Masei: Cities of Refuge

This Torah portion recaps the journey the Israelites took through the desert on their way to Canaan. Then God tells Moses the rules for the invasion of Canaan, ironic considering that God has ordered Moses' death on this side of the Jordan River without permitting him to set foot in Canaan.

God tells Moses that the Israelites are to drive out the current inhabitants of Canaan, who have committed offenses to God bad enough that the Israelites are the retribution God has planned for the Canaanites. The Israelites are to destroy all the idols and altars of the Canaanites. The Canaanites who remain, God predicts, will be "that those which ye let remain of them shall be pricks in your eyes, and thorns in your sides, and shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell. Moreover it shall come to pass, that I shall do unto you, as I thought to do unto them." [Numbers 33: 55-56]. The Hebrew of "pricks in your eyes" is "bee stings in your eyeballs". Not a comforting image.

Then God defines the borders of the Promised Land. I'm not going to bother to quote this part (it's not like the Bible isn't readily available), since it has become the justification today for Religious Zionists to occupy the West Bank and Gaza, as well as some Transjordanian land as well, claiming that this ancient promise justifies their actions.

Because the Levites are not a tribe in the same sense that the other tribes are, they are given cities and their surrounding suburbs for their tribe. After describing these cities, God explains that a few of the cities will be designated Cities of Refuge. If a person commits manslaughter, they can escape to a city of refuge, and the city will protect them from the victim's family's vendetta until there can be a trial. The manslaughterer can find refuge in the city, and will be safe until there can be a fair trial. The passage defines the difference between murder and manslaughter. I'm not aware of a more ancient text to make the distinction.

But not only does the Bible make that distinction, but God will, later on in the Bible, designate six particular cities to be cities of refuge. To me, this seems particularly noteworthy. Who would want to live in a city of refuge, knowing that potential murderers, and people who want to kill them, will show up there? But there is also mercy in this, as these cities of refuge provide asylum for those who accidentally kill others.

The passage ends with resolution for the daughters of Zelophehad, who are told to marry within their tribe, so that their inheritance, while theirs, does not pass to another tribe when they marry.

It is customary in Torah study, when a student or group of students finishes studying a book of Torah, to say: chazak chazak v'nitchazek. This could be translated as "Be strong! Be strong! And may we be strengthened."

חזק חזק ונתחזק

Matot: have ye saved all the women alive?

This is another week with a double Torah portion. This portion has three major themes. The first is the sanctity of vows. Men and divorced or widowed women are to keep their oaths and obligations. Wives and dependent daughters, if they make vows, can have those vows vetoed by the man responsible for them. This is problematic for a modern, egalitarian sensibility, but is pretty standard for a heavily patriarchal culture.

This veto is a double-edged sword, in a sense. God is merciless to the man who makes an oath he cannot honor, but shows some mercy to the woman who makes an oath she cannot fulfill. This mercy is entrusted to her patriarch, who can decide for her that she cannot be obligated to carry out her obligation, provided he objects within a day of her oath. In one sense, it is profoundly insulting to the woman's autonomy that a patriarchal figure in her life has veto power over her agreements. However, much of Jewish law is how to get rid of an obligation that one has made but cannot fulfill, and Jewish law is much kinder to women than to men who fail to meet their obligations.

The second theme is Moses' vengeance on Midian for the heresy of Baal-Peor. Recall that the Israelites have been journeying through the wilderness, and on the plains of Moab are nearly done with their journeys. They have been seeking passage to Canaan, and finding various nations have opposed them in their attempt to enter the land. First, the Israelites responded by avoiding their opponents, then when later opponents attacked them, they cursed their cities and avoided them, still later, when their opponents attacked them, they defended themselves and took the battle to their opponents, killing them. Finally, with Midian, the Israelites engage in a war of extermination.

God tells Moses that he is to organize a surprise attack on Midian, and that afterwards, Moses will die, and cede leadership to Joshua. Moses gathers a force of 1000 men from each tribe, and these shock troops, led by Pinchas ben Eleazar the priest, mount a surprise attack and slaughter every adult male in Midian, and take the women, children and livestock captive, along with all their valuables and possessions. They single out and execute by sword the five kings of Midian, along with Balaam the sorcerer (although presumably his donkey was spared). All of the buildings in Midian are set on fire.

Moses is furious. He asks the generals and captains: "Have ye saved all the women alive? Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." [Numbers 31: 15-18].

If the savagery of Moses drives you to contemplate atheism, you would not be the first, nor certainly the last, to do so. Thomas Paine, in The Age of Reason, wrote the following about this passage:

Besides, the character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the most horrid that can be imagined. If those accounts be true, he was the wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or on the pretence of religion; and under that mask, or that infatuation, committed the most unexampled atrocities that are to be found in the history of any nation, of which I will state only one instance.

When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and murdering excursions, the account goes on as follows: Numbers, chap. xxxi., ver. 13:

"And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp; and Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle; and Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the Council of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now, therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man by lying with him; but all the women-children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."

Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater than Moses, if this account be true. Here is an order to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers, and debauch the daughters. Let any mother put herself in the situation of those mothers; one child murdered, another destined to violation, and herself in the hands of an executioner; let any daughter put herself in the situation of those daughters, destined as a prey to the murderers of a mother and a brother, and what will be their feelings? It is in vain that we attempt to impose upon nature, for nature will have her course, and the religion that tortures all her social ties is a false religion.

After this detestable order, follows an account of the plunder taken, and the manner of dividing it; and here it is that the profaneness of priestly hypocrisy increases the catalogue of crimes. Ver. 37 to 40, "And the lord's tribute of sheep was six hundred and three score and fifteen; and the beeves were thirty and six thousand, of which the Lord's tribute was three score and twelve; and the asses were thirty thousand and five hundred, of which the Lord's tribute was three score and one; and the persons were sixteen thousand, of which the Lord's tribute was thirty and two persons." In short, the matters contained in this chapter, as well as in many other parts of the Bible, are too horrid for humanity to read or for decency to hear, for it appears, from the 35th verse of this chapter, that the number of women-children consigned to debauchery by the order of Moses was thirty-two thousand.

People in general do not know what wickedness there is in this pretended word of God. Brought up in habits of superstition, they take it for granted that the Bible is true, and that it is good; they permit themselves not to doubt of it, and they carry the ideas they form of the benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they have been taught to believe was written by his authority. Good heavens! it is quite another thing; it is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy; for what can be greater blasphemy than to ascribe the wickedness of man to the orders of the Almighty?

Paine judges Moses by the standards that he would judge the way that 18th century Englishmen of sufficient birth would treat each other. The Pennsylvania of his time was one that ran a spectrum from the developed East to the wild West, where the Eastern coast was ethnically cleansed of native inhabitants and its Western border was still engaged in bloody guerrilla war between natives and Europeans, with massacres committed on both sides. The England of his time was one where Luddites were hanged for damaging factories, and riots were broken up with bayonets and rifles. It was also a time where Ireland was pacified with brutality and oppression. It was also a time of massacres in India, in Africa, and in Guyana. This cruelty outlived Paine by many, many years. Just last night, listening to the BBC, I heard that victims of English cruelty in the Mau Mau uprising were suing Great Britain. One woman told of driving with her husband and children in 1958, and being stopped at a road block by British soldiers. She and her husband were separated, interrogated, and tortured. Her husband was castrated. Both were eventually released, and spent the next decade scouring Kenya looking for their children, whom they never found. They reluctantly concluded that they had all been murdered. She was suing the UK for war crimes.

Moses lived in a time where empires put whole peoples to the sword. The Assyrian empire, which shows up later in the Bible, impaled the entire populations of those they conquered, leaving them to die horribly over several days. Israel was a new nation surrounded by vicious enemies. If their actions seem horrific, they were, but no more so than their neighbors.

As Walter Kauffman wrote in reply to attitudes like Paine's: "The reproach of callousness and insufficient social conscience can hardly be raised. Our social conscience comes largely from the religion of Moses. ... [But] to find the spirit of the religion of the Old Testament in [these biblical passages], is like finding the distinctive genius of America in the men who slaughtered the Indians."

The third theme is that of the Transjordan Israelites. The tribes of Reuben and Gad, along with half of the tribe of Manasseh, liked the land in Moab for grazing cattle, and asked Moses to allow them to reside there. Moses, assuming this was a dodge to keep them from participating in the conquest of Canaan, was upset with the request. But the leaders of these tribes promised to form the advance guard in the conquest, and return to this land only after Canaan was under Israelite control. With this stipulation, Moses agreed. Sadly, because of this, these tribes were the first lost tribes, as they did not have the same protection as the other tribes, and were picked away by conquest. Sadly, among the more zealous Religious Zionists, there are those who make a claim on the Transjordanian lands that were once occupied by Reuben and Gad for a modern state of Greater Israel. It is not clear that the Jordanians would ever comply with this.

Bechukotai: Sugar for Sugar and Salt for Salt

Let's imagine for a moment that God is an anthropomorphic being that lives in the sky, watches us from above from his throne in the sky, and judges us according to whether we obey the least arbitrary rule, or rebel against his yoke. This God makes rules, and these rules are ethical only because they are His rules, rather than being ethical by human standards. Imagine that He gave Moses these rules, and they all have to be obeyed; that there is no real difference between eating rabbit and murdering a human being, between incest and wearing a garment spun of wool and linen, between homosexual relations and allowing a disobedient son to live. This God of our thought exercise is going to punish us for disobedience, in essence, the only possible crime. This God is going to reward us for obeying all the rules all of the time, without error, without equivocation, and without circumspection.

In this thought exercise, we move between two poles: God's wrath, and God's material blessings upon us. We express our devotion to our Sky King by obeying all the rules, and we are showered with bounty: our crops grow superabundantly, our animals are astonishingly fecund and robust, our enemies collapse before our might, and the whole world envies us. We waver in our devotion by deviating from the rules, and our crops fail, our animals and our children die, some of whom we are forced to eat in our famine, our enemies easily mow us down, rape our women, slaughter our babies, and enslave us while our Sky King watches our agonies in indifference bordering on disgust.

That is this, the final Torah portion of Leviticus, interpreted in the most literal possible manner. Why worship this God? Out of fear of punishment, and out of hope for reward. In the scheme, the entire purpose of consciousness is mindfulness about obedience to a system that has nothing to do with each individual will. Humans do what God tells them to do, or they enter a world of hurt. God's love is absolutely conditional on Israel's compliance.

I've never liked this version of religion. No Jew likes this this version of religion, with the possible exception of the most fanatical but least mystical of the ultra-Orthodox. Oddly, many Christians think that's what Judaism is, this bargain. That being the presupposition about Judaism, of course the sane ones clamored to Jesus' revelation, if only to get out of such an awful bargain. What kind of an idiot would stay in such a dysfunctional relationship?


Now, let's try another thought exercise. Imagine that we notice that:

The everlasting universe of things Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom— Now lending splendour, where from secret springs The source of human thought its tribute brings Of waters...[Percy Shelley, Mont Blanc, opening lines]. 

 Let us imagine that we try to find these secret springs, and we notice how consciousness and nature seem both to lead to the same source. We still our inner monologue, and find a stillness behind it. We notice that the stillness is pregnant with the potentialities of things, and we notice that in that stillness is an intelligence greater than our waking minds, an emotion more powerful than the hungry ghost that chases after memes that we think is our emotional center (but isn't).

We find a flow, a direction, a purpose, a center, and everything seems to point to it, align with it, and resonate its vibrations. And we are gobsmacked when we first perceive that it loves us.

It loves us with an intensity we cannot possibly be capable of. It loves us even though we seem helpless and crude and banal and cruel and thoughtless compared to It. Does It have a personality? Compared to It, do we?

Whether or not we call this Presence God is less important than to understand that the authors of the Torah did. These authors, these primitive men, were writhing in their crudeness and antiquity, and looking up from the chaos, the violence and savagery, the heedlessness of idolatry and butchery and ignorance and superstition to see if there wasn't a Power that could pull them out of the nightmare. And what they found, they called God. What they found, they immediately lost and scrounged and searched for. They spent much more time lost than found. And yet they found. They saw. Each stood before the Presence before losing that link forever, and died in darkness, only to have others learn from their discoveries and find the Presence again and lose it.

Abraham found what he called God, and used the force of his faith to be the progenitor of the loftiest dreams seeded in spiritual condition of billions today. And yet in his madness he bound his son Isaac to sacrifice him carnally before the Presence intervened. And Jacob found what he called God and wrestled with His angel from midnight to dawn, dislocating his hip in his struggle. And Joseph found God in a prison in a world of slavery and bondage, surrounded by enemy aliens, and God freed him and set him at Pharaoh's right hand. And yet he made sport of his treacherous brothers until they groveled before him.

And Moses, the fugitive murderer who had been the apple of the old Pharaoh's eye, who was tending his sheep near Mount Sinai, carrying a lost lamb who had strayed from the flock, saw a burning bush and had the presence of mind to notice that the bush was not consumed by the flame, and he beheld God. He spoke with I WAS, AM, AND SHALL BE WHO I WAS, AM, AND SHALL BE, and armed with that consciousness, he led his people from bondage to liberation. That Presence stayed with them, as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. It dwelt in the Tabernacle. It fed them food from heaven. In the Presence, their clothes did not wear out on their bodies, not for forty years of wandering. And yet, as we will see in the Book of Numbers, the Israelites retreated into their familiar crudity and petulance and idiocy. Sometimes Moses joined them in their cruelty, and sometimes Moses held firm and shared the light of God with the people.

What does it mean to walk in the Presence? What does it mean to find the Force, the Tao, the meaning and purpose of life? It means that you will plant crops in the way that will heal the land, give the maximal yield, and flow with such bounty that there will be plenty left over for the hungry, the stranger and the destitute. It means that those who oppose you as you walk in the Presence cannot possibly succeed. Those who create a bulwark against the Force will have that bulwark collapse on them. "And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people." [Leviticus 26: 12].

What happens if we join the forces of ignorance, superstition and brutality, and give up on our search for the Lost Word? If we embrace ignorance, we lose the gift of intelligence. We suffer all that ignorance brings, and make all the mistakes that burden us. We plant our crops in the wrong place and have no yield. We breed our animals at the wrong time and they grow infertile, skinny and rangy. We become bickersome and petty. With superstition, we begin to worship something less than the One. We walk for too long far away from the Presence, and loss ever having missed it. We lose all compassion and become cruel. We are so disorganized, dispirited and foolish that those who oppose us can easily scatter us, enslave us and destroy us. "And I will set my face against you, and ye shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you; and ye shall flee when none pursueth you." [Leviticus 26: 17].

Eventually, our decisions will harm our children. We will allow our world to become polluted, and our children to sicken in a polluted world. We will exploit the wealth of the next seven generations, seizing and consuming it ourselves, robbing our children of their future livelihoods, trying to feed the hungry ghosts inside us that are never, ever satisfied. As we hunger for the Presence we have forsaken, and as long as we are too proud to return to the Source, we continue the devastation of our own crazy, soulless stupidity. The Presence, the Force itself, speaks:

And if ye will not for all this hearken unto me, but walk contrary unto me; Then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury; and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins. And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.
And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your images, and cast your carcases upon the carcases of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you.
And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savour of your sweet odours.
And I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it.
And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste.

Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your enemies' land; even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her sabbaths.
As long as it lieth desolate it shall rest; because it did not rest in your sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon it.
And upon them that are left alive of you I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee, as fleeing from a sword; and they shall fall when none pursueth.
And they shall fall one upon another, as it were before a sword, when none pursueth: and ye shall have no power to stand before your enemies.
And ye shall perish among the heathen, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up.
And they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies' lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them.

If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and that also they have walked contrary unto me;
And that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity:
Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land.
The land also shall be left of them, and shall enjoy her sabbaths, while she lieth desolate without them: and they shall accept of the punishment of their iniquity: because, even because they despised my judgments, and because their soul abhorred my statutes.
And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them: for I am the LORD their God.
But I will for their sakes remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the heathen, that I might be their God: I am the LORD. [Leviticus 26: 27-45].

Forget the Sky King metaphor for a moment. This is what it is like to live outside of the Tao. Imagine that the Presence is addressing us directly. What happens if we pervert nature in our greed and boredom? What happens if we feed the hungry ghosts instead of noticing, as Jacob did, that "Surely the LORD is in this place"? [Genesis 28: 16]. As we fight the flow of all purpose, we find that the Universe itself resists us.  Nature will reclaim what we have spoiled. Devastation and suffering will lead us to look for the Lost Word again, to again seek the Presence.

This is the deterioration that led to the destruction of the Temple, the Exile, the scattering and the Lost Tribes. And the passage back, the return, the teshuvah, the Passing of the Veils, the Crossing of the River in the 15th Degree, is the work we have to do to rebuild what we have lost.

It is customary in Torah study, when a student or group of students finishes studying a book of Torah, to say: chazak chazak v'nitchazek. This could be translated as "Be strong! Be strong! And may we be strengthened."

חזק חזק ונתחזק

Behar: Thou Shalt Relieve Him

This Torah portion is BeHar, or "On the Mountain", because it begins with words God speaks to Moses on Mount Sinai. To the Jews, this means that these commandments are part of the Revelation, and are thus as sacred as the Ten Commandments.

God commands the Israelites to look after their fallen brethren: "And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee." [Leviticus 25: 35]. A Mason understands how a man can be his brother and yet be a stranger, as we profess to be linked together by an indissoluble chain of sincere affection. On this basis we form our friendships and establish our connections.

In the Midrash for this passage, Rabbi Pinchas, in the name of Rabbi Reuven, said: "Whoever gives a single coin to a poor person, the Holy One, Blessed be He will give that person life. For indeed, is he really giving only a single coin? No, he gives the poor person life! How can we explain this? If a loaf of bread costs 10 coins and a poor person standing in the marketplace has only nine, then if someone comes and gives a single coin so that he is able to buy a loaf of bread and, having eaten it, feels refreshed, the Holy One, Blessed be He, says to the donor, 'In your case too, when your soul presses to break loose from your body, I shall return it to you."

Kedoshim: Thou Shalt Love Thy Neighbour As Thyself

This Torah portion continues the Holiness code from the previous portion. This portion is mostly a list of rules, introducing two different types of capital punishment, and the punishment of cherem, or excommunication.

There are some lovely mitzvot here as well.

1. Revere your mother and father
2. Rest on the Sabbath day and keep it holy
3. Not to reap all the way to the edges of a field, thereby depriving the poor and the homeless of teh possibility of gleaning from your fields, and thereby feeding themselves
4. Do not pick your fruit trees clean, so that the poor have some fruit to eat
5. Pay your laborers on the day they work, so that they do not go home hungry or unpaid
6. Do not put obstacles in the way of blind people (the rabbis debate whether this is meant literally or figuratively, i.e. putting moral obstacles in the way of those without much moral foresight)
7. Love your neighbor as you love yourself (unfortunately, some Christians think this originally came from Jesus. This is where Jesus got it.)
8. Show deference to the elderly
9. Love the stranger as you love yourself, for you were a stranger once in Egypt (some would interpret "stranger" as "foreigner")
10. Treat the convert exactly the same way you would treat someone born Jewish

Two forms of capital punishment are introduced: stoning and burning. The Talmud describes stoning as a procedure where the condemned is thrown from a height of at least two stories to the street below. If they survive, a massive rock (so big that it takes at least two people to carry it) is dropped on them, crushing them. That's pretty barbaric, but not nearly as barbaric as the current version of stoning used in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan, Yemen, UAE, and Iran today. The contemporary version of stoning involves burying the condemned in the ground (men buried up to the waist and women up to the chest), and pelting them with rocks. The Iranian penal code forbids the use of any stones that individually could kill the condemned outright in one or two throws. It often takes a long time to die this way.

Burning, according to the Talmud is having molten lead poured down the throat.

The Talmud proscribes two other methods: decapitation and strangulation. Decapitation is with a sword, and strangulation is with two strong men on opposite sides pulling cords around the neck of the condemned until death.

In Jewish law, two witnesses had to see the crime for the death penalty to be in effect. These witnesses had to be fully educated in the law, had to be fully employed at the time of the crime, and could not be related to each other or to the accused. They had to each give a warning to the accused that the crime they were committing carried the death penalty. The accused had to acknowledge that the crime carried the death penalty and had to continue committing the crime anyway. The two witnesses could not have had a conversation afterwards about the offense, and thereby have corroborated their testimonies. The jury had to be in a strict majority, but could not be unanimous in their decision (to prevent a rigged jury). The two witnesses were required to be the executioners.

As a result, a Sanhedrin that executed more than one person in seven years (and some say seventy years) was considered to be excessively bloody.

1. What sins carried a potential death penalty?
2. One who gave a child to Molech
3. One who insulted his father or mother
4. A man who committed adultery with a married woman, and the married woman with whom he committed it
5. A man who lay with his father’s wife, and his father wife with whom he lay
6. A man who lay with his daughter-in-law, and his daughter-in-law with whom he lay 
7. A man who lay with a male as one lies with a woman, and the male with whom he lay 
8. A man who married a woman and her mother, and the woman and mother whom he married 
9. A man who had carnal relations with a beast, and the beast with whom he had relations 
10. A woman who approached any beast to mate with it, and the beast that she approached 
11. One who had a ghost or a familiar spirit

Now imagine that two men were having sex. Two witnesses, who are fully employed, and well-schooled in the law witness them in flagrante delicto. Each tells the two men to stop, that what they are doing is listed in the Torah as an offense that carries with it the death penalty. Each time, both men tell each witness that they know this, but are going to continue anyway. The two witnesses never talk to each other until after the Sanhedrin meets to decide the fate of the two men, and they decide for death by stoning, although not unanimously. How often do you think that occurred?

There are other rules in this Torah portion that seem bizarre to us today:

1. Not to interbreed different species, or sow fields with two different kinds of grain
2. Not to wear garments from both wool and linen (unless it is the High Priest's garment and you are the High Priest)
3. Not to eat the fruit of a newly-planted fruit tree for three years
4. Not to trim the hair on the sides of the head
5. Not to destroy the side-growth of the beard
6. Not to mourn for the dead by scarifying the flesh

The penalty of excommunication is also explained, and given as punishment for the following:

1. One who turned to ghosts or familiar spirits (but presumably did not possess them)
2. Marriage between siblings (including half-siblings, but not step-siblings)
3. Sexual intercourse involving a menstruating woman (both people would be excommunicated)

So, the Holiness code can be very harsh, and somewhat arbitrary by today's moral standards. With the exception of some of the ultra-Orthodox, there is nobody today who follows every jot and tittle of it. The point of it all was to ascribe towards some sense of holiness as a means of emulating God. The word kadosh in Hebrew means holy. It is where the title of the 30° in the Scottish Rite, Knight Kadosh, comes from. We are created in the image of God. The Holiness code is an early attempt to set the ground rules for holiness.

Acharei Mot: The Holiness Code

In this Torah portion, the observance of Yom Kippur is discussed, as well as a discussion of the sacredness of blood. Various forbidden sexual practices are discussed, including one of the only lines of Leviticus many Christian Fundamentalists read and observe. After listing a series of forbidden incestuous relationships and somewhat incestuous relationships like marrying your stepmother or marrying two women who are sisters. Other sexual sins are listed, like having sex with a menstruating woman (yeah, I know. Read the previous blog post), and committing adultery with your neighbor's wife. Then, suddenly, the rhythm of the passage falls off a cliff: "And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD." [Leviticus 18: 21]. What?

There was a practice in Semitic paganism of sacrificing children to Molech, a god worshipped during that time. It was thought that an iron statue of Molech with its arms outstretched was heated with fire, and the infant was placed in the arms of Molech until it burned to death. By so doing, the person believed that they could transform their fortunes for the better. What does this have to do with the previous rules? The Egyptian aristocracy had incestuous marriages, and the Philistines had child sacrifices. Moses is commanding the Israelites to behave differently than the Egyptians and the Philistines. And it is in this context that we can put the next verse: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination." [Leviticus 18: 22].

It's right there in the Bible, right? What else does the Bible refer to as תֹּועֵבָה (to'evah), or abomination?

1. The Egyptians regarded shepherds as to'evah.
2. Hebrew animal sacrifice in the land of Egypt was to'evah.
3. Idolatry
4. Remarrying a person you have divorced.
5. Haughty eyes
6. A lying tongue
7. Hands that shed innocent blood
8. A heart that devises wicked schemes
9. Feet that are swift in running to mischief
10. A false witness who utters lies
11. One who spreads strife among brothers
12. Incest
13. Adultery
14. Temple prostitution
15. Money earned from prostitution
16. Child sacrifice
17. Transvestism
18. Cheating in the market by using crooked weights
19. Dishonesty
20. Eating non-kosher food
21. Stealing
22. Murder
23. Breaking covenants
24. Usury
25. Armed robbery
26. Oppressing the poor and needy

This list includes behaviors we still take as taboo, like murder, child sacrifice, armed robbery, and incest. But eating rabbit makes this list, as does lying (which appears three times on the list). While transvestism was shocking years ago, nobody picketed the Milton Berle show for the occasional comic drag scene.

Maybe those who are so affronted by homosexuality should go after the other items on this list. When was the last time you saw a demonstration against usury? When was the last time that people waved Bibles in the air to protest the oppression of the poor and needy? When indeed.

Incidentally, the next line goes after bestiality, which is why some Fundamentalists equate homosexuality with bestiality. And yet they never equate homosexuality with adultery, like in the previous line. Go figure.

Metzora: Why Does The Torah discuss such things?

In this Torah portion, the priests are instructed in how to ritually cleanse one stricken with tsara'at, often mistranslated as leprosy, but when it affects people is closer to plaque psoriasis, and when it affects clothing or houses is closer to mildew or dry rot. There is instruction in how to recognize if a house is afflicted with tsara'at, and when it should be demolished to ward off the affliction. The rest of the Torah portion discusses male and female genital discharges, and how they make a person ritually impure.

For men, genital discharges, both from semen and from gonorrhea, are discussed. For women, menses, and non-menstrual bloody discharges are discussed. It is enough to have a nocturnal emission or a discharge of pre-seminal fluid to render a man in a ritually unready state, but sexual intercourse leading to a male ejaculation, or a discharge resulting from gonorrhea will also cause a man to lose his spiritual readiness. In the case of gonorrhea, he will remain unready for a week after the last discharge. Also, if a man has intercourse with a menstruating woman, he is regarded as being in the same state of ritual unreadiness as a menstruating women for a week after the intercourse. In each case, ritual bathing and sacrifices are necessary to put them back in a state of spiritual and ritual readiness.

For women, their menses renders them in a ritually unready state for a week after the last discharge. They are also rendered unready by any bloody discharge, even if outside of her menstrual cycle. After bathing and bringing turtle doves to the priests to sacrifice, they are ready again.

This stuff is crazy at first glance. What is going on here? Why is this in the Bible?

The common factor is the intermediation of the priests. When something strange and probably unhygienic happens, bring in someone who is experienced in dealing with such things (read "doctor" here), and let them examine it. Then bathe and disinfect. Not bad advice. This was a superstitious age. To bring in an objective party and to stress bathing, quarantine for contagious afflictions, and a clear, delineated way to get back to normal is a big improvement for a people used to moral panics, child sacrifices, and mad eruptions of violence.

The Torah portion ends with the reason for all the purity laws. The Tabernacle is pure, and the people who come into the Tabernacle are unleashing powerful spiritual energies, powerful enough to kill the unready. Those who come into the Tabernacle should be in a state of spiritual readiness. When you enter the tyled lodge, you should be in a similar state of spiritual readiness.

Tazria: What "Leprosy" Actually Is

This week has the second double portion, of both Tazria and Metzora. Tazria is about tsara'at (צָרָעַת), which usually gets translated as leprosy. But any reading of the text will demonstrate that the disease being described is nothing like Hansen's disease. When it affects humans, it is more similar to plaque psoriasis, although perhaps not identical. But tsara'at also affects clothing and houses.

Let's step back a moment and put this in context. When I was a child, I was raised without religion by secular Jewish parents. When I was old enough to begin Hebrew school, my father offered me the choice of either spending my weekend mornings at Hebrew school, or playing pee-wee ice hockey, and I chose hockey. When my friends who attended Hebrew school began having their Bar Mitzvahs, I was invited to all of them, but I really had no context for what I was observing. The first Bar Mitzvah I went to was a friend who was in hockey with me (so he was doing both). His Torah portion for his Bar Mitzvah was Tazria, this Torah portion. I was given a Chumash (a book with the five books of the Torah in Hebrew with all vowel points and cantillation marks printed, and an English translation alongside the Hebrew text, with Torah commentary at the bottom of the page), and I followed along with my friend as he recited the passage. And I was horrified. It soured me on Judaism in general for a long time to come.

I am not unique in this. A lot of Christians, and even a lot of Jews, are mortified that the Bible puts so much detail into describing a disease, which in English often gets mistranslated as leprosy, and describes it as a Divine retribution causing the sufferer to become an unclean outcast who is removed from the community and blamed for his affliction. It is hard to reconcile with our understanding of a loving God, and goes against our contemporary concept of fairness. As a result, the entire Book of Leviticus is reduced to being "the leprosy book", and many Christians (and atheists) dismiss the whole Old Testament as "leprosy and stuff".

So, how does a contemporary Jew reconcile the ugliness of Tazria with a modern theological sensibility? My rabbi really enjoys teaching this Torah portion, because it illustrates many things about the Bible that are not well understood today. One year, my rabbi brought in a dermatologist to analyze the Torah's description of the skin disease, and diagnose it based on current medical understanding. In my community, we embrace textual ugliness rather than shy away from it. We haven't even gotten to the genocides Moses leads against the Midianites (that will have to wait until the Book of Numbers), but there will be a lot more that is disturbing in the weeks to come. How do we handle that which is disturbing in the Torah?

By taking in what is said with a critical eye, not rejecting the text, but striving to understand these things are in the text. There is often much subtlety in this approach. Judaism is one of the rare cultures that has a continuous history of many millennia, and in that time, we have gone from a pastoral or agrarian society from the early Bronze Age; to an urban culture in the Iron Age; to an ancient civilization in the midst of other ancient civilizations like the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans; to a small urban minority in medieval, feudal society; to a modern religion. Jews have connections to all aspects of this historical continuum, being simultaneously ancient and modern. Being a Jew means having an identity that spans most of recorded history. So when we find our Scripture mired in antiquity, we can recognize that we traveled through that portion of space and time, and reflect upon where it fits in our long journey.

We can easily imagine that in the time of the Torah, contagious diseases were not well understood, and that sanitary conditions in the encampment of the Children of Israel were not especially good. In the desert, there was a constant shortage of water, which means that bathing was infrequent. Most people had the clothes on their back and no other clothes. The Torah tells us that one of the miracles in the desert was that the clothing of the Children of Israel never wore out, which means they were wearing the same garments for forty years of wandering in harsh elemental conditions. One can imagine that skin diseases like psoriasis broke out with some frequency.

How would an ancient and primitive people handle such outbreaks? Most likely by ascribing such afflictions to Divine retribution, and possibly mass panic. To deflect against this, the Torah describes skin diseases in a great deal of detail, and then insists that the sufferer be brought to Aaron or to the Priests for inspection. This would immediately diffuse a panic, since the Priest as mediator would protect the sufferer from the panic of the general populace. The immediate prescription is a week of quarantine. This would keep the affliction, if contagious, from affecting other people, and keep the sufferer out of the way of the crowd who might panic at the sight of such an affliction.

The Torah describes when tsara'at affects clothing (and houses in the next Torah portion). By a modern understanding, this could be mildew or dry rot. We know that these things can spread, and that they have to be treated early before they do more damage. Again, the affected garment should be brought to the priest, which is then quarantined if it proves to have tsara'at. If after seven days, the blemish has not gone away, a garment is to be burned.

All this is fairly reasonable medical treatment for a Bronze Age physician. So why is this in a holy text? The Torah is intended to be all the laws for the Children of Israel. Unlike other religions, Judaism intends to cover every aspect of life, the ugly and material as well as the sublime and spiritual. The Talmud is intended to be a whole document that covers every possible judgment that could be made, and this includes such issues as well as a myriad of other examples far stranger. When we get to the Sotah in the Book of Numbers, we are going to see things far less reconcilable to a modern sensibility, so get ready.

As I have mentioned previously, the word that gets translated as unclean might better be translated as unready. Someone overcome with skin lesions might not be ready for social intercourse, let alone the spiritual demands of temple services. Clothing eaten away by mildew might not be ready to wear.

The Talmud interprets tsara'at as the Divine punishment for harmful gossip. This metaphor of dry rot or skin lesions for the effects of gossip is effective. When we gossip maliciously, we cause real damage with our words, harming the reputations of others, and turning amicability into emnity. Many a social organization, including more than one Masonic lodge, has been destroyed by harmful gossip. The Talmud suggests that tsara'at might not even be visible, but merely the residue caused by lies and malicious rumors. There is a Hasidic tale of a woman who has spread mean-spirited rumors who, feeling some contrition, asks the rabbi how she can fix the damage she has caused. He tells her to go home and take a feather pillow, tear it open with a knife, and scatter the feathers out her bedroom window, and then to return to him. When she does this, she goes back to the rabbi and asks him what she should do next. He tells her to retrieve every feather that she scattered.

"That's impossible," she tells the rabbi. He replies that it is equally impossible to reverse the harm caused by malicious rumors.

Pekudei: the Glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle

This Torah portion finishes the Book of Exodus with the completion of the Tabernacle. In this passage, Freemasons in the York Rite can reflect upon a few things that relate to the Mark Master Mason degree and the Most Excellent Master Mason degree.

Exodus 38:25 gives the total of the one-half shekel census tax levied on the people. Each of the men over 20 years of age among the Children of Israel was required to give half a silver shekel as tribute to pay for the building of the Tabernacle. Capitular Masonic tradition, probably from the late 18th or early 19th century, equates a silver half-shekel with a quarter dollar coin, especially back when such coins were made of silver. The complete tally from this tribute was about 15,000 troy pounds of silver. There was also collected, from voluntary offerings, roughly 4400 troy pounds of gold, and roughly 10,600 troy pounds of copper. This was melted down and used in the construction of the Tabernacle.

Much of the passage is a repeat from a few weeks ago, when the future construction was described by God to Moses. In this passage, Bezalel and Oholiab construct the Tabernacle according to this description. The description of the vestments of the High Priest is particularly interesting. The robes were made of sky-blue, purple and crimson threads, using dyes from sea-snails, worms and plants. Gold was beaten into thin sheets, and sliced into threads which were woven into the fabric of the garments. The ephod, belt, and breastplate were fabricated. The breastplate was a doubled square, just as the Lodge Room is a doubled cube. The hem of the robe was decorated with pomegranates and bells, in sequential order, as in pomegranate, bell, pomegranate, bell, all along the edge.

Moses, seeing the work, blessed it and blessed the workers. On the first day of the first month of the second year of the Exodus, Moses and the Levites erected the Tabernacle for the first time. Exodus 40: 20 tells us that Moses put the Tablets of Testimony in the Ark of the Covenant, set the carrying poles on the ark, and put the karopet (covering) on the Ark. He then brought the Ark of the Covenant into the Holy of Holies within the Tabernacle, and shielded it from view with the parokhet (curtain). At each step, the Book of Exodus describes each thing Moses does to erect the Tabernacle, followed by כַּאֲשֶׁר צִוָּה יְהוָה אֶת-מֹשֶׁה, or "as the Lord commanded Moses".

Finally, Moses placed a drape over the entrance to the Tabernacle, and with this, completed all the work. The Cloud that led the Children of Israel covered the Tabernacle, and it was filled with k'vod YHVH (the Glory of God). Moses could not come into the Tabernacle, because the Cloud rested on it, and it wis filled with the Glory of God. When the Cloud lifted off of the Tabernacle, it was a signal that it was time to move forward in their journeys. The Cloud appeared during the day, and by night, a fire was in the Tabernacle (but did not burn it).

This mysterious Glory of God came to be equated with the Shekhinah, or the feminine indwelling Divine Presence of God. The Shekhinah dwelt inside the Tabernacle, and later dwelt inside the Holy of Holies of King Solomon's Temple (and presumably, but more debatably, the Second Temple as well). This presents a real paradox. How can an omnipresent Deity dwell in one particular portion of space and time? This is the question that King Solomon asked at the consecration of the Temple: "But will God indeed dwell on the earth? behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded?" [1 Kings 8: 27].

Indeed, during an ordinary regular year or ordinary leap year, this passage about the Consecration of the Temple (1 Kings 7: 51 - 8: 21) is read as a supplemental Scripture passage (or haftarah) after the Torah reading. The story in these two chapters from the First Book of Kings every Freemason should know intimately.

This year, 5772, this Saturday is a special Sabbath, Shabbat Parah, or the Sabbath of the Red Heifer. I have blogged about the Red Heifer before, when explaining about chukim, or esoteric mitzvot. It is probably the most mysterious commandment in the Torah. When someone is spiritually contaminated by exposure to a human corpse, they must purify themselves by being anointed with the ashes of a heifer who is entirely red in color (two non-red hairs on her entire body disqualifies her), who has never worked as a draught animal. The heifer is to be ritually slaughtered, and then burned to ashes, along with cedar wood, hyssop, and threads dyed with the dye of the crimson worm.  The ash mixture is mixed with pure water and contained in a vessel. A bunch of hyssop is dunked in the mixture, and then splashed on the contaminated person, on the third, and seventh days of their impurity. The priest who performs this ablution is ritually contaminated until sundown, and must bathe himself and his clothes.

Jewish tradition tells us that from Moses to the destruction of the Second Temple, only nine such perfect Red Heifers were ever located, slaughtered and used. The ashes of the last heifer were exhausted during the Talmudic period, and now, no Jew who has been exposed to a corpse has any way to purify himself. Jews even today will keep track of whether they are from the tribe of Levi, or whether they come from a line of kohanim, or priests. Hence the common Jewish last names of Levy, ben Levi, Lewis, Cohen, Kahn, Caen, etc. Cohens are advised never to attend a funeral, that they might not be irremediably contaminated by contact with a corpse.

This is a strange commandment. There is a midrash that after God imbued King Solomon with wisdom, he was asked if he now understood all the mitzvot in the Torah. He replied that he understood all of them except the mitzvah of the Red Heifer.

There is a tenet of some Christian eschatology that Christ will not return until the Third Temple is built in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount. This would require a new red heifer to purify the Temple builders and priests. To this end, a group of evangelical farmers are trying to breed a perfect red heifer. Some Jews believe that the red heifer has to be born in Israel, so work is being done both in the USA and in Israel to provide this animal through selective breeding. I'm not sure what planning is being done to relocate the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount, and how well such planning is being received by those who worship at those holy sites.

Shabbat Parah is the Shabbat after Purim. This year's Purim day 2, or Purim Shushan, extended into the Sabbath, so Shabbat Parah is this Friday night into Saturday morning.

It is customary in Torah study, when a student or group of students finishes studying a book of Torah, to say: chazak chazak v'nitchazek. This could be translated as "Be strong! Be strong! And may we be strengthened."

חזק חזק ונתחזק

Vayakhel: Chokmah, Binah and Da'at

The Torah is divided by the rabbis into 54 Torah portions, or parashiot. The Hebrew calendar is lunisolar, meaning it is based on both the sun and the moon. The Islamic calendar is lunar; it is defined by twelve months, each of which is defined by the moon from new to waxing to full to waning to the next new moon. The challenge is that twelve lunar months is 354.37 days whereas the solar year is 365.24 days. That means that the two means of reckoning the year diverge by about 11 days. So a date in a purely lunar calendar will drift throughout the seasons as the years progress. The sacred month of Ramadan can appear in the winter when days are short, or in the summer when days are long and heat increases people's thirst, or anywhere in between.

The Jewish holidays are seasonal. Passover is a celebration of springtime. Shavuot is a celebration of summer, and Sukkot is a harvest festival in the autumn. The Jews wanted a lunar month but wanted to keep their seasonal festivals, so they came up with a lunisolar calendar. Each month is lunar, so to adjust the calendar to keep the months aligned with the seasons, they have a leap month every few years. The month of Adar becomes the months of Adar I and Adar II. The rabbis of the Talmudic era divided the Torah into 54 portions so that, with a few special Sabbaths outside of the cycle (like during the High Holy Days), they would fit into the 13 month calendar. On non-leap years, like 5772, the current year, some of the shorter Torah portions are doubled up so that the cycle fits into a 12 month year. This week is the first such double parashah, where Vayakhel and Pekudei are bundled together as Vayakhel/Pekudei.

In blogging about each Torah portion, I had to make a decision this week as to whether to consider each portion separately, or to treat Vayakhel/Pekudei as one portion. I have decided to treat each portion separately, although each treatment may be shorter than my regular treatments (which is fine: the passages themselves are shorter).

Vayakhel is not the first mention of the craftsmen Bezalel son of Uri, son of Hur (B'tzalel ben Uri ven Chur) of the tribe of Judah in the Torah, but it is the first in which he appears in person. Previously (Exodus 31: 2-3), God told Moses about Bezalel, and told Moses that He had filled Bezalel with wisdom, understanding and knowledge. These words in Hebrew are Chokmah, Binah, and Da'at, and the first two are Sephirot on the Tree of Life, holding the second and third positions. Da'at is sometimes considered a Sephirah, but more often it is considered a pseudo-sephirah, or something inferior to an actual sephirah. This is strange, and needs some explaining.

The first Sephirah on the Tree of Life is Keter, or the Crown. This is the first manifestation of Being, as Ain Soph precedes Being. Keter is utterly abstract, the Prime Movement of the Prime Mover, the first inkling of the first actuality. It immediately emanates into a polarity: yin and yang, male and female, the first dyad. The male pole is called Chokmah, or wisdom. The female pole is called Binah, or understanding. These one-word translations do not do these concepts sufficient justice. They cannot be conceptualized without a lot of meditation.

The synthesis of the two is called Da'at, or knowledge. It sits inside a hexagon of the first six Sephirah, but is often not considered a Sephirah itself. In the Golden Dawn system, Da'at sits in the Abyss, the barrier between the three lesser worlds of Ideas, Formations, and Action (Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiah) and the greater world of emanations (Atzilut).In the Western Hermetic tradition, this Abyss is absolutely perilous. The adept has to cross the abyss, but if they tarry or get bogged down, or if they try to keep their egos from being annihilated in the process, they will fall into the abyss of which there is no escape. Aleister Crowley claims that the Abyss is populated by the demon Choronzon, whose number is 333,, who will devour your soul if he detects any trace of ego remaining in you when you encounter him.

All this is much more innocent in the Jewish Kabbalistic tradition. Da'at is knowledge. It is the synthesis of Chokmah and Binah, wisdom and understanding. It is not a Sephirah, but it valuable nonetheless. In the form of Hasidism under the Chabad Lubovich school, ChaBaD is itself an acronym. Chokmah, Binah, Da'at. Chabad philosophy is encapsulated in the Tanya, the magnum opus of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of Chabad. The Tanya is a plain language treatise on Lurianic Kabbalah written as to be understood by the layman as a rational philosophy. At the time, this was an extraordinarily controversial thing to publish, as Kabbalah was a closely-guarded secret whose adherents required proficiency with Torah and Talmud from any potential student. Chabad believes that it is information that should be made accessible to any Jew whatsoever. Chabad also has its own unique interpretation of proper Jewish orthodoxy and orthopraxy, which can sometimes be controversial.

So Bezalel was chosen because God had filled him with Chokmah, Binah, and Da'at, and that gave him the power to construct the Tabernacle. In a very real sense, he is to the Tabernacle what Hiram Abiff is to the Temple, with the noted exception that there is nothing in the legends about Bezalel's death. The Kabbalists regarded Bezalel as able to form letters out of nothing, and to rearrange them to shape the substance of the universe as he saw fit. The name B'tzal-el means in the shadow of God. Midrash says that although God twice showed Moses the design of the Menorah, or lampstand, Moses was unable to grasp the complexities of God's concept for it. When Moses described what he understood to Bezalel, however, Bezalel understood immediately, and was able to create it from a single giant piece of hammered gold. The Talmud says that Bezalel was only thirteen when he fashioned the Tabernacle, but was of great wisdom, and Midrash says that he was the grand-nephew of Moses, through Bezalel's grandfather Hur (Chur).