Have you ever wanted to simply “cut
out” a part of the Torah? There are many parts of the Torah we find very hard
to read because we find them uncomfortable, because they clash with our modern
day sensibilities, because we find them morally objectionable or simply because
we find them irrelevant. Surely many of
us would like to eliminate some parts of the text. For example, this week’s Torah portion is
called “Metzorah”. Its subject matter is how the Kohen, the priest, is to deal
with diseases of the skin, molds in the walls of a home, and discharges from
the sexual organs, all of which cause ritual impurity. Woe to the bat mitzvah
student who draws this as their parasha and must write about it for their D’var
Torah! You will see tomorrow that Alyssa
does an excellent job! There are other
parts of the Torah that we might be equally tempted to eliminate if we could. Take
the story about Jacob’s sons slaughtering all of the men of the city of Shechem
because their prince abducted their sister Dina. That story puts the Jewish
people in a bad light. That same group of siblings seems to have learned
nothing when they plot to kill their own brother, Joseph, only to settle on
selling him into slavery and misleading their father about what happened. It’s
embarrassing to read about our ancestors acting this way. Moses himself kills
an Egyptian when he sees him beating an Israelite. One has to ask – was that
really necessary? And if it was, does it have to be in the Torah? The account
of the building of the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary in the desert, goes on
seemingly interminably, with excruciating detail. It takes up the entire second
half of the Book of Exodus! Can’t we cut that down to a few paragraphs? We no
longer perform sacrifices, but a good deal of the Book of Leviticus describes
the minutia of the sacrificial system. Too much talk about blood and kidneys
and livers and entrails for modern sensibilities. Can’t we just have a summary
or an excerpt? We struggle with the Bible’s apparent condemnation of
homosexuality – what do we do with an outlook which is so at odds with our
modern, scientific view of human sexuality? Can’t we just get rid of those
passages? Can we at least skip over them when we come to them in our weekly
Torah reading? The Book of Numbers describes what is called “The Ordeal of the
Bitter Waters”. A jealous husband can demand that his wife goes through a
demeaning ritual to determine if she has been unfaithful, as he suspects.
Needless to say, there is no corresponding ordeal that a wife can put her
husband through if she suspects he has been unfaithful. The Torah is
relentlessly patriarchal – women play an important, but usually supportive and
even subservient role as wife, mother, daughter or sister of the patriarch. The
rabbis determined 2000 years ago that the Ordeal of the Bitter waters was
inoperative. They forbid performing it. Yet we still have it in our Torah, and
we still hear about it every year when that part of the Book of Numbers is read
in our synagogues.
Yet, we don’t tamper with the Torah. We don’t remove
texts we don’t like, because the Torah is considered sacred. Some believe that
each word, each letter, even the “crowns of the letters” – the scribal
decorations that adorn some of the text – were given to Moses by G-d at Mount
Sinai. We therefore cannot remove or skip over what we do not like. We cannot
edit out what does not conform to our sensibilities. Everything is the direct
word of G-d, and G-d would not abide an editor. Others believe that the text is
not divinely given but, rather, divinely inspired, and is therefore holy and
not to be changed in any way.
To us, revising the text of the
Bible would be unthinkable. Yet there is
historical evidence that some groups have tampered with the Bible. That
evidence is on display at the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC through
September 1. The exhibit tells the story of how Christian Missionaries manipulated
the text of the Bible to meet the economic needs of the British Empire. These missionaries wanted to convert African
slaves in British Caribbean colonies in the late 19th century. So
they edited the Bible to meet their needs. The so-called “Slave Bible”, printed
in London in 1807 retains those parts of the Torah that teach about slaves’ obedience
to their masters and what their duties toward their masters were. It eliminates
those parts that teach about the responsibilities of a master toward their
slaves. It conveniently removes parts of the Book of Exodus and Psalms that
might have given the slaves hope for freedom and encouraged dreams of equality.
Examples of passages that are eliminated:
“He who kidnaps a man — whether he
has sold him or is still holding him — shall be put to death.” (Ex. 21:16)
“You shall not turn over to his
master a slave who seeks refuge with you from his master. He shall live with
you in any place he may choose among the settlements in your midst, wherever he
pleases; you must not ill-treat him.” (Deut. 23:16-17)
"If a man strikes the eye of
his male or female slave, and destroys it, he shall let him go free on account
of his eye. "And if he knocks out a tooth of his male or female slave, he
shall let him go free on account of his tooth." (Exodus 21:26-27)
"He who strikes a man so that he dies shall surely be put to death." (Exodus 21:12)
And from the Book of Leviticus -- On
the fiftieth year you shall “Proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all the
inhabitants thereof.”
We Jews have an entire holiday
dedicated to remembering our slavery and how we were freed. We will begin that
celebration next Friday night when we sit down to our Seders. It seems
unimaginable that anyone would remove this story from Scriptures deemed holy by
both Christians and Jews. Yet this is exactly what happened. The text was
doctored in order to manipulate and oppress. It was edited in order to maintain
the status quo. This teaches that although we may struggle with the holy text
that has come down to us, we are not free to eliminate those parts that do not
understand, like, or agree with. We can challenge it and question it, but we
dare not ignore it or suppress it. As Ben Bag Bag, a Jewish sage who lived around
the time of the destruction of the Second Temple says referring to the Torah, “Turn
it and turn it again, for all is in it; see through it; grow old and worn in
it; do not budge from it, for there is nothing that works better than it.”
Shabbat Shalom
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