Wrapping Ourselves Up in Our Story - Bo 5786
Why the tallit unites law and narrative, and why more adult Jews should fulfill this mitzvah
Every nation, every culture, tells foundational stories about itself. The Ancient Greeks saw themselves as being descended from gods. One Korean origin story is that a bear and a tiger yearned to become human; the tiger fails, but the bear succeeds and becomes a woman, who has a child with a heavenly character. The American story is that colonists here threw off the yoke of unfair rule by the English king.
And we, the Jewish people, have the Torah, which gives us both law and narrative story.
Rabbi Shelomoh Yitzḥaqi, the 11th-century French commentator we all know and love as Rashi, opens his commentary on the Torah (on Bereshit / Genesis 1:1) not by mentioning the very first words of the Bereshit / Genesis, but rather a verse from Parashat Bo, from which we chanted this morning. He points out that the Torah could naturally have begun with the verse (Shemot / Exodus 12:2):
הַחֹ֧דֶשׁ הַזֶּ֛ה לָכֶ֖ם רֹ֣אשׁ חֳדָשִׁ֑ים רִאשׁ֥וֹן הוּא֙ לָכֶ֔ם לְחׇדְשֵׁ֖י הַשָּׁנָֽה׃
This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you.
What follows for most of Chapter 12 of Shemot are the instructions for celebrating the festival of Passover, including some of the rituals we still practice today on that holiday, like conducting a seder, a festive meal during which we tell the story of the Exodus and eat symbolic foods. These are the first explicit mitzvot, opportunities for holiness, described in the Torah. Rashi proposes that this starting point might have been just as good, but there were other considerations, and so the Torah instead begins with the creation story of six days of work followed by a day of rest.
But what Rashi detects from the outset is the immediate tension and relationship between law and narrative. On the one hand are the mitzvot, the essential behavioral commandments of our tradition and on the other, the story of the Jewish People: where we came from, why we are here, and so forth. The first mitzvah and God’s creation of the world are effectively in balance, a kind of push-and-pull on the Jewish bookshelf. And we still very much feel that relationship today in the Jewish world. Law and story, in Hebrew halakhah and aggadah, are intimately connected, and you cannot have one without the other.
Think of the ways in which Jewish observance, that is, the rituals we perform, are tied to the narrative of Jewish stories. Shabbat connects us to Creation, of course, since we refrain from 39 forms of work because God rested on the seventh day. Tu Bishvat, the birthday of the trees, which we will mark in nine days, is connected to a midrash which tells us that if it were not for the trees, human life could not exist.
And a little further on in Parashat Bo (Shemot / Exodus 12:26-27):
וְהָיָ֕ה כִּֽי־יֹאמְר֥וּ אֲלֵיכֶ֖ם בְּנֵיכֶ֑ם מָ֛ה הָעֲבֹדָ֥ה הַזֹּ֖את לָכֶֽם׃ וַאֲמַרְתֶּ֡ם זֶֽבַח־פֶּ֨סַח ה֜וּא לַֽה’ אֲשֶׁ֣ר פָּ֠סַ֠ח עַל־בָּתֵּ֤י בְנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ בְּמִצְרַ֔יִם בְּנׇגְפּ֥וֹ אֶת־מִצְרַ֖יִם וְאֶת־בָּתֵּ֣ינוּ הִצִּ֑יל וַיִּקֹּ֥ד הָעָ֖ם וַיִּֽשְׁתַּחֲוֽוּ׃
And when your children ask you, “What do you mean by this rite?” you shall say, “It is the passover sacrifice to GOD, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when smiting the Egyptians, but saved our houses.”...
The Pesaḥ / Passover story is not only about recalling the Exodus, not only about refraining from eating the five species of grain during those eight days. It is also deeply connected to teaching our story to our children, and passing that story down as a matter of Jewish law. We are obligated to teach our children the words, the laws, the customs of our tradition. And that is one primary reason that the Jews are still here: that we teach our children our texts, and we continue to act on them.
There is a mitzvah which many of us in the room are fulfilling right now which, I feel, brings together law and story in a sublime way: the mitzvah of tzitzit, that is, wearing a tallit, a four-cornered garment with specially-tied knots at each corner. The Torah instructs us to wear such a garment in Bemidbar / Numbers (15:37-41), in a paragraph which most of us know because it is the third paragraph of the Shema, recited evening and morning every day. Every nation, every culture, tells foundational stories about itself. The Ancient Greeks saw themselves as being descended from gods. One Korean origin story is that a bear and a tiger yearned to become human; the tiger fails, but the bear succeeds and becomes a woman, who has a child with a heavenly character. The American story is that colonists here threw off the yoke of unfair rule by the English king.
And we, the Jewish people, have the Torah, which gives us both law and narrative story.
Rabbi Shelomoh Yitzḥaqi, the 11th-century French commentator we all know and love as Rashi, opens his commentary on the Torah (on Bereshit / Genesis 1:1) not by mentioning the very first words of the Bereshit / Genesis, but rather a verse from Parashat Bo, from which we chanted this morning. He points out that the Torah could naturally have begun with the verse (Shemot / Exodus 12:2):
הַחֹ֧דֶשׁ הַזֶּ֛ה לָכֶ֖ם רֹ֣אשׁ חֳדָשִׁ֑ים רִאשׁ֥וֹן הוּא֙ לָכֶ֔ם לְחׇדְשֵׁ֖י הַשָּׁנָֽה׃
This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you.
What follows for most of Chapter 12 of Shemot are the instructions for celebrating the festival of Passover, including some of the rituals we still practice today on that holiday, like conducting a seder, a festive meal during which we tell the story of the Exodus and eat symbolic foods. These are the first explicit mitzvot, opportunities for holiness, described in the Torah. Rashi proposes that this starting point might have been just as good, but there were other considerations, and so the Torah instead begins with the creation story of six days of work followed by a day of rest.
But what Rashi detects from the outset is the immediate tension and relationship between law and narrative. On the one hand are the mitzvot, the essential behavioral commandments of our tradition and on the other, the story of the Jewish People: where we came from, why we are here, and so forth. The first mitzvah and God’s creation of the world are effectively in balance, a kind of push-and-pull on the Jewish bookshelf. And we still very much feel that relationship today in the Jewish world. Law and story, in Hebrew halakhah and aggadah, are intimately connected, and you cannot have one without the other.
Think of the ways in which Jewish observance, that is, the rituals we perform, are tied to the narrative of Jewish stories. Shabbat connects us to Creation, of course, since we refrain from 39 forms of work because God rested on the seventh day. Tu Bishvat, the birthday of the trees, which we will mark in nine days, is connected to a midrash which tells us that if it were not for the trees, human life could not exist.
And a little further on in Parashat Bo (Shemot / Exodus 12:26-27):
וְהָיָ֕ה כִּֽי־יֹאמְר֥וּ אֲלֵיכֶ֖ם בְּנֵיכֶ֑ם מָ֛ה הָעֲבֹדָ֥ה הַזֹּ֖את לָכֶֽם׃ וַאֲמַרְתֶּ֡ם זֶֽבַח־פֶּ֨סַח ה֜וּא לַֽה’ אֲשֶׁ֣ר פָּ֠סַ֠ח עַל־בָּתֵּ֤י בְנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ בְּמִצְרַ֔יִם בְּנׇגְפּ֥וֹ אֶת־מִצְרַ֖יִם וְאֶת־בָּתֵּ֣ינוּ הִצִּ֑יל וַיִּקֹּ֥ד הָעָ֖ם וַיִּֽשְׁתַּחֲוֽוּ׃
And when your children ask you, “What do you mean by this rite?” you shall say, “It is the passover sacrifice to GOD, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when smiting the Egyptians, but saved our houses.”...
The Pesaḥ / Passover story is not only about recalling the Exodus, not only about refraining from eating the five species of grain during those eight days. It is also deeply connected to teaching our story to our children, and passing that story down as a matter of Jewish law. We are obligated to teach our children the words, the laws, the customs of our tradition. And that is one primary reason that the Jews are still here: that we teach our children our texts, and we continue to act on them.
There is a mitzvah which many of us in the room are fulfilling right now which, I feel, brings together law and story in a sublime way: the mitzvah of tzitzit, that is, wearing a tallit, a four-cornered garment with specially-tied knots at each corner. The Torah instructs us to wear such a garment in Bemidbar / Numbers (15:37-41), in a paragraph which most of us know because it is the third paragraph of the Shema, recited evening and morning every day.
And the wearing of the tallit is also tied to our story. In that same passage, the purpose of the tzitzit is to remind us not only to keep the mitzvot (vv. 39) וּרְאִיתֶ֣ם אֹת֗וֹ וּזְכַרְתֶּם֙ אֶת־כׇּל־מִצְוֺ֣ת ה’ וַעֲשִׂיתֶ֖ם אֹתָ֑ם - you shall see the tzitzit and they shall remind you of all of God’s mitzvot so that you will perform them, but also (v. 41)
אֲנִ֞י ה’ אֱ-לֹֽהֵיכֶ֗ם אֲשֶׁ֨ר הוֹצֵ֤אתִי אֶתְכֶם֙ מֵאֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרַ֔יִם
I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the Land of Egypt
That is, wearing the tallit reminds us of our freedom from slavery. And not only that, the פטיל תכלת / petil tekhelet, “thread of indigo” that the Torah mandates suggests the Sea of Reeds, which the Israelites crossed over on the way to freedom. And the idea of wrapping ourselves up in our tradition keeps us swaddled and safe and connected to our people, our history and our culture. And of course the blue stripes in the flag of the State of Israel are meant to suggest the petil tekhelet; the flag was designed to look like a tallit.
One of the most precious moments between parents and children in today’s Jewish world is when a parent gives a new tallit to a child who is about to be called to the Torah as a bat mitzvah or a bar mitzvah; I am overjoyed to see two such new tallitot today on our benei mitzvah. This is how we transmit our story along with the law; when your children ask you, what’s that funny scarf with the fringes? You should say, this is what we wear during prayer, reminding us of our mitzvot and that God gave us freedom from slavery, so that we might fulfill them.
And yet, for complicated sociological reasons, throughout much of our history, only half of the Jewish people fulfilled this beautiful mitzvah, of being enveloped in our history and tradition during prayer. The text of Bemidbar / Numbers is not specific to men: it is all in the language of 2nd-person plural, which Pittsburghers call “yinz.” Yinz should wear a tallit. Not just the men.
One of the things that makes us Conservative Jews is that, while committed to the idea that halakhah / Jewish law is still binding on us, it is also continuing to develop, as it has for thousands of years, depending on our situation, our response to new understandings and technology, and of course regarding our appreciation for the roles of men and women in our society.
My colleague Rabbi Pamela Barmash, writing in a teshuvah from 2014, a rabbinic responsum on women’s obligation to the mitzvot, explained that the mitzvot from which women were traditionally exempted were clearly originally meant for all adults, but women were excluded due to their status in society in the ancient world.
But today, Rabbi Barmash says, when we understand all adults to be equal in status, women should of course be equally obligated as men. And that includes, among other things, fulfilling the mitzvah of tzitzit.
The Talmud itself, 16 centuries ago, explains that women are in fact obligated to at least some mitzvot that might have only been incumbent on men.
Pesaḥim 108a-b
וְאָמַר רַבִּי יְהוֹשֻׁעַ בֶּן לֵוִי: נָשִׁים חַיָּיבוֹת בְּאַרְבָּעָה כּוֹסוֹת הַלָּלוּ, שֶׁאַף הֵן הָיוּ בְּאוֹתוֹ הַנֵּס.
And Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: Women are obligated to the four cups of wine at the Passover seder, as they too were included in the miracle of the Exodus.
Rabbi Barmash uses this texts like this to argue that the blanket exemption of women from positive (“thou shalt”) mitzvot that must be performed in a certain time frame did not actually apply in the ancient world, and all the more so does not apply now, and she concludes that women should not be thought of as exempt from these mitzvot, but rather obligated, just like men.
Including, of course, tallit!
Now, there are many women here who already have taken upon themselves the mitzvah of tzitzit, who wear their tallitot proudly. And there are many others who are not ready to do so.
But we in the Conservative movement, and here at Beth Shalom, believe not only that halakhah, Jewish law, is still relevant and binding upon us today, but also that we should always be looking to up our game, to reach a little higher. We have been teaching tallit and tefillin to women for years; we have made some nicer, arguably more feminine tallitot available here in the sanctuary to make the mitzvah of tzitzit more appealing. And we are continuing to discuss how to bring more women on board, to step forward and participate as equals in fulfilling this mitzvah.
In doing so, we will continue to teach our children, our sons and our daughters, continue to tell our story, to wrap ourselves up in our tradition, to thrive at the intersection of law and narrative.
***
*Although this devar Torah is primarily about tallit, I would not want to neglect the fact that at the very end of Parashat Bo are two verses (Shemot / Exodus 13:9,16) citing the mitzvah of tefillin, of binding words of Torah to our arm and forehead. These verses are included in two of the four passages found on the scrolls found inside the tefillin boxes.
