OzTorah

Something similar is happening all over the Jewish world today.

I had a teacher who used to say, “If you want to reform Judaism, restore it”.

The restoration of Judaism seems to be going on everywhere these days. Jews are going back to the sources to delve into the old ideas, principles and practices.

The packaging is up-to-date. The technology of the 21st century is being utilised. But the content is traditional Judaism – Isaiah and Jeremiah, Hillel and Shammai, Rambam and Yehudah Halevi, Rashi and Ibn Ezra, Joseph Karo and the Chafetz Chayyim.

Don’t let anyone persuade you that Judaism is disintegrating or in danger of disappearance: it is the modern world which is under scrutiny and its laissez-faire relativism is being found wanting.

Jacob was the studious one who enjoyed his home and his books: The text says he loved his tents (Gen. 25:27), which Radak indicates means that wherever there was a tent of learning, that’s where one would find Jacob.

Esau, on the other hand, was the “cunning hunter” (Gen. 25:27). Rashbam takes this phrase literally: Esau was the prototype of the macho man who, in later parlance, went in for “huntin’, shootin’, and fishin’”.

Ibn Ezra thinks the idea of being not only a hunter but cunning is particularly important, since Esau exercised his wiles on deceiving the animal prey and making it easier to capture them.

But the way the story works out with Esau and Jacob vying to impress their father, it seems more likely that the phrase “cunning hunter” doesn’t only refer to animal targets. It conveys the sense of a man who could flatter and dissemble when it came to other human beings, especially Father Isaac.

Poor Isaac was old and losing his eyesight – a contrast to the later Moses who even at the end of his life was still vigorous and clear-sighted (Deut. 34). Isaac, on the other hand, was not only taken in by Esau’s wiles but probably wanted to be.

The boys’ mother Rebekah got Jacob to pretend to be Esau in a superb piece of see-through disguise because she knew how gullible Isaac had become, and she wanted to show that if a patent disguise that covered the smooth arms of Jacob could fool him, all the more so could he be taken in by the smooth talk of Esau.

Q. Does Judaism believe that man is a sinner?

A. Classical Christianity would say yes: Judaism says no.

The basis of the discussion is the sin of Adam and Eve. God told them not to disobey, but they did.

For Christianity, this has lasting theological consequences. Man “fell” from his original state of innocence and henceforth is tainted by the effects of the sin, though some groups within Christianity deny that the sin persists through the generations but maintain that man has an inherent status of sinfulness.

The way out is to accept that Jesus sacrificed himself to redeem humanity from sin.

In Judaism it is a story without deep theological consequences. The early chapters of B’reshit explain how many things began – clothing, food, gender, language, and death (since God warned Adam and Eve that if they sinned they would die, and their sin therefore brought death into the world).

There are passages in the Bible that speak of inherited sin, e.g. the section of the Ten Commandments that says that God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children to the third or fourth generation.

There is a statement in the Prophets, “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge” (Jer. 31:29, Ezek. 18:2).

Other passages insist that “the soul that sins, it shall die”: Ezek. 18:20, Jer. 31:30.

Rare Midrashim attach greater significance to the sin of Adam, but they do not represent normative Jewish doctrine.

Solomon Levy said that where Christianity posits Original Sin, Judaism responds with a doctrine of Original Virtue.

Q. Who was the Rabbi Ben Ezra about whom the English poet Browning wrote?

A. It was Abraham Ibn Ezra, the 12th century poet, grammarian and Bible commentator.

Born in Toledo, Spain, in 1092, he visited England in 1158 and called it “an island in the corner of the world” (“Angleterre”). He likened the London fogs to the three days of darkness in Egypt just prior to the Exodus. He possibly visited Oxford, where it is said that three university halls were owned by Jews.

Despite his intellectual prowess, Ibn Ezra never became affluent; he used to joke, “If I made shrouds people would stop dying; if I sold candles the sun would not set”.

You figure in a sheaf of Biblical stories, but hardly ever do we come to grips with you as an individual.

You are Abraham’s wife, Pharaoh’s romantic interest, Isaac’s mother, Hagar’s rival… but it’s all about you in relationships with others, not you in your own right.

Were you really beautiful, in appearance, in character? Were you really pious and God-fearing, thinking of God, meditating on eternity? Were you really clever, a good organiser, an efficient homemaker?

Did the Midrash get it right when it said your tent had a light burning from one Erev Shabbat to the next, that you were not only hospitable but brought the women under the wings of the Divine Presence, that you wanted Isaac to study in the yeshivah of Shem and Ever?

Did Abraham value your wisdom and hearken to your voice? Did you willingly allow Isaac to go with his father, even if he never came back?

Did your tears flow in private, so that neither your husband or son would realise how torn apart you were?

When you died, was it old age or the shock of events? When Abraham came to mourn for you and weep, was he weeping for himself, now alone and bereft, or for you, such a woman of worth whose going made the world poorer?

Sarah, don’t leave yet before we have worked out your preciousness and personality!