Jeremy Rosen
Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Leviticus 19:23, Ethics

Jeremy Rosen - Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Leviticus 19:23, Ethics

- Hello everybody. We are back to Leviticus 19 and to recap, are dealing with a series of what we call ethical laws, moral laws, behavioural laws in the Bible. And as we’ve mentioned before, there seems on the face of it to be no order that makes sense, no sequence. And we are used in western intellectual culture to see things systematically. And this is not at all systemic. It seems to jump from one subject to another, and yet we can notice certain patterns. The other thing that I want to reemphasize is that this is a text that is about 3,000 years old written in the context of life in the Middle East at that particular time. And so if we expect everything in it to conform to the culture now, 3,000 years later, in a different world altogether and at a different time, it would not do justice and it wouldn’t be fair in one sense to take this text and shall we say, make fun of it because some of it seems to be utterly ridiculous. Now, a long, long time ago, the commentators, well, whoever they were and whatever they were, knew that a lot needs to be explained. And so, it’s this explanation that they had of the so-called Written Law, the Text of the Torah, this interpretation of what we understand it to mean that is so important in making sense. And the reason why we want to make sense is because even now, 3,000 years later, we regard this as a foundational text, as if you like the beginning of the constitution. And just like any constitution, it develops over the years. So this constitution also develops over the years and has developed.

And so with that in mind, one needs, if I may use the expression, to suspend one’s critical faculty, to allow for the fact that this is speaking to people in a totally different era. And now what I try to do is try to say, how do I as the heir to this ancient tradition make sense of this? Can I make sense of this? Can this be a guide for me now at this moment in time? And so if you remember, we ended towards the end last week with verse 18 of chapter 19, one of the most famous verses in the Bible. Don’t bear a grudge against anybody, but you should love your neighbour as yourself. So this was a text, which is a beautiful idea. Love your neighbour as yourself and very often misunderstood to mean you must love your neighbour as much as you love yourself. But what it really means is you need to show love to your neighbour because he or she is the same as you. Of course, it’s very difficult to love our neighbours as much as we love ourselves. But nonetheless this is a lovely idea. But this idea has been current for thousands of years, 1,000 years before Christianity picked it up and continued with this idea of loving your neighbour as yourself. And here we are 3,000 years later, no closer to loving our neighbours as ourselves as we were 3,000 years ago. And that underlines the idea that we still need these moral values and these moral values, many of them are just as valuable now as they were then. And then we moved on to the whole question of do you mix things up? Do you mix sexes up, animals up, grounds up, seeds up? Is there a concept of wanting to go back to the original simplicity before things got so complicated?

And then we move on to the question of mixing in terms of sexual relations, which was very important in those days, particularly if you think in terms of Egyptian society where incest was the norm or the pagan society where you were expected to sleep with anybody at the temple or the priests once a year as a devotion to your God and where there were no rules. And interestingly enough, what the Bible underlines is it’s not just the kind of idol worship that they were up to, it was the fact that they had no self-control, no discipline structure, and in essence, self-indulgence as opposed to control. Now another important issue that crops up again in the Bible quite regularly is the issue of slavery because slavery is something which was the norm in that society thousands of years ago. And let us not forget, it was the norm in American society a couple of hundred years ago, and it is still going on in different parts of the world today. But in the Bible, there are divisions, there are divisions between slaves within the community, which was a way of describing somebody who couldn’t afford to support himself and his family and therefore, had to take on employment. And if you take on employment to some extent, you are subject to your boss. And the Bible lays down and we’ve come across these very, very rigid laws about how to treat your Hebrew slave, limit of time that he serves or she serves.

They can be redeemed at any moment by a relative. They don’t serve compulsorily for much more than seven years is the actual maximum. Then they have to be provided with support to set up a business afterwards. But there was a difference between that Hebrew slave as it was called, and a Canaanite slave, that is to say a non-Jewish slave who is not the same as a stranger living in your midst who is a citizen, if he accepts or she accepts the law, but is if you like part of the property of the person who bought them at the slave market. And remember, slave markets have gone on for thousands of years after this, so horrible as it is and the fact that the Torah actually objects and says, I don’t want you to be slaves to other human beings. I want you in a sense to be subject to me, to God, to spiritual laws. Nevertheless, recognise the fact that that was part of society at that time. Now, when you bought a slave on the open market, so to speak, immediately they became, in a sense, part of the family. They were obliged to keep many of the laws that other people were keeping within Jewish society. Resting, taking time off, control over how they would be treated. If a slave was injured in any way, they would go out free. But the interesting thing is that the slave, the moment they are freed become full-blooded citizens of the Jewish state, so to speak.

So freeing them means they become equal. So they have the potential, but in the meantime, they are in a subsection. And a subsection means they have rights, they have privileges, but also limitations. And one of those limitations is it would be possible for the owner of a slave to expect them to go into a kind of a union either with the other woman or the other man. And now, we are talking about the rule of a Shifra, of a maid servant when she is designated to somebody which means engaged to somebody. And according to biblical law, if you, shall we say, have sex with a married woman, that’s category number one disaster. If you have sex with an engaged woman, that’s also pretty terrible, not quite as bad as the first one. And if you have sex with somebody who is engaged to another person already and is a slave, that’s also a crime, but in a third category, and that is what we are dealing with today. And so if you look at verse 20 of chapter 19, it says this. If a person sleeps, has sex with a woman, the Shifra, she is a maid servant, this is a Canaanite maid servant, not a Hebrew maid servant because a Hebrew maid servant is a full citizen, can’t be forced into marriage with anybody. She’s engaged to a man. She is still in a state of being bound. This could be another Jewish man when she gets freed, but she has not yet been redeemed or she hasn’t yet been set free so she’s still in this middle area, this is the technical meaning of bikoret is an inquiry, but bikoret means here, according to the interpretation, he must suffer a punishment for doing this.

He has no right. It’s true that the death penalty, which as I’ve explained before, was almost impossible to carry out, the death penalty might not apply because she wasn’t a free equal citizen, but somewhere in between. But nevertheless, he must bring his guilt offering to God in the entrance to the tabernacle or later the temple as an atonement and the kohen, the priest will atone this man for having slept with somebody he shouldn’t have. Now, in our society, that wouldn’t be treated unfortunately too bad, and as we’ve seen in our society, if you rate the person who everybody else disapproves of, then you can get away with it. But that shows how far we are from a fair and just society nowadays. But it also tells us something interesting. It’s a myth, an urban myth within parts of the Jewish world that it’s all right if you have sex with a non-Jewish person, but you can’t have sex with a Jewish person you’re not married to. And the fact is that this particular point is making it very clear that you may not, it is forbidden just as any other forbidden marriage is forbidden. Everybody has a right to, if you like, their privacy, relationships have a sanctity and anybody who breaks a relationship is doing something which at that time was considered to be very, very bad. So when we have a law like this, we’re examining principles of slavery, of citizenship, of privilege, of sexual concern and sensitivity. And now we move on to sensitivity and concern for the poor.

So there is, if you like an assumption, that if you are sensitive to other people, you should be sensitive to people who are in a different position to you, either with citizenship, they might not have full citizenship or because they are poor. And so in verse 23, we start off with this statement, when you come to the land of Canaan, which is an agricultural society, and you should eat fruit, you shall plant fruit trees. And you shall leave in a natural state, the fruit. For three years, they will be forbidden to you, you may not eat that fruit. Now that looks like entirely a matter for agricultural issues. in the fourth year, you dedicate the produce of that fourth year to God, to the temple. You can eat the fruit so that it will go on producing fruit. I’m God. And when it says I’m God, this is always referring to something that is not logical. It might not make logical sense to you at the time. Now we may make sense and say that agriculturally, we know from that part of the world and at that time that the purpose of this was to allow the fruit tree to grow strong before we started harvesting it. And so the first three years it would remain in this state of impermissibility. And interestingly enough, the word arel that’s used here that this fruit, it should be its fruit in a sense is the same word as circumcision. It should be uncircumcised and only then circumcised if you like, in the end of the third year.

So in a sense, the parallel between them is the notion of circumcision is you’re not yet ready and now we complete the process either of a tree growing to produce fruit or a human male to be part of that particular society and in the fifth year, you may eat. Many laws were added into Judaism in the 16th century by the Kabbalists in Safed. The Kabbalists moved from Spain where the Zohar, the major book of modern Kabbalah came, there was mysticism along before that. But when the Jews were driven out of Spain in 1492, they moved to the East and the Kabbalists moved towards the Ottoman Empire, which was much more welcoming to the Jews than was the Christian world at that particular moment. And they were allowed, they were welcomed in to bring with them their skills and many of them settled not in Jerusalem, which had no industry, couldn’t absorb large numbers. There was a small little Jewish community there. Most of them moved to Safed-Tsfat in the north and Tsfat was able to sustain them because it had industry. It was a place where there were large amounts of sheep and the sheep provided for a textile industry. And the textile industry flourished in Safed and so Jews flocked there. And amongst the Jews that flocked there were two major rabbis, one called Cordovero from Cordova in Spain and the other’s called Luria, Isaac Luria. And they took the Kabbalah of the Zohar and expanded it and innovate it. One of the innovations is going to apply this week. This week on Thursday, we’re going to have the new year for trees.

The new Year for trees is mentioned in the Oral law in Rosh Hashanah talking about the different New Years. There was different new year for kings, different year for trees, different new year for religious functions. In Babylon there was seven New Years. So it wasn’t unusual in the Bible to have lots of New Years for different things. There was a lunar calendar and a solar calendar. And the New Year for Trees was the moment at which the BiShvat began to rise in a tree as spring gets closer. And that is when you judge the age of a tree. So any tree born or planted before Tu B'Av is in that year and any planted after Tu B'Av of this 15th day of Av is counts towards the next year for when you count three years or five years, or give tides. Now there’s no ceremony mentioned at all for Tu BiShvat whatsoever anywhere in the Bible or in the Talmud. It is the Kabbalists who introduced the idea of having a huge big meal, a banquet on Tu B'Av at which you eat the fruits of the land of Israel or any new fruits that you haven’t eaten that year. Because when everyone has something new, whether it’s a fruit or a suit you’re supposed to thank God for it, there’s a little blessing for it. And so they had this special event which has become nowadays in Israel quite popular, even in the secular world, in the agricultural world as it returned. But for many years when Jews were not involved in agriculture after the Roman exile, it was ignored completely.

So they innovated it and not only did they innovate that, but also it Isaac Luria innovated the idea that when a boy is born, his hair should grow without being cut for three years rather like the fruit of the tree growing for three years to give it strength. And then after three years, then you have a ceremony and you cut his hair, which is why you see a lot of young males in the Orthodox community running around with long locks that make them indistinguishable for many girls. So these are two examples of innovations that in a sense go back to this, but didn’t come into Judaism until about 400 years ago. Then we come now to verse 26, which is one of the most difficult lines of understanding in the Torah, and one in which there are at least seven different interpretations as to what it means. The first part goes, which literally means don’t eat on the blood. What that means is undifficult to understand and then goes on to say, don’t indulge in divination in reading the stars or reading your palm, or don’t rely on oracles, on soothsayers. Don’t get involved in something which you do not know in advance what you’re going to be committed to because the soothsayer may tell you to do something really weird and the person who reads the stars may come up with all kinds of strange things. And so there’s a link between these two.

What’s the connection between not eating on the blood and not being involved in astrology, and any other kind of pseudo magic, which to this day, people ignore completely. And in America, the astrologists are one of the most popular sources that people go to when they want to know answers to their questions. Very, very popular still at this period of time. And people swear by the stars and astrology and everything like it. Now let’s start with the first part first. One way of understanding it is to say that the rabbis have that don’t eat anything while the blood is still fresh in the animal, which is the origin actually, of removing the blood from an animal before you can eat the meat. And so kosher food has two phases to it. The first phase is it has to be killed in this way that causes minimal pain to the animal. And secondly, the blood has to be drained from the body. So one is not eating the meat generally. Another interpretation is this is referred to the temple. On the temple, you had sacrifices, they will come there and part of the sacrifice meant taking the meat and separating it from the blood, draining it away and not then eating the sacrificial meat until the blood has been dried away. These are two examples of what we might call sacrificial explanations of this text. But there’s another series of interpretations which are very different. One means don’t eat while there’s blood flowing in the streets, when people are being killed, when people are suffering. When poor people are suffering, don’t sit down to eat while they might be dying because you’re not helping them.

So that is, if you like, an ethical principle of Jewish law. It also refers to the fact that when somebody rebels against their parents and rebels in an obvious way by eating as gluttonous insensitive people, that can lead to people suffering, whether it’s your parents suffering or whether the person himself ends up in a mess being dead because he exercises or she exercises no self-control. And another explanation is that this is a general rule, it’s not a specific rule, it’s a general rule which says be careful about blood, whether it’s blood rising because somebody blushes and you’ve insulted them, whether it’s because somebody is suffering, whether because you are not going to help somebody in the street and the whole question in American law in other law is, what are the obligations of the good Samaritan, so to speak, to go and help somebody? You hear a scream, should you go and help? Somebody’s fallen in the street, should you help them get up? These are a range of different opinions as to what this single phrase means. And it’s amazing that a single phrase like this has so many different interpretations. And that to my mind is also the greatness of the Jewish theological system that it allows for so many different interpretations. And if you don’t like the idea of sacrifices, okay, fair enough, I don’t like the idea of sacrifices, find another explanation. But then you have the second part, then what is this to do with soothsaying? Well, the answer is because if somebody goes to a soothsayer, they are inclined to take what they say as law.

And if they advise you to do something which may go against the law, then you’ll betray the law and justice and you’ll do weird strange things, sometimes even bad things. And so that’s why in order to be sensitive to people, we have to have a legal definition of what the right thing is. And if you ask me then, what is the difference between a religion and superstition? I would say this, that in the case of a religious law, you know in advance without doubt what you are committing to, you know what you have to do. The trouble with superstition is that there is no clear explanation or reason. It is something that if you are told by an expert to do you may do not because it’s the right thing, but because they tell you to do it, it’s dependency on something which is unpredictable. And because it’s unpredictable, that is what we mean by superstitious. A system that has no defined boundaries of what is good and bad. So we then move on to something else. 27, don’t surround cut round the hair of your head. Don’t destroy the corner of your beard. Now what is this? Obviously, it applies to most men, not to women. But clearly, if you think of, let’s say, how monks have this round haircut with a Tonsure, the gap at the top. And very often, in many religious areas, shaving was an important sign, particularly in Egypt of your superiority. Only the peasant grew a beard ‘cause they couldn’t afford to shave or didn’t have the time to shave. So this is clearly something which is referring to differentiation between monotheism and idolatry of having a physical mark to show to everybody who you are, not to be ashamed of your… There’s another law of this that’s going to come in with regard to fringes on your garments.

And this is obviously a problem that many people are experiencing now with the demonstrations against Israel and won’t be told because of the antisemitism around the world not to wear a kippah or cover their head in public. The law of covering your head with a kippah is not mentioned as a law till much, much later. It’s merely mentioned in the Talmud as an act of piety, a symbolised God above, but it didn’t become this obligation until much, much later. But this obviously underlines the idea that you shouldn’t be ashamed in order to show who you are. And yet, Jewish laws we’ve come before always said, don’t put yourself in unnecessary danger. And if you are in unnecessary danger, you may break the law. And similarly, something that is very relevant now, the and don’t cut your flesh, don’t cut your flesh when somebody dies. And that was a very common action of pain, of suffering when somebody died to cut till the blood ran and the custom we have to this day of cutting a garment when somebody dies is a hark back to that, but saying, do it to a garment if you must, but don’t do it to your body, and literally that means don’t tattoo, don’t write permanently into your skin. And this is why, of course, to the Orthodox world, tattooing is forbidden. And there’s, of course, an urban myth that if a Jewish tattooed he can’t be buried and that is simply not true. And various of these myths about who can and can’t be buried circulate, but the fact of the matter is that even if somebody, let’s say, were to cremate themselves, which goes against Jewish law, you would still want to bury the ashes. And in principle, we believe in returning dust to dust.

But nevertheless, this idea of not carving up and tattooing was obviously because this is how the non-Jewish world behaved then and to some extent does now. And then 29, a father has control over children until they reach the age of 12 and a half, if she’s a female or 13 if it’s a boy. There’s no mention by the way of a bar mitzvah in the Torah and indeed not even of celebration in the Oral law in the Talmud, just that when you reach the age of 13, you can count as an adult for purposes of census or of minyan, or responsibility for your actions. Now it’s very common, particularly for poor people and it is the case in India of selling off, and in a way, sometimes covering it by marrying off a daughter either to provide income or to avoid having to feed her. So it says, do not then degrade or desecrate your daughter to sell her into prostitution because if you then bring prostitution into the land, this is zimmah. And zimmah is a word we’ve come before when we describe the people you can and you can’t marry. And zimmah is something that we find unacceptable, something that is morally unacceptable. Another similar use of this is when somebody gives intentionally false evidence against another person, unacceptable witness who is causing somebody else to die or to lose money, or to lose their life by telling a lie in court and depriving the person.

This undermines the foundation of society. And then we round this off with , I want you to keep my sabbaths what that really means any holy day or and respect my sanctuary, I am God. Because the whole purpose of the rituals is to remind us every day, every week, every month, every year of how we’re supposed to behave 'cause we tend to forget or we tend to get carried away. And the behavioural emphasis in Judaism rather than the theological emphasis is incredibly important. But then we come back again and we have this idea of reiteration. Very often, every law repeated three times, don’t turn again to these oracular people or objects, or oracles out of , don’t ask them because they will drag you down to their level of idolatry. Again, I am the Lord your God, do this to be God-like. And one of my favourite ones, 32, particularly relevant to me now, rise before seiva. Seiva is somebody who has grey hair or sometimes translated in King James the hoary head, the the white hair, the fire upon the head of Benny Hill’s famous line. And you should give respect to or deference to , the elder. Now the difference between seiva and zaken is highly debated and controversial. In one sense, seiva means simply the act of old age, but you could be an old fool. Zaken means somebody who is old, but somebody who is wise. That is one way of looking at the difference between the two. The other is zaken is used in the Bible to mean somebody in a serious position of authority, respect, authority, don’t undermine authority otherwise, like Hobbes society will turn into a horror place where people each each other alive.

So you have two ideas, you have the respect for old age and you have respect for authority. And the person you should respect most of all is the you should respect God. I hate this translation as I mentioned before, fear God. Fear means being frightened of, and you don’t have to be frightened any more than you should be frightened of your parents. And you are commanded to the , you should respect your mother and your father. And therefore, this in a sense, like respect for your parents, respect for the elder, respect for authority are all fundamental principles of a balanced, fair society where chaos is under control. And most important, in many respects in the world in which we live in, verse 33, when a stranger comes to live in your land, . Tonu is translated here as wrong them, but it also means oppress. It can mean oppress in different ways. It’s also used generally as oppressing in language. When you deceive people, that’s a form of oppression. In other words, in no area can you be deceitful or take advantage of the stranger. Now this is not a convert, the term ger here now is used to mean a convert. But in those days it meant somebody who comes to live there either for business or because he likes that society and you have to treat him fairly. , the stranger has to be like a citizen. You have to grant him citizenship. Not only that, , you should love the stranger as much as yourself.

So when we said earlier about love your neighbour as much as yourself and you say, oh, that’s only your neighbour, only your Jewish neighbour. No, here it says in black and white, you should love your neighbour as yourself. You should consider him important. And remember, that you were slaves once upon a time in the land of Egypt and I’m telling you to do this because I say so, not because it might make or not make logic to you, but this idea of the stranger is predicated, is predicated on the idea that the stranger accepts your laws, accepts your civil laws, doesn’t have to accept your religious laws, but has to accept your civil laws. And if there’s a stranger in your society who wants to kill you, then you’ve got to get rid of him. That’s a different matter altogether. But that is the important issue. And 35, , don’t distort justice. Don’t turn justice into a game. Into, you know, the game is to find the guilty man innocent or the innocent guilty, as happens in the court cases in most countries. It’s a game and very often it’s not the law, it’s who’s got the best lawyer who knows how to fiddle the law. Here we are saying everything has to be done according to the book. And it’s not a question of persuading the jury, it’s a question of clarifying what the law says on the basis of actual evidence. And now, another important law, 36. People often say, I come across orthodox people who swindle and cheat and break the law. And I say to them, well, that’s no different to somebody who doesn’t keep the law of kashrut, who doesn’t keep Shabbat, who doesn’t keep festivals. It’s going against a clear law in the Bible that you must not cheat in business.

And here is the statement that every one of your weights and all weights and measures, and every way of dealing in business of buying and selling should be fair and right. Sadek should be right. So scales of righteousness of nay stones which are weights they call it a stone, but we going to be fair. Ephah, the whether you measure the quantity you’re giving out and take a little bit off. These have to be sadek. And similarly a hin, another measure, ephah and hin are two measures of how they gave out grain or how they measured weights, this has to be righteous. And if you are cheating somebody, you are breaking the law of the Torah as much as any other law of the Torah. And finally, is a general statement, you should keep my commands, the commands, the hawk of those that you might not understand, but are traditional. , the laws of civil law, which makes sense in any just legal system. , you should abide by them and , and I’m telling you, this is what I’d like you to do and I think this is what’s going to make you a better, caring human being and do it either because you understand it or if not, do it. Do me a favour, says God, I think this will make life a lot better for everybody in society. So now I stop the share and I go to the questions and answers and see where we’re up to.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: Could we have the title of music? Dawn Berman asked.

A: At the beginning, the title of the music was Handel, “The Queen of Sheba,” the entrance of the Queen of Sheba when she comes into the King Solomon in this famous procession.

Q: Israel, I would appreciate if you could clarify an idea that God says he is holy and will be holy. What does this mean? We are an Am Kadosh, how do you understand this applying to the children of Israel?

A: Holy, the term Kadosh simply means being different, being different either in a good way or in a bad way. It defines us as having choices. When we talk about God being holy, we mean God is defining the way he/she or it would like us to behave the right path. Adam and Eve had choices, they made the wrong choice. And similarly, Am Kadosh means as a nation we make the right choices. And if we don’t make the right choices, we lose that, if you like, benefit or association with God, which explains why it is that so often we have been beaten up and destroyed and suffered because too often we have failed to live a godly life. Whenever God is defined in the Torah, they talk about God in Genesis as being, knowing the difference between good and bad. Not that God needs to know anything because God is not a human being. But differentiating between good and bad, that is what kadosh means. And as again, I’ve mentioned before and kadosh means holy in a good sense in the Bible, and kadosh also means a prostitute male or female in the Bible. So it’s the same person, but behaving badly or behaving well.

Q: Brian asks, on the question of loving your neighbour, why by translation is it assumed that your neighbour is the same as the people of Israelite?

A: Well, first of all, not everybody translates it like that, but it is assumed by some people to mean it’s the equivalent of citizenship. Citizenship bestows certain laws and benefits on people that the non-citizen doesn’t have. And so you can’t assume that the non-citizen has the same rules. But as I point out later on, there’s a very specific law which says not only love your neighbour, but love the stranger and love the stranger who’s not a convert, who’s anybody. And not only, but it says , the stranger should be treated as a citizen. So this is the beauty that the Torah and one or reasons why it repeats things because it wants to clarify uncertainty. And sometimes the best way to do it is repeat a law in a slightly different way to add another principle, and this is interpreted by the rabbis as how we deduce things from the repetition and whether it’s a general rule or a specific rule.

Thelma, I’ve just been reading about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings and it seems to me Jefferson was familiar with Leviticus. Yes, the founding fathers studied the Bible and considered the Bible as an important guide for how they should live. But like everybody who, shall we say, adopts the Bible in one form, we tend to be selective in what we do adhere to and what we don’t adhere to. But yes, the Bible was, and that’s why in many states still the 10 commandments, which is part of the Jewish Bible are in the governor’s house or in the courts of law because that is how if what is called Judeo-Christian society developed. Although, I believe that Christian is more close to Greek society and Greek theology than to Jewish, so we should really call it Greco-Judeo or Judeo-Greco Christian Society.

Rita, thank you, thank you.

Q: Shelly, did the violated engaged Canaanites maid servant get freed because of the rape, an injury freed a Canaanite slave, did it matter who raped her if it was a member of her master’s family?

A: Well, first of all, rape anyway, is considered a violation. But over and above actual rape, there were rights if you like, to contract people to get married, which was still a fact in many societies until relatively recently. And people were forced into marriages, which is in a form, a form of rape, it was not considered rape, it was a different case altogether. Raping anybody by force is an injury. And later rabbis would definitely say this is something punitive.

Q: Could the the fruit of the young tree in verse 23?

A: That’s an excellent question, and there’s a debate about it. If it fell to the ground, can you? Technically, not, even though they were allowed to eat, of course, any fruit that falls off a ordinary tree, so if an ordinary tree, they were always able to go and pick up the droppings as they might be called. But here, there’s an argument as to whether this should be left to God and possibly also as an act of fertilising the ground. So there are very good, if you like agricultural reasons, even though that’s not why we keep a law because it’s agriculturally right any more than it because it’s from a health point of view, a very good idea.

Q: Brian, why an orthodox rabbi refuse to marry a luckily born couple who have tattoos, many girls have pierced ears?

A: Look, I can’t speak for all orthodox rabbis. All I can tell you is halachically having a tattoo is not a ban in any way to get married. It is not something that prevents you getting married any more than it prevents you being buried. Now are there some people who might object? Well, possibly. But then I’ve never ever heard of a rabbi asking a woman to strip in order to find out if she had a tattoo or not. Why is ear piercing allowed amongst religious Jews? Well, only amongst the women, the men would not accept it at all because the men from the golden calf onwards were forbidden to have any kind of facial piercing or indeed jewellery and women were not because women had importantly so, reiterated by the Talmud to look nice and pretty for their husbands, so the husbands won’t wander off in the wrong direction. And interestingly enough, there is a law in the Talmud, which they claim goes back all the way to Ezra, 2,500 years ago. And the law says it is important for Jewish communities to either employ or make sure that men travelling around offering cosmetics should be available to every Jewish community so that women should look nice for their husbands. Interesting that isn’t it? Instead of fearing God is we should be in awe of God. That’s precisely how I always translate this idea of Yirah, which people translate fear. It should mean respect or awe, awe or respect, but definitely not frightened or fear.

Thank you, Clara. Brian, thank you very much.

Q: And Richard, you mentioned fear can mean respect, can it also mean awe?

A: Yes, indeed, indeed it can. Carla, very interesting, thank you. Kol Hakavod and to you too, Carla.

Stephen, burial of suicide in corner or outside, kohanim do not participate in funerals. Yes, we’re going to come to a law that talks about priests, kohanim not coming into contact with the dead and therefore, not attending funerals in places where there may be trees or any overhanging anything. And so they have a special sanctuary of their own to go to, which is maintained as a custom today, even though originally, those concepts of purity went out with the end of the temple, but we were preserved historically. Suicide is also a fascinating example of something where we have a law which says, you should not commit suicide. But in England, they used to say when suddenly committed suicide that he took his own life when the balance of his mind was disturbed. In other words, no normal person was going to commit suicide. And in fact, that is part of the Jewish approach. The Jewish approach is to say, surely, this man at the last moment would’ve changed his mind. Will have regretted it as he was bleeding to death or whatever it was. And so we can assume he’s not a real suicide and therefore, we allow him to be buried. And I, in a certain community where I once was, the rabbi before me had actually committed suicide. And the nearest Bet Din, a rabbinic authority insisted he be buried normally and that he surely would’ve atoned or changed his mind before he died. But there are indeed some communities that do have a special area in the courtyard, in the graveyard, where they would bury either a suicide or sometimes somebody whose conversion might not have been a hundred percent. And in some cases, when somebody’s married a non-Jew married to a Jew, Jewess and wants to be buried in close to her. So it is up to the people running cemeteries to decide how to conduct their affairs, whether they do or don’t, put aside separate areas and these is another area where Jewish law allows for rabbinic interpretation, intervention, and exceptions to a rule.

Carol, thank you so much. The favourite Bible teacher, that’s really nice of you, thank you. Janice, where all the trees grow from seeds and were all fruit on the fourth year given to the temple? Well, first of all, no, fruits often can come from what’s called grafting, which is attaching a plant to another, from one tree without going to the roots. So you insert a chute from a tree into the tree itself, so there are different methods of fruit husbandry and so forth. But yes, the fourth year, this temple, this was given to the temple and it was one of the benefits that priests in the temple had too. When I changed the word fear to revere, I like that one, Arlene. I agree with that a hundred percent. Thank you, Israel.

Thank you everybody, and I hope to see you again next week.