Weekly Torah Readings, April 25
In Israel this week: Aharei-Mot and Kedoshim
This week we read two combined portions, “Aharei Mot” and “Kedoshim.” Perhaps the most famous verse among all those to be read is Lev 19:18, “You shall love your neighbor like yourself.” Rabbi Akiva declared that this verse was nothing less than the “great general principle of the Torah” (Sifra Kedoshim 4), and even before him, Jewish scholars spoke of the two verses beginning with the words “And you shall love” as embodying the whole of the Torah: this verse and the one in the Shema that begins, “And you shall love the Lord your God…”
But what exactly is this verse asking us to do? Does loving your neighbor mean that if, for example, you win the lottery, you have to pick someone else, your “neighbor” or your “fellow,” and split the money 50-50? And who is your neighbor? Any fellow human being? Any fellow Jew? The Jews of the Dead Sea Scrolls community were told to hate everyone other than the members of their own community, in fact, they looked forward to the great “day of retribution,” when God would strike all other Jews down. But how could they reconcile this with our verse? Apparently, they interpreted it as meaning “You shall love your neighbor-who-is-like-yourself,” that is, anyone who was a member of their community was to be loved. Everyone else deserved eternal hatred.
If that’s not the right interpretation, then what is? The traditional rabbinic interpretation holds that this verse is intended in a rather limited sense: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.” So you don’t have to split the money you won 50-50, but you can’t do anything to your neighbor that you wouldn’t want done to you. This sounds a bit less lofty than actually loving your neighbor—but the rabbis had a good exegetical reason for interpreting in this sense.
I should mention that the words quoted from Lev 19:18 are only are only part of the verse. The whole verse reads, “You shall not take revenge or hold a grudge against your countrymen, and you shall love your neighbor like yourself: I am the Lord.” The rabbis apparently interpreted the latter part of the verse in light of the former. How so?
Taking revenge or holding a grudge sounds pretty serious, like the blood feuds that still go on in the modern Middle East, sometimes lasting for generations. But the rabbis of Mishnaic times interpreted “revenge” here in a very down-to-earth way. What is taking revenge according to their understanding?
Suppose, they said, you ask to borrow your neighbor’s scythe, but he says, “No, it’s a very delicate instrument, I’m afraid I can’t lend it out.” Then, sometime later he asks to borrow your shovel, and you say, “You didn’t lend me your scythe, I’m not going to lend you my shovel”—that’s taking revenge. No blood feud, just a little nasty pettiness. But if that’s revenge, then what’s “holding a grudge”? It sounds like it’s the same thing, but the rabbis said: Not quite. Suppose he refuses to lend you his scythe, and later he asks to borrow your shovel. If you say, “Sure, take it! I’m not a cheapskate like you!”—you may not be taking revenge, but you’re still guilty of holding a grudge.
In light of these two examples, what do the words that follow them, “And you shall love your neighbor like yourself,” seem to imply? There is indeed a great general principle in human relations, but it doesn’t require you to do the impossible. Instead, what is demanded is that you take the high road and not do anything to your neighbor that you wouldn’t want done to you—even if your neighbor has already done it.
Shabbat shalom!
Outside Israel this week, the reading is Tazri’a-Metsora:
This week’s double reading (Tazri’a-Metsora) opens with an unusual law: “When a woman conceives and gives birth to a male child, she will be ritually impure for seven days; just as with the period of her menstruation, so will she be ritually impure. On the eighth day, the flesh of his foreskin will be circumcised… But if she gives birth to a female child, she will be ritually impure for two weeks, as in [the ritual impurity of] her menstruation” (Lev 12:1-5).
Interpreters have been puzzled by this distinction—one week of ritual impurity if the mother has a son, two weeks if she has a daughter. Does a daughter’s birth require twice as much purification time for the mother as a son’s because a daughter by nature imparts more impurity? Or is the fact that the newborn son is circumcised on the eighth day somehow decisive, ending the mother’s ritual impurity a week before a daughter’s birth? Or is this, as some feminist interpreters have suggested, just another case of gender discrimination?
An interesting explanation comes from an under-appreciated source—the book of Jubilees, a book written by an unknown Jewish author toward the end of the biblical period (probably sometime around the year 200 BCE). The author says it all has to do with Adam and Eve.
The Torah seems to give two different accounts of the creation of humanity. In chapter 1 of Genesis, it says that “God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Gen 1:27). But chapter 2 goes on to relate that God first created Adam and put him in the Garden of Eden. Only later, when a female equivalent (‘ezer kenegdo) could not be found, did God take Adam’s “rib” or “side” and shape it into a woman. So what really happened—were Adam and Eve created simultaneously, or was Adam created first and Eve shaped out of part of Adam’s body?
The book of Jubilees suggests that the Torah is reporting on a two-step creation. In the first step, God did indeed create all of humanity, “male and female He created them,” but the female part was left inside the male, a little pouch somewhere in the male’s “side.” This all took place on the sixth day of the world’s first week (Gen 1:31). Then came the seventh day, the first Sabbath. In the week that followed, the second step occurred. God said, “It is not good for man to be alone” (Gen 2:18), so He anesthetized Adam with a “deep sleep” (Gen 2:21), pulled the pouch out of Adam’s side, and turned the female homunculus (homuncula?) into a full-sized human being: Eve.
All this happened, Jubilees is careful to assert, on the sixth day of the second week. If so, then the law of ritual impurity after childbirth precisely mirrors these events: Adam was created on the sixth day of the first week, and in commemoration of this fact, a mother who gives birth to a male child is ritually impure for a single week. Eve, by contrast, was not fully created until the sixth day of the second week, so in commemoration of that fact, a mother who gives birth to a female child is ritually impure for two weeks.
Shabbat shalom!
