The following is a transcript of Episode 5 of the TEXTing Podcast. Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.

Elana: Welcome to TEXTing, where we consider issues relevant to Jewish life through the lens of classical and modern Torah texts. I’m your host, Elana Stein Hain. TEXTing is generously supported by the Walder Charitable Fund and Micah Philanthropies. If you’d like to follow along with today’s text, you can find the link to our source sheet in the episode description. 

There’s a comfort in feeling understood, especially in troubling times, and yet being part of different social circles, whether home, work, or other means, having to translate one’s positions, commitments, and behaviors to those who may not instinctively share them. Sometimes this is called code-switching. 

In a general sense, code-switching is when we adjust our speech and mannerisms to blend into a broader cultural context. Outside of our home communities, many of us likely code-switch all the time, whether with regards to our external indicators of religion or our political opinions, sometimes it can feel disingenuous like checking a part of your identity at the door in order to belong or for someone else’s comfort. But sometimes it feels like playing up a part of yourself to strengthen a connection. And sometimes it feels like a little bit of both. 

Many of us find ourselves in that position of code-switching right now about Israel, changing the way we explain ourselves, the way we act, what we wear, depending on the audience.

Today we’re gonna look at a midrash, a rabbinic homily from a collection called Pesikta DeRav Kahana, section four, subsection seven to eight. It navigates the complications of code-switching, how people explain themselves to themselves and to others. 

My chavruta today is Yonah Hain, my partner in crime, someone who you might call a professional code switcher as campus rabbi at Columbia University. Welcome Yonah.

Yonah: Thanks for having me, Elana.

Elana: What are you code-switching about these days?

Yonah: So for me, I have many different versions of code-switching. I have intra-Jewish code-switching. So if you think about the building where our Columbia Barnard Hill operation takes place, we have at the Kraft center, three different Shabbat services. And each floor represents a different style, denomination of Judaism, and overseeing all of it, I may give the same speech, I may share the same message, but accent different notes. I might use different formulations. I might phrase the entire topic from a different starting point depending on who the audience is. So that’s one aspect. I have intra-Jewish code-switching. 

I experience almost a whiplash in my code-switching outside of the Jewish world. You know, I have Wednesday nights, our multi-faith fellowship, and there I’m speaking in very different terms and using very different vernacular. even if we’re talking about the same topics.

Elana: Yeah, it’s interesting. It’s a great segue into our text today because our text really does take, sort of an insider and outsider lens. We’re gonna have Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, ultimate insider, being judged by someone who’s described as a gentile, meaning someone who is not even named, they’re just so outside of the purview of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai’s life that they’re just defined as somebody who’s not in this group, right? And no offense meant to anyone. It’s just a descriptor of who’s in in that environment and who seems to be an outsider looking in. 

So let’s, let’s start this section of the Peskita DeRav Kahana, it doesn’t actually start directly with the question to Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai. It actually starts before that with Jews questioning themselves. This is really the most intense context you could have for code-switching within an internal Jewish conversation, which is, it’s about the Red Heifer. 

The Red Heifer is a ritual that is used to help purify people from the impurity associated with contact with the dead. And it is something that is famously. in rabbinic literature, not understood, meaning it is something that is beyond our understanding and is understood as something called a chok, something called a law where we do not assume we understand the rationale.

Yonah: The red heifer moves in mysterious ways.

Elana: Beautiful, beautiful. To paraphrase Bono, am I getting that right? No, I got it wrong. Alright, let’s go to the text. I’m safer there. 

Okay, so it goes like this, it quotes Bamidbar, Numbers 19:2, “And they shall bring you a red calf.” Lulyanos, son of Tivris, or maybe Tiberius, said in the name of Rabbi Yitzchak Katriko, which might be the Talmudic city of Tarkartignin, don’t know, these are very strange names. Rabbi Azarya, and Rabbi Yitzchak, Rabbi Yossi ben Hanina, meaning a lot of people said this on the phrase, “And they shall bring you,” meaning Moses, “And the people shall bring you a red cow.” God said to Moshe, I’m revealing to you what the cow means. For everybody else, it’s gonna remain a mystery. It’s gonna remain a chok, the rationale for it.

So when the verse says, and they shall bring you, Moses, the red cow, there is an exclusivity. And I love that this is the intro to what’s about to be a question from an outsider, hey, what is this red heifer thing that you’re doing? Cause the intro is, we don’t understand it either.

Yonah: I also think that it calls into question what information does, not different from the story in the Garden of Eden, awareness is sometimes a double-edged sword.

Moshe now knows things. Is he sworn to this code of silence? Can he share with others? I mean, that must stink to know about the Red Heifer, and all of its intricacies, and not be able to teach.

Elana: By the way, I think about that a lot in terms of this war, and who knows what I mean, I’m reading the news, come on. What information am I really getting from these different news outlets? Like there are people who really know what’s going on, and I’m not one of those people. 

But let’s get to the code switch. Here goes: A Gentile asked Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, again, just describing it as their sociocultural context is. Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, he’s in an internal Jewish rabbinic world, so somebody who’s coming from the outside and is about to ask him something, there’s something to that outsider’s gaze.

These rituals you do, he says, they seem like witchcraft. You burn a heifer, a cow. You, you crush it up. You take its ashes. And then if one of you is impure by the dead, so you take two or three drops of, you know, water mixed with it and sprinkle it on them and you declare them pure. What is this witchcraft that you’re doing?

Yonah: It reminds me of a conversation I had with my Buddhist counterpart on campus 10 years ago, and she was describing the ritualistic treatment of the Buddha, and as she’s describing it, the compartment that it’s contained in and the jewelry that is adorned with and how you don’t turn your back towards it, remind me of the laws of how we treat our Torah scroll. And rituals without context look like witchcraft.

Elana: Well, it’s interesting. There’s two things, meaning one is ritual without context look strange to you, but another is, actually, rituals without context sometimes look very familiar to you, right? Meaning it’s, oh, this is like what we do with our thing, right?

Yonah: But there are moments when you’re trying to translate your ritual or custom and you just stopped dead in your tracks. I remember our oldest child, he was in Bright Horizons daycare. He’s, I don’t know, what was he? One, two. And I wanted to do something special for Hanukkah for the kids. And I couldn’t bring donuts ’cause they were too young. So I thought, oh, chocolate gelt. And then I started to think about what is the messaging of children who can’t understand the value of money creating chocolate money.

Elana: Jews love money. You’re like, Jews love money. No, no, no. Jews love chocolate.

Yonah: I brought applesauce Go-Go squeezes instead.

Elana: Excellent. Excellent move. Excellent move. So essentially what happens here is Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, we’re taking something that is just sort of presumed as the way it’s done in Judaism, and an outsider’s gaze says, wait a second, that looks like witchcraft, but Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai is ready with a response.

So he says to him, what do you mean? Has a restless spirit never entered you? And restless spirit, the Hebrew for it is ruach tezazit, like l’zuz, to move. Some people think maybe it’s a reference to sort of a demon, sort of like a being, being possessed? Some people think it’s a reference maybe to epilepsy, like movement, like bodily motions that can’t be controlled.

And so he says to him, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai says, well, tell me, have you ever had that experience? The man says no. So he says, okay, well, have you ever seen somebody else who’s had that experience? Right? 

You know, v’lo raita acher shenichnesah bo ruach tezazit, have you seen somebody else have that experience, right? And he says, yes, I’ve seen that, I’ve seen that. And says to him, so what did you do for him? He said, we brought roots, right, like herbs, roots of plants. We made them smoke beneath him, and we poured water on the person and it fled, this ruach tezazit, right? 

So Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai says, hey, do you hear what you just said? V’lo yishmau oznecha mah shepicha midaber? You should hear, your ear should hear what just came out of your mouth. The same thing is true for the spirit that we are getting rid of, right? The spirit of impurity, as it is written, even the prophets, and the spirit of impurity, will I remove from the land, and, meaning, they sprinkle upon the person who is impure, purifying waters that are mixed with this red heifer ash and the spirit of impurity flees.

Meaning we do something very similar to you. What looked like witchcraft to you, don’t you realize you do the same thing? 

Yonah: So he’s taken the pragmatic, functional, or even ethical layer to explaining mitzvah. I keep kosher because it’s the ethical thing to do. 

Elana: Well, actually, I’m gonna say a little bit different. 

Yonah: The healthier thing to do.

Elana: The same way you are intentional about what goes into your body, I am intentional about what goes into my body. I’m not saying that the type of intentionality, I’m not saying anything about the type of intentionality or the content of it. I’m just saying it’s intentional.

Yonah: Even better.

Elana: He has now made this red heifer, which by the way, is not intelligible to the Jews themselves, which I find interesting. Right. This might not be a great example for our conversation right now because I think a lot of people, when they’re talking about Israel or Zionism and they’re like, no, no, no. It’s very intelligible to me. I know exactly what I think. This is not like some mystery to me that I have to explain to someone else. 

Yonah: Right, but it’s a question of what you share with whom. How you present your case, right? Nothing but the truth, but it isn’t always whole truth.

Elana: Well, so I think the question becomes, does Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai really believe this, or is he just saying it in order to get this person to sort ofl kind of validate the idea.

Yonah: What I love about this from an educator’s perspective, you know, one of the privileges of my work is being very invested in the growth of rabbinical students. I have rabbinic interns. One of the things when we’re working on their content, I always say is, what about the skeptic in the audience? That doesn’t mean you have to fully accommodate the skeptic, but if it’s only for the fully committed, true believers, I think you’re missing some of your audience.

Elana: Well, so let me ask you a question. 

Yonah: And so what Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai here is doing is, I’m able to speak to, I’m able to speak a skeptic’s language.

Elana: Well, so let me ask you a question. This person who’s an outsider calling them a skeptic, you are already assuming some sort of judgment. What if it’s just they don’t understand? I just wanna ask also, what do we think are the stakes here? Right? Somebody comes up, an outsider comes up and says to Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, what you’re doing looks like witch witchcraft.

Are these stakes equally about, I’m worried what those outside will think because there may be political ramifications, there may be theological ramifications, right, if you can’t justify what you’re doing. I’m wondering also if there are ramifications for Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai himself of, if I can’t translate this into someone else’s language, then either I can’t be part of that group, which I’m not sure Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai cares to be part of that group or there’s something, 

Yonah: I wanna be in their good graces at least.

Elana: Yes, it’s true. I can use all my internal language and internally I know what I think, but sometimes when I’m in an environment, it’s not just about placating somebody else, it’s also maybe I also think that their gaze, it does challenge me in a way to think about my own. Psychologically, how much am I also validating myself?

Yonah: Yeah, I, I still think that there’s an educator’s toolkit here, where code-switching is a responsibility, because you’re not just a transmitter of Torah, you’re a translator of Torah.

Elana: So you’re saying there’s a responsibility not to just say, hey, buzz off. I’m not interested in talking to you. I know you’re a skeptic or you don’t understand this. Go read some books and then come back to me. You’re saying, no, no, no. That’s not the role of somebody who is an educator.

Yonah: And even more so. Don’t have a one-size-fits-all answer.

Elana: Yeah. I just think for some people, it’s one thing if you’re an educator and you spend your life doing this, I think for some people it’s really, really hard. It’s exhausting. It’s actually exhausting, right? Like your friends at work ask you about what’s going on in the Middle East, why do you support Israel? And you’re just like, really? I just wanna be at work. Like I can’t do this right now.

Yonah: Well, it reminds me of the time that you were in grad school. And one day it was raining outside and you were wearing a baseball cap.

Elana: Oh yeah. My professor who I was TA-ing for, he asked me if I was wearing a religious head covering.

Yonah: And you were not married.

Elana: Yeah, I was single at the time and I said, well, if it’s religious to cover up a bad hair day, then sure. Right. Like he saw me always through the prism of Jewish ritual and Jewish law and, really interesting.

So let’s see what happens next, because Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai’s interlocutor leaves and Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai is left back within his own cocoon again. Right? So the next part of the midrash, v’keivan sheyatza, and once the man left, amru lo talmidav, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai’s students said to him, lazeh dechita bikneh, you were able to push that man off with a reed, meaning it was easy for you to quote-unquote “get rid of him.” Lanu mah atah meshiv, what do you say to us? 

Meaning we also have the question, hey, this kind of looks like witchcraft, and it’s not gonna be enough for you to say to us, oh, well, you know how the other nations do it? So that’s what we’re doing. Let’s see what happens. 

He said to them, by your lives, meaning I swear, a dead person doesn’t actually make things impure, and the water doesn’t actually make things pure. Rather, God said, I have engraved the rule, I have decreed a decree, and you have no permission to transgress what I decreed. As it says, describing the red heifer, this is the rule, the chok of the Torah.

Meaning he says to them, don’t be fooled. I compare this to some medical process that they do, or quasi-medical process that they do to do an exorcism or something. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This isn’t, this isn’t medicine. This is, God told us to do it and that’s why we do it. What do you think of this answer?

Yonah: I just think that this text highlights a flexibility and a nimbleness as an educator that Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai has. Because it’s an educator’s responsibility to balance the base and the comfort of the insiders who, in this instance are fueled by notions of obedience and subservience to God, but also to be able to generate meaning-making for others.

Elana: So I wanna relate for a minute to what is he trying to do to these students? He’s trying to give them an internal logic and his internal logic is not a logic that outsiders are going to understand. You have to understand for yourselves that this is about your fielty to God and the law. 

He’s essentially saying there is a logic. The logic is God said. That’s the logic. Like when our kids are like, why should I do it? And I say, I have actually resorted occasionally to say, cause I said so, right? Cause I said so. 

What I find most interesting is sometimes like the follow-up to the text, like the next text that shows up, like the proximity. Cause it tells you something. Because think about it, this midrash that we just read started with, God only told the reasons to Moses and not to the rest of the people. So by the way, even within the Jewish people, this is a big question mark. 

And then somebody comes and says to Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, hey, what is this weird witchcraft that you’re doing? And he says, oh, no, no, no. It’s just like your medicine. You can relate to it. Fantastic. Great. I can validate it along other sociocultural lines or other cultural contexts.

Then the students say, tell us. What’s the real reason? And he’s like, no, no, no, no reason. God tells us to do it. That’s the reason. That’s it. And then look what happens in the very next section, the very next subsection. It’s so gorgeous. I mean, you should give editors a, like, just the applause that they deserve.

It goes like this. The next section says, why are all the sacrifices male animals? But this one, the red heifer is female. Timeout. What? What? What do you mean? We just said a minute ago, stop looking for logic. Stop trying to understand what’s going on here. And they said, well, 

Rabbi Eivo says, this is like the son of a maid who soiled the king’s palace. The king said, let his mother clean up, come and clean up the excrement. So God said, let an adult cow come and atone for the golden calf. Right? So essentially what they’re saying here is the reason why the red heifer is a female red heifer is because she’s cleaning up after her golden calf baby, meaning they sinned, this is an atonement forever.

Yonah: It’s another code switch.

Elana: Yeah, say more.

Yonah: Because we start off with saying there’s this commonality in the ritual with what you do, so it isn’t so bizarre. And then we turn to, it’s completely mysterious, no way to penetrate its rationale. And now we talk about how there’s a very relatable analogy to what’s transpiring.

Elana: Right, now, obviously I would say at this point in, you know, in our family, it wouldn’t just be the mom who would be cleaning it up. It would be the dad too. So it could be, the sacrifice could be male in our family, but it’s very relatable. 

Yonah: But I’ll tell you, it wouldn’t be the children. 

Elana: It wouldn’t be the kids themselves, right. You actually have four approaches here. You have the approach of, don’t worry, Moses knows the reason. Not everybody here needs to know the reason. Your leader knows the reason, you believe in the, leader, you trust the leader. By the way, very relatable content right now. Who do you trust? Who do you trust right now in looking at the war, and finding out what’s going on? 

A second, actually, this needs to be something that can be explained across difference, because if it can’t be explained across difference, not only do you lose your allies, you might also lose yourself a little bit. Not that I think that’s so important to Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, but we know that when the rabbis ask questions, they’re also asking questions that they have. Right? 

A third, actually, we do have an important value here, and that important value is loyalty. That important value is loyalty to someone and something, right? In this case, God.

And number four, hmm. Within it, we can explain pieces. Maybe we can’t explain everything, but within it, we can explain pieces.

Yonah: I want to add one final comment about code-switching because I think this text and Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai in it personifies the educator’s moral responsibility. I. If I feel like the Torah has what to contribute, and I am passionate about it and I am inspired by its contents, so I need to be able to convey that message in different settings in different ways, whatever will be most effective. But I do see a downside and not just because there’s the comfort of the insiders who want things to be a certain way. 

There is, there can be a tyranny of code-switching. And I think about students on campus now, where code-switching is not about the effective delivery of the messaging, but it’s actually a self-censorship. If we’re talking about Middle East politics, and I want to talk about Israel’s right to do X, Y, and Z, or my love of Israel, using the term Zionism for certain students in certain contexts becomes a buzzword that starts hyperlinking to other conversations.

So they code-switch by dropping the term, even though that term has so much meaning towards their identity. And ultimately that version of code-switching represents a self-censorship that is about Jewish discomfort, not about Jewish communication and Jewish expression.

Elana: Yeah, it’s so interesting because I think it always has a little bit of both. Sometimes code-switching allows you to belong, and sometimes the price of that belonging is losing a bit of yourself. And I think that the conversation of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai is, to his students, is a little bit like, oh, no, no, no. I still know exactly what I think, even though I may have had to say it that way.

Yonah: With a double consciousness, no matter what those,

Elana: My blessing to all of us, is that when we code switch, it is less about self-censorship and more about belonging, to the degree that it can be. Yonah, thank you so much for joining me today.

Yonah: Thanks for having me, Elana.

Elana: See you at dinner.

Yonah: Looking forward. 

Elana: Thanks for learning with us. And special thanks to my chavruta this week, Yonah Hain. TEXTing is produced by Tessa Zitter and our executive producer Maital Friedman, with production assistance from Tamar Marvin. M Louis Gordon is our senior producer. This episode was mixed by Ben Azavedo at Bear Cave Audio with music provided by Luke Allen.

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