Emily Shapiro
ATID 1999
Approaching the Avot
The characters of the Bible have always intrigued me. I, like many, have always been particularly attracted to the characters in ספר בראשית. The attraction to this text and its characters has been described by Naomi Rosenblatt:
Genesis is populated by surprisingly modern personalities living in the real world – imperfect human beings inspired by a lofty spiritual ideal, but whose feet of clay drag plaintively along the ground. They are husbands and wives, parents and children, constantly torn between their highest aspirations and their basest instincts. They are at once bold visionaries engaged in direct dialogue with God and frail human beings trapped in their own self-destructive behavior. The greatest heroes of Genesis are often the most deeply conflicted, and the children of each generation, like our own, are obliged to work through the same personal problems that plagued their parents.[1]
I intuitively related to these personalities and appreciated the Bible’s total candor in
portraying them with both their highest and lowest human drives. My personal and family background may have contributed to this understanding. As a בעלת תשובה, who gradually became observant through and beyond my high school years, I was reassured by the knowledge that one could err and still be loved and great. I saw a striking dissonance between the actual text, in which the characters are often portrayed as flawed or weak, and the tradition, in which the same characters are popularly perceived as great heroes and saints. I believe it was this dissonance that I found inspirational, as Burton Visotzky explains:
Like Genesis there is a disparity between who we really are and who we wish to be, the face we present to everyone else. The gap between those two parts of us, if you will, the profane and the sacred, is what draws us so powerfully to Genesis…We wish to make our own narrative as well respected, as universally acclaimed, as canonized as Genesis. It is this possibility of mediating the dissonance that is the powerful appeal of Genesis. When we observe the disparity between the storied in Genesis and their sacred reception, we yearn to
accomplish the same for ourselves. [2]
Therefore, when I began teaching, I was naturally inclined to teach the Biblical characters. First, I taught a course entitled “Women in the Bible” to the women in my local Jewish community. Then, in Israel, I began teaching a course entitled “Biblical Personalities,” in an all female post- high school seminary in Jerusalem. I combined both the literal text and the aggadic literature, to present my overall impressions of the particular character. Following the method of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, I presented them as “Biblical-historical characters and also archetypal figures in some way relevant to the inner life of the modern society and politics as well.”[3]
The study of the Biblical characters proved to be exciting and stimulating for teacher and pupil alike. I invited my students to be creative and analytical. However, my experiences in both of the above settings forced me to reevaluate my approach to the Biblical characters. I began to confront many religious, philosophical, psychological, and educational challenges. Although I had personally been religiously inspired by my approach to the characters, I became confused by how I should present the same material to my students. On the one hand, I encountered students who were quick to call Jacob a “liar” for misleading his father and Avraham “disgusting” for leaving his wife in Egypt.[4] In addition to this outright criticism, the middle aged women were prone to diagnose the Biblical characters with some Pop-psychological disorder from a recent Self-help best seller they had read. On the other hand, I taught students who were outraged by even the suggestion that the אבות could be anything but perfect. I once suggested that Yosef did not contact his father when he was in Egypt because he mistakenly believed that his father had intentionally rejected him. I did not intend to criticize Yosef, but simply to explain his possible insecurities. Nevertheless, one student was furious and responded “Yosef was not just any stupid seventeen year old who would be overly sensitive to his father’s rebuke! He could not make a mistake or misunderstand. He was יוסף הצדיק!”[5]
Both of these extremes bothered me religiously and educationally. I found both to be reflective of a simplistic and offensive understanding of both literature and theology. On the one hand, I did not want my students to read בראשית as an “ugly little soap opera about a dysfunctional family.”[6] I wanted to instill respect and love for the characters. I began to question my original assumptions that “the men and women of Genesis are very much like you and me – lusting for pleasure and power, dealing with sibling rivalry, and learning from trial and error…”[7] Avraham, Yizchak, and Yaakov were not just “like you and me.” God spoke to them, performed miracles for them, and promised them to be the founders of our great nation. Maybe in allowing myself, and my students, to identify with and relate to the אבות, I was deserving of Rabbi Wolpin’s condemnation:
And then there are silver-tongued preachers who hope to inspire their flocks with all sorts of homilies drawn from Bible stories, making the Avos hakedoshim “jes’folks,” with the same kind of personal weaknesses and domestic problems that you and I have. Their agenda is commendable: to make us better people. But the price – in terms of cutting down Biblical personalities to “accessible” size – is much, much too high.[8]
On the other hand, I wanted my students to read the text literally and objectively. I wanted them to relate to and learn from the characters’ accomplishment and defeats. I believed that there was value in encouraging my students to use their lives to illuminate the text.
Although this discussion is relevant to the study of all Biblical characters, such as Moshe, David, and Shimshon, it is particularly controversial in reference to the אבות. There is greater hesitance in judging the actions or traits of the אבות for a number of reasons. Howard Deitcher is correct in noting that “by virtue of the fact that Bible study generally begins with the narrative portions of the book of Genesis, the child’s initial exposure is to the Biblical characters.”[9] Unfortunately, for many, this exposure is the last they formally receive in their Jewish education. “Many people continue to view the Avos from their kindergarten perspective of good people who happened to talk with God. Indeed, Rabbi Yaakov Kaminetzky often pointed out how we fail to have our concept of the Avos mature along with us as we grow older."[10] In addition, the אבות, more than any other Biblical figures, hold a special place in our hearts and minds. They are our founding fathers; we are the Chosen People because they were chosen. We evoke their names so that God will answer our prayers in their merit, בזכות אבות, even if we are not deserving. If we denigrate them, it is felt, we are destroying our own national and personal self image. Finally, there is no condemnation of the אבות found explicitly in the verses of Genesis. In Samuel II 12, following David’s affair with Batsheva, Natan the prophet proclaims, “why did you disgrace the word of Hashem to do evil?” and David himself responds “I have sinned against Hashem.” There also seems to be a clear formula of sin and punishment found in the life of Moshe. “And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron: ‘Because you did not believe in me, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you will not bring this assembly into the Land which I have given them.’”[11] An explicit evaluation of the behavior of the אבות, by God or one of his prophets, does not appear in ספר בראשית. We may feel uneasy when Sarah expels Hagar or when Yaakov takes Esau’s birthright. However, we are wary to judge, because the text itself does not seem to indict them for these actions.
For the above reasons, there is a popular assumption that “…genuine Jewish fundamentalists would not easily shed their inhibitions about criticizing the pariarchs”[12]
Although this may be found in a large portion of Jewish literature, there has never been one unified approach. Rather, the interpreters of the text, from the midrash until modern day, presented the Biblical personalities based on various religious, educational, and societal factors. The Biblical interpreters understood the importance of knowing their audience. Their interpretations reflect what they assumed to be the spiritual and intellectual stage of their particular audience. The world of the patriarchs was not permanently fixed but varied with the context of society.
Throughout history, the image that inspires and entertains has varied. Marshall Fishwick writes, “Style in heroes, as in everything else, changes.”[13] Even the meaning of the word has evolved.
In Greek, “hero” came to mean a superhuman or semidivine being whose special powers were put forth to save or help all mankind or a favored part of it. The Greek hero was normally less than a god and yet more than merely human …by about the seventeenth century, ‘hero’ in English could mean any notable or great human being, while at the same time keeping its more restricted Greek sense…today any admirable human being can be called a hero – a saint or business man, baseball player or writer. [14]
Throughout the history of literature there have been shifts in the definition and perception of
the hero.
In the early Middle Ages the heroic dominates; in the Latter Middle Ages and early Renaissance the anti-heroic dominates. In the later Renaissance the heroic once again comes to the fore, even though its opposite is by no means dead… This period is followed by a dry-period of anti-heroism in the eighteenth century… Then the cynical hero and the anti-heroic hero of the post war period follow. Finally, very recently the tide seems to be
turning again and we find new heroes – in the old sense – gurus and the like.[15]
The period and location of the Biblical interpreters has also effected what type of heroes they
chose to create for their readers.
The treatment of Biblical characters is extensive in the midrashic texts.
…in the laconic style of the Bible, we find a significant cause of the necessity for midrash. Midrash comes to fill in the gaps, to tell us the details that the Bible teasingly leaves out: what did Isaac think as his father took him to be sacrificed? The Bible doesn’t tell us, but the midrash fills it in with rich and varied descriptions. Why did Cain kill Abel? Once again the Bible is silent, but Midrash is filled with explanation. How tall was Adam as he walked in the garden? Look to the midrashic materials, not to the Bible for such details. The human mind desires answers, motivations, explanations. Where the Bible is mysterious and silent, the Midrash comes to unravel the mystery. [16]
Many popular images of the Biblical characters are based on the Midrashic version and not
necessarily the Biblical one. Nechama Leibovitz’s famous story is a good example of this
phenomenon:
She recalls asking a group of lieutenants to open their Bibles and locate the story in which Avraham smashes his father’s idols. The soldiers feverishly leafed through the Book of Genesis, eager to show their renowned teacher their extensive knowledge of Scripture. They became increasingly frustrated as they failed to find the story that they remembered so vividly from their early childhood. Finally one soldier looked bewilderedly at Professor Leibovitz, and asked her if the Bible they were currently using was the same edition as the one they had studied at school.[17]
The impression of the אבות that we obtain from the midrashim is obviously very powerful. Yitzchak Heinemann notes that the style in the midrash is often contrastive. “From here developed the schematic contrasts of ‘צדיקים’ and ‘רשעים’ that the Aggadah desired no less than the early stoics. One group is absolutely different from the next…the צדיקים say little and do much, the רשעים say much and do little; they differ in life: the beginning for the צדיקים is strife and their end happiness, the opposite for the רשע; they differ even in death: the רשעים are choked and ‘their deaths are not in heavens or earth,’ while the צדיקים are buried in the earth and their souls are bound in the binds of life in the heavens.”[18] The midrash also creates epithets to emphasize these polarized stereotypes such as “יוסף הצדיק” and “טיטוס הרשע.” The midrash will forgo the פשט in order to uphold the image that “the אבות were not controlled by the evil inclination.”[19] In this vein, Baba Batra 109 rules that: “Anyone who mentions the צדיק and does not praise him and anyone who mentions the רשע and does not curse him transgresses a positive commandment.” Therefore, the trickery of Jacob, the jealousy of Rachel, and the participation of Aaron in the sin of the Golden Calf are all justified in the midrash.[20] The most extreme example of this approach may be illustrated by Rabbi Yonatan’s opinion in Shabbat 55b that anyone who says that Reuben, the sons of Eli, the sons of Samuel, David and Shlomo sinned “is nothing but mistaken.”
The midrash does not only make the “good guys” look really good, it makes the “bad guys” look really bad. The aggadah adds to the evilness of the “רשעים.” The midrash often portrayed any gentile as evil. Even characters who did not do anything explicitly negative in the text, like the wife of Lot, Pharoah in the Josef story, and Vashti are all judged negatively in the midrashic report.[21] The gentiles that are clearly portrayed as righteous in the text, such as Rachav, Bat Pharoah, the sailors in Yonah,[22] are deemed exceptional by the midrash because they converted to Judaism.