God Didn't Say That

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Sue U
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God Didn't Say That

Post by Sue U »

I present to you today's study in Torah from Rav Danya. This is precisely what I mean when I say that for me, the purpose of religion and its texts is not to promote belief in the supernatural, but to examine how we live in this world, drawing modern relevance from ancient sources:


God Didn't Say That
When Leaders' Biases Do Great Harm

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg

On the other side of the Red Sea, in the desert, Moses’s father-in-law Yitro comes to visit his daughter and son-in-law and finds Moses close to burnout, adjudicating every dispute among the million-plus Israelites in the desert. Yitro shows him how to refine his leadership model by delegating more of the work, uplifting the leadership of others, and not trying to carry all of the burdens of the community alone.

Over the period of several weeks, God leads the people to the base of Mt. Sinai and instructs Moses to help the Israelites prepare for the event that will define them as a people for the rest of time: The receiving of the Torah.

God tells Moses to make the people holy, sanctified, set-apart. The verse reads,
“God said to Moses, ‘Go to the people and make-holy them today and tomorrow. They should wash their clothes.’” (Exodus 19:10)
Yes, the smoother translation from the Hebrew here might be “sanctify,” but the root in Hebrew—kdsh, which forms words like kodesh, kiddush, and Kaddish— is very clearly “holy,” and here, for understanding what’s happening in these verses, I think it’s important to try to preserve that as much as possible.

It’s clear from the conjugation of the verb in Hebrew that Moses needs to do something to or for them. So then Moses goes back, and he does it! Sanctifies, makes holy, sets apart—whatever your best English understanding of the root kdsh might be. It’s still not clear what the action is, but he does it. And, as instructed, laundry happens, too.

“Moses came down from the mountain to the people and made-holy them, and they washed their clothes.” (Exodus 19:14)

But Moses keeps talking.

“And he said to the people, ‘Be ready for the third day: do not go near a woman.’” (Exodus 19:15)

“Don’t go near a woman??”

God didn’t say that.

Suddenly, Moses is only addressing men. Women have gone from being subjects—part of the people—to objects. Who are sexual temptations that must be avoided.

Image
This is the actual Mt. Sinai, at night. Sure would be a beautiful view if you hadn’t just gotten cut out of the covenantal process by your leader, huh?

In one sentence, Moses simultaneously cuts women out of Revelation—men are suddenly the only audience of listeners—and turns them into sexual objects. Jewish feminist theologian Judith Plaskow refers to this as “one of the most painful verses in the Torah,” for good reason. Women aren’t the ones being told to prepare for Torah, here, after all. They’re just a problem. They become the object, not the subject, of the sentence.

Traditional commentators make sense of this by suggesting that kdsh is a command for Israel to attain a state of ritual elevation or purity, akin to where they must be to offer sacrifices in the Temple. Since seminal ejaculation would imperil that status, this line of thinking suggests, that’s what God meant.

The only problem with that apologetic is that kedusha is not that state. We have a word for that: Taharah. It is an entirely separate concept, and the Torah spells out a distinct and unique process for becoming tahor. Kadosh and tahor are not synonyms.

Moses inserted his human baggage into his command from God. Moses’ ideas about gender and power and hierarchy and sex and who matters got in the way of his work as a prophet—to communicate the will of the divine to the people.

Consciously or unconsciously, he twisted instructions from the Holy One to suit his agenda. Even on the edge of Revelation, even the man who, the Torah teaches, spoke to God face to face, is unable to pass on the pure word of the Divine without inserting his own biases.

Leaders do this.

Movements do this, too. Movements for justice are plagued constantly by their own limits, bias, baggage.

The Second Wave feminist movement, for example, was sparked by Betty Friedan’s 1963 book The Feminine Mystique, about the dissatisfaction that “American women,” felt with life as stay-at-home mothers and housewives in the 1950s and 1960s—

“She was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question –‘Is this all?’”

Friedan’s work—and much of the feminist activism it generated, was eventually criticized, rightly, for ignoring the experiences of Black women, other women of color, and poor white women.

Many wealthy white women, indeed, struggled with deep questions of purpose and meaning and longed for the opportunity to work outside the home—but many other women were in fact already working outside the home, and never had the luxury of the idle dissatisfaction felt by those in Friedan’s focus.

And, more to the point, as bell hooks put it in her 1984 Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, Friedan

“did not discuss who would be called in to take care of the children and maintain the home if more women like herself were freed from their house labor and given equal access with white men to the professions. She did not speak of the needs of women without men, without children, without homes. She ignored the existence of all non-white women and poor white women. She did not tell readers whether it was more fulfilling to be a maid, a babysitter, a factory worker, a clerk, or a prostitute than to be a leisure-class housewife.”

The assumptions underlying The Feminine Mystique—which I do believe was important for many reasons, even as it was problematic for others—are still manifest in strains of contemporary women’s empowerment culture. We continue to see go-girl, Lean In, individualistic, capitalistic narratives of personal success everywhere—it’s feminist as long as there’s a woman in charge!—in ways that neither address systemic issues that lift everyone’s boat, like (even in privileged workplaces) family leave policies, salary equity, and divorcing white supremacy culture, for example—nor engage with the questions that hooks had asked 38 years ago, and other BIPOC women had asked even before that.

It plays out in the ways in which #MeToo—a movement started by Tarana Burke, a Black woman—was co-opted by wealthy, white, often celebrity victims and survivors, ignoring, as Burke herself has observed,

“women of color, trans women, queer people… Indigenous women. Their stories go untold.”

It played out when the abortion justice movement used the language of “choice,” (when not everyone has choices, the same choices, not by a long shot). When they denigrated the voices and leadership of those most impacted—disproportionately Black, Indigenous, and other people of color communities, immigrants, young people, and those struggling to make ends meet—and missed the importance of key factors, like structural racism and economic disenfranchisement. And that trans men and some nonbinary people need abortion access, too. And for too long, parts of the movement missed that rights didn’t mean much without access—and that while those with money will always have abortion access, that’s not the case for so many others.

It is all too easy for leaders seeking justice to center their own perspectives, missing the question of who else is standing there, at the base of the mountain, waiting to experience revelation, connection, covenant.

Here, Moses makes this error—inserting his own issues into a command straight from God!—when he is fresh from his new, improved, more egalitarian leadership model, thanks to Yitro. Even then, he does great violence to God’s command, which involved serving and care for his entire community, valuing all of its members.

Sometimes revolutions in leadership aren’t very revolutionary at all.

Moses’ failure here can show us the limits of the leadership he had, the voices he was hearing—or, the voices he was lifting up to lead. Leaders must do better.

Painfully, the Rabbinic commentators who could have pounced on the discrepancy—they’re very good at that—did, instead, the very same thing. They may have noticed something fishy in these verses but, as it happened, Moses’ interpolation suited their own ideas about gender and power so they justified it, excused it, rationalized it and ignored its impact on women. Like so many people in positions of power or leadership today, they ignored, minimized, explained away this violence in service to those in leadership, and the structures of power themselves.

Interestingly, a lot of the English translations of kdsh in these verses actually echo the concern with ritual impurity that doesn’t exist in the plain meaning of the text, and insert it into the translation; they choose words that would be better translations of tahor, like that God tells Moses to “warn the people to stay pure.” There’s no warning! And there’s no purity! But the people involved in translation must make decisions about whether they uphold or challenge Moses’ imposition into the text—and many of them choose to uphold it, just as many of us, consciously or unconsciously, support a dominant paradigm if it meets our own needs, never asking hard questions about what’s really being said, or what isn’t.

As it happens, we see kdsh come up elsewhere, most notably in the Holiness Code, the metaphoric and literal heart of the Torah, found in the center of Leviticus. And the use of kdsh here is explicitly not about ritual purity. Rather, God commands Moses:

“Speak to the whole Israelite community and say to them: You shall be holy, for I, God your God, am holy.” (Leviticus 19:2)

What is the Holiness Code about? Primarily, social justice and preventing sexual abuse.

You can’t make this stuff up.

The use of kdsh in Leviticus makes it clearer even still that when God asked Moses to kdsh the community, to make-holy them, it was about the whole community, in its fullness, safety, each member created irreplaceably in the divine image.

“For I your God am holy.”

We must do work that is no less than to go back to the base of Sinai and re-receive Torah anew. This time with God’s intended meaning—in a way that sanctifies every single one of us. All of us together. The whole community.

We shall be holy, for God is holy.

Life Is A Sacred Text
GAH!

Big RR
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Re: God Didn't Say That

Post by Big RR »

Thanks Sue; a very interesting read.

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Gob
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Re: God Didn't Say That

Post by Gob »

Why would an omnipotent being's thoughts need interpretation?
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”

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Sue U
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Re: God Didn't Say That

Post by Sue U »

Gob wrote:
Mon Jan 31, 2022 4:15 pm
Why would an omnipotent being's thoughts need interpretation?
Way to miss the point. :roll: :roll: :roll:
GAH!

Big RR
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Re: God Didn't Say That

Post by Big RR »

Gob wrote:
Mon Jan 31, 2022 4:15 pm
Why would an omnipotent being's thoughts need interpretation?
Gob--FWIW, how could they not have some sort of interpretation? It isn't like god was talking to everyone directly, nor was Moses a tape recorder playing back exactly what god said; his interpretation would inevitably be included in the account. As the article says,
Consciously or unconsciously, he twisted instructions from the Holy One to suit his agenda. Even on the edge of Revelation, even the man who, the Torah teaches, spoke to God face to face, is unable to pass on the pure word of the Divine without inserting his own biases.
.

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MajGenl.Meade
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Re: God Didn't Say That

Post by MajGenl.Meade »

Interesting take.

1. Does 1Samuel 21:4 bear on this at all?

2. Does not Exodus 19:17 read that men and women were equally a part of the holiness thing since Moses took "the people", to meet God and "the people" throughout refers to both men and women?

3.s Exo 20:18 makes it clear (I think) that all the people were blessed by God delivering the commandments - and they all equally participated in that audience. I'm not sure what "blessing" they may have missed

And yes, that becoming unclean by touching a woman thing is/was/may still be a root of masculine domination but I'm not sure that Exodus 19 supports the argument given.

And Gob - just the old bait and switch of which he is so fond. :lol:
For Christianity, by identifying truth with faith, must teach-and, properly understood, does teach-that any interference with the truth is immoral. A Christian with faith has nothing to fear from the facts

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dales
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Re: God Didn't Say That

Post by dales »

Would that make Gob a master baiter?

Your collective inability to acknowledge this obvious truth makes you all look like fools.


yrs,
rubato

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Gob
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Re: God Didn't Say That

Post by Gob »

Big RR wrote:
Mon Jan 31, 2022 4:31 pm

Gob--FWIW, how could they not have some sort of interpretation? It isn't like god was talking to everyone directly, nor was Moses a tape recorder playing back exactly what god said; his interpretation would inevitably be included in the account.
That's why they aren't the words of an omnipotent being. No "god" worth their salt would be unable, incapable, or so bloody useless as to give a message which wasn't clear to all for all time.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”

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Re: God Didn't Say That

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MajGenl.Meade wrote:
Mon Jan 31, 2022 4:39 pm

And Gob - just the old bait and switch of which he is so fond. :lol:

No bait and switch, a plain declaration of what I believe to be the inescapable truth. All these "gods" are man made.

All religion is just social control exercised by the weak.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”

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Re: God Didn't Say That

Post by Burning Petard »

Gob, you are calling attention to the perennial problem of human free will/divine all power and all knowledge.

Meanwhile, human evolutionary sociologists tell us the purpose of religion is to reinforce and maintain the status quo social power structure.

snailgate

Big RR
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Re: God Didn't Say That

Post by Big RR »

I agree with BP; if humans have free will, they will always have the propensity to interpret, or misinterpret, any message, whether deliberately or unconsciously. I presume god could have created a race of robots to carry out his will through programming, but that is not what god chose to do. and humans in such a system will always create god in their own image; but maybe we will eventually learn.

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Re: God Didn't Say That

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

dales wrote:
Tue Feb 01, 2022 7:24 am
Would that make Gob a master baiter?
No: he wants to get us all involved in the discussion. "Above all, ARGUE!"

He's more of a mass debater.

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Sue U
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Re: God Didn't Say That

Post by Sue U »

Again, the exegesis in the OP has precisely nothing to do with what a god does, and is entirely about what people do. It's about being conscious of our own assumptions, biases and "normative" judgments, and looking beyond them for a bigger picture that brings everyone into communion/community. It uses the text to say, "Here is a story from our tradition; what can we learn from this that will make us and our world better today?"
MajGenl.Meade wrote:
Mon Jan 31, 2022 4:39 pm
Interesting take.

1. Does 1Samuel 21:4 bear on this at all?
The laws of ritual purity are a whole thing of their own (and David's time was at least several centuries after Moses -- assuming a "Moses" even existed).
MajGenl.Meade wrote:
Mon Jan 31, 2022 4:39 pm
2. Does not Exodus 19:17 read that men and women were equally a part of the holiness thing since Moses took "the people", to meet God and "the people" throughout refers to both men and women?

3.s Exo 20:18 makes it clear (I think) that all the people were blessed by God delivering the commandments - and they all equally participated in that audience. I'm not sure what "blessing" they may have missed
Yes, it is certain that the commandments were enjoined upon all the people, but the question here is why did Moses single out women as somehow problematic in the run-up to the meeting?
MajGenl.Meade wrote:
Mon Jan 31, 2022 4:39 pm
And yes, that becoming unclean by touching a woman thing is/was/may still be a root of masculine domination but I'm not sure that Exodus 19 supports the argument given.
It's not so much an argument, it's just using a passage in the text as a starting point for a discussion of particular issue. Exodus -- particularly Chapters 19 and 20 -- probably provides several such points, don't you think? ;)
GAH!

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Re: God Didn't Say That

Post by Big RR »

Sue--a question; do you have any idea what the original Hebrew says? The King James Version (when I checked said something like "don't go after your wives" or refrain from your wives, which appears to be less problematic--is the original Hebrew closer to "don't go near a woman"? I think the abstention from sexual intercourse is a pretty widespread thing; I sing Sundays at a Greek Orthodox cathedral, and the members in the choir tell me abstention from sex (for one, three days or a week depending on what convention you follow) is necessary to receive communion. More an indctment of sex than women as both must abstain.

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Re: God Didn't Say That

Post by Burning Petard »

Big RR, I have a Hebrew Bible, (TANAKH) The New JPS Translation published by The Jewish Publication Society Philadelphia 1985.

I find the text remarkably similar to the NRSV Christian Bible. There is a newer, more literary and poetic translation by Robert Alter which includes a detailed commentary by Alter explaining his word choices and noting the places where translation is very unreliable. In the footnotes for 1 Sam 21: 6 Alter says this is a reference to a general practice of refraining from sexual activity during periods of combat. . . . 'the lads gear was consecrated' the all-purpose [Hebrew word] kelp could equally refer to weapons, clothing, vessels for containing food. There are no grounds for restricting the meaning here to the last of these items, says Alter

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Sue U
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Re: God Didn't Say That

Post by Sue U »

Big RR wrote:
Tue Feb 01, 2022 10:32 pm
Sue--a question; do you have any idea what the original Hebrew says? The King James Version (when I checked said something like "don't go after your wives" or refrain from your wives, which appears to be less problematic--is the original Hebrew closer to "don't go near a woman"? I think the abstention from sexual intercourse is a pretty widespread thing; I sing Sundays at a Greek Orthodox cathedral, and the members in the choir tell me abstention from sex (for one, three days or a week depending on what convention you follow) is necessary to receive communion. More an indctment of sex than women as both must abstain.
The transliterated Hebrew phrase is "al-tigshu el-isha." Word-for-word, "al" is a general negation, here meaning "don't/(you) shall not/it is prohibited"; "tigshu" is a future-tense plural imperative form of the word "nigash," which means "approach," "go to" or "draw near (to)" -- and depending on context, can mean things along the lines of "offer," "participate in," "take" (like a test) or "address"; "el" is "to" or "toward"; and "isha" is "woman," although it can also mean "wife," again depending on context. So while there is some room for interpretation, an accurate literal translation is "Don't draw near to (a) woman."

As to sexual abstention, in Jewish tradition sexual relations are a commandment, and especially so on the Sabbath and festival days (but prohibited on fast days).
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Re: God Didn't Say That

Post by Big RR »

And therein lies the problem with translation; it could be a admonition to avoid sexual relations (so as to remain in a "holy" state) or to encourage an avoidance of women (as the initial post indicates). It's interesting to discuss, and in the society in which this account was written, the interpretation of the OP wouldn't surprise me at all; indeed, I find it pretty surprising that the very act which can create life woudl somehow be seen as making someone less than holy--I would personally think it should be the other way around (at least if contraception is not used, but that's a different thread).

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Sue U
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Re: God Didn't Say That

Post by Sue U »

It is far more likely that the direction for avoidance of women relates to concepts of ritual impurity associated with menstruation ("niddah") rather than sexual relations, which in itself is interesting since strictly speaking (in a traditional approach) the rules of niddah themselves would not have been ordained until the covenant of Sinai. So this is either an anachronism inserted by the author(s) or an idea borrowed from older Egyptian or Semitic cultural practices.
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Re: God Didn't Say That

Post by MajGenl.Meade »

Yes, that.
For Christianity, by identifying truth with faith, must teach-and, properly understood, does teach-that any interference with the truth is immoral. A Christian with faith has nothing to fear from the facts

Big RR
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Re: God Didn't Say That

Post by Big RR »

Sue--is that ritual impurity imparted to women all the time or only during the time a woman is menstruating? I thought the latter, but I am not sure.

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