In Israel: Koraḥ (Numbers 16:1-18:32)

 

Ganging Up on Moses

 

This week’s Torah reading recounts the attempted revolt of Koraḥ and his allies. According to Num 16:3, the rebels “assembled” (vayyiqqahalu) against Moses and Aaron. The same verb appears again in Num 16:19, where it is said that Koraḥ “assembled the whole band against them.” All this makes perfect sense: Koraḥ was a rabble-rouser bent on building a coalition to challenge the status quo.

 

But some years ago, an eminent Semitics scholar suggested a different understanding: the root q-h-l in Hebrew (as well as Syriac, a related Semitic language) sometimes seems to mean “argue” or “reprove.” One of the proofs he cited came from a passage in the book of Nehemiah, which reports on a conflict between Nehemiah and the Judean officials; Nehemiah says, “And I set upon them a great qehillah…and I said to them, ‘What you are doing is not right’” (Neh 5:7-9). It seems unlikely that Nehemiah was saying that he rounded up a lot of people to support his side of the argument. Why would he need to? This was a legal dispute, not gang warfare. Rather, Nehemiah seems to be reporting that he lodged a great complaint against his opponents, as the passage goes on to detail.

 

This understanding has some interesting implications. The biblical book of Ecclesiastes is so called because its speaker is called Qohelet in Hebrew. This was long understood to mean that he was a “man of the assembly” (which is why the book was called ekklesiastes, “assemblyman,” in the Septuagint translation). But what assembly was that? There is never any mention of such a gathering in the book itself. So perhaps the author of Ecclesiastes was so called because he had acquired the nickname of “the Arguer” or “the Reprover”—which certainly fits the book’s overall theme.

 

Now, this same root appears at the start of this week’s Torah reading, “And they [Koraḥ and Company] vayyiqqahalu against Moses and Aaron and said to them, ‘Now you have gone too far!’” (Num 16:3). It seems that the Torah isn’t stressing Koraḥ’s success in raising a crowd; he himself had a meager 250 followers. What the word vayyiqqahalu really meant to say was that Koraḥ and his allies were just a bunch of complainers.

 

Shabbat shalom!

 

Outside Israel: Shelaḥ-Lekha (Numbers 13:1-15:41)

 

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 this week’s reading (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 has long been held to be extinct, though some people now believe 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” (Est 8:15).

 

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 display of tekhelet, the colored fabrics of the great temple in Jerusalem. Anyone who visited the temple was immediately struck by the festival of dyes that met the eye—including, prominently, tekhelet.

 

Thus, the anonymous author of the Letter of Aristeas (second century BCE) 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 from the same century, 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 the minds of ancient Israelites the splendor of the holiest place on earth, the Jerusalem temple, and with it all the commandments of Israel’s God.

 

Shabbat shalom!