Unscrolled : 54 Writers and Artists Wrestle With the Torah (9780761178743)

by Bennett, Roger (EDT)

  Here he is being given a new task; he is to become a priest. Tzav, I now see, is Aaron’s instruction manual, a ninety-seven-verse “to do” list dictated by God via Moses: Prepare flour on a griddle, divide meals into morning and evening portions, eat the leftovers of a sin offering. The directives are endless, the prescriptions exact. Yet Aaron does not complain once. In fact, throughout the entire Torah portion, Aaron does not utter a single word.

  I am irritated for him.

  As kids, my sisters and I promised one another that we would never become rabbis. Being a rabbi’s daughters had taken its toll on us—the seemingly endless “short” stops at the hospital on our way to dinner; comments of praise or derision about our father, which somehow seemed equally appropriate to share with his children; couches re-covered with a mistaken fabric but not able to be returned because they were done as a favor by a congregant. Yes I complained, but I also understood that this job of modern priest required offerings to be made morning and evening—that when our portion was the leftovers, we could not be picky.

  My father, who shares his Hebrew name with Moses, not Aaron, was bound to his duties, but not so easily compliant. He chafed at being told what to do. He had his own creative approach to the rabbinate and saw his job as interpreting tradition in a way that was relevant and less about how things should be done. This meant that at a young age, I already knew about disgruntled synagogue presidents, split board votes, and what it meant to leave a synagogue with half the congregation to start one of your own. Around that time my mother moved to Arizona. Being the rabbi’s wife had taken its toll on her as well.

  These old memories return as I read Aaron’s new job description, and I feel suddenly that this time, someone must speak for Aaron, must say what he himself does not, cannot, say. “Wait, God,” I call out. “I OBJECT. This new duty may be what is needed for the people, but what about Aaron? What of his children, his sons, who will also be forced to be priests?”

  I have read ahead and know how the story will end: Two of Aaron’s sons will get too close to the fire when making an offering and will be consumed by flames. The sacrificers will become the sacrificed.

  And yet, years later I am in Jerusalem at a dinner party, sitting on one end of a meticulously set table with thirty other guests. I suddenly notice a woman staring at me. She calls out, “Are you Martin Levin’s daughter?” Yes, I nod. Knife to wineglass, she silences the other conversations. “Listen,” she says. “I have a story to tell.” The story is of her son who is mentally disabled and how one morning, many years ago in synagogue, a rabbi gave her son a spur-of-the-moment bar mitzvah, something she had never thought possible. The rabbi called him up to the Torah and then led the entire congregation in dancing so joyous that it spilled out into the street. The congregation was celebrating her son, welcoming him as a full member of the community. “I will never forget what your father did for my family,” she says. Suddenly, she is crying and I am crying, too.

  I have seen through the years how rabbis have special access to people because they are present when people are at their most joyous, most vulnerable, most pained, most in need of hope. My father knows that in these moments, there is possibility, and that has always been more than enough for him.

  I whisper through the letters of the text, “Was that enough for you, Aaron?” And I wait.

  “You shall not eat of their flesh or touch their carcasses; they are unclean for you.” —Leviticus 11:8

  SH’MINI (“Eighth”)

  Leviticus 9:1–11:47

  It’s a dramatic appearance. eight days later, Moses convenes Aaron, his sons, and Israel’s elders, and commands them to arrange a complicated series of sacrifices involving a ram, a he-goat, an ox, some calves, and a meal offering.

  The entire Israelite tribe assembles as Aaron goes to work amid the blood, organs, and smoke of the sacrifices. As he raises his arms to bless the people, the Lord appears in the form of fire, which bursts forth to consume the burnt offering. At the sight of this spectacle, the Israelites scream, fall forward, and bow down to the ground.

  Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu set a fire and load it with incense to make an offering that God has not commanded. The Lord sets them on fire, burning them to death in an instant. Moses has to explain to Aaron that God meant it when speaking these words:

  “Through those near to Me I show Myself holy,

  And gain glory before all the people.”

  Aaron remains silent.

  Moses instructs Aaron’s cousins Mishael and Elzaphan to dispose of the burned bodies and warns Aaron and his family against following the traditional mourning ritual; if they tear their clothes or bare their heads, they will be struck down. The Lord takes a moment to prohibit Aaron and the priests from drinking alcohol before they enter the Tent of Meeting; they must be able to distinguish between the holy and the profane. The sacrifices then continue.

  The birth of kosher

  God fills Moses and Aaron in on the details of kosher food. The Israelites are allowed to eat any animal that has real hooves, and that chews the cud. Camels, a hare-like animal called daman, and swine are expressly prohibited. Any fish can be eaten if it has fins and scales.

  Birds of prey, including the eagle, vulture, black vulture, hawks, and falcons, are off-limits. Ravens, nighthawks, ostriches, seagulls, little owls, great owls, white owls, cormorants, pelicans, bustards, storks, herons, hoopoes, and bats are prohibited.

  All winged insects that walk are considered an abomination, though locusts, crickets, and grasshoppers are permitted.

  A detailed list of animals deemed unclean is offered; it includes every beast that does not chew the cud or walk on paws. Anyone who carries the carcasses remains unclean until the evening and will have to wash their clothing.

  God wraps up the legislation by reminding them of the intention behind the laws, declaring, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” It becomes the Israelites’ task to distinguish between living things that can be eaten and those that cannot.

  David Sax

  Okay, this all seems pretty straightforward.

  No pigs, shrimp, oysters, or mussels. Steer clear of the baby goats boiled in their mother’s milk, not to mention eels and sharks, crocodiles and geckos, hawks and vultures, and the rock badger (and I’m guessing that You’re also implying all other badgers as well).

  Now, here’s a genuine product that’s clearly on Your hit list: Baconnaise, a spreadable mayonnaise, touted as a condiment and dressing, that tastes like the salted belly fat of the cloven-footed, hoof-parted, non-cud-chewing swine that are clearly verboten (right there in clause seven). It’s made by J&D’s, a food company based in Seattle whose slogan proclaims, “Everything Should Taste Like Bacon,” and it works to fulfill that commandment with products like bacon salt, bacon popcorn, bacon gravy, bacon lip balm, and bacon-flavored envelopes (called MMMMMMvelopes).

  Sounds like treif city to me. Cue the fire, bring on the brimstone.

  Wait, it’s kosher? Certified by the Orthodox Union to be consumed with meat, dairy, and parve foods? Seriously?

  Okay, but how about the belly-crawling shellfish buffet offered by the idolaters at Dyna-Sea: crab salad and lobster rolls fit for a Kennebunkport summer’s lunch, and pink shrimp curled around a martini glass, mocking You from their horseradish-spiked red cocktail sauce, colored the very fire of hell they’re surely destined for.

  Kosher, too? Certified by Kof-K for consumption with all foods. Oh, come on!

  For close to three thousand years, Your chosen people have largely followed the dietary laws, avoiding the unclean creatures, making delicious brisket out of the clean ones, all while pretending You never really mentioned the whole edible-insects thing (locusts, crickets, and grasshoppers are perfectly kosher, because they have jointed legs, though the fried-cricket market of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, has yet to take off).

  Th
en, in the mid-twentieth century, some among Your faithful realized that the devout were deprived, and, like Soviets trading a month’s supply of toilet paper for a pair of Levi’s, they would pay handsomely for the illusion of transgression wrapped in the legal safe ground of kosher certification.

  “Look,” these people say, “it’s certified, within the letter of the law, kosher as a matzo. What’s the harm in eating a Whopper at the kosher Burger King in Costa Rica, or McNuggets at one of several kosher McDonald’s in Israel? If eating a Reuben sandwich with kosher corned beef and a slice of soy-based cheese was a sin, wouldn’t that be there in the Sh’mini? Wouldn’t there be a clause saying that we shall not eat foods that pretend to be unclean, even though they aren’t?”

  Decades from now, a bar mitzvah buffet at a kosher banquet hall will resemble a Roman feast, once the tempeh tipping point is breached and test-tube experiments with embryonic protein cultures yield remarkably tasty kosher animal flesh. We’ll bypass the mock shrimp scampi wrapped in mock bacon, and head straight for the mock alligator jambalaya, mock eagle-egg sliders, and the pièce de résistance, an entire roast mock suckling pig, apple and all, carved with great flourish, in an act of legally certified, morally questionable mockery that the devout will eat with a greedy ferocity, grease painting their lips, as they turn to a shocked-looking elderly relative and say:

  “Don’t worry, it’s perfectly kosher.”

  “When a person has on the skin of his body a swelling, a rash, or a discoloration, and it develops into a scaly affection on the skin of his body, it shall be reported to Aaron, the priest, or to one of his sons, the priests.” —Leviticus 13:2

  TAZRI·A (“She conceives”)

  Leviticus 12:1–13:59

  The lord’s next briefing revolves around the rules of purity. Moses learns that a woman is considered unclean for seven days after birthing a male, remaining in a state of “blood purification” for thirty-three days, during which time she cannot touch anything holy or enter the sanctuary. In the case of the birth of a daughter, however, the blood purification period is much longer, stretching to sixty-six days.

  Upon concluding this blood purification process, the mother has to present the priest with a young lamb for a burnt offering and a pigeon or turtledove for a sin offering. Once the priest makes these two offerings on her behalf, the mother will be considered clean.

  Monitoring the swollen

  The Lord shows Moses and Aaron how to cope with bodily swellings and rashes. Priests are to perform an examination of the offending area and follow God’s detailed procedures to determine whether the patient is merely unclean or in need of isolation.

  When a burn victim is examined, the priest has to inspect the depth of the wound and its coloring to determine whether the scarring is unclean. The same procedure has to be followed by those suffering from a disease of the head or beard.

  Anyone found to be suffering from skin infections is to dwell outside the camp and have his clothes torn, head bared, and mouth covered while announcing himself with a shout of warning: “Unclean! Unclean!”

  If a similar scaly infection erupts like a mold on wool or linen fabric, the priest shall determine if it can merely be washed or if burning is necessary.

  Jamie Glassman

  tinea cru-ris [kroo r-is], (noun), (medical). A dermatophyte fungal infection, or ringworm, involving especially the groin region in any sex, though more often seen in teenage males. Also known as eczema marginatum or (colloquial) crotch itch, crotch rot, gym itch, jock itch, jock rot, or in Budapest in 1989, scrot rot.

  Whenever I read a portion of the Tanakh translated into English, I am taken back to my days as a twelve-year-old boy in Liverpool studying for my bar mitzvah.

  This was the moment when I was to become part of the Jewish religion, with its thousands of years of tradition and its code of ethics that had survived numerous catastrophes.

  After months of learning, practice, and nerves, it hadn’t crossed my mind to translate the words I would be singing to my local Hebrew congregation. I had just assumed that the words that I would sing would surely resonate and move me.

  I can remember the moment my heart sank when I discovered that my parashah—a section from Exodus known as Mishpatim—was a long list of laws about the treatment of slaves and what to do with your neighbor’s lost ox should you see it wandering.

  But I pity any poor twelve-year-old child who is saddled with this portion, Tazri·a, and reads it for the first time. It is a list of dos and don’ts for any leprosy sufferer. Could there be any less meaningful chunk of the Bible?

  Things like When a person has on the skin of his body a swelling, a rash, or a discoloration that develops into a scaly or leprous affliction on the skin of his body, he shall present himself to the priest.

  Or, If a white swelling streaked with red develops where the inflammation was, he shall present himself to the priest. The person with a leprous affliction, his clothes shall be rent and burnt, and he shall call out, “Unclean! Unclean!”

  Surely there can be no more proof of the irrelevance of the Bible to our modern lives than this parashah.

  That is unless you consider Maimonides’ thoughts on Tazri·a. A twelfth-century Jewish philosopher—you may know him as Rambam—Maimonides broadened this parashah into one of the most important lessons any teenage boy could ever learn.

  When the Bible says “leprosy,” he wrote, think of it as any fungal infection.

  The author attempts to sanitize his underwear in Budapest, 1989.

  I learned Rambam’s lesson the hard way. Aged eighteen, I was traveling around Europe with a monthlong rail pass and two unfortunate friends.

  Unfortunate because they would have to share train carriages, hotel rooms, and a tent with an overweight young man with a very serious case of tinea cruris.

  Long walks on sweltering summer days through Europe’s great capitals with inappropriate polyester clothing might not have been what Maimonides had in mind, but the result was the same.

  A mixture of stoicism and pride stopped me from seeing a doctor in a country where I knew only a smattering of the local language, so I walked through the streets of Paris and Rome like John Wayne after three weeks riding on the plains.

  A fellow traveler attempts to scrape off the affliction in Padua, Italy.

  The affliction was not without its benefits. There was some tender mercy on the long, crowded night train to Budapest, when it was impossible to get the much coveted banquette compartment in which third-class passengers might catch some sleep. That is, until I walked in stinking of rotting flesh, causing the carriage to empty within minutes. No sooner had the last bunch of young Euro lovelies fled the compartment than the choice of banquettes was ours.

  Rambam didn’t say this, but I have added my own level of interpretation to the great scholar of Cordoba’s. Instead of a “priest,” perhaps the parashah should say a “pharmacist.” For in the back streets of Budapest my pain outweighed my shame when I limped into a local pharmacy and tried to mime my condition to the old man behind the counter.

  He spoke no more English than I did Hungarian, so I pointed to my crotch and waved a hand in front of my nose, letting him see the agony on my face as I made each step.

  His diagnosis was immediate. “Scrot rot!” he proclaimed with a theatrical clap of his palms, and he handed me a cream that cost me a few forints.

  After days of suffering, just one application of his wondrous cream and my “leprosy” had gone.

  So Tarzi·a is proof of the great wisdom of the Bible across continents and millennia, for this sufferer went to the priest/pharmacist and exclaimed, “I am Unclean! I am Unclean!” and an ointment was procured and the priest/pharmacist did make him clean once more.

  And that night, the offending polyester shorts did warm us as they were tossed upon the fire.

 
If you know of any bar mitzvah boy or any young man in his teens about to embark on a long and possibly sweaty journey, I urge you to point him in the direction of Tazri·a. For there can be no greater lesson for a young man of this age.

  Tell him that if he should experience a swelling, a rash, or a discoloration that develops into a scaly or leprous affection on the skin of his body, he should wash, dry, and air the affected area as often as possible, together with a generous application of a clotrimazole antifungal cream, available in any pharmacy, in any city in the world.

  “This shall be the ritual for a leper at the time that he is to be cleansed.” —Leviticus 14:2

  M’TZORA (“Being diseased”)

  Leviticus 14:1–15:33

  The scapegoating of the bird: the lord explains to Moses how a leprous or “skin-blanched” patient should be cleansed. The priest is to visit the diseased person outside the camp. If the infection appears to have cleared up, the priest is to take two live, pure birds, cedar wood, crimson stuff, and hyssop. One bird shall be killed, and the other is to be dipped in a mixture of bird blood and the other ingredients. After sprinkling the potion on the patient, the surviving bird is to be let free. The sick person shall wash his clothing, shave off all his hair, bathe, and then be deemed clean.

  Once back in camp, the individual must remain outside his tent for seven days, and then shave off all his body hair again, wash his clothing, and bathe before being declared clean. The next day he shall make a series of sacrifices, in the course of which the priest shall dab oil on the head of the cleansed Israelite.

  Home improvement

  The Lord then teaches Moses and Aaron how to cope with the case of a mold-infected house in Canaan. The home is to be evacuated before the priest enters. If the priest identifies green or reddish streaks penetrating the wall, the house shall be closed up for seven days. If the infection continues to spread, the contaminated stone has to be ripped out and cast outside of the city. The rest of the house is to be thoroughly scraped and replastered. If the disease still remains, the house must be torn down and the debris discarded outside the city.