Jeremy Rosen
Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Deuteronomy 6:10, Can the Law Be Wrong?

Jeremy Rosen - Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Deuteronomy 6:10, Can the Law Be Wrong?

- Hello, everybody. I thought I’d give you something different for a change to maybe indicate why it is I am totally out of sync with modern pop music, or what passes as pop music, and I just like the old-fashioned stuff, where the lyrics are brilliant, where the emotion is there, and Ella Fitzgerald is just wonderful. So, I thought, change is not a bad idea. We are now going to continue with this long speech of Moses, which we have started, which is going to carry on for a while. And I’m going to select certain parts of it that I think are interesting and relevant, and I’m going to skip those repetitions that say nothing new. Now I want to start with chapter six, verse 10. When God, your God, brings you to the land, he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you, and you will find, when you get there, big cities, which you didn’t build, in verse 11, and houses, full of good things, you didn’t put that stuff there, and wells that have been dug, which you didn’t dig, vineyards, and olives, that you didn’t plant, you will eat, and you’ll be satisfied. So I’m bringing you to a place. It’s true you’re going to have to fight for it, but at the same time, you’re going to be taking over a lot of stuff from the people you defeat. Verse 12, then remember, be careful, . Lest you ignore and forget God because God brought you there for a purpose. He took you out of Egypt from the house of slavery, and therefore, you owe it, so to speak, in verse 13, to respect the Lord your God, to serve him, and to swear in his name, that is to say, to use God as the touchstone of how you speak and how you think.

And therefore, again, don’t go after other gods. We’ve said that already so many times, 10 Commandments, twice. From the gods that are around you, because once again, in verse 15, God is consequential or impassioned or else, and he’ll get very upset, and the result of this is, you’re going to lose it all. So it couldn’t be clearer, this message that we are being given something, and we’re privileged to have it, but we shouldn’t take it for granted and realise that we can lose it. In verse 16, the Lord your God, as you tested him all the time in the desert over water and over everything. The Lord’s God’s mitzvoth. So we’ve added another word, we’ve had before as laws which are, shall we say, tests of your faith. is a new word here. It’s not a mishpat, which is civil law, it’s not a mitzvah, which is a religious law. Edot really is to witness. That’s a term that has significance in the Christian world, but, in English, it sounds rather non-Jewish, but means those things that test to whether you’re faithful or not. And now we come to verse 18, which is one, in my view, of the most important verses in the whole of the Torah. One of the most recurring questions I get from other Jews is how do you define being a good Jew? After all, you see people who are very religious, and they are corrupt, or they’re hypocrites. I don’t keep very much, who is better? Who’s a better Jew? Are they a better Jew keeping commandments? Am I a better Jew not keeping commandments but committed to my people? And the simple answer is that there are different ways of understanding what is a good person. You can be a good person, if you like, and a bad soccer player.

You can be a good soccer player and a bad person. You can be somebody who’s committed to Judaism as a religion, and you can be somebody who’s committed to Judaism as a historical phenomenon or maybe just as an emotional commitment. Some people are committed as a result of, if you like, oppression, alienation. There are lots of ways. And nowhere in the Torah does Moshe try to differentiate between a good Jew and a bad Jew. First of all, because humans can’t judge. We don’t know what goes in on a person’s heart. We know that people can put on a good act, and it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. And so what do we mean when we talk about a good Jew? And I would differentiate between, shall we say, somebody whose goodness is defined by a religious structure, or somebody whose goodness is defined by some other standard. The problem that we have is that everybody likes to think that they have it right. If you’re more religious than me, you are a fanatic. And if you’re less religious than me, you are, if you like, a heretic or simply somebody who’s abandoned. Now, we are told here, in this, that what is required of a Jew is to keep the commandments. To keep the commandments, which include both ethical commandments and practical, both historical and ritual commandments. I don’t think anybody keeps all of the commandments all of the time, and therefore, it’s not a matter of saying, you know, “Do I eat kosher, therefore, I’m a good Jew.

Do I not eat kosher, therefore, I’m a bad Jew.” No, it depends entirely on how you understand what the priorities are, and what the important things are, within a tradition. Now there, in verse 18 of chapter six, there is something which goes like this. We’ve just been told that you have to keep all the commandments, the mitzvoth, and the edot, and the , you’ve got to keep them, but then it adds something new that hasn’t been mentioned before. And it says this, you must do what is right and what is good in the eyes of God. And that, to me, is one of the most important definitions of what a good Jew is, somebody who does what is either good or, if you like, straight, honest. That is a crucial element, and therefore, if we come back to the question of a good or bad Jew, if you take somebody, for example, who, let’s say, dresses very , very religious, outwardly keeps Shabbat and kashrut and all these laws, but swindles in his business, that person is choosing which of the laws to keep and which of the laws not to keep. And therefore, somebody who keeps the laws of being an ethical good person is probably doing more in terms of what God wants of us than somebody who’s keeping the rituals. The rituals are a means to an end. They’re not an end in itself. And what is the end? What is it that we require? In the words of the great prophet, Micah, there’s a phrase that goes like this, “It’s told to you man,” says God, “what is good.” What does God want from you? Just to do justice. And to love kindness. And be a humble person before God. No mention of whether you’re keeping this law or that law or anything else. It’s being a good person, and being good person who also is a Jew is the core of what this statement is.

You have to do what is right and what is good in the eyes of God in order that things will go well for you in this context, you’ll be able to inherit this land, which God has promised you, and in verse 19, and in order to, if you like, have your enemies weakened and not strengthened. I don’t want to go into the question of the relationship with God because relationship with God is such a subjective idea. It is the core, but the core of what we can understand as a system, and it’s a system that requires of us both identity to a people, and to do that, it is adherence to the traditions of those people, and on the other hand, to have a relationship with something spiritual, and yet, as you know, many of us find it very difficult to find a spiritual relationship with God, and therefore, we tend to fall back on the behavioural, and many of us find the behavioural side of God very, very difficult to adhere to. And that’s why we fall back on some other form of identity, whether it’s Holocaust or Zionism or secular or whatever it is. All of these human elements, all of these human elements, play a very important part in what we call being Jewish. But so far, nobody has satisfactorily found a way of defining being Jewish that encompasses all the different options, which is why, in my opinion, we have to recognise the varieties of human beings in the sort of life they choose and expect just one thing of them.

And the one thing we expect of them is this phrase, you should do what is good and what is right. Now, you will argue and say, “Okay, but how do I know what is good and what is right? Where do I get our morals from?” And here, again, we have this major divide between those who think, like Kant does, that you can work out by yourself what your morals are, and it’s up to you to decide. And you have, on the other hand, those who say, “But human beings are eminently suggestible. They find an excuse for doing whatever it is that they want to do, and human beings, like, if you like, a horse being trained to go in the right way, need some sort of discipline and structure in order to help them, in order to remind them.” And so these are the arguments go both ways. But the one thing I think that, here, in this group, we’re interested in, is at looking at the sources that are part of our tradition. And yet, obviously, within our tradition, there are going to be things that are connected with a particular moment in time. So here we have a moment in time, coming out of Egypt, and coming into a different land, when we are acting as conquerors, and acting as conquerors, that gives us benefits, but it also, we are told, has to give us obligations. And that’s true under any condition, then and now. But then, the Torah, having said that, goes on, in verse 20, to tell us something else. And it goes back to something that has been repeated throughout the speech of Moses, and which we know from the Passover Haggadah, when we have the four sons, or the four children, asking the four questions. When your son or your child asks you tomorrow, “What are all these witnesses, these laws, and these principles that God has commanded you?”

And there’s some argument about whether you includes us or not. Verse 21, and you should say to your children, we were once slaves, and God took us out of Egypt with a strong hand, and there were miracles and wonderful things that happened, bad things to the Egyptians in front of our eyes and good things that are going to happen to us. And God, in verse 23, took us out of there to bring us to this land which he swore to our fathers. And, in verse 24, God commanded us to do these things, and it’s going to be good for us if we do, and . This unusual word here of used in this context, which has nothing to do, what we understand as being to do with charity nowadays. means doing the right thing, not necessarily how much money you give, not much how your donation is, but whether you are being, again, somebody who, in terms of relations with people, is doing the right thing. Now, in the part that we have just done, you can see that, when giving an answer to the next generation, the answer that’s given is a historical one. It’s another way of saying that God relates to us through the history, not necessarily for appearing to us and telling us what to do or having some sort of seance or anything like that, but we are part of a particular history, in which we have been privileged and burdened with a tradition that it’s our responsibility to maintain, not necessarily to convert the whole of the world, but necessarily to follow particular tradition. And this is the tradition that we pass on.

Now, many of the lines here, you’ll be familiar with, in terms of the Haggadah that we say on Passover. So, for example, if you go back to verse 20, and it says, If your son asks you tomorrow, or your child, what are all these things about? And notice how the word goes like this. If your child asks you something about all these laws, and in the Hebrew, it goes, which God has commanded you. Now, you, can also be , to you. So , in a sense, involves you, whereas to you, in a sense, detaches you from here to there. means we’re together in this. So, this idea of togetherness is one of the things that we talk about on Pesach. And when we talk about on Pesach of the two sons, the good son and the bad son, so to speak, you’re talking about the person who identifies and the person who doesn’t identify, who, in a sense, excludes himself or herself. And there have always been people who have excluded themselves. We think it’s a problem now, but it’s always been a problem like this, of people not wanting to identify while others are prepared to and willing. And so, in terms of the Haggadah and Pesach, we’re addressing people and saying, “You’re involved, this is important.” Then we go on to the history, and the question of miracles and wonders that might have taken place at a particular moment, but if you go to verse 28, if you go to verse 28, there is a line there, which, according to the Talmud, you must say on the Passover celebration, in fact, it’s mainly included in the Sephardi tradition, and it goes like this. He, God, took us out of there.

And so, this says is something that we all have to say. We’ve all got to imagine and act as if we are being freed. But it is, again, an example of history, an example of what happened in our past. And this connects us again to the tradition. And the tradition is important for us as a body, and as individuals, we decide where we fit in to this overall system. Now we come to chapter seven, and chapter seven is, in a way, a very problematic one. When God brings you to this land, which you are coming to inherit, you will displace many of the different tribes. These are not necessarily massive people. It’s not huge, but these are significant tribes. Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites, the so-called Seven Nations, who are much stronger than you. So, size has got nothing to do with it. Appearance of strength has got nothing to do with it. Being outnumbered, nothing to do with it. In verse two, God will give them into your hands, and you will smite them, destroy them, don’t make any deals with them, don’t have mercy on them. And not only that, don’t intermarry with them. No, don’t give your son to his, and his son, his daughter, don’t take for you. Now, there’s a little bit of dissonance here. Dissonance here is that you’re going to defeat them, and yet you’re telling me they’re still going to be around to intermarry with you?

On the one hand, you can take this, as many people do, as an example of Jewish barbarism. And how often have I heard people say, in this day and age, “You know you are barbaric, you’ve always been barbaric, you’ve always wiped out the Canaanites and defeated them and defeated them,” and, in fact, there was this well-known philosopher and multitasking intellectual called George Steiner, who wrote a very famous book called “Portage to San Cristobal,” in which he imagined Israelis coming to the jungle and finding Hitler sitting there, and engage him in a discussion. And Hitler turns around to them and says, “Don’t talk to me about genocide or about killing all the Jews. Look what you did to the poor old Canaanites.” Well, of course, you know, trying to compare a situation now to a situation that existed thousands and thousands of years ago is quite ridiculous, but that’s what people are doing, and people are turning round and accusing us of things that they think they can find parallels in the Torah. The one thing that they miss is the reality, not the theory, but the reality that the Canaanites and these other groups went on coexisting with the Jewish people, the Israelites, in the land of Israel for hundreds of years, and carried on, really, until the Assyrians moved all the tribes. When they conquered the land, they got rid of everybody who was there. And archaeologists today, when they excavate Jewish sites, they find, in the land of Israel, constant examples of pagan artefacts as much as, clearly, Jewish artefacts, of bones from non-kosher animals, as well as bones from kosher animals. So, what this is, is, if you like, an abstraction.

It’s saying, “Look, you’re going to face the problem of assimilation.” You’re going to face problem assimilation in your land, let alone outside, where you come under other people. And the only way to survive against this is to be firm in your identity. You have to have that identity, and most of all, you have to pass that identity on to the next generation. And verse four, if your children turn away from me and abandon me, then there’s going to be a sticky end. What’s a sticky end going to be? They’re going to end up like the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Jebusites and all of the lot of them, none of them we remember to this day. They have no place there, they’re gone, and their memory and their culture can be found in small examples archaeologically, but they have no impact in the way that we have an impact, for better or for worse. But anyway, in verse five, he goes on to say, “I want you . This is what I want you to do, I want you to break down their altars. I want you to cut down their groves, like the druids had in England. I want you to burn their idols because you are a holy nation,” verse six, God shows you to be a treasured people from everybody else. Now, this raises another issue, the issue of the chosen people, that we think, supposedly, that we are better than anybody else. Well, anybody who thinks that, automatically, we’re better than anybody else, of course, is talking a load of hogwash. We are not automatically better than anybody else. We are a better person if we are carrying out the obligation we’ve just heard of doing . But we do come into contact with other alien cultures, and our problem is how do we cope with it? Do we cope with it on a personal level, or do we cope with it on a national level?

But when we talk in English about chosen, and the truth of the matter is, it doesn’t talk about the chosen people as being chosen. It talks about God selecting a group of people to carry a certain message and a certain tradition and a certain way of life, an , a person who has a specific function. So just as within, in our society, we can choose people to be good. Again, football players or musicians or artists doesn’t make them necessarily good people, and picking them doesn’t make them automatically better, although you wouldn’t know that from the internet nowadays, where it seems anybody who is a person is somehow more valuable and more important than anybody else. So, the notion of what is called a chosen people is not what the text actually says, but let’s assume it says that you have been picked for a special task. The fact is, both Christianity and Islam have both taken it upon themselves to say that they are the new chosen people. They have replaced the Jews, and therefore, if they want to accuse us of being the chosen people, or the favour of God, each one of them does the same thing. So be consistent, either accept that they are, as the Christians say, the new Israel, or as Islam says, we are the new children of Allah, then they are as chosen as we are, and it means no different to being told you have a particular tradition, and it’s up to you if you’re going to adhere to it or not. Verse six, you as a nation are supposed to be our nation, which is, to use the word, kadosh, which means holy, and holy does not mean, oh, holy, holy, holy, holy. Holy means different, different in a positive way.

So you should be different because you have this obligation. So if anything, it is a responsibility, it’s a burden, it’s an obligation. It’s not giving us a free pass to do whatever we feel like doing. And not only that, in verse seven, God isn’t interested in you because of numbers. God doesn’t count his followers, so to speak, he weighs them. How good are you as a person? You are one of the least important, significant people who exist in this world. It’s only eight, out of verse eight, out of the emotional relationship between God and you, that he has this particular relationship that has brought you historically out of one situation to give you a position in another. In other words, you were taken out of Egypt for a purpose, and it’s up to you to adhere your purpose, and therefore, you should know that you should, in verse nine, follow this commitment. Now, from this, I want to go on, and I’m going to jump, and I’m going to jump from here to chapter 11, verse 13. So I’m going to take you up to chapter 11, in which the same theme has been passed all the way through. And so I’m not reaching up a great deal to explain that you can’t always follow. Sorry, I made a mistake. I have not made a mistake. I have brought you to chapter 11, verse 13. So I want you to go to chapter 11, verse 13. Once again, it starts off the chapter, there should be this relationship of love, emotional warmth between God and you. And this is the important thing. And if you go down to 11, you will find the, sorry, 13, chapter 11, verse 13.

This is the second paragraph of the famous Shema, that is to say, the prayer that is recited morning and evening, the prayer which is the core of Jewish identity. We say it before we die, we say it when we are in pain, we say it when we’re suffering. The Shema, which talks about our emotional, loving relationship with God. Verse 13 goes like this. So these verses now can be found in prayer book, they can be found in the mezuzot we have on our doorposts. These are, this, with the earlier Shema, is the second paragraph of the Shema, and it starts off like this. If you listen to my commandments, which I command you today, to love the Lord your God and to serve with all your heart and all your soul. So again, notice this constant repetition of the emotional, of the loving relationship, rather than the fearful, terrified one. I will give rain to your land, the first rains that come in the autumn, and the later rains that come in the spring. You will gather your corn and your wine and your olive oil. There’ll be grass in the fields for your animals. You will eat, and you will be satisfied. But be careful, verse 16, your hearts will be turned away, and you will turn away and serve other gods and bow down to them. God will be very angry with you and will close the heavens. There will be no rain. The earth will not give its produce, will disappear quickly, this good land that God gives you. And these words should be on your hearts and on your souls or in, you should bind them as signs on your hand, they should be between your eyes. And this, we mentioned before, is the origin of the tefillin.

And last week, I showed you the tefillin, and I showed you what they are on the outside. And I didn’t show you what’s on the inside. If you look on the inside, this is, first of all, the inside of a small, little mezuzah. So if you see this small, little mezuzah, you will see that there are two paragraphs, the first paragraph of the Shema, and the second paragraph of the Shema, and then on the back, you have God’s name, Shaddai, and you have a cabalistic combination of letters that refer, on the back, to God’s name. Then, if you look at what’s in the tefillin, the tefillin, as I mentioned, consists of two parts. One part is what goes into the hand, the, sorry, I’m getting confused there, which is in the head in the different, different compartments. This is the one in which all of them are together. But each one of these is broken up into small, four, individual, little sections, which go in the four sections of the one that goes on the head. So these contain, two of these, are the combination of the section of the Shema which is part of this idea of binding yourself to a text, having a text constantly to remind you. And in verse 19, you should teach them to your children, when you sit in your homes, when you’re travelling, when you get up and you go to sleep, on the mezuzot of your hands, of the doorposts and your gates. And again, this is a repetition of what was said in the first paragraph, another example of constant reiteration. Verse 21, in order that you should have long life, on which sworn to you, to give, for as long as heaven and earth survive and continue.

Now, whenever I read that and most people read that, we have a problem, and the problem is, very simply, this is stating, quite clearly, that there is reward and punishment for adhering to the rules and the laws. And yet, the reality is that we see it doesn’t seem to work that way. So, the most common answer that religions give to this, because all religions say the same thing. You know, follow us or Mohamed or Jesus, and everything will be fine, and we’ll take care of you, and we’ll sort everything out for you, and you’ll have a good life, and yet, it doesn’t seem to be that way. Now, in one sense, you could say this is no more than a historical phenomenon, that is to say, if we look at the archaeology and the evidence we have of the ancient to the near Middle East of that period, we know that this is what kings always said when they came to the throne. They always made a declaration to their citizens and said, “I want you to follow me, be loyal to me, to love me, and I will protect you, I will make sure that you can go out into the fields, and you can produce food, and everything will be fine, and I will make sure your enemies don’t attack you, and I will make sure the rains come in the right time, or I will find a way of providing water for you. I will take care of you,” and in fact, even in much more recent times, the idea of loyalty to the crown in those areas, particularly, in the European world, where there was constant changing of dynasties and constant conflict and politics, and loyalties were shifted from one minute to the next, just think of the Wars of the Roses in England, but right across Europe, you have this problem. And the question is, of course, do we take this literally or do we not? There are some people who take it literally, in which case, I suppose, they have a problem of deciding why it is that we have droughts.

And yet, it’s very clear, from the Torah, that people do have droughts. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all suffered from situations of drought, and nobody claimed they weren’t good people who followed God’s path in whichever way they did. And so, one other way of looking at it is to say this is talking about national survival. It’s poetry, it’s a metaphor, it’s talking about how you survive as a people. We’re not all going to be farmers who care about the crops, as they did at that stage. We might as well include sort of modern technology if we’re going to bother with that, and reword it to understand that, take advantage of what the opportunities we have are. But we should not think that this is actually going to happen. And yet, this is what does happen, ironically, if you take a broad, historical view of things. You can say that the mere fact that we have survived, no matter what has been thrown at us, year after year, generation after generation, hundreds of years, thousands of years at a time, we have suffered, we’ve been humiliated, we’ve gone through tough times, and yet we’ve managed to come through. How did we manage to come through? One answer is we came through because we had a tradition that then also turned into a written tradition, which was able to survive, and this was what kept us going, that we had a tradition based on behaviourism, which is universal, rather than theology, which changes from place to place. You can say for those reasons, but you can also say survival. The historical survival that God promised us, in a sense, at this early stage, that is what God is saying. So, history, if not God, is reiterating the fact that if we stick to our tradition, we will survive. So, at that point, I will switch to any questions that anybody has.

Q&A and Comments:

And the first question was to the words of the song I started with. The song I started with was Ella Fitzgerald singing the “Cole Porter Songbook.” So you can get it online, you can find the “Cole Porter Songbook,” Ella Fitzgerald, she loved, did a lot of things with Louis Armstrong. They were very much in league together. The only other person I know who comes close to her is Lena Horne. Lena Horne was, again, an amazing singer. And the great thing about both of them is their timing, that when they drag out something, when they shorten something, they’re absolute masters, and so, that’s why I thought I’d give you a different kind of a treat this year, and vary things.

Q: Romaine, “The 10 Commandments do cover range of expectations. It is the dilemma of implementation, do you agree?”

A: Yes, Romaine, I do agree. We all know how hard it is to do what we believe we ought to do, to do the right thing. This is terribly difficult. We are constantly being tempted. We’re not being tempted by Satan, as some people like to think. We’re being tempted by our own human weakness. And, I would think, one of the things that worries me about religious authorities is that they tend to put authority and power over and above and before the needs of the individual. And I think that goes right against what the idea of , doing the right thing in how you live, is talking about.

Rose, hi, Rose. “The emphasis of identity is repeated at numerous times, especially in Ezra and Nehemiah, but the people, as a people, do the same with intermarriage, and mostly, what’s important, they then get involved in idol worship. Even King Solomon, who married an Egyptian princess, allowed this to happen in his home. It’s an eternal problem. Yet the other nations complain that we stand apart.” Well, that’s quite true. The Greeks and the Egyptians in the second century, before the common era, when Jews were a significant power and force in the Middle East, complained that Jewish laws prevent them from mixing. Can’t eat the same food, don’t keep the same calendar, and careful who they marry, all these things kept them apart. And yet, the fact of the matter is, that in every society, then and now, you have social groups that are apart, that don’t mix, that don’t live in the same places, that choose to rather live with people who share the same values or the same ideas. And this notion, that we have to be the same, doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. What does make sense is that we have laws that mean that we should treat everybody, rich and poor, intelligent, less intelligent, male, female, different identities, we should treat them fairly and equally.

We can’t be the same. And so the fact that we have laws that strengthen our sense of togetherness is something what, is what everybody does. It’s what is dominating the universities in America today. We all want people to be the same, to have the same views, the same system of who is, somebody who is being prejudiced against and who is not and what it is. So, all groups tend to revolve around themselves. But I have to say, I have found the most open-minded Jews living in the strictest ghettos. In which you think is a phenomenal ghetto, and it is, I have found amazing people, with the most broadest, the broadest, most open mind you could find. And on the other hand, I have found people living in a total secular, or even a modern New York society, were the most prejudiced, mean, nasty people you could come about. So in other words, it’s not where you live, it’s how you live. It’s not being taught, it’s what you’re being taught, and what example parents are giving to children. To me, that is, of years of my teaching in education and the rabbinate, the role of the parent is so fundamental. It’s not the only one. If friends have a very big influence, and it’s often a bad influence, which is why the Talmud says, “Get yourself a good friend.” Teachers have a bad influence, which is why it says, “Get yourself a good teacher.” So a lot of people give negative vibes, but the importance is to try to use whatever tools we can to be positive and teach them to be positive and caring and tolerant.

Thank you, Richard, I’m glad you appreciate it. And thank you, Clara, too, and Carla and Jean.

“In my 84 years raised in the Protestant religions of Christian faith, I was never taught that we are the chosen people, but I see the Jewish faith as a foundation.” Oh yes, if you look at the text of the church, early church fathers, they all say that we are the new Israel, we are the new chosen people. So this is documented. You can find it if you check on the internet, all the different sources. And, you know, not everybody hears everything that is said by everybody. And I am delighted that you are here with us, studying this, and I hope that it will strengthen your own religious faith.

So, on that note, I close for today and hope to see you next week.