2009
ISSUE 72 | 75
EXCERPTS OF NEW BOOKS BY HUC-JIR FACULTY | EXCERPTS OF NEW BOOKS BY HUC-JIR FACULTY
The food and water found on the way are the
signs of Divine providence. God, the guide
through the wilderness, is also the predominant
speaker. The realm of this section is the ideal,
as the people live up to the demands placed
upon them.
Yet Egypt renders God's aims in the pres-
ent impossible. Egypt comes to represent a
series of opposite images. Along the Egyptian
axis are the voices of the people, through their
complaints and the recounting of their old life.
This is an axis of the concretely real and
known: familiar food, familiar conditions and
even a familiar relationship of ruler and op-
pressed. The people carry the vestiges of their
lives in Egypt into the wilderness. To destroy
Egypt, God must destroy the generation. Thus
the axis of Egypt becomes the arena of death,
as the people, now doomed to retrace their
steps, end in unmarked graves in the Wilder-
ness. This dichotomy is embedded in the larger
narrative as illustrated by the chart above.
The two opposing series create an im-
passable divide between the Egyptian past
and the promised future in the new Land.
They also highlight the gap between an
ideal, near abstract vision of what should be
versus an unflinchingly honest depiction of
how actual humans are likely to behave.
Only a later hand, with access to both tra-
ditions, could organize the tales of the
wilderness in order to develop and highlight
those distinctions, preserving a record of
the Wilderness Period as both ideal and its
opposite, unrelentingly harsh and disap-
pointing. Yet it does not stop there. As we
will see, the editors of Numbers use those
distinctions to creatively and strategically
chart a way out of the wilderness…
The wilderness suggests a vista of wide
open territory, free from unwelcome reminders
of past lives and sorrows – a territory wonder-
fully situated for a newly forming, newly
hopeful people. Recently liberated from op-
pression, in the wilderness Israel could shape
itself into God’s people, in the image offered
by Moses and Aaron. They are close – very
close – to accepting that vision, becoming that
people. Overflowing with gifts for the taber-
nacle, contentedly following the pillars of fire
and of smoke, listening to the sons of Aaron
blow the trumpets. Suddenly, memories of
their former lives, tastes and smells of Egyptian
delicacies, haunt and overcome them. Cries
and longings lead to rebellion and death. The
rest of Numbers suggests that the visionary
promise of its opening can only come into
being by forcing an entire generation to watch
the destruction of its elders, slowly but relent-
lessly over forty years. To give birth to new
possibilities, Israel must reject its past. But such
a rejection is exceedingly difficult, even after
disappointment replaces desire. In the cries of
Reuben and Gad Moses hears the futility of
using the past at all. But they reassure him.
They have in fact learned the lessons of their
parents. So too do the editors hear memories
and longings that worry them. They too face
the futility of relying on the past. Yet they reach
the same conclusion as Moses. They accept the
necessary and inevitable use of memory in ful-
filling their most pressing agenda – shaping the
story of the past in such a way as to lead the
present audience forward into its future.
[
Reprinted with permission of Cambridge University
Press]
A Great Voice that Did Not Cease:
The Growth of the Rabbinic Canon
and Its Interpretation
Michael Chernick,
Hebrew Union College
Press, 2009
H
ermeneutics may be described as the de-
velopment and study of theories of the
interpretation and understanding of texts. They
are essentially the lenses through which inter-
preters view the material they interpret. In this
seminal study, Michael Chernick demonstrates
how hermeneutical methods confronted the
difficulties that arose for the Rabbis when
various literary and logical problems appeared
in scriptural texts and later in rabbinic texts.
Given the Rabbis’ theological, literary, and
rhetorical concerns, these reading strategies
were adopted to obviate the problems the texts
presented.
Retreat: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Going Forward:
The Past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .The Future
The popular voice . . . . . . . . . .The voice of God and Moses
Egypt as the desired object . . .The Promised Land
Abrogates obligations to God . .Under obligation to God
The familiar, old life . . . . . . . . .An unfamiliar, new life of Israelite law an practice
Slavery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Liberation
Egyptian delicacies . . . . . . . . .Manna
Punishment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Reward
Retracing of steps . . . . . . . . . .Reaching the borders of Canaan
Death in unmarked graves . . . .Life for the new generation
is Visiting Associate Profes-
sor of Bible at HUC-JIR in
New York. She has pub-
lished in the
Journal for the
Study of the Old Testament
and
Prooftexts,
and is
a contributor to
Women Remaking American Ju-
daism, Healing in the Jewish Imagination,
and
The Torah: A Women’s Commentary.
Dr. Adriane
Leveen
