Vaera'

There’s an old, old joke about Stalin and Trotsky. It goes this way: Stalin emerges to address an expectant crowd. “Comrades!,” he says. “I have in my hand a telegram from Comrade Trotsky, which I think will resolve our current differences of opinion. Let me read it to you: ‘You were right and I was wrong. You are the true heir of Lenin. I should apologize. Signed, Leon Trotsky.’” The crowd goes wild. But one man in the crowd signals to get Stalin’s attention.“Yes, comrade?,” Stalin asks. “Comrade Stalin, I think you know Comrade Trotsky is Jewish.” “Yes, I do.” “Well, I’m Jewish, too, and I thought I might have an extra insight on what Comrade Trotsky was trying to say. May I read the telegram myself?” “Of course, comrade!,” Stalin asks.The man gets up and starts reading: "You were right and I was wrong? (question mark) You are the true heir of Lenin? (question mark) I should apologize? (question mark) Signed, Leon Trotsky.”

See: when you are Jewish you add a lot of question marks, everywhere. And you realize that written words are not enough. Take for example the verses 2 and 3 of Exodus 6

וַיְדַבֵּר אֱלֹהִים, אֶל-מֹשֶׁה; וַיֹּאמֶר אֵלָיו, אֲנִי יְהוָה.

וָאֵרָא, אֶל-אַבְרָהָם אֶל-יִצְחָק וְאֶל-יַעֲקֹב--בְּאֵל שַׁדָּי; וּשְׁמִי יְהוָה, לֹא נוֹדַעְתִּי לָהֶם

God spoke to Moses and said: אֲנִי יְהוָה. I am God. I appeared to Abraham, to Izak, to Jakov in El Shadai, and my name  יְהוָה, Adonay, לֹא נוֹדַעְתִּי לָהֶם .

This לֹא נוֹדַעְתִּי לָהֶם lo-nodaati lahem is problematic: it is a first person passive form, a niphal, of the verb ידע, which literally means to know. So if we translate closely, we should read: "I, God, was not known to them", to the Patriarchs.

Wait a minute. Is the text saying that God appeared to the Patriarchs and they did not know God’s name? The classical commentators have an ingenious solution for this problem. Because the problem we are struggling with is very serious. It is a theological one. Is the God who appears to Moses different from the one who appears to the Patriarchs? Of course not, Rashi says. We need to read it like that telegram from Leon Trotsky: adding the proper punctuation.

“וָאֵרָא,  I revealed myself, אֶל-אַבְרָהָם אֶל-יִצְחָק וְאֶל-יַעֲקֹב to Abraham, Isaac and Jakov בְּאֵל שַׁדָּי As El Shadai, but my name isיְהוָה Adonay, and that I did not revealed to them”.

According to Rashi, El Shaddai is a Divine Name related to the Promise, so you see there is a logic in his understanding of the text. When God appeared to the Patriarchs, it was about the Promise. Now that God appears to Moses, the Promise is coming close to be fulfilled.

The interpretation of the classic commentators is apparently so convincing that it has become mainstream. You will find it in the the English translation in the contemporary commentaries, like Etz Hayym, the American Conservative, the Stone Chumash, or our British Hertz: “I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make Myself known to them by My name”. They all rely on a row of classical commentators who buys into that Rashi reading of the text. Like Ibn Ezra, who even states: "This verb is not a niphal, passive; it’s an hiphil, a causative. You should read: I did not make my Name known to them. God did not make his Name known to the Patriarchs, rather He revealed himself completely to Moses, to whom he’s speaking now".

That’s fine, but to me the problem is that, well, that verb is not a causative form. It’s a passive form. And the root י ד ע in Biblical Hebrew does not mean to reveal, it means to know, in a very direct, experiential way: in a Biblical way, literally. Therefore the proper reading of the text is exactly the most troubling: God said: “I appeared to your forefathers as El Shaddai, and they did not know Me”. And I quite like the reading of this passage from the writing of the Maharal from Prague: the understanding, the knowledge, of the banim, the children, is not the understanding of the avot, the fathers, to whom God appeared as El Shaddai.

Now, I find it very moving: in Italy, the Shaddai, is a special amulet, usually handed to you from your parents. Often is a simple Magen David, that the parents place in the cradle, under the pillow. And when you grow up, it becomes a pendant for your necklace. Before you ask, I will admit: yes, it’s pure superstition. It aims to protect the weak child from the omnipresent evil eye, the ayin haraa, which becomes envy, which becomes gossiping, which leads to fight and war. Did our parents really believe to this superstition? If asked, they would say that “believing” is probably not the proper word. They would never admit it, and only speak of Shaddai as a lovely, lovely tradition.

“As El Shaddai God appeared to the previous generations”  says our verse. Do we really believe to the superstitions related to the word Shaddai? Of course not. Do we live in the same world, dominated by the uncontrollable force of the ayin ha-raa, the envious eye? Of course not. We live in a world that had been able to transform envy, greed, in a force for the development of the economy. Although the consequences are not always good, but that is for another sermon.

And, yes, our understanding of God is different from our parents, and from the previous generations. Indeed, we can say that God appeared to them, as in our verse; but they did not know God in the same way we know. The various understandings are so different that even the same object has different meanings: one for the generation of the parents and another for the sons’ generation.

And how difficult it is, so difficult, to find a common language, a way to communicate, to hand down to our children what we have received from our elders. That we ourselves understood in a different way. It is the case for a jewel. It is the same case for our belief system, for our culture, for being Jewish; as it is the same case for God.

To me, the strength of Judaism, the source of the resilience of our faith, is not that it has always been the same. As (supposedly) it was in the old days, as if we had the duty to preserve and pass on intact. No: Judaism is a progressive religion. Every Jewish generation has a different, and perfectly legitimate understanding of Judaism. Every generation lives in a different world from the previous one. As our verse implies by listing the different Patriarchs, Avot, in their historical, chronological order: “I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jakov”. Just before, there is a revelation, Vaera’, I appeared. But every generation understands it, names it, in a different way.

I really cannot know, now, which sort of understanding my son will have, when he will be my age. What will mean to him to be a Jew. What will he do with this precious gift that me and my wife are handing over to him; by lighting the Shabbat candles, going to shul, narrating stories from the Torah, celebrating the holidays, going to Limmud, maintaining a relation with Israel, learning Hebrew etc. To me all of this is El Shadday, which carries a nice resemblance with dai, dayenu!, enough! But most probably my son will give another name to all of this, to being Jewish. And as a proud Jewish parent, at the moment, I can only say it will be a smart, intelligent, and clever one.

Whether I will understand it, or not.

Ho un altro blog

Il titolo mi piaceva ed era libero da un po'. Ecco qua.

Vayshlach

The Yabbok is a tributary of the Jordan River. Biblical archaeologists identify it with a river called Zarka in Arabic, that runs through a deep ravine in northern Jordan. It is mentioned in the Pentateuch as the northern boundary of the territories of the Israelite tribes. But the Yabbok is especially known for having been the scenario of the wrestling of Jacob with ish, a mysterious man mentioned in Gen 32:25.

Who was this mysterious man? In the Targumim, Aramaic translations of the Biblical text read in the early synagogues, it is mostly identified with an angel. Not one of the chubby babies we are used to see in the works of Christian painters. Rather, such an ish is explained to be an emissary from the Other World, resembling an human being. Only through the fight, because of its superhuman strength, Jacob comes to understand that, despite its semblance, it cannot be a man. It is too strong, too resilient: the battle went on for a whole night.

Midrashic sources, like Bereshit Rabbah, maintain that such an ish was a brigand. Not a rough street- bandit, a robber, but a rather a sophisticated financial criminal. He saw that Jacob was a wealthy man, who could send droves of goats, cows, bulls and rams as gifts to his brother. So the brigand comes to the side of the Yabbok with his flocks and his camels, and proposes to Jacob a transaction: “Let’s put our assets together, and they will grow in number and will give us profits”. But Jacob realizes that there’s a trick, that the mysterious ish is not an honest businessman but a sorcerer with whom it is very dangerous to get along.

Medieval commentators evoke both these two characters: the emissary from the Other World, and the shrewd, deceptive sorcerer. They maintain the ish was an evil force. According to Rashi, for example, it was the guardian angel of the most deceptive and cruel man of that time: Esau. The whole purpose of the fight was to prevent Jacob going on, crossing the Yabbok, to continue his journey towards the reconciliation with his brother.

Contemporary commentators are indeed less comfortable with guardian angels. Etz Hayim, the Torah Commentary published by the Rabbinic Assembly of the American Conservative Movement, points out that this mysterious entity, in the mind if the author of the text, could even be the demonic guardian of the Yabbok river, a sort of local deity with whom Jacob struggles in his most lonely hour.

But regardless of the origins or the purposes of that ish, all the commentators point out that the struggle, the fight, happens when Jacob is alone, just before a crucial moment in his life. Jacob is aware of the relevance of that moment: he is to meet with his brother, with whom he lost contact decades before.

All the memories of that troubled relationship come to surface. Jacob is struggling with his past; literally: with his conscience. The ish might have been deceptive, shrewd businessman-like: but Jacob himself had been deceitful with his brother, stealing a blessing which was destined for Esau. The mysterious man can be an emissary from the dark, Other World. Jacob, exactly at this point, is dealing with the darkest part of his past.

And what sort of a fight was it? Every fight has its rules, and indeed the mysterious ish become a rather sporting gentleman towards the end. He and Jacob realize none of them could win completely, so Jacob asks for –and receives- a blessing.

Given that it was a fair match, which were the rules of that fight, on the Yabbok’s riverside?

Jacob, as we know, was not an athletic type. He was thin, and slender, like Daniel Mendoza, a Sephardi Jew, who in the XIXth Century was a famous boxer in England. Thanks to Mendoza the stereotype of the weak, cowardly defenceless Jew was eradicated from the British press –at least for a generation. So, were they, on the Yabbok riverside, trading fists against each other, like in the modern boxing?

Or was there, between Jacob and the angel, a match of krav maga? Krav maga, is a martial art developed at the beginning of the State of Israel, by an Israeli soldier, Imi Sde Or – born Imre Lichtenfeld in Bratislava. Krav maga consists mainly in kicks and punches aimed firstly to remove weapons from the opponent’s hand and, secondly, to hit his vital organs.

In other words: on that crucial night, was Jacob trying to hit violently his opponent’ vital organs? Did he feel threatened as if that mysterious ish was carrying a lethal weapon? But no weapons are mentioned in the Torah; and, as I have said, it looks like it was a rather fair fight.

I tend to think it was a less violent form of physical confrontation. I think it was a matter of agility. There have maybe been kicks and punches, but probably more twists, grabs and throws. In that match, to my mind, Jacob and his opponent did their best to force each other to loose balance, to fall down, to end up lieing down on the ground defenceless. Something like an Aikido match, where the winner is not the most strong, the most powerful, but rather the most agile, the one who is able to turn against the opponent, the same strength and power with whom the opponent is trying to hit him.

For a whole night, on the river of the Yabbok, Jacob is fighting with a mysterious ish, a man who represents his past, who wants to prevent his reconciliation with Esau. It was a confrontation that Jacob had tried to avoid for years. Now he has sent lots of gifts to his brother. He tried to appease him and maybe he thought Esau would be satisfied with his share, and will avoid the troubling moment of face-to-face. But the opponent, the ish, the man, is more agile, grabs Jacob and forces him to confront his past. We do not know how many twists and turns happened that night, how many times Jacob, or his opponent, came closer to total defeat, to be exposed to the other’s mercy.

The Torah leaves all the details to our imagination. But it tells us that Jacob emerged from that confrontation as a more complete human being: that despite the physical wounds that he found on his body after that match, he was ready to make peace with his brother, to confront his past and to move forward.

He discovered his weakness, certainly: but, definitively he also discovered his humanity.

Questa vignetta fa schifo

Questa vignetta era su Il manifesto di oggi.

Le ossessioni di Berlusconi sono comiche ed e' possibile sfotterlo in ogni possibile modo. Mi chiedo pero' che bisogno ci sia di parlare della sua impotenza (politica e sessuale) ricordando ai lettori italiani la triste condizione di chi invecchia, ammalato, nell'Europa di oggi, Italia compresa. 

Tra le persone che invecchia(va)no andrebbe incluso anche Lucio Magri, fondatore del quotidiano comunista, che se ne e' andato per sua scelta la notte scorsa. Ma mentre Magri invecchiava, nessuno ha pensato di fare battute sui suoi cateteri o le infermiere. O l'impotenza dei comunisti. 

Il manifesto e' un quotidiano... Boh, trovate voi la definizione. Tra l'altro anche Vauro, autore della vignetta pseudo umoristica, non e' proprio giovanissimo.

Brian di Nazareth

Non c'e' discussione: Life of Brian e' un capolavoro. Non lo avete visto? Cavoli vostri. Lo avete visto? Bene.

Vi ricordate quando Mel Gibson spedi' nelle sale cinematrogafiche il suo polpettone antisemita splatter, con l'espresso desiderio di fare incazzare gli ebrei? Abbiamo perso una occasione. Avremmo dovuto organizzare proiezioni, in contemporanea, di quella straordinaria pellicola. E sono certo che sareste tutti venuti a rivedere di nuovo i Monty Python, altro che l'incubo splatter in aramaico di un alcolizzato. 

Ieri mi sono trovato a parlare di questo film con un paio di amici. Una che si occupa di dialogo inter-religioso va pazza per questa scena.

 Un nostro amico latinoamericano preferisce questa:

La mia esperienza con la sinistra italiana, infine, mi porta ad apprezzare questa scena:

Padania 2011

le sfumature del diritto

Carina, questa storia. Dunque: il nipote di Leibowitz, un tale di ottima famiglia che ha abbandonato Israele per trasferirsi a Washington, dove campa facendo il traduttore dall'ebraico. Si trova tra le mani le registrazioni delle telefonate della ambasciata israeliana. Che gia' e' roba illegale - registrare telefonate, dico. Contrario ad ogni norma del tanto strombazzato diritto internazionale.

E che fa? Le passa a un altro tizio, che scrive un blog dal titolo orwelliano ("rendere il mondo un posto migliore"). E questo secondo tizio, avendo a che fare non con un crimine, ma con due, ma essendo comunque abituato a muoversi in un universo orwelliano, ritiene di avere davanti a se' un genuino patriota americano (!), e quindi pubblica tutta la roba sul suo blog [non ve lo linko, trovate tutte le informazioni qui]. Poi, il coraggioso, si caga in mano e cancella tutti i post che possono portare qualcuna delle informazioni che Leibowitz gli ha passato.

Questo e' il genere di persone che brandisce le dichiarazioni ONU ed il diritto internazionale ogni volta che si tratta di condannare Israele. Cioe' sono ebrei che attentano alla sicurezza dello Stato ebraico. Per come la vedo io, sono del tutto simili a quegli italiani che, nel nome della sicurezza dell'Italia, collaboravano con strutture piu' o meno legate ai servizi segreti di vari Paesi, e disseminavano l'Italia di bombe. I camerati di Pino Rauti e Stefano Delle Chiaie, insomma.