In Israel: Shelaḥ Lekha
Memorable Threads
This week’s Torah reading ends with the law of “fringes” or “tassels” (tzitzit). In pre-modern times, weavers used different means to finish off a piece of cloth so that it would not unravel. One way was to hem the cloth; another was to take the threads protruding from the end of the garment (technically, the warp threads) and group them together into little bunches of ornamental tassels. In Num 15:38-40, Israelites are commanded to make such tassels on the corners of their garments, and to include in the tassels a special, tekhelet-colored thread.
In biblical times, the color tekhelet (probably a kind of violet or bluish purple) was manufactured from a certain snail that was then common along the eastern Mediterranean coastline. (This particular variety of snail had long been held to be extinct, though some now claim it has been rediscovered.) The manufacturing process employed to make the tekhelet dye was time-consuming and costly; scholars have calculated that it took something like 12,000 snails to made 1.4 grams of dye. Only the very wealthy could afford a whole garment of tekhelet; perhaps for this reason people sometimes speak of the color as “royal blue.” When, in the book of Esther, the king rewards the virtuous Mordechai, the latter walks out of the palace “in royal robes of tekhelet and white.”
In this week’s reading, the Torah first commands Israelites to make the tzitzit in Numbers 15:38; then the next verse says: “And it will be a tzitzit for you [in the plural], so that when you see it you will remember all of the commandments of the Lord and do them.”
This verse raises two little questions: 1) why tell people that “it will be a tzitzit for you” when that was just mentioned in the previous verse—of course it will be a tzitzit! And 2) why should the sight of the tekhelet thread cause people to remember “all of the commandments of the Lord”? That color was certainly associated with kings and the very wealthy, but what did it have to do with remembering God’s commandments?
Actually, both questions are pretty easily answered. As to the first: the word tzitzit sounds as if it might be related to the verb hetzitz, “glance at, glimpse.” (The two words aren’t really related, but they sound as if they might be.) So the Torah seems to be saying: it’s called a tzitzit because you are supposed to catch sight of it.
As for why catching sight of the tekhelet should remind people to “remember all of the commandments of the Lord,” this has nothing to do with royalty or the very rich, but with another major consumer of tekhelet, the great temple in Jerusalem. Anyone who visited the temple was immediately struck by the festival of colors that met the eye—including, prominently, tekhelet.
Thus, the anonymous author of the Letter of Aristeas describes “all the glorious vestments,” including the tassels “of marvelous colors.” Seeing it, he said, “a man would think he had come out of this world into another.” Ben Sira, a Jewish sage of the early second century BCE, similarly remarked on the “holy garment of gold and tekhelet and purple” with which God had adorned the priesthood—“How glorious was he [the High Priest] … when he donned his glorious vestments and put on his garments of splendor.” In fact, for Philo of Alexandria and others, the priestly garments “would seem to be a likeness and copy of the universe.”
No wonder, then, that a glimpse of a single thread of tekhelet would bring to an ancient Israelite’s mind the splendor of the holiest place on earth, and that glimpse would cause him to come to his senses and remember all the commandments of the Torah.
Shabbat shalom!
Weekly Torah Reading, June 25, 2016
Outside Israel: Beha’alotekha
Continue or Stop?
In this week’s reading, Moses gathers up the 70 elders of the people and stations them all around the Tent of Meeting (Num 11:24). Then God comes down in a cloud, and the divine spirit is transferred to the 70 elders. The Torah relates that when the spirit rested on them, they begin to prophesy in ecstasy, and they did not… Did not what? Here is a problem.
The Hebrew text says they did not y-s-f-w. As is well known, the Hebrew writing system sometimes uses consonant letters to represent vowel sounds: vav (or waw) can stand for the vowel-sound u or o, the consonant heh can represent the sound ah (or sometimes o, as in Shelomoh, Solomon), and so forth. The use of these and other consonants to represent vowels is done rather consistently for final vowels (for example, nafshi, “me” or “my soul”) but less consistently elsewhere in the word. So, when the Torah says that the 70 elders prophesied and did not y-s-f-w, it could be saying they prophesied and did not continue (Heb. lo yasefu, from the root y-s-f), or it could mean the exact opposite: they prophesied and did not stop (lo yasufu, from the root s-w-f).
Which is right? Most modern translations understand the text to mean that the elders prophesied once, but then they did not continue—this in contrast to the two men mentioned next, Eldad and Medad, who remained in the camp and apparently did keep on prophesying. This is the understanding that appears in the early midrash Sifre on the book of Numbers (section 95), which was later restated by Rashi (“they prophesied only on that day”). Long before Sifre, the Septuagint translation of the Torah into Greek similarly rendered the phrase, and they did not continue. On the other hand, in Onkelos’s Aramaic targum (translation) of the Torah, this verb appears as did not cease, and the same understanding occurs in the targum Pseudo-Jonathan and elsewhere; see also the discussion in the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 17a.
Interestingly, the same potential ambiguity surrounds the end of the story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38. Judah accuses his daughter-in-law Tamar of promiscuity, but then he himself turns out to have been the unwitting father of her child: Tamar is exonerated, and Judah did not y-s-f to have sexual relations with her. Here, Onkelos translates the text to mean that Judah did not continue to have relations with Tamar, and the same understanding is found in the Septuagint and virtually all ancient interpreters. According to the book of Jubilees (ca. 200 BCE), however, Judah was informed by angels that his sons had actually never consummated their consecutive marriages to Tamar; if so, one could conclude that in those pre-Sinai days, Judah did not cease to have relations with Tamar—they could be considered legally married. (Nevertheless, Jubilees says the opposite: Judah did not have further relations with Tamar.)
Perhaps the most striking y-s-f ambiguity comes in the Deuteronomy account of the Ten Commandments. There, the Torah reiterates the Ten Commandments and adds that God spoke these things “with a mighty sound/voice and did not y-s-f.” Does this mean that He did not cease speaking, or that He did not continue? As in the passage from this week’s reading, ancient interpreters were divided. Onkelos says He did not cease speaking, perhaps reflecting the fact that in Onkelos’ time, certain “heretics” claimed that the Ten Commandments, first promulgated in Exodus 20, had been the sum total of God’s speech. On the other hand, the Septuagint has the opposite: And He did not continue to speak in this loud voice, presumably suggesting that the public promulgation of laws at Mount Sinai ended with the Ten Commandments—the other laws were given to Moses to be passed on to the Israelites.
Which is right? Perhaps the best interpretation is one that preserves the ambiguity. According to Midrash Tanhuma (Yitro, 11), Moses was not the only prophet present at Mount Sinai: all those prophets who were yet to be born were also present there in spirit. “And not only the prophets,” the midrash continues, “but also all the sages who have [subsequently] come and who are yet to come [were there], as it says, ‘The Lord spoke these words to your whole congregation at the mountain [amidst the fire and the cloud and the deep darkness, a mighty voice that did not y-s-f].’” This means, according to the midrash, that there was truly only one great divine revelation, that one day at Sinai, where all subsequent prophets and sages heard what they were to speak centuries later: it was thus the one-time revelation, “a mighty voice that did not continue.” At the same time, however, these later prophets and sages did go on to speak in the ages to come; in this sense God’s words at Mount Sinai were indeed “a mighty voice that did not cease.”
Shabbat shalom!
