Creation - Plants and Trees With Attitude Problems

[Note: the following is a slightly edited version of a post that I wrote for the now apparently defunct Sefer HaBloggadah.]

Genesis 1:11-12 covers the creation of plants. God says make some plants, and the earth makes some plants. The story is three sentences long. One might think this is all pretty simple and straightforward.

Not even close.

A midrash in Bialik's Sefer Ha Aggadah (1:2:32) picks up on one seemingly minor textual inconsistency, and a comment from Rashi picks up on a different textual inconsistency. Juxtaposing these two gives us some pretty interesting conclusions. Let's start with the Torah text, and then discuss our midrash, Rashi's comment, and what we can make of all this.

Here's the Torah:

And God said: 'Let the earth put forth grass, herb yielding seed, and fruit-tree bearing fruit after its kind, wherein is the seed thereof, upon the earth.' And it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, herb yielding seed after its kind, and tree bearing fruit, wherein is the seed thereof, after its kind; and God saw that it was good. (Gen 1:11-12)

The midrash notes one subtle textual discrepancy in this story. God said to produce "herb yielding seed" but the earth actually brought forth "herb yielding seed after its kind". (That is, the seeds from these plants would themselves grow the same kind of plant.) Here's most of the Midrash:

[T]he grasses applied to themselves an a fortiori argument, saying: If God enjoined "after its kind" upon trees, which by nature do not grow up in promiscuous miscellany, how much more does it apply to us! Immediately each grass sprouted forth after its kind . . . . Then the angel of the universe declared, "The glory of the Lords endures forever; the Lord rightly rejoices in His works!"

Grass with attitude. God says do it one way, and the grass thinks it has a better idea and does it differently.

But things gets better. Here's another textual inconsistency. God said to create "fruit-tree bearing fruit" (עֵץ פְּרִי עֹשֶׂה פְּרִי), but the earth instead brought forth "tree bearing fruit" (וְעֵץ עֹשֶׂה-פְּרִי). Our midrash skips this problem, but Rashi picks up on it. "This implies that the taste of the tree should be the same as the taste of the fruit. However, it [the earth] did not do this, but rather: 'The earth sprouted forth . . . a tree producing a fruit,' but the tree itself was not a fruit."

Now the earth has attitude. God's original plan called for the entire tree -- branches, leaves, bark, everything -- to be edible. It would literally be a "fruit tree" that also bore fruit. But the earth decided it had a better idea and made regular trees instead. Rashi notes the consequences for the earth's disobedience. "Therefore, when Adam was cursed for his sin, it, [the earth] too, was punished for its sin and was [also] cursed."

This is remarkable. God issued a simple command to the earth: make some plants and trees. The grass -- after comparing itself to the trees, carefully thinking through the problem, and applying Talmudic reasoning -- decided to improve on God's plan. And then did! (And did so before it was even created. Talk about being an over-achiever.) The earth on the other hand made the opposite move. God wanted super-trees, but the earth just created regular old ordinary trees.

But the most puzzling verse of all is the transition between God's commands and the much modified implementations of these commands: "And it was so." It most certainly was not so. God got very different grass and trees than he had commanded.

So what do we make of all this?

Here's my explanation. The divine plan for creation is not static. It is dynamic and changing, and these changes even include creation's modifications of the divine plan for creation itself.

Also, it means that people have a very important role in continuing God's creation. Contrary to Dr. Pangloss's position, this is not the best of all possible worlds. We can improve things, and we should.

As many people have noted, we see this idea reflected in our shabbat blessings. We bless God for bringing forth bread from the earth. But of course God does not create bread. Nature brings grain from the earth. People then improve the grain and make the bread. And then we bless God for creating the fruit of the vine. Well, God may do that, but we are not eating grapes. We are drinking wine. And people improved the grapes to make the wine. Our blessings make no difference between the the products people make (bread, wine) and the raw materials God makes (grain, grapes), and in fact seems to confuse the two categories.

Exactly.

The reason for all of this, as I see it, is that the divine plan includes the potential to modify the divine plan. Grapes includes potential wine, wine includes prior grapes, bread includes prior grain, and grain includes potential bread. God and people work together, we get some pretty good stuff, and all of this is part of the divinity of all of this.

The Torah notes that we are created in the image of God. And one important idea in Judaism (and other religions; hence the Latin) is imitatio dei: imitating God. God creates and modifies, and so should we.

This process is not limited to the physical world. It applies to halacha as well. God creates law. As I have argued elsewhere, God also modifies law. And so should we. Halacha cannot be a static and unchanging set of legal rules. Instead, it is up to us to create new rules and modify the old ones as changed conditions require changes in the rule. We should not do so out of convenience or laziness, but only to promote the highest ideals of Judaism.

This enterprise, like all such enterprises, must be undertaken with seriousness and careful thought. Note the two endings to our two stories. God rejoiced when the grasses made themselves better, but he punished the earth when it made trees that were worse. We should change things when we need to, but we need to try very hard to get it right.

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Theories of Judaism and Rawls' Reflective Equilibrium

Jews tend to cluster around certain general understandings of Judaism, like Orthodoxy, secular or cultural Judaism, or ignorance and apathy. Other understandings, like moderate Conservativism tend to be less stable, with its adherents sometimes towards one of the other extremes. And when people make changes in their religious beliefs and practices, they often do so in large steps rather than gradually: Orthodox Jews go "off the derech" and secular Jews become Orthodox. In other words, Jewish religious beliefs tend to be "lumpy." Why?

One possible answer comes from the idea of "reflective equilibrium", a phenomenon explained by noted philosopher John Rawls. (My co-blogger Diane studied with Rawls; unlike me, she actually knows something.)

In A Theory of Justice, Rawls explained the idea of reflective equilibrium. He noted that people tend to start with both general theoretical ideas and some particular judgments. These may conflict, and when they do, we modify either our theoretical beliefs or our particular conclusions and then think some more. As long as conflicts remain, we are not in reflective equilibrium, and we repeat the process. However, once we reach a point where our general theory and our particular judgments are consistent with each other, we are in reflective equilibrium and we are satisfied with both.

One implication of this theory is that once we have reached reflective equilibrium, our beliefs tend to support each other. That is, particular beliefs (either general ideas or concrete conclusions) cannot be modified in isolation. The whole system of general beliefs and specific conclusions hangs together, and it is difficult to simply make a slight modification. (We don't see Orthodox Jews observing 612 mitzvot, but skipping (say) putting up a mezuzah.)

Another implication is that beliefs tend to be robust. That is, it is difficult to get people to change. A particular problem does not challenge only one small aspect of beliefs, but the entire system, and the system has a lot of intellectual inertia.

We see this robustness in religious discussions. When a traditional Orthodox Jew is confronted with some potentially troubling argument (the existence of needless suffering, modern bible scholarship, evolution, 2 million people wandering in Sinai, Noah's flood), his reaction is often to ignore the problem, deny the problem, or dismiss the argument as just implausible or unbelievable. Similarly, when a secular Jew is confronted with some potentially troubling argument (the existence of consciousness, the "Torah Codes", the inconsistency between going to synagogue on Yom Kippur and not observing other mitzvot), his reaction is often to ignore the problem, deny the problem, or dismiss the argument as just implausible or unbelievable. (Note: I am not making any claims regarding these arguments themselves; I am simply noting how people respond.)

A third implication is that some belief systems are relatively stable, and others are relatively unstable. As a very general matter, I see three stable and one semi-stable belief system.

The stable belief systems:

Orthodoxy: God entered into an eternal covenant with the Jewish people and gave us the Torah as binding instructions for life. Jews should do all the mitzvot and devote their lives to Judaism.

Slightly Observant and Barely Religious: Authentic Judaism is Orthodoxy, and we do not want any part of that. Judaism consists of ancient bizarre rituals and stories that no sensible person would take seriously. But it is mostly harmless, and might have some beneficial aspects, like teaching children general ethics and social responsibility, lifecycle rituals, and innocuous holidays like Chanukah and Passover. So we will send our kids to religious school at a Reform or Conservative synagogue to "get bar-mitzvahed," but we'll quit after that. But we're not going to do the second half of the seder, our Yom Kippur fasting will probably stop when we get hungry, we're not going to read the Torah or any book about Judaism for that matter, and we've never heard of Shavuot and don't really care.

Hostile and Non-Observant: Judaism is just silly. We don't belief in God. We don't need religion for ethics, and the whole thing just upsets me. Religious people are deluded and foolish.

The semi-stable belief system:

Religious and Moderately Observant: We have an non-traditional understanding of both God and Torah. We take Judaism seriously. We observe enough mitzvot that our liberal Jewish friends think we are nuts (or might even be Orthodox!). But we do not observe enough mitzvot that our Orthodox friends think we are heretics. Unlike everyone else, our answers to simple religious questions involve long and complicated answers. We like contradictory slogans like "Tradition and Change."

The obvious reason why the last belief system (which is mine, BTW) is only semi-stable is that it is balancing between competing contradictory ideas, and if that balance gets unbalanced, we run off to one of the extremes. (Although we gain some flexibility, and things like atheism, agnosticism, theism, bible criticism, the existence of suffering or evil tend not to require huge shifts in our belief system.)

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Ne'ilah's Gates

Before Yom Kippur, a friend and colleague (the some one with the clever Rosh Hashana suggestion) had a good suggestion for thinking about ne'ilah. (This is the short closing service on Yom Kippur just as the day is ending. It literally means the closing of the gates, either of heaven, repentance, or prayer.) He noted that many people imagine themselves outside the gates as they are closing. (I did.) The problem is that this conveys a pretty unpleasant message: you didn't make it, or at least not yet. He suggested that I instead think about myself as being inside the gates as they are closing.

I tried it. About halfway through neilah, I imagined that I had made it through the gates and I thought of my tallis as the wings of the shechinah around me. But then I had two problematic thoughts: (1) I started worrying about the people who had not yet made it through the gates, and (2) now I didn't have to daven so hard since I was already through the gates. Blah.

So I started thinking a little more about the gates, and I had two contradictory but helpful thoughts.

The indisputable fact is that Yom Kippur is ending. And once the day is over, we will all be in the next day. So the gates of the day itself are closing, and they are closing for everyone. So everyone is on one side, the good side, the Yom Kippur side. And as the sun sets, we all move through the gates together, the gates close, and Yom Kippur is over. The holiday was whatever we made of it, and we are done.

I then had a second thought. The gates are the special gates of prayer or of repentance open only on Yom Kippur. We ourselves do not actually go through the gates; only our prayers or our repentance do. And they close for everyone when Yom Kippur ends (although other gates are certainly open then).

Here, as in many other parts of Judaism, there are multiple, overlapping, and even contradictory ways of thinking about the same idea.

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Sukkot - Time to Start Building

Sukkot might be one of the few post-denominational holidays. Everyone can do what they love. Orthodox Jews can focus on lots of technical halachic details, like how much wall flapping is permitted. Reform Jews can think about social justice issues, like people who have no home at all, let alone a sukkah. Conservative Jews can agonize endlessly over which sukkot rules to change, if any, and who should make that determination, and how, and after considering what, and .... And if they are using their sukkah from last year, Reconstructionist Jews may literally be reconstructing.

But the one thing that should unite everyone is that Sukkot is a holiday of joy. Literally: z'man simchateinu. So after the apples and honey have been eaten, the lists of goals made, the forgiveness sought and received, the fasting both fasted and break-fasted, it is time for some pure happiness. I have previously written about why everyone should celebrate Sukkot and some practical issues in building your own sukkah. (Hint: use bolts not screws, so that it is easier to dissemble and reuse next year.) And if you have young kids, they love to help build and decorate a sukkah.

So go plan and build your sukkah. Remember, there is no weekend between Yom Kippur and Sukkot, so start planning and building now. Have a meaningful Yom Kippur, but then have a wonderful Sukkot.

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The Evolution or Non-Evolution of Jewish Practices and Law

Ben Z at Mah Rabu has a post on egalitarian issues in marriage entitled Marriage In Generalized Coordinates. He used some advanced math (including Lagrangian mechanics), but his basic point is that since we have not worked out all the kinks in how to do a more egalitarian wedding ceremony, individual people have to do a lot more thinking, compromising, and trial-and-error work than would otherwise be true.

Ben's post raises an interesting general point about the evolution of Jewish practices and their resulting or non-resulting equilibrium. Ben's background is in physics, but mine is in both law and economics. (My use of Lagrange multipliers was limited to solving n-dimensional optimization problems.) And so I approached this issue a little differently.

Here's the problem. Traditional Judaism advocates particular Jewish practices, rituals, and laws. Before the modern age, these were more or less universally accepted as what Judaism advocated, even if particular people might not follow them. (So there was a traditional standard of kashrut, or of shabbat observance, although some people did not keep kosher or shabbat.) But in the modern age, there has been pressure to change some some of these laws in light of modern ideals, especially in the Reform and Conservative world. The problem is that they have not evolved into a single new standard, but have resulted in many people and many communities each doing their own thing.

I am not arguing whether this is good or bad, only that it has happened.

To see the problem, it might be helpful to look at both law and economics. Both of these fields involve evolution. Legal rules change over time, and current American law is quite different from English common law from 700 years ago, even though it evolved from this. But we have a single law (at least in any single jurisdiction) not a bunch of people, each with their own law.

And of course institutions in the economy change and evolve. New companies are created and succeeds, some companies fail, some new product succeed, and others fail. We are constantly getting better mousetraps, but there is a lot of confusion as the "gale of creative destruction" works its toll.

Both the common law and the economy are able to evolve only because of a complex backdrop of institutions. The common law requires a complex set of courts, litigants, parties, legislatures, prior case law, and rules that require general deference but some flexibility when it comes to previous decisions. The economy requires a complex backdrop of property, contract, and tort law, as well as corporate law and bankruptcy law. It also requires risk takers and risk avoiders, financial capital, human capital, and plain old ingenuity. Without all of these institutions, it would be impossible to evolve --- that is, to move from one state to another while still maintaining some continuity with the past.

Jewish law and Jewish practices have a hard time evolving. And perhaps one reason is the lack of institutions that make this possible.

In the Orthodox world, the tendency is not to evolve. The decision rules of halacha are backwards looking. Once prior generations have decided an issue, it is difficult if not impossible to reverse that. There are some modifications in the interstices, but things tend to be pretty static. Of course, this leads to its own problems. In America, Orthodoxy is often out of sync with the broader society, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. This dissonance leads to problems that Orthodoxy must address, and how to deal with the modern world is one key area that separates Modern Orthodoxy from hareidi Orthodoxy.

In the non-Orthodox world, the goal is to evolve, at least where appropriate. As we reach new understandings of things like Bible criticism, science, feminism, and egalitarianism, we tend to modify or want to modify some rules and practices and beliefs. (Ben Z's marriage discussion is one example of this.) But we lack the institutions to allow this to evolve, as opposed to simply changing into radically decentralized individual decisionmaking.

I think this problem is most acute in the Reform world. With its emphasis on individualism and autonomy, Reform in effect encourages people to make their own decisions. As a result, longstanding practices not only get changed, but they get changed into numerous different things. And this problem will only grow worse over time. It is hard to maintain a community and community standards when everyone in theory is encouraged to do whatever he or she finds meaningful. And this in turn makes it hard for new dominant practices to emerge and to reach new equilibria. As Ben Z noted, there are a lot of people doing a lot of thinking and coming up with a lot of new wedding ceremonies.

The Conservative movement tries to address this problem with the Rabbinical Assembly and to a lesser extent with other central organizations. The problem here is more practical and sociological. Few Conservative Jews pay attention to this. When deciding whether to eat peanut butter during Passover, Conservative Jews weigh many different considerations, but reviewing the RA's teshuvah on this issue is probably not high on the list. Thus, despite some institutional structure leading to centralized decisionmaking, and thus possibly to new equilibria, these institutions might not have sufficient power, or even social pressure, to produce new practices.

The result of all of this is that over time, Orthodoxy may grow more out of sync with the rest of the world, while Reform and Conservative Judaism may grow out of sync with traditional Judaism with themselves.

Of course, it is not clear that this is a problem. It may be that the lack of a single equilibrium is on balance beneficial. Different communities can have different standards, and people will go where they are most comfortable. But it has costs too, as Ben's example illustrates. There is not a single (or even a small set) of egalitarian wedding ceremonies that have commanded universal acceptance. So Ben, his wife, and lots of other people spend a lot of time thinking about and inventing such ceremonies.

If this is a problem, the solution for Reform and Conservative Jews is to devise some institutional structures that can provide a counterbalance to the decentralizing and centrifugal forces already in operation. (See Ben - I can use physics terms too.) I am not sure what these institutions are, though. They do not have to be central organizations of rabbis (although that may be part of it), and they will need to have broader popular appeal.

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Blog format update

L'shana tovah everyone.

I have made a short change to the blog format. I have created two general indexes, one for the TMH / DH project, and one for the blog in general. I then included links to these indexes in the margin on the right. Hopefully, that will increase the readability, decrease the clutter, and make navigation a little easier.

UPDATE: I probably should have put the links here.

General index

Torah Min Hashamayim / Documentary Hypothesis index

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Preparing for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur - Part III

Following up on parts 1 and 2. Jeff Bernhardt published an interesting article in the Jewish Journal entitled "In Approaching the High Holy Days, It Pays to Take Time to Prepare." It is along the same lines as my earlier posts. Well worth a look.

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In That Very Day - P

Friedman points out that the phrase "in that very day" (sometimes translated "in that selfsame day" or "in that same day") occurs 11 times on the Torah. Ten of these are in P, and the 11th is R, modeled after P. The Hebrew is "בְּעֶצֶם הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה" or "b'etzem ha-yom ha-zeh".

Here is the list:

Gen 7:13 - "In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark."

Gen 17:23 - "And Abraham took Ishmael his son, and all that were born in his house, and all that were bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham's house, and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin in the selfsame day, as God had said unto him."

Gen 17:26 - "In the selfsame day was Abraham circumcised, and Ishmael his son."

Exod. 12:17 - "And ye shall observe the feast of unleavened bread; for in this selfsame day have I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt . . . ."

Exod 12:41 - "And it came to pass at the end of four hundred and thirty years, even the selfsame day it came to pass, that all the host of the LORD went out from the land of Egypt."

Exod 12:51 - "And it came to pass the selfsame day that the LORD did bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt by their hosts."

Lev 23:14 - "And ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched corn, nor fresh ears, until this selfsame day, until ye have brought the offering of your God; it is a statute for ever throughout your generations in all your dwellings."

Lev. 23:21 - [On Shavuot]: "And ye shall make proclamation on the selfsame day; there shall be a holy convocation unto you; ye shall do no manner of servile work . . . "

Lev 23:28 - [On Yom Kippur] "And ye shall do no manner of work in that same day; for it is a day of atonement, to make atonement for you before the LORD your God. "

Lev 23:28 - "For whatsoever soul it be that shall not be afflicted in that same day, he shall be cut off from his people."

Deut 32:48 - "And the LORD spoke unto Moses that selfsame day, saying:" [continued in 32:49-50: 'Get thee up into this mountain of Abarim, unto mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, that is over against Jericho; and behold the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel for a possession; and die in the mount whither thou goest up, and be gathered unto thy people; as Aaron thy brother died in mount Hor, and was gathered unto his people.'] (Note: this is from R.)

This phrase arises in very different contexts, including narrative stories (Noah's flood, Abraham's circumcision, the exodus from Egypt, death of Moses) and the laws of holidays (Passover barley offering, Shavuot, Yom Kippur).

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Sinai and Horeb - Criticism of the DH

Oswald T. Allis in "The Five Books of Moses" (3rd ed 1964) attacks the DH and defends the traditional view. In this book, he addresses the Sinai-Horeb issue. His general argument is that J and E get really fragmented if one tries to separate them, and he is right. Advocates of the documentary hypothesis note this as well. If the only sources were J and E, the theory would be considerably weaker. But we also have P and D and they break more cleanly.

Let's look at his argument in detail. In making a more general point (that there are sometimes variations in wording within a single source, even though one would expect uniformity) (p. 34), Allis includes an endnote (p. 310, n. 27), where he discusses Horeb and Sinai:

If Horeb is regarded as characteristic of E (Ex. iii.1, xcii.6, xxxiii.6), the mention of Sinai six times in Ex. xix constitutes a serious difficulty, since all critics apparently find a considerable E element in this chapter. According to Driver the verses which mention Sinai are either P (vss. 1, 2a) or J (vss. 11, 18, 20, 23), while vss 2b, 3a, 10-11a, 14-17, 19 are given to E. . . . But this analysis destroys the continuity of both E and J. E.g., E skips from Ex. ii.14 (or 10) to iii.1 and then to iii.4b.

Let's unpack this argument. Allis argues that if we separate E and J using the Horeb / Sinai distinction, we run into a problem with the story in Exodus 19 (were God revealed himself just before giving the Ten Commandments). More specifically, once we separate out the J and P elements from the story, we are left with an incomplete E narrative.

Allis uses Driver's breakdown of the sources. However, as I have noted, Friedman later revised this breakdown slightly and reverses some of the J and E sources. (See my Exodus comparison chart --- good thing I put that together.) Friedman's E story coveres 19:2a-9, 16b-17, and 19.) (This argument is easier to follow with an open Torah.)

How does this argument hold up? P is not a problem. The P source is simply the introductory sentence 19:1, and R has 19:2a.

E and J are a little messier, but not too bad. They are interwoven, but E stands in pretty good shape. God talks to Moses (19:3-6), and Moses tells the elders and the people (19:7-8), and then God speaks again to Moses and tells him he will appear in a cloud (19:9). And the God does so. (19:16b-17, 19.) Driver's version (see the chart) is a little shorter and choppier, but still hangs together as a coherent story.

J also holds up. In it, God tells Moses to tell the people to get ready (19:10-13) and he does so (19:14-15). On the third day, there is thunder and lightening, smoke, and God appears and speaks to Moses again. (19:16a, 18, 20-25.)

So Allis's more general point is one worth considering and I think it is one that is universally acknowledged. If separating the sources produces incoherent or incomplete stories, that weakens the claim for the DH. Conversely, if separating the stories produces complete and coherent stories, which are themselves inconsistent with other narratives, that strengthens the claim. But everyone acknowledges that separating the sources sometimes produces complete and consistent narratives that are themselves inconsistent with other narratives (like the two creation stories), sometimes produces messier fragments, and sometimes produces something in the middle. And I think everyone acknowledges that this is more of a problem with J and E, and less of a problem with P, E, and JE.

But here, once Friedman's revisions are taken into account, the E source is fragmentary but not incoherent.

So I will keep this argument in mind as we go through other sources.

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Sinai and Horeb - Traditional Explanations

As noted earlier, the mountain where God appeared to the Children of Israel is called both Sinai and Horeb. As discussed earlier, the Documentary Hypothesis notes that P and J exclusively use Sinai and E and D exclusively used Horeb.

I have not yet been able to find a traditional explanation of the use of these two names. Rashi does not mention anything. The Talmud notes that these names refer to the same mountain, and then notes the derivations of the names:

What is [the meaning of] Mount Sinai? The mountain whereon there descended hostility [sin'ah] toward idolaters. And thus R. Jose son of R. Hanina said: It has five names: [...] Whilst what was its [real] name? Its name was Horeb. Now they disagree with R. Abbahu, For R. Abbahu said: its name was Mount Sinai, and why was it called Mount Horeb? Because desolation [hurbah] to idolaters descended thereon.

(Shab 89a-89b)

Without getting into the merits of this claim, it simply is addressing a different question. Regardless of how the names were derived and what they mean, why is it that one name is used in certain places and another name is used in other places?

If anyone has an explanation from traditional sources, please leave a comment.

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