The Structure of Mashal as a Background for Deserted Wife by Dvora Baron
Dvora Baron A Deserted Wife. Reclaiming the Mashal from Woman’s Perspective
by Ula Chowaniec
This is to introduce the working of MASHAL in the traditional Jewish texts, in order to see how Dvorah Baron work on its basis and changes, or challenges it.
“Do not treat the mashal lightly … for by means of a mashal a person is able to understand the words of Torah.” (quoted after Zetterholm, K. Hedner. 2012. Jewish Interpretation of the Bible: Ancient and Contemporary. Fortress: Minneapolis p. 83)
To illustrate the role and working of a mashal as an interpretative tool in Rabbinic literature I chose the parable from Mekhilta Bahodesh 5 (discussed in class from Lauterbach 2: 229-237). It fits to the first part of this exam, where I analyse the linguistic aspects of one of the expansions. The parable here aims at explaining the biblical verse from Exodus 20:2. This is the moment when – at the Mount Sinai - God introducing the ten commandments and the verse in Jewish tradition is understood as the first commandment:
אָֽנֹכִ֖י֙ יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֑֔יךָ אֲשֶׁ֧ר הוֹצֵאתִ֛יךָ מֵאֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרַ֖יִם מִבֵּ֣֥ית עֲבָדִֽ֑ים׃
I the LORD am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage (Sefaria)
The question that intrigued the rabbis is: why God wait for the commandments until Israel’s Egyptian slavery, liberation and they until people were in the wilderness. Why were not Commandment given at the beginning of the Torah?
Mekhilta Bahodesh 5 presents a mashal that compares the idea of God giving Ten Commandments and declaring himself a King of Israel at the beginning of Torah to someone who comes to the land declares himself a king without any merits. The parable teaches that if someone wants to be a king of people, one needs to show that cares for her people and ability to protect them: builds the cities and provides water and wins in battle then – when people ask if they want her to be a king – people agree. The lesson (nimshal) of this mashal is that this is how God acted in his relationship with Israel: first He assured the liberation from Egypt, crossing of the Red Sea and giving manna as well as winning over Amalek, and then He asks to keep the commandments and be Israel’s kind.
Here there are the characteristics of Rabbinic midrashic parable/ mashal:
1). Setting a problem:
The leading question that triggers the mashal and motivates the Midrashist is why commandments are given at Sainai, or – in other words: “Why were the Ten Commandments not said at the beginning of the Torah” (Lauterbach, p. 229). The parable is a tool for scriptural exegesis; hence it investigates the questions that arises from studying Torah.
2). Introduction of mashal:
Nevertheless, the answer given by the tool of mashal is not “clean-cut answer” (Zetterholm, 93), but rather ambiguous – offering presentation of ideas. The basic rule of this presentation is comparison, which is linguistically marked, since the parable – mashal is usually introduced by the words: (like in Mehilta Mahodesh 5) “To what may this be compared” (229)
3). Mashal - characteristic imaginary:
Mashal is a narrative, in which God is usually presented as a King (modelled on Roman Emperor of the Rabbinic times). The relationship between Kind and his son (sons), kings and his servants are at heart of mashals, less often man and wife, woman and children. Mashal’s imaginary was determined by its purpose, and since mashal is the way the Rabbis “contemplated the relationship between God and Israel” (Zatterholm, p. 93), the father-son, King-servant metaphors were the most popular.
4). Nimshal is the lesson that the parable illustrates it usually follows after the words: similarly, or thus, it is a religious feature and, as Karin Zetterholm ponts it out it is a secondary feature of parable.
5). The characteristic moment of parable are points of discontinuity (“an unexpected, un-explained, peculiar events, Zetterholm, p. 84) – it is characteristic by the mashal element that give reader a clue to look for the answer.[1]
In the mashal quoted in the Mekhilta Bahodesh 5 there are several points of “surprise” that needed the explanation. The Midrash author give a lot of space to explain the point of surprise: Why do God say: I am the Lord, thy God, why people were asked to accept Torah, why after the slavery, why on the wilderness etc. The expansion is usually supported by many quoted from other part of the Tanah (see the Kugels assumptions in Biblical exegesis – part 5 of this exam)
Let’s talk shortly about few of the explanations, reflected by the question why in this moment - Exodus 20:2 – God declares himself a kind: because (1) he is both merciless and a warrior – Amelek and manna (argument against the fact that heretics/ heretics” (מינין) could claims that there is good and bad gods); (2) because he is a God of Israel – rescued from slavery (definition of Israel); (3) He is a God of everyone – this is why at the wilderness not in Israel (so tribes do not argue about the hierarchy); (4) there is also a expansion that God offered the Torah before and, yet people cannot accept the rules of not murdering, no stealing, not to commit adultery. This is why, at Mount Sinai, God repeats the commandments.
Mekhilda Bahodesh 5 is just one of abundance of the examples of Jewish mashal as one of the most popular Midrashic tradition of Jewish scriptural exegesis. Mekhilta Bahodesh is an example of a Tannaitic halakhic midrashim that consist of verse-by -verse (or word-by-word) rabbinic exegesis (Hanbook, p. 61).
Bibliography:
Ben-Eliyahu, E., Y. Cohn and F. Millar (eds.). 2012. Handbook of Jewish Literature from Late Antiquity, 135–700 CE. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jacobs, Irving. 1995. The Midrashic Process, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lauterbach, Jacob. 1949. Mekhilta de Rabbi Ishmael. Vot. 2, Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America.
Zetterholm, K. Hedner. 2012. Jewish Interpretation of the Bible: Ancient and Contemporary. Fortress: Minneapolis.
[1] In this moment of discountinuity in mashals, rabbis imitate also the Biblical tradition of a texts, where everything is explainable and logical - The rabbi saw the Biblical texts “as the revealed word of God, not only in terms of its eternal validity, but also with regard to the uniqueness of its language, which transcended the ordinary medium of human communication. In the context of this 'Divine Language', the most common-place terms and expressions - even particles of speech indispensable to the functioning of Hebrew - were to be regarded as 'containers' of deeper meanings, which the interpreter was required to unlock. Consequently, the main challenge of the Bible, as perceived by the ancient Jewish exegetes, was to decode its messages, to reveal the inner significance of the text. (Jacobs 1995, p. 4)
by Ula Chowaniec
This is to introduce the working of MASHAL in the traditional Jewish texts, in order to see how Dvorah Baron work on its basis and changes, or challenges it.
“Do not treat the mashal lightly … for by means of a mashal a person is able to understand the words of Torah.” (quoted after Zetterholm, K. Hedner. 2012. Jewish Interpretation of the Bible: Ancient and Contemporary. Fortress: Minneapolis p. 83)
To illustrate the role and working of a mashal as an interpretative tool in Rabbinic literature I chose the parable from Mekhilta Bahodesh 5 (discussed in class from Lauterbach 2: 229-237). It fits to the first part of this exam, where I analyse the linguistic aspects of one of the expansions. The parable here aims at explaining the biblical verse from Exodus 20:2. This is the moment when – at the Mount Sinai - God introducing the ten commandments and the verse in Jewish tradition is understood as the first commandment:
אָֽנֹכִ֖י֙ יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֑֔יךָ אֲשֶׁ֧ר הוֹצֵאתִ֛יךָ מֵאֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרַ֖יִם מִבֵּ֣֥ית עֲבָדִֽ֑ים׃
I the LORD am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage (Sefaria)
The question that intrigued the rabbis is: why God wait for the commandments until Israel’s Egyptian slavery, liberation and they until people were in the wilderness. Why were not Commandment given at the beginning of the Torah?
Mekhilta Bahodesh 5 presents a mashal that compares the idea of God giving Ten Commandments and declaring himself a King of Israel at the beginning of Torah to someone who comes to the land declares himself a king without any merits. The parable teaches that if someone wants to be a king of people, one needs to show that cares for her people and ability to protect them: builds the cities and provides water and wins in battle then – when people ask if they want her to be a king – people agree. The lesson (nimshal) of this mashal is that this is how God acted in his relationship with Israel: first He assured the liberation from Egypt, crossing of the Red Sea and giving manna as well as winning over Amalek, and then He asks to keep the commandments and be Israel’s kind.
Here there are the characteristics of Rabbinic midrashic parable/ mashal:
1). Setting a problem:
The leading question that triggers the mashal and motivates the Midrashist is why commandments are given at Sainai, or – in other words: “Why were the Ten Commandments not said at the beginning of the Torah” (Lauterbach, p. 229). The parable is a tool for scriptural exegesis; hence it investigates the questions that arises from studying Torah.
2). Introduction of mashal:
Nevertheless, the answer given by the tool of mashal is not “clean-cut answer” (Zetterholm, 93), but rather ambiguous – offering presentation of ideas. The basic rule of this presentation is comparison, which is linguistically marked, since the parable – mashal is usually introduced by the words: (like in Mehilta Mahodesh 5) “To what may this be compared” (229)
3). Mashal - characteristic imaginary:
Mashal is a narrative, in which God is usually presented as a King (modelled on Roman Emperor of the Rabbinic times). The relationship between Kind and his son (sons), kings and his servants are at heart of mashals, less often man and wife, woman and children. Mashal’s imaginary was determined by its purpose, and since mashal is the way the Rabbis “contemplated the relationship between God and Israel” (Zatterholm, p. 93), the father-son, King-servant metaphors were the most popular.
4). Nimshal is the lesson that the parable illustrates it usually follows after the words: similarly, or thus, it is a religious feature and, as Karin Zetterholm ponts it out it is a secondary feature of parable.
5). The characteristic moment of parable are points of discontinuity (“an unexpected, un-explained, peculiar events, Zetterholm, p. 84) – it is characteristic by the mashal element that give reader a clue to look for the answer.[1]
In the mashal quoted in the Mekhilta Bahodesh 5 there are several points of “surprise” that needed the explanation. The Midrash author give a lot of space to explain the point of surprise: Why do God say: I am the Lord, thy God, why people were asked to accept Torah, why after the slavery, why on the wilderness etc. The expansion is usually supported by many quoted from other part of the Tanah (see the Kugels assumptions in Biblical exegesis – part 5 of this exam)
Let’s talk shortly about few of the explanations, reflected by the question why in this moment - Exodus 20:2 – God declares himself a kind: because (1) he is both merciless and a warrior – Amelek and manna (argument against the fact that heretics/ heretics” (מינין) could claims that there is good and bad gods); (2) because he is a God of Israel – rescued from slavery (definition of Israel); (3) He is a God of everyone – this is why at the wilderness not in Israel (so tribes do not argue about the hierarchy); (4) there is also a expansion that God offered the Torah before and, yet people cannot accept the rules of not murdering, no stealing, not to commit adultery. This is why, at Mount Sinai, God repeats the commandments.
Mekhilda Bahodesh 5 is just one of abundance of the examples of Jewish mashal as one of the most popular Midrashic tradition of Jewish scriptural exegesis. Mekhilta Bahodesh is an example of a Tannaitic halakhic midrashim that consist of verse-by -verse (or word-by-word) rabbinic exegesis (Hanbook, p. 61).
Bibliography:
Ben-Eliyahu, E., Y. Cohn and F. Millar (eds.). 2012. Handbook of Jewish Literature from Late Antiquity, 135–700 CE. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jacobs, Irving. 1995. The Midrashic Process, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lauterbach, Jacob. 1949. Mekhilta de Rabbi Ishmael. Vot. 2, Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America.
Zetterholm, K. Hedner. 2012. Jewish Interpretation of the Bible: Ancient and Contemporary. Fortress: Minneapolis.
[1] In this moment of discountinuity in mashals, rabbis imitate also the Biblical tradition of a texts, where everything is explainable and logical - The rabbi saw the Biblical texts “as the revealed word of God, not only in terms of its eternal validity, but also with regard to the uniqueness of its language, which transcended the ordinary medium of human communication. In the context of this 'Divine Language', the most common-place terms and expressions - even particles of speech indispensable to the functioning of Hebrew - were to be regarded as 'containers' of deeper meanings, which the interpreter was required to unlock. Consequently, the main challenge of the Bible, as perceived by the ancient Jewish exegetes, was to decode its messages, to reveal the inner significance of the text. (Jacobs 1995, p. 4)
Dvora Baron - biographical and literary context
Questions for discussion in the "HAVRUTAS" during the classes:
1. The structure of the story: is there something particularly intriguing in the structure of the story?
2. Who is the main character/protagonist of the story?
3. Who is the deserted wife? What's particularly of "deserted wife" in Jewish culture?
4. How is the shtetl presented in the story: good or bad, nice or alienating?
5. What is the position of women in shtetl in the short story?
1. The structure of the story: is there something particularly intriguing in the structure of the story?
2. Who is the main character/protagonist of the story?
3. Who is the deserted wife? What's particularly of "deserted wife" in Jewish culture?
4. How is the shtetl presented in the story: good or bad, nice or alienating?
5. What is the position of women in shtetl in the short story?
Interesting site: Jewish Historical Institute in Poland/ ŻIH: https://delet.jhi.pl/pl/search?searchQuery=wieś&searchIn=library