A Rabbi Reads the Torah

By Jonathan Magonet

A Rabbi Reads the Torah distils a lifetime of Bible study by a Jewish scholar devoted to popularising the study of the Hebrew Bible in its original language, helped by the wealth of centuries of Jewish interpretation and debate, as well as the best of modern literary approaches.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SCM Press
• Release date: Jul 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9780334049159

Jonathan Magonet

Born in 1942, Jonathan Magonet is a medical doctor, rabbi, Bible scholar and poet. Retiring after twenty years as Principal of a rabbinic seminary, the wish to explore a new language and culture led him to Japan. Jonathan now lives in London.

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Introduction

In theory, rabbis don’t give ‘sermons’!

Though, truth to tell, we have been influenced by the forms and terms of the wider society – including some of the worst aspects: A late-arriving congregant asks another who is just departing: ‘Has the rabbi finished his sermon?’ ‘Yes,’ comes the answer, ‘but he is still talking!’

Instead of a sermon, traditionally the rabbi, or indeed any lay member of the congregation, might give a derashah, a commentary on the particular passage from the Torah, the Five Books of Moses, that was being read on Shabbat morning that week in the synagogue. (Actually the Hebrew text is not ‘read’ but chanted according to a traditional set of melodies whose musical divisions also form a kind of commentary on the text.) Darash means to seek out, to search out, to delve into the many potential meanings within the biblical text itself, often aided by commentaries composed by rabbinic scholars over the past two thousand years.

The word ‘Torah’, from a root word ‘yarah’, meaning to shoot arrows at a target, is best translated as ‘teaching’, containing as it does both the narrative parts of the Bible and the legal aspects, everything that points the way towards a spiritual life. Though initially the term referred to the Five Books of Moses alone, understood traditionally as the direct revelation of God to Israel through Moses, Torah developed over time to include the rest of the Bible and indeed all the laws, teachings, opinions and personal examples derived from it. The derashah allows the rabbi to make his or her own contribution to the accumulated wisdom derived from the Torah.

The Five Books are divided into 54 units or parashiot so that the entire collection is covered in the course of a year – actually a leap year (one in which an extra month is added because the Jewish year is about one week shorter than the calendar year and has to catch up every few years). In non-leap years, of 50 weeks, some of the parashiot are joined together. Texts from Genesis are read in the autumn; from Exodus from the beginning of the year till about March; from Leviticus through to May; from Numbers till July, and from Deuteronomy over the summer months and into the autumn. The entire cycle of readings is completed in the autumn after the Jewish New Year at a festival called Simchat Torah, the rejoicing in the Torah, when we read the end of the Book of Deuteronomy and immediately begin again with Genesis. The cycle never ends, and with it the responsibility of rabbi and congregation together to seek out, to search for, the message embedded in the text by God with its lessons relevant for today.

Following the passage from the Torah in the synagogue there is a reading from the second division of the Hebrew Bible, the ‘prophets’, nevi’im. This prophetic reading is called the Haftarah, meaning conclusion. The passage for the week was chosen by the rabbis to echo some aspect of the Torah reading, but at various times of the year it is used instead to introduce or reflect upon the current Jewish festival. In addition, certain biblical books, the five megillot, scrolls, are read in conjunction with five key festivals and one fast during the course of the year: Esther at Purim in early spring; the Song of Songs at Pesach, Passover; Ruth at Shavuot, Pentecost; Lamentations on Tisha b’Av, the fast day during the summer commemorating the destruction of Solomon’s Temple by the Babylonians; Ecclesiastes during the autumn harvest festival of Sukkot. So all of these texts may be drawn upon for comment.

The various chapters in this book were not delivered in the conventional location of a synagogue on Shabbat morning. Instead, like those in From Autumn to Summer,¹ they are a second collection of broadcasts given on German radio over a number of years during a Friday evening programme welcoming the Shabbat. Though ostensibly aimed at Jewish listeners, their real audience was a far broader one of people who were interested in matters Jewish. So the comments had to reflect some aspect of the Torah reading but also address a far wider community, as part of a broader commitment to interfaith dialogue. The 52 chapters in the book do not follow completely the cycle of the year, but may offer something for a personal weekly dip into the Bible. Some readings relating to specific festivals are to be found towards the end of the book.

Whether called a derashah or a sermon, it is a difficult art – to compress into a limited time enough information to explain the context within the Bible itself, and then translate it or open it up to address the expectations and needs of the congregation. Few rabbis can be sure that they have been faithful both to the Torah text itself and the listening congregation even once, let alone week after week. Perhaps the best one can hope for is the kind of positive response I experienced once at a civic service in a small synagogue in south London. At the end, the visiting non-Jewish mayor, said: ‘That wasn’t a sermon. You spoke to us!’

1

The Call to Abraham

Genesis 12

We begin the cycle of stories about Abraham, the founding figure of biblical faith. He is a most unlikely hero for such an extraordinary achievement. He is 75 years old. Nothing in the previous references to him in the Bible has suggested that he will be a religious pioneer. Indeed, so little information is given that the rabbis are forced to fill in his earlier life with stories that explain how he came to the belief in the one God.

This biblical silence encourages us to enquire about beginnings in general. For example, why does Abraham’s story begin here in Genesis 12? Or rather, what are we to make of the few tantalizing glimpses of his earlier life in the chapter before?

There is already something of a puzzle about the opening verses of our chapter. God speaks to Abram, as he is then known – only later will his name be changed to Abraham. God invites him to depart from his land, his family and his father’s house to go to a land that God will show him. God’s two words in Hebrew, lekh l’kha, are actually an invitation to go, not a command as many translations suggest. The two words mean ‘go to yourself’, ‘go for yourself’, or ‘go for your own sake’. This suggests that Abraham is free to accept this task or not. For God’s plans for humanity to have any meaning Abraham has to be a free agent. He must willingly choose to place his life and future in the hands of this God who calls to him.

Nothing is said about how Abraham considered the matter and came to the decision to go. Instead, we are simply told that Abraham went and took his extensive household with him. These include the servants he had acquired during his stay in a place called Haran. This is an important city on the main route from Abraham’s birthplace, Ur, on the Euphrates river, to Aleppo. But at this point something becomes a little unclear in the biblical story.

To understand the problem we have to go back to the previous chapter, Genesis 11. It introduces Abraham’s family and the cast list of people we will need to know something about as the story unfolds. Genesis 11 consists of a genealogy extending over ten generations from Shem, the son of Noah, down to Terach, the father of Abraham. We are told that Terach has three sons, Abraham, the oldest, Nahor and Haran. Haran dies, and his son Lot becomes Abraham’s ward. He will accompany Abraham on his journey and cause him considerable trouble in the future.

We learn that both Abraham and Nahor marry. Nahor has children who will also feature in later stories about Abraham’s family. But Abraham’s wife Sarah, we learn, is barren and cannot have children. So much for the background.

But next we learn that it is actually Terach, Abraham’s father, who originally set out on a journey away from his homeland, from the city of Ur. Terach’s destination is the Land of Canaan, the unnamed land that Abraham is invited by God to visit. Under the name, the land of Israel, it will forever be associated with Abraham and his descendants. Under Terach’s leadership the family only get as far as the city of Haran, and there it seems they become settled and remain. So here is the problem. Terach has already set out from the family homeland for the land of Canaan. So what is the meaning of God’s invitation to Abraham to leave his homeland, if he has already long since done so accompanying his father? In fact, whose initiative is the whole journey, Terach’s or Abraham’s? Was Terach also obeying a word from God? Was Abraham merely following a path established by his father?

One thing this apparent contradiction illustrates is the difficulty of pinning down where exactly something begins. Events always have a previous history. What factors might have led to the present moment? A chance encounter, a personal experience, an entire lifetime spent in a certain way, may all turn out to be the preparation for something entirely new and unexpected. Something out of the past, perhaps long forgotten, has had its quiet effect that only now bears fruit. Like the ripples that spread out when a stone is thrown into water, they will touch many other places and have effects that could never have been anticipated.

Our lives are part of a web of endlessly developing results of events from our past, only some of which we may remember. We are held in a matrix of cause and effect, of actions and consequences, of infinite complexity. Perhaps we catch an occasional glimpse of how things came about in a particular case. Mostly we simply try to make sense of what is happening to us now, at this precious moment.

What was it that made Abraham particularly open to the call he received from God? Was it something about the city of Haran that disturbed him? The rabbis assumed it was a place of many gods and many idols that Abraham became unable to tolerate. They tell a story about how he came to worship the one God.

As a child, Abraham began to worship the stars, but when he saw the moon he worshipped that instead. However, when the powerful sun arose the following morning, he became convinced that here indeed was the true God. But then the sun was hidden by a cloud, and he realized that behind all these natural phenomena was a greater power that controlled them. In this way, be came to discover the one God. Once he had made this discovery, he found it difficult to remain in a place of idol worship. So this inner journey explains his need to break with the past and make the outer journey to a new land.

But perhaps there were other factors that made Abraham ready for such a move. Maybe we have to look more closely at the information given us in the previous chapter. The death of his uncle brought new responsibilities as his nephew Lot entered his immediate family. Abraham became suddenly the possessor of two households, not one. Later in Genesis, we will learn that there is friction between the two families so that they have to separate and each has to settle in a different territory. Perhaps this was a factor that opened Abraham to new possibilities. The need for additional pasturage for his cattle helped break the bonds that kept him tied to his father in Haran. When the call came from God he was more than ready to hear it and to move.

But we know of one other factor that must have weighed heavily upon him – the barrenness of his wife Sarah. A man with no children in that biblical world was a man with no future. Though it is the wife who is assumed to be unfruitful, it was nevertheless a poor reflection on the man who was incapable of producing children. It would have been a source of embarrassment and shame in his immediate society.

We will learn that Sarah is beautiful. Perhaps Abraham is torn between his love for her and the need to find another wife, if his wish to procreate is to be fulfilled. Maybe his departure was not intended as a journey of discovery but rather an escape from an intolerable domestic situation.

All the above reasons suggest some factors that might have predisposed Abraham to make such an extraordinary move at an advanced age. But none of them quite explain the power of his call or the willingness with which he responded. Feeling ill at ease in an alien culture, struggling to support a growing family, or torn by a painful domestic situation – all of these have led throughout history to population migrations. But few have led to a vision that has transformed humanity. Abraham may have thought the call was an invitation to go for himself alone, for his own benefit – but it became a journey not simply for himself but for us all.

2

Etiquette and Hospitality

Genesis 18–22

This passage from the Torah begins with Chapters 18 and 19 of Genesis and provides us with a mystery and some lessons in etiquette. First the mystery! We are told at the beginning of the chapter that God appears to Abraham while he is sitting in his tent during the hot time of the day. Yet, it is not God that Abraham sees but instead three men. In the conversation that follows, it is not certain whether Abraham is speaking to all three of the men, or just one of them, or simply to God. Indeed, does Abraham know that he is speaking to God at all? Who are these three mysterious men, or what are they? Is the whole episode simply a figment of Abraham’s imagination? After all it is the hottest part of the day. Perhaps they are a mirage, or he is dreaming. Or are they some kind of supernatural beings, sent as messengers by God?

The more we try to understand the passage, and the chapter that follows, the more our confusion grows. For it seems that one of the ‘men’ either stays with Abraham or disappears, because in the next chapter there are only two of them. Moreover, in the next chapter, they are no longer referred to as ‘men’ but as ‘angels’. Now they are visiting Abraham’s nephew Lot and will rescue him when the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed. From the sequence of chapters, they would definitely appear to be two of the original three. But if so, why are they called something different in the chapter about Abraham than they are called in the chapter about Lot?

First, we need to clear up a problem in the Hebrew language. The word translated as ‘angel’ is mal’akh, which actually means ‘messenger’, someone fulfilling a particular task. When the word was translated for the Greek version of the Bible they chose the Greek word for messenger, angelos, from which comes our word ‘angel’. It is only later traditions that turned these messengers into the supernatural angels that we think of today with wings and feathers.

So on one level of the story, it is three men who encounter Abraham bringing him a message from God. Two of them will then continue their journey to Sodom and Gomorrah to rescue Lot.

The rabbis were a bit critical about Lot, and in this they were following the biblical evaluation of him. His wealth is all derived from Abraham, but that very wealth leads to the two men quarrelling and separating. Lot, it seems, was a bit too much concerned with his financial situation, which made him forget certain other values about family loyalty and respect. This leads to the rabbinic explanation of why the mysterious visitors are sometimes called men and sometimes angels. Although Abraham only saw men approaching him, strangers, probably idol worshippers, he was such a generous host that he went out into the heat of the day to greet them and showed them great hospitality. But Lot, on the other hand, was so mean that if he had only seen two men coming he would have ignored them. However, because they appeared to him looking like angels, supernatural beings, he was willing to greet them and look after them!

Rabbinic tradition develops the story a bit further and identifies the angels. They pointed out that this story occurs just after Abraham has circumcised himself and his first son Ishmael. Since this was a major operation, no wonder Abraham was lying down in his tent recovering from the trauma. So the first messenger was Raphael, the angel appointed to look after the process of healing. He was there to help Abraham recover. The second was the angel Michael, whose task was to give Abraham’s wife Sarah the good news that she would have a child. The third was Gabriel, whose task was to destroy the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

The rabbis derived a number of important lessons from these stories about how we should behave. From Abraham’s actions, they taught the importance of hospitality, for Abraham went out of his way to look for, welcome and feed his guests. In the same way we should also be generous hosts.

From God’s behaviour, we learn the mitzvah, the commandment, of bikkur holim, visiting the sick. We too should imitate the actions of God and visit those who are ill and support and comfort them.

The rabbis also noticed a difference between the behaviour of the visitors in the two chapters. When Abraham offered them food they ate it at once. When Lot offered them hospitality at first they refused and only accepted when he insisted. From this, they derived the responsibility of guests. Abraham was clearly a rich man and could afford to feed them, so they did not refuse. But it was not clear whether Lot was wealthy and could afford to be so generous, so they refused hospitality at first so as not to embarrass him. Only when he insisted did they agree.

If these are the lessons in etiquette to be derived from the chapter we are left with the mystery of these visitors and how to understand them. One approach is to see them as normal human beings who happen to be messengers for someone else even if they are unaware of it themselves. This means that any encounter with another person contains