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Mishneh Torah Hilchot Qiddush HaHodesh – Introduction

הלכות קדוש החדש. מצות עשה אחת והיא לחשב ולידע ולקבוע באיזה יום הוא תחלת כל חדש וחדש מחדשי השנה. וביאור מצוה זו בפרקים אלו.

The Laws of the Sanctification of the Month

There is a single mitzvah in this category and it is to calculate, to know, and to determine which day is the beginning of each and every month of the year.  This mitzvah will be explained in the following chapters.

I will begin with a confession, and that is that I am starting this project with the hopes of “unblocking” my writing.  I have several projects that I should be working on but am avoiding, and so I hope to get the words flowing with a little journal on the Rambam’s section on determining the new month.  So I confess to being blocked.

I’m not going to try to introduce the Mishneh Torah at the outset but bring up issues as we go along.  If you are among the dozens of people reading this and you decide you want a systematic background Halbertal’s book is real and spectacular.  I’m going to try to move through the Laws of the Sanctification of the Month in journal form.  Since I’m doing this to loosen the words in my head, it kind of is going to be about me.  Trying to rehearse a comprehensive view of the material is not going to help with what I need to do.

Like many people, I knew about the Mishneh Torah for a long time without realizing how wonderful it was.  When I began to explore Judaism and its books, I knew that there were several codes that one could consult if one needed to know what to do, but the whole idea of codes seemed pretty boring.  One doesn’t read a physiology textbook for fun (if “one” is normal), and with Mikra (the inside term for the Hebrew Bible) with its commentaries and with Talmud and philosophy why would anyone want to sit around reading codes?  I confess (again) that this was my own limited experience but this is what I was thinking.  (I had strong and stupid opinions.  I told Rabbi Burt Visotzky during my seminary admissions interview that I thought midrash was mostly a waste of time.)

Anyway, it was only when I started seminary and one of our seminar teachers, R. David Hoffman, assigned the introduction to the Mishneh Torah and our eyes fell upon the goal of the text (i.e. to replace all other rabbinic literature), and we learned that this book was the invention of a genre and to top it all off was never really equalled that I began to realize how myopic my view of codes was.

I suppose I should qualify all three of those claims.  It is disputed that Maimonides wanted to replace all previous rabbinic literature with the Mishneh Torah.  But he did write stuff like this (from the introduction):  

אלא דברים ברורים קרובים נכונים על פי המשפט אשר יתבאר מכל אלו החיבורים והפירושים הנמצאים מימות רבינו הקדוש ועד עכשיו. עד שיהיו כל הדינין גלויין לקטן ולגדול בדין כל מצוה ומצוה ובדין כל הדברים שתיקנו חכמים ונביאים. כללו של דבר כדי שלא יהא אדם צריך לחיבור אחר בעולם בדין מדיני ישראל אלא יהא חיבור זה מקבץ לתורה שבעל פה כולה עם התקנות והמנהגות והגזירות שנעשו מימות משה רבינו ועד חבור הגמרא וכמו שפירשו לנו הגאונים בכל חיבוריהם שחיברו אחר הגמרא. לפיכך קראתי שם חיבור זה משנה תורה. לפי שאדם קורא בתורה שבכתב תחלה ואחר כך קורא בזה

I’m not going to translate the whole thing, but the highlighted parts say, “In sum, one does not need any other composition whatsoever regarding the laws of Israel, only this summation of the entire Oral Torah (!)”, and “Therefore one could read (only) the written Torah (the Tanakh) and afterwards this book (!)”  Borrowing the title Mishneh Torah from, well, Moses’ own summation of the Torah a.k.a. the Book of Deuteronomy was also pretty audacious.  That there was nothing like Rambam’s code before probably requires less qualification, and the fact that subsequent codes are not as comprehensive is also pretty defensible, I think.  Anyone, it was with that introduction that I began to really groove to studying the Rambam.

Why I am fascinated by the laws for determining the month?  I’ve always been suspicious of the common assertion that there is a dichotomy between science and religion.  Most casual thinkers accept the formalization of this separation articulation by Stephen Jay Gould as Non-Overlapping Magisteria (NOMA):  science gets to describe the natural world and religion gets to talk about morals.  That has always struck me as being based on a Christianized concept of religion, perhaps following in Augustine’s City of God/City of Man dichotomy.  I think that Judaism has a harder time with this dualism (or should have a harder time with this dualism given our “worldcenteredness”).  I think that Rambam’s presentation of these laws challenges that separation.  People who argue against prayer in public schools sometimes quip that prayer in school makes as much sense as math in church.  I am not in favor of prayer in public schools and I don’t go to church, but I think that it is hard to be a serious person while avoiding math.  Serious religions cannot avoid it either.

Dear Friends,

With all of the stipulations required to avoid calling down a calamity from heaven, I marvel at the beauty of this summer in Bangor.  The days have been pleasantly warm with deliciously cool nights.  Looking at the smokey hills that surround us, we remember how lucky we are to live in such an enchanting place.  I hope that you too are enjoying summer and all that it brings.

We still, though, have the bulk of the “Dog Days of Summer” in front of us, so there may be some mild discomfort in store.  The “Dog Days” have a rich pagan history, flowing from the observation of the ancients that the warmest time of the year was when Sirius (the “Dog Star”) rises with the sun.   From the Iliad:

Sirius rises late in the dark, liquid sky

On summer nights, star of stars,

Orion’s Dog they call it, brightest

Of all, but an evil portent, bringing heat

And fevers to suffering humanity.

So it is clear that what is happening at this time of year is more than a little humidity.  For the Egyptians, this period coincided with the annual flood of the Nile, which was a period of great danger but also of potential prosperity.  The “Dog Days” were a time of the year when the stakes were higher for good as well as bad.

It’s very telling that the period assigned to the “Dog Days” by the Romans, by the Farmer’s Almanac, and even by the Christian Book of Common Prayer (!) is forty days.  The number forty has resonance across all cultures and we too have a 40 day period of heightened religious sense at this time of year – the season of introspection and repentance that begins on the 1st of Elul (August 14 this year) and culminates on Yom Kippur.  Like the flooding of the Nile, the season of Elul and the High Holidays remind that life is laden with both risk and opportunity, and that realizing our potential in the time we have is not something that will be accomplished haphazardly but requires great care.  It is to this task that we turn in Elul.

We recognize that this cannot be a purely individual task.  At this time of year we need the tools of the tradition, study and prayer, but we also need each other.  It is the insight of Judaism that the greatest potential can be discovered when we act communally.   As the New Year approaches and we begin our self-examination, it is my hope that we heighten as well our efforts to support one another.  And may the “Dog Days of Summer” be as meaningful as we can make them (and with a minimal amount of humidity)

L’Shalom

Rabbi Bill Siemers

Every year when we prepare to read Parashat Balak, I get questions about why everyone else in the world calls the shady protagonist Balaam but Jews call him Bil’am (בִּלְעָם).  I’m happy to get this query because (unlike a lot of other inquiries I get) I can answer it.

One needs to start off with the information that the oldest tradition of writing the Hebrew scripture did not indicate short vowels.  The name of the magician summoned to curse the children of Israel was written בלעם, or in Roman equivalents BL’M (_’_ here represents ayin, which does not appear in Western alphabets).  The standard Jewish pronunciation Bil’am (בִּלְעָם) is found in the Tiberian tradition of pronunciation, which added the dots and lines that we are used to seeing in the Hebrew Bible and indicate the standard pronunciation.  The Tiberian tradition dates from roughly 800 – 1000 C.E.

Codex Vaticanus

A much earlier witness to the pronunciation of Hebrew can be found in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible dating from probably sometime between 300 B.C.E and the beginning of the Christian Era.  The Septuagint transliterated proper names into Greek, and from these we have critical evidence as to how Hebrew was pronounced perhaps a thousand years before the “official” Jewish version was recorded.   The Septuagint (which we will abbreviate as LXX going forward) transliterates בלעם as Βαλαὰμ, which would be Balaam in Roman characters.  Because the LXX is adopted by Greek speaking Christians and becomes the basis for the Latin and other more popular versions of the Bible, most of the world says Balaam while Jews say Bil’am.

An instinctual reaction of Jews is to consider the Greek-based Balaam as a corruption.  Part of that defensiveness flows from the fact that the LXX was often used to criticize the Jewish tradition of scripture, and yes, it does grate a bit have our indigenous Hebrew scripture corrected according to a Greek translation. That the LXX survived primarily in the Christian tradition does not help matters.  And finally, it can be pointed out that since Greek has fewer consonants than Hebrew there is in fact a potential for corruption.  Take as an example יעקב (ya’aqob) in which two of the four consonants do not exist in Greek (the ayin and the quf) leading to Ιακωβος (yakobos).  בלעם itself has an ayin that does not go into the Greek as a consonant, but is reflected instead in the lengthening of the vowel of the second syllable (Balaam).

But with all of these qualifications, it is likely that the most prominent difference between the standard Jewish pronunciation (Bil’am) and that of the rest of the world (Balaam) is the vowel of the first syllable (i versus a), and in this instance it seems that the Greek transliteration does preserve the older form.  There is well-known tendency in Semitic languages for the short vowel a in CaCCaC (C = a consonant) to change to i CiCCaC.  This is often referred to as “attenuation” as the journey from a to i is a shortening.  This is considered to have happened early on in Hebrew with the prefixes for the verb (yiqtul in Hebrew but yaqtul in older forms – the ya– prefix is preserved in Arabic), but also to be an ongoing process that occurred later in nouns.  There are many examples among proper names.  For example Mary Magdalene (Μαρία ἡ Μαγδαληνήis) was called Magdalene after her hometown which was Magdal or ‘tower’.  The word for tower in Tiberian Hebrew is Migdol – so the theory would be that sometime after the name was recorded in Christian Scripture the pronunciation in Hebrew (through this phenomenon of attenuation) changed from Magdal to Migdal (and on to Migdol).  The name Mary itself probably reflects the original a vowel of Maryam – realized in Tiberian Hebrew as Miryam.  Likewise, Samson/Shimshon.  Our best conjecture then is that at the time of the LXX, the pronunciation was Bal’am which attenuated to Bil’am by the time of the Tiberians.

I know, pretty cool.  We take away from this that even while the pronunciation of the Torah was pretty conservative over a very long time (Bal’am to Bil’am over maybe 1000 years!), things are not completely static. I use this example to make two further points:  The first is that even though the Septuagint is thought of as an external book for Jews it did not start off that way.  Though it became Christian scripture it cannot be considered Christian scripture in origin, because it largely predates Christianity.  There are other contexts in which this is important to keep in mind.  The second point is that our fidelity to the Tiberian pronunciation does not hang on whether it is the “original” way of pronouncing Hebrew.  The enterprise of setting the proper vocalization of the Bible was conducted in an environment that formally recognized the existence of variants, of which decisions had to be made as to which one to use.   We pass over the alternatives when we read because we have to, not because they are not there.  Someone who came into a synagogue and pronounced Balaam instead of Bil’am would be rightly told to stop – not because his theory of historical phonology is off, but because we have an agreed tradition of how to pronounce that does not change in the face of scholarship.  I think that maintaining this duality of practice and theory is one of the things that permits outside learning and scholarship to thrive within Judaism, but that is a topic for another post.

Korach does not get a great deal of good press.  Typical are these comparisons to, well Goebbels, and here is another linking him with the Tea Party.  Also Avodah has a piece on Korach the Populist Demagogue.  (Updated 6/28/2015 – also Robert E. Lee).The point of contact between Korach and these terrible people and institutions is the commentary on Psalm 1 found in Midrash Shocher Tov.  The Psalmist begins with the negative attributes of the happy and prosperous:  Happy is the man who does not walk with the counsel of the wicked, stand in the path of sinners, or dwell in the company of scorners.  It is on the company of scorners that the midrash takes up Korach (translation mine with scriptural citations in bold):

  “ובמושב לצים…” זה קרח, שהיה מתלוצץ על משה ועל אהרן

מה עשה קרח? כינס כל הקהל, שנאמר “ויקהל עליהם קרח את כל העדה”, והתחיל לומר להם דברי ליצנות, ואומר להם: אלמנה אחת היתה בשכונתי והיו עמה שתי נערות יתומות, והיתה לה שדה אחת. באה לחרוש – אמר לה משה (דברים כ”ב): “לא תחרוש בשור וחמור יחדו.” באה לזרוע – אמר לה (ויקרא י”ט י”ט): “שדך לא תזרע כלאים.” באה לקצור ולעשות ערמה, אמר לה: הניחי לקט שכחה ופאה. באה לעשות קרן, אמר לה: תני תרומה ומעשר ראשון ומעשר שני. הצדיקה עליה את הדין ונתנה לו.

מה עשתה עניה זו? עמדה ומכרה את השדה וקנתה שתי כבשות כדי ללבוש מגזותיהן ולהנות מפרותיהן. כיון שילדו – בא אהרן ואמר לה: תני לי את הבכורות, שכך אמר לי הקב”ה (דברים ט”ו י”ט): “כל הבכור אשר יולד בבקרך ובצאנך הזכר – תקדיש לה’ אלוהיך.” הצדיקה עליה את הדין ונתנה לו את הולדות. הגיע זמן גזיזה וגזזה אותן – בא אהרן ואמר לה: תני לי ראשית הגז שכך אמר הקב”ה (דברים י”ח ד’): “ראשית דגנך תירושך ויצהרך וראשית גז צאנך תתן לו.” (לכהן).

אמרה: אין בי כח לעמוד באיש הזה, הרי אני שוחטת אותן ואוכלתן. כיון ששחטה אותן בא אהרן ואמר לה: תני לי הזרוע והלחיים והקיבה. אמרה: אפילו אחרי ששחטתי אותן, לא נצלתי מידו – הרי הן עלי חרם! אמר לה אהרן: אם כן – כולה שלי הוא, שכך אמר הקב”ה (במדבר י”ח י”ד): “כל חרם בישראל לך יהיה.” נטלן והלך לו והניחה בוכה היא עם שתי בנותיה.

כך עלתה לעלובה זו! כל כך הם עושים ותולים בקב”ה!

And in the place of scorners – This is Korach, who mocked Moshe and Aaron.

What did he do?  He gathered the assembly for it says he assembled against them the entire assembly.  And he commenced to pronounce words of scorn.  He told them as follows:

There was a widow with two orphaned daughters and she had a field.  She set out to plow and Moshe said to her Do not plow with an ox and a donkey together (presumably her only two animals), she set out to plant and Moshe said Don’t plant a mixture of seeds in your field.  When it was time to harvest he said Leave the gleanings and the corners of your field for the poor.  When she wanted to set aside a surplus he said, “Pay me the priestly taxes, the levitical tithe and the tithe for the poor.”  She acted in accordance with the law and paid him.

What did this poor woman do?  She sold the field and bought two sheep to use the wool for clothing and to sell their offspring.  When they gave birth, Aaron came and said “Give me the firstborn” as it is written Each male firstborn from the herd or from the flock shall be dedicated to God.  She acted in accordance with the law and gave him the offspring.  The time for shearing came and Aaron said, “Give me the first shearing” as it is written The first of your grain, wine and oil, and the first shearing you shall give to the priest.   The woman said, “I do not have the strength to abide this man.  I will kill my sheep and eat them.”  Aaron said, “Give me the shoulder, the jaw and the gullet.”  She said, “Even if I kill them I can’t keep them out of his hand.  I declare a herem upon them!”  Aaron said, “If so, then it all belongs to me,” as it is written All of the herem will be for you.  He took them and and left, leaving her weeping with her two daughters.  Thus she came to this wretched state of affairs.  This are the things that Moshe and Aaron do and ascribe to God.

The defense of Moshe and Aaron take a few standard forms:  Because they haven’t even come into the land to institute all of these laws yet Korach is clearly lying, the fact that the widow would rather place her sheep in herem before she shares them with the poor demonstrates that she is greedy, etc.  The Daily Kos accuses Korach of being a pioneer in using “wedge issues” to alienate the poor from their true interests:

But Korach was inciting the poor to follow him in destroying an incipient taxing and welfare system that was designed to keep the poor fed, clothed and housed – a taxing and welfare system that would greatly expand by the end of the Second Temple period in 70 CE.

In his commentary on the Torah Em LaMikra, R. Eliyahu Benamozegh makes the following observation at the beginning of Parasha Korach:  He cites in full the midrash from Shocher Tov, and states that, “Every literate person who reads this midrash thinks immediately of the heretic Voltaire.”  Not only that, Benamozegh continues, this midrash can be found in a nearly complete form under the heading _Curate_ in Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary.  The below is taken from The Works of Voltaire, A Contemporary Version, (New York: E.R. DuMont, 1901), A Critique and Biography by John Morley, notes by Tobias Smollett, trans. William F. Fleming.

Believe not, dear reader, that the Jews, who were a stiff-necked people, never complained of the extortion of the tenths, or tithe. Give yourself the trouble to consult the Talmud of Babylon, and if you understand not the Chaldæan, read the translation, with notes of Gilbert Gaumin, the whole of which was printed by the care of Fabricius. You will there peruse the adventure of a poor widow with the High Priest Aaron, and learn how the quarrel of this widow became the cause of the quarrel of Koran, Dathan, and Abiram, on the one side, and Aaron on the other.

“A widow possessed only a single sheep which she wished to shear. Aaron came and took the wool for himself: ‘It belongs to me,’ said he, ‘according to the law, thou shalt give the first of the wool to God.’ The widow, in tears, implored the protection of Koran. Koran applied to Aaron but his entreaties were fruitless. Aaron replies that the wool belongs to him. Koran gives some money to the widow and retires, filled with indignation.

“Some time after, the sheep produces a lamb. Aaron returns and carries away the lamb. The widow runs weeping again to Koran, who in vain implores Aaron. The high priest answers, ‘It is written in the law, every first-born male in thy flock belongs to God.’ He eats the lamb and Koran again retires in a rage.

“The widow, in despair, kills her sheep; Aaron returns once more and takes away the shoulder and the breast. Koran again complains. Aaron replies: ‘It is written, thou shalt give unto the priests the shoulder, the two cheeks, and the maw.’

“The widow could no longer contain her affliction and said, ‘Anathema,’ to the sheep, upon which Aaron observed, ‘It is written, all that is anathema (cursed) in Israel belongs to thee;’ and took away the sheep altogether.”

What is not so pleasant, yet very remarkable, is that in a suit between the clergy of Rheims and the citizens, this instance from the Talmud was cited by the advocate of the citizens. Gaumin asserts that he witnessed it. In the meantime it may be answered that the tithe-holders do not take all from the people, the tax-gatherers will not suffer it. To every one his share is just.

Benamozegh goes on the explore the late literary path of this midrash and how it ended up in front of Voltaire.  I’m unsure of his purpose of bringing this forward in Em LaMikra (besides that it’s pretty cool), but the comparison with Korach and Voltaire underlines the uneasy relationship between Judaism and the Enlightenment.  It can be hard for one who wants, like me, to live in both worlds.  Yes, Voltaire is a heretic and anti-semitic, but he is also Voltaire.  I find it impossible to imagine living without not just his literature, but his attitudes against abusive authority are a precious legacy for all who live in the West and all citizens of the United States. Jefferson, among many of the founders, was a big fan of Voltaire.  The “demagogue” of Midrash Shocher Tov seems very American to me.

I also wonder how innocently Judaism requires us to read Scripture.  On the Arachim website we read:

Korach incorporated other elements of modern-day propaganda as well. His one-sided story entirely ignored the important roles the priests and Levites played for the entire nation, and the fact that most of them were poor, spending their time teaching the nation G-d’s Torah and serving in the Temple for the spiritual sake of the people. The widow’s story failed to mention the Heavenly blessing pouring down on those who set aside a portion of their resources for tzedaka (charity) such as tithes to the priests and the poor, not to mention the absurd exaggeration Korach worked in, hinting that the amount that each person had to give made the priests wealthy off the backs of the poor. What a joke! The priests were the poor.

Well, maybe, but I can’t read that without my brain screaming, “Who’s being naive, Kay?”  Should we read the Torah with the understanding that everything is going to implemented according to the elevated good intentions of those with power, or with the perspective that political institutions will wield power the same way it has been everyplace and everytime else?  And there are non-innocent ways to read the text that are quite disturbing.  Today we think of Levi’im as the second of three classes (they get the second aliyah after all).  And from this point of view Korach is just being greedy.  However, there are clues in the Torah to the contrary; that the Levi’im were the Hierodules – the slaves to the priestly caste whose actual social status was lower than everyone else (which is why Deuteronomy always throws them in with the other outcasts – widows, strangers and orphans).  It is possible to read לעבוד עבודה באוהל מועד in a very negative register (i.e. to perform servile labor in the Tent of Meeting), and when one does so the impression of Korach is quite different (and his denouement becomes quite chilling.)

The comparison of Korach and Voltaire also raises the inadequacy of the usual rabbinic slogan that we should make our disputes for the “sake of heaven”, like Shammai and Hillel and not in the manner of Korach.  In many cases that is good advice and I always try to remember that the guy who wants to light his Hanukkah candles in the opposite manner that I do has his own point of view that is worthy of respect.  But do we really want that for things we actually care about?  Should our argument about slavery be like the disputes between Hillel and Shammai?  About racism?  Is our debate over whether women should be allowed to drive and walk around with their heads uncovered a debate for the sake of heaven?  Or are they debates for the sake of slaves and for the sake of women?  Robert Conquest has pointed out that everyone is reactionary about the things they feel are truly important and it seems to me that is as it should be.  In the course of human events, sometimes you need a little Korach.