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)

Chanoch/Noach and Yuval/Levi

In this Times of Israel post I suggested that Chanoch and his grandson Noach share a trait, that has been passed down in partial form ("If you look at the letters of Hanoch (Het Nun Vav Chaf), Noah shares only two of them (Nun Het).")

חנוך

נח

Recently it struck me that the same might be argued for another ancestor and descendant: Yuval and Levi.

Yuval is called "the father all who played the lyre and pipe" (Genesis 4:20-21). In other words, the progenitor or father of music. Levi is a very musical tribe, who end up being the singers in the Temple. And the letters of Yuval's name partially descend into Levi:

יובל

לוי

We Must Not Be Noah

A blog post at Times of Israel

Noah and his moment

This year I have been feeling the story of Noah very deeply. Particularly, the image of this man who essentially went through a Holocaust with his family.

There is an interesting tension within our commentators (revolving around the words "in his generations") between those who would see Noah as righteous and those who would see him as mediocre at best.

It's easy to judge Noah. He wasn't Abraham - he did not plead to G-d to save the world, and he did not run around telling everyone that they needed to repent. He was "נח", passive. That is why we do not adopt him as one of our patriarchs or as a role model.

Abraham was told "Lech Lecha, leave behind everything you know and set out on a long journey." So was Noah. Both obeyed G-d. 

Abraham opened his house to guests. Noah built a (floating) house and faithfully took care of hundreds of animal guests for over a year.

Yet to be fair, Noah did not have any role models for action. G-d came and told him to do something very difficult, and he did it. He obeyed. We praise Abraham for his obedience at the Akedah, why should we not give Noah the credit for fulfilling the extremely challenging task he was given.

You could argue that neither did Abraham have any role models before him. True. But he did have Noah and the flood story (a midrash even claims that Noah was still alive when Abraham was born). He had a negative example to learn from. He also had a contemporary (and who knows, perhaps he even spoke to him?) to whom G-d had spoken and who had obeyed.  In other words, perhaps without Noah there could not have been an Abraham. Noah's actions and activities created the basis, was a precursor, for the greatness of Abraham.

Hegel speaks of thesis and anti-thesis. Perhaps Noah's very passivity and lack of pleading (thesis) led to the antithesis, Abraham's active mode and his intercession before G-d.

- - -

But, truth to tell, Noah did miss a tremendous opportunity. After the flood, all idol-worship had been wiped out. There was only Noah and his family, and they know of the one G-d. Judaism's entire theology is bent towards the day when the entire world will know G-d. Noah had an opportunity to set the world on a foundation of monotheism when he emerged from the ark; to go out into the world and serve G-d. Instead, he got drunk and ended up cursing his own descendants. It is hard to blame Noah for getting drunk - he must have been unimaginably traumatised by emerging from the ark into a world where nothing he had known even existed any more and everyone was dead. But it was a lost opportunity and hence, it was subsequently up to Abraham to try to introduce monotheism into a world already riddled with idol-worship.

N.B. Interestingly enough, a lecture I heard last week by Dr Paula Friedrikssohn taught me that during the time of Jesus, another such moment came along in history. At that time, pagans were pluralists, and even those who might admire the Israelite G-d, would still cling to their own nation's gods. In other words, the norm was to worship numerous gods at the same time, but never to let go of your family gods. Along came Saul/Paul and began to announce to the pagans that they must surrender their idols and worship only the G-d of Israel (who was of course the G-d that Jesus and his followers believed in, being Jewish). At that time, many pagans converted to a form of Judaism, or at least Jewish belief (I am not sure if they had any practice).

Of course, the moment was lost, on some level, when this form of Judaism then morphed into a new religion that no longer resembled Judaism. Still, this series of events set into motion the advent of a new monotheistic trend in the world that would come to embrace millions and bring them closer to one G-d. Let's hope, pray and believe that this has to be a good thing.