Hitzonim | Outsiders

Okay, so this was due Thursday. I have an excuse—sort of. Work was busier than expected this week, so that’s a thing, but I planned to get this out first thing Saturday morning. Friday night around midnight, two trees from the tree line behind our house fell in high winds and landed at our home, shattering a skylight and putting two large punctures in our roof. Big mess and some damage, so rather than publishing this post Saturday morning, we were all dealing with the big clean-up effort.

I like what I did with the Parsha this (last) week, so I’m moving forward with sharing this post, even though it’s technically a week behind the Torah schedule. Enjoy. And yes, our family is safe, but we’ll likely need a new roof, and I have to figure out what to do with a shop vac filled with broken glass, and I can’t help but glance up at the gaping hole in our roof to be sure the tarp is holding. Oy. Yet, I know Hurricane Helene had a much more significant impact in the Gulf states, including loss of life, so I am grateful that we are all safe here. xx. ❤ -a.

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Logistics Update

Nitzavim, the Parsha we read this (last) week, is the last Parsha before the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana, “head of the year” for the Hebrew calendar year 5785, celebrated this week, beginning sunset October 2, 2024, followed ten days later by Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year. There is a Torah reading for Rosh Hashana that I’ll write a post on 

October 3, and there is another Parsha on October 5 that I’ll discuss. I’ll take a planned break for Yom Kippur, so no post the week of October 7. We’ll kick off our book study by AJ Levine on the Gospel according to John on the week of October 14, so be sure you sign up if you’d like to participate. The Parsha calendar starts for the (Hebrew) new year with B’resheit, Genesis 1, the week of October 21, and I’d love to continue writing weekly summaries all year. That’s a big commitment, and we’ll have unexpected things come up, but if you want to read all of Torah with me, we have an opportunity to do so together.

That’s enough housekeeping. On to Parsha Nitzavim! 

Introduction to Parsha Nitzavim (Deuteronomy 29:9-31:30)

“You stand this day, all of you, before Adonai your God.”

Parsha Nitzavim (“ones standing”), opens with a legal ceremony to get square on the covenant before entering the land. Entering the land means that our reading of Deuteronomy is nearing its end, and with that, so is our reading through Torah for Hebrew year 5784, with only one more Parsha to go.

Entering the Covenant with Adonai

The posture of everyone standing before Adonai, and this is everyone! All people, all genders, all ages, and all social statuses are instructed to stand before Adonai, “both with those who are standing here with us this day before our God Adonai and with those who are not with us here this day.” From passages like this, we affirm that anyone with a Jewish soul, their neshama, was gathered, and those who become Jewish by choice were also gathered.

According to the commentaries, the posture of everyone standing before Adonai reminds us of other scenes of subjects appearing before Adonai. For example, Psalm 82.1 (with a bit of annotation from yours truly):

God (Elohim) has taken his place in the divine council (the assembly of El);

    in the midst of the gods (“divine beings” JPS) he holds judgment

Ope. Not quite yet monotheism, like the other gods who figure in this Psalm, Deuteronomy assumes the existence of other gods, saying back in 5.7 that the people should have no other gods before the God of Israel. I guess the logic goes something like, why stipulate holding no other god before the God of Israel if the God of Israel is the only god? The instruction itself tacitly asserts a polytheistic worldview. Actually, monolatrous, but we’ll get to this.

Much later in the text of Deuteronomy, 29.25 says, “they turned to the service of other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they had not experienced and whom [God] had not allotted to them” (JPS).

Gods that they Did Not Experience

The background belief here is that a people have an allotment: a tribe, a land, and a god. The people described in Deuteronomy 29.25 turned to other people’s gods, gods not allotted to them, not part of their land and people. The concern with these other people is not that they admit the existence of other gods or even that they worship other gods, but that they worship gods that are not part of their allotment. The God of Israel sets apart the people of Israel. That is their allotment. I think this helps us make sense of the covenantal language. The God of Israel’s concern is not with worshiping other gods because there is only one God; instead, the prohibition is related to the covenant between the God of Israel and the people of Israel’s allotment. In its earliest material, Deuteronomy has no special prohibition against admitting to the existence of other gods; the concern of the covenant is that the God of Israel is exclusive to the people of Israel. I hope this makes some sense and explains why this portion of Deuteronomy is not (yet) monotheistic. Monolatry is a view that allows for the existence of multiple gods but finds that one God is supreme. See how this coheres with the idea of a Divine Council?

Your God, Your Mascot

I take this detour because these details matter to appreciating the text. I don’t want to take the scenic route, but one reason that the religion of Israel was permitted in the Roman Empire for some time is that the pagan idea of a god being associated with a family, a town, a land, and so on was the way that the religion of Israel was partially understood and respected, with its emphasized role for ancestors (“The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), and its unique and set apart relationship with its god. Ironically, I read in a book on Paul in the Christian tradition that his ability to institute his gatherings (ekklesia) throughout the Empire was because the Judean religion was at least tolerated that Paul didn’t receive initial pushback from pagan cities for establishing what may well have seemed like a synagogue. Synagogue. Paul was a Pharisee. I mean, duh, right?

Back to the people’s allotment of their god and their land. This context is also useful for understanding the language of a god marching with you into battle. Shit, remember my commentary on Parsha Matot at the beginning of August?

The P source here is doing a couple of things: first, establishing their own military prowess, and second, reinforcing precise legal and cultic codes; in fact, the priestly utensils used in the tabernacle (no Temple yet) are carried into the battle to ensure the divine presence is with them.

Your god is your mascot, sort of, but more than that, the strength of your military prowess was directly proportional to your god’s strength. Part of conquering another people is defeating their god or making their god subordinate to your god. The God of Israel, the one called Adonai, and the one whose name is four letters, ultimately takes on characteristics that were previously distinctive of Baal, another Canaanite deity, and El, a name that was still in use whenever Psalm 82 was composed. See my annotations above.

I want to make two further points with this information, one related to the text and another to us. First, within the text, I want this whole worldview to become a little more secure in our minds. I am skeptical that we can adequately reconstruct the mental attitudes of our 6th-century BCE ancestors. I am optimistic, however, that we can intellectually connect some dots here. Consider all that a people have riding on their god. For the people of Israel, this God of Israel made a commitment to their ancestors and to them that they may conquer and settle on this land. The covenant with the God of Israel isn’t just a statement of faith or something. This is how you receive your blessings and avoid your curses. The view here is that you are a people set apart for the God of Israel, and here is your allotment of land, and here are your requirements for maintaining the covenant on your end. This is the ceremony for which the people stand before Adonai your God just before they enter the land. There is a weightiness here for the intended audience that is different in kind from the weightiness we may experience reading the text.

The second point I want to make, the one addressed more to us, as modern readers, is related to this. I want us to appreciate the vast gulf between the “religion” of this setting and religion today. I understand how tempting it is to turn to our sustained traditions of ark and covenant, sacrifice and prayer, garments, diets, and festivals and conclude that there is something of them in us. And I think, to use an old philosophy phrase, that is true, in the limit.

Generations have sustained this text and dedicated entire lives to the study, interpretation, and application of these ancient texts. Indeed, we’re actively doing this together now! There are volumes of law codes and precedents, shtetls and cities, shuls and skyscrapers, and this little boy with peyot here and that man with the tzit tzit there, and as we approach Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, festivals discussed in the books we’re studying, there is a romantic ideal that these ancients are closer to us than we think. I very much value and appreciate that insight. I also think it’s mistaken.

This text and these traditions undoubtedly influence modern rabbinic Judaism. A common traditionalist thread weaves into the tapestry of this Torah, and we do share something with these ancients, but I want to maintain a respectful distance from the text. The Deuteronomy covenant is not a bar mitzvah in Highland Park. Reminding ourselves of the distance between us may license our creativity to understand how we apply the text today. Tradition is like advice: Take what works, but don’t worry about dismissing what doesn’t. To quote the most famous Bible scholar on TikTok, we’re constantly negotiating with the text.

Blot Out Your Name

The last theme I want to discuss involving this Parsha includes the caution that should you violate the covenant, your name will be blotted out. A blotting out, or a wiping out, is considered by the ancient authors to be a total erasure of the thing so named. This is often associated with divine punishment, either by Godself or by a ritual that a priest performs, ostensibly carrying out a cultic practice licensed by the Holy One. This variety of divine punishment has plenty of use cases throughout the Torah/Tanakh.

Paradigmatic examples include when God seeks to wipe out creation for our wickedness (Gen. 6.7) or when Moses is instructed to blot out the memory of Amalek (Exodus 17.14). The dealing with Amalek and the Amalekites as the mortal and sworn enemies of Biblical Israel was evoked by the current Prime Minister of modern Israel; a genocidal use of the sacred literature that I find personally abhorrent.

Later in Exodus, Moses intervenes on the people’s behalf following the incident of the molten calf; Moses offers himself to be blotted out in place of the people (Exodus 32.32). In the Deuteronomistic literature (Deuteronomy 9:14), God suggests destroying the Israelites and making a new nation from Moses, essentially “wiping out” the current nation due to their rebellion. This divine punishment can also reveal God’s mercy. For example, in 2 Kings 14.27, God decides not to “blot out” the name of Israel from under heaven, showing mercy and preserving their existence.

In Psalm 9.6, the psalmist speaks of the destruction of the wicked, stating that their cities have been “blotted out” and their memories erased, and with it, the people, “the wicked’s” legacy has been erased

In the Book of Numbers, chapter four, we read about what has come to be called the Sotah ritual. This ritual describes a procedure that was used to determine the guilt or innocence of a woman accused of adultery by instructing her to drink “bitter water” that would cause physical afflictions (miscarriage?) if she were guilty. This interpretation is based on the description that the “water of bitterness” would cause her abdomen to swell and her thigh to waste away, which some scholars interpret as a euphemism for a miscarriage. Modern Jewish scholars and commentators sometimes explore this passage, considering the ritual’s implications for reproductive healthcare. It’s worth saying that abortion is not a violation of Jewish theology. In Jewish tradition, following the story of Adam’s creation in the Garden, life is breathed into a person, so the interpretation follows that life begins at first breath, not at conception, as has become the interpretation in some, not all, Christian traditions. Religious freedom, if we’re serious about it, and not only using “religious freedom” as code for “Christian nationalism,” demands that issues respect all religious traditions.

Back to Numbers, at 5:23, the priest performing the Sotah ritual writes curses on a scroll and then washes them off with the water of bitterness, blotting them out. This act is symbolic, transferring the curses into the water. The woman then drinks this water as part of the ritual to determine her guilt or innocence regarding the accusation of adultery.

The washing off of the curses into the water is meant to imbue the water with the power of the curses, making it a potent agent in the ritual, but they are also blotted out by the water.

The punishment for violating the covenant in Deuteronomy is total erasure, which is connected to some of the worst offenses of wrongdoing and injustice in the Torah/Tanakh. This is the risk of failing to maintain loyalty to the God of Israel, the specific allotment for the people of Israel, who were set apart by God exclusively.

Wrapping Things Up

Parsha Nitzavim offers profound insights into the covenantal relationship between the people of Israel and Adonai. The imagery of all individuals standing together, regardless of status, underscores the inclusive nature of this covenant. This Parsha also highlights the historical context of monolatry, where the God of Israel is seen as supreme among other deities.

The concept of divine punishment through the blotting out of names is a stark reminder to the intended audience of the seriousness of maintaining this covenant. As we draw near to our close of Deuteronomy, I hope the ideas of covenant, monolatry, and the editorial insertions into the text to reflect evolving theology over time are becoming more clear. The ancient worldview is complex and cohesive, as far as it goes, but it is also distant from us. Marrying the modern to the ancient is one of my goals.