I mentioned in my previous posting that the Rabbis of the
Yerushalmi spare no feelings when it comes to describing graphically the events
of 70 C.E. A fuller picture is that while they soundly condemn Bar Kochba as
cruel, irresponsible, and abhorrent, and don’t hesitate to tick off sins
committed by Israel that account for the brutality she endured at the hands of
the Romans, the Rabbis also speak of God’s loving mercy. It appears that the
Rabbis’ ideas and emotions are all over the board: God is punishing, but also
loving. God ordains Israel’s suffering, but God also seeks to alleviate their
suffering. Raw and painful emotions come through loud and clear. But so, too,
we find glimpses of hope.
Amidst these passages, wedged in between one horror and
another, is a fantasy that made me smile and even laugh.
R.
Chanina said: Forty years before the Israelites went into exile to Babylonia,
they planted date palms in Babylonia since they wanted to have something sweet
to prepare the tongue to study Torah.
R.
Chanina b. R. Abbahu said: 700 kinds of clean [i.e. kosher] fish, 800 kinds of
ritually clean locusts, and fowl too numerous to count, all went into exile
with the Israelites to Babylonia. And when [the Israelites] returned, all [the
animals] returned with them, except for the fish called shibuta.
God has providentially seen to the people’s basic nutritional
needs. Date palms planted more than five decades earlier would be mature and
produce abundant fruit by the time the Israelites arrive in exile. Why date
palms? So they can do what will sustain their spirits and traditions: study
Torah. Date palms nourish their souls.
Dates were not the only sustenance God provided in exile. A
myriads species of fish, locusts, and fowl (all kosher for eating) migrated
with the Israelites. This fantastical idea speaks to God’s loving guardianship
of Israel.
While we can go along with the fantasy and imagine locusts
springing and vaulting their way from the Land of Israel 1000 miles to
Babylonia, and birds winging their way to join the Israelites in exile, how
could fish possible make the trip? There is no water route from the Land of Israel
to Babylonia. Just to make this clear, here’s a map.
Israel is on the west coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The
Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which carve out ancient Babylonia, can be seen
flowing southeast into the Persian Gulf. How did the fish get to Babylonia?!
R. Huna
b. Yosef said: They went into exile through the t’hom (the primordial deep), and they returned through the t’hom.
Two uses of this unusual term — t’hom — jump out at me, each associated with a very different image
and message, but taken together, speak to the present situation and the
longed-for future.
We first encounter the term t’hom in the second verse of the Torah:
When God
began to create haven and earth — the earth being unformed and void, with
darkness over the face of the deep
and a wind from God sweeping over the water — (Genesis 1:1-2)
The t’hom is the
great watery primordial deep. It precedes everything. It is the raw stuff of
which God shapes the world. It is beneath the land, beneath the sea, and
metaphysically beyond our world. It harkens back to the original creation.
The Flood arose from the primordial deep:
In the
six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day
of the month, on that day all the fountains of the deep burst apart, and the floodgates of the sky broke open.
(Genesis 7:11)
Mentioning t’hom
not only solves the fantasy’s logical problem of how the fish could reach
Babylonia, it evokes the primordial chaos before creation. The events of 70
C.E. are so great a cataclysm it is as if everything has returned to primordial
chaos. How can there ever be order again?
We find the term t’hom
in the book of Isaiah, as well. The prophet Isaiah lived in the 8th
century B.C.E., long before the Destruction of either the First or Second
Temple. Scholars consider chapters 40-55, however, to be the work of another
author who lived through the Destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E. This
section (chapters 40-55) is attributed to an anonymous prophet scholars have
dubbed Deutero-Isaiah, who prophesied the redemption of Israel from
Exile in Babylonia, restoration to the Land of Israel eternally promised to
them by God, and the unbreakable and permanent quality of their covenant with
God. In this context, the Deutero-Isaiah uses the term t’hom with a strikingly different valence:
Awake,
awake, clothe yourself with splendor,
O arm of
the Lord!
Awake as
in days of old,
As in
former ages!
It was
you who hacked Rahab to pieces,
That
pierced the Dragon.
It was
you that dried up the sea,
The
waters of the great deep;
That made
the abysses of the Sea
A road
the redeemed might walk.
So let
the ransomed of the Lord return,
And come
with shouting to Zion,
Crowned
with joy everlasting.
Let them
attain joy and gladness,
While
sorrow and sighing flee.
(Isaiah
51:9-11)
Deutero-Isaiah evokes the primordial chaotic
deep. Rahab and the Dragon are primeval monsters whom God tames, bring order to
chaos — an integral part of the Creation of the world. In the passage from
Isaiah chapter 51, the prophet speaks optimistically: the chaos of the
destruction and exile in the 6th century B.C.E. is not forever. God
will return the world to its former state of order, just as long ago God
overpowered Rahab and the Dragon. God does not open the “fountains of the deep”
as in Genesis 7:11 to unleash death and destruction, but quite the opposite:
God dries up the deep to create a safe passage for the Israelites to return to
Zion.
This is a powerful image of redemption
that evokes the paradigmatic redemption from Egypt. It’s impossible to read
about God drying up waters to make “a road the redeemed might walk” and not
think of the Exodus from Egypt through the Reed Sea. The Rabbis descend from the
Jews who experienced the trauma of destruction and chaos. It is clear from the Yerushalmi’s account
that their descendants also feel traumatized, even generations later. (We
should not be surprised, given all we know about the children of Holocaust
survivors.) In their fantasy of God’s providential care of Israel in Exile, the
Rabbis’ use the evocative term t’hom,
which both acknowledges the present reality but also points to a redemptive
future. Order will be restored. Even more, Israel will be created anew.
Pesach is around the corner. The message of hope and the
possibility of redemption never gets old. In our lives and in the lives of
those we love, in the life of the State of Israel we cherish and in the life of
the world and all its inhabitants, we need to keep hope and the possibility of
redemption front and center, a guidepost to direct our lives.
© Rabbi Amy Scheinerman
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