on weekdays) is derived by the Gemara, not assumed.[4] Were it to be true that we could not violate Shabbat to save non-Jews’ lives, that would only mean God told us that for one day a week, He (and the non-Jews themselves, who can clearly act to save lives on Shabbat) would run the world without our usual input and assistance.  Much as God feeds all creatures without our help, God can decide whether to save non-Jews; there is no deep theological reason God could not have extended that to us, just a Divine “choice.”

Further, the Gemara evaluates the value of the lives of non-Jews by the same standards it applies to Jews, whether they adhere to those commandments that apply to them.  For a non-Jew who adhered to the seven Noahide laws, even if the Gemara might not permit violating Shabbat to save his or her life (again: a halachah we do not observe in practice, and have not for centuries), it does not celebrate that death, nor does it absolve us of the responsibility to take all those steps that do not involve violating Shabbat.  The Gemara is not making a point about non-Jews’ lives, only about the way the obligations of Shabbat restrict us from what is ordinarily a valuable endeavor.

Before readers dismiss my claim as apologetics, I would draw attention to the opinion of R. Elazar son of R. Shimon, who held that we would call a Jew a רודף– a term usually applied to someone about to kill someone else– if that Jew were about to violate Shabbat.[5]  In his view, the violation of Shabbat is of a level of seriousness akin to murder.  We again do not rule this way, but not out of any rejection of the concept that Shabbat could be so important.  If so, the Gemara’s perspective on Shabbat violations and the saving of non-Jewish lives is more convincingly portrayed as a function of the significance of the violation, not the indifference to those lives. 

Attitudes Toward עובדי עבודה זרה  

Moving from the example back to the broader question, I would first reiterate that most of my commenters exaggerated halachah’s antipathy towards non-Jews.  While he chose to minimize those sources, one of my commenters noted a long list that shows the steady move to de-demonize non-Jews.  Leaving out Meiri for his lack of influence, the continuous trend of the Baalei haTosafot (and generations of halachic authorities who followed) was towards allowing interactions the Talmud had prohibited, building closer connections with non-Jews. 

The article by Prof. Berger cited in that comment,[6] amply demonstrates the tendencies towards leniency to which I am alluding, so I will not go further than that.  I will, however, note that my commenters also mistook Jewish attitudes towards עובדי עבודה זרה, a much thornier problem (since they are in fact in violation of the Torah in a way that brings upon them capital liability) for those towards all non-Jews.  For the Tosafists and all who lived in Catholic countries, the two were the same, but Jews who lived in Moslem countries or among Protestants with a more Jewishly-acceptable view of the Trinity, faced a different set of questions regarding their non-Jewish neighbors.

First, such Jews would have to carefully distinguish which of the Talmud’s rules were directed at עכו”ם, idol-worshippers, and which at all non-Jews.  A further challenge came from our inability to extend to ordinary non-Jews all the privileges we would like—such as equal rights to our tsedakah dollars—because of a quirk of halachah that has nothing to do with our underlying attitude towards them.

That quirk is the lack of a functioning Yovel, a lack that stems from our failure to have the majority of Jews living in Israel and, possibly, the Tribes of Israel living in their right places.[7]  As Rambam points out many times in the Mishneh Torah,[8] as long as that is true, we will not be able to confer the official status of גר תושב, meaning a non-Jew who publicly declares adherence to the Noahide laws.  Jewish law is clear that such non-Jews would become fellow-travelers of Jewish society, obligating us to extend to them many if not most of the kindnesses we extend to other Jews.  Were we to surmount this problem, I believe we would find that halachah is a lot more universal than the commenters to my piece believed.

That belief is fueled by my little acquaintance with how halachah has operated even when faced with the thornier problem of עובדי עבודה זרה.  Here, let me reiterate, halachah promoted discriminatory behavior, because we are, in fact, supposed to have a problem with the act and attitude underlying it.  I linger over this point because the tendency to leniency on this issue has led to a situation where many Jews forget just how offensive the act and attitude of עבודה זרה is, to all of our detriments.

In our imaginations, I think we sometimes demonize עובדי עבודה זרה as these benighted souls who came to think that a piece of wood or stone ruled their lives, and that along with that came a complete lack of moral fiber.  This may have been true, but does not change the reality that contemporary עובדי עבודה זרה, moral as they may be, complicate our fulfilling our national mission of being מתקן עולם במלכות שקי, of pushing for a world that recognizes and worships the one true God.  They are certainly better than those of old, but it is still one of the basic missions of Jews to eradicate all עבודה זרה, at least within our own society, and to abhor it in others.

This was and is a constant element in our relations with Catholics and other Trinitarians.  The belief that three beings of whatever sort constitute the Godhead (or, are God) is monotheistic from a non-Jewish perspective, but עבודה זרה in halachic terms.  This truth does, indeed, create challenges in balancing our desire for pleasant relations (recall the Gemara’s concern with דרכי שלום, ways of peace) with our concern with doing as much as we could to rid the world of wrong beliefs about God.

One side of any discussion of Jewish relations with non-Jews, then, should appropriately call out the canard in the claim that Jews still see non-Jews just as in the time of the Talmud.  There have always been, and still are, those who have absorbed the messages of דרכיה דרכי נועם insufficiently, and have found legalistic ways to permit actions that run counter to the tenor of the morality of Torah and halachah, acting wrongly towards non-Jews or even, many times, Jews.  The acts and attitudes of these few, however, should not be mistaken either with the acts of the many nor the ideals of the system itself.  An honest appraisal of how rishonim and aharonim wrote and thought about dealing with non-Jews shows that the ethos of Rambam (living among Moslems, whom he respected as equally as monotheistic as himself), Ramban, and Torah Temimah (both living among monotheists who were, halachically, עובדי עבודה זרה), among many others, has been the guiding one for most Jews in most eras of Jewish history.

There is a flip side to this discussion, why the Talmud looked down so much on the idolaters of its time and its ramifications for our times, but I leave that for my next post.

[2] There are numerous difficult conclusions we would draw from that source alone, but that is not my topic.

[3] For details, see שו”ע יורה דעה קנ”ז.

[4] Berachot 60a.

[5] Sanhedrin 74a.

[6] In Marc Stern, ed. Formulating Responses in an Egalitarian Age (Rowman &Littlefield, 2004).

[7] Rambam, ספר המצוות, מצוות עשה, קל”ו

[8] One of the first is הלכות עכו”ם י:ו.

1. I suspect that many of these readers have absorbed the Western assumption that different treatment is necessarily discriminatory; I will leave a demonstration of the falsehood of that idea for another time.
2. I note the timing because it shows that while the Tannaim and Amoraim may have assumed that saving Jewish lives was permissible on Shabbat, there was a long time when they did not know exactly how they knew that.