OzTorah

Fiddler on the Roof featured the catchy song, “If I Were a Rich Man”. We all sang along, because we all had dreams of being rich.

Affluence is still a widespread dream, but most of us will never achieve it.

Even in the Bible it seemed noteworthy that some people were richer than others, Abraham for instance. About him the Torah says, “And Abram was very rich in cattle, in silver and in gold” (Gen. 13:2).

But how does the text say “very rich” in Hebrew? Kaved m’od, literally “very heavy”.

Possibly this indicates the sheer bulk of his possessions, but it could also be understood metaphorically as telling us, “Abraham’s affluence weighed heavily upon him”.

The sages say in Pir’kei Avot, marbeh n’chasim marbeh da’agah, “The more possessions, the more worries” (Avot 2:7).

One type of rich person constantly obsesses about not losing his or her wealth, but this is probably not Abraham. His worry is that of the tzaddik, for whom money is a challenge and an opportunity… a challenge to use his means wisely, and an opportunity to benefit society as a whole.

What spoilt them was the vice and godlessness which gave God no choice but to rain down destruction upon them.

Rabbinic commentary piles up criticisms of the way of life that permeated the cities: they were inhospitable towards strangers, they had no concept of justice, the locals did not even trust one another.

But there is also a rabbinic principle: “There is no punishment without admonition” (Sanh. 56b). So Abraham tried to get God to delay punishing the cities in the hope that they would recognise their sins and repent, but to little avail.

In time Sodom and Gomorrah became a byword for Divine chastisement; Amos reports God as rebuking Israel who failed to learn the lesson of the twin cities – “You were like a brand plucked out of the burning, yet you have not returned to Me, says the Lord” (Amos 4:11).

Israel’s enemies would be overthrown like Sodom and Gomorrah and will become “a breeding place of nettles, and saltpits, and a desolation for ever” (Zeph. 2:9). But in typical Jewish fashion, that is not the end of the story.

According to the Tanchuma (Vayyera 50a), “God destroyed Sodom, but in time to come when He heals Israel He will heal her too”. At that time Sodom and Gomorrah will change their tune and sing songs of justice and righteousness.

It is part of the messianic belief that the world will be mended and sin will be unthinkable.

A lovely dream? We can help it become a reality if we work on ourselves and our neighbourhood and gradually eradicate the causes that delay and obstruct the coming of Mashi’ach.

Q. Why do Christians, but not Jews, call God “Jehovah”?

A. In the Tanach (Hebrew Bible) the authentic name of God is spelt Y-H-V-H. The text has no vowels, only consonants.

It seems certain that the name derives from the root H-V-H, “to be”, and points to the uniqueness of God’s being.

In ancient Israel the name was pronounced only on the Day of Atonement and only by the high priest, and the correct pronunciation was not known to the people as a whole.

When the Temple ritual was suspended nearly two thousand years ago, the secret was lost for ever (unless the Almighty chooses to reveal it again). No-one can therefore be certain how to vocalise the name, and no-one is entitled to guess.

Hebrew grammar would allow for at least two possibilities – a vocalisation that would indicate “He who is”, or one that would denote “He that causes (all) to be”.

Christian tradition was quite ungrammatical in using the form Jehovah. No such pronunciation fits in with any of the rules of Hebrew.

What happened was that Jews piously substituted for the name Y-H-V-H the title AD-ON-AI, “My Lord”.

They could not remove the original consonants of the name from the Scriptures, but when printed or handwritten books began to insert vowel points in the texts as an aid to reading, they added the vowels of the substitute title to the original name as a sort of coded clue to help the reader.

The word therefore looked something like Jehovah, but no Jew or Hebrew scholar would ever read it as such.

Q. Why do we raise the Torah after it has been read?

A. Ashkenazi and Sephardi customs differ. The Sephardim raise the scroll before and the Ashkenazim after the reading. Both customs are explained by Samson Raphael Hirsch in these words:

“The Torah is the treasure which rules supreme over the congregation and which the congregation must uphold and raise on high”.

Hirsch adds, “To this very day we recognise it as the same Law which Moses placed before the Children of Israel” – implying that whatever the claims of other religions, the Torah given at Sinai remains, unchanged and unchallenged, the central feature of Judaism.

The V’zot HaTorah comes from Deut. 4:44 followed by part of Num. 9:23, denoting that the Torah is from God and was conveyed to us by Moses His servant. Once, the Deuteronomy verse was probably said by the person who raised the scroll and the second quotation was the congregational response.

Three verses follow (from Proverbs 3:18, 17 and 16 – in reverse order to that found in the Bible; a similar reversal of order is found in the Ashkenazi version of Tzid’kat’cha Tzedek on Shabbat afternoon, coming from Psalms 119:45, 71:19 and 36:7).

No’ach is described in the famous words, No’ach ish tzaddik, tamim hayah b’dorotav: et haElokim hit’halech No’ach – “No’ach was a righteous man, wholehearted in his generations: No’ach walked with God” (Gen. 6:9).

The sages regarded Abraham as a greater tzaddik: where No’ach walked with God, Abraham walked before God (Gen. 24:40).

There is an analogy: as a young child walks with its parent, but an older child is trusted enough to walk a little ahead of the parent, so No’ach was not yet as morally mature as Abraham was.

There is another comparison, according to Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev.

One type of tzaddik is devoted to God and to human beings, but another type is devoted to God and not so much to humans.

The second type is No’ach, who for all his piety is too ready to give up on other people.

The first type is Abraham, who never ceases to endeavour to bring his contemporaries to God. Abraham and his wife Sarah dedicated their lives to what today is called outreach; No’ach gave up and settled for safety in the ark and the hope that a new day would dawn.

Both types are alive and well in our own day; some say, “Let me at least preserve my own and my family’s religious standards,” whereas others keep on trying to bring their contemporaries under the proverbial wings of the Divine Presence.

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, if he were alive today, might suggest that there are two types of the Abraham model.

Some follow an outreach method which comes on rather too heavy, being a little too superior and patronising. Others work more subtly, by example rather than what looks like propaganda. Both seek the same goal, but one is more gentle and constructive.

Baruch HaShem, both bring new strength to Judaism, but there are valid ethical questions about how best to pursue the goal.