Sifrei Bamidbar 131

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TEXTing with Elana Stein Hain delves deeply into Jewish texts to guide and inspire us as we grapple with the concerns and meaning of this moment. Join Elana as she addresses the issues of our day through the lens of classical Jewish texts, in conversation with Hartman scholars Christine Hayes, Yonah Hain, and Leora Batnitzky.

TEXTing. Where ancient wisdom meets contemporary relevance.

Living with Dissonance

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. We’re recording on Wednesday, September 4th, 2024, the beginning of the Jewish month of Elul. If you’d like to follow along with today’s text, you can find the link to our source sheet in the episode description.

As I’ve mentioned previously, my family and I are spending this year living in Israel. We arrived just eight days ago, and what an intense week it has been. The morning that my children were setting off on their first day of school, we were I saw the news that Hamas executed six hostages in cold blood. The juxtaposition of the balloons and music playing upon their arrival to school with the expressions on the faces of the parents when their children weren’t looking, it was downright impossible.

As some Israeli friends told me, I got to witness firsthand the kind of dissonance with which Israelis are often subjected. And this year, by default, forced to live with death alongside life, vicious endings, threatening to overshadow promising beginnings. And so today I want to offer a unique episode of TEXTing in which I speak to three of my Israeli Hartman colleagues about a piece of Torah that feels urgent to me right now. It discusses living with dissonance, hearing from them about how they understand this text, the Midrash Sifrei Bamidbar, section 131. And especially how they understand this text now was really powerful for me, and I hope it will be powerful for you.

Given the convenience of being in the same city as them for the first time in a long time, I was able to just walk into their offices, and so the sound quality is not exactly going to be what we’re used to in the studio. I hope that it will come through just as forcefully.

I’m going to break the text into three parts and I’ll read each part and turn to a different interlocutor for each of them. For part one, I’m joined by Tal Becker, VP of the Shalom Hartman Institute. So let’s just say a little bit about the first part of this text. Sifrei Bamidbar section 131, takes as its launching pad the fact that two stories in Bamidbar, the book of Numbers, are back to back. The sin of the Jews fornicating with foreign women comes right after the story of Bil’am blessing them. And so the juxtaposition is talked about. And what we see in this first part is that there’s a disagreement between Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Judah the Prince as to how you view juxtaposed ideas, incidents in the Torah.

It starts like this. Rabbi Akiva omer, Rabbi Akiva says,”Kol parasha shehi smukha l’chevarta lamedah haymenah.” Any section that’s close to another, there’s something that should be learned from it. In other words, the section that comes after the other is clearly gaining something. You can understand it better by looking at what comes before, implying that there’s a deep connection between two things, two sections, incidents, verses, chapters that show up in the Bible back to back.

But Rebbe, Rabbi Judah the Prince disagrees. He says, what do you mean? “Harbeh parshiyot smuchot zo lazo.” There are plenty of sections in the Torah that are right near each other, but in terms of their content and their message and whole tone even, “u’rechokot zo mizo,” but they are as far from each other, “k’rochak mizrach mi ma’arav,” like the distance between east and west.

And when I first read this. I literally was looking at it yesterday and said, that is exactly how that dissonant day felt.

So I’m here with Tal Becker, the Vice President of the Sheldon Hartman Institute. Tal, it’s good to be on the same side of the ocean with you.

Tal: It’s good to have you on this side of the ocean, even if it’s a pretty volatile side of the ocean.

Elana: So I, you know, I looked at this midrash, And, you know, with Rebbi saying to Rebi Akiva, how could you possibly try to understand juxtaposed verses as connected when there are so many juxtaposed, whether stories or verses or chapters where there seems to be something kind of coming apart at the seams.

And what I thought, it was my kids first day of school here in Israel, when we found out that that six hostages had been executed and those two things next to each other really, really shook me up, as it shook up most of the parents who I saw on that day dropping their kids at school. But I’m wondering when you look at this Midrash and you look at Rebbi and Rabbi Akiva having their differences in certain ways, you know, where it hits you right now in this time?

Tal: Well, I mean, I mean, I was one of those parents. And like, my body was walking my kids to school, but my head was in a very different place in my heart. The first thing when, when Rebbi says, you know, they’re far apart from each other, they’re close, but far apart. My first reaction, when you sent it to me, Elana, was emotional. And I thought of the soldiers approaching the hostages, that how can you be so close and so far away at the same time? Like the moment of redemption and the moment of agony were next to each other. And that I think has shaken all of us, this whole society. So my first reaction wasn’t textual as much as emotional.

Elana: Well, I remember when those three hostages were accidentally killed by Tzahal. And I remember that feeling of, but they got so close, they got so close, they got so close. And even the celebration of rescuing one chatuf, rescuing one hostage, just a few days before, and maybe connected that, you know, they were executed. That’s really, um,

Tal: I mean, it’s such a part of the human experience, I think, and the Jewish story as well. These things are not ends of a spectrum, right? You know, we have the Yom Zikaron and Yom Hatzma’ot. We have in the human experience that the people you love are the people that hurt you the most. You have that very, very fine line between love and hate. So there’s a lot of things that feel opposite that are close together and yet far apart at the same time.

Elana: So do you think when you say that, you know, it sounds a little bit like Rabbi Akiva, meaning you have things that may look very different, but they’re actually really connected. So when, how do you read Rebbi in this? Because what you just said, it sounds like, no, they go together, fortunately or unfortunately, whereas Rabbi Akiva sounds like he’s saying, what are you, whereas Rebbe sounds like he’s saying, what, what are you saying, Rabbi Akiva, that they’re learned from one another?

Tal: So I think Rebbe Akiva is pretty famous for trying to find meaning in everything, right? And it feels to me like Rebbe is saying to him, what are you trying to find meaning in everything for? Not everything has meaning. Not everything can we extract from it some greater significance and this is you, Rabbi Akiva, forcing yourself on the text. It’s not what the text is doing. Not every time, at least. There are times when it’s doing it. There are times when it’s not doing it.

And I think especially at this moment, it speaks to this desperate need to inject meaning at moments that feel like the agony of the abyss is before you. And so you fill it, you know, you fill it with meaning and Rebbi is saying, be careful, you know, human need also suggests some kind of capacity to control our circumstances in ways that everything has meaning and that’s not our experience as human beings.

Elana: Yeah, it’s interesting. I was just thinking about Jon’s eulogy for Hersh, zichron l’bracha, of blessed memory, where he said, maybe you’re the stone that hasn’t been turned, which to me was a meaning-making moment. And Rachel saying, you’re finally free. And then at the same time, Rachel saying we are now in a new form of hell, meaning it’s not you’re finally free. And now, no, no, no, it’s a new form of hell.

Tal: Yeah. So I think first I’m, you know, I was at the Shiva this morning and I looked around at literally an overflowing tent full of people that was representative, I’m sure of an entire people trying to be Rabbi Akiva, trying to give meaning to this moment and the desperate word. One of the things you hear so much is that the hostages death is not in vain. There is a meaning.

But alongside it, as you described, Elana, is the abyss of the pain that doesn’t have an explanation, that doesn’t have a meaning, and in a way you kind of have to read Rebbe with Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Akiva with Rebbe. We are meaning-seeking people and we will struggle through the world and through our experience and through text. Desperate to find meaning that can give us direction and inspiration and hope, but Rebbe is telling us have the humility to know that it’s not going to solve every problem and it’s not going to fill every hole. And there will be the darkness and the nothingness that you can’t fill. And that’s also part of this world, and those two things happen together. They were there this morning the shiva and they’re there in our lives.

Elana: And in some ways what you’re describing is they’re different. Sometimes the coping mechanisms are actually detrimental. They’re actually detrimental. They don’t let you mourn the deeply tragic reality that sometimes we have to accept. Well, really, thank you so much. Yeah, no, no, please.

Tal: Sometimes I’m critical of our intellectualism at Hartman, because we fall in love with symmetries and paradoxes. Right? We like to make these grand structures, of thought things are also messy and not symmetrical. They don’t make sense. They’re also irrational. And if you’ve made it too neatly, if the text flows together too beautifully and your Torah is just a complete vision a beautiful kind of tapestry, something needs to be torn in it and Rebbe is telling us that it’s, it reminds me of, I think an essential, I’m no expert in it, and certainly not like you, it reminds me of an essential tension the book of Iyov, in the book of Job, where Job’s friends are desperately trying to explain his agony and his suffering.

And the text is reminding us very often, you miss something when you try to explain everything. And you have to hold that too. And I’m also conscious of the fact that I’m kind of making a symmetry now between Rebbi and Rabbi Akiva. And I want to stop that right now. I don’t want to do that either because I’m over intellectualizing it.

Elana: Meaning you want to say, oh, you need Rebbi and you need Rabbi Akiva. It’s like, no, sometimes you are just sitting in Rebbi’s world and saying it is all broken.

Tal: Let’s not turn this into its own intellectual symmetry, because then we’ll be falling into the trap that Rebbi doesn’t want us to fall into.

Elana: I’m with you. I’ll just end our little segment with the fact that I saw something that stopped me in my tracks. You know, we’re in the month of Elul and in the month of Elul, people say Hamalach Ba’sadeh. The Sovereign is in the field, meaning God is here. And I saw someone post, I could cry right now, said Hamelach ba’minhara. God is in the tunnel. And I just, you know, sometimes God is in the tunnel. And I think that’s really what you’re trying to describe to us.

Elana: Thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate you.

Tal: Thanks a lot.

Elana: See you soon, because I really will.

So that was only part one of the Midrash. For part two and sort of the way that it transitions us, I brought in Tehila Friedman. She’s a former fellow at the Hartman Institute who has served in Knesset and is essentially famous for the work that she does in trying to create centrism in Israeli society.

So let’s talk about part two before we bring in the conversation that I had with her. So, remember, we have this disagreement between Rabbi Akiva, who says all back to back sections are meant to be learned one from another and be connected in a sort of consonant way that works together. And then you have Rabbi Yehuda the Prince, Rebbi, who says, no, no, no, sometimes things that are back to back are as far away as possible, as east from west and west from east.

Well, here’s an example that shows us Rabbi Judah the Prince’s view. In Exodus, Shemot chapter 6, Moshe says, “Behold, the children of Israel haven’t listened to me.” This is when he’s trying to get them to believe his message, that the Exodus is going to happen. And he’s complaining to God that the people haven’t listened. And yet, God told Moses in chapter 3 of Shemot, of Exodus, “And they shall listen to you.”

This is an interesting example because the Mitrash basically says how could it be that’s so close together, God promises Moses that they’re gonna listen to you, and then when he actually goes and tries to do the thing that God tells him to do, he finds that they’re not listening to him? See? Dissonance. See? Contradiction. See? Potential next to stolen potential. And so I brought Tehila in to talk about this. And here’s our conversation.

Elana: Tehila, thank you so much for joining me. It’s been a hard time and I think Torah sometimes can bring out some of the things that we’re thinking and feeling.

Tehila: Yeah, sometimes. Not always.

Elana: Yeah, well let’s see if we can here. So we’re in this second part of the Midrash, of which you’ve seen the full. Moshe experiences that the people don’t listen to him and three chapters earlier God had said to him, the people are going to listen to you. And so to me, this is an example of Rebbi, right? You have things that are near each other, ish, but they don’t seem to go together, they seem to be far. And I’m wondering what your take is, both scholarly wise and where you are.

Tehila: So first, when we look at it, I’m not sure that’s an example for Rebbi, because those two parashat, two parts, two psukim, are not near each other. So, in a way, it’s an example of how, not necessarily, the connection between two parts has to do with them being near each other. It’s the opposite, okay? They gave examples, or are going to give examples for psukim, which are, you know, near each other, have nothing to do with each other.

And here, for example, for two psukim that has a lot to do with each other, but they’re not near each other. So it’s example of how, like no necessary connection between the content and the structure of the perek.

Elana: So in a sense, you’re saying, don’t try to whitewash this, one is from chapter six and one is from chapter three. And in fact, look at it as, this is actually, they’re far from each other, and yet they’re close, and I think there’s something interesting to that, even metaphorically, I think there’s something interesting to that, where sort of things that you thought had nothing to do with each other, things that you thought were in your past, or were already set, suddenly, you now see, oh, actually, there’s a reopening. There’s a reopening.

Tehila: Yeah, and also, I think it’s like an ongoing question for Moshe. Like, his position as a leader. That’s not something that he takes for granted and that’s something, sometimes I’m not sure he’s like, doesn’t feel comfortable with it, or it’s not.

Elana: Is he going to be listened to, you mean ,the question of whether he’s going to be listened to or not listened to?

Tehila: It’s going to follow him on his life, in a way, is he a natural leader and what’s his connection with the people and are they gonna, are they listening to him? And what is he doing when they’re not listening to him? So it’s not accidentally that those two parashaot are not near each other because I feel it’s like it’s gonna come up again and again and again.

Elana: So then you might say, that what Rebbi is offering us and saying you can’t necessarily always solve and resolve is that there’s actually an ongoing story. Where you’re not going to be able to resolve, and he actually never resolves this problem. Sometimes people listen to him, sometimes the people don’t listen to him.

And I’m thinking about where he hits the rock, and he says, Shim’u na hamorim, listen to me, you rebels, like, just listen to me. You know, you’re a leader, you need people to listen to you, I think to my mind, you’re one of the people who’s really fighting for what it looks like to continue to have a center in Israel. Or to create a center in Israel. When you look at this, and you look at right now, where sometimes people feel they’re being listened to, or they’re not being listened to, who’s being listened to?

Tehila: I think, I think that’s the thing. The question of, is there a point in talking, is someone listening? Because the feeling right now is, it’s almost like, what’s the point of writing? What’s the point of talking? What’s the point? Everything is like ongoing internal war, leave aside, you know, the fight with Hamas, with Iran, with Hezbollah, the situation inside, and when everything is becoming so, like more and more polarized, more and more radical, more and more to the extremes, the power is moving all the time from what used to be center to that extreme. So the question of, is that the worthwhile even trying, to talk and to raise a voice?

Elana: Okay. So I have to actually ask as sort of our last piece, cause I’m doing small pieces with you and with Tal and with Shoshana, who I’ll introduce in a few minutes. So how do you, I mean, you’re writing and you’re talking all the time. How do you push yourself or why do you push yourself to hope that someone’s listening?

Tehila: So I’m not sure I’m doing it all the time. I think it’s like I, in waves, I feel Moshe, because it’s like waves. Sometimes I have the feeling of, okay, I have to raise my voice because, you know, maybe someone will listen. Maybe someone is reading, maybe there is a place and sometimes I feel, I don’t have words, or there is no point.

I don’t think as leadership as a position, as a person, I think of leadership as an action. So people are doing acts of leaderships and it’s not like, okay, there is someone who’s a leader and he’s leading all the time. I feel that we are, you know, missing leaders right now. So it’s like a big vacuum. And so people in the position of leadership necessarily are not leading anymore, so it’s like an action and it has to do with this internal questions that Moshe has. Are they going to listen to him?

Elana: Well, I’ll tell you, I’m listening to you. And I hope a lot of people listen to you. And I thank you for giving me your time today because we all need each other and we need to hear each other and we need to be able to feel that our voices make a difference.

Tehila: I always keep reminding myself, one pasuk from Yishayahu , V’kovei Hashem yachalifu koach.

Elana: Which means, let’s, let’s, let’s just say what it means from Isaiah, yeah?

Tehila: It’s like, the people who hope for God, so now, how you translate it? Yachalifu koach, is like, get rest, and then be empowered again, maybe.

Elana: Right, sort of like you get reinvigorated with strength.

Tehila: It’s also in Hebrew, is also to exchange. So I think about it like, okay, there are times that I don’t have any koach, and you can give me, and there are times that I have, and I can give you. So we’re like exchanging, as long as, as long as that, you know, keep hoping.

Elana: Amen. Thank you, Tehila, so much.

Wow. You know, to everybody listening, I hope you feel like you’re in the room with them because talking to them definitely helped me be able to process a really tough time. And also hearing their different perspectives. I mean, someone coming to us with, hey, stop trying to make meaning of everything. And someone else coming to us with, sometimes I don’t know if anybody’s listening. But I’ve got to shout into the wind anyway, and I’ve got to hope that somebody is.

So let’s move on to part three of the Midrash for my last guest.

Okay, so we’ve had part one where we have Akiva telling us that back to back means they’re connected, and Rebbi saying sometimes back to back, they’re as far away as east and west. We’ve had part two, where we have an example that supports Rebbi’s view of actually things that are pretty close together, maybe really far apart and really contradictory.

And now to talk about part three, which is really examples to try to support Rebbi Akiva’s view. The more, how can we find a connection between things, even if they seem not connected, or maybe even if they seem contradictory to each other.

So I’m joined here for this part by Rabbi Shoshana Cohen, who’s a Hartman faculty member and a Talmud scholar, to discuss the three examples that the Midrash offers to support Rabbi Akiva. Clearly, the Midrash is really interested in trying to find the connection between things that feel contradictory. Shoshana, thank you so much for being with us.

Shoshana: Great to be here. I mean, it’s a hard, yes, at this moment, I feel like Torah is a good thing to be doing.

Elana: 100%. Well let’s just talk about the first example, we’ll cut right to the chase here. The first example is from Vayikra 21, laws about the high priest are placed immediately after the listing of capital punishment against a priestly daughter who fornicates, right? Not something we talk about every day, but I mean, what could possibly be the connection between these things? It’s not just what could be the connection, it’s, they seem so far apart.

But the Midrash comes up with a parable to explain how they’re connected. The parable goes like this. There’s an army officer who finished his training, but defected and ran away before reaching the next rank. The king sent for him and brought him and sentenced him to beheading. But before he was taken to the gallows, the king said, fill a measurement of golden dinars and place it before him and say to him, had you done the right thing, you would have taken these golden dinars home, and you would’ve had your money, and your life. But now you’ve lost your life and your money.

So then the Midrash relates this parable to the verses mentioned because it’s essentially, the high priest stands as a contrast to the priestly daughter’s who threw away her chances to birth someone like the high priest. So in the words of the Midrash, he basically says to her ilu asit ke’derech she’asu imotecha, had you done what your foremothers did, the right thing, zachit she’yotze mimech kohen gadol, you might have birthed a kohen gadol. And now? You’ve fallen low.

So let’s talk about this example of like, this is the reconciliation between the bad that comes before the good. How does this hit you as a scholar and how does this hit you now?

Shoshana: Right. I feel like this is very upsetting. Clearly, like you said, the structure of this whole Midrash that we’re going through is really kind of how do we make connections between these disparate parts, and I think even more than that, on a deeper level, a lot of times we’re going to see the examples are actually how do we get from this place of sin, to a place of kind of fixing the sin, or some kind of redemptive reality?

And in this case, what’s really kind of awful to me about it is that, is essentially what we’re saying is, when I’m talking about the mashal, it’s lost for this particular person, they’re sentenced to death. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to actually pile it on. Not only are you going to die, you actually have lost all of your money. And we’re talking about the daughter of the Kohen, we’re saying not only are you gonna die for what you did, but you’re essentially, you know, giving up the lives of all the potential wonderful children that you would have had.

Elana: So instead of being an arc that goes from bad to good, it’s an arc where, it’s not even an arc, it’s just the good essentially stands as a really ugly contrast to the bad. Like this is really, really, really bad, and this is not redemptive, it’s actually just didactic.

Shoshana: Right. And I think in that sense, right, when you get into the didactic, it could be potentially redemptive to the learner, right? The person who’s reading this, I think the point really, perhaps, of this midrash is this didactic point, which says, it’s warning you, right? It’s a threat. You should know that if you do something wrong, it’s going to be even worse than you thought. And the hope seems to be that’ll make people not do such bad things, but for the person who’s going through it, it doesn’t really help.

Elana: So I actually want to do, before we get to where this hits you, I want to look at the second example because I think it goes in like the exact opposite direction and it’ll help us kind of find ourselves on a spectrum, right? The next example is not taken from the five books. It’s not taken from Chumash. It’s actually taken from the book of Hosea, right? There’s the first chapter of Hosea ends by God saying to the Jewish people through Hosea, “You are not my people. Which is like, ugh.

Shoshana: Right, some of the most heart wrenching material that we have is in the Book of Hosea.

Elana: And, and, yeah, I mean really. And the first verse of the second chapter though, starts with, “You are going to be as multiple as the sand by the sea, and you’re going to be called children of the living God.” There it is, contradiction, as far apart as East and West, and even as opposing as East and West, and how are you going to reconcile them?

And so the Midrash here does offer another parable, right? Which I think is powerful. And it goes in the opposite direction of what we just saw, which is this time the parable, again we have a king, because of course this is a stand in for the sovereign of the universe, right? We have a king who wants to divorce his wife, but before the scribe who’s supposed to write the divorce arrives, the king is reconciled with his wife. So the scribe arrives, and the king makes an interesting decision. You know, as the Midrash puts it, amar hamelech, the king, says, efhsar she’yetzeh sofer zeh mikan chaluk? What? The scribe is going to leave without doing anything? Elah, emor lo, tell the scribe, bo k’tov she’ani kofa l’ketubata. Write that I’m actually going to double her marriage settlement, meaning, it’s like the opposite, the equal and opposite, right? I want to make it not just I want her back, but I want her to be multitudes.
And that’s the same, says the Midrash, the parable means, end of chapter one in Hosea, God says, you’re not my nation, and then immediately says, uh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Beginning of chapter two, no, no, no, no, no, no. I want you to be children of the living God. And I want you not just, I want you back, but I want you to be even multitudes. This is a very different way of reconciling the good and the bad. There’s an arc from the good to the bad.
Shoshana: Exactly. And I think, as you were speaking, I think it gets interesting. This is also piling it on, right? There we had the piling it on of, you should know, this is even worse than you thought. And here it’s like, no, actually, you know, once this changes, I want to, pile on the goodness to counteract the badness that there was.

Elana: Oh, that’s amazing, what you’re pointing out. Because in the first example. It’s, take a bag of money and say, this is what you lost. And in the second example, he says, I want the marriage settlement, which is a bag of money essentially to be doubled. That’s, and it represents a piling on. That’s beautiful.

Shoshana: I think that’s true. I think what’s also particularly striking to me about this is, if you notice, the wife is actually kind of not really present in the Midrash. Right? This is all happening essentially kind of in the mind of the king. He’s communicating somewhat with the scribe. So some kind of change is happening, but it seems to have almost nothing to do with the wife’s behavior.

And I think that, then, if we’re thinking sort of more theologically here or in terms of the message of how we get, as I said, from this kind of sin consciousness to redemption consciousness, this one kind of conveys a little bit perhaps of a fantasy in which it, yeah, okay, we, the sinner, doesn’t even have to, like, take any responsibility. This is, something happened and God is the one who says, you know what, actually, I made a mistake in assessing the situation or, alternatively, I love you so much that I’m actually willing to like, let go of the anger that I had towards you.

Elana: Right. Like, when the consequences I obviously like the latter better. You know me and you know my theology, but the consequences are so terrifying. That it’s like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we can’t go here. We need to double down on the love and the relationship. Because the consequences, even if you deserve it, or I thought you deserved it at some point, the consequences are too terrifying.

So can I ask you a question? When you look at these two, the sort of piling on of what could have been, and the, wait a second, these consequences are too bad. We’ve got to flip the script. Where do you find yourself right now? Because we, are living in a situation where I could say, oh, looking at what could be, I mean, there’s so much potential and looking at what is, it’s so, as my son said to me last night, it feels like the Holy Land is desecrated. Right. And this is a kid who got here eight days ago. And, and then you have this sense of, well, no, we just need to wait for someone to change their mind in order to change it. So I’m, I’m wondering where it hits you.

Shoshana: Right, so I do think I agree with your son, that there’s a moment at which it just feels like it’s all so much, right. All that we’ve been exposed to, all that’s happened to us since October 7th, even leading up to October 7th. It’s like, how much, right? We’ve lost everything, right? There is a little bit of that sense, and I think a lot of us are feeling that.

But I have to say on a deeper level, specifically around Hersh’s death, the process that, you know, our friends, Jon and Rachel, and also our colleague, Elliot, have gone through all of this time.

Elana: Just to clarify, in case people don’t know, our colleague, Eliot from Hartman, is a cousin of the Goldberg-Polin family and has really been a the force behind the campaign to save Hersh’s life.

Shoshana: So I’m a member of the community, Hakhel in Jerusalem, where Jhn and Rachel and Hersh, and where Hersh grew up. So, you know, we’re very connected personally to this situation. And I think when I think about kind of their process and I think about also the process of all of us who have been on the streets protesting for what is already years, pointing to a kind of impending disaster. Honestly, emotionally, where I am is kind of in the second mashal.

Elana: Really? Can you spell it out for us?

Shoshana: Which is, this is not our fault. It’s not their fault. And I know that there’s a lot of kind of talk right now, and I appreciate people who are using this rhetoric of we’re sorry. We’re sorry. We weren’t able to bring these hostages home. We’re sorry that we failed, but my kishkas kind of feel like I don’t want to apologize for this because this is not my fault. I think that we’ve identified this problem. We’ve been doing everything we can. And I think that’s also one of the most tragic elements of the story specifically of this campaign and of Hersh is they did everything, everything possible. There’s really no way that they can be blamed in any way, you know, even in terms of the way that they spoke about their own anger. Obviously there was anger and they didn’t express it, right? So I identify with that notion that says, you know what, something external to me, right? Or to us is going to have to,

Elana: Right, so you feel like the wife in that second example, where there’s a near divorce and you’re just waiting for someone else to change their mind. It’s so interesting because I know your politics and I know that the king here is Netanyahu for you. I know. And this is not a political show per se, but it is a moral and a value show. You wanted to say something, I cut you off.

Shoshana: Yeah, I want to say two things about that. I think on one hand, I actually personally, I can read the king as Netanyahu. Like, you know what? This is, like you said, this is you. You screwed this up. You need to fix it, right?

And the other possibility is, and I think I connected this to earlier on in the war, which is the king could still be God, right? When I connect to prayer, and I think a lot of people now, even around the funerals, are reconnecting to prayer, what I’m saying is, look, whatever it is that we people are doing here is really not working, and we really need God to come into this. For me right now, it’s much more complicated because I think that people are screwing it up very badly. And so I almost feel embarrassed. And I feel embarrassed, to stand before God and say, God, can you fix this, when there seem to be so many humans who are determined to not.

Elana: Look, the only thing I’ll say is without drawing ire or anything, I know a lot of people, Netanyahu is their go-to for who can fix this. And it’s interesting to see other people arguing and saying, what about Qatar, like, why didn’t they fix this? Like, so it’s interesting to think who you put the key in.

But I, you know, I appreciate you bringing that in. I want to do , the last example, because the last example, like these two that we just saw, they’re very extreme, right? They’re either extreme, there’s no redemption, at least for the people going through it. Or the second, there’s full redemption and then some, right? And the third example that’s trying to reconcile things that look like they don’t make sense together and yet they show up back to back is also from Hosea.

And I don’t think it’s an accident, because Hosea is also what we use when we talk about the Shabbat between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Shuvah, right? Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat of Repentance, Return, it’s based on a verse in Hosea chapter 14, and I think it, there’s a search for redemption here, and Hosea chapter 14, you’ve got the following two things back to back. You’ve got a verse that says, Shomron is going to be destroyed because it rebelled against God, and then right after it says, Israel, return to God. So which is it? It’s destroyed? Shomron is a stand in for the Israelite kingdom, right? It’s destroyed, or are you going to return? Right? Make a decision.

And so, of course, we’ve got a parable. What’s the parable? The parable is to a province that rebelled against the king. And the king said to his general, I want you to go destroy it. And the general was really smart and really experienced and went to the people and said, look, people, you’ve seen us destroy this other place and this other place and this other place. Do the right thing and we won’t destroy you.

And so, the parable essentially becomes, you’ve seen how the Israelite kingdom has been destroyed. This repent, sort of command is going for the other kingdom, kingdom of Judah. You saw what happened to them. Don’t let that happen to you. But you know, contrary to the previous example, you have to be very active in doing something. So this feels like, you know, it’s like thesis, antithesis, synthesis? Like, here’s your synthesis.

Shoshana: Right. Definitely. Right. And I think the hope here is that having seen the possibility of this horrible consequence, we’re going to be able to then make the right choice. And I think the notion is if I haven’t really fully played out how horrible this could be, then I won’t necessarily make the choice in terms of doing the right thing. And it’s interesting that they also cast the general as being savvy. This is a good tactical way of, it’s almost like, in Sefer Devarim and a lot of times what we have a theme throughout Sefer Devarim is here, I am presenting for you here, the good. And the bad, choose, make your choice.

And I think that that’s true, that works a lot. I really kind of believe in that strongly, even when I think about activism, of, let’s be honest about what the bad outcomes could be. Let’s face them, and then let’s make the right choice.

Elana: Right. Don’t be scared to look at bad outcomes. You know, it’s interesting. Just to conclude, it feels to me like all the conversations that I’ve had today with Tal and with Tehila and with you, they really do revolve around a certain sobriety. Right. You know, Tal is arguing, don’t always try to make meaning, like Rabbi Akiva. And Tehilah is, she’s honest about the fact that sometimes people listen to you as a leader and sometimes people don’t. Sometimes you can be effective and sometimes you can’t.

And you’re essentially saying, you’ve got to be able to figure out what is your responsibility and do whatever you can within your sphere of influence, what is not your responsibility and is not something that you can change and to be really clear-eyed about the possible terrible effects.

Shoshana: This is actually a process that I go through every Elul, what I kind of call a sort of taxonomy of sin, which is really trying to figure out what are the things that I kind I don’t want to take responsibility for, but I did them and I need to actually dig deeper and figure out how I can take responsibility and change them. And what are the things that I’ve been kind of mulling over and feeling really guilty about, but in fact they actually weren’t my fault and I can’t change them, and what are those things? Those things that I actually have to let go. I think about, you know, send off with the se’ir l’azazel and just kind of like, let them go.

And I think as an activist, that’s, I think where a lot of people are right now in Israel is, okay, what are the parts we can change and what are the parts we need to dig down and take responsibility for? And what are the parts that we need to say, this is not us, someone else is going to to do it.

Elana: Wow. I think that is a very powerful way to end. I would say no matter who the someone else is in your paradigm, right? But taking responsibility, I mean, I gotta be honest, only Israelis are gonna sit here after a week like this and talk to me about how they can take can take responsibility for all people, wow. I feel very privileged to be here in this country, especially at a time like this. Thanks, Shoshana.

Shoshana: Thank you.

Elana: Thanks for listening to our show, And special thanks to my three chavurot this week, Tal, Tehilah, and Shoshanna, for giving us some more texture to how this Torah applies to their lives.

This episode of TEXTing was produced by our senior producer, M. Louis Gordon, with production assistance from Sarina Shohet. Our executive producer is Maital Friedman. This episode was mixed by BenAzevedo at Bear Cave Audio with music provided by Luke Allen.

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