The Way of the Flint/The Way of the Mouth

What is going on in the somewhat strange biblical story known as “the circumcision at the inn”? (Exodus 4:20-26)

Moses is on his way, together with his wife Tzipporah and their two sons, to Egypt, in obedience to God’s commands. Suddenly the Lord appears and wishes to kill him (who Moses? The son?)

Tzipporah seizes a flint, circumcises their son, and ends by announcing “You are a bridegroom of blood to me.”

The mysteries are many. Here is one possible insight.

While doing a Bibliodrama on the life of Tzipporah, a couple of the participants brought to light something interesting. We noticed that at the well in Midian, where Tzipporah first meets Moses, Moses steps in to help Yitro’s seven daughters, who are harassed daily by shepherds who drive them away.

We are told Moses “stood up and helped them, and watered their flock” (Ex. 4:17). Participant Esther Goldenberg noted that Moses was fleeing from Egypt, where he had killed a man. When he comes to the well, he wishes to rectify his violence and chooses to act more peacefully, intentionally helping the young women in a non-violent way and not interacting with the shepherds at all.

Now let’s see how this plays out in the circumcision story. Uri Etigson pointed out to me we notice that in Ex. 4:25, Tzipporah takes up a flint, in Hebrew צר, comprising two of the four letters of her name צפרה.

The other two letters of her name are פה meaning “mouth.” So one message of this story might be to present two paths – the way of the flint (violence) and the way of the mouth (non-violence).

We see Tzipporah taking upon herself the violence that Moses has long rejected, after his murderous deed forty years before caused him to have to flee his home. This may be one explanation for why Moses did not circumcise his own son during these forty years in Midian – he went to the other extreme and did not even want to engage in this important ritual act.

In their coupling and its dynamic, Tzipporah find she must take up the slack to fill the void left by Moses’ shadow side – his inner violence that we later see emerging from time to time in his flaring anger at different points. This does happen inside couple relationships, that one partner becomes a certain way in order to compensate for a repression or unbalancing in the other.

“The way of the mouth” encapsulates Moses’ future mission in Egypt. There, he and Aaron will speak for God before Pharaoh, whose name breaks down to פה רע meaning “bad mouth”.

As a person with a speech impediment (“heavy of mouth and tongue”), Moses cannot take words lightly, each word comes at a cost. So much so that he does not think he can speak at all, and G-d has to reassure him that He Himself will be with his mouth, and that Aaron will be his spokesman. (Ex. 4:10-17, where the word “mouth” is mentioned repeatedly). Yet we do see Moses speak later, many times. He is not justified in his overcaution. He can do this.

It is surely no coincidence that Moses initially describes himself as being “of uncircumcised lips” (Ex. 6:12, 6:30). Perhaps, suggests Uri Etigson, by circumcising their son, Tzipporah is also “circumcising’ her husband’s lips, allowing him to speak much more fluidly than he ever could have imagined when he took on the mission. 

The Divine works through dark deeds too

While we don’t love the idea, divine providence seems to be able to work through foul deeds just as well as fair ones. We would prefer for the vessel for providence to be the righteous and saintly – and they surely are – but we also see clearly in the Tanach that G-d chooses to enact the divine plan through much less wholesome individuals.

In the story of Joseph, his brothers choose to strip their brother of his coat and throw him in a pit, then sell him to merchants and deceive their father with a blood-covered coat into thinking his beloved son was dead.

Though some try to give these deeds a higher motivation, on the face of it they are pretty heinous. And yet they are a crucial link in the divine plan to bring the Jacob family down to Egypt, while positioning Joseph as the viceroy. Along the way there is much suffering.

If we were to ask G-d why it had to be this way, why the family could not have come to Egypt under gentler circumstances, and why the divine needed to work through so many unsavory deeds (not only of the brothers, but also of Potiphar’s wife, the butler, and more) perhaps the answer might look like this:

I work through evil too, it leads to a form of rectification and refinement of souls that is not necessarily achievable through kind and pleasant ways.

(Or perhaps kabbalistically speaking: "There are sparks that need elevating even in the darkest places.")

It’s not a nice thought. Many years ago I learned that the evil Hitler survived no less than 42 assassination attempts. For me, if that is not divine providence, then I don’t know what is. Due to this, I do not accept theologies that suggest that G-d was not involved in the Holocaust and it was somehow all human doing. G-d worked through Pharaoh, and G-d worked through Hitler. No, it’s not pleasant on the ears or heart, and the last thing I mean to do is desecrate the memory of any who died in the Holocaust. I’m not pretending to know what exactly was the divine plan. I’m just looking at a fact.

Proof that G-d works directly through evil people arrives in a book very closely connected to the Joseph story. The book of Esther contains texts that mirror phrases from the Joseph story. Apart from the intertextuality, the two main characters share that they had to leave home, go into a foreign environment, live in a palace and be close to the ruler, and use that ruler to save the Jewish people. They also both found favour in the eyes of all who saw them.

In the Esther story, wicked deeds are turned precisely on their head:

1) In Esther 6:6, Haman wants the honour for himself, but by his own hand it is then Mordechai, whom he hates, who is placed on the horse with the king’s crown atop his head, while Haman has to call out before him, “Thus shall be done to the man whom the king wishes to honour.”

2) In Esther 7:10, Haman is hanged on the very gallows he built for Mordechai

3) In Esther 9:1, “on the day that the enemies of the Jews had hoped to overpower them, the opposite occurred, in that the Jews themselves overpowered those who hated them.”

Because the one major difference between the two stories is that the Joseph story is full of G-d’s name, while in the Esther story G-d’s name is hidden, I feel that this exact reversal is the Divine saying, “I am right here, behind the scenes, and yes, I work through wicked people too.”

Today’s world is full of evil and lies. For some, this is the work of Satan or the evil inclination, and is the place most devoid of G-d.

I do not deny evil must be fought wherever it is. Hitler needed to be defeated and the final solution stopped. Yet having studied these Tanach stories, I wonder if G-d is not somehow working the divine plan through them too. Why, we can only guess.

Odd twinship in the line to kingship

Overturning the firstborn

It is well known that the role of the firstborn in the ancient Near East was of great cultural, social, and legal significance. It carried responsibilities, privileges, and symbolic meaning. We can see this in the plague of the firstborn, with the Egyptians being hit where it hurt.

But in the Torah narratives, especially in Bereshit, this whole notion of the firstborn being the one to get the inheritance, and the priority in the lineage, is constantly being overturned.

Already in the Cain and Abel story, G-d favours Abel. Arriving at the beginnings of the Jewish nation, Abraham may be the firstborn – at least he appears so, according to the verse listing Terah’s sons. However Isaac is not, and neither is Jacob. The son of Jacob who receives the kingly line –

Judah – is not. Joseph is a kind of firstborn, of Rachel, but his sons Menashe and Ephraim have their birth order reversed by Jacob when he blesses them and crosses his hands to privilege Ephraim the younger.

This is the bloodline leading down to King David – who himself is very much the youngest son, so much so he is overlooked initially for the anointing by Samuel.

Odd twin behaviour at birth 

Going one step further, though: what is interesting within the ancestors of King David is that we find two sets of twins, both of which exhibit strange behaviours at birth. In Toldot we have Jacob coming out of the womb grabbing Esau’s heel. The symbolism of might vary but one reasonable possibility is that this seems to be an attempt to overtake him in birth order.

Jacob buys the birthright off Esau in a not particularly nice way. (G-d does not reverse this, but Jacob is punished by having Lavan deceive him later by giving him Leah the firstborn instead of Rachel the younger). What this means is that in the case of Jacob and Esau, unlike with Isaac or Judah, the legacy and privilege doesn’t cleanly and clearly pass to a younger sibling. Rather, the firstborn status is muddied. Here, we have a biological firstborn, but his younger brother has managed to grab that status off him, purchased by a bowl of soup. Perhaps had Jacob let things unfold naturally, he would have received the divine legacy as the younger son, in some obvious way. Instead we have a somewhat muddy and ambiguous thing going on in terms of who is the real firstborn, with a proactive coup.

Fast forward to the second set of twins: those Judah has with Tamar. Also a strange story, she is married off to his two sons and they both die, and he doesn’t give her to this third son as he ought to. So she dresses as a prostitute and becomes pregnant from him. She gives birth to twins but here too something ambiguous happens. At the birth, one baby puts his hand out, and the midwife immediately ties a piece of red string around it to mark that he is the firstborn. But then he puts his hand back in again and then the other comes out. So who is the firstborn here? Seemingly the other, Peretz, who actually came out first (his name means “breach” as he broke through). Yet Zerach has a red string around his little wrist, which normally indicates a firstborn. (His is the firstborn hand!) So once again, something indistinct and unclear has occurred.

Wave/Particle Theory

Something about this reminds me of wave/particle theory in physics. Both progenitors of David – Jacob and Peretz – are the firstborn and yet simultaneously in some aspect not the firstborn.

I feel as if this is a legacy passed down to King David, to be able to be contradictory things simultaneously: a dedicated servant to God who is also able to take another man’s wife and try to send him to his death. A warrior and a poet. Our most celebrated King is like the wave/particle. He is born of ambiguity and he reminds us that life is not clear cut, not always “either/or” but sometimes ‘also this and that”.

Job IS the Phoenix

Did you know that the phoenix appears in Jewish tradition?
There are a number of sources for it.

It is said to have been at the Garden of Eden, the only animal that did not accept Eve’s offer to eat of the forbidden fruit.“It lives a thousand years, and at the end of a thousand years, fire emerges from its nest and burns it. An egg-bulk remains of it and it then grows limbs, and lives again," the midrash tells us.

It is also said to have been in the ark, where, in an alternative explanation for its longevity, Noah blessed it with eternal life after it modestly did not want to trouble him to feed it.

But both interesting and odd is to find it referenced in Job (29:18).

And I said [to myself], I shall die in my nest;
and my days shall be numbered like the sand.

Rashi, drawing on the midrash, explains on the word “sand”:

This is referring to a bird known as חול (the Phoenix), and the punishment of death was not laid upon it, for it did not taste from the tree of Knowledge [at the sin of Adam and Eve]. After 1,000 years, it renews itself and returns to its youth.

In other words, Job had expected his days to be numbered like the sand bird, namely the phoenix. He had expected to live a long life.

Now what is intriguing about the phoenix is that it is not a creature that is simply immortal – that simply lives forever without death. Rather, the intriguing and unique aspect of the phoenix is that it dies and is reborn. Its old self dies in flames and its new self is reborn.

The verse in Job is meant to be a lament for what is lost.

That chapter (29) begins with the bereft and broken Job crying out “O that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me.” Those were the days when he expected to die peacefully at home of old age.

And yet, the unusual connection made by the midrash between this verse and the phoenix made me think about it in greater depth. And I realised: Job indeed was like the phoenix. His old life went up in flames, he lost his children, his possessions, his health - everything. And yet, after going through an excruciating process of pain and questioning, Job is finally given a mysterious revelation and rests his quest, accepting that the divine plan cannot be known, it shall always remain beyond human grasp.

At that point, in the final verses of the book (chapter 40) we are told:

12. So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning; for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand female asses. 13. He also had seven sons and three daughters. 14. And he called the name of the first, Jemima; and the name of the second, Kezia; and the name of the third, Keren-Happuch. 15. And in all the land no women were found so pretty as the daughters of Job; and their father gave them inheritance among their brothers. 16. And after this Job lived a hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his grandsons, four generations.
17. And Job died, old and full of days.

Phoenix-like he is reborn and has, if anything, even more vigor and vitality than before, like a young bird emerging from its egg.

The connection, through the word chol, sand, teaches us this – that after destruction, rebirth can (hopefully) ensue.

(With thanks to Shaatnez - a group dedicated to Judaism and speculative literature)

Is "Choose Life" Really A Choice?

Deut: 30:19: “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your seed may live.”

It’s your birthday, and I’m giving you two presents. One of them is horrible; something no one would want. So I’m telling you to pick the other one! But why then did I put two down in the first place – why not just give the nice one? Isn’t that a kind of unpleasant mind game? And what if you want the horrible one, will I give it to you?

And seriously: what is the point of giving someone a choice and then commanding them to pick only one, thereby removing that choice?

But is it indeed a commandment, or just a strong recommendation? That’s the difficulty in the Torah, that some things that are worded so they sound like commands are not actually so, e.g. “six days you shall work and on the seventh day is for rest” (I did hear one opinion that this is in fact a mitzvah to work!).

I hear in our verse not a command, but a heartfelt request and strong encouragement. We are allowed to choose the path of life or the path of death, that is how the world is structured. The way I hear G-d’s voice is—so to speak—imploring us, saying:

I have put terrible things into the world I have created. Enough of them that you can choose to focus on them all day every day, and become suffused with feelings of anger, disgust, and despair. I will not take away your free will; you get to decide where to put your eyes. But please, for the sake of this grand experiment I have called Life, please make dozens of tiny choices every day and every week to look at the good. ‘For this thing is very near to you, in your mouth, and in your heart, that you may do it.’” (Deut: 30:14)

Something in human nature pulls us constantly into the negative. I find that the only way to remain in the positive place, the “choosing life” place, is to constantly make endless small good choices.
Rambam (Hilchot Teshuva 3:4) notes we should behold ourselves as evenly balanced between innocence and guilt, and see the entire world similarly…. “if he performs one good deed, behold, he will overbalance himself and the whole world to the side of virtue, and bring about his own and their salvation and escape..." Every time we choose the good, we tip the scales, we move into the realm of good, we face the right direction. And we will receive help to keep going there. As the Sages say, “The way in which a person wishes to go, they are led.”

Once a year, we read these words “Choose Life”. But we should really hear them every day, every hour and every moment.