The Words of the Prophets are Written on the Subway Walls

From ripped-up street posters at Kikar Zaltzberger ("Beit Elisheva‘"):
[the traffic circle intersection where El‘azar Hamoda‘i and Koveshey Qatamon streets turn into each other while crossing Hhizqiyahu Hamelekh, in the Valley of the Aboriginal Ghosts, Jerusalem]


עוד ארבעים יום
וגוש קטיף נהפכת
בעוון גזל

שובו שובו מדרכיכם הרעים ולמה תמותו בית ישראל — יחזקאל ל"ג י"א
ולא תקיא הארץ אתכם בטמאכם אותה — ויקרא י"ח כ"ח

---

מחללי השם
הסירו טלפיכם
מעיר האבות

ולא תקיא הארץ אתכם בטמאכם אותה

---

מתפנים מההתנחלויות
למען נחדל
מעושק ידינו


Or in other words...


Forty More Days
And Gush Katif Shall Be Overturned*
Because of the Sin of Robbery

Turn away, turn away from your evil ways, for why should you die, House of Israel? — Ezekiel 33:11
So that the Land will not vomit you out for your defiling of it. — Leviticus 18:28

---

Desecrators of God's Name
Remove Your Hooves
from the City of the Ancestors

So that the Land will not vomit you out for your defiling of it.

---

We Are Vacating Ourselves From the Settlements
In Order to Stop
the Oppression Done by Our Hands



* = a reference to the Prophet Yonah's declaration against the city of Nineveih. Interestingly enough, in the story of Yona on the ship, when he convinces the sailors to throw him overboard, they ask God to forgive them, saying (Yona 1:14):

"Please, God, let us not perish for this man's life, and do not hold us accountable for [spilling] innocent blood..."

The expression they use for "innocent blood" — dam naqi — is spelled with an extra silent alef at the end of naqi, as if it were a form of the verb lehaqi’ "to vomit" found in the quote above about the Land vomiting out those who defile it. So you could easily read the verse drashicly as if the sailors were saying, "Please don't hold us accountable for causing Yona's death by throwing him off the ship; we don't really want to do it, we can barely stand to do it; even the thought of killing someone makes us sick inside..."

S J M I S O T S T G A

(Single Jewish Male In Search Of The Song That Got Away)

My mother came to Israel (for the first time ever!) to visit me for my graduation from my tokhnit lehakhsharat morim, and I took her touring around the country. The Saturday Night that we were in Jerusalem, we drove up to Ben Yehuda street (here's a tip: NEVER EVER DO THAT, the parking was WHORRIBLE) in our rental car so my mom could do the whole touristy go shopping on the midrahhov thing and buy trinkets and tchotchkas to bring back to the States.

On the way there, we were cruising down the hilly Jerusalem roads and i was flipping stations on the car radio since Gal[galgal]galatz was playing bad techno/trance music. Someplace in the vicinity of Galgalatz (=93.9fm) we stumbled across what seemed to be a religious station, and it was playing a song seemingly based on Yirmeyahu 31:14-16, the famous image of the matriarch Rahheil mourning the Jews who are being taken away to exile:

Thus says God:
A voice is heard in Rama — lamentation and bitter weeping, Rahheil weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are not.
Thus says God:
Refrain your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; for there is a reward for your work — this is God's declaration — and they will return from the enemy's land. And there is hope for your future — this is God's declaration — and children will return to their own border.

What i found interesting (and really cool) about the song was that it wasn't simply the Biblical text set to music, as many composers and songwriters have done with various parts of this prophecy. The lyrics were original, but obviously rooted in Yirmeyahu's words and phrasing.

All i can remember from the song is what i jotted down on my cellphone:
...ani mavtiahh lakh Rahheil...
("...I promise you, Rahheil...")

So, has anyone else ever heard this song, or know a way to track it down?
Any and all assistance is appreciated, and if you want a reward I can go to Ben Yehuda street and get you a touristy trinket or tchotchka... ;-)

Linguistic Registers (cha-ching!)

Check out this old post by the blogger at Gimme Shelter about Robert Alter's theory that the Tanakh was written in Biblical Hebrew's literary register, while the later Hhazalic Hebrew that the Mishna was written in descends directly from Biblical Hebrew's colloquial register. This explains why sometimes certain everyday objects are referred to in the two forms of Hebrew by completely different words when the Hhazalic words are not simply borrowed from Aramaic.

Mazal tov and mabrouk, Robert Alter!
You win the Cunning Linguist of the Year award!

Update: See the new and improved version of the old Gimme Shelter post at MFM's new blog, On the Main Line!

p ∧ ¬p

Around Purim-time, the then-Godol Hador was going through a series of Theories, Approaches, and Answers to the questions of Life, the Universe, and Everything — or at least Science and Torah. One of his theories was the Tired-Taiku Theory.

In his own words, the Tired-Taiku approach to contradictions can take a number of possible forms, including:

1. We have some reasonable answers, but no way of knowing which is correct, so lets just leave it.
2. Any hope of finding any answer seems remote, so lets just leave it.
3. I don't know enough about this topic, so lets just leave it.
4. The obvious answer is clear, but we really don't like it, so lets just leave it.
5. I can't be bothered to discuss this anymore, so lets just leave it.
6. I don't want to to discuss this at all, so lets just leave it.
7. This is not worth discussing, so lets just leave it.
8. For some unrelated reason, I don't wish to answer right now, so lets just leave it.

In the comments, I suggested a similar approach:

A Biblical History professor i had claimed that the existence of contradictory stories in Tanakh show that our ancestors weren't fazed by contradictions or held back by the limits of Greek "P or not-P, but not both" logic.

So to the people who received (if you're traditionally-minded) or wrote (if you're biblical criticism-minded) the Torah, it didn't matter one bit whether plants were created before humanity (Bereishit ch.1) or afterwards (Bereishit ch.2) -- they were both true, without any high-falutin' commentators or Slifkins necessary to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable.

Supposedly, many contemporary Native Americans follow this model, believing in their native spiritual traditions, foreign imposed religions like Christianity, and/or the findings of contemporary science all at the same time, without worrying about how to fit them all together in some so-called "logical" manner, and without feeling a need to semi-deligitimate one side at the expense of another.

You could call this the Walt Whitman
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
I am large, I contain multitudes.
answer.

So i'm thinking, next time someone asks me if i believe that the world is 5765 or Billions of years old, or if i believe in Creation or Evolution, i'll just answer "yes". And pretend to be confused when they don't understand how i can believe two contradictory things at the same time.

Side Point:
I expected some kind of Creation/Evolution controversy to come up during each Geology class i took in college, but it never did!

The only problem is, i can't really honestly say i believe that. I mean, i admire my ancestors' ability to accept two contradictory versions of events as true, but it just doesn't feel right. One version has to be the primary one, and the other has to be somehow allegorized or reinterpreted, or pushed off to the side. It just doesn't make sense otherwise.

Coming Down The Mountain

A traveling song:

— Mahhar Ani Babayit by Ethnix

חכי לי שאחזור מחר אני בבית נמאס לי לתקן עולם בארץ יריבה חכי לי שאחזור טוב להיות בבית כולם היו אחים בדם יפה הדרך חזרה

Wait for me to return, Tomorrow I'll be home; I'm sick of perfecting the world In a land of strife. Wait for me to return, Tomorrow I'll be home; They were all blood-brothers The road back looks pretty nice

Thoughts on leaving The Land.

In last week's parsha, Beha‘alotekha, there's a small chunk of text set off from the rest of the Torah by a kind of pseudo-brackets — strange upside-down nun letters, before and after Bemidbar 10:35-36. In the Babylonian Talmud, Shabat 116a, a few explanations are discussed for this strange phenomenon. One is that the nun signs mark off what lies between them as a separate book of the Torah, so that the Torah has seven books instead of five: Bereishit, Shemot, Vayiqra’, Bemidbar-A, Bemidbar-B, Bemidbar-C, Devarim. Not so catchy, but philosophically intriguing. Another explanation given is that the two pesuqim between the 'brackets' are not in their proper place, but were inserted there to make a break between two tragedies that would otherwise follow one another immediately.

What are those two tragedies?
  #2 is the beginning of chapter 11, where the people make up pretexts to complain against God, and he sends a fire that burns against the edges of the encampment. (interestingly enough, immediately following this is the "we want meat!" story i blogged about before, reading God's actions in it as Trickster-like)
  #1, though, isn't explicit in the text; the Talmud identifies it with "and they traveled from the Mountain of God..." (10:33), and Ribbi Hhama beribbi Hhanina explains that "they turned away from following God."

The Tosafot comment: like children running away from school.

My teacher training program is ending. In about two weeks, iy"H, i will be taking a plane back home, from home. From my homeland, my land — The Land — to the land of my birth, the home of my family and the vast majority of my friends. It's a strange feeling. Before i came to Israel i had no concept of what it's like to live here, and no intention of making ‘aliyá. Now that i have lived here, i still have no intention of making ‘aliyá — at least not for the foreseeable future — but i could see myself doing it. I could really see myself living here, and i don't know whether that inspires or scares me. When i next come back, Gush Qatif could be gone. There could be a Palestinian state. There could be Peace, or even (God save us from ourselves) a civil war.

From my "Gradumatation (sic) Speech":

I was not allowed, for various reasons, to come to Israel for a year in yeshiva between high school and college. I was told that once I graduated from college, though, I could go learn in Israel or do anything else I wanted. Of course, at the time I had no idea that that is exactly what I would be doing. I came here ki miTziyon teitzei’ Torah udevar Hashem miYrushalayim, as Yesha‘yahu Hanavi’ put it. Torah goes forth from Zion, and God's message from Jerusalem. Or, to broaden the statement, as Ribbi Tanhhum did in Bereishit Rabba, ein Torah keTorat Eretz Yisra’eil, velo’ Hhokhma keHhokhmat Eretz Yisra’eil. There is no Torah like the Torah of the Land of Israel, and there is no Wisdom like the Wisdom of the Land of Israel.

I just spent the last few days driving around the north of the country with my mother, who came in for this graduation. We stood on the ruins of the theaters and palaces of Caesaria, where the first blows of the Great Revolt against Rome fell. We climbed to the top of Muhhraqä on the Karmel, where — at least according to the nuns who live there — Eiliyahu Hanavi’ had his showdown with the false prophets of Ba‘al. We touched Tel Dan, where Yarov‘am ben Nevat, first king of the Northern Kingdom, set up one of his golden calves. And at the end of a long swing through the green Golan, the yellow Jordan Valley, and the brown Judean Desert, we arrived right back here, in Jerusalem.

With my friends and colleagues I've seen where David slew Goliath, where the Mishna was published, and where the Third Jewish Commonwealth — the modern State of Israel — was proclaimed into being.

All these places are not just locations in time and space — geology, history, theology and poetry — they are experiences that etch themselves on your soul. They are also 58 rolls of film and counting of pictures I can bring back to my future students in the States, and give them the barest hint of what it feels like to be here.

This valley here in which we are situated is ‘Eimeq Refa’im — the Valley named after the earliest known inhabitants of this land, of whom barely the memory of their name remains in the Tanakh. And thousands of years later, it's filled with houses with Jerusalem addresses. This is Yerushalayim habenuya ke‘ir shehhubera lah yahhdav (the built-up Jerusalem which is like a city fused to itself); and this is the axis mundi, the place around which our world turns. And although I am by far not the biggest Zionist ever, I feel honored that I have been able for two years to live a Jewish life the way it was meant to be lived — according to the structures built by the Torah on the natural cycles of this land: metar artzekhem be‘ito (rain, logically, during the rainy season), with harvests and the holidays of which they are an essential part, all at their proper times. And I am thankful that I have been able to learn Torat Eretz Yisra’eil here ... and Hhokhmat Eretz Yisra’eil ... .

But the flow goes both ways — I am getting ready now to bring the Torah and Hhokhma of the Land of Israel out to my future students in the Diaspora, and in return, I hope that what I have done, and what they will do, is bring the experience and ideals of the Diaspora back to the Land of Israel. Outside of Israel, the ethic of ki geirim heyitem b’Eretz Mitzrayim — for you were strangers in the Land of Egypt — is no empty theory. It is a palpable fact, that reinforces in us Tolerance for the Other and Sympathy for the Oppressed. And it refines the Torah and Hhokhma of our Homeland, making sure that they do indeed match up with the devar Hashem that goes forth from Yerushalayim.

I may go back to New York.
I may settle in North Carolina, or California.
I don't know yet where exactly i'll be next year, or where life will take me.

But I will always be a Yerushalmi.

Loki, Coyote, Eshu, Brer Rabbit... (lehavdil*) YHVH?

And the mixed multitude that was among them became lustful; and the Israelites also went back and cried, and said, "Who will feed us meat? We remember the fish we would eat in Egypt for free — the zucchinis, the watermelons, the leafy vegetables, the onions and the garlic. But now our throat is dry, there's nothing; the only thing before our eyes is the manna!"
...
And God said to Moshe, "...And to the people say, 'sanctify yourselves for tomorrow and you will eat meat — for you have wept in the ears of God, saying, "Who will feed us meat? For it was better for us in Egypt!" Therefore God will give you meat, and you will eat. Not one day only will you eat it, nor two days; not five days, and not ten days, and not twenty days — but for a full month, until it comes out of your nostrils, and you become sick of it, since you have rejected God who is among you, and you cried before him, saying, "Why, now, did we leave Egypt?"'"
          &mdash Bemidbar 11:4-6,16-20

In other words, what God is telling the People here amounts to "OH, SO YOU WANT MEAT? MY MANNA ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU? WELL THEN, FINE, I'LL FRIKKIN' SHOW YOU MEAT, YOU UNGRATEFUL #&*#%)@*%!!!!"

(ahem)

In the study of Religion, Folklore, and Literature there's something called the Trickster archetype. Tricksters are cunning. Tricksters are humorous. Tricksters are too smart for their own (or others') good. And lately, it has become increasingly clear to me that the God of Israel is a trickster divinity.

The first Jewish blog i ever discovered was Mobius's Orthodox Anarchist, and one of his posts, Suck Seek My Face became (for a while at least) a 'classic' of the Judeoblogosphere. A moving, insightful and personal discussion of his views about the nature of God and God's relationship to the world and to Mobius himself, it prompted a number of similarly deep reflections on the subject from commenters. I also responded, and ended my comment with the following description of God-as-Trickster:

God, like those archetypical girls in that Cyndi Lauper song, just wants to have fun. And God is going to have fun with us whether we think it's fun or not. God likes to challenge us, to throw crap our way to teach us not to be complacent, to see how we deal and learn to overcome it. And just for kicks, of course. And sometimes we're wise enough to the ways of the universe to laugh about it afterwards ourselves. Not that i think God expects or wants us to just sit there and take it - i feel that God wants us to challenge God when we think there's a little too much smirking going on at our expence up in heaven. Or when we think God's been watching a bit too much "Jackass" on MTV...

Us rationalist types like to think the world makes sense. That, for instance, if carbon dating, geological stratigraphy, and biological and genetic studies come to certain conclusions about the age of the Earth, the evolution of life, and similar topics, they're probably right. God wouldn't just plant fossils and isotopes in the earth to fool us into believing in biology, geology and astrophysics if all God really did was flip a few switches 5765 years ago!

Unfortunately — or fortunately, depending on how you look at it — as a "Tricksterist" i can't actually say that for sure.

I mean, of course it makes no sense.

Sure, it wouldn't be right.

But damn, wouldn't that be the Best Practical Joke Ever?

 * and that's not any old lehavdil, that's a full blown lehavdil elef alfey havdalot bein hahhayim levein hameitim i'll have you know! (nobody accuses me of monolatry!)

UPDATE: LATE-BREAKING NEWS!
The story of Hhoni Hame‘ageil — Hhoni the Circle-Drawer — from the Mishna, Ta‘anit chapter 3:

Once upon a time, they said to Hhoni Hame‘ageil, "Pray for rain to fall." He told them, "Go out and bring the Pesahh ovens inside, so that they don't get water-damage." He prayed, but rain didn't fall. So he drew a circle, stood inside it, and said, "Master of the Universe! Your children have looked to me [for help] since i am like a member of your household. I swear by your great name that i am not moving from here until you have mercy on your children!"
Rain began to drip down. He said, "This isn't what i asked for! I meant rain [that will fill] cisterns, pits, and caves!"
The rain fell violently. He said, "This isn't what i asked for! I asked for rains of goodwill, blessing and graciousness!"
The rain then fell properly, [and continued] until Israel went up from Jerusalem to the Temple Mount because of all the rain.
They said to him, "Just as you prayed for [the rain] to come, so pray for it to go away."...