God's Katherine Hepburn

The Rabbis taught that each human being has a yetzer tov/good Inclination and a yetzer ra/evil inclination. Our yetzer tov is the part of us that inclines to be giving. Our yetzer ra is our selfish side. However, the yetzer ra is also the part of us that is responsible for our ambition, independence and drive. That’s why the Rabbis also said that “the yetzer ra is good. Were it not for the yetzer hara, human beings wouldn’t marry, build houses or engage in business”. That is, unbridled, the yetzer hara is ego gone wild. But, when the yetzer hatov has the services of the yetzer hara, good is more effective in the world. 

The yetzer hatov makes its first appearance in the Bible in the form of the serpent who tempts Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Eve is attracted to the Tree because she believes eating its fruit will make her as powerful and independent as God. It’s her competitive impulse that draws her to rebel against God’s command. In our Bible class, Shaynan Graves suggested that Eve was more likely to oppose God, because she was created to be an ezer k’negdo/a helpful oppose. That is, Adam is attracted to Eve, in part because she is different from him. She offers him a perspective on the world that he does not have. And, with that perspective, Adam is more complete.

When Abraham appears on the scene, he elevates the yetzer hara to a new level. In opposing God’s plan to destroy the wicked Sodom, Abraham accesses his independent, rebellious side. But, Abraham’s motivation for opposing God’s will is not to compete with God. Rather, Abraham is trying to hold God to God’s own highest standards. In this way, Abraham becomes God’s ezer k’negdo (helpful opposition). 

It is clear that this is exactly what attracted God to Abraham in the first place. In the first eleven chapters of Genesis, God is depicted as searching for a partner, someone who will understand Him, but also, where appropriate, oppose him. God’s initial search for a human partner ends in frustration, much as Adam initially does not find a suitable mate. Adam and Eve, Cain, the generation of Noah and the people of Babel are all a disappointment to God.

Along comes Abraham, and God declares ‘zot ha’paam’—this time, it’s right---as Adam declared about Eve. When God considers ‘not covering up’ what God is about to do to Sodom from Abraham, it is reminiscent of the stage in a love relationship where partners begin to share things with each other that they would share with no one else. God even uses the words ‘ki tedativ’/ for I have ‘known’ Abraham. The word ‘yada’ in Biblical Hebrew is the word for intimacy, both physical and emotional. 

This aspect of love is well known to us from the Katherine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy movies. The Hepburn character is attractive to the Tracy character precisely because she opposes him. Throughout the Bible, we, the Jewish people, are Katherine Hepburn to God’s Spencer Tracy.  God is constantly complaining about our rebelliousness, calling us  ‘a stiff necked people” and in the prophets ‘an untrained calf.’  Our disobedience often results in the severest of punishments. But, it is arguable that the same quality in us that is so problematic for God is precisely what attracted God to us in the first place.

 

Link to chapter a day calendar

Here is the link to the chapter a day calendar:

http://h-nt.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Reading-the-Bible-Calendar.pdf

Is the Bible Sexist?

In last week’s class, we noticed several troubling features of the Adam and Eve story in Genesis 2-3:

·        Eve was created second. She appears to have been derivative, secondary, created to serve Adam’s needs.

·        God barely speaks to Eve. God speaks only to Adam, until the end of the story, when God questions her for eating from the Tree of Knowledge (after first speaking to Adam)

·        Adam names Eve, as he names the animals. The naming seems to be an expression of power over Eve, as Adam has power over the animals.

·        Worst of all, God says to Eve, after she and Adam have eaten from the Tree that Adam’will rule over you,’ i.e. that from this point forward, men will rule over women.

 

We responded to these issues in the following ways:

1.      There is no question that the Adam and Eve does not reflect a 21^st century ethical sensibility in every way. There are elements of the story that we must reject as the product of a human element in the Bible, and not as reflecting God’s ultimate will. The idea that women will be ruled by men is not something we can accept today.

 

2.      Phyllis Trible has written that the Adam and Eve story is descriptive, not prescriptive. That is, it’s clear that before Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden, they lived in a state of equality. The dominance of man is equated with a fall from grace. It’s implied that the return to a more ideal state would mean the restoration of equality between men and women. The rest of the Bible and Jewish history is the story of how we seek to get back to the Garden. So, modern feminism is in keeping with the idea that male chauvinism is a flaw in human relationships that must be corrected to retrieve what God wants of human beings.

 

3.      This idea is supported by a later story in the Bible, the story of Esther. In chapter one of the megillah, male chauvinism is ridiculed. A drunken king objectifies his queen, demanding he show off her beauty to her male comrades. When she refuses, he calls a cabinet level meeting to decide what do to. Memuchan frets that if Vashti’s refusal is allowed to stand, all the women of the kingdom will rise in revolt against their husbands. It will be a catastrophe!  The king issues an order that the man is the boss of the house everywhere in his empire. This story portrays men who seek to dominate women as weak and foolish. 

 

4.      What’s more, later in the story, Haman’s paranoia about Jewish ‘disobedience’ to the king’s laws is equated with male paranoia about the female disobedience. Male dominance of women and persecution of the Jewish people are equated and declared equally illegitimate. At the end of the story, a strong woman emerges as a hero over weak men. Still, there is a missing piece. The Jews have escaped death, but we are still powerless and vulnerable to a fickle non-Jewish population. We have power, but it is the power behind the throne. It is clear from this Diaspora story,that the ideal is for the Jewish people to be in charge of our own destiny. This we can only achieve by having complete sovereignty in our own homeland (depicted by the Bible as the new Garden of Eden). The implication of the Esther story is that similarly, the triumph of women through manipulation of weak men is only an intermediate step. Ultimately, women deserve to be men’s equals, not just the power behind the throne, just as the Jewish people deserve to be authorities in our own land, not just vice presidents in someone else’s country.

 

5.      What emerges from the Esther story is that the Bible is a conversation, reflecting varied points of view, just as later in Jewish history, the Talmud is debate among Jews who have different opinions. The tendency of the Jewish people to wrestle with each other and with God in seeking to find the best way to live is found in the Bible itself from the very beginning. In next week’s class, we will look at how this tendency is found in Abraham and Sarah.