Somewhere over the Rambam? The peculiarities of rainbows in Jewish thought

Towards the end of last week, in the midst of Israel’s much anticipated rainy season, this image from Bat Yam was a striking ray of beauty in what has been a dark and gloomy horizon for much of the past 16 months. But being a product of the Jewish school system I immediately started to ponder the significance – if any – of this rainbow. And to wonder if my gazing at the picture in front of me even was permitted and appropriate!

The first appearance of a rainbow in the Torah is as a symbolic accompaniment to God’s covenant with Noach, in order to reinforce His commitment that such universal destruction will not be revisited on humanity. Ramban(!) comments on the relevant verse that we are bound to accept the scientific conclusions of the Greeks and that we can therefore be confident that the rainbow is a natural phenomenon which would have appeared many times previous to Noach’s generation. Ramban then notes the past tense presentation of the verse: “My rainbow I have placed in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of a covenant between Me and the Earth” (9:13). The significance, he notes, is that God was designating a pre-existing natural phenomenon as bearing newfound symbolic significance – much the same, writes Rabbi S. R. Hirsch, as the moon would later be imbued with symbolic significance of renewal and freedom immediately prior to the Exodus.

The rainbow’s profound symbolic significance led to a deep dichotomy over how it should be viewed – or whether it may be viewed at all! On the one hand, as with all displays of natural wonder and beauty, the Talmud formulates a blessing to be recited by one who sees it. On the other hand, the Talmud (Chagigah 16a) also records that one should avoid looking at the rainbow altogether, as doing so represents a “lack of concern for one’s Creator’s glory” – the rainbow, it is important to note, is used to describe aspects of the divine chariot in Yechezkel’s Merkavah vision. The Shulchan Aruch attempts to reconcile these two teachings, writing that one may glimpse briefly at a rainbow in order to make the blessing. More sustained gazing, however, is not permitted.

When we move to look at the Rambam’s approach to this question, however, it is striking that he omits any mention of a prohibition to gaze at a rainbow. Commenting on this glaring omission, the notes in the Makbili edition of the Moreh Nevuchim point out that Rambam interprets the rainbow description in the Merkavah vision allegorically to represent the process of prophecy. This being aptly alluded to by a beautiful yet constant projection of light which is perceived differently depending on the eye of the beholder (no two people see a rainbow identically!).

In Rambam’s understanding, therefore, it seems likely that the aggadic injunction against feasting one’s eyes on a rainbow does not pose any contradiction to the Talmudic instruction to recite a blessing over it. Rather it is likely a manifestation of another similarly presented Talmudic caution to be “concerned for the honour of one’s Creator” – in the first Mishnah of Chagigah – which relates to the attempt to explore theological questions that the human mind is incapable of understanding. In this explanation, staring inquisitively and uninhibitedly at the prophetic process represented by the rainbow appears to be the equivalent of the “Nobles of Israel” who “stared at a vision of the God and ate and drank” thus incurring divine wrath.

Given that I never seem to be able to recall the lengthy and cumbersome wording of this blessing, it is fortunate that my recent exposure to the Bat Yam rainbow was limited to an image on my screen. Yet there is an important lesson to be gleaned even from this awkward wording. It emerges from the Talmudic discussion on the topic that this wording is the result of a compromise – a combination of blessings proposed by two different rabbis. At a time when social media posts and discussions frequently and quickly descend into a cesspit of name-calling, finger-pointing and insults, it is important to remind ourselves of the necessary – even if maddeningly difficult – price of compromise and unity, even at the expense of an inconveniently worded utterance. Perhaps this is the most important lesson that the rainbow can come to symbolize.

For comments and discussion of this post on Facebook, click here.

Can God change His mind?

In a popular post last month, this group explored a suggestion (advanced by the Seforno and developed by Rabbi S. R. Hirsch) that God’s initially “universal” plan for the world was recalibrated and amended to seek out a single “Chosen Nation” which would receive and transmit His Torah. While that post addressed the issue from the perspective of Choseness, the very idea of God appearing to change His mind and resort to Plan B raises thorny theological problems.

Judaism Reclaimed highlights Rav Hirsch’s approach to tackling this difficulty. Focusing on a close grammatical reading of the relevant biblical phrase, he argues that none of these amendments represented a 'change of God's mind', but rather a tailoring of the divine plan in response to human conduct.

“And God regretted (vayinachem) that He had made man upon the earth, and He became grieved in His heart.” (Bereshit 6:6)

Crucially the Torah employs the active form of the verb "vayinachem" rather than the reflexive form of the verb "vayitnachem", which would have implied that God changed himself. This usage supports the idea that the element of change was caused by a factor — the exercise of human free will — that was inherently external to God rather than being intrinsic to His original plan.

The word vayinachem appears again in response to Israel’s repentance and Moshe’s prayer in the immediate aftermath of the Golden Calf:

“God reconsidered (vayinachem) the evil He had said He would do to His people.” (Shemot 32:14)

This can be seen in contrast to the word vayitnachem – which the Torah itself tells us cannot be applied to God:

“God is not a man that He should lie, nor is He a mortal that He should change His mind (veyitnecham).” (Bemidbar 23:19)

Interestingly, while Rav Hirsch in this instance steadfastly rejects the literal implication of the Torah’s text, he nevertheless makes it clear that he opposes the position advocated for by Rambam which seeks to reinterpret and explain any biblical terms which appear to impute physicality to God.

“Scholars have philosophised about these expressions [anthropomorphism], in order to keep us far from ascribing to God material features. This gives rise, however, to the danger that the Personality of God will become increasingly blurred and indistinct to our perception. Had that been the Torah’s intention it could easily have avoided such expressions … Belief in the Personality of God is more important than the speculations of those who reject the attribution of material features to God.”

Elsewhere Rav Hirsch explained further how: “the maturest mind of the philosopher knows no more about the essence of God than the simple mind of the child”.

As Judaism Reclaimed proceeds to analyse in a subsequent chapter, Rav Hirsch’s position comes very close to that of earlier rabbinic authorities who took biblical descriptions of God at face value. Marc Shapiro, in The Limits of Orthodox Theology, invests great effort to collect and present rabbinic statements which, taken superficially, reflect belief in a physical deity. While he sees medieval rabbinic commentator, Moshe Taku, as the “most significant" example of rabbinic corporealism, leading scholar of medival rabbinic mysticism, Joseph Dan begs to differ, writing that:

"He [R’ Taku] insists on the literal acceptance of the prophets' descriptions of their visions as well as the anthropomorphic references to God in talmudic-midrashic literature. He does not do so because of his belief in the literal veracity of these descriptions; he only insists that they represent the maximum that can be conveyed concerning God's essence and appearance, and that any further inquiry cannot lead to valid conclusions. God chose to reveal to us in the scriptures whatever is found in them: man should be satisfied with that, and ask no more questions. It is not that Rabbi Moses Taku believed in an anthropomorphic God; most probably, he did not.”

Having addressed claims of rabbinic belief in a physical deity, Judaism Reclaimed then proceeds to demonstrate, however, that none of this would be likely to impress Rambam, who states with equal force that any attempt to worship or connect “without knowledge” to God such as by attributing physical features to Him:

“does not in true reality mention or think about God. For that thing which is in his imagination and which he mentions is his mouth does not correspond to any being at all and has merely been invented by his imagination”. (Moreh Nevuchim 3:51)

Since, for Rambam, connection to God is an absolute reality and achieved primarily by means of the intellect, the quality and existence of such a connection is directly affected by the correctness of a person’s intellectual perception of God. He cannot accept, therefore, the notion that one should just accept the biblical text at face value. Instead biblical indications about the incorporeality of God combined with a powerful rabbinic tradition serve as signposts to scholars seeking to maximise their understanding of and relationship with God.

Find out more at www.TalmudReclaimed.com.

First posted on Facebook 10 November 2024. For comments and discussion, click here.

A tale of two tales

By Shmuli Phillips and Daniel Abraham

Parashat Noach lies at the heart of the battle between traditionalists and bible critics over the structure, origin and authorship of the Torah. While it has always been a core tenet of traditional Judaism is that the Torah as a whole was revealed to Moshe, source criticism in recent centuries has developed a methodology through which, its adherents believe, they can identify a multiplicity of original sources from which the fabric of the received text of the Torah was subsequently woven. Scholars have considered that the application of this methodology to the narrative of Noach and the Flood is “foundational” to source criticism; they count it as being amongst this methodology’s most “brilliant achievements”.

In his recent works (Inconsistency in the Torah, Ani Maamin) Rabbi Dr. Joshua Berman has challenged some of source criticism’s fundamental assumptions. In doing so he has identified what he claims to be serious methodological flaws in the critics’ interpretations of the Flood narrative. Motivated by what they understand to be widespread instances of contradiction and repetition, critics divide the narrative into 27 snippets of varying sizes. 14 of these snippets, they claim, originate with one source, while the other 13 emanate from the other. Yet, as Berman notes, the “unravelling” of the text into two sources “clearly does not provide us with two accounts, each free of contradictions and incongruities…”. He observes that, “…rather than walking back from the hypothesis, source critics have sought to buttress it by resort to a series of redactors, who are the agents responsible for the disruptive passages”. Citing other scholarly studies, however, Berman notes that the sort of redactive interference that critics propose in the Flood narrative is absent from other compositions which have reached us from the Ancient Near East.

It is on the subject of other ancient texts that Berman launches his most serious challenge to the claims of source criticism regarding the Flood narrative. Scholars have long noted strong thematic and structural parallels between the Torah’s account of the Flood and the Gilgamesh Epic, which originated in ancient Mesopotamia. Whether we assume that the Epic and the Torah are both independently reporting the same event, or whether the Torah is reworking a prior prototype from a monotheistic perspective, what stands out is that the discovered tablets similarly combine content which, the Torah’s source critics contend, originated from two distinct sources. As biblical scholar Gary A. Rendsburg put it:

We are supposed to believe that two separate authors wrote two separate accounts of Noah and the flood, and that neither of them included all the elements found in the Gilgamesh epic, but when the two were interwoven by the redactor, voila, the story paralleled the Gilgamesh flood story point by point. [The Biblical Flood Story p116]

While Berman’s rejection of source criticism’s attempt to have disassembled the Flood narrative may be persuasive, it nevertheless leaves us to address a further question. Why would the Torah – as a single source – present the episode in such an inconsistent and repetitious manner?

Judaism Reclaimed presents a fascinating explanation of this passage by Malbim which explains why the Torah might have adopted this style. The basis for Malbim’s approach is an ancient midrashic teaching that the divine names, YHVH and Elokim, represent different dimensions of the complex and multi-faceted relationship between God and humanity. The name Elokim is used when the Torah is describing God as a distant “First Cause”, relating to the world through the perpetual forces of nature. YHVH, by contrast, is employed by the Torah when it depicts God as a concerned providential deity, managing the lives of people in accordance with principles of reward and punishment. The Malbim utilises this distinction in order to contrast the first chapter of the Torah, which employs the divine name Elokim as part of its cold, factual account of Creation, with the use of YHVH in the subsequent chapter which examines creation specifically through God’s providential relationship with humanity (this theme is developed extensively by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik in Lonely Man of Faith).

Malbim uses the same technique to analyse the repetitious and contradictory phenomena which critics highlight throughout the story of Noach. In the passage that opens the parashah, God (as Elokim) relates to Noach as the “distant first cause” – concerned only with ensuring that the natural world continues:

Noach was a righteous man, perfect in his generations; Noach walked with Elokim … The Earth had become corrupt before Elokim … And Elokim saw the earth … All flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth … Elokim said to Noach “The end of all flesh has come before Me ...”. From all that lives, of all flesh, two of each shall you bring to the ark … [Bereishit 6:9-19, selected text]

In the next chapter, the Torah again records that God instructs Noach to build an ark, but this time the deity carries the personal providential name of YHVH:

And YHVH said to Noach, come you and your household to the ark, for it is you that I have seen to be righteous before Me in this generation. Of every clean animal take with you seven pairs … [Bereishit 7:1-2]

Commenting on these parallel accounts of the world’s corruption and God’s instruction to Noach to prepare and enter the ark, Malbim appears to be following the approach of source critics in so far he separates them into two distinct passages. Each of these passages, however, plays an integral role in communicating the Torah’s core message: the multi-layered interaction and dynamic of the relationship between God and humanity.

While the Elokim passage, therefore, records Noach’s merit in cold, objective terms (“righteous in his generations”), the second passage describes it in terms of a personal providential relationship with God “I have seen that you are righteous before Me”.

In keeping with this approach, Noach is instructed by God in the Elokim passage to take two animals of each species. Malbim explains that this is because the perspective of the Elokim dimension of the God’s interactions with the world simply seeks to preserve and maintain the natural world. For this, a male and female of each species suffices. The YHVH passage, however, additionally commands Noach to take “seven pairs of pure animals”. This further requirement relates solely to the personal providential dimension of Noach’s relationship with God. As Malbim explains: Noach understood that “God had commanded me regarding more pure than impure animals so that I can offer them as sacrifices”.

This dichotomy continues through to the covenant(s) between God and humanity at the end of the Flood narrative. The Elokim description of the covenant (9:1-17) is essentially a detached divine commitment not to destroy the world’s natural order – animals and humans alike. This is in contrast to the second account of the covenant (8:20-22) which utilises the personal, providential YHVH name of God in order to relate God’s commitment specifically to humanity’s frailties. It is also significant that God’s commitment appears to be prompted by Noach’s sacrifices and by the providential dynamics that had been created by humanity’s good deeds.

Malbim’s approach offers a framework through which one can accept – and perhaps even expect – a degree of duality within a Torah narrative. Thus, where the Torah wishes to convey aspects of the Flood through different providential dynamics, it can do so within the flow of a single textual narrative. Adopting this approach also means that Malbim need not be troubled – as source critics are – by the presence of two apparently incompatible sets of storylines which cannot each tell a distinct and, free-standing version of the Flood episode.

First posted to Facebook 3 October 2021, here.

The message of Noach: tyranny, culture and religion

The parashah of Noach raises more than its fair share of controversies and discussion points. In its chapters which arise from this parashah, Judaism Reclaimed focuses on the theme of the Torah’s universalist message being borne by a small Chosen Nation.

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, whose universalist understanding of the Torah features heavily in our analysis of this parashah, builds upon the ideas of earlier commentators such as Rabbi Yehudah Halevi and Rabbi Ovadyah Seforno. These earlier commentators indicate that God’s primary plan for the world was for the entire human race to strive together for spiritual and moral perfection. Parashat Noach, following R’ Hirsch’s approach, is a demonstration of how a manifestly unified society repeatedly squandered this opportunity, leading to the fracturing of mankind into distinct rival groups from which only one would emerge as being suitably quipped to bear the responsibility and privilege of carrying God’s message to the world.

It is in this context that R’ Hirsch presents an original and illuminating interpretation of Noach’s prophetic utterances concerning his three sons, and of the interrelationship of the nations which would become associated with them. Crucially, R’ Hirsch distances himself from the notion that Cham’s descendants were terminally cursed with being enslaved to his brothers -- a reading which has prompted some to justify African slavery and which is mocked by Ibn Ezra (“Some say that Kushites are slaves because Noach cursed Cham. But they have forgotten that the first king who reigned after the Flood was from Kush”).

How then does R’ Hirsch explain Noach’s words? He proposes that Shem, Cham and Yafet represent three distinct traits (and even ideologies) to which their names allude. Shem (literally “Name”) indicates great intellectual and spiritual insight to perceive the essence of matters. Cham (“Hot”) embodies a surrender to unrestrained “burning” physical sensuality while Yafet (“Open”) represents the openness and sensitivity of people’s hearts to beauty and aesthetics.

Identifying these core traits and ideologies as national aspirations rather than as characteristics determined by strict biological descent, R’ Hirsch interprets Noach’s vision as a prayer and as guidance for the direction and religious perfection of mankind. In brief: many nations have risen and fallen throughout human history, their only essence and aspiration being exploitation and domination over others. Such nations of ‘Cham’ are thus identified with tyranny, brute force and craven submission to humanity’s primal urges (phenomena which are reflected in their religions and gods of war). For such cultures to develop a more sophisticated moral and spiritual dimension, R’ Hirsch writes, they must first come under the refining influence of Yafet’s thought and culture. This bears the potential to stimulate the mind and soul to develop an awareness and consciousness which transcends humanity’s most animalistic elements.

Elevated by of the principle of “Yaft Elokim leYefet”, the next step is for Cham to be “yishkon be’ohalei Shem” – to dwell in the tents of Shem where Cham can absorb the ultimate moral, spiritual and religious truths which lie beyond aesthetic satisfaction. R’ Hirsch traces the various influences of the Greeks and Jews (primary exemplars of Yafet and Shem) throughout history, demonstrating how Noach’s prophecy has elevated humanity.

Judaism Reclaimed continues this discussion with an assessment of how R’ Hirsch’s interpretation might have viewed the violent combinations of (i) Cham and Yafet in Nazi Germany, as well as (ii) Cham and Shem in the barbaric theocracy of the Islamic State. We conclude by demonstrating that Noach’s prophecy and teaching remains both relevant and critical in the 21st

century.

[Other controversial discussions arising from parashat Noach such as the parallel Noach narratives, Gilgamesh Epic and how to approach apparent conflicts between the Torah’s text and science, feature heavily in later chapters.]

First posted to Facebook 29 October 2019, here.