(Mis)Translations and (Mis)Quotes - Interpreting and Changing Tradition

אמר רבי סימון: אין לך כל עשב ועשב, שאין לו מזל ברקיע, שמכה אותו ואומר לו גדל

Rabbi Simon said: Is it not so that there is not a single blade of grass that does not have its Fortune in heaven striking it and telling it to grow.

I have long struggled with word changes and misquotes of traditional texts, not to mention incorrect citations.

The above translation is what it really says in the original. And yet, I much prefer the more common translation: Behind every blade of grass there is an angel telling it, "Grow! Grow!"  You can find that quote all over the internet - incorrectly attributed to Talmud. It's really in Mishnah Rabba Bereishit (ancient rabbinic commentary on Genesis), 11:6. 

Just instinctively I prefer the gentler version - no hitting.

Recently, I have seen מכה translasted as "tap" - as though the angels are tapping the blades of grass on the shoulder to get their attention. But מכה is the word for striking, for hitting, for giving punishing lashes to someone (as in the tractate of Talmud, מכות makot, in which we learn that one should never merit 50, so the worst punishment is 49 מכות, lashes.

And then there is a traditional interpretation of the original in which the hitting of the grass is meant to teach us that some things need to be hit in order to grow. Tell me how many heder (school) teachers or parents have used that one through the generations to justify striking a child.

And perhaps "change" is less true than borrowing a bunch of sources and putting them together: while the Midrash is based on a statement in Job, there is no mention of an angel. Where does the angel come from? In Sefer Hasidim (12th c.) it says, כי אין דבר שיהיה מלאך ממונה עליו, ואפילו כל עשב ועשב, "there is nothing that doesn't have a guiding angel over it - even grass." I like this version, though it doesn't indicate that the grass is being told to grow.

This also brings up the angel bit. In the Midrash, there is no angel - there is מזל mazal, fortune, or perhaps star or constellation. Yes, this is whence we get mazal (mazel) tov - not "may you have good luck," but "what you have (achieved) is a sign of good fortune," a sign from the stars.

Somehow, we get from Fortune to Angel, as well as from hitting and telling to telling (possibly with a gentle tap to get attention).

Perhaps it is a bit like the game of telephone, whereby a teaching is passed from one generation to the next, and on the way transitions in order to remain relevant, to speak to each successive generation.

Indeed, if we didn't need that, we could all simply sit down and read the Torah and never need the Mishnah, or the Gemarrah, or the Midrash, or the commentaries of Rashi, Maimonides, Nachmanides, Gersonides, Hirsh, Hertz, Eitz Hayim, or all of the rabbis and teachers offering Divrei Torah, interpretive words of Torah, in Jewish communities throughout the world.

There are good reasons to consider all words we wish to pass on, and how we choose to interpret them says something about our values. Some people don't want to talk about angels - ancient rabbis as well as contemporary Jews both. I like to talk about them - I like to think about the role of angels in the world, the angels who sit behind a blade of grass and what they do. Maybe, back in the day, they did hit the grass - and maybe, like we now don't believe in striking our children to get them to learn, just maybe those angels have also changed and don't any longer strike the grass to urge it to grow. Maybe they tap it gently, נגע to touch, just to get its attention. Or maybe they just whisper a little louder, or change their words, or step out in front instead of staying behind - just to get the attention of the grass.

With that in mind, I will stick with:
Behind every blade of grass there is a guiding angel whispering to it, Grow! Grow! 

And I will cite its origin as "Midrash, common interpretation."

For Our Teachers and Our Students: A Journey in NonLinear Faith

A long time ago this morning (likely yesterday by the time I finish writing and post), I sat at the table of local Torah maestro Beth Huppin. She is marvelous at demystifying Jewish text and weaving difficult teachings into meaning for any interested learner.

This morning's text, in honor of Yom HaShoah this week - was from Kalonymus Kalman Shapira (1889-1943), Piaseczno Rebbe, who taught light in the Warsaw Ghetto (and before).

In his posthumous Sacred Fire, Shapira takes the Talmudic teaching that "when anyone repeats the Torah (teaching) of a dead scholar, the lips of the dead, though lying in the grave, mutter along with the speaker." (Read positively as "whisper," or "murmer" rather than "mutter" with its negative connotation.) Shapira argues that this is literally "in the grave," and literally "moving," not some dreamy picture of our teachers in an ethereal Olam Haba (world to come).

This teaching Shapira places near the end of a rather elaborate explication of the importance of students to teachers, which basically states that a teacher may learn something in the act of teaching that is far beyond the ken of the students, but which the teacher could not have understood without the configuration of particular learners around him.

Am I blown away by this teaching? Yes. While we were careful in the room this morning to read this as having broad meaning, I want for a moment to reflect on its context, a teaching during the Shoah, before I move on to weave in a few texts that came to my mind.

Consider: Shapira is teaching this in January 1942. By now he is aware of the death of teachers and students, and may, whatever hope he tries to keep alive, reasonably anticipate his own mortality. (Significant change came with partitioning of the ghetto in December 1941, two parts joined by a wooden foot bridge.) Did he intend this teaching as comfort to those he spoke them to that January? A reminder to himself that so long as people came to learn from him, he had purpose, and he could learn? To console himself at the loss of his own teachers?

Consider now the far-reaching meaning of this text. One of the questions Beth asked her students (me) to reflect on this morning was whether we had "ever experienced hearing the lips of the dead speaking" when we speak or teach words we learned from them.

This gives me chills, just thinking about it. And I say, "well, not literally, no . . . and, yes!"

Sometimes simply studying a text that is thousands (!) of years old, if in a moment I sense the person or people behind that text (author, editor, redactor), I may feel profound awe at the opportunity to find meaning for myself in their words.

There are people who converse with a text. I mean out loud, even. What do you mean by X? they might ask, or delving deeper, Does your idea hold up when you consider A? This, I think, was the savvy of the Talmudic rabbis - not to try to preserve the text as is (though with sacred texts they did their best), but to be in conversation with those texts, or to imagine themselves in conversation with the originators of the text.

Many scholars have done this simply in the margins of a text (See Rashi's Torah commentary, for example). Joseph Caro was overheard by his disciples having conversations with the personified Mishnah.

How do I do it? Usually quietly in my head. Sometimes jotting an epiphany on paper. And recently, I have begun the idea of writing out such conversations.

Am I "imagining" the conversation? What is imagination?
Am I "really" in conversation with a text?
Do the answers that I scribe for the text or its author actually belong to the person I am channeling?

Yes or no, it doesn't really matter.

What matters is:
Somewhere along the way, now and then, I experience the murmer, the דובב (dovev), of teachers past, some of whom I can never have known.

A long time ago this morning - now yesterday morning - I sat at the table of a great teacher. She taught the words of another great teacher. And he cited Talmud from more than a thousand years ago, which in turn cited Shir haShirim, Song of Songs, attributed to King Solomon nearly 3000 years ago.

There is no time in Torah. The teachings reach backward into the generations, and forward to students not yet born, who will elicit from their teachers new and revelatory understandings, just as our students do today for us, and as we have for our teachers. Though I prefer, unlike Shapira, to consider an Olam Haba rather than the earthly grave, I offer the prayer: May we hear the voices of our ancient teachers and their future students murmering through the veil.

In memory of teachers and students lost.

Torah and Tigger - Finding Community

Torah and Tigger: Creative Reading

Perhaps a year ago, I took this picture of the bag of "groceries" my son brought me during some free play time. It contained, among other things, a Tigger book and a stuffed Torah. 

There is meaning in everything - and there is most definitely a connection for me between the imagination that leads to a story like Winnie the Pooh, and the creative reading that makes Torah a personal experience.  

When we come to Leviticus, as we do this week with Parashat Vayikra, and we jump straight into the old, earthy, sacrificial system, the blood and guts - it might be time for a little creative reading.

(Maybe that's why we go back and read the Exodus stories again, now, in preparation for Passover - so we have something else to occupy our minds with through the sacrificial readings.)

But perhaps Tigger can teach us something about how to approach Leviticus. Tigger is a hopeful creature - and a very social one at that. In The Tigger Movie (2000), Tigger searches desperately for other tiggers, looking through the woods for his family tree. He loses sight of the circle of friends around him, his community-family - who try lovingly to help him find (and even understand) family, even as it means he is looking away from them.

The book of Leviticus is a biblical, priestly attempt at understanding and creating a cohesive family unit out of a dozen tribes and reportedly a couple of million people (600,000 able-bodied men, plus women, elders, and children). We may not feel a particular connection to the sacrificial system - it may, indeed, rub against our contemporary sensibilities (against killing animals unnecessarily, in favor of cleanliness and community conversation). But we can nonetheless learn something - both from Leviticus itself, and from the evolution of the system presented there to our present day Jewish practice. Because we Jews don't make burnt offerings anymore, but we do still have community!

The book of Leviticus starts right in with אדם כי יקריב מכם קורבן "When a person brings a sacrifice..." (Lev. 1:2). When, not if - and the general term of אדם, a man, but easily read as "a person." Skip the details of how to bring that sacrifice, for the moment - and come to the list of "unwitting" trespass - of the law designed to sustain community.

The unwitting part is, I think, important here. If we do not intend to neglect or cause harm, are we liable? The reminder here is that our actions, witting or unwitting, impact community. Like the proverbial pillow whose feathers cannot be retrieved, or the ripples flowing out from the impact of the stone in the pond - our actions fly or ripple out into the community, irretrievably. We must do something to change the impact, to heal it or sooth it, regardless of intent in the action itself.

Tigger does not realize the impact on his friends until he sees that they have costumed themselves as (spoiler alert) tiggers, in order to help him feel loved. He is fortunate not to have lost his friends in his moment of neglect of them.

When the Temple was destroyed, the sages wisely transitioned the sacrificial system into a prayer system. Each person remains responsible for prayer, but while some prayers can be recited in solitary, a handful require a minyan of ten adults, thus encouraging community connection. As Rabbi Maurice Harris puts it, in his book, Leviticus: You Have No Idea, "The newly designed religion [of the post-Temple period] valued literacy and excelled at maintaining communication between diaspora communities."

In the contemporary Jewish world it seems that the current community model of synagogues and JCCs as community gathering places is, at minimum, not reaching a great many of our Jewish population. I will not tackle this extensively here, but I will say that I was reminded this week in a conversation that Leviticus indeed points us to an evolving community model, and that we are responsible for maintaining communication even (especially?) with those looking outward, as Tigger was looking away from his Hundred Acre Woods community, and for active contemporary reconstruction. 

Rewriting What is Written in Stone

Fire in Stone
original sketch by the blogger ;)

The image of the ten commandments - a few dozen words etched directly by G-d into two tablets of stone - epitomizes the notion of immutability of not just these few words, but the whole of Torah, perhaps the whole bible.  

All of the progressive movements of Judaism have made gender-balancing changes to the siddur (prayer book), at least as an option, thus literally changing the words of our texts.  

But no Jewish community has, to my knowledge, rewritten the text of Torah. Torah is sacred and, for all intents and purposes, written in stone.

One of my two year old’s favorite TV shows, Super Why!, focuses on reading as a superpower. The show opens with song: “Who’s got the power / The power to read / Who answers the call / For friends in need / … / Who looks into books / For the answers we need / It’s SUPER WHY and the Super Readers.”  

Little boy Whyatt and his friends transform into superheroes. As Super Why, he says, “with the power to read, I can change this story and save the day!”

What a radical concept! Not only does reading provide knowledge, but the opportunity to change the very thing we are reading.

The stories the Super Readers enter and make to are often well known, like Jack and the Beanstock or Goldilocks, stories I would have thought nearly as sacred, immutable, as Torah.  

But the Super Readers come in and “save the day” by challenging the very text.  An angry giant takes a nap on his “huge bed” rather than having a “huge tantrum” (Season 1, Episode 1); moonlight suddenly brightens the room of a bear who is afraid of the dark by changing the last word of the sentence, “Charlie’s room is dark,” to “light.”

They transform the story by changing the words.  

But we can’t do that with Torah.  And there are times Torah seems to, I’ll be honest, contain things we would rather not read, let alone teach our children. So what do we do?

Essentially since the moment Torah was written, there have been ways to transform meaning. Consider, for example, the understanding of the word שמע shema (as in the credal, “Hear, O Israel,” (Deuteronomy 6:4)) as שאו מרום עיניכם - “lift high your eyes” - not only emphasizing the notion of “pay attention” but linking it to another text (Isaiah 40:26).  

In this week’s Torah reading, Parashat Vayikra, we find the following (Leviticus 1:2):  אָדָם כִּי-יַקְרִיב מִכֶּם קָרְבָּן

Just to give you a sense of how translation is inherently interpretation, I offer the following:

• 1917 Jewish Publication Society translation, “When any man of you bringeth an offering...”
• 1999 Jewish Publication Society translation, “When any of you presents an offering…”

The main difference between the two translations is a problem, as it were, with the first word, ADAM - אדם. The first translation is as a generic “man,” and the second translation avoids to word entirely.  

Some ask the question, why ADAM (אדם) instead of ISH (איש), which is the more common word for “a person”? Our second translation opens up the possibility that אדם is a more gender neutral term, something more compatible with contemporary egalitarian thinking.  I would imagine they might justify that based on the verse “And G-d created אדם...male and female” (Genesis 1:27), such that Adam is a word not subject to the gender binary, whereas Eesh (איש) is explicitly gendered.

Another nice twist is the acronym given for אדם by Rabbi Yochanan in a discussion on what a person does/is when they are haughty (Talmud Bavli, Sotah 5b) - aleph (א) for אפר aphar, meaning dust; dalet (ד) for דם dam, meaning blood; and mem (מ . ם) for מרה marah, meaning bile. An act of repentance or turning from haughtiness - a base, physical act - could be an offering, an attempt to turn away from the physical ADAM and to “draw near” to one’s spiritual self through an act of קרבן korban, the type of offering here, which is connected in its root to קרב karov, literally to draw near.

Those who read Torah, who are knowledgable in the Hebrew especially, have the power to be, as all Torah commentators throughout the centuries have been, nothing less than Super Readers, with the power to transform the meaning of our text for our own and future generations.

New Respect for Writer's Block

All that white space in Torah, the spaces between the words, the information left out… I wonder, was it left out intentionally?  Or did the “author(s)” of Torah know that they just needed to “finish” the work and put it out there even if it wasn’t “perfect”?  

Apparently, I have writer’s block.  I was sure I posted in January, but apparently not.  Believe me, I’ve been writing up a storm!  I’ve even drafted a few blog entries, on “paper” and in my head.  I have plenty to say.

But I’m (re)discovering that writer’s block isn’t always about not writing.  Sometimes, yes, it’s the stare-at-the-page-can’t-find-a-single-word block.  Sometimes I have a lot to say, and I really want to share it, and I’ve even written it out.  But I make excuses: I don’t know if this is right for the blog, I’m not sure it’s a “finished” product, I don’t know if anyone is actually reading, or I don’t know if the “wrong” people are reading, or I do want feedback or I don’t want feedback, I’m sick, my son is on school break, I don’t have time.

At My Writing Space, created by prompt from The Artist's Way

In December, shortly before this unconscious hiatus from blogging, a rabbinic colleague recommended a book called The Artist’s Way (Julia Cameron) - a workbook aimed at moving one past various creative blocks, recognizing that the creative energy in us is the way in which we created in the image of the Creator.  This is a very compelling answer to me about what Torah means that humans are created “in the image of G-d” (Genesis 1:27).

In the process of engaging with this book, I have written hundreds of pages - mostly journaling, but also drafts of two children’s books and some unpublished blog posts.  When the book asks each week if I see where I am blocked, I scoff.  “I’m not blocked,” I say, “I’m writing - I’m blogging.”  Whoops.  The only writing I have shared, however, has been work-related sermons and such.  I’ve shared the writing I had to write, not the writing that I have created as part of my personal creative energy.

I’ve used every excuse, until I became aware this week how bad the excuses really are.  And I see, after weeks of working through the book and claiming NOT to be blocked, that I actually am blocked.  Yes, I’m writing.  But I’m not sharing.

Can there be “wrong readers” on a blog, since anyone who reads the blog is self-selecting to do so?  And since I can find changes to make in any sermon, blog entry, short story, etc. that I’ve already been put out into the world, I know a finished project isn’t necessarily a perfected one.  I need to unblock, to put my work (and yes, sometimes my process) out there - blog or otherwise.  It won’t always be good, and it will have white space (intentional and not).  Let the readers read into it as they will.

More soon.  Um...I hope!

Dreams and Dreamers

Joseph is a dreamer. His dreams - or at least his sharing of his dreams put him in danger. They are the dreams of a prophet, dreams that know something that can't be known.

Dreams can be like that. Dreams sometimes tell us a situation is or isn't right in a way we don't seem to grasp in our waking life. 

The double entendre of the word "dream" is really quite profound. We dream in consciousness about our hopes, and we dream to process life while we sleep. I believe that in dreams my subconscious mind can work in the space, the veil, between olam haba (the world to come, or the spiritual world) and olam hazeh (this world, the physical).  

Someone recently asked, thus reminding me, about my journey from anthropologist to rabbi. It is a multifaceted journey, one that relies on conscious and subconscious dreams. Since childhood, I have loved digging through layers of past cultures, and this passion is directly connected to my spiritual and moral identity. 

Sleeping dreams have directed my journey through these interests on more than one occasion. A series of dreams during my work as an archaeologist ultimately led me to leave that academic field and pursue the rabbinate. The dreams were difficult, filled with ethical dilemma, and left me raw. The transitions weren't easy (if ever they are).

Unlike Joseph, whose initial downfall may be in sharing his dreams too readily, I was cautious about with whom and how I shared my dreams. But like Joseph, my dreams have led me on a long, sometimes arduous, often splendor-filled journey.

I am never sorry when I follow my dreams.  It is good to be reminded of this.

How do you make use of conscious dreams - dreams of hope? And how do your subconscious dreams - of sleep - speak to you? Do you have a little Joseph in you?

[edited for clarity]

You Are What You Read (and Read What You Are)

You Are What You Read, declared a link posted by a friend on Facebook.  Apparently the news is a little old (2011-12), research suggesting that identifying with a character in a book can actually change us.

Actually, this isn’t news in Jewish tradition at all.  I find the annual cycle of reading Torah -- a practice dating back thousands of years -- to be a practice of identifying with characters and of becoming.  I spiral back to each story individually and with community, and each time I read a story I bring different questions to it.  

I mean that at any given point I am living certain questions.  These questions may be big or small, but they always are about where I am in my life, on a journey or in a stuck-place, grieving or experiencing newness and joy, as teacher and/or student, focused on love or grappling with darker emotions. 

Admittedly, the questions I am living at a given moment impact my reading of a story (biblical or other) -- but the wisdom of Torah and the cyclical reading of it is that  each story brings answers, somehow, to the questions in which I am living.  

The many questions I flow between in my life are not by any means unique to me.  Torah (and much good literature) is brilliant in leaving space for questions -- in answering questions with questions -- leaving room for the reader to examine what isn’t written, the stories between the stories.  This is midrash. 

From this week’s reading we have sibling rivalry between Jacob and Esau beginning in the womb: “the children struggled within her” says the Torah, and Midrash says, “whenever she passed by a place of study Jacob would struggle to come out, and whenever she passed by a place of idolatry Esau would struggle to come out” (Genesis Rabbah 63:6).  The midrash has each child dealing with their own personal struggles, rather than the sibling rivalry that seems the original intent of the text.  Author beware -- your reader will find things in your writing that are more about him/her than about what you thought you wrote.

One of my favorite contemporary authors, Dara Horn, employs the concept of midrash to her writing.  I have just finished her recent book, A Guide for the Perplexed, which brilliantly tells a 21st century story by sweeping together the biblical Joseph story with a medieval book of the same title and a 19th century rabbi-scholar.  This is a book that has influenced me in recent weeks.  Another of Horn’s books, The World to Come, provides some of the foundation on which I tell my son the story of his birth (which came a year or so after I read the book).

Our modern experiences really aren’t that different from what has happened to people in the past, despite the illusion created by changing technologies and our own sense of progress.  Whether Torah or contemporary literature, horror or fantasy, news or memoir, self-help or spirituality -- what we read influences who we are. 

On the flip side, I am finding that who/what/where I am in my life has a lot to do with the choices I make in reading material.  Last spring I slipped into a phase of reading fiction that described terrorism and human slaughter in gruesome detail.  This literature somehow helped me to deal with loss and grief in my own life. 

Recently, I have realized that I am unable to open such books.  My circumstances have changed.  I’m moving out of hardcore grief and into a journey of hope.

And what am I reading?  Besides the weekly Torah readings, which are filled with great stories for the journey-oriented questions I am currently engaging, I’ve moved into the “cozy” mysteries, where deaths may happen but the details are kept to a bare minimum.  And I’m reading life-journey books, including Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things, and Dara Horn’s Guide.  

Thank you for reading my words - I can only hope they are helping you with your questions. Recommendations for my next read are welcome!