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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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