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

by Bennett, Roger (EDT)

No work shall be done on Sabbath, the seventh day.

  Passover will start on the fourteenth day of the first month and last seven days, with the first and last days considered sacred.

  A Harvest Festival will occur fifty days later.

  Rosh Hashana, on the first day of the seventh month, will be marked by complete rest and shofar blasts.

  Yom Kippur will be on the tenth day of the seventh month. Any person who does not participate will be cut off from his kin, and those who ignore the day and work shall be put to death.

  Sukkot, on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, will involve dwelling in huts for seven days and employing palm and citrus trees in celebration.

  These are listed as the Lord’s sacred occasions in which sacrifices should be offered.

  Moses is advised to make sure the Israelites bring clear oil to kindle the Temple lights and keep them burning. They also have to provide bread for the altar every Sabbath.

  A story is then told of a man whose mother is Israelite and whose father is Egyptian. The man had a fight with another Israelite, during which he used God’s name in vain; the “half-Israelite” is placed in custody to await the Lord’s ruling. God commands that he be taken outside the camp and stoned before those who witnessed the blasphemy, and he is.

  God commands that blasphemers be put to death, as well as murderers. An Israelite who kills another man’s beast has to make restitution. Those who maim others will have to suffer the same injury in return: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for a tooth.

  Dana Adam Shapiro

  We

  I’ve been thumping the Bible

  And thinking of truth

  Of an eye for an eye

  And a tooth for a tooth.

  Of revenge, retribution

  AYIN TACHAT AYIN,

  That dish best served cold

  Was it cooked on Mount Zion?

  To wish for the murdering man to drop dead

  Got me thinking of what Dr. Seuss might have said.

  So I sat, then I stood.

  Then I sat back and wondered

  Of times when I’ve stumbled and bumbled and blundered,

  Of times I’ve been too cool or too proud to say

  That “I’m sorry,

  I’m sorry for being that way.”

  But it’s not just a lack of I’m sorrys that sway

  Peaceful people to huff and to puff in that way

  That we all know can lead to a POW!

  Or a THWACK!

  Or a monkey Velcro-ing itself to your back.

  It’s the triumph of ego.

  A hex laid upon us.

  That need to get even

  Or LEX TALIONIS.

  Now think of the eye for the eye

  And the tooth—

  Why, it sounds so unfriendly,

  It sounds so uncouth.

  Though intended to moderate vengeance, instead

  It makes people grow eyes in the back of their head.

  But imagine if “eye” became “I”

  As in: You

  And if TOOTH became TRUTH.

  Tell me, what would you do?

  Yes, an I for an I

  And some truths for some truces,

  We’ll unplug the chairs

  And unravel the nooses.

  An eye for an eye equals blindness,

  You’ll see,

  But an I for an I

  Makes for something called

  We.

  “But in the seventh year the land shall have a Sabbath of complete rest, a Sabbath of the Lord; you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard.” —Leviticus 25:4

  B’HAR (“On the Mount”)

  Leviticus 25:1–26:2

  The lord broaches the notion of a Sabbatical for the land with Moses. Every seven years, the fields are to be left unsown and the vine- yards untended, so the land can recuperate. In the year after the seventh Sabbatical, the fiftieth year, the Israelites are to celebrate a jubilee with a loud horn blast. The jubilee year is akin to a Sabbatical year where the land will lie fallow, but in addition, all property will revert to the possession of its original owners, unless it is an urban dwelling in a walled city.

  Indebted

  If an Israelite falls on such hard times that he has to borrow money, interest cannot be charged. If the Israelite is unable to repay the debt and has to offer his own services instead, he cannot be treated as a slave. He shall work as a hired laborer and be freed in the jubilee year, because no one Israelite can rule over another.

  Mireille Silcoff

  I liked my school, because my school was quiet. In retrospect it was also a dour place: The heavy shoes of rabbis and the stern heels of French teachers echoed through dark green hallways that smelled like old wet paper. This is not the sort of place a child would normally relish. More like something out of Pink Floyd’s The Wall.

  But I liked it. You could hunker down there, between the pencil shavings and the monolithic walls of books with burgundy pleather covers. I believed I had a secret. It was one of those innately childish beliefs, like thinking that your voice is deeper than everyone else’s, because that’s how it sounds in your ears. My mother imagined I did well in school because I had smarts. But I knew my scholarly success as a third grader had nothing to do with intellect. It had to do with stillness. I liked sticking my head into something and then leaving it there for a while. It felt, somehow, homey.

  This was not the sort of home my mother approved of. An active woman of Tel Aviv provenance, an Israeli folk dancer in both calling and profession, she held that life, the childhood phase of it in particular, was synonymous with movement. This meant that if any of my time was in her hands, it would most likely be spent in a leotard.

  Witness: It’s 1981. I am eight years old. I am just minding my own business, reading a cereal box while eating its cereal for breakfast. My mother is playing a cassette of unspeakably bad Israeli folk music while reminding me of my week:

  “Okay! Today, Monday! After school you have rhythmic gymnastics, Wednesday you have Broadway, Thursday you have modern dance, and Friday, danse ouverte.”

  My mother knew that I was a hopeless dancer. But four days a week, she had her rehearsals, and they went late, and she needed somewhere to put me. She didn’t want me to be one of those sad kids with a key tied around my neck, sitting in a house, doing nothing. And I suppose in early 1980s Quebec, extracurriculars were limited. And so dance and dance and dance and dreaded open dance it was.

  On some mornings, I pleaded with her to just let me come home after school, to the silent house. I would imagine the darkening at 4:00 p.m. in the Petits Anges dance studio with Gerry Laframboise, the rhythmic gymnastics instructor, who wore a black scoop-neck with chest hair sprouting forth, like a bearish Marcel Marceau, and I would feel bone tired: the overheated locker room; the running around in leg warmers with an unfurling ribbon on a stick (and for what purpose? this ribbon on a stick?); the hungry lineup for miniature boxes of hard raisins; the chattering car pool home.

  In school, most of the books I had for my classes contained central sections of calligraphic-looking Hebrew writing framed by columns of smaller Hebrew writing. The school was always cold. You kept your head in your weekly Torah portion, the big writing, and then the small. You used the heat of your eight-year-old mind to make the blocks of text come apart.

  I chose to write about this parashah—B’har, a far-from-exciting bit, largely about leap years in farming practice—because it is, even over anything in the big bang of B’reishit, the one I remember best from my primary school years.

  This is because I took B’har out of the book and put it into my life. Children are capable of surprisingly lateral thinking. I thought, For every extended period of planting, the farm
er gives the land a period to rest. God says the farmer has to, or everything will get too exhausted. The farmer does not plow, or dig, or sow, or prance about in French Canadian dance studios balancing ball on chest like a trained seal. The farmer, might, say, kick back in a cozy bedroom with a nice chapter book in a quiet, empty house at dusk.

  There was no way I could have persuaded my mother to cut my extracurriculars by quoting Bible passages about taking breaks. So, God on my side, I began lying instead. One week I made my modern dance instructor sick, and the next Gerry Laframboise “canceled class.” The week after that I had a sudden headache for Broadway, and the week after that my mother may have understood something: I got a key, and it went around my neck. And sometimes, when I was sure I was alone, I danced like crazy in my bedroom.

  “And if, for all that, you do not obey Me, I will go on to discipline you sevenfold for your sins.” —Leviticus 26:18

  B’HUKKOTAI (“By my decrees”)

  Leviticus 26:3–27:34

  Reward! god reminds moses of the covenant. As long as it is maintained, God will sup- ply rain at the appropriate time and guarantee a bountiful harvest so the Israelites can eat their fill and dwell securely in their land.

  Peace shall reign. The Israelites will not be threatened by either man or beast. All enemies will be put to the sword. Just five Israelites will be imbued with sufficient power to rout 100 of their enemies. One hundred can make ten thousand flee.

  The Lord will ensure that the Israelites multiply, while residing in their midst.

  And the punishment

  However, if the Israelites do not maintain the covenant and keep the Lord’s commandments, misery will befall them. The Israelites will be beset by consumption and fever. They will sow their seed fruitlessly. Their enemies will dominate them. Their land will yield no produce. Wild beasts will kill their children and cattle. The Israelites will withdraw into their cities, yet an epidemic will run among them and their enemies will control them.

  Hunger will set in, and they will be forced to cannibalize their sons and daughters. They will be scattered among the nations as their land becomes desolate and their cities ruined. The Israelites will be made so nervous that the sound of a leaf will make them flinch, and they will fall over though no one is pursuing them. They will rot in the lands of their enemies.

  Those who survive will confess their guilt and the guilt of their fathers, and they will atone, and God will remember the covenant made with Isaac and with Abraham and will remember the land.

  A costly vow

  As an appendix, God affixes values for Israelites who want to consecrate or sanctify their lives to the Lord, or the lives of family members, as a ritual and voluntary act of dedication to God. The cost of consecration is set out as follows:

  50 shekels of silver for a male aged 20–60 years old

  30 shekels for a woman aged 20–60 years old

  20 shekels for a boy aged 5–20 years old

  10 shekels for a girl aged 5–20 years old

  5 shekels for a boy aged 1 month to 5 years

  3 shekels for a girl aged 1 month to 5 years

  15 shekels for a man 60 years or over

  10 shekels for a woman 60 years or over

  If the person who wants to make a vow cannot afford the above sums, a priest is to fix a fair price.

  Christopher Noxon

  Part Four

  Numbers

  Welcome to the biblical smorgasbord. Numbers is a grab bag of text, akin to a movie made of the discarded scenes that hit the cutting-room floor only to be resurrected and rush-released.

  The promised land is close. The twelve tribes are polled, organized, and detailed. Yet insurrection is never far away, and it often seems like the Israelites’ greatest threat is their own self-doubt: They continue to grumble their way ungratefully toward self-actualization.

  Despite this, the Israelites have become a hardened, martial people—one their opponents can only gaze at fearfully when their armies are scattered across the valley floor.

  Eli Horowitz

  B’midbar (“In the desert”) Numbers 1:1–4:20

  Justin Rocket Silverman

  Naso (“Lift up”) Numbers 4:21–7:89

  Eddy Portnoy

  B’ha·alot’kha (“When you step up”) Numbers 8:1–12:16

  Caitlin Roper

  Sh’lakh L’kha (“Send to you”) Numbers 13:1–15:41

  Adam Levin

  Korah (“Korah”) Numbers 16:1–18:32

  Rachel Axler

  Hukkat (“Decrees”) Numbers 19:1–22:1

  Shoshana Berger

  Balak (“Balak”) Numbers 22:2–25:9

  Larry Smith

  Pinhas (“Pinhas”) Numbers 25:10–30:1

  Gabe Delahaye

  Mattot (“Tribes”) Numbers 30:2–32:42

  Rebecca Bortman

  Masei (“Journeys”) Numbers 33:1–36:13

  “The Lord said to Moses: Record every firstborn male of the Israelite people from the age of one month up, and make a list of their names.” —Numbers 3:40

  B’MIDBAR (“In the desert”)

  Numbers 1:1–4:20

  Census II. On the first day of the second month of the second year since the Exodus, God instructs Moses to take a census of the Israelite community. He and Aaron are to record the names of every male twenty years and older who can wage war.

  The census determines the tribes to be sized as follows: Reuben: 46,500; Simeon: 59,300; Gad: 45,650; Judah: 74,600; Issachar: 54,400; Zebulun: 57,400; Ephraim: 40,500; Manasseh: 32,200; Benjamin: 35,400; Dan: 62,700; Asher: 41,500; Naphtali: 53,400. A grand total of 603,550.

  Meet the Levites

  God instructs the Levite class to dedicate themselves to looking after the Tabernacle—carrying and guarding it as well as setting it up and breaking it down. The responsibility is the Levites’ alone. Any outsider who encroaches upon it will be put to death.

  The Lord then informs Moses how the Israelites should march and camp, tribe by tribe, in fixed positions around the Tent of Meeting.

  The Levites’ responsibilities are further delineated. They are to serve the priestly class. Moses records the name of every Levite aged over one month, spread amongst the Kohathites, Gershonites, and Merarites—a total of 22,200. Each is given a separate task.

  God decrees that the Levites will be treated as substitutes for the firstborn sons who had to be ritually redeemed in God’s eyes, causing Moses to record the names of the 22,273 firstborn sons.

  Finally, Moses is instructed to take a census of the Kohathites, aged thirty to fifty years old, who are responsible for the most sacred objects in the Tent of Meeting surrounding the Ark of the Covenant. God reminds Moses and Aaron to prohibit the Kohathites from entering the sanctuary while they are performing their duties, to protect them from instant death.

  Eli Horowitz

  The Bible is, of course, full of excitement: fighting and feasts and sex and weird food rules and weird sex rules. It’s a real page-turner, no doubt. But amid those rollicking good times, every now and then there’s a . . . pause. A moment of reflection, or a meditation on core values—or, in this case, the logistical procedure for a regional census, followed by detailed results of said census and also some discussion of campground zoning.

  Of course, that’s just a rough summary. The actual text gets much juicier. I mean, this census isn’t going to just organize itself, is it? Of course not, and don’t worry—the Lord has thought of everything. For example, you were probably wondering who was going to help Moses and Aaron count the members of the Asher clan; well, that’d be Ochran’s son Pagiel. That is hammered out tribe by tribe, and then we learn the exciting results: There are 54,400 adult males in the Issachar clan, 57,400 in Zebulun, a mere 32,200 in Manasseh, and so on.

  If this is sounding a
little dull: Yes. It is. Fortunately, it’s followed by a lengthy description of where each clan should camp: who’s next to whom, who’s down south, who marches in what order. It’s actually somewhat soothing, sort of like reading box scores—and much like box scores, little narratives sometimes start to emerge: Hmm, looks like Asher got kind of screwed, placed all the way up north and squashed next to those noisy Naphtalites. Mostly, though, it’s about as exciting as a wedding seating chart read aloud by Werner Herzog. (Which is pretty much what it is, depending on one’s religious feelings toward Werner Herzog.)

  What I haven’t mentioned, though, is that one clan got excluded from all this fun, all the camping and counting: the Levites. The Lord forbade Moses from including them in the census, instead reserving them as the special Tabernacle-tending squad. Hmm! Starting to get interesting, maybe? Wait, not so fast, says the Lord. Remember how I said not to include the Levites in that census? Well, that’s because I want them counted in a separate census, all 22,000 of them. Okay, and now that we’re rolling, how about just one more census, this time just to see how many Kohathites are among those Levites.

  And so now we’re ready for some action: the Tabernacle, the Ark of the Pact. There are blue cloths and purple cloths and a crimson cloth. There are lamps and tongs and ladles, and there’s a surprising amount of dolphin skin. It’s all described in great detail (of course), and guess who gets to carry it all? The lucky Kohathites, well counted thanks to those dogged census-takers.

  And then it ends.

  And so I am left looking for lessons, the essential truths at the heart of this seemingly mundane recitation. Does this passage teach us the benefits of taking stock, counting up who we are and what we have? Or is it, perhaps, a meditation on neighborhood dynamics, urban planning, the diverse roles that make up a community? Maybe. It’s possible. But maybe what we’re reading here is more just a reminder that sometimes things are a little . . . boring. Some days you might find yourself spending hours rearranging your living room, or alphabetizing your record albums, or choosing which among your children will serve as specialized ark-porters. These days can feel futile and irrelevant, and maybe they are. But these futile days stretch back as far as days have been counted, and most likely will stretch forward as far as there are any left to count. Moses had to organize a team of census-takers. Shelumiel son of Zurishaddai had to find his camping spot on a seating chart. All our days are counted—even the dull ones.