Your Humble Blogger is still leading parshah discussion, by the way, although little of it has found its way into this Tohu Bohu. Somehow, I find that parshah notes are difficult and time-consuming to type up, and so rather than put myself through procrastination and remorse, I’ve decided to essentially give up on the blog notes, unless I feel inspired to write them. As it happens, my tenure as Parshah Guy is up in a couple of weeks, as the synagogue in this college town can’t get a minyan in July and August; I’ll try like heck to keep reading the text every week, but knowing me, I probably won’t.
Anyway, last week’s parshah was Naso, and contains lots of fun stuff about lepers, about unfaithful wives and jealous husbands, and about the priestly blessing, and also the most boring passage in the Torah, Numbers 7:1-89. Possibly the most boring thing I’ve ever read anywhere. Naturally, that’s the section that I talked about.
What happens (in brief) is that the twelve princes bring their tribe’s gift, at the dedication of the Mishkan, as the people begin the journey, and each prince’s gifts are described in detail. And each prince’s gifts are exactly the same. Twelve times, a prince comes and offers the gifts, which are described in the exact same words. At the end, we sum up. It’s eighty-nine verses of tedium. And there’s no obvious reason for it, either; we could have just had the sum, or just listed the gifts once and said that each prince gave the same, or even just said that they gave identical gifts without going into detail. The rabbis say that if something in the Torah is repeated, it’s not an editing error, but is meant to emphasize something, or teach a lesson; what’s the lesson in this twelve times stuff?
Well, and we kicked it around for a while. One angle was bringing it down to a personal or family level, treating the tribes as if they were the siblings they were named for. Joseph’s brothers had, presumably, learned a bit about one-upmanship, and were then capable of negotiating a level at which each brother/tribe could give. Also working from the brother angle, it was pointed out that it’s like a parent getting a pencil-holder from each child as each child goes through second grade (or whenever they make pencil-holders these days); each one is pretty much the same, and each is enjoyed uniquely as an expression of the love of the unique child. And, of course, the Divine is much better at that sort of thing than human parents, who perhaps have some difficulty working up enthusiasm for yet another pencil-holder. The Lord, through this repetition is underlining the way each of our gifts is both unique and treasured, without the pressure on us poor mortal saps to come up with a gift the Divine hasn’t seen before. In this context, I wound up bringing up my response to The Incredibles and its refrain that ‘if everybody is special, then nobody is.’
The other take was to take it up to the national level, and look at national philanthropy and giving. In particular, people were reminded of the distasteful one-upmanship after the tsunami last December, as well as the current negotiation at G8. It would be nice, the general thought was, if the various nations could like the tribes come forward each with their gifts, without either skimping or promoting, but in an orderly manner.
Well, and it turned out to be a lively and interesting discussion. The dullest passage in the Torah, and a fascinating and thought-provoking discussion. I know that there’s something tautological going on, that any text invested by its community with that kind of importance will yield interesting discussion simply because of the focus of the community, but even considering that, I am amazed by how much the Scripture rewards close reading and consideration. There have only been one or two weeks in the year that the discussion has failed to bring up something I hadn’t thought of or expected to talk about. And I definitely feel that if I did it all again next year, I’d find more passages perplexing and problematic, and more possible interpretations and contexts to view them in.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.