The Rabbinic literature is replete with midrashically aggrandized personalities, serving to present things in a way that unambiguously reinforce Chazal’s overall attitude toward character traits and behaviors. Often, and perhaps too often, Biblical personalities are described with such consistent flawlessness — both perfectly good and perfectly bad — that it’s sometimes difficult to imagine that such a person really existed.
This weeks parsha opens with the death of Joseph, his brothers and the entire generation (Exodus 1:6). Immediately, we are told of a melech chadash — a new king — that began to rule over Egypt, one who did not know Joseph. As we’ve been told that Joseph had been made viceroy of Egypt, “without whom no one in Egypt was able to even lift his hand or foot” (Genesis 41:42-44), this seems odd — you’d think there wouldn’t be an Egyptian soul who hadn’t heard of him!
The Talmud picks up on this and questions the possibility of such a thing (Eruvin 53a); Rav and Shmuel dispute the meaning of the term ”new king,” with the former maintaining that there was an actual change in sovereignty as per a literal interpretation of word “new,” and the latter maintaining that such a change would necessarily be made apparent by mention of a death or abdication; Shmuel thus posits that it was not the king who was new but only his agenda.
Why do we care? It seems to be of such tiny importance whether or not Pharaoh really died or just had a change of heart, and with all there is to fight about in Jewish law (and there is a lot), what is the gain in arguing over this point?
As alluded to above, the Rabbis tend to magnify and amplify the people and places mentioned in Tanach — using commentary and midrashic literature, they enjoy painting a fuller picture of the characters and settings mentioned in the text in order to engender a sense of universality and uniformity in one’s properties — thus, when we are introduced to Sodom in Genesis 13:13, rabbinic literature fills in the background information by compounding Sodom’s vices: they were inhospitable (19:2, 19:26) and engaged in homosexuality (19:5), hence the modern word sodomy. When my daughter comes home from yeshiva with parsha sheets, the evil people are invariably embellished with mustaches or goatees — this is the modern-day yeshivish establishment doing the same thing. Not only that, but they are frequently and curiously adorned with “angry-eyes,” and by that I refer to thickened, inwardly-slanted eyebrows a la Toy Story, even on the infant Esau — I mean, how upset could the infant Esau really be? But he’s evil, and to get that point across to our precious children, we must pile on the stereotypes. These artists don’t really have a concept of anachronism, as the infant Jacob is mysteriously wearing a yarmulka and payos and the kohein gadol in Yom Kippur packets may be spotted on his way out of the Beis Hamikdash after a glorious day of atonement wearing his shtreimel. But I disparage only these modern-day clowns who pretend to carry the legacy of Chazal, because they don’t; Chazal, on the other hand, well, their entire purpose was to transform the meager text into a full-bodied worldview, and they did this by polarizing things in this fashion, embellishing the background information to provide life-lessons from Tanach.
So how do we impugn Egypt? How do the rabbis get across to the reader that Egypt was not a good place and its people were evildoers, all the more so to set a contrast with the Am HaNivchar (chosen nation)? Well, they’re a bunch of wife-thieves (Genesis 12:15) “permeated with lewdness” (12:19-20) who foolishly worship livestock (43:32, 47:1) and are otherwise wholly unsavory in their lifestyle (Leviticus 18:3). To establish the greatest contrast between the Israelites and the non-Israelites, rabbinic literature goes so far as to state that Egypt was the most corrupt of all nations, and even so, we were brought out and transformed to purity of the highest levels.
So we’re told that a new king rises to the Egyptian throne and he may not be so new — what is the lesson here? The purpose is to teach us how we are to act — and suffice it to say that any character trait embodied by Egyptian royalty is to be eschewed. We are told that Joseph correctly interprets the Pharoah’s dreams and thinks up a grandiose plan to not only save Egypt but establish it as “the” place to go to get food — and all of a sudden, the Egyptian monarch can’t seem to remember Joseph? Ah…what we mean to say, according to the Talmud, is that he didn’t want to remember Joseph.
And what can be worse than ingratitude? Ah, apparently not too much. Thanklessness is such a disgraceful attribute that, well, even the Egyptians possess it. That should be enough of a deterrent.
We are told way back that for his involvement in the sin of Eden, the snake would be punished with having to “crawl on his belly and eat dust for all of his life. ” Now we all know that snakes don’t eat dust — but this entire curse is a euphemism for being cast away to a lowly stature. R’ Joseph Albo explains that the punishment was much more profoundly spiritual and far reaching than it initially appears; it was that God was severing his ties to the snake, allegorically telling him that he will find food wherever he goes so he doesn’t have to bother having a relationship with the Almighty. Oooh…that’s rough (and you thought eating dust was bad).
Egypt is famous for its Nile — and one of the many distinctions drawn between Israel and Egypt by Chazal is that the population of Israel is entirely dependent on rain while the Egyptians are pleasantly reliant on the overflowing Nile, or so they think. Because they can sit back and count on the Nile, they are disconnected from the Almighty, and develop a lack of awareness and attentiveness for this subtle point. They cannot appreciate what God does for them because they see it coming to them. And this is their sin: a total and utter lack of recognition for the benefit bestowed upon them by God — and because they don’t appreciate God, it trickles down to them lacing the trait entirely, and they eventually fail to appreciate man — even the man who came from God to save the day.
tl;dr version: It’s all fake.
Something doesn’t have to historically accurate to be true — that’s the appropriate summary. Your cynicism is unfortunately all too common, and may aim was to dispel that.
> Immediately, we are told of a melech chadash — a new king — that began to rule over Egypt, one who did not know Joseph. …this seems odd — you’d think there wouldn’t be an Egyptian soul who hadn’t heard of him!
The biblical timeline of when the Bnie Yisroel were in Mitztrayim roughly matches with the period when Egypt was conquered by the Hyksos (probably a Semetic people) and then re-conquered by the Egyptians. A change in the nationality of the ruling class would account for a king who didn’t know Yosef. Identifying the Bnie Ysoroel with the Hyksos was once popular, but I think it’s fallen out of favor, and the consensus now is that the two probably had nothing to do with each other.
> with all there is to fight about in Jewish law (and there is a lot), what is the gain in arguing over this point?
The gemara is not a point-by-point discussion of halacha, it’s a collection of lecture notes. It’s prone to going off on tangents and often discusses odd things. Also, it’s not like there was limited space and this discussion was carefully chosen for inclusion. It’s in there because someone thought it was interesting, not because it necessarily has profound significance.
> God was severing his ties to the snake, allegorically telling him that he will find food wherever he goes so he doesn’t have to bother having a relationship with the Almighty. Oooh…that’s rough
The corollary is that God makes it difficult for humans to get food so that we should daven to Him and have a relationship with him. I don’t know about anyone else, but I give my kids food when they’re hungry without making them beg for it. In fact, I even keep food in the house so that when they want to, they can take some by themselves. R’ Albo’s vort suggests that by doing so, I’m telling my kids that I don’t want to have a relationship with them.
> the Egyptians are pleasantly reliant on the overflowing Nile, or so they think. Because they can sit back and count on the Nile, they are disconnected from the Almighty
The Egyptains had many gods who they served with devotion. On the other hand, when Pharaoh asked Moshe who Hashem is, he most probably had legitimately never heard of the God of his slaves. Saying that Egyptians were disconnected from Hashem because they don’t rely on rain is anachronistic and myopic. The Egyptians were disconnected from Hashem because most of them had never heard of Him. They had their own pantheon of gods and weren’t about to start worshipping the god of a people they had enslaved.
The name of the Nile god was Hapi. This is the first Google result I got for him: http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/hapi.htm From that site:
“During the inundation flood, the Egyptians would throw offerings, amulets and other sacrifices into the Nile at certain places, sacred to Hapi. Hapi was thought to come with the inundation (the ‘Arrival of Hapi’) with a retinue of crocodile gods and frog goddesses, and the sacrifices were given in the hopes that the flood would not be too high, nor too low. If the inundation was too high, many homes would be destroyed (the Egyptians built their homes and even palaces out of mud brick, which was easily washed away in a large flood). On the other hand, if the flood was too low, there would not be enough water for the fields and cattle – Egypt would be in drought. During inundation, statues of Hapi were carried about through the towns and villages so that the people could honor and pray to him – it was a solemn occasion.”
So much for the Egyptians taking the Nile flooding for granted.
I get that the point of your dvar torah is Chazal’s lesson, not its historical accuracy, but I think that ignoringthe latter reduces the former to a fairy tale.
” . . . we all know that snakes don’t eat dust . . . ”
I think you’re being too literal –my own impression is that the part of the pasuk/verse that says that the snake will eat dust merely emphasizes the fact that snakes crawl on the ground.
Speaking of “historically accurate,” some folks are of the opinion that the Pharaoh who allegedly didn’t know Yosef/Joseph came from a new dynasty that was opposed to the dynasty of the Pharaoh whom Yosef had served. If that’s the case, it wasn’t that the new Pharaoh wasn’t aware of Yosef’s role, it’s that he didn’t want to ackowledge the contributions of anyone with ties to the old regime.
“Because they can sit back and count on the Nile, they are disconnected from the Almighty, and develop a lack of awareness and attentiveness for this subtle point. They cannot appreciate what God does for them because they see it coming to them. And this is their sin: a total and utter lack of recognition for the benefit bestowed upon them by God . . .”
Nice.
Taking it too literally? That was my point — it can’t be taken literally. Although Biblical verse is poetic, there is a limit to poetry in that metaphor veering too far serves to undermine the message. Although I take it all allegorically, within the allegory it has to make sense…it has to provide a message — and once it states that the snake will crawl on its belly, I sense that eating dust doesn’t add to that as much as it serves to introduce a new point. R’ Albo apparently agreed, and he suggested the explanation I included above.
And in respect to your melech chadash comment, being from a new dynasty and intending to distance oneself from the previous monarchy doesn’t absolve one from repaying old debts. If Joseph saved the country from impending doom as the biblical recount of the past few weeks indicates, it would be inappropriate even for a member of another ruling party to make a partisan stand on the issue. As my friend R’ Evan Hoffman of Park East Synagogue in Manhattan suggested to me, it would be like Obama refusing to dole out the medal of honor for someone — assuming it was all but absolutely objective that he deserved it — solely because this man’s service was rendered during Bush’s tenure. That’s beyond party politics and well out of line.
Thanks, Shira — I welcome comments from all non-cynics like yourself.
I commented on Friday, but it got stuck in moderation. Let’s try again.
> Immediately, we are told of a melech chadash — a new king — that began to rule over Egypt, one who did not know Joseph. …this seems odd — you’d think there wouldn’t be an Egyptian soul who hadn’t heard of him!
The biblical timeline of when the Bnie Yisroel were in Mitztrayim roughly matches with the period when Egypt was conquered by the Hyksos (probably a Semetic people) and then re-conquered by the Egyptians. A change in the nationality of the ruling class would account for a king who didn’t know Yosef. Identifying the Bnie Ysoroel with the Hyksos was once popular, but I think it’s fallen out of favor, and the consensus now is that the two probably had nothing to do with each other.
> with all there is to fight about in Jewish law (and there is a lot), what is the gain in arguing over this point?
The gemara is not a point-by-point discussion of halacha, it’s a collection of lecture notes. It’s prone to going off on tangents and often discusses odd things. Also, it’s not like there was limited space and this discussion was carefully chosen for inclusion. It’s in there because someone thought it was interesting, not because it necessarily has profound significance.
My singular attempt at satire, and you have to take it apart. Sheesh!
I will look into the timeline and Hyksos and get back to you.
So I spoke with R’ Evan Hoffman, assistant rabbi at Park East Synagogue in Manhattan and my close confidant. He’s a PhD candidate in Jewish History from YU and I figured he’d be the perfect person to consult for this question — he was intimately familiar with the Hyksos and indicated scholars debate the time line of events of the period (as presented) to an extent sufficient to create serious doubt as the the validity of your premise. I cannot comment beyond that because I am now still nearly as unfamiliar with the Hyksos as I was before you mentioned it.
… indicated scholars debate the time line of events of the period (as presented) to an extent sufficient to create serious doubt as the validity of your premise.
Perhaps I was unclear. The enslavement of the Bnei Yisroel roughly matches the period of the reconquest of Egypt from the Hyksos.IF the times correspond, then it explains the pharaoh not knowing Yoseph and wanting to enslave the Bnei Yosroel, a semetic people like the recently ousted Hyksos. Exact dates of historical events in antiquity are often open to debate. If I remember correctly (it’s been a long time since I looked this stuff up) there’s a difference of only a few centuries between the debated dates.
No, you were very clear — I was just so completely unfamiliar with what you were saying that I hadn’t even heard of the Hyksos. Rather than perform an intensive study and displace everything else on my schedule for the past few days, and rather than perform a cursory study and misconstrue the data, I decided to present your thoughtful question to my Jewish historian friend, and he responded that he doesn’t consider it a serious problem, because of the explanation that I wrote above.
Wouldn’t a few centuries make a big difference, seeing how we claim to know the exact year of the Exodus and the calendar match-up algorithm?
Even our claim to know the exact year is debated in traditional sources, and it is acknowledged that it may be off by a hundred something years. And that’s assuming that the traditional dating system is accurate in the first place. Dating events in antiquity is problematic because it relies on things like king lists, (so-and-so ruled for X years, followed by so-and-so who ruled for X years…) which may include people who ruled simultaneously and other confounding factors.
Of course, if the dates are off by even a few years in reality it makes a difference. But here it’s more of a margin of error. If the dates are reasonably close to one another, then it is reasonable to speculate that they may be the same event.
> he responded that he doesn’t consider it a serious problem,
I’m not sure what the problem would be. It’s a historical explanation. Apparently your historian friend doesn’t think it’s a good one, and I bow to his expertise.
The dates can be matched so that Thutmose II was the pharaoh who died, and his wife/sister Hatshepsut was the pharaoh Moshe was dealing with. What’s interesting about this is that the pharaoh who died is said to have suffered from tzaras, and Thutmose II’s mummy was found to be covered in lesions. Also, it’s interesting that Moshe’s name is the second half of Thutmose’s name. I’d be interested in hearing what your friend thinks of the above.
> God was severing his ties to the snake, allegorically telling him that he will find food wherever he goes so he doesn’t have to bother having a relationship with the Almighty. Oooh…that’s rough
The corollary is that God makes it difficult for humans to get food so that we should daven to Him and have a relationship with him. I don’t know about anyone else, but I give my kids food when they’re hungry without making them beg for it. In fact, I even keep food in the house so that when they want to, they can take some by themselves. R’ Albo’s vort suggests that by doing so, I’m telling my kids that I don’t want to have a relationship with them.
> the Egyptians are pleasantly reliant on the overflowing Nile, or so they think. Because they can sit back and count on the Nile, they are disconnected from the Almighty
The Egyptains had many gods who they served with devotion. On the other hand, when Pharaoh asked Moshe who Hashem is, he most probably had legitimately never heard of the God of his slaves. Saying that Egyptians were disconnected from Hashem because they don’t rely on rain is anachronistic and myopic. The Egyptians were disconnected from Hashem because most of them had never heard of Him. They had their own pantheon of gods and weren’t about to start worshipping the god of a people they had enslaved.
The name of the Nile god was Hapi. From the first Google result I got for him:
“During the inundation flood, the Egyptians would throw offerings, amulets and other sacrifices into the Nile at certain places, sacred to Hapi. Hapi was thought to come with the inundation (the ‘Arrival of Hapi’) with a retinue of crocodile gods and frog goddesses, and the sacrifices were given in the hopes that the flood would not be too high, nor too low. If the inundation was too high, many homes would be destroyed (the Egyptians built their homes and even palaces out of mud brick, which was easily washed away in a large flood). On the other hand, if the flood was too low, there would not be enough water for the fields and cattle – Egypt would be in drought. During inundation, statues of Hapi were carried about through the towns and villages so that the people could honor and pray to him – it was a solemn occasion.”
So much for the Egyptians taking the Nile flooding for granted.
I get that the point of your dvar torah is Chazal’s lesson, not its historical accuracy, but I think that ignoringthe latter reduces the former to a fairy tale.
There is a well-known parable in my circles: A king provided for his son so well that he never heard from him. Only when the king decided to limit his financial support for the prince to that which would suffice for a week did he start to see the prince around the castle. I don’t think it’s any profound mysticism — if you let your kid go off to college and give him a credit card without limit, he’s much more likely to lead a more freer lifestyle devoid of you than if you give him $300 whenever her asks for it, but he knows that he’s got to come home for the weekend to get it. The fact that your children live at home with you suggests that there is some sort of relationship, and if they’re young enough that they haven’t begun to resent you, you’re probably safe. But you won’t deny that completely providing for someone without them having to contact you will lead to them taking you for granted with more certainty than if they need to keep in close contact with you to gain that support.
Maimonides asserts that all avodah zarah began as a sincere attempt to serve the One and Only God. If a given king is distinguished, his noblemen, children and palace assume a lesser degree of esteem due to their relationship to the king — this is known as eved melech melech (the servant of the king is [sort of] a king [in his own right]). Maimonides claims that the natural powers of the world, from the mighty oceans to the glorious sun, are individual powers that make up the collection of God’s spectrum of control over the universe, and worship of the many things in the world, from the celestial bodies to the “god of the hunt” all originated from actual divine worship of the Almighty — they just veered too far off the path and ended up becoming misguidedly self-serving. And if the Egyptians prayed to nonsense gods, that’s losing a connection to the Almighty.
Re your second paragraph, is that meant to be a response to my points about the Egyptians not knowing who Hashem was and their worship of Hapi? If so, I don’t think it really addresses my point. Far from being disconnected from a sense of the divine by the regular overflow of the Nile, for the Egyptians it was a time of religious significance and ceremony. Whatever the origins of avoda zara, by the time the Bnie Yisroel were in Mitzrayim, the Egyptians had legitimately never heard of Hashem.
Frankly, the vort about the rain in Eretz Yisroel vs. the overflowing Nile comes off as self-righteous, part of a genre of cute divrei torah meant to demonstrate that “we” are so much better than “them” that makes unfounded assertions while completely ignoring what we and they actually do.
That’s a fair assessment — I’ll think it over and get back to you tomorrow.
OK — you’re right! The fact that the Egyptians were religiously meticulous is substantiated and they did offer prayers and other forms of worship in response to the Nile’s ebb and flow. You’re assessment has undermined by analogy between the snake and the Egyptians, and I provisionally retract the comparison until I can clarify my thoughts over the next day or so.
Good work!
Apparently copying and pasting a comment loses the line breaks.
Let’s not forget the Egyptian magic.
Yoshke – with a J – learned Egyptian magic and used to power of Tumah to fool the world into praying to him, which is why my mail didn’t come today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Is that satire? Maimonides stated there was no Egyptian magic.
Maimonedes is only one opinion. Let’s not forget, RaMBaM is not much for mysticism to begin with. He’s not one for believing that Karbanoth, for example, have any sublime powers other than keeping us away from Avodah Zara practices–that if you’re going to bring a sacrifice, this is the “kosher” way to do it. Of course, RaMBaN, Abarbanel, et al. take issue with this.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty skeptical of magic as well. I’ve met those who have traveled to the Far East who claim they’ve seen Gurus who can zap people with lightning (a la Emperor Palapatine), blow dust from their hands and magically make shapes from it, and meditate for weeks straight without stopping–but they claim that levitation is fake, they’re just jumping while sitting in the lotus position. Hell, I knew a guy in Israel who actually saw with his own eyes the Baba Sali continuously pouring from a bottle of Araq, and the Araq never ran out; this man himself cautioned me to take any story about the Baba Sali with a grain of salt, as many of them have been blown out of proportion–for example, no the Baba Sali did not have a flying carpet he used to travel from Morocco to Israel!
My sister brought to my attention a fellow named James Randi, you can find clips of him on Youtube. This man professionally debunks these myths. Basically, he’s a former magician who is intimately familiar with all the tricks of the trade. He has this standing offer of $1 Million to ANYONE who can prove to him that they actually have supernatural powers: so far, no one has won it. First, he sets up a scientific test to prove that what this person has is actually supernatural (i.e. they can read minds, they can see auras, they can use a Dawser Rod to find underground water). He makes sure they agree that this test is a fair test. Then, after he conducts his test (and so far, everyone has failed it), he then debriefs the audience on what they just saw, on how these people typically trick us into thinking that this is a supernatural power.
I would say that anyone who said magic was real was merely parroting what they heard from the contemporaries of the day, and people of that time used to think magic was real. It’s much like the medicinal benefit of bloodletting — do I mock the Talmud for condoning or even recommending it? A cynic would, but I realize that the rabbis just went down the block and asked the local doctor what he thinks and that’s where they came up with ground scorpion as a cure for cataracts (Bavli Gittin 7). People used to believe in a lot of weird things, and the rabbis were not fortune teller psychics or omniscient by any means — they relied on the conventional wisdom of the time.
So the people who appeared to do magic in the Bible though, do you think they were not doing miracles but just magic of some type?
Mahla, remind me later to send you some stuff I have where Maimonedes would argue that yes, there never was such thing as magic, angels, miracles, etc. That it was all the laws of nature, and a superstitious way of understanding it. I’ve found a few interesting ones. But as I said before, that’s just one opinion. One who takes a Kabbalistic view would probably strongly disagree.
Have you ever seen the animated film “Prince of Egypt”? If so, recall the scene where Aaron confronts the court magicians (“chartumim”). The movie showed a real elaborate sleight-of-hand using mirrors, tricks of the light, smokescreens, etc. to make it appear that the chartumim were turning their staffs into snakes!
Most of the miracles have been explained away by science. A talking donkey? Either Balaam was tripping, or it was a parable (I prefer the former). Elijah rising a boy from the dead? CPR. I still have a bit of trouble with Joshua stopping the moon, but I’m sure somewhere out there something can be said.
Mahla:
Well, the people who were performing miracles were performing miracles, while the people who were apparently doing magic were really only performing illusions. To summarize, for the purpose of this discussion, I take the position that God exists but magic does not.
Ghottistyx:
You are confusing miracles and magic. That may be your intention, but in case you are interested, there is no necessary reason to defy the existence of miracles in the face of science assuming the existence of God, while the same is not true for magic. That is the position of Maimonides, for he may assume angelic references were dreams, but he asserts the revelation at Sinai was historical, as were the miraculous occurrences associated with various entities (the Temple in Jerusalem, etc.) and times (the Chanukah story).
Guilty as charged. As I’ve probably made clear from many of my posts, I consider myself one who’s not smart enough to be an apikores, but if knowing kol torah kulah wasn’t a prerequisite, I’d probably be there. Let’s just say that it is halachikly permissible to speak loshon hara about me, if you know what I mean.
Let’s assume the crudest possible definition of a miracle. There are laws of nature that follow a set course; it is the scope of science to delineate these rules; a true materialist believes that these rules are written and stone and it’s impossible for them to defy themselves for any reason whatsoever; a miracle is what seems to be a violation of these rules of nature as we understand them.
Is it safe, then, to assume that perhaps our minds don’t fully understand nature? For the sake of argument, let us take the approach of David Hume. Let us say that astronomers have traced the path of the moon in the sky to a point where one who’s educated can accurately predict what trajectory the moon will follow tomorrow night, the night after, ad infinitum. Why does the moon continue to follow this path? Constant Conjunction! But who’s to say that tomorrow, the moon won’t all of a sudden follow a different path? Even just for one moment? Perhaps with Joshua, we were observing some astrological phenomenon that can’t be explained by conventional astronomy (perhaps General Relativity would shed some light…).
Hume would even take it so far to say things such as next time you cut someone, they may not necessarily bleed; that if you throw a baseball at a window, the baseball may not necessarily be what broke the window, but rather, the window broke at the same time the baseball hit it, but we can’t automatically assume that the baseball actually broke it; that next time I drop something, it may not fall downwards: in all these cases, we’ve only grown to expect it!
Anyway, I’m not saying I accept Hume as being absolutely true. Hume, btw, didn’t have much patience for religion, and was attempting to formulate a completely atheistic philosophy, so he may not be appropriate here. But here is one possible explanation for what a miracle is.
So sorry, last post was me. Apologize about the name there.
I am moderately familiar with the Humean argument because I took philosophy for 2 semesters at YU with Professor David Johnson, author of Hume, Holism and Miracles, and we covered this text in the second semester.
After consultation with established intellectuals, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are substantial holes in Johnson’s conceptualization of things, mostly in the form of non-analogous premises that force his conclusions to diverge far from rational inference, and then there’s the problem of reading the text, because far too much of it is consummate gobbledygook, but in discussing Hume’s definition of a miracle, Johnson uses the term “apparent violation of nature.”
At least from my tenuous perspective as a freelance deep thinker with no real formal training in philosophy, I think that’s a great way to describe the nature (excuse the pun) of a miracle from Judaism’s perspective. Let’s take a quintessential miracle from the Old Testament — one that we can all agree is adequately detailed enough in the verses and ill-elaborated upon enough in the commentaries so as to establish itself as historical for even the most skeptical of firmly adherent Torah-true Jews, such as R’ Jeremy Wieder (YU), and perhaps myself: the burning bush.
A bush, whether live or dead, herbaceous or woody, consists of combustible material and if ignited, will char as it is consumed in the chemical reactions that produce light, heat, etc.
But if the fire was being supplied by something other than the material of the bush, such as a previous dousing of alcohol, the fire could exist within the bush but the bush would not be consumed — all I’m trying to do here is establish a theoretical possibility of there being a fire in the bush that does not consume the bush.
Now enter a God. An all powerful God — but that doesn’t mean he does anything. He may very well be able to do anything, but whether he does so or not is, at least to me, beyond questionable — he most certainly would not do anything. And for this I call upon a previously cited conversation I had with R’ Schachter (YU) regarding the creation story involving the snake — when I pressed him to explain how a walking, talking snake desired Eve in a sexual fashion and plotted to knock off Adam in the manner described by midrash as explained on the yeshiva high school level, he permitted me to understand the entire story as an allegory. It just seems to psychedelic of a story. You may then question what methods we use to determine historicity of biblical accounts — is it merely my mind that will tell me that something is too odd to cope with — and we can debate that at another time and place, but suffice it to say that God can do anything in the sense of his power, but he won’t do just anything, because he maintains this world in the pattern that we call nature, and with that is his desire to do whatever he wishes manifest. As described in the first paragraph of mariv, “He brings on evenings, alters periods, changes seasons, orders the stars in their hevenly constellations as he wills.” His desire to maintain consistency overrides his ability to do otherwise.
But in acute, localized instances, he does deviate to make a point. It’s like any system that wishes to make a point — take for example the awesomeness of Yom Kippur. We want to imbue YK with such gravity that we permit it to override the Shabbos and we abstain from food when they coincide in order to demonstrate the power of the day. Chazal could have done away with that — but they didn’t. The more parameters that are set and the greater their steadfastness, the more magnificent of a message it sends when such a rule is broken.
So that’s how Judaism sees miracles. They are all well within God’s ability, but they are kept to an absolute minimum in terms of frequency and duration (but very likely not in magnitude, for the same reason) in order to stress the incredible basis for the miracle.
So God can and does allow miracles to be performed, and they are all directly developed from his divine power and control of the natural universe, in the same way that what we call “nature” is a direct and straightforward manifestation of his control and power — we just experience these manifestations all the time and are able to quantify and qualify them, so they don’t seem so odd. We figure out what makes them tick, and so we reduce “miraculous” digestion of food to concentrations of ions and rates of enzymatic catabolism, etc.
D rosenbach, are you kidding? “If Joseph saved the country from impending doom as the biblical recount of the past few weeks indicates, it would be inappropriate even for a member of another ruling party to make a partisan stand on the issue.”
Those times anytime a new king came to the throne through a non peaceful way it was off with the heads of anyone allied with the last regime.
If I recall correctly, it is mere speculation that there was this massive government overthrow — the fact that Chazal take issue with the missing information related to the previous king’s death suggests that they would certainly take issue with the missing information of a major regime change.
It’s not letting me reply to the last thread, so I reply here.
I took David Johnson for Logic. Great professor. My familiarity with Hume comes, however, from a very different man: Michael Levin from City College of New York. Levin is himself a staunch empiricism, one who is a huge fan of Hume. I never took the time to really pick Johnson’s mind, but I do remember him one day proving to us God’s existence: I forgot the proofs by now, but I remember him also explaining why, then again, his proofs were not completely infallible. But as for Johnson’s conception of Hume, I’d have to try reading his book before I decide.
While I am vaguely familiar with R’ Weider (never got to know him so well, but I hear great things), R’ Shachter I got to know a bit. I consider him an honest man. I’ve even heard him more than once say “I don’t know”, when a man with his breadth of knowledge could easily be tempted to wing it. His humility extends to the point that many people I know who only met him casually really don’t see the gadlut in him at first. I myself had to hear him speak a few times before I saw it myself. I’ve heard so many stories about what a genius R’ Hershel Shachter is, but he’s pretty down to earth about it, I’ll say.
In trying to understand your approach: is it the Rambam who said that all miracles are performed to look like they were done naturally? Rambam, of course, was no fan of Kabbalah, but to one who has studied Kabbalah, miracles are something much more grandiose than this altogether. I myself have only perused Kabbalah, but I do understand that, for example, there is a lost art called Yetzirah–that one who has mastered it could use divine names to create living things. Golems? Of course, the historocity of Golems is questionable, esp. the one of the MaHaRaL. Yes, the Alt-Neushul in Prague is the only surviving Czech Synagogue from pre-Shoah, but that a Golem actually sleeps in the attic is doubted by most people.
Of course, I doubt some of the Midrashim, like Yoseph saw his brothers eating an Eiver Min HaChai from an animal they created using Yetzirah, so it wasn’t REALLY a violation of Eiver Min HaChai. Ummm….something you tell the kids for sure.
Another elephant in the room is the stories of Chanina ben Teradyon, which for all due purposes was a miracle worker. He had such faith, that he could make vinegar burn like oil for Shabbos candles! This is one of many stories about him. I’ve heard it told by Kabbalistic minded that this is proof that God Created Nature, God Can Bend Nature In Any Way He Wants. Yes, it’s true, they believe that not only can God create a rock he can’t lift, he can even lift that rock!
Anyway, my point is that plenty of people out there have that conception of miracles, in this crude sense, being such. Based on your explanation above, am I to understand that you’re not much for Kabbalah? It’s okay if you’re not, plenty of rational minded people I know aren’t. Of course, I mean real Kabbalah, not that cult Madonna, Brittney Spears, and Paris Hilton are into.
I have formed a new worldview over the past few years based primarily on the teachings of R’ David Pahmer, a scholar/gentleman who lives near me in Passaic, NJ; he is a prime talmid of R’ Schachter and I speak to him for hours every week.
With regard to midrashic literature, the likes of R’ Wieder, R’ Pahmer and others almost completely discount the historicity of the tales — they are meant as retcon filler to either artificially lend support to later historical events, serve as lesson-rich fodder in teh form of legend, or the like. So when we say that the Avos kept the Torah, they most certainly did not — but much like the parsha sheets have Yakov wearing a yarmulka because kids can’t grasp pre-Judaism Judaism, adults can’t contemplate it either. And when we say that Leah prayed and her fetus switched for that of Dena, that didn’t happen either. That’s the most recent parsha example of psychedelic dreamstuff most similar to the events surrounding the snake of Eden — I don’t doubt that God could do such a thing, but it’s so ridiculously beyond the miracle category that contains the burning bush that the only people who advance this midrash without questioning its literal historicity are those who have no concept of the real world.
In terms of miracles appearing as natural events? I suppose you would here refer to, for example, the plagues of Egypt, which one could explain as not nearly as miraculous as yeshiva parsha sheets make them out to be. Yes, Maimonides explains that miracles of a very miraculous nature are only used in explanation when they cannot be explained in a more rational fashion — but such an approach is certainly time sensitive, for what we once thought was OK is no longer OK. The important thing to do is to approach each example of a seemingly troublesome bit of Judaic bible story individually. Verses are one thing, midrash is something entirely different, and certainly, stories about post-Talmudic personalities are something very different from even that, indeed!
Indeed, I once did hear that “Timeroth Ashan”, Rashi describes them as a pillar of smoke shaped like a “Tamar”, a palm tree, and notes “this is something I’ve never seen”. I forget who said this, but modern science can very well explain this phenomenon that Rashi’s never seen. We now refer to it as a Mushroom Cloud, something we’ve all heard of nowadays, but during Rashi’s time would be unheard of.
But how about Kabbalah? Any thoughts on those Kabbalists who they say could have done “miracles” like Chanina ben Teradyon, or Golems, or the like?
Again, you’re mixing up two things: miracles and magic. There’s no reason to doubt that a prophet can perform miracles. A prophet not only communicates with God but is replied to as well. It’s reasonable to assume that any miracle performer was personally confident to a tremendous degree before he started announcing that apparent violations of nature would start occurring on cue — take Elijah on Mount Carmel as perhaps the most famous miracle maker of Nach. Why was he so confident? Because he sensed that God was using him as a guide to the people and wouldn’t leave him hanging there like a fool in front of everyone. If Kabbalists were able to summon miracles — and that’s a very bold statement — then so be it. It’s odd, it’s really creepy and one might initially be hesitant to even consider such a thing, but that’s only because we think of outward miracles as having stopped way before the turn of the 16th century CE (when the Maharal lived). But to say that the Maharal based his golem on mystical knowledge of how God formed Adam — if the creation story is a myth in the sense that it’s allegorical and meant to teach us profound lessons in subordination, insubordination, hakaras hatov, etc. and we maintain that there was no “Adam” per se, then what exactly did the Maharal do? Hmm…the Maharal died in 1609 and that period was the setting of Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” — not exactly your bastion of scientific attentiveness, especially for those not in the upper class. So I don’t know what to do with that story other than to say it sounds really odd and incredible (read in-credible).