While preparing a class on Miriam last week, I came across essays (here and here) which show that Josephus and Pseudo-Philo, in the first century CE, presented a diminished version of the midrashic tradition regarding Miriam.
In rabbinic tradition - which Josephus and Pseudo-Philo demonstrate that they knew, even as they report it in an altered form - Amram and Yocheved, parents of Miriam and Aharon, separate from each other when Pharaoh decrees the death of Jewish baby boys. Miriam reports a prophetic vision that her parents will produce a son who will rescue the Jews, and she convinces them to return to each other. Then, when that baby (Moshe) is put into a box in the river, Miriam stands guard over him. [See Exodus 2 and Talmud Megilah 14a.]
In Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews II 9:3-4, per the Whiston translation available here, there is no separation of husbands and wives. Amram has a vision that his son will rescue the Jews from Egypt, and Miriam goes to the water to watch over Moshe only because her mother has told her to do so.
In Pseudo-Philo's Biblical Antiquities of Philo 9, per the James translation available here, the husbands and wives separate, but Amram is the one to insist that Jews continue to have children. Miriam does then have a vision regarding Moshe, but she does not watch over Moshe on the river at all.
What is this evisceration of Miriam's role about? Is it simply misogyny? Or an attempt to conceal from the Romans the possibility of Jewish insurrection, as represented by a fearless Miriam? Or something else entirely?
Showing posts with label Tanach: Miriam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tanach: Miriam. Show all posts
Monday, January 19, 2015
Friday, March 23, 2012
Miriam's Influence
I was asked the following question the other day: In three separate places in Chumash, Chur is mentioned and Rashi takes pains, each time, to inform us that he was the son of Miriam.
First: Shemot 17:10, when Chur and Aharon support Moshe in his defense of the Jews during their war with Amalek.
Second: Shemot 24:14, when Moshe appoints Aharon and Chur to be the counselors of the Jews while he is away on Har Sinai.
Third: Shemot 35:30, when Chur's grandson Betzalel is appointed to lead the creation of the Mishkan.
Why does Rashi go out of his way to mention Chur's mother each time?
My first thought was that there were midrashim on each pasuk identifying Chur's lineage, and Rashi was only citing those midrashim, but I could not find any such midrash, on any of the pesukim.
So I have an idea which I would not deem "peshat", but which I like in any case: Each of these cases involves Chur in a different role, and in each case he channels the influence of his mother, Miriam.
In defending the Jews against Amalek, Chur channels his mother Miriam's defense of the Jews as a midwife (Shemot 1:17), and her defense of Moshe as he floated in the river (Shemot 2:4-9).
In counseling the Jews, Chur channels his mother Miriam's counsel to Amram and Yocheved to have more children (Sotah 12a), and her counsel regarding Moshe and Tziporah's relationship (Bamidbar 12:1, Rashi there).
In creating the Mishkan, Chur's grandson channels Miriam's act of connecting the Jews to Gd in the dance after they crossed through the Sea (Shemot 15:20-21).
And Rashi highlights this by commenting, each time, "Chur is the son of Miriam."
Just a thought.
First: Shemot 17:10, when Chur and Aharon support Moshe in his defense of the Jews during their war with Amalek.
Second: Shemot 24:14, when Moshe appoints Aharon and Chur to be the counselors of the Jews while he is away on Har Sinai.
Third: Shemot 35:30, when Chur's grandson Betzalel is appointed to lead the creation of the Mishkan.
Why does Rashi go out of his way to mention Chur's mother each time?
My first thought was that there were midrashim on each pasuk identifying Chur's lineage, and Rashi was only citing those midrashim, but I could not find any such midrash, on any of the pesukim.
So I have an idea which I would not deem "peshat", but which I like in any case: Each of these cases involves Chur in a different role, and in each case he channels the influence of his mother, Miriam.
In defending the Jews against Amalek, Chur channels his mother Miriam's defense of the Jews as a midwife (Shemot 1:17), and her defense of Moshe as he floated in the river (Shemot 2:4-9).
In counseling the Jews, Chur channels his mother Miriam's counsel to Amram and Yocheved to have more children (Sotah 12a), and her counsel regarding Moshe and Tziporah's relationship (Bamidbar 12:1, Rashi there).
In creating the Mishkan, Chur's grandson channels Miriam's act of connecting the Jews to Gd in the dance after they crossed through the Sea (Shemot 15:20-21).
And Rashi highlights this by commenting, each time, "Chur is the son of Miriam."
Just a thought.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Defeating Necrophobia through a Dead Cow
Early in my Rhode Island years, I helped the chevra kadisha move the body of a young man who had passed away.
I’ve always had a death-phobia, but that was a particularly rattling experience for me; it reminded me that we don’t have 100% certainty about what occurs when we die. We have faith, but even the Torah’s pesukim don’t fully address our questions about what befalls both body and soul.
Of course, some people are congenitally immune to those fears, or have been exposed to death so often that they are desensitized, but many people share my reaction of a dozen years ago – death is fundamentally frightening. This is one of the reasons why the world has been so caught up in the recent death of the big ‘80s stars, first Farrah Fawcett and then Michael Jackson – the death of these people who were so vital and so much a part of public life - so recently a part of public life - is a scary reminder of our most basic questions about the invisible future.
In the Parah Adumah, though, I see a message for dealing with our death-induced fear.
The Parah Adumah (red heifer) is used in a ritual performed to purify people from contact with death. As we described it in this morning’s parshah, a red cow is killed, and then the carcass is incinerated. A small amount of the ash is then placed into specially prepared water, and that water is sprinkled on a person who is impure. This didn’t go on all the time, of course; the ash of the parah adumah lasts for generations, so that only nine parot adumot have been used in history.
This parah adumah is actually described twice in the Torah, in separate contexts:
• First: After the Jews crossed through Yam Suf, they traveled for three days without fresh water. Finally, they arrived at an oasis called Marah, only to find that the water was not potable. Frightened by their physical suffering they complained to Moshe, and Gd showed Moshe how to treat the water to make it sweet. Then, we are told, the Jews were taught חק ומשפט, which Rashi explains includes parah adumah, and so the parah adumah is eternally linked to the water of Marah.
• Second, this week, we learn the specific laws of the parah adumah, and here the sages link the parah adumah with the Cheit haEigel. When Moshe disappeared atop Har Sinai for nearly six weeks, the people feared that they had lost their Divine protection and they created an Eigel, a calf, as a substitute, treating it as a quasi-god. We use a cow for purification to counter that idolatrous calf.
In both of those cases, the message is that the Jews experienced fear of physical or spiritual death, and Gd was there for them – and their message is the message of the Parah Adumah as well.
Marah and the Eigel provide the two basic components of the Parah Adumah ritual: We take the ashes of a cow, reminiscent of the Eigel at Sinai, and we introduce them into water, reminiscent of the water at Marah. We then sprinkle them on the person who has been close to death to remind her that we have been close to physical and spiritual death in the past, as a nation, and Gd has saved us.
Indeed, the whole idea of using a dead cow to purify someone from death is inherently paradoxical, but perhaps that’s part of the message – that even when we are brought face-to-face with death, we can conquer this fear because Gd will be there for us.
Just as Gd told Yitzchak, “Don’t be afraid – I was with your ancestors, and I will be there for you as well”;
Just as Gd told Yaakov, “Don’t be afraid – I was with your ancestors, and I will be there for you as well”;
So Gd tells every one of us, in our moment of greatest despair and fear, “Don’t be afraid – I was with your ancestors, and I will be there for you as well.”
The Torah underscores this message by connecting it with Miriam, placing it right before her demise, because she faced down death with trust in Gd.
Miriam was all of six years old, apprentice to her mother as a midwife, when the Egyptian Pharaoh ordered the two of them to kill all of the Jewish baby boys. She and her mother overrode any fear of man, defied Pharaoh and saved the babies. And so the conclusion of Miriam’s story follows the Parah Adumah, a lesson for all of us in how to deal with our own fear of death.
Forty years ago this month, with the entire world of their day as well as future generations watching, three men conquered their fear of the unknown, landing on the Moon in the Apollo 11 mission. They used training and simulators to get rid of the unknown; as Buzz Aldrin wrote, “True fear is the fear of the unknown, and all our training had been geared towards eliminating the unknown as much as possible.”
But when a human being confronts death, he can’t eliminate the unknown; there is no ‘death simulator’ available. Nonetheless, the Parah Adumah’s message is that any of us can conquer our fear of the unknown by remembering that just as HaShem was at our side at the waters of Marah, and just as HaShem was present at Sinai, so HaShem will be with us now to help us along.
-
Notes:
1. I am always loathe to suggest original ideas, and particularly regarding Parah Adumah, regarding which the sages teach that we cannot divine the explanation for some of its details. However, I base my comments on those of the sefer Or Avraham; he pointed out (based on the wording of a special tefillah for Parshat Parah) that Parah has the two elements of Marah and Eigel, and that the Eigel explanation is associated with Parshat Chukat but that other explanations would be necessary for Marah.
2. Of course, the gemara and most midrashim exclude parah adumah from Marah, offering other definitions of חק there, but parah adumah is the one that Rashi chooses to present.
3. I also wanted to do something with the ezov of korban pesach and tolaat shani of mishkan, but the erez is more problematic. Of course, the general bundle appears in taharat metzora.
4. Miriam is the Torah's icon of fearlessness in many more ways, but I left her larger story out lest it distract, and focussed specifically on the fear-of-death element.
5. Buzz Aldrin's comments are found here.
I’ve always had a death-phobia, but that was a particularly rattling experience for me; it reminded me that we don’t have 100% certainty about what occurs when we die. We have faith, but even the Torah’s pesukim don’t fully address our questions about what befalls both body and soul.
Of course, some people are congenitally immune to those fears, or have been exposed to death so often that they are desensitized, but many people share my reaction of a dozen years ago – death is fundamentally frightening. This is one of the reasons why the world has been so caught up in the recent death of the big ‘80s stars, first Farrah Fawcett and then Michael Jackson – the death of these people who were so vital and so much a part of public life - so recently a part of public life - is a scary reminder of our most basic questions about the invisible future.
In the Parah Adumah, though, I see a message for dealing with our death-induced fear.
The Parah Adumah (red heifer) is used in a ritual performed to purify people from contact with death. As we described it in this morning’s parshah, a red cow is killed, and then the carcass is incinerated. A small amount of the ash is then placed into specially prepared water, and that water is sprinkled on a person who is impure. This didn’t go on all the time, of course; the ash of the parah adumah lasts for generations, so that only nine parot adumot have been used in history.
This parah adumah is actually described twice in the Torah, in separate contexts:
• First: After the Jews crossed through Yam Suf, they traveled for three days without fresh water. Finally, they arrived at an oasis called Marah, only to find that the water was not potable. Frightened by their physical suffering they complained to Moshe, and Gd showed Moshe how to treat the water to make it sweet. Then, we are told, the Jews were taught חק ומשפט, which Rashi explains includes parah adumah, and so the parah adumah is eternally linked to the water of Marah.
• Second, this week, we learn the specific laws of the parah adumah, and here the sages link the parah adumah with the Cheit haEigel. When Moshe disappeared atop Har Sinai for nearly six weeks, the people feared that they had lost their Divine protection and they created an Eigel, a calf, as a substitute, treating it as a quasi-god. We use a cow for purification to counter that idolatrous calf.
In both of those cases, the message is that the Jews experienced fear of physical or spiritual death, and Gd was there for them – and their message is the message of the Parah Adumah as well.
Marah and the Eigel provide the two basic components of the Parah Adumah ritual: We take the ashes of a cow, reminiscent of the Eigel at Sinai, and we introduce them into water, reminiscent of the water at Marah. We then sprinkle them on the person who has been close to death to remind her that we have been close to physical and spiritual death in the past, as a nation, and Gd has saved us.
Indeed, the whole idea of using a dead cow to purify someone from death is inherently paradoxical, but perhaps that’s part of the message – that even when we are brought face-to-face with death, we can conquer this fear because Gd will be there for us.
Just as Gd told Yitzchak, “Don’t be afraid – I was with your ancestors, and I will be there for you as well”;
Just as Gd told Yaakov, “Don’t be afraid – I was with your ancestors, and I will be there for you as well”;
So Gd tells every one of us, in our moment of greatest despair and fear, “Don’t be afraid – I was with your ancestors, and I will be there for you as well.”
The Torah underscores this message by connecting it with Miriam, placing it right before her demise, because she faced down death with trust in Gd.
Miriam was all of six years old, apprentice to her mother as a midwife, when the Egyptian Pharaoh ordered the two of them to kill all of the Jewish baby boys. She and her mother overrode any fear of man, defied Pharaoh and saved the babies. And so the conclusion of Miriam’s story follows the Parah Adumah, a lesson for all of us in how to deal with our own fear of death.
Forty years ago this month, with the entire world of their day as well as future generations watching, three men conquered their fear of the unknown, landing on the Moon in the Apollo 11 mission. They used training and simulators to get rid of the unknown; as Buzz Aldrin wrote, “True fear is the fear of the unknown, and all our training had been geared towards eliminating the unknown as much as possible.”
But when a human being confronts death, he can’t eliminate the unknown; there is no ‘death simulator’ available. Nonetheless, the Parah Adumah’s message is that any of us can conquer our fear of the unknown by remembering that just as HaShem was at our side at the waters of Marah, and just as HaShem was present at Sinai, so HaShem will be with us now to help us along.
-
Notes:
1. I am always loathe to suggest original ideas, and particularly regarding Parah Adumah, regarding which the sages teach that we cannot divine the explanation for some of its details. However, I base my comments on those of the sefer Or Avraham; he pointed out (based on the wording of a special tefillah for Parshat Parah) that Parah has the two elements of Marah and Eigel, and that the Eigel explanation is associated with Parshat Chukat but that other explanations would be necessary for Marah.
2. Of course, the gemara and most midrashim exclude parah adumah from Marah, offering other definitions of חק there, but parah adumah is the one that Rashi chooses to present.
3. I also wanted to do something with the ezov of korban pesach and tolaat shani of mishkan, but the erez is more problematic. Of course, the general bundle appears in taharat metzora.
4. Miriam is the Torah's icon of fearlessness in many more ways, but I left her larger story out lest it distract, and focussed specifically on the fear-of-death element.
5. Buzz Aldrin's comments are found here.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Daf: Sotah 10-11
There is so much to see and say here, and no time to write it all down in a clear form. Here is some of it, anyway:
10b
On the line, “Better to throw one’s self into an oven than to embarrass another person publicly,” Rashi takes our gemara simply: We see that one should let himself be put in an oven rather than embarrass someone else, since Tamar was willing to suffer this fate. Tosafos in Bava Metzia 59a points out that this is seen in the Torah’s pasuk itself, in which the word מוצאת does not have any vowels on the א, so that the word is actually מוצת, to be kindled (a la ויצת אש בציון – Eichah 4).
The gemara notes the recurrence of הכר נא in the book of Bereishit linking the sale of Yosef with Yehudah/Tamar, but there are many more borrowed phrases and images unifying Bereishit (as well as the Torah itself), and giving the lie to the Documentary Hypothesis. A few quick examples: The young goats (Yaakov’s meal for Yitzchak, the goat’s blood for Yosef’s tunic, Tamar’s fee), the link of עלי קללתך and עלי היו כלנה, the numerous references to walking in the דרך ה', and the cross-biblical theme of צדקה ומשפט which carries us from Bereishit 18:19 all the way through Devarim 33:21 and then into the neviim.
The gemara talks about Yehudah being named for his future admission/הודאה, but the Torah gives a reason for his name – it’s הפעם אודה את ה', Leah’s thanks to Gd! Maharsha says she would have named him אודה under her original reason; HaShem inspired her to call him יהודה.
I am puzzled by the gemara’s declaration that Yehudah sanctified the Name of HaShem by publicly admitting his wrong; we are taught אשרי נשוי פשע כסוי חטאה (and see the Rambam in the beginning of Hilchot Teshuvah on this point) that one should not divulge private sin to the masses, lest it actually cause a desecration and desensitization!
11a
See the Maharsha on the gemara's analysis of the pasuk describing Miriam's wait for Moshe.
Why do we bring a pasuk from Yeshayah מי נח זאת לי as proof that won’t destroy the world with water, instead of bringing the post-Flood biblical pledge, לא אוסיף להכות את כל חי?! Perhaps because that earlier pasuk isn't water-specific?
The gemara here regarding Yisro's reward for refusing to participate in Paroh’s persecution indicates that Yisro's descendants, or at least some of them, did become Jewish. (See our discussion on Yael.) But then why did they live next to Amalek, per Shemuel I on Shaul’s war with Amalek?
Some have the minhag of blowing a Teruah Gedolah at the end of Yom Kippur. This mirrors Rashi here, that the Jews heard a Teruah at Har Sinai, since the shofar blast at the end of the Revelation at Har Sinai (במשוך היובל המה יעלו בהר) is one of the sources for the shofar blast at the end of Yom Kippur.
Rashi's two approaches to translating the gemara on ערי מסכנות take the Gemara’s line in opposite directions – one is that it's about the building in Egypt, the other is that it's about construction in general.
On “resembling thorns in their eyes,” the Maharsha's approach (the Egyptians resembled thorns in their own eyes) seems to fit the wording more accurately than Rashi (the Egyptians felt punctured by thorns).
11b
The pasuk brought here, תחת התפוח עוררתיך שמה חבלתך אמך שמה חבלה יולדתך, is one source for the myth that the fruit in the garden was the apple, from a mis-reading of the Hebrew root ח-ב-ל as corruption – “Under the apple tree, your mother corrupted you.” It should be read like חבלי לידה, “your mother birthed you.” (There is also a second source, the Latin “mal” which is associated with the apple/malus.)
The Maharsha explains why I might be more or less likely to identify Miriam or Elisheva as the second of the meyaldot.
The Gemara’s derash readings of חיות depend on reading it with a patach under the ח, instead of the actual kamatz.
The gemara that says Miriam gave birth to Chur after her illness must not be referring to her illness with tzaraat, but rather to a childhood illness, for Chur was dead (per midrash) by the time she experienced her tzaraat. This also fits 12a; see Rashi on 12a עזובה.
10b
On the line, “Better to throw one’s self into an oven than to embarrass another person publicly,” Rashi takes our gemara simply: We see that one should let himself be put in an oven rather than embarrass someone else, since Tamar was willing to suffer this fate. Tosafos in Bava Metzia 59a points out that this is seen in the Torah’s pasuk itself, in which the word מוצאת does not have any vowels on the א, so that the word is actually מוצת, to be kindled (a la ויצת אש בציון – Eichah 4).
The gemara notes the recurrence of הכר נא in the book of Bereishit linking the sale of Yosef with Yehudah/Tamar, but there are many more borrowed phrases and images unifying Bereishit (as well as the Torah itself), and giving the lie to the Documentary Hypothesis. A few quick examples: The young goats (Yaakov’s meal for Yitzchak, the goat’s blood for Yosef’s tunic, Tamar’s fee), the link of עלי קללתך and עלי היו כלנה, the numerous references to walking in the דרך ה', and the cross-biblical theme of צדקה ומשפט which carries us from Bereishit 18:19 all the way through Devarim 33:21 and then into the neviim.
The gemara talks about Yehudah being named for his future admission/הודאה, but the Torah gives a reason for his name – it’s הפעם אודה את ה', Leah’s thanks to Gd! Maharsha says she would have named him אודה under her original reason; HaShem inspired her to call him יהודה.
I am puzzled by the gemara’s declaration that Yehudah sanctified the Name of HaShem by publicly admitting his wrong; we are taught אשרי נשוי פשע כסוי חטאה (and see the Rambam in the beginning of Hilchot Teshuvah on this point) that one should not divulge private sin to the masses, lest it actually cause a desecration and desensitization!
11a
See the Maharsha on the gemara's analysis of the pasuk describing Miriam's wait for Moshe.
Why do we bring a pasuk from Yeshayah מי נח זאת לי as proof that won’t destroy the world with water, instead of bringing the post-Flood biblical pledge, לא אוסיף להכות את כל חי?! Perhaps because that earlier pasuk isn't water-specific?
The gemara here regarding Yisro's reward for refusing to participate in Paroh’s persecution indicates that Yisro's descendants, or at least some of them, did become Jewish. (See our discussion on Yael.) But then why did they live next to Amalek, per Shemuel I on Shaul’s war with Amalek?
Some have the minhag of blowing a Teruah Gedolah at the end of Yom Kippur. This mirrors Rashi here, that the Jews heard a Teruah at Har Sinai, since the shofar blast at the end of the Revelation at Har Sinai (במשוך היובל המה יעלו בהר) is one of the sources for the shofar blast at the end of Yom Kippur.
Rashi's two approaches to translating the gemara on ערי מסכנות take the Gemara’s line in opposite directions – one is that it's about the building in Egypt, the other is that it's about construction in general.
On “resembling thorns in their eyes,” the Maharsha's approach (the Egyptians resembled thorns in their own eyes) seems to fit the wording more accurately than Rashi (the Egyptians felt punctured by thorns).
11b
The pasuk brought here, תחת התפוח עוררתיך שמה חבלתך אמך שמה חבלה יולדתך, is one source for the myth that the fruit in the garden was the apple, from a mis-reading of the Hebrew root ח-ב-ל as corruption – “Under the apple tree, your mother corrupted you.” It should be read like חבלי לידה, “your mother birthed you.” (There is also a second source, the Latin “mal” which is associated with the apple/malus.)
The Maharsha explains why I might be more or less likely to identify Miriam or Elisheva as the second of the meyaldot.
The Gemara’s derash readings of חיות depend on reading it with a patach under the ח, instead of the actual kamatz.
The gemara that says Miriam gave birth to Chur after her illness must not be referring to her illness with tzaraat, but rather to a childhood illness, for Chur was dead (per midrash) by the time she experienced her tzaraat. This also fits 12a; see Rashi on 12a עזובה.
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