"What" is this thing that nourishes us?

 

In this week's Torah portion, Beshalach, there's a key word that repeats over and over: Mah, meaning "What?" Sometimes it means, synonymously, "What for?" (One of the Hebrew words for "Why," which is lamah, literally translates syllable by syllable as "for what?") 

    What for did we let those Israelites go? (Pharaoh and the courtiers ask themselves)

    What for did you bring us out of Egypt if we are going to die in the Sea, or in the wilderness, of hunger. or of thirst? (the Israelites ask Moses)

    What for are you quarreling with me, and testing God? (Moses asks them in return)

And perhaps most puzzling of all: food falls from the sky, and the people ask Mahn hu? "What is it?" (It's from mahn that we get the name for the food from that day until now: manna.)

What is it with all this "what"?

The Torah, the Haggadah, and the Simple Child

Every year in synagogue, we read the story of the Exodus once from the Torah. But every year at home, we read it at least once--in my family, more than once--in the Passover Haggadah. And in the Haggadah, "What" is the hallmark of the Simple Child.

Mah zot? "What is all this," the Simple Child asks? Unlike either the wise or the wicked child, who want to understand the Why, and unlike the child who doesn't even know how to ask a question, the Simple Child is stuck on What.

This week, I learned from reading Aviva Zornberg that certain rabbis thought the Simple Child in the Four Questions was more objectionable than the one who doesn't know how to ask. Those rabbis, she says, interpreted the Simple Child's question, "Mah zot?" (What is this?) as a request for a simple answer that would end the conversation. Those rabbis--and she, and I--think that what God wants is a search for more complex, nuanced answers that continue the conversation. 

 

But I think those rabbis had the Simple Child wrong, and this week's parshah shows where they went astray.

 

Look again at those questions from Parshat Beshalach. 

These are not conversation-enders. They are questions that engage in conversation and carry it further: precisely the kind of conversation we think and Zornberg thinks God wants us to engage in! (and far preferable to holding our feelings in silence)

So, if the "Mah questions" in this week's portions are not a search for what Humpty Dumpty in Alice calls a nice knock-down answer, a once and for all, why on earth should we think the Simple Child is asking for that kind of finality? 

It seems to me that the "Mah" in both this week's portion and in the Haggadah could be an open-ended question, inviting the kind of dialogue that it is not a challenge but more like a caress. It seems to me that it's the kind of word that has a different flavor each time you take it in, like manna.

God bless the simple child who's got his own...question.

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I'm reading through Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg's amazing commentary on the biblical Book of Exodus, The Particulars of Rapture. Each chapter expounds one of the portions we read in the synagogue weekly. It's slow going because it is so rich with insights. To keep on track, I will post at least one insight weekly between now and mid-March, when (God willing) I finish the book.

Taking Pharaoh to Heart

 

Pharaoh is no bleeding heart.

Throughout the story of the ten plagues (last week's Torah portion and this week's), Pharaoh and the country over which he rules get hit with catastrophic punishments. Pharaoh promises Moses to let the Israelites go off into the desert to worship God, if only the plague goes away. The plague ends, and Pharaoh changes his mind--or, in Biblical parlance, his heart is hardened.

Sometimes the Torah narrative says God hardens Pharaoh's heart. Sometimes, especially toward the end of the story, Pharaoh does it to himself. 

I'm not going to get into the much-discussed question of how God can hold Pharaoh accountable for his actions when God is pushing those actions in a particular direction. Others have explored that in depth. 

Instead, I want to ask: is a hard heart necessarily a bad thing? From the Hebrew, it seems like an open question.

Hearts: Hard, Strong, or Heavy?

The first thing to understand about hearts in Hebrew is that they are neither blood pumps nor valentines. In the Torah, a heart (lev) is not sentimental; it's the organ of understanding. 

Yes, we understand with our emotions as well as our intellect. That kind of understanding is called a heart of wisdom. But it's important to know that whatever happens to Pharaoh's heart, it's not simply a feeling: it affects his calculations and his actions, too.

A hard term to translate

What does happen to Pharaoh's heart? One verb that describes it is the root ch-z-k. It's conventionally translated in Exodus as "harden," but it's not hard in the sense of difficult--there's a different word for that. 

It's not hard in the sense of stiff and unyielding, either. At least, in many other contexts it's not used that way, and there are alternative words for rigidity that the text could have used. So, why this one?

The most natural translation for words using ch-z-k is "strong." But there's a problem with that translation, which is that "strong" is usually a positive! 

* When Jews get to the end of reading the Book of Exodus (or any of the Five Books of Moses) in shul, we rise and say Chazak, chazak v'nit-chazek: "Strong, strong, and let's strengthen each other."

* When Moses passes the leadership on to Joshua, he wishes him Chazak v'ematz: "Be strong and of good courage."

* At the end of Psalm 31, we read a similar phrase, only in the plural. Chizku v'ya'ametz l'vavchem: "Be strong and let your heart take courage...." (Is it significant that "heart" is mentioned here, too?)

So many other times, ch-z-k means "strong," and it's said with approval. So, what does it mean that Pharaoh's heart is strengthened--and why is it a bad thing?

 

A heavy thought

Here's an even more puzzling version of what happens to Pharaoh's heart as the ten plagues progress. In Exodus 9:7 (after the cattle die and before the Egyptians get stricken with boils), it's the first time that Pharaoh apparently hardens his own heart, without divine intervention. (I learned this from Aviva Zornberg's interview by Krista Tippett.) 

But the Hebrew this time is not ch-z-k, or strong. It's ch-v-d, or heavy.

Va-yichvad lev Par'oh, v'lo shilach et ha-am.  

In English: Pharaoh's heart becomes heavy, and he doesn't send out the people (or let the people go, as the familiar song says).

Clearly, this Hebrew phrase is not the English-language idiom "a heavy heart." Pharaoh is not becoming sad. That is not why he reneges on his promise to Moses. Heaviness here implies weightiness, severity, and even immobility. Pharaoh weights himself down and refuses to budge from his supreme authority, over Egypt and over the Israelites.

Again, the problem is that ch-v-d has many positive connotations. In fact, it's the same root as the word for "glory"...which we most commonly hear associated with God!

What's wrong with Pharaoh's heart?

A strong heart, a glorious heart--in English, we might say a stout heart. Wouldn't we praise these qualities in our friends and allies? Then, why is hard-heartedness so terrible in the Egyptian leader?

I have to admit, I do not have a good answer yet.

Here's one traditional answer, from the text: God needs Pharaoh to keep on refusing so that God can show the Egyptians, and the world, that Pharaoh is not a god. 

The repeated cycle of plague from God, pleading from Pharaoh, and reprieve from God shows that it's not just a one-time event. This God (whom Pharaoh says, at the beginning of the story, "I do not know") can control the world at will. It's Pharaoh's weighty heart (vay-yichbad lev) against God's glory (kavod). Guess which one wins?

This answer makes sense in context, but I don't like it. It poses the question of why an almighty God needs to impress mere human beings with his power. It seems like a cosmic pissing context between two swaggering men. (I miss the women from the first portion of Exodus!)

Here's another answer from a friend in the #ParshaChat: God actually makes Pharaoh's heart stronger--that is, more capable of compassion.

On this reading, ch-z-k is positive here, as it usually is. God makes Pharaoh's ability to understand the situation rightly, and to have compassion, stronger. The terrible thing is that Pharaoh refuses to use his improved ability, his stronger heart. He sticks with his position of power instead.

I like this reading, but I don't think it works with the plain meaning of the Torah. What's more, I can think of times when a misplaced compassion is injustice and times when a refusal to bend is a virtue. (Remember "Nevertheless, she persisted"?)

So, I invite you to help me take this Torah portion to heart. How would you make sense of the positive and the negative, the strong and the stubborn, the hard and heavy heart vs. the courageous and glorious? What is really going on here?

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I'm reading through Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg's amazing commentary on the biblical Book of Exodus, The Particulars of Rapture. Each chapter expounds one of the portions we read in the synagogue weekly. It's slow going because it is so rich with insights. To keep on track, I will post at least one insight weekly between now and mid-March, when (God willing) I finish the book.