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

by Bennett, Roger (EDT)

  The dire threat of worshipping idols is restated. Moses warns that once an Israelite begins to express curiosity about foreign gods, he will soon find himself partaking in immoral behavior and human sacrifice. He also warns against believing in false prophets and dream diviners who might rise up. God’s orders are the only ones to be followed. Anyone—even close kin—seeking to lead an Israelite astray should be stoned to death. If a town turns against God, every resident should be killed and the town burned to the ground.

  Kosher restated

  As a holy people, the Israelites should not mutilate their bodies or shave the front of their heads. Nor are they to eat anything deemed abhorrent. A list of permitted animals is provided: the ox, the sheep, the goat, the deer, the gazelle, the roebuck, the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope, the mountain sheep—any animal that has cleft hooves and that chews the cud. Camels, the hare, and the daman lack proper hooves, and pigs do not regurgitate the cud so are taboo. Fish can be eaten as long as they have fins and scales. Birds of prey are unclean, as are winged, swarming things. It is also prohibited to boil a kid in its mother’s milk.

  The obligations of holy people

  The Israelites are instructed to set aside a tenth of their harvest every year and to make a pilgrimage to a destination God will name. Every seventh year they are to forgive all debts and release all slaves. They are also to ensure there are no needy or poor members of their community. If a slave does not want to be freed, the master will have to execute a ritual in which the slave’s ear is pierced with an awl.

  The festivals of Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot are restated—Passover to commemorate the exodus from Egypt, the agrarian festival of Shavuot, and the booth-dwelling festival of Sukkot, a time of “nothing but joy.” All three of the festivals will involve male Israelites traveling to worship with offerings to a place God will determine.

  Samantha Shapiro

  The command issued in this parashah to not-eat (lo tochlu) certain foods has had amazing staying power. From juice fasters to political vegans to the gluten-free, the carb-free, Lent observers, halal eaters, hippies avoiding “nightshade” plants, and those swearing off sugar, it is not hard to find people of any faith or no faith who still believe that some form of lo tochlu, not-eating, will purify them.

  In Re’eh Moses restates the basic rules for Jewish not-eating, also known as keeping kosher. We are told not to eat the camel, the griffin vulture, animals with undivided hooves like pigs, and “creeping things” like bugs or eel or calamari. Blood is also a no-no, as is “cooking a kid in its mother’s milk.”

  Those laws alone are a handful but still pretty workable—the logistics of collecting and storing the milk of a mother cow seem difficult, and who wants a burger boiled in milk anyway? But thousands of years of rabbinic interpretation have added layers of complication to Jewish not-eating. For starters, the law against cooking a kid in its mother’s milk has been expanded to mean not serving the milk of any animal and the meat of any animal together (see: cheeseburger) and not eating foods that contain any dairy product until six hours after you have finished eating meat. The rabbis also determined that silverware, dishes, and cookware acquire a status of dairy, meat, or unkosher animals through heat, and that this status is retained and can be further transferred, depending on the porousness of materials. This ruling is what really limits kosher eating. Cooking a ham renders one’s stove, pan, utensils, and serving dishes unkosher; those items then have the power to turn something kosher, like a spear of asparagus, into something unkosher.

  In my twenties I decided to keep strictly kosher. This meant I couldn’t eat any cooked food unless it was prepared in a kosher kitchen or at minimum, a kitchen about which I had a detailed historical record. Switching at this late date from eating pretty much everything to not-eating so much taught me something really important about food. Birthdays are celebrated, jobs won, and boy problems dissected over food. It’s not enough to go and not eat; people expect that something material will be shared. The alchemy of transforming a kosher apple into an unkosher apple cake—the heat, the care, and time invested—does not just matter to ancient rabbis, it actually still matters to most everyone. I have interviewed a Saudi prince in the rooftop restaurant at Dubai’s Burj Al Arab and a North Korean refugee sleeping on the floor of a suburban condo, and both cared very much, almost as a condition of the interview, that I eat something they laid out for me. When the host at a family event discovered I wasn’t partaking of the refreshments, he drove off mid-party to pick up salmon, which he roasted in tin foil (the tin foil shields the salmon from the unkosher oven). The other two kosher cousins and I found ourselves surrounded by relatives demanding that we immediately eat the huge, steaming side of salmon.

  The first time I wondered if I could truly keep strictly kosher for the rest of my life was not when faced with turning down one of the more expensive and beautiful meals I’d ever been offered during a work lunch at a trendy restaurant. It was when, one afternoon leaving my parents’ Manhattan apartment, I was caught downwind of the vent outside Mariella Pizza. Like a hydraulic dredge, the rush of pizza air lifted submerged memories to the top of my mind: the yellow plastic kiddie furniture my brother and I used to eat the pizza off of, the time I got Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s autograph at a street fair next to a five-foot-wide Mariella Pizza, a snowstorm in sixth grade that stranded me at school and the Mariella sub I requested when I got picked up. It was impossible to imagine that I might really never eat another slice of Mariella.

  Not-eating expresses a rejection of some aspect of the world or one’s body, and a hope for a change in it. Some see kosher eating and not-eating as a rejection of the non-Jewish world. I haven’t experienced it that way. In the not-eating of kashrut, I hear an echo of the lo tochlu imparted to Adam and Eve. The command not to eat from that seemingly harmless apple tree in the garden of Eden is at least as counterintuitive as the one associated with the ham sandwich. Failure to comply with the first lo tochlu is what got us kicked out of Eden into sorrow, labor, and violence. I don’t know what was so bad about that apple, or Twinkies for that matter, but I do know that better control over appetites—for vengeance, greed, selfishness—could prevent much suffering.

  In Re’eh, dietary laws come before the laws about the Sabbatical year. In the Sabbatical year, the Torah tells us, no one should work, the land must rest, slaves should be freed, and all loans should be forgiven. What could run more counter to our impulses than voluntarily giving up everything we have worked for? Perhaps this is why the Torah calls the Sabbatical year the year of “release”—it entails letting go of the idea that you own people or possessions.

  To let go of the urge to build up the self demands a radical reconfiguring of appetites. The Torah places the dietary rules before the laws of the Sabbatical year and so provides a daily practice for retraining appetites, an almost hourly negotiation between a base appetite and a spiritual concept. Perhaps from these negotiations, our appetites will emerge no less fierce, but more clearly joined with spiritual hungers for justice, love, and connection.

  In keeping kosher, I could not eat so much—the enchiladas sold out of a Coleman cooler on my street, a friend’s wedding cake—and I came to better understand what I really wanted from those foods. There are many ways to connect to people and place, but few that go as deep as quickly as eating. In the not-eating, I see that what the rabbis said about food was exactly right: Everything is transferred and absorbed in heat. A pizza vent can unleash a string of memories, shining and dense like pearls.

  “I will raise up a prophet for them from among their own people, like yourself: I will put My words in their mouth and he will speak to them all that I command him.” —Deuteronomy 18:18

  SHOF’TIM (“Judges”)

  Deuteronomy 16:18–21:9

  Justice, justice shall you pursue: Moses continues his final instructions to the Israelites, commanding them to appoint magistra
tes and officials in every settlement God gives them. The justice system shall be fair and bribe-free.

  Israelites should avoid erecting stone pillars or posts by altars in case they lead to idolatry. They are reminded to make sure sacrifices are unblemished and to condemn those who worship idols to death by stoning. Two witnesses are required in such a case, and the witnesses have to be the first to cast the deadly stones.

  If any case baffles the community, it shall be presented to the priests, who will make a ruling. Anyone disregarding their decision shall be put to death to maintain the people’s faith in the legal system.

  The Israelites are given permission to appoint a king, but on a few conditions. First, he cannot be a foreigner. A king is also prohibited from living lavishly: He cannot keep an abundance of horses, marry numerous wives, or amass riches of silver and gold. He must follow God’s laws without deviating from them.

  Sacred sustenance

  As the Levite class is receiving no land of their own, they are to sustain themselves by eating offerings and are free to choose where to live. However, the priests are to receive the shoulder, cheeks, and stomach of any sacrifice, and the first fruits of the field, as well as the first shearing of the flock.

  Soothsayers will have seen this coming . . .

  Once they enter the land, the Israelites are not to replicate the rituals practiced by the locals—human sacrifice, soothsaying, or sorcery. Such activities are deemed abhorrent and linked to the Lord’s decision to evict the people from the land in the first place.

  The Lord will provide a prophet who will rise up and become a Godly mouthpiece. Any self-appointed prophet shall be deemed false and must die.

  City of Refuge, again

  Three cities are to be set aside for those involved in manslaughter so that they can flee their avengers. These cities will be augmented by three more once the Lord enlarges the size of the territory. However, the sanctuary is not to be misused by an enemy who kills another. Such an act warrants the death penalty.

  The Israelites are not to move the country’s landmarks, nor are they to allow a single witness to condemn the accused, as it can encourage malicious testimony. However, they are not to offer pity and must follow the value of a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot.

  The rules of engagement

  The Israelites should feel no fear when they take to the battlefield and encounter armies larger than theirs. Before engaging in combat, a priest shall address the troops to remind them how the Lord will march beside them and guarantee victory. Soldiers who have not yet dedicated newly built homes, harvested their vineyards, or married a woman for whom they have paid a dowry shall be granted leave to return home and complete those tasks. Those who are afraid shall also be allowed to stand down. Military commanders will then assume control of the forces.

  Before attacking any town, the Israelites should offer to broker peace. If those terms are accepted, their enemies will be permitted to serve as forced labor. If the offer is refused, a siege shall be set, and once the Lord delivers victory, all the males shall be put to the sword and the women and children treated as spoils of war. However, if the town lies within the land the Lord has promised, the townspeople must be killed on account of their previous abhorrent behavior.

  During a siege, the Israelites are forbidden from cutting down trees that bear food, though their produce can be savored.

  Cold case

  If a body is found and the case remains unsolved, the elders and magistrates shall measure the distance between the corpse and nearby towns. Those towns will sacrifice a heifer to signify that they are not responsible for the death, and ask God for absolution.

  David Katznelson

  I believe in prophets because I have met one.

  I am a music enthusiast. I started young; collecting records before I knew how to read, ushering at rock-and-roll shows, and deejaying on the radio before I could drive. I began working at a major record label at voting age and grew to become one of the youngest vice presidents in the A&R Department, catching the end of the industry’s renaissance era.

  I learned my craft while working with musicians I revered—from the Flaming Lips and Nick Cave to Shane MacGowan. Although each of these artists was different, they all shared a commonality: the ability to articulate a complex vision of the world rife with challenging and inspiring ideas.

  In a way, all my musical appreciation stems from the blues: the Afro-American art form that has bled its way into so much of the music that has come after it and in many ways is the root of everything I hold so dear. Like many late-twentieth-century music enthusiasts, I had learned about the blues through the modern artists I grew up with. The Who and the Rolling Stones covered blues tunes, incorporating song structures and melodic lines into original compositions, resurrecting some of the genre’s forgotten legends like Son House or Mississippi John Hurt in the process. In so doing, they rescued these artists from obscurity and brought them to a new public.

  My understanding deepened the day producer and friend Jim Dickinson sent me the field recordings his son Luther had made of local Mississippian legend Otha Turner, one of the last purveyors of the fading blues fife tradition. Turner’s band, the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band, kept alive a type of music that was the oldest practiced in postcolonial America. It was the only form of blues the slave owners allowed their charges to play, because of its similarity to military marching music. But the slaves, and the sharecroppers who followed them, reveled in the tradition, infusing it with their own rhythms and stories.

  Otha had taken Luther under his wing, embracing the young guitarist as both student and collaborator. The recordings he sent me were unlike anything I had heard before: crazy, repetitive rhythms that swayed and grooved, with the angelic blow of the fife on top, the low pulse of the bass drum on the bottom, and Otha’s deep, sultry vocals carried in between. Otha was ninety years of age and had been leading his band for more than fifty years. Yet he had never released his own record. The first time I heard Luther’s recordings of the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band, the music weighed so heavily on my ears that I knew I had to travel down in person, meet him, and preserve his work.

  A few months later, I ventured down to Mississippi for the first time. It was a cool, dry winter day when I drove into Senatobia, Mississippi. Otha’s place was on the outer part of town, down a gravel road that took you through a rural land dotted with double-wide trailers and circles of chairs around fire pits. Black country dogs tried to play fetch with every car that drove by. I met Luther at a crossroad, and we drove on to Otha’s house, which the bluesman had built himself on a small piece of land he had farmed since he was a young man.

  Luther led me into the main room of the house, which was heated and lit by a wood-burning stove. In the corner sat Otha. The brown and yellow lights of the room were reminiscent of a Rembrandt painting, and when the aged bluesman rose to greet me, this statuesque figure with sharp cheekbones and translucent blue eyes offered me a wiry, firm handshake. He knew I had come because I wanted to release his record. But first, he wanted to have a few words, his way.

  He started by talking about the centrality of worship. “Sunday, every Sunday, you need to make sure you went to church,” he declared, adding that it was critical that every human be a good community citizen so you could “keep yourself right.” And after he was sure I got that message, he pulled a bottle of moonshine out from under his couch, passed it to me, and started telling me about women, about his family, and about his approach to life.

  Jim Dickinson would often say that Otha was the “most whole” human I would ever meet . . . a man who lived life on his own terms, battling extreme poverty while crafting a livelihood and building a family of four children, countless grandchildren, and a growing number of great-grandchildren who all lived nearby. His band was comprised of his daughter and his grandkids. His band
was his voice, family, and community intertwined.

  Since the 1950s, Otha had a tradition of convening a two-day picnic for the local community around Labor Day. By the time I first attended, the event had grown. It felt like the entire region was there, along with people who had flown in from far-flung states and even other countries: a crazy mix of Otha’s followers who all shared a sense that the two-day festival was to be a time of pause from a hard, trying existence, a time to celebrate the goodness of being alive. Even as a white Jew from California, I was warmly embraced by the Turner family, who made me fit right in.

  The picnic started in the morning with Otha ceremonially killing a goat that would be cooked up for the night’s festivities. It would end with a wild party driven by the Fife and Drum Band walking through the crowd, blowing and blasting as the participants clapped and shook. Their message was simple, delivered through Otha’s rendition of traditional blues songs, like “Work done got hard, and now she’s gone, but I don’t worry, I’m sitting on top of the world.” Those words, along with the drumming, blasted electricity into the congregated mass. We were all suddenly sitting on top of the world, despite whatever it was that had been trying to hold us down. Amen.

  Otha used his music to connect his history, his family’s story, the history of a people, a history that arguably goes back to his African roots. Jim Dickinson captured this when he wrote the record’s liner notes: “Otha is a human treasure merging life and art into a single testimony.” And in his signature number, “Shimmy She Wobble,” an instrumental, no words were needed to convey the deep, rich tradition he needed to share. It is a dark, driving anthem, a work song—the sound of prophecy—and often at the picnic, he would play it all night long.