A.
This week’s double parasha contains a very comprehensive list of illicit liaisons to be avoided in the interests of actualizing and maintaining the level of sanctity necessary in Israel. Before Ma‘amad Har Sinai we were told that our purpose was to serve as a ממלכת כהנים וגוי קדוש, a “kingdom of kohanim and holy nation” (Exodus XIX, 6). Now, we are told again, קדשים תהיו, “you will be holy” (XIX, 2), and again והתקדשתם והייתם קדשים (“And you will sanctify yourselves and be holy”; XX, 7), and yet again: והייתם לי קדשים כי קדש אני ד' ואבדל אתכם מן העמים להיות לי (“And you will be sacred to Me for I, Ha-Shem, am holy; and I have separated you from the nations to be Mine”; ibid., 26).
Prominent in that list, first mentioned in Chapter XVIII and re-emphasized in Chapter XX, is the following: ואיש אשר יקח את אחתו בת אביו או בת אמו וראה את ערותה והיא תראה את ערותו חסד הוא וגו' (“And a man who rakes his sister, daughter of his father or of his mother, and sees her nakedness, and she sees his nakedness, it is a hesed....”; XX, 17).
To anyone possessed of a living sense of the Hebrew language, the statement is a jarring peculiarity. Hesed is a well-known and common Hebrew word which occurs hundreds of times in Tanach with roughly the meaning “kindness.” In what way is this word applicable here? After all, as the verse goes on to state: ונכרתו לעיני בני עמם ערות אחתו גלה עונו ישא (“...and they will be cut off from the eyes of their people; he has uncovered his sister’s nakedness, he will bear his sin”).
B.
The Talmud offers one solution, which Rashi cites: א"ת קין נשא אחותו חסד עשה המקום לבנות עולמו ממנו שנאמר "עולם חסד יבנה" (“If you say, Qayin married his sister, G-d did a hesed in order to build His world from [Qayin], as it is said, ‘The world is built of hesed’ [Psalms LXXXIX, 3]”).
In short, the Talmud reads this as though the term hesed refers to an original, one-time dispensation which was granted at the dawn of creation, in order to enable the human race to get underway. There were originally, after all, only two people; the next generation consisted entirely of their descendants. If siblings were not permitted to marry, whom, exactly, would they marry and how would the human race carry forth its imperative of פרו ורבו וצלאו את הארץ (“be fruitful and multiply and fill up the earth”; Genesis I, 28)? Hence, G-d did a hesed with His creatures to permit them to go forward (עיי' סנהדרין נ"ח: וע"ע מאמר זה במלאו בירושלמי יבמות פי"א ה"א ודברי קרבן העדה ופני משה שם).
Well and good, but that dispensation had taken place a long time before Mattan Torah, and had already come to an end, since bënei Noach are partially forbidden this relationship (עיי' רמב"ם הל' מלכים פ"ט ה"ה), and the Torah forbids it completely to Israel, regardless of whether she is one’s sister on the father’s side or on the mother’s side.
Rashi himself terms this a midrashic interpretation of the verse, and offers a different suggestion for the simple meaning of the word. Hesed, he tells us, is a לשון ארמי חרפה, an “Aramaic expression [meaning] an object of reproach or contempt”).
Thereupon hangs an observation with very deep significance indeed for Israel.
C.
Rashi has put his finger on a rare occurrence in the Torah, one in which an Aramaic word appears all by itself in a context in which all the other words are Hebrew (for a second example, compare Deuteronomy XXXIII, 2, in which vë-atha, “and he came,” appears where we might expect u-va’). It must be emphasized that this is an entirely different phenomenon from that of Genesis XXXI, 46, the only occurrence of a connected Aramaic phrase, yëgar sahadutha, in the Torah. This is recognised as a foreign phrase, since it is translated in the same verse into Hebrew, gal‘éd, “mound of testimony.” Our case is an instance in which the word is used as if it is a Hebrew word.
Aramaic and Hebrew are closely related languages, and share a number of roots between them, though more usually with some phonetic change. In the case of our verse, the word appears identical with a Hebrew word whose meaning is rather nearly the reverse of the Aramaic word. Rabbi Yochanan Zweig, shlit”a, has taken note of this apparent reversal, and suggested that it may be explained by a major difference in the world-views of Hebrew and Aramaic, respectively.
To point up that difference, he reminds us that the Ba‘al ha-Turim famously notes that the letters of the word Arammi, “Aramaean”, also form the form the word rammai, “trickster”(Genesis XXV, 20; ע"ע בראשית רבי פס"ג סי' ד'). The Torah contains several examples of devious Aramaean behavior, that of Lavan (Genesis XXIX, 27); his descendant Bil‘am ben Bë‘or (Numbers XXI, 6, Rashi ad loc.; עיי' זוה"ק ח"א קס"ו:), as well as his sister Rivqa (Genesis XXVII, 1-25), and daughter Rahél (עיי' מגילה י"ג:).
The last two are of the greatest interest to us, since Rivqa, Rahél, and her sister Lé’a are the direct ancestresses of the Jewish people, and Avraham was adamant that his son Yitzhaq marry a girl from Aram (Genesis XXIV, 4, 10), as in deed Yitzhaq instructed Ya‘aqov (ibid., XXVIII, 2).
Why should this be? What is it about ramma’uth, “trickery,” that recommends it as an essential ingredient in the ancestry of the Holy Nation, such that the patriarchs ensured that Israel got a double dose of it?
Rabbi Zweig suggests that an essential part of the character of a confidence man is an ability to empathize with his victim, to “feel his pain,” as one of the greatest political confidence men of the 20th century was wont to say. It is only in this way, he suggests, that the trickster is able to tailor his message to the victim, so that the victim will be taken in, and will trust the trickster. The emphasis, then, of the Aramaic language is outward, toward the object of the action; it follows that the thrust of the Holy Language is inward, toward introspection, and the feelings and attitudes of the subject of the action.
We see this at work in the very word at issue in our verse. When one does a hesed, there are two sides to the phenomenon. On the one hand, from the point of view of the person who performs the act (whatever it is), it is a gracious act of kindness, wholly meritorious. From the point of view of the one receiving the hesed, though, it is something else. He is now under obligation to the person performing the act. No matter how graciously the act has been performed, the recipient will feel uncomfortable until or unless he has been able to pay it back, to requite the act in some fashion. In short, the Hebrew meaning of the word hesed views the term subjectively, from the point of view of the performer of the act; the Aramaic meaning with its overtones of shame views it objectively, from the point of view of the recipient.
This fundamental fact of human psychology underlies the Rambam’s classification of tzëdaqa: The highest form of tzëdaqa is to enable the recipient to earn his own living, so that he no longer needs charity; the second greatest is a mattana bë-sether, a gift in secret, such that neither the donor nor the recipient knows the other’s identity, and the donor therefore cannot feel superior in some regard to the recipient, nor can the recipient feel ashamed in the face of the specific donor (רמב"ם הל' צדקה פ ה).
(Another example, by the way, of such a reversal in the meaning of a root which serves to con-firm Rabbi Zweig’s observation may be found in comparison of the Hebrew word שכח, shachah, "forget," and Aramaic אשכח, ashkah, “find”. Here again, forgetting is subjective, on the part of the person who has lost the object; finding is objective, relating to the object lost).
D.
From the mirror images of the word hesed, viewed as a Hebrew word, from the point of view of the giver, or as an Aramaic word, from the point of view of the recipient, we can see why it was that this quality of empathy, of being sensitive to the other person’s feelings, is essential to the Holy nation, if we are to perform mitzvoth properly. in such a fashion that they only effect good things, and do not, G-d forbid, cause pain or hardship to others.
From our own point of view, as we know (for instance) from the patriarch Avraham, there is a great wellspring of the desire and zeal to do good, to benefit others in whatever way we can. It is our matriarchs Rivqa, Rahél, and Lé’a, who provide us with the sensitivity to see the other’s point of view, and act with care and discretion in response to that imperative, so as not ever to hurt anyone unnecessarily. It is only by exercising both the patriarchal and the matriarchal heritage of Israel that we are able to fulfill the injunction with which G-d introduces the list of forbidden liaisons: ושמרתם את לקתי ואת משפטי אשר יעשה אתם האדם וחי בהם (“And you will keep My laws and My judgments, which a person should do and live by them”; XVIII, 5). “Living by them” requires that we be sensitive both to the way in which we perform mitzvoth, and to their effects on others.
3 comments:
Thanks for your thoughts on the use of Aramaic and Hebrew in the Tanakh. There are quite a few instances like this where a word is used in the Tanakh which is easier to understand if it is Aramaic. Another obvious example is the use of bar (son) in Psalm 2, or Psalm 19:3 where "shows" knowledge is yechaveh, which is easier to understand if it is Aramaic. Are you saying these might be deliberate plays on words in Hebrew/Aramaic?
Dear Aramaic Scholar:
The relationship between the Jewish people is a very ancient, and somewhat convoluted, as I’m sure you realize.
I have seen it said in the name of the midrash (though I don’t have the actual citation) that the Patriarchs spoke both Aramaic and Hebrew. This stands to reason, given that Rivqa, Rachel, Le’a, Bilha, and Zilpa were all Aramaeans, and there is no indication in Genesis that either Eli‘ezer, Avraham’s servant, or Ya‘aqov had any difficulties in communicating with Bethu’el and Lavan (nor that Yizchaq and Ya‘aqov could not talk to their wives).
The Mishna Bërura (Orach Chayyim 285:6) tells us that the Targum Onqelos was actually given at Sinai with the Hebrew text, and learns from this the age-old Jewish custom of Shnayim miqra vë-echad Targum.
The now-famous inscription from the lost Book of Bil‘am found at Deir ‘Allâ in Jordan, which Prof. William Shea has plausibly identified with Bil‘am’s city of Pëthor, is said to be written in a language which is a mixture of Aramaic and Hebrew (or Canaanite, if you like; the Zohar tells us that Bil‘am was a lineal descendant of Lavan). This suggests that such a mixed language was in common use.
It is worth noting, however, that the two examples which you cite, from Psalms, and the example from Deuteronomy XXXIII, 2, which I mentioned in passing, are, of course, exalted, poetic language (it should also not pass without note that the meaning of bar in Psalms II, 12, is controversial: The Even ‘Ezra reads it in such a way that it can be construed as equivalent to ben, but Rashi and the Mëtzudoth read it as equivalent to Hebrew bar lévav, “pure/clear of heart”), though the halachic verse which is the center of my essay and Rabbi Zweig’s observation is more workaday.
Finally, even if Aramaic was part of Israel’s heritage from a very remote time, there came a time when it was forgotten, for during the days of King Hizqiyahu only educated members of the political class understood Aramaic; the common people did not (cf. II Kings XVIII,26, Rashi ad loc.).
In short, yes. It is certainly possible, even likely, that such usages as the ones mentioned in my piece and in Psalms are deliberately learned plays on words, and it is at least arguable that the different Weltanschauungen exemplified by the two languages, as Rabbi Zweig brings out, is the reason why.
Kol tuv,
Avi
Post a Comment