Gifts from the Ancestors
Itamar Dotan Katz's photos of our amazing Jazz Shabbat last week
Dear friends,
In a flash of gratitude that raised him from the muck of reality my Talmud teacher, Reb Dovid Neiberg let fly: “Where would be without Rashi?” Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki, the 11th century French genius revealed to all the generations that followed him the hidden lights between the letters of the Torah that had been discovered by all the generations that preceded him. Rashi is so key to Jewish thought that it’s hard to find an edition of one of the books of the Torah, the Tanach or the Talmud that doesn’t include his commentary. This one person shaped the way millions of Jews from the 11th century onwards understand themselves.
The unthinkable, insane task of writing commentary on both the written and the oral Torah (known nowadays as the Old Testament and the Talmud) is a significant one, which no one else to my knowledge has managed. But the more amazing thing is the ability to do it selflessly. What makes Rashi so significant is that he almost never offers his opinion. Instead, he passes on what he was taught. These sacred texts are very old. We don’t know what their authors meant. We used to, however, have explanations and elucidations that were passed down, some of which may have gone all the way back to the time the texts were written. Rashi is perhaps the last holder of that orally transmitted treasure chest.
We are currently studying the Book of Exodus based on Rashi’s interpretations in our weekly Torah Byte (Thursdays at noon on Zoom, you’re all welcome to join). An educator to his core, in this week’s parasha, Rashi goes from explaining Hebrew grammar, to spelling out theological concepts, to translating odd Hebrew word formulations to highlighting how Moses himself used methods of Torah study still used today. But his greatest gift of all is the way he fills for us the relatively sparse biblical narrative with thousands of little, tiny stories that enliven the text.
When Moses and Aaron go meet Pharaoh by the Nile in the showdown before the first plague, he pulls this ditty from Shmot Rabah, an ancient collection of midrashim:
“Pharaoh would tell people he was god, and therefore did not need to relieve himself. Every morning he would go alone to the Nile and relieve himself.”
Now, instead of imagining this encounter between Pharaoh and Moses taking place in the presence of all of Pharaoh’s attendants, we begin the story with this intimate, revealing meeting. Suddenly our intense narrative begins with humor, and the power dynamic between the two leading characters is filled with raw humanness.
Shortly after we reach the moment when Aaron puts his staff to the Nile and turns the water to blood. Here Rashi uses another ancient midrash to explain why it was Aaron’s staff and not Moses’ that turned the water to blood:
“Because the river had protected Moses when he was cast into it, therefore it was not hit by him neither at the plague of blood nor at that of frogs, but it was smitten by Aaron.”
Not only does this remind us of the cruelty that kicked off this saga, but it also gives dimensions of love and care to the natural elements, like the river. It shows us through a brief story the underlying message of the entire book: within the cruel times there is care, there is deliverance, there is the presence of God. Within the plague there is a memory of love.
The last plague we reach in this parasha is hail, which receives an enigmatic and dramatic description in the Torah:
“The hail was very heavy—fire flashing in the midst of the hail—such as had not fallen on the land of Egypt since it had become a nation.”
Rashi’s words, based, again on an ancient rabbinic midrash take the story to a new plain. He takes the image of fire flashing in the midst of hail and writes:
“A miracle within a miracle! Fire and hail mingled, although hail is water! But in order to perform the will of their Creator they made peace one with the other.”
If fire and hail can get along, maybe democrats and republicans can too, Israelis and Palestinians, fascists and anti-fascists. Maybe the story of our deliverance and liberation is that of all of us succumbing to the will of our creator and making peace. Perhaps the first step is for all of us to see the miraculous gifts hiding in plain sight, like the treasure troves left to us by the minds and pens of those who came before us.
Before I sign off I’ll invite you to support an important mutual aid project in LA. The Fire Poppy Project supports renters who are Black, Indigenous, of color, and/or low-income whose homes were either burned down or contaminated by toxic smoke and ash in the Eaton Fire.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha