Fact-Checking the Torah -- a new fallacy?

You’re reading this because you want to know what to do now that your favorite urban legends, as well as those of other people, have been discredited by facts or logic.

One is that you could cry interpretationism. That’s a fallacy which says you don’t have to take my same fundamental positions and therefore you don’t have to agree with me that the way to interpret Torah is as the basis of Jewish law and culture.

You’re right. But interpretationism cuts both ways. I’ve been in online or other conversations where the other party expects me to agree with them, no matter what they say to bolster their claims. One tried calling names because what convinced him (commentaries based on bad translations) didn’t convince me.

But of course, that’s not you. You wouldn’t call names.

Interpretationism comes from the field of criticism, mostly the field of art criticism. It says the critic doesn’t have to take into account the artist’s upbringing or lifestyle at the time a work was created, in writing a critique.

That means the critique wholly relies on the critic’s point of view.

So what? They have freedom of speech.

Of course they do. What they don’t have is freedom of belief – my belief. They’re not entitled to shape my opinion if they rely on outdated information, commentaries or bad translations.

In fact Joel Baden of Yale is taking DH into the field of art criticism, but with a difference.

First, Baden assumes the four documents. That’s not exactly starting from scratch, and you now know that the concept is false in a number of ways.

Second, as Susan Niditch points out, Baden preserves a Grafian isolation (my phrase, not hers) about which I’ll say more a few posts from now.

Third, Baden retains the redactor, which DH only needed because of its presumption of the four documents.

Fourth, Baden holds that some parts of Torah contradict others. A-ha! You say.  You never talked about what DH definitely calls contradictions.

No more I did. That’s for next week.

21st Century Bible Hebrew -- "bring"

Genesis 2:19

 

יט וַיִּ֩צֶר֩ יְהֹוָ֨ה אֱלֹהִ֜ים מִן־הָֽאֲדָמָ֗ה כָּל־חַיַּ֤ת הַשָּׂדֶה֙ וְאֵת֙ כָּל־ע֣וֹף הַשָּׁמַ֔יִם וַיָּבֵא֙ אֶל־הָ֣אָדָ֔ם לִרְא֖וֹת מַה־יִּקְרָא־ל֑וֹ וְכֹל֩ אֲשֶׁ֨ר יִקְרָא־ל֧וֹ הָֽאָדָ֛ם נֶ֥פֶשׁ חַיָּ֖ה ה֥וּא שְׁמֽוֹ:

 

Translation:     **** Gd formed from the earth every wild animal and all flyers of the sky, He brought [them] to the man for the  purpose of seeing what he would call them; all that the man called them, a living soul, that was its name.

 

This is the hifil.  MEMORIZE IT, it is one of the top 30 verbs and means “bring”.

The aspectless verbs are

הָבִיא

הָבֵא

Progressive

 

Singular	Plural	Gender
מֵבִיא	מְבִיאִים	Masculine
מְבִיאָה	מְבִיאוֹת	Feminine

 

Perfect

 

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
הֵבֵאתִי	הֵבֵאנוּ	First
הֵבֵאתָ	הֵבֵאתֶם	Second/masculine
הֵבֵאתְ	הֵבֵאתֶן	Second/feminine
הֵבִיא	הֵבִיאוּ	Third/masculine
הֵבִיאָה		Third/feminine

 

Imperfect

 

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
אָבִיא	נָבִיא	First
תָּבִיא	תָּבִיאוּ	Second/masculine
תָּבִיאִי	תָּבֶאנָה	Second/feminine
יָבִיא	יָבִיאוּ	Third/masculine
תָּבִיא	תָּבֶאנָה	Third/feminine

 

Now that you’ve seen this conjugation, notice that va-yave looks more like a version of the aspectless form than the imperfect. It shows up 50 times in all of Tannakh, 18 of which are in Torah. A feminine form shows up 3 times, none of which are in Torah. I’m not sure what it is, unless it’s the lamed alef form of the narrative necessity. I mean, you have to admit, if Gd had not caused Adam and Chavvah to meet, a whole lot of history wouldn’t have happened.

DIY -- dryer balls

I know some of you are laughing. When you're done, keep reading

I forget where I heard of these, but I found a website selling them and bought a box of half a dozen for less than $13.

A couple days later I sprinkled essential oil of sweet orange on two of them and threw them in the dryer with six bathsheets.

The towels came out terrific, just as soft as with those dryer sheets full of chemicals. IIRC, if you use more balls, things get softer.

I had actually washed another 4 bath towels and nine kitchen towels, and those went in the next load.

This is a DIY post because there are instructions on the web to make your own. You start with all-wool fingering weight yarn, which means dryer balls don't shed plastic that gets into the ocean.

You wind them up, put them into pantyhose to keep them from unwinding, and put them through a hot cycle in the washer. This makes the wool hackle together; you're basically turning the balls into felt.

But I don't have any pantyhose so I bought my balls.

The next question is do they pay for themselves. They cost about 2/3 the price of a 250 count box of Bounce. You'd have to do more than 300 dryer loads for the dryer balls to be cheaper than the Bounce. The dryer balls would have to last at least six years at one load per week.

If you're just starting out with your first place, or you have to do more than one load a week, or you can't put up an umbrella clothesline like the one I have, they probably would pay for themselves. Because of the clothesline, I don't always use my dryer.

But you can customize the fragrance of your fresh-dried laundry by using different essential oils with your dryer balls -- lavender, bergamot, cedar, davana, frankincense, myrrh, geranium, neroli, patchouli, rose, ravensara, sandalwood, vetiver, and ylang ylang are all available. Some of them are pretty expensive, but it only takes half a dozen drops to scent your balls.

You can resume laughing.

Fact-Checking the Torah -- equal treatment

You should have a big question after my last post. I pointed to drift in material in Samaritan Pentateuch as a sign of a languishing tradition. Why isn’t the position of the slander stories the same thing?

As usual, I have several answers for that.

First, focusing on the slander stories would be cherry-picking, a form of sampling bias, which is a fallacy. I gave two other issues that identify Samaritan Pentateuch as a languishing tradition. It’s also important for you to know that Samaritan Pentateuch has the slander narratives in the same place and sequence as Jewish Torah. The Samaritan Pentateuch continued languishing after the narratives came to rest in their current position.

Second, when was the last time you read Numbers 21? Go ahead. Read it. I’ll be here when you come back.

Numbers 21:14-20 is a classic survival in Olrik’s terms. If I had that time machine I keep asking you for, I could go back to 1628 BCE and move back and forth between then and 597 BCE. I could catch the narrative in its fullest form, and then watch it languish to these few verses. I never said there was no languishing material in Jewish Torah and in Narrating I point out other examples as they come up.

Finally, we have the same issue I discussed more than a year ago about the similarities between Talmud and Jewish Torah that identify both as oral traditions.  Originally, Talmud was transmitted only by word of mouth, except for notes as prompts for memory. It was eventually all written down to keep it from being forgotten.

When the Jews in Babylonia stopped speaking Biblical Hebrew as their vernacular, it is natural to think that their children began to have trouble remembering Torah – and all the rest of the oral tradition. The Jewish authorities no doubt started writing the material down from their own memories, helped out by elders who still spoke the mame loshn of their youth. There’s no doubt that some of the narratives languished over the millennium before the captivity. It’s how the human mind works. What did make it into writing, became the “scroll of Mosheh” that Ezra had when he brought the Babylonian Jews back to the Holy Land.

So once again, similar situations involve similar processes and have similar outcomes. And we have the external evidence in Samaritan Pentateuch of a waystation in the tradition, a point of departure, which is identical in both daughter traditions, one of which languished in more extreme ways afterwards.

So what is going on with DH in the 21st century?

21st Century Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 2:10, "go, come"

Genesis 2:19

 

יט וַיִּ֩צֶר֩ יְהֹוָ֨ה אֱלֹהִ֜ים מִן־הָֽאֲדָמָ֗ה כָּל־חַיַּ֤ת הַשָּׂדֶה֙ וְאֵת֙ כָּל־ע֣וֹף הַשָּׁמַ֔יִם וַיָּבֵא֙ אֶל־הָ֣אָדָ֔ם לִרְא֖וֹת מַה־יִּקְרָא־ל֑וֹ וְכֹל֩ אֲשֶׁ֨ר יִקְרָא־ל֧וֹ הָֽאָדָ֛ם נֶ֥פֶשׁ חַיָּ֖ה ה֥וּא שְׁמֽוֹ:

 

Translation:     **** Gd formed from the earth every wild animal and all flyers of the sky, He brought [them] to the man for the purpose of seeing what he would call them; all that the man called them, a living soul, that was its name.

 

Vocabulary in this lesson:

יָּבֵא

Brought, causative of “come”

 

I’m going to give you two conjugations for this verse for an important reason.  If you have been memorizing conjugations right along, you know almost all of the 30 most frequent verbs in Torah. I haven’t given you m’daber yet and that will make it almost unanimous. This will give you a comparison of qal and hifil and show you another ayin vav verb, this time with a lamed alef flavor.

 

Below is the qal, not the hifil. The difference between the feminine third singular progressive and perfect is that in the perfect aspect, the stress is on the first syllable and in the progressive aspect, the stress is on the last syllable. Normally the stress in Hebrew words is on the last syllable, but in perfect aspect, it is on the next to last syllable and that’s the only thing that distinguishes the feminines in this verb.

 

The aspectless verb is בּוֹא

 

Progressive  aspect

 

Singular	Plural	Gender
בָּא	בָּאיִם	Masculine
בָּאָה	בָּאוֹת	Feminine

 

Perfect  aspect

 

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
בָּאתִי	בָּאנוּ	First
בָּאתָ	בָּאתֶם	Second/masculine
בָּאתְ	בָּאתֶן	Second/feminine
בָּא	בָּאוּ	Third/masculine
בָּאָה	בָּאוּ	Third/feminine

 

Imperfect aspect

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
אָבוֹא	נָבוֹא	First
תָּבאוֹ	תָּבוֹאוּ	Second/masculine
תָּבאִי	תָּבוֹאנָה	Second/feminine
יָבוֹא	יָבוֹאוּ	Third/masculine
תָּבוֹא	תָּבוֹאנָה	Third/feminine

Garden -- Rose of Sharon

It's time. Your Rose of Sharon (Syrian hibiscus) is done blooming in the DC region. Hummingbirds and pollinators that like red flowers are now going after my morning glories, which got a late start due to the cool spring, and lingered in the warm October weather.

See how the hibiscus branches are bending over? That's because of seed pods, which are getting brown and prickly.

You must cut those puppies NOW.

Otherwise in spring you will have 500 bazillion hibiscus seedlings to pull up.

You do have to pull them up. By the roots. Because as they mature, those roots will penetrate deep into the soil and be impossible to get out.

I've seen it happen. When a new neighbor arrived, she put an ad somewhere inviting people to come take away plants they liked, so she could plant other things in those places. Three different people tried to take her hibiscus. They all gave up.

So cut those hibiscus pods. It won't hurt the bushes or keep them from flowering next year. Things that flower this late, this is THE right time to prune them. Waiting until spring will reduce the number of flowers next year.

And put the cuttings in your city yard waste recycling, not in your compost heap. You don't want to risk that some of those seeds are already ripe enough to germinate in the spring.

It's also time to stop mowing your lawn. What grows from now on will keep the roots from freezing to death if we get a freezing snap.

Personally I would not bet on that; my cricket count says a mild winter except perhaps near the end. Based on the number of foggy mornings this autumn, however, we'll probably get a lot of precipitation. I soooo hope it's not snow. We've had a record 50 inches of rain just since May 15 (May 15, not March 15), which would be 500 inches of snow.  😱

 So prune hibiscus but stop mowing.

Fact-Checking the Torah -- both-and, not either-or

In Babylonian Talmud Pesachim 6b and other places, Talmud and midrash say “there is no earlier or later in Torah”.

This phrase refers to wrapping up a sidebar (in Olrik’s terms) before moving on to another narrative. Genesis 11 wraps up with the death of Terach, although anybody who can do the math (the midrashic rabbis certainly did it) can tell that Terach lived 65 years after Avraham left Charan. Nevertheless Genesis places most narratives in chronological order due to genetic relationships.

I think the slander episodes in Numbers 12 through 16 are an example of association overcoming chronology.

The first narrative in Numbers 12 has Miriam and Aharon slandering Mosheh’s wife. It takes place specifically while the tabernacle is still outside the camp. After the Levitic consecration, which occurred after the seven days of the yitchata procedure, the tabernacle was moved inside the camp, inside a Levitical buffer zone between it and the non-Levitical Israelites. They were at Sinai when Miriam got leprosy.

This narrative is at the end of Parshah Behaalotkha. Right after that comes Parshah Shlach L’kha and the first attempt to enter the Holy Land. This involves slander of the Holy Land. It happened less than two weeks after the Israelites leave Sinai (“eleven days from Chorev through Har Seir to Qadesh Barnea,” Deuteronomy 1:2). The sequence is valid, but the Miriam incident did not happen at Qadesh, which the Israelites reached after the new camp structure was set up.

The third incident is the rebellion of Qorach and the Reuvenites which slandered Mosheh and Aharon for not getting the Israelites to the Holy Land, and for assuming the priesthood. Parshah Qorach comes immediately after Parshah Shlach L’kha, but some of the things the rebels say make no sense given that chronological order; they make more sense if this rebellion happened at Sinai.

When Datan and Aviram complain that Mosheh has not led them to a land flowing with milk and honey, it’s hypocritical. Their own tribe was among the rebels of the recon party. It’s less hypocritical if they are still at Sinai saying “we came to Sinai and all we got was this lousy tabernacle.”

When Qorach complains that Mosheh and Aharon have arrogated the rulership to themselves, this doesn’t make sense because of Numbers 11. In that chapter not only does the Holy Spirit descend on 72 elders (including Eldad and Medad), but Mosheh explicitly says “I wish all the Israelites had a direct line to Gd.”

The way I think of it, a lot of things produced this clump of narratives. One is the association between these slander incidents.

Another is what Olrik discusses as repetition identifying the importance of an issue, sometimes looking it at it from different angles. The same thing happens in the three (!) captive-wife episodes in Genesis. Here it is so important to emphasize what happens to slanderers of all kinds and classes, that chronology goes to the wall.

A third is a Law of Three; there are only three incidents.

The slander episodes are examples of the Law of Ascents: from 1 person punished to 10 to the 250 elders who joined Qorach and all the relatives of Datan and Aviram. The object of the slander also fits this Olrikian principle: from Mosheh’s wife, to the Holy Land, to Mosheh and Aharon and, by implication, Gd Himself.

I also think that Qorach’s rebellion makes sense if it happened immediately after the death of Nadav and Avihu. In that context, Qorach is saying that it’s an obvious sign that nepotism doesn’t work. It doesn’t make sense to have this happen at Qadesh after the Israelites have been punished for rebellion several times, unless you think Qorach feels invulnerable because he is one of those Levites necessary to the tabernacle service.

To summarize the in-culture structural analysis we have: an expert in Talmud who admits the association principle; the organization of Mishnah which seems to copy the frequency principle; the drill-down structure repeated (if not copied) in Jerusalem Talmud; and the explicit recognition that realtime is sometimes irrelevant. All of these are features of the oral tradition of Judaism.

And narratives associated with these features demonstrate Olrik’s principles.

The discussions in these last four posts are more rocks on the grave of DH. But they are more. The in-culture structural analysis is supplemented by Olrik’s principles, not contradicted. As with Cook, the rabbis and Olrik didn’t know anything about each other, but their material fits together. And that’s a win-win.

One more point on association and then...

21st Century Bible Hebrew -- Subject Review #4

 

Again, try to remember at least one fact about each of the following topics.  The last review was lesson 79.

 

Eleh Toldot

Nifal aspectless verb with object suffixes

Demonstrative pronouns

Feminine nouns ending  in patach plus chet

Vav as conjunctive “but”

Verbs ending in patach plus chet

Peh nun verbs showing assimilation

Vav plus hayah plus l’: “become”

Mi and object suffixes

Ayin yod verbs

Function and morphology: a diatribe

Progressive aspect functions

Verbal nouns

Yatsa

Subject pronouns

Where the rivers are

Holekh

Haniach, an irregular hifil verb.

Laqach; a peh lamed verb that drops the lamed

“Duplicate conditional”

Permissive/prescriptive verb form

The death penalty

 

If you can remember just one thing about each of these subjects, give yourself a reward, such as a week off. I’ll keep posting but you might need a brain break.

Getting off the yoyo

So you're done for this year worrying about being thin for the beach.

Now we're going to talk about how to live until next beach season and not gain all that weight back.

Here's why. If you drop and gain weight over and over for 5 years, you are twice as likely to have a heart attack.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181001082145.htm

Here's how we're going to do it.
1. Cut back on anything with a sweetener in it. Doesn't matter if it's artificial, plain sugar, high-fructose corn syrup. Here's what happens.
It gets on your tongue. Your tongue's special receptors say "Sweet!" and transmit the message to the rest of your body.
Your pancreas groans and says OK now I gotta drag sugar out of the blood stream. What does it do with that sugar? It turns it into fat. So you gain fat no matter what kind of sweetener you use.
It also wears your pancreas out a little bit. All kinds of sweeteners promote Type II diabetes.

This includes almost all box cereals. It includes granola bars -- read the ingredients. It even includes BBQ sauce as I learned.

Examine the ingredients of everything you buy pre-made. Whatever has -ose on the end is a sugar. If it's up toward the start of the ingredients, there's more of it in the food. But some foods have more than one -ose in them, and it adds up.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170103151026.htm

2.  Exercise. Twenty minutes, three days a week.  That's way less than 10,000 steps a day but it's enough to keep weight off. More is better.

3. SLEEP. If you wake up drowsy, get your doctor to prescribe a sleep study. You may find that you have sleep apnea. Get into treatment. You will drop about 10 pounds quickly. You will also prevent heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, and other problems.

While you are waiting to start the sleep study, take a look at my post on insomnia, which is my problem. I almost have it fixed. The last tweak was learning to sleep in spite of some noise and light, so I could keep my bedroom ventilated in summer.
https://pajheil.blogspot.com/2013/08/even-so-ive-been-fighting-insomnia-for.html

States are catching on that it's as dangerous to drive drowsy as to drive drunk, drugged, or distracted. Get ahead of the curve. Solve your sleep problems before you get arrested or worse yet, kill somebody.

4. PARTIES. Yikes. All that food. Here's what you do; this worked for a radio personality whose job was going to big shindigs.
You go to the buffet. You get the SMALLEST plate. You go down the buffet table.
When you find something that looks good, you take a SMALL portion just to get a taste of it and put it on your plate.
Keep going. Cover that plate ONCE with tastes. No heaping up.
Walk away from the table. While you talk to people, work through that plate full.
Give the plate to wait staff. Get a mineral water. Walk around, talk, dance, whatever.
The party is probably half over. People are starting to get drunk and loud. It's not fun any more.
Go home.

And don't let your kids tour the neighborhood for Halloween.  Have a small party at home with trail mix and -- OK -- candy or taffy apples, fruit juice and NO sodas. Then you won't have to take a bag full of crap to the hospital to Xray. You have to send your kids the right message so they develop good habits.

5. RESTAURANTS. Cut back on restaurants, fast-food or not. All restaurants serve too many calories, too much fat, too much sugar, too much salt, too few vegetables and too little fiber. The ones that advertise gluten-free items -- they're not necessarily low-gluten. You can make healthier food for less at home.

And here's a bonus. Cooking from scratch makes you exercise. The best food exercise is making bread without a bread maker. Make a 2-loaf batch of dough, but take half of that, break it into 8 pieces, and make rolls. You can use them for sandwiches.

Or hey, here's another idea. Tryptophan, the sleep nutrient, needs a carbohydrate fuse. At night, before bed, have one of your rolls with about 2 ounces of cheese or turkey. This can be part of that bedtime routine that helps your brain get ready for sleep.

6. Cravings. We all have them. Mine are salty crunchy things, which usually have a lot of fat in them. I made it an assignment to have them, not every weekend, but only on long weekends. Making it a chore made it less attractive.
I make my own tortilla chips.
I substitute dry-roast peanuts which have protein, omega-threes, and selenium.
If you're allergic to peanuts, talk to your doctor about the new habituation treatments.

Or here's another strategy. Get out some of what you crave. Put ONE SERVING on the plate, in the bowl, whatever, as soon as you get the craving. Now force yourself not to touch it for 10 minutes. Then you can eat it. Practice this for a month. Then increase the time to 15 minutes. Eventually, you will be able to put off satisfying your cravings. Works with kids too.

Also, never leave what you crave out in the open. Too easy to get to. I have a bag of chips in a closet right now, and I don't open that closet often. Out of sight out of mind.

7. Eat right. I put this last because I knew if I put it first, you would roll your eyes and not read the rest. Here's why you have to eat right.
Supplements don't work as well.
We didn't used to have scientific information about this, but more than 20 years of clinical studies have all come back with the same answer, and it was finally published in a medical journal.
Supplements are a waste of money, when they aren't downright dangerous.
http://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/1789253/enough-enough-stop-wasting-money-vitamin-mineral-supplements

One of the problems with supplements is, you don't know what's in them. They could illegally have prescription drugs in them. Companies advertising "herbal" remedies have been caught over and over again violating this law.

You don't have to go organic. Ignore claims about the "dirty dozen". This article describes scientific methods used to examine pesticide exposure and shows that blueberries, cherries, and kale do not belong on the list and exposure from the other nine items is negligible.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3135239/

There, I didn't even get to twelve steps. Start this month with #1, and start with sodas. In November, either do another sweet or start exercising. Do yoga, find some place to learn Tai Chi or Tae Bo, mall walk (without your credit card), whatever. By next bikini season, you will probably be the same weight you are now. Maybe less. Keep it up for life.

Fact-Checking the Torah -- where does it go?

In his lectures, R. Bechhofer explains to his students that Talmud is not linear in structure. He specifically uses the word “association” to describe the leaps in subject: one concept brings in another. It’s hard for our literate minds to follow the leaps but you have to remember that they occurred in an oral environment, the same as where Torah took the shape it has now.

Association is one of the principles behind the sequence of material in Exodus through Numbers. It affects both the sequence of the drill-down segments, and the material within them. One example is between Passover and the firstborn. Exodus 12 gives the laws for Passover. Exodus 13 has the laws of firstborns.

This association shows up again in Numbers 8, where the Levites are assigned to depute for the firstborn Israelites in servicing the tabernacle. Numbers 9 has the narrative of the “Little” Passover instituted for people who for some reason can’t observe it at the normal time.

Another association is where Exodus puts information about the incense altar, which is different in Jewish Torah and Samaritan Pentateuch. The building of the altar is in Exodus 30:1-10; it includes the timing for lighting incense on it, which is in the morning when he cleans the menorah, and at night right before he lights the menorah.

Samaritan Pentateuch moves the making of the incense altar from Exodus 30 to put it after Exodus 26:26. Which is “right”?

The association in Jewish Torah has to do with the sequence of actions in rituals in the tabernacle. This is also the reason that the whole offering is first discussed in Exodus 29, as part of the instructions for making the tabernacle (it also relates to the frequency principle as you know), instead of in Leviticus 1.

Samaritan Pentateuch is inconsistent about ritual procedures. It has the whole offering in Exodus 29, except that it moves verse 21 after verse 28. There’s a very simple problem with that. If the ritual proceeds according to Jewish Torah, pouring the blood is possible, but if it proceeds according to Samaritan Pentateuch, the blood has congealed and can’t be poured. The issue of congealed blood is discussed in Mishnah Yoma 4:2 and a couple of other places.

Samaritan Pentateuch associates the two pieces of hardware, and it associates the two instructions about the blood. The inconsistencies in SP are signs of the split in the tradition.

If that’s all I had, it would be debatable which one was “right”. But it’s not all I have, as I showed in previous posts. Samaritan Pentateuch is a record of a languishing oral tradition, the evidence including the homogenization of wording, and the disappearance of geographic data. We even know why it languished: Kings I 12 tells us that as soon as he split the kingdom, Yeravam also split worship by building two cult centers in the north. Political as well as religious chaos ensued, followed by the Assyrian Conquest.

The difference in order in Samaritan Pentateuch of these two issues are examples in legal material of Olrik’s principle that when narratives languish, episodes fall out of order. So although I said that Olrik has nothing to do with legal material, it turns out that this material is just narrative enough to follow his principles.

Another case of association involves slander, which is only discussed in narratives. That relates to another principle, and I’ll save it for next week.

21st Century Bible Hebrew -- women in Torah

Genesis 2:18

 

יח ו וַיֹּ֨אמֶר֙ יְהוָֹ֣ה אֱלֹהִ֔ים לֹא־ט֛וֹב הֱי֥וֹת הָֽאָדָ֖ם לְבַדּ֑וֹ אֶֽעֱשֶׂה־לּ֥וֹ עֵ֖זֶר כְּנֶגְדּֽוֹ:

 

Translation:     **** Gd said it is not good, the man being alone; I shall make for him a help like an opponent.
 

Vocabulary in this lesson:

לְבַדּוֹ	Alone, by himself
עֵזֶר	Help (n)
נֶגְדּוֹ	Opposite to him

 

Notice heyot and the vowel under the he.  You saw something similar when I conjugated “to be” in perfect aspect.  Heh not only won’t take shva like bet does, it won’t take patach chataf like chet does.  It requires segol chataf.  And when it comes before itself as a definite article, again, it has to be voweled segol, not patach or qamats.  An example would be he-harim, הֶהָרִים.

 

The translation reflects Midrash (Breshit Rabbah 17:3). It says that Gd intended for a woman to be a help to her husband when he is doing right, but to be an opponent to him when he is doing wrong. There is a reference to R. Yossi ha-Glali and his wife, who would contradict him in front of his students, and they asked him why he put up with it. Eventually he divorced her for her bad behavior because it also brought the law into ill repute, but when she remarried and they became impoverished, R. Yossi supported them. R. Yossi is cited in Talmud as declaring that Torah was to be taught to girls, in one of many places where he is cited.

 

At any rate, Jewish women were never second class in the house. They were expected to assert themselves to prevent wrong-doing. They could testify in court in business cases, operate their own property, keep their earnings if their husbands refused to provide for them, and bequeath property without asking their husbands’ permission. They could get courts to force a divorce from husbands who tried to isolate them from their family or community or if he wouldn’t sleep with them; conjugal rights in a Jewish marriage belong to the woman, not the man.

 

People talk and write a lot of bushwa about the so-called inferior status of women in Jewish law; here’s oneof my posts on another page of this blog showing that men are in a worse position in some respects and that in others it’s a wash.

 

In England, a man could marry a woman for her money, waste it on gambling and prostitutes, and drag her into debtor’s prison with him, or kidnap her children and leave her in the street, without the law lifting a finger. Changes began only in the middle of the 1800s in England, after the accession of Queen Victoria. For thousands of years these things have been prohibited under Jewish law. It may be no coincidence that the first Jewish peer was seated in Parliament about the time women’s legislation began to change.