The Episode of the Blasphemer

 

                              

In Parashat Emor Vayikra (Leviticus), 21:1-24:23, we are told about a son of an “Yisraelite woman” and “Egyptian man” who quarrelled with an Yisraelite man (24:10). Torah continues and shares with us that “The son of the Yisraelite woman pronounced the name of G-d, cursing Him... His mother’s name was Shelomit bat Divri of the tribe of Dan” (24:11-12).

The sinner is detained and upon G-d’s directive, he is put to death by stoning

Following the event, G-d speaks to Moshe and orders him, “You must speak to Bnei Yisrael, saying: ‘Any man who curses his G-d must bear his sin. One who pronounces the proper name of G-d while cursing it must be put to death. The entire community will stone him to death. Whether he is a convert or a native Yisraelite, if he pronounces the Divine Name as part of his curse, he must be put to death” (24:15-16).

Who is this “blasphemer” whose name is not mentioned other than his being the son of an “Yisraelite woman and the son of an Egyptian man?” What was the dispute about? Why did he curse G-d?

This story, as it seems, is one case where Jewish sages diverged on how “dramatically” they read the account.

Rash”i, for instance, brings a Midrashic explanation with a few key ideas. He draws his interpretation from Midrash Tanchuma and Vayikra Rabbah. Using these sources, Rash”i focuses on why the Torah emphasizes the man’s mixed parentage. Midrash Vayikra Rabbah (32:3), offers that the “Egyptian father” is the same Egyptian who was killed by Moshe in Shemot (Exodus) 2:12, after the latter witnessed him beating a Hebrew man. According to Midrash Tanchuma (Emor 24), that Egyptian disguised himself as Datan, the husband of Shelomit bat Divri, entered her room when Datan was absent and assaulted her. The child born from that union is the blasphemer in our Parashah.

Rash”i further explains that this man tried to “pitch his tent” among the tribe of Dan, his mother’s tribe. Unfortunately for him, tribal identity followed the father’s line. The court, therefore, ruled against him. Out of frustration, anger and humiliation, Rash”i asserts, he escalated from a personal dispute to blasphemy.

Unlike Rash”i, Ramba”n and Ibn Ezra do not lean on the Midrashic approach. Rather, they read the story in a straightforward manner. For them the key issue is legal identity and do not see any need for a backstory drama or link the event to a morally tainted origin story that happened in Egypt. Like Rash”i, they believe that the blasphemy is the result of social dislocation and legal rejection.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks reads the episode quite differently from the classical commentators mentioned above. Though like Rash”i and Ramba”n, Sacks notes that the Torah’s detailing of the man’s parentage is unusual. Unlike Rashi, he doesn’t focus on who his father was and unlike Ramba”n, he doesn’t center on the legal technicality of tribal placement. Rather, Sacks dwells on what the story says about identity, belonging and speech. For Sacks, the episode reflects human and social tension.

Rabbi Sacks takes it further, psychologically. In his view, the sinner lived with a fractured and unresolved identity, torn between two worlds. On the one hand, he was inside the camp yet not fully accepted. In a way, Sacks uses the Midrashic backstory to frame a modern psychological and social lesson about the dangers of exclusion and humiliation and how the anger and frustration they create can lead to desecration of the most sacred, in this case, the Divine Name.

Sacks believes that “One law shall be for you, for the stranger as for the native” (24:22) tells us about the kind of society the Torah is trying to build. He points to this verse, as the Torah’s own concluding lesson on the event, one that demands equal justice even for those whose origins make them social outcasts.

Va’etchanan - The Answer to the “Why” of Jewish Existence

 

“Those who have a “why” to live, can bear with almost any “how.” – Victor J. Frankl

 “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” – Mark Twain

Va’etchanan, this week’s Torah portion is the second portion in the book of Deuteronomy (3:23-7:11). Moshe continues his final sermon to Am Yisrael. He shares with them how he pleaded (Va’etchanan) with G-d to allow him to enter the Promised Land and sums up some of the key milestones along their journey through the desert.

“Remember the day at Mount Sinai when G-d spoke to you out of the midst of fire,” Moshe reminds them. That day, in our Jewish history, is what Mark Twain refers to, in the above quote, as “one of the two most important days” in our life as a People. It was the day Am Yisrael and the Jewish Nation were born, the day we became a “A kingdom of Priests and a Holy Nation unto G-d.” (Exodus 19:6).

On that first important day, we also declared in one unanimous voice, “we shall do, and we shall harken.”

By proclaiming these words, our People, composed of a former community of tribes, most of whom were illiterate slaves, unconditionally accepted and affirmed the “what” and the “how” of our Jewish Moral Code of Law. We took upon ourselves the burden of the Mitzvot and how to follow them. I doubt many, if any, understood what they meant and “why” it was important to follow and obey them.

For the forty years of wandering in the desert, Bnei Yisrael were repeatedly taught the “what” and the “how.” During that period, though, Moshe does not dwell as much on the core of the reasons behind the mitzvot, on the “why,” or what the ancient Greeks call Telos.

As Frankl suggests above and as many of us have learned in life, knowing the “why” facilitates and eventually enables us to overcome the harshest of obstacles and hurdles posed before us on our odyssey through life. The search for the meaning of our existence requires us to discover what Twain defines as “the second most important day of our life,” the day we discover the “why.”

In his article, “The Power of Why,” Rabbi Sacks also addresses the relevance of the “why” in our life. He shares with us a TED talk by Simon Sinek, an English American author and inspirational speaker. In it, Sinek asked, “How do great leaders inspire action? What made people like Martin Luther Kind and Steve Jobs stand out from their contemporaries who may have been no less gifted, no less qualified. Sinek’s answer, tells us Sacks, is “Most people talk about the what. Some people talk about the how. Great leaders, though, start with the why. This is what makes them transformative.”

Moshe, undoubtedly, understood the importance of the concept.  Unlike other sermons delivered by him, in the past, his final farewell not only stresses the duty to follow the commandments, but it also unveils a new facet of them, thus reinforcing their solemnity. It reveals to Am Yisrael, the universal “why” behind the Mitzvot.

Though on other occasions, in the past, the decree to follow the Torah was backed by the “why,” it was, generally, in the form of personal, individual and even national rewards for following them or subsequent punishment for disobeying them. For instance, the personal merit that is attached to the Fifth Commandment which requires us to honour our mother and father, promises the granting of a long life by G-d. Likewise, as a nation, we are warned against the dire consequences of any deviation from the Law as well as promised the rewards that await us for complying with it.

However, in Moshe’s “Swan Song,” in Va’etchana,” we learn about a much bigger and more significant reason for adhering to the One G-d and His commandments. This one is a universal “why” which ascribes the importance of preserving Jewish existence and survival. “Observe them carefully for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about them and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord, our G-d is near us whenever we pray to him? And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today?”  (Deuteronomy 4:6-8).

This is the big “why,” behind the “what” and the “how” that we were given in Mount Sinai. It is not merely for the gain of Bnei Yisrael as individuals, or as members of a Nation but it is also a universal benefit. It is the “why” that serves to fulfill the exceptionally enormous role that we were destined to play as “a Holy Nation unto G-d,” in the history of mankind.

May we, Am Yisrael and the Jewish People be comforted on this Shabbat Nachamu and be worthy of the role that G-d and history have allotted to us.

Shabbat Shalom