Jeremy Rosen
Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Exodus 23:13

Jeremy Rosen - Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Exodus 23:13

- Good morning from New York. I look to studying with you to cheer me up. So that’s what we’re going to try and do today. Although the text that we’re going to read and study from is a rather complex one. And it follows the pattern of what looks like random, inconsistent themes and ideas. So we’re going to start from Exodus, Shemot, chapter 23 and verse 13. And we’ve been talking up to now about six days of work and a seventh day of everybody, including your servants and including your animals having a day off. So if animals are having a day off, it’s hardly because it’s a spiritual day for them. It’s rather more as often happens, people are saying something along the lines of, listen, if animals have to rest, how much more so do you? And in fact, there is a debate in terms of rabbinic interpretation of the Torah as to whether animals have souls as well as humans have souls. In fact, in the book of Ecclesiastes called Qohelet, tributed to King Solomon, you have the famous line, who knows if the souls of humans rise when they die and the souls of animals go down. This is a miss you, which is much debated. And there are several ways that the mediaeval rabbis tried to resolve it by saying something like, for example, there’s an animal soul and there’s a human soul or a divine soul. And there are different kinds of souls. And in fact, there are five different words used in the Torah to describe that one thing we talk about, soul. So we don’t know exactly, or everybody can’t agree, to be fair, on what we mean by soul. And therefore, when you have this term that we mentioned last week, that Shabbat is and nafash, nefesh, is the soul, it implies that this is more than just stopping work. It’s creating something spiritual. Now, from there, in a sense, it makes sense to go on to verse 13, which says, I want you to listen to everything that I’ve been telling you up to now.

Now, why would one want to say that? Why would one want to say, you know, a parent says to a child, now listen to me, you’ve got to listen to me, only if it’s clear that they’re not listening. And it seems to be built into the Torah, the assumption that humans will not pay attention. We are, from the very beginning, just contrary, and therefore we have to reiterate. I’m telling you, you make the wrong decisions, it’s going to be disastrous. And in fact, that’s exactly how human life has been functioning for the last couple of thousand years. We keep on making mistakes, and we keep on getting punished, so to speak, for them, but it’s not punishment as such, it’s what I would call the consequence, consequential. Anyway, carrying on in the text, it says, in verse 13, whatever I tell you, I want you to keep. I want you to adhere to, pay attention. And the name of God’s other gods to me, do not mention. And I always find this interesting, because why doesn’t it say, as indeed in the Ten Commandments it says, should say, there are no other gods. Why are you saying don’t pay attention to other gods, if there’s only one God? It doesn’t seem to make much sense. On the other hand, one can understand this as saying, look, humans make their own gods all the time. How many people now are enslaved to money? How many people now are enslaved to passion or to sex? And they make this the determining factor in their lives. And so in this sense, we can understand God as being, if you like, the most important factor in our ethical, moral decision-making.

And therefore, because there are, and we make other gods to be primary, ambition and so forth, then the text is quite right in saying, don’t take on other gods, doesn’t necessarily mean there are other gods. It means humans make other gods. And as a result of saying this, we then move on to verse 14, which says there are three festivals during the year. Now that in itself is very strange because there’s Passover, Pesach, there’s Shavuot, the festival that is called Pentecost, because it’s 50 days, pentangle five, 50 from Pesach, and Sukkot, tabernacles in the autumn. But then there’s Rosh Hashanah, there’s Yom Kippur, you might even say there’s Rosh Chodesh each new month. So what are we talking about these three? What is unique about these three is that in the course of the Torah, when they are repeated, we are told that these are what are called foot festivals, migration festivals, the three times in the year when people were expected to turn up at the temple or the tabernacle or whether the centre, wherever it was. So the implication is that normally during the course of a day or a week, we’re not necessarily turning up at the synagogue. But when it comes to these three festivals, they were the three festivals that united the nation. Now, if you think about it, most of the laws of the Torah are laws that apply to individuals, how we behave as individuals, not necessarily addressed to the wider community, although that’s implied. If you are living at the time of the temple, and the temple was the centre, and there were people living all around the land of Israel, but also in Egypt, also in Babylon, also in Turkey in the North, and also in the Roman Empire later on, what was their cohesive was getting the group together. How did you get the group together?

And the way you did this was by having these three festivals rather in the way that in Islam, the Hajj coming together, certainly at certain prior times in the year, give everybody this sense of belonging to the community. So these three festivals, the Shalosh Rugalim, are all linked to history, festival, and community. That’s the kind of the three dimensions of these three festivals. There’s the festival of Matzot. Interesting, it doesn’t say the festival of Pesach, of Passover, it says the festival of Matzot, something we eat. Seven days, you should eat Matzot, as you have already been commanded. Indeed, we were commanded when we were still in Egypt, that when we came out, we’d have to celebrate this festival eating Matzah. , it’s got to be at a fixed time, , in the spring. that’s when you came out of Egypt. And here, do not appear before me in the temple empty-handed. Now, empty-handed implies that you should be coming with stuff, with food for everybody, with food to celebrate. And if you don’t have the food, or you’re not a farmer, you bring money in order to buy, in order to celebrate, and have a meal together, to eat together, to feel we’re part of the community. Two interesting observations on this. One of them is, you know that there are two ways of having a calendar. There is the solar system, and there is the lunar system. The year, according to our calculation, 365 days in a bit. And the lunar, which is based on the month, 30 days, or in our case, 28, 29, with an extra month every now and again to make up the difference.

The difference in calendar is this. If you are a Muslim, for example, with a lunar calendar, then the month of Ramadan keeps on moving around the year. And so Ramadan could be in the spring, it could be in the autumn, could be the winter, summer, any time. If you have a solar calendar, then you go according to the sun, which is going according to the season. So spring is always springtime, autumn is always autumntime. When you have a solar calendar, you fix the month, as it says here, the period, is in the month, which might imply a lunar calendar, but which is springtime, the happy time when things start growing. And that is the Hebrew month, and it always has to be then. So if it always has to be then, it’s got to conform both to the lunar and to the solar, which is how the Jewish calendar works. We’re a combination of these two. And then it says, not appearing empty-handed, this idea, important idea of community. So the first one is Pesach, Passover, in the spring. Then you have, in verse 16, the next one, the first harvest. Of course, there are three harvests. There is the early barley harvest, there’s the later wheat harvest, and then there’s, in the autumn, the fruit harvest. Of course, this applies in the Northern Hemisphere, works the other way around elsewhere. And of course, nowadays, with food being brought from all around the world, it really doesn’t make much difference. So this is the , the festival of the harvest, , when you’re first, result of all the hard work you put in to sow, to prepare the ground, to sow, to plant, and then to reap and pick, or whatever. Ashet is but this is mainly for the field harvest, as opposed to the fruit harvest, which comes in the autumn. And then you’ve got the other harvest festival, which is , which is the autumn, the gathering in of absolutely everything, including the fruit and everything else. But , as we go towards the end of the year, when everything is brought back in from the field. And , three times a year, , all your men should gather before the, and accept the authority of God.

This is an unusual phrase, Adon, like Adonai, Adonai, twice, Adon, Adonai means essentially the authority of God. Now you will say, what about the women? And the answer, of course, is that the obligation is primarily on the men, because the men were travelling for business or travelling for other things. Women might have to stay at home to look after the children or to provide. It didn’t mean they couldn’t if they wanted to. And indeed, there are plenty of examples given in the Talmud, not only of ordinary people, but also of very wealthy queens coming to the temple, dedicating the temple. Queen Helene is the most, Helene is the most famous one. And participating in the Festival of Sukkot and these pilgrim festivals. So this is the reason why there is a distinction between the pilgrim festivals where you’re supposed to come together and the others where you don’t have to come together. You can if you want to, but you don’t have to. And this was a way of keeping the nation together at a time when travel was difficult. Even in small countries, people lived a long way away, couldn’t always come. And at least three times a year, they had to leave their local place and go to come to be part of the community. And verse 19 carries on with, , all the first of your fruits. You should bring, tavi, , to the house of God. And then, . Don’t see the kid or boil a kid in its mother’s milk. What a strange thing. What does it mean? What is it doing here? And it is mentioned three times in the Torah in connection with the harvest festival. We now know that boiling a kid in its mother’s milk was quite a well-known pagan ritual for fertility and for harvest. It’s mentioned, although some people disagree about the mentioning, in the Ugaritic texts of Rashamra. And there, the idea can be understood to mean the same, but forgetting whether Ugarit did it or not, what does it mean?

We now have taken it to mean that we shouldn’t eat meat and milk together. And this would therefore classify it under the laws of kosher food. And so it is possible to say that the laws of kosher food essentially derive from some pagan background in which we are being told not to do this in a pagan sense, but to eat in a sanctified monotheistic sense. I’m sure you have heard the joke, but I’ll repeat it again to make life a little easier. And the story goes like this. Moses is on Mount Sinai, and God says to Moses on Mount Sinai, , don’t see the kid in its mother’s milk. And Moses says, so what you mean, God, is that I shouldn’t have meat and milk together? No, Moses. I said, don’t see the goat in its mother’s milk. Oh, said Moses, so what you mean is we should have two sets of plates, one for meat and one for milk. No, Moses. I simply said, don’t boil a kid in its mother’s milk. Oh, good. So what you mean is that we shouldn’t sit down at the same table with meat and milk. Okay, Moses says, God, you have it your way. So, you know, that’s a way of making light of this whole idea, but essentially it has become a very important feature of Jewish life, even though it seems quite insignificant here. But it’s mentioned in the context of the harvest. And because all pagans did have harvest festivals, everybody has harvest festivals, all around the world they do. It seems to me that this is simply a response initially to that, but that as the text of the Torah can be understood in so many different ways, who is to say what the original intent was? All we can say is, this is part of the customs that have developed over time. Now we come to verse 20. And I always have difficulty with this area of the Torah, in which basically what God is saying is, I’m going to help you, I’m going to do everything fine for you, but I warn you, if you don’t, I’m going to smash you to pieces.

Now, I understand this as being a convention, because as I’ve mentioned before, we know very often that throughout the ancient Middle East, it was common for Kings acting as the representative of God on earth to start off their reigns with declarations. And the declaration would be something along the lines, you must be loyal to me and obey me. And if you obey me and are loyal to you, I will protect you. I will protect you and I’ll protect your children. I’ll protect your flocks and your herds. I will intercede with God to get rain to come so that you will have plenty to eat and you will be happy and live happily ever after. But I warn you, if you disobey me, I’m going to smash you to pieces and destroy absolutely everything. In a sense, it’s rather like most children will only do things, if only behave sometimes when daddy or a policeman or mommy is around. That’s the natural tendency of humans to do what they want to do and only control themselves if there is, as Freud says, a kind of a super ego that controls the ego and the id and tells them, look, guys, hold on. Don’t immediately expect everything and ask for everything. It’ll be in your interest to delay and do better later on. So it pays to work hard to study now because you’ll get a good job later on. But this method, this message, so to speak, runs right through the Torah. And here it is in verse 20. And it goes like this. I’m going to send a messenger ahead of me on my behalf. And he will protect you on the route that you’re going in order to bring you to the place that I’ve prepared for you. And so it looks very clearly that this is talking about Moses, who’s going to lead you out of this place and come to the land, the promised land. And he’s acting on my behalf. It’s not that he’s doing it. He’s acting on my behalf, which is one of the reasons given as to why Moses dies before he gets to the land of Canaan, because people shouldn’t think he did it all by himself.

He was merely an agent. And this term malach literally means an agent, a messenger, somebody acting on behalf of somebody else. It has come over time to imply that it is some supernatural force, a kind of an angel, either a good one or a bad one. But that’s a much later development. Here, basically, God is saying that I work through human beings. And this human being, Moses, is going to bring you to your land. And be very, very careful in verse 21. Listen to what he tells you to do, because he won’t forgive your misdeeds, because I, God, am with him. And if you disobey him, it’s like disobeying me. But in verse 22, if you listen, listen to what he tells you, whatever I tell you to do, I will literally enemy your enemies. I’ll beat up your enemies. And I will trouble those who trouble you. In other words, I’ll act as your protector. And in verse 23, when my representative goes before you and leads you and brings you to the land of the Amorites and the Hittites and the Prizites and the Canaanites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, there you’ve got all these seven Canaanite tribes, I will destroy them, or at least I will diminish them. It’s interesting because throughout the 500-year period of the Jewish kingdom and after Moses brought them into the land, they still existed. They were not destroyed. And so therefore, we must take this as, again, a metaphor rather than as fact. But they will be around and they will represent a threat to you. And I will help you cope with that threat. But nevertheless, they will be there. In verse 24, don’t bow down to them. don’t serve their gods. Their gods, their system, their culture is dangerous. don’t imitate them.

Don’t do what they do. And this is one of the basis of why some of the Hasidim intentionally dress differently to the non-Western, non-Jewish world, in order to not follow the customs and the laws of those days, the pagans. And remember, and this is very important to emphasise, the Torah and Judaism, right through the Talmudic period, differentiates between idol-worshiping non-Jews and non-idol-worshiping non-Jews. It does not treat them at the same. The worshipping idols of the non-Jews represent the threat, not people who are good human beings, but just not Jewish. Anyway, it goes on further to say in verse 24, I want to beat them up and bash them. I don’t want you to follow their gods and their idols. Get rid of them. Destroy them. And you should serve the Lord, your God. And then God will bless your bread, your food, your water. And I will remove all plagues, all illnesses from you. If only it was so, it’s a nice idea. But of course, they will have known there were still plagues. People still got sick. It’s a nice way of saying, you know, it’ll be good for you, better for you than the other way. And not only that, but then to make matters even more complicated, it says, They will never be a woman who miscarriages or a barren woman. I will allow you to live a full life. Very full life. Now, how can one say that literally? Even under the best of conditions, accidents happen. Some people are barren. Some people do miscarry. It’s another way of saying good things. I will make sure that good things happen as opposed to bad things. But then what about the relationship with the Canaanites? And what about the relationships with those people who attack you? Which at this moment is very, very relevant. Verse 27.

I will send fear of me or fear of offending me ahead. And that will influence the people who you are coming towards to get them not to be too much trouble. And all your enemies will be an oref literally means a neck. Oref is a neck. And it could mean turn their necks and run away. Or it could mean, as was custom at the time, and more likely, the victor puts his foot on the head of the person he has conquered to indicate that he’s won the battle. And verse 28, it says, I will send the tsira. And again, tsira is a word that has different meanings. Sometimes it’s translated as a hornet, as a stinging bee. Sometimes it’s described as a kind of a plague. I will send my plague in amongst them to drive the Canaanites and the Hittites out. And notice it’s just mentioned the Canaanites and the Hittites. The Canaanites were down south. The Hittites were mainly towards Turkey, but they had extended down. Why doesn’t he mention each time the seven? Sometimes he likes to abbreviate. Anyway, here’s an interesting point. Don’t think in verse 29 that I am going to drive them out right away. That wouldn’t make sense. Because if I were to do it immediately, the land would then be barren. The land wouldn’t be cultivated. And if the land isn’t cultivated because you can’t pop it, you know, you haven’t got control. You haven’t regulated it. You don’t have guards. You don’t have protection. Then it’ll be open to . The wild animals will come and they will colonise it.

So don’t think things are going to happen right away for good reasons. In verse 20, it will take place in stages as indeed the conquest of land did. Started with Joshua, and then it moved on throughout the life of Joshua and then beyond. And in fact, went on right through to the time of David and Solomon. But I will. And here’s another, again, hyperbole. I will open up your borders. From the Red Sea. Right through to the Sea of the Philistines. Now, what is that? That could be the Mediterranean. Well, that’s not such a big area, but it does imply initially that the location would be a coastal one from the borders of Egypt up the Mediterranean coast, which in fact, not for a thousand years did they get to the time of Herod. And up to that time, it was controlled by the Sea Peoples, the Phoenicians or the Philistines. But then I will extend it the other way further. I will extend it Mimidbar from the wilderness, and I assume this is from Transjordan going all the way to the Euphrates. The Nahar is a general name in the Torah for the Euphrates right across that far. So your territory would be from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates. And that, as you know, is the territory that the revisionist movement of Jabotinsky has on its flag, the full extent of Jewish territory. Meanwhile, we’re confined to a very, very small percentage of it. It’s also difficult to know what you mean by the Euphrates because the Euphrates, in a sense, goes down from Turkey through Syria, then down through Iraq, down to the Persian Gulf.

And therefore, it could simply be the area of Syria and not necessarily the whole of Transjordan and Iraq. But the words are left, in a sense, without clarification. And that’s, again, where commentary comes in, where interpretation comes in. When you talk about this area of land, how much are you understanding? What do you mean by it? And in the same way, just as we have difficulty understanding things like kids in their mother’s milk, so we have difficulty understanding this other than in poetic terms to say this is the zone, this is the area you’re going to be caught between Egypt wanting to control you in the south, Assyria and Babylon wanting to control you in the north. You’re going to be subjected to constant pressure. Now, in one sense, you could say that this is one of the reasons why the Jewish people did so well, because they constantly had to adapt to situations and they could draw on external influences from the north and from the south. So in one sense, being stuck in this terrible point between the two world powers was better than being stuck somewhere, let’s say, like Saudi Arabia, where you just had the oil, which is very good to rely on, but doesn’t necessarily give you other benefits of interaction between other nations and other peoples.

But I don’t want you, when you deal with these people that you have to deal with, I don’t want you to make a covenant and a piece of them in which you will merge. Covenant is a form of alliance and you may make, as King Solomon did, alliances for political purposes. But when King Solomon, as you know, married all these non-Jewish pagan princesses, because whenever you made a treaty, you married somebody to seal the deal, something that you saw in the case of Sarah and Pharaoh, this is likely to cause trouble. And in fact it did, because as the Torah said, these people turned the mind of Solomon. In a sense, they corrupted him. He wasn’t strong enough to withstand that pressure. So in verse 33, it says, I don’t want them to live in your land. They will make you sin against me. They will distort the true message. They will seduce you. Now this is very strange, because we’ve already said several times, last week and the week before, that you are encouraged to have gerim. And gerim is the stranger coming to live amongst you. And the Torah therefore says, ah, there’s a difference. There’s a difference between people coming to live with you, who adhere to the basic Noahide laws of morality. Don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t kidnap, don’t be cruel to animals, set up courts of law, and don’t reject the idea of God. So clearly it is referring to pagans carrying on to live amongst you with their pagan rights. And don’t, again, don’t serve other gods, because they will only, the term mokesh is to snare, but they will only seduce you to do the wrong thing. And that’s where we come to the end of the chapter 23. And chapter 24 initiates a totally different issue.

Now, you know that in Exodus, we had the story in chapter 20, 19 and 20, the story of Moses going up the mountain to receive the Torah. And in going up the mountain, he goes up, he goes down, he goes up, he goes down. And there’s a debate how many times he goes up and down. Now, one of the things that I want to do is to compare the text of that going up and down with then a chapter or two later in Exodus, another version of going up and down, with this chapter going up and down. And so, although we won’t have time to do the whole of it this session, I would like you, maybe in preparation for next week, I’m going to begin the process now, look at these two different texts. So if you have your Tanakh in the Bible that we have, you will find it on chapter 19 of Exodus. And here I’m going to open up Isaiah and Exodus and look up chapter 19, 19, and here we have it before us. And chapter 19 goes like this. On , the third month, when the children of Israel came out of Egypt, by Yom HaZeh, on this day, they arrived in Bar Sinai, the wilderness of Sinai. At this stage, it doesn’t say a specific area in the wilderness, but they reached a certain place. And they journeyed from Rufidin, where they’d had a fight with the Amalekites. And they came to the wilderness of Sinai, in verse 2, they encamped in the wilderness, opposite the mountain. Doesn’t tell us which mountain.

We don’t know where it is. The so-called monastery of Mount Sinai in Sinai is not likely to be the Mount Sinai, but it’s difficult to know. And it may be, it may not be. But anyway, it’s what we call Mount Sinai, the place where the Torah was given. And in verse 3, it says that Moshe, Moses goes up to God. So he climbs up the mountain. Number one, notice the number of times he goes up. And he called out to God. Sorry, God called out to him from the mountain. So he’s up the mountain and he gets this message. And the message says this. This is what I want you to say to the house of Jacob and to the children of Israel. Now, that’s the same thing, isn’t it? Why are you repeating it? And one of the features of the Bible is that its form of poetry, which we had crossing the Red Sea. We have throughout the text poetry based on repetition. So we have such phrases as listen to me, heavens, give ear to me, earth. The same repeating an idea, repeating an idea is saying this is poetry. We have now entered into a different zone of communication, a different type of communication. It’s poetry and there’s prose. So we’re into something poetic, saying this. The interpretation of the rabbis is that Beti Akov is another way of talking about the women because they are the house. The woman is the mistress of the house. She sets the tone. She is crucial in looking after it and in developing it.

And , children of Israel, also means male and female. Although sometimes it’s in a form of the men, B'nei, the sons, but we translate that the children of because in classical Hebrew B'nim can mean children, including the male and the female. So this is now speaking in poetry the message I want you to give. read Temah, verse four. You’ve seen , what I did to Egypt. and I brought you out on the wings of eagles. Well, of course, it wasn’t wings of eagles. It’s a metaphor. And of course, as you know, when the Jews were lifted from Yemen in planes that they’d never seen before to go to the land of Israel after independence, that scheme was called the wings of eagles. But now V'ata, five. And this again is poetic. Why not say , why? Listen, but is listen, listen, double, double. In other words, really listen. It’s a form of emphasis. Listen to my voice. and keep my covenant with you. My deal I’ve made with you. You will be a treasure amongst the nations. , because mine is the earth. It doesn’t mean to say you’d be the only treasure, but you would be quite unique in your relationship with me. And it uses the word segula. It doesn’t use the word chosen.

You will be a kingdom of priests. All of you will be priests. That is to say, all of you will have the same religious obligations. Whereas in other religions, there was a difference between the role of the priesthood or the aristocracy and the masses. Everybody here is going to be a priest in the sense that they all be expected to behave in a priestly manner. A holy nation. These are the words which you should speak to the children of Israel. So this is the message I want you to give the children of Israel, that I want you to be my special people that will represent the best of humanity. But that doesn’t mean that other people can’t do that too. So that’s where I want to stop for today. But when we start up next week, we’re going to start up back here at verse seven, because I want to run through the procedure once more in order to compare it to the other procedures that we’re going to come and where we are as a result of our study now. So stopping there, I then turn to look at the questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Thank you, Bronwen for asking about my hand. It is healing. I’ve not got a full bandage on, but I won’t show you the other side because it doesn’t look very nice. So I hope this will cheer us up too.

Q: So do you have any comments on the awful news we’re getting from Israel? I need help.

A: Look, there are two ways of looking at everything. There’s the good side and the bad side. And most people focus at the moment on the bad side and on the things that are going wrong. And yet at the same time, there are things going right. There’s the specific response to us as Jewish people, children of Israel, and there’s a response to us as citizens of the world. You can look at it from a black point of view, and you can focus on all the terrible things that have happened and terrible things happen in life to us all at some stage or another. And when terrible things happen, the worst thing, as you will have heard from the lecture from Dr. Shiner on Thursday about trauma, that the worst thing is to focus on the negative. The worst thing is to be fixed to the television and watching these horrible things that have been posted by our enemies and posted by them that the majority of the world does not want to care about, does not see as barbaric and destructive. We’ve seen how people are suffering all the time. But look what happens in Israel. Look how they’re all coming together after a year of hatred and antagonism, helping each other, supporting each other. That’s a wonderful, positive atmosphere in Israel, which brings out the best in us. And therefore, I think we have to focus on the good, on those people who are alive, on those people who need our help. That is where we should be focusing and putting all our emphasis, not on harking back on the horrible things that have happened. And in the same way, if the world is against us, the world has been against us before. But we have had good people who have been prepared to stand up for us.

Now, I don’t put my faith in , says the Bible. Don’t trust princes. I’m delighted that Biden said nice things, that he is supporting Israel up to a point. But he has his agenda, which is not our agenda. Our agenda is our survival. And we do that by strengthening ourselves and by doing what we can to repair the damage, the pain and the suffering. And so, in one sense, I can, like Musk has just said this morning, this is third world, the Third World War. And you can look at the axis of evil, which has got stronger and stronger. And the forces of good have got weaker and weaker. And we are divided amongst ourselves. And the hatred on the universities of Israel is enormous. But it has been brewing for years and years. And we did nothing about it. It was our fault. In the same way, we did nothing about Gaza and the danger from Gaza over this period. We’ve had the wrong policies. We must now focus on the right policies. And we must rely on our inherent talent and goodness that we don’t go raping and torturing people, little boys and old women, to give us the moral superiority to stand up to our enemies and make sure we survive. So I hope, I’m hopeful, I pray, I sing, I look at the bright side of life and know that we will survive. Verse 17 says, men come. Well, you know, verse 17, like many verses, has words that can be understood in different ways. I mentioned before the idea that means everybody in Israel, although sometimes it can mean the men or the sons.

But when we have children, we say we bless the banim, the children. It doesn’t just mean the sons. It’s a generic term, like people. Alfred, do not see the kid. I propose that the Masoretic pointing is an error, possibly during the Babylonian exile, and the original reading is chelev, fat. Well, that’s possible. Chalav and chelev are the same words, the same letters. But there are separate laws about not eating all chelev, not just in a gedi. There are laws against eating chelev, the fats of the cows or the sheep and the goats. So it doesn’t make sense to say here it is that chelev. It makes sense to say that this is another chelev. But technically, you’re right. It is the same word, but look at the context and you see that it’s unlikely to be a specific mention of one animal’s fat when we have a general law about all animals’ fats.

Are fowl categorised as meat, says Anthony. A chicken mother doesn’t have milk. Very, very good point. 2,000 years ago, the rabbinic community was split into two. Those who said it’s only a quadruped that you can boil in its mother’s milk because it says gedi. It says nothing about chickens. And in fact, the famous rabbi, Rabbi Yossi HaGalili, Yossi, who lived in the Galil, did eat chicken in milk and his family ate chicken in milk. And when they asked him why he’s doing this, he said, because we’ve always done this. Well, in the life of Yossi HaGalili, they had a convention. They had a gathering in which they took a vote and they agreed that chicken should be included. And the reason why is because chicken was considered part of, in the Roman festive system, in their banquets that they had, chicken was served as part of the meat part of the meal in distinction to the fish part of the meal, in distinction to the dessert part of the meal and other condiments. And so they took a vote and they decided that you cannot have chicken with milk.

At which point, Yossi HaGalili’s children turned to him and said, well, dad, what are we going to do? Up to now, we’ve been eating chicken and milk. Why can’t we go on eating chicken and milk? To which he said, the reason is because up to my time, there hadn’t been a decision. There hadn’t been a vote. And therefore we went according to what our family tradition was. Now that there’s been a vote, you have to accept the majority decision. And that’s how law developed. And that’s how law has developed. And you might think it’s a wrong decision, but nevertheless, that’s the law. Heresy.

Malach, this is Alfred, is not an emissary, but rather an emanation, which is part of God and remains part of God. That’s why the verb continues in the first person. And we have the same verbal construction. Malach followed by first person verb in Bereshit, Abraham, possibly at the Akedah, but I’m not sure. Yes, there are all these different references to a Malach. And these references to Malach are always in the singular with one or two exceptions. And the one or two exceptions is when Abraham has a vision of Malachim, of angels. So there are references to, or messengers, but nevertheless, despite the fact, the words mean the same. You want to read them that way? You’re welcome to. And I wouldn’t say you’re wrong, but I think that it makes sense given that the term Malach is used so often in a context where clearly it is a messenger and not some other form of being, means that it’s more likely to be the more reliable explanation.

Q: Are you using Eichsheim translation this week?

A: No, I don’t know what translation I’m using this week. Usually I’m using a JPS translation, which I disappear with most of the time. But as I’ve told you before, there are so many different translations and there’s so many variations. That’s why I like to look at the etymological basis in Hebrew, because it’s a Hebrew word. There’s , also the former slaves, non-Jews, who would be included as Jews after receiving the Ten Commandments, not just poetry. Yes, it’s possible to say that. There’s no express statement of it, but it is possible to say that this includes or could include others. Thank you, Clara. Alfred Repetition, Hen Diades, a feature of Ugaritic and Homeric poetry into the classical period. Yes, I’ve always said there is cross-fertilization of culture and language between the different cultures and the different peoples living in the same area as there is between Arabic and Hebrew.

Q: Richard, does Moses go up the mountain two or three times? Isn’t classical answer two?

A: Well, that’s what we’re going to look at, because some say six, some say five, as well as two. So that’s to be dealt with next week. Happening, not happened.

Yes, you’re right, Rita. It is happening. Thank you, Lisa. I’m glad you enjoyed this session.

Q: Do you feel the term segula in verse five is fundamental cause of antisemitism?

A: There is antisemitism, because it comes from envy, but people who are biassed anyway will find any excuse. So I think, you know, using this is a justification after the fact. People didn’t like them for whatever reason, whether it was just because they were strangers or different or envied them or admired them and then thought that that made them better, whatever. Julian, same with Sunak in the UK, except I didn’t expect him to go to visit the synagogue. Still, I was surprised that he and Bin weren’t totally bad people. Yes, yes, yes. I was surprised and particularly given the amount of anger in the Muslim family on the world. On the other hand, remember, he’s not Muslim. He is from a Hindu background and Hindus have always been favourably disposed to Israel and to the Jewish people. So we have to be very careful about not typecasting everybody. Thank you, Karl. I’m glad you liked it.

Q: Is it okay to bomb and kill civilians, including children who’ve done nothing against you? Aren’t these crimes against humanity?

A: Well, they’re not actually in a situation where you are under attack. What is wrong is when you target these children and target people, but when they are being used as human shields, they are being used as part of an enemy. And this is the argument that’s going on all the time, that Israel is no better than the Hamas. And the answer is it is better than Hamas because Israel tries to avoid civilian casualties, whereas Hamas makes a point of civilian casualties. So I don’t think you can compare those two. I regret any death, and Israel goes out of its way to avoid death and gives warning, which Hamas never gave warning. So, you know, don’t make false equivalents. I don’t think that’s fair. And on that point, I will leave you for today and see you, please God, next week.