Leaders and Their Roles

by R. Gidon Rothstein

Parshat Ve-Zot Ha-Berachah

An Ibn Ezra I’d Have Preferred to Avoid

I several times this year pointed out where Ibn Ezra was more traditional than I’d have thought, more accepting of Chazal’s readings. One reason I had prejudged him were comments of his pointed out to me over forty years ago, that put him decidedly outside of what we today consider the camp of the faithful.

At the beginning of chapter thirty-four, the Torah says Moshe climbed Mount Nevo, where he then passed away and was buried. Bava Batra suggested that Yehoshu’a wrote the last eight verse in the Torah, from where the verse tells us Moshe passed away; Ibn Ezra argues it had to have started from here, since Moshe never came back down.

Later, in verse six, he suggests Yehoshu’a wrote the Torah’s comment that no one knows Moshe’s burial place ad ha-yom ha-zeh, until this day, at the end of his life, I think because the phrase seems to assume a lengthy time in which no one had come to know the burial place.

Both those comments today raise hackles, since we live when many challenge the divinity of the Torah. Any claim anyone other than Moshe wrote parts of the Torah eases those people’s sense of its divinity, helps them feel comfortable denying the Mosaic origins of the Torah, the unique type and level of prophecy Moshe reached in recording Hashem’s words exactly. If we can say Yehoshu’a wrote some, their logic goes, we can say other parts were by others, and so on.

It’s sad for Ibn Ezra, whose other comments stress fealty to God and (as we have seen) rabbinic tradition. Even in these verses, when the Torah describes Moshe as eved Hashem, a servant of God, Ibn Ezra interprets it to mean he always did as God commanded, even in the manner of his death.

Context Counts

For his comfort questioning Moshe’s authorship of these verses (and, perhaps, scattered phrases elsewhere in the Torah, a list I feel no need to spread), I am reminded of the words of a teacher of mine long ago (I do not know if he would want to be quoted on this, so I leave out his name). We were discussing the Torah commentary of R. Yehudah He-Chasid, the trigger of a brouhaha when it was published in the late twentieth century, because it, too, casually accepted the possibility some verses were inserted later.

This teacher pointed out the different implications of the same idea, depending on the intellectual context. Where everyone, Jew and non-Jew, agrees Moshe wrote the Torah from God’s dictation (Christian and Muslim countries), to say a phrase here or there was not by Moshe makes a point far removed from what it means when those basic beliefs are no longer accepted.

In our verse, for example, Ibn Ezra pushed back a rabbinic tradition four verses. The Gemara itself tolerated the possibility that Yehoshu’a wrote the last eight; Ibn Ezra likely would have said he was taking the logic where it went, to where Moshe’s involvements with this world ended, even if he did not yet pass away.

We have problems with such views today, because of where they lead. But Ibn Ezra said it, in a parsha where I did not find other comments of any particular interest. So I decided not to dodge it.

The Wondrous Levi’im

In Moshe’s blessing of the tribe of Levi, 33;9, he notes their willingness to set aside family to uphold Hashem’s law, not caring about who their fathers were. At the Golden Calf, says Sforno. For their sons’ lives, he points to their insistence on circumcising them in the desert, despite Yevamot 71b-72a saying the healing north wind did not blow all those years.

Sforno writes many Levite babies died because of this, a claim I find troubling, especially since halachah stresses the importance of not performing circumcision where we have reason to believe it would endanger the baby [I just recently attended a brit where the baby also had a pidyon ha-ben, it being his thirtieth day, because he wasn’t big enough until then!].

He seems to portray the Levi’im as rabidly devoted, even where halachah itself would not want it. It doesn’t seem what Moshe would praise. I suggest, although his phrasing doesn’t really agree, that Sforno meant many more babies died than necessary. If ordinary infant mortality was one in 100,000, and Levite devotion t meant one in ten thousand died, that’s many more, ten times as many, although in absolute numbers, it might not have been enough to raise halachic concerns sufficient to justify foregoing circumcision.

The rest of the people gave up milah all those years out of real but overblown concerns, where the Levi’im continued observing the mitzvah despite the real occasional consequences.

Interestingly, when the verse then says they assiduously kept Hashem’s berit, a word we instinctively connect to milah, Sforno reminds us of Yoma 66b’s tradition that the tribe of Levi never worshipped any power other than God.

Devotion expressed in willingness to put fealty to God over fealty to seriously sinning family, over fealty to excessive concern with their babies’ health, and certainly over any involvement with powers other than God.

The People’s King

In 33;5, Moshe describes the arrival of a king in the Jewish people as being when the heads of the nation gather, a phrase Or HaChayyim takes two ways, both emphasizing the people’s role in the monarchy. First, he cites Tosefta Sanhedrin 3, appointment of a king requires ratification by the Sanhedrin of 71, who represent the nation, and must be merutzeh, happy with, the king.

[Or HaChayim lived in Morocco and Italy while he wrote and published this commentary, neither of them republics, but other places in Italy were. Random comments here and there lead me to believe our antimonarchic democratic world overstates the tyranny of kings, even ones we today call despots.

Thought experiment: what percentage of Chinese are happy with Xi Jingping running their country, of Russians are happy with Putin? I think an uncomfortably high percentage, for we who value democracy. When Or HaChayim speaks of people happily choosing their king, I take him at his word.

Especially because of his next comment.]

For the other way the king is the people’s, he reminds us Jewish monarchy started with when the nation requested a king (in the time of Sha’ul), upsetting Shmuel the prophet, who preferred they stay satisfied under the direct rule of God.

He suggests it explains the use of the word va-yehi, a word tradition generally takes to signal trouble. Here, he reads the verse to mean if the heads of the nation gather, and insist on a king, there will be a king in the Jewish people.

Not a ringing endorsement of absolute monarchy from Or HaChayim, who thinks the people must initiate the move to a king, then be happy with the one chosen.

A Torah For Each of Us

We say 33;4 often, Moshe commanded us a Torah, a heritage for kehillat Ya’akov; the last two words bother R. Ya’akov Kaminetzky. Why Ya’akov instead of Yisra’el, why a kehillah as opposed to zera, the offspring, or benei, sons of?

He sees it reflect an essential gulf between Jews’ experience of Torah and non-Jews’ of their religions. Their religions are the domain of leaders, priests, and wise people, the only ones who understand the theology, the rest of the people relying on them for what to do and how.

Yisra’el would indicate those elites, because we got the name ki sarita, “for you have contended with,” for Emet Le-Ya’akov a reference to sarei ha-am, the leaders. Ya’akov, with its idea of heel, indicates the whole nation, highest to lowest (however we calculate that). Those other religions, R. Kaminetzky thinks, express worship in special acts (he does not give examples; I can think of a Muslim praying on his rug, a Christian going to church), but does not address the rest of life.

Torah weighs in on everything we do, morning to night, cradle to grave. It is why a non-Jew may only bring an olah, a burnt offering, in the Beit HaMikdash, because his/her religion has the person give everything to God, in certain narrow situations. Where a Jew can also offer a shelamim, the altar gets some, the priests some, and the Jews themselves have some. Sacrifice, and religion, weave into their lives.

Torah is all of ours, not just great scholars or priests who run rituals.

A nice place to end, so I won’t even summarize the four comments for this week. Nor do I have time to review the year, because Bereshit is upon us! Because Sukkot ends Wednesday night in the US, close to Shabbat, I hope to send out Bereshit before Sukkot. It starts a two-year process of review, as I will describe next time.

Meanwhile, chag sameach to all, may this year contribute to restoring our sense of the last day(s) of Sukkot as a time of great joy and revelry, pleased to have finished one year of Torah study, and start another.