Bo: The Jewish Lunar Calendar as Anti-Egyptian Polemic

Rambam (Moreh 3:29) maintained that knowledge of the beliefs and practices of the ancient idolatrous nations is vital for understanding the reasons for the Torah's commandments. Here is an example.

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Artwork: DALL-E’s response to the prompt, “photorealistic painting of a broken and shattered Egyptian sun god”

Bo: The Jewish Lunar Calendar as Anti-Egyptian Polemic

My learning of Sefer Shemos this year has been enhanced by two relatively new publications. The first is Founding God’s Nation: Reading Exodus (2021), by Leon R. Kass. Following in the footsteps of The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (2003), Kass weaves a masterful analysis of the text using the “wisdom-seeking approach” of the Great Books tradition. (For a summary of his methodology, see my 2017 article, Musings on the “The Academic Approach”). The second publication is The Koren Tanakh of the Land of Israel (2020), translated by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and edited by David Arnovitz under the auspices of Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb. The running commentary consists of short articles on Egyptology, archaeology, philology, geography, and more, accompanied by vibrant photos, illustrations, and diagrams. This is a perfect resource for those who are interested in supplementing their Torah study with modern scholarship within the framework of Orthodoxy.

In Shemos 12:1 the Children of Israel are commanded to observe a lunar calendar. Kass explains the significance as follows:

Time in Israel will have a new basis and a new meaning. With sun worship defeated and left behind in Egypt, Israel gets a calendar that will no longer be based on the sun’s revolutions in the heavens or the correlated seasons of the year and the earthly sproutings and harvests they provide. This seemingly unprecedented innovation completes the Bible’s quiet but insistent polemic against living in thrall to the sun, the moon, and the stars – and the earth. The very beginning of Genesis had demoted the sun to a mere marker for the preexisting day and for seasons. It instituted instead a regular weekly seventh day, the Sabbath, independent of lunar change and commemorating instead the Creation and its Creator. Similarly here, the annual calendar is redefined in commemoration of a historical rather than a natural event. The target is no longer Babylonian “moon time,” but Egyptian “sun-and-earth” time. (p.168)

In contrast, Dr. Neria Klein’s article in the Koren Tanakh underscores our calendar’s non-revolutionary character:

The order of the months begins with Nisan, which is referred to throughout the Tanakh as “the first month” (Lev. 23:5). The biblical calendar is similar to the standard Akkadian calendar, in use in Assyria and Babylon – where the first month was called Nisannu (parallel to the Hebrew month Nisan) and the second month was called Aiaru (parallel to the Hebrew month Iyar). Likewise, the Hebrew month of Marḥeshvan is parallel to the Akkadian month Arah Samna, which means the eighth month – and again implies that Nisan is the first of the months. (p.62)

On the surface, Klein’s evidence would appear to undermine Kass’s theory. Kass characterizes the Jewish calendar as a “seemingly unprecedented innovation” – a radical departure from the other calendrical systems which prevailed at the time. He understands the Torah’s rejection of the solar year to be part of its silent campaign against Egyptian culture and avodah zarah (idolatry). Klein, on the other hand, endeavors to show the contrary – that the Jewish calendar is not radical, but typical. It would seem that Klein has the upper hand here, considering Kass’s methodological aversion to relying on “outside sources,” such as anthropological data. Kass explains the reasoning behind this “controversial view” of his in his preface: “like any great book, Exodus carries its persuasive power in itself. Access to the truths it might contain does not require prior faith, prior traditional or religious commitments, or reliance on outside authorities.” (p.9) What are we to make of this discrepancy? Does Kass’s theory still hold up in light of Klein’s evidence?

In my opinion, the answer is: yes, Kass’s theory can still be valid, and can coexist with Klein’s Assyriological evidence. Even though the lunar calendar existed in other ancient cultures, it was new to the Jews in Egypt. If one is willing to accept the notion that Hashem took institutions which existed in contemporaneous cultures and incorporated them into Torah, imbuing them with new meanings in line with its own agendas – such as korbanos (sacrifices), as explained by the Rambam (Guide 3:32), or milah (circumcision), which the Koren Tanakh contributors demonstrate was practiced in ancient Egypt – then Hashem certainly could have repurposed the Akkadian calendar as a weapon in the arsenal of Judaism’s war against Egyptian idolatry and culture.

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Shemos: Dasan and Aviram – to Blame or Not to Blame?

The Torah itself only ascribes one wrongdoing to Dasan and Aviram. It is the Sages who place them at the scene of other crimes. What are we to make of this? Let's turn to Rashi and Ralbag for insight.

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Artwork: DALL-E’s response to the prompt, “impressionist painting of Moses standing between two quarreling Hebrew men”

Shemos: Dasan and Aviram – to Blame or Not to Blame?

The events that led to Moshe Rabbeinu’s flight from Egypt are recounted in the span of three pesukim:

[Moshe] went out on the second day, and behold, two Hebrew men were fighting, and he said to the guilty one, "Why do you strike your fellow?" [The man] said, "Who set you as a chief and judge over us? Do you intend to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?" Moshe feared, saying, "Indeed the matter is known." Paroh heard the matter and sought to kill Moshe, but Moshe fled from before Paroh; he dwelled in the land Midian, and sat down by the well. (Shemos 2:13-15)

Ask any Jewish day school student, “Which two Hebrew men were fighting?” and they’ll likely answer, “Dasan and Aviram.” This view of the Sages, cited by Rashi (Shemos 2:13), is given full expression in Midrash Tanchuma 2:13:

He went out on the second day, and behold, two Hebrew men were fighting. Who were they? Dasan and Aviram. They were the ones who said, “Let us appoint a leader and return to Egypt!” (Bamidbar 14:4).  They are the ones who rebelled at the sea (Shemos 14:11). They are the ones who left over some of the manna, as it is written: “Men left over from [the manna] until the morning” (ibid. 16:20), and they are the ones who went out to gather [manna] and didn’t find any (ibid. 16:27). They are the ones who were involved in Korach’s dispute (Bamidbar 16:1), as it is stated: “the same Dasan and Aviram” (ibid. 16:27), for they persisted in their wickedness from beginning to end.

The Sages do not claim with certainty that Dasan and Aviram were involved in these incidents. The Torah Temimah explains that “because [Dasan and Aviram] were known to be contentious people, [the Sages] ascribe [fault] to them, following the principle of tolin es ha’kalkalah l’mekulkal (we ascribe degeneracy to the degenerate)” (Shemos 2:13, note 37). In other words, the midrash implicates Dasan and Aviram for homiletical reasons – not because we have a tradition that they were behind all this troublemaking as a matter of historical fact.

Ralbag does not blame Dasan and Aviram. He, too, favors a homiletical approach – as evidenced by his practice to conclude every section of his Chumash commentary with a list of toalos (beneficial lessons) that emerge from the text – but unlike Rashi, Ralbag grounds his ethical lesson in the pshat (straightforward meaning) of the narrative:

The 8th lesson is to inform us of the evil conduct of Israel at that time, when they were in the throes of the [Egyptian] exile – namely, that they were fighting with each other, and striking each other, and they hated rebuke [to the extent] that when Moshe rebuked them about [their fighting], they did not want to accept his rebuke, but instead publicized the matter of killing the Egyptian in a way that reached Paroh, forcing Moshe to flee. All of this is to teach us that the reason why we were in such a severe state of exile is because of this bad conduct, to the extent that if they would have improved their actions and drawn close to Hashem according to their ability, they would not have been in such a severe exile. For this same reason you will find that the exile did not begin until Yosef and all his brothers died, even though it had been decreed upon them that they would be enslaved and oppressed for 400 years, because good free will decisions can override the natural order …

Ralbag maintains that the degenerate behavior exhibited in our pesukim – quarrelling, physical assault, hatred of rebuke, informing on a fellow Jew – was not limited to two “bad apples.” It was endemic. According to Ralbag, this evil conduct was so pervasive that it resulted in prolonging the exile longer than it needed to be.

Each approach has its pros and cons. The advantage of Ralbag’s approach is that it sheds light on the sociological reality of the Egyptian exile and underscores how we, as a nation, could have avoided unnecessary suffering by remaining close to Hashem or doing teshuvah. The disadvantage is that Ralbag’s insight is abstract and difficult to relate to on a personal level. The disadvantage of Rashi’s approach is that it’s easy to simply blame Dasan and Aviram without reflecting on how their behavior persists in ourselves and in our people today. The advantage of Rashi’s approach is that Dasan and Aviram can be held up as emotionally resonant anti-role models for their bad character traits. The educator must decide which approach is the most effective for each audience and context.

If you’re interested in a full-length shiur I gave on this topic, entitled Midrashic Embellishment: Why Did Chazal Villainize “the Bad Guys” and Vindicate “the Good Guys” and What are the Educational Implications for Us?, click here for the YouTube version (featuring the PowerPoint presentation that accompanied the shiur) and click here for the podcast version.

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If you've gained from what you've learned here, please consider contributing to my Patreon at www.patreon.com/rabbischneeweiss. Alternatively, if you would like to make a direct contribution to the "Rabbi Schneeweiss Torah Content Fund," my Venmo is @Matt-Schneeweiss, and my Zelle and PayPal are mattschneeweiss at gmail.com. Even a small contribution goes a long way to covering the costs of my podcasts, and will provide me with the financial freedom to produce even more Torah content for you.

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Vayechi: The Wolf as an Allegory for the Shechinah

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Artwork: DALL-E’s response to the prompt “impressionist painting of a wolf’s face made up of flames” (variation 2b)

Vayechi: The Wolf as an Allegory for the Shechinah

The most important shiur I gave in 2021 was called Of Wolves, Men, and Methodology: an Attempt to Capture and Articulate an Epistemological Upheaval (available in video and audio). The catalyst for my “epistemological upheaval” was the book Of Wolves and Men (1979) by nature writer Barry Lopez. The goal of the shiur was to identify the many forms of unwarranted intellectual reductionism that dominate our thinking about wolves, Torah, and everything else. We must be on guard against reductionist fallacies and constantly remind ourselves of how little we know, and how little we can know.

Ever since I gave that shiur, my ears perk up when I encounter any mention of wolves. It should come as no surprise, then, that of all the blessings given by Yaakov Avinu to Bnei Yisrael, it is the final one that caught my eye: “Binyamin is a predatory wolf; in the morning he eats plunder, and in the evening he divides spoils” (Bereishis 49:27). Targum Onkelos renders this blessing as follows: “Binyamin: the shechina (divine presence) will dwell in his land, and in his inheritance the Mikdash (Temple) will be built; in the morning and afternoon the Kohanim will offer korbanos (sacrifices), and in the evening they will divide their leftover share from other kodshim (sacred things).”

The plain meaning of the Targum is straightforward: the Beis ha’Mikdash was located in the territory of Binyamin. Every morning and afternoon the Kohanim would bring a korban tamid (continual sacrifice), each consisting of a single lamb, and in the evening they would distribute their portions of other kodshim among themselves. My question is: What does any of this have to do with wolves? Onkelos provides no insight as to why the imagery of a wolf is employed.

One answer is given by R’ Pinchas in the midrash: “just as a wolf seizes [its prey,] so did the mizbeach (altar) seize the korbanos” (Bereishis Rabbah 99:3). The Etz Yosef explains that this “seizing” refers to the miraculous fire that would consume the sacrifices on the mizbeach. Unlike Onkelos, R’ Pinchas learns the entire pasuk to be about the korban tamid: “in the morning [the wolf] eats plunder” corresponds to the lamb-offering brought in the morning and “in the evening [the wolf] divides spoils” corresponds the lamb offered in the afternoon.

On the last page of Maseches Sukkah (56b) the mizbeach is compared to a wolf again, but in a derisive manner:

There was an incident involving Miriam bas Bilgah, who apostatized and went and married a soldier of the Greek kings. When the Greeks entered the Sanctuary, [she entered with them and] kicked the mizbeach with her sandal, saying: “Lukos, Lukos! (Wolf, wolf!) For how long will you consume the property of the Jewish people, yet you do not stand with them in dire circumstances?”

The difference between R’ Pinchas and Miriam bas Bilgah illustrates one of Lopez’s concluding thoughts:

We create wolves … in the wolf we have not so much an animal that we have always known as one that we have consistently imagined. To the human imagination the wolf has proved at various times the appropriate symbol for greed or savagery, the exactly proper guise for the Devil, or fitting as a patron of warrior clans. (p.203-204)

The same is true of the mizbeach. To R’ Pinchas, the mizbeach is the locus of the rendezvous between the shechinah and Israel: the two lambs we offer each day are seized in a wolflike fashion by a miraculous fire which testifies to the indwelling of God’s hashgachah (providence) among His people. But to Miriam bas Bilgah, the mizbeach is a predatory institution which drains Israel’s resources, yielding nothing in return. It is a relic of a bad deal with a God Who abandoned His people.

And what is true of the mizbeach is true of the shechinah itself. God’s hashgachah is an objective reality, but our perception of it is a reflection our own premises. We, as a nation, have fallen prey to such biases in the past: “the Children of Israel imputed things that were not true to Hashem, their God” (II Melachim 17:9). Like the wolf, the shechinah is what it is, but it is also what we make of it in our minds and imaginations. We must proceed with the utmost intellectual humility, cognizant of our human limitations. Only with such humility can we be worthy to stand before the shechinah, as it stated about the most humble of us all: “Moshe hid his face, for he was afraid to gaze at God” (Shemos 3:6).

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If you've gained from what you've learned here, please consider contributing to my Patreon at www.patreon.com/rabbischneeweiss. Alternatively, if you would like to make a direct contribution to the "Rabbi Schneeweiss Torah Content Fund," my Venmo is @Matt-Schneeweiss, and my Zelle and PayPal are mattschneeweiss at gmail.com. Even a small contribution goes a long way to covering the costs of my podcasts, and will provide me with the financial freedom to produce even more Torah content for you.

If you would like to sponsor a day's or a week's worth of content, or if you are interested in enlisting my services as a teacher or tutor, you can reach me at rabbischneeweiss at gmail.com. Thank you to my listeners for listening, thank you to my readers for reading, and thank you to my supporters for supporting my efforts to make Torah ideas available and accessible to everyone.

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