Bereshit Rabbah 39, Part 8: Beit-El

We are in the commentary on this verse: Vaya’tek misham hahara mikedem leVeit El — “He moved on from there to the mountain east of Beit-El.” We start from the principle that the path of the fathers — the orientation, let us say, that was set for the generations to come — is something through which we must see ourselves: through the life of the patriarchs. In short, what they themselves lived through is what we go on living over the course of time — first on the individual level, but also along the historical paths of the whole people of Israel. So Avraham’s taking possession of the land is done symbolically, through this crossing. Avraham walks the length of the land of Israel, he builds an altar: that is how he takes possession of this land, and it is on that basis that this land is promised to him. Consequently, there is no assurance as to the actual ownership of the land by the Jewish people — I am expressing myself badly: there is no assurance as to the settlement of the Jewish people on this land for all time; it will be subject to fluctuations. And the text specifies […].

“He moved from there to the mountain, east of Beit-El.” […] In the past it was called — it bore the name — Beit-El, the house of G-d. But in the time of Yarovam the name of Beit-El was changed, and it was called Beit-Aven. Beit-Aven is the very opposite of Beit-El, because it is the place of idolatry instead of the place of divine service. So the way is open to a transfer of the people of Israel from its land toward the nations, as we shall see. […] And Rabbi Elazar confirms this idea: this name of Beit-El, which was destined for the precincts of Yerushalayim, was called in his day the “house of standing” — the house that is stable, that is fixed, where man builds himself and fulfils himself.

But when the goal is, so to speak, not reached, it is called the place of toil, of pain. [The midrash says in Aramaic:] “There they call […] amidah, and the [vessel] for urine amilah.” […] A vessel, a utensil that lasts over the long term, was called amidah; but the vessel for urine — the urinal, so to speak — amilah: it is the place of the refuse one throws away, it is labour lost. So, after this warning, and this awareness of the promise of the land that has been given — paradoxically, the text mentions that Avraham performed a symbolic act: vayet oholo, “he pitched his tent.” But “his tent” should in principle be written in the masculine form; yet the text, by its spelling, reads ohalah — “her tent.” It is not his tent but his wife’s tent: ohel Sarah natah techilah — he pitched Sarah’s tent first.

From this it teaches us that he first pitched Sarah’s tent and only afterwards pitched his own. It is the Midrash’s way of telling us that the attachment we have to the land of Israel, the covenant we have contracted with this land, is identical to the one contracted with one’s wife. And just as a being is fully realised only in his own country, in his “motherland” — parenthetically, we never speak of a fatherland: Israel is the matrix of the Jewish people — so too, in the same way, he contracts the covenant with his wife. Now here, you know very well that the notion of zakhar and nekevah, of male and female, faded with the appearance of Chavah and her recognition as man’s equal partner: ish, ishah. We no longer speak of zakhar and nekevah — which recalls, in a way, that arrangement which some, unfortunately, want to adopt today: “parent one, parent two.” No: there is a notion of ish and ishah, of av and em, father and mother, which carries within it a divine seal, and a covenant as well, which binds — symbolically — man to his wife, and man to the land of Israel.

Why? Because just as a man is fully realised only in the feminine, only in the wife he has chosen — and without that he remains in total instability — so it is, likewise, when he binds himself to his land. That is the reason why every wedding concludes with the glass that is broken: the groom breaks the glass while citing the verse, “If I forget you, Yerushalayim, let my right hand forget.” It is a way of saying: the covenant I contract today with my wife is of the same order as the one I contract with my very essence, which is the land of Israel. For it is true that it is said, kol hadar bechutz la’aretz ke’ilu oved avodah zarah — whoever dwells outside the land of Israel is as though he practised idolatry. But what is meant? One must establish the difference between dar, “dwelling,” and gar, “sojourning.”

The one who sojourns — who is gar outside the land, who lives temporarily outside the land of Israel — is not like one who adopts the customs, habits and cultures of other countries, or who is exposed to adopting them later and to falsifying, in some way, his own culture. No — this is a different way of inhabiting: the circumstances, you see, which have in some way dictated or prolonged our stay outside the borders of Israel mean that we live there, and we are called to assume a role of transition between the people of Israel and the other peoples […], because Israel has no raison d’être without the other peoples — we have said it already and we say it again. There is a necessity — and indeed the text that follows will make it clearer still — namely, that if we are called to build ourselves outside the borders of Israel, within the other peoples, it is also in order to draw in, to glean — yesh shever beMitzrayim, “there is grain in Egypt” — all these holinesses, all these particles of holiness scattered among the other peoples, in the other cultures. Whether we like it or not — be it mathematics, be it physics, be it computer science — these are all sciences that we have also received from the other peoples, and that we have converted, in another way, to our outlook of spiritual life.

And that, in sum, is it: there is a chokhmah chitzonit and a chokhmah penimit, an outer wisdom and an inner wisdom. There is the outer science, the science of the physical laws of creation, and there is the science of the spiritual laws of creation. The spiritual laws of creation are proper to the Torah of Israel. That is the inner Torah, the chokhmah penimit; the other is the chokhmah chitzonit. And we cannot, so to speak, isolate the one from the other — on the contrary. And it is Yosef who was, as it were, the link between the Avot, the patriarchs, and the nascent people of Israel. Yosef’s long stay in Egypt — without inquiring, for twenty-two years, after the father and brothers he had left behind in Israel — is because he intended to spread, he had a vocation of spreading, the values carried by the patriarchs. What are the Avot? Only the three patriarchs are called Avot. One cannot say that Yosef is an av, a father; but neither is he entirely a ben, a son, since he gave rise to two tribes within the whole of the twelve tribes.

It is a way of saying that within the twelve tribes of Israel there is one tribe which is, properly speaking, the product of exile, and which we have integrated into the communal structure of the people of Israel. That is what Yaakov wished to undertake with Dinah, when she was taken by Shechem and he consented — on condition of circumcision — to a coexistence; but the moment was not ripe for it. It had to be put off until much later. So here, what the text tells us — the one who sojourns outside the land — is that the covenant contracted is the one that brings about the building, the raising up of the Jewish home through the feminine, through the woman, in a language of panim el panim, face to face, in a relationship of face to face.

Of course, this covenant, as we shall see later, passes through the milah. And the milah is not only the circumcision of the flesh — of the very essence, of the physical existence of the being — stripped of desire; it is also milah in the sense of words: the cutting of speech, the circumcision of speech, the circumcision of the mouth. The two are, in principle, linked, and one must give another language to communication between a person and his fellow — a language that man first learned to cultivate and to perfect in the relationship of husband and wife. Now, this covenant is consecrated by the text, which tells us that he consecrated it by building an altar to the Eternal. And Rabbi Elazar develops that there were three altars built by Avraham: one altar for the tidings of Eretz Yisrael; a second for taking possession of the land of Israel.

The third, so that his children would not fall. He takes as his reference the verse — it is what is said in the conquest of the land of Israel by Yehoshua, when, during an unfortunate incident in which the rules of conduct were not respected, Yehoshua tore his garments. He fell on his face to the ground before the ark of the Eternal until evening, hu veziknei Yisrael, he and the elders of Israel, vaya’alu afar al rosham, and they put dust on their heads as a sign of mourning. Hence the Midrash’s question — kelum banah Avraham mizbe’ach ba’Ai? The text is saying: was it for nothing that Avraham built an altar in the city of Ai? No. Ai was a battlefield where the Jewish people did indeed suffer — following the sin concerning the cherem, the banned spoils — a defeat, a grave defeat.

But they were not to despair — his children were not to despair. To pursue the link the Midrash establishes between Avraham’s covenant with his wife Sarah — vayet oholo — and the covenant with the land: there is indeed the stage echad livsorat Eretz Yisrael, that of the vort, of the betrothal, of the announcement; echad lekinyanah, that of union, of marriage; and a third, so that the tensions within the home do not come to break up the union, so that one can get through this stage, this obstacle, and preserve the union. For, as we shall see, the Holy One, blessed be He — why did Moshe not enter the land of Israel? Because had Moshe himself undertaken the conquest of Israel at that moment, the people would not have been equal to its demands and its obligations, and it would then have been removed from the land of Israel for good. So G-d preferred to leave Moshe outside and to have the conquest undertaken only by Yehoshua bin Nun, who was far from Moshe’s stature, and thus to allow, in a way, certain breaches to exist; but then the Holy One, blessed be He, pours out His anger on the stones, on the wood — meaning by this the Sanctuary — rather than on the people of Israel. Exile is a way of keeping the people of Israel alive at all costs; and indeed this is what gives birth to Israel’s eternity. The Maharal of Prague says that the other peoples do not withstand exile at all.

They end up dissolving into their host land, whereas the Jewish people, despite hundreds of years of exile, has managed to preserve its identity entirely, even on foreign soil. Vayikra beshem Hashem — “and he called upon the name of the Eternal.” Now, what was he doing? What was this exile for? Melammed shehikri shemo shel HaKadosh Barukh Hu befi kol beriyah: the aim is to have the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, pronounced — spelled out — by the mouth of every creature. Another explanation — and you know very well that “another explanation” always means “in other words” — he began to make gerim, to practise a certain proselytism — lehakhnisam, to bring people in and draw them near, tachat kanfei haShekhinah, under the wings of the Divine Presence.

Let us note well that bringing them in under the wings of the Divine Presence does not mean compelling others to have the same obligations and the same values as the children of Israel; for up to this point we are speaking only of Avram and Sarai. Their names have not yet been converted into Avraham and Sarah; they are still tied to their origins. And we know very well that before them there were three generations, with three leaders — among them Noach, Metushelach, Chanokh, Shet — who tried, in a way, to spread these universal values of the Torah: the values, the Noahide laws. Avram and Sarai also come from this milieu; they had not yet made that total conversion. The conversion will come only at the moment of the milah, when Avram becomes Avraham and Sarai becomes Sarah.

And we will stop giving the names Avram and Sarai to our children, to indicate this break we have made with the universal laws, and the commitment to the specific laws of the Torah, in order to attain the title of goy kadosh, a holy nation, and of a people of kohanim, a kingdom of priests. Avraham megayer et ha’anashim veSarah megayeret et hanashim — Avraham would convert the men, and Sarah would convert the women. Here again, by the way, the term giyur does not mean a total conversion as one would understand it today, but simply drawing them near — as the text says — to the Shekhinah. And our sages say that what he indeed did — excuse me — is that he always traced his route toward the south, and in doing so already laid out the route of the peoples toward the place of the Sanctuary.

That is, toward Yerushalayim. I now move on to the next chapter. […] Vayehi ra’av ba’aretz — “there was a famine in the land.” Here the text tells us — we are already announcing it — that there will be a period when famine spreads across the land. Now, this famine spreading across the land is not only a famine on the agricultural, economic level. We do not live by bread alone; man lives also by his spiritual aspirations. So when we speak of the nourishment of the being, it is not necessarily a purely physical nourishment; it is at the same time a nourishment of the soul. And this nourishment of the soul requires of the people a temporary abandonment of the land: toward Mitzrayim, toward Bavel, toward Madai, toward Yavan, toward Rome, toward Edom.

There are eras, there are slices of history, in which this Jewish presence is indispensable, and that is accepted. Vayered Avram Mitzraymah lagur sham — Avram goes down to Mitzrayim. Now, one must realise that Mitzrayim is an empire; it is, at that time, the culture that stands, let us say, at the summit of all the nations, and it needs the contribution of Avraham’s moral dimension. And the descent is lagur sham, “to sojourn there.” Lagur — I stress it once more — the word here is ger. We ourselves are gerim: ki gerim vetoshavim atem imadi, “for you are strangers and residents with Me.” We have the status of both ger and toshav. Ger is the status of the stranger; toshav is the resident. And that is how a Jew understands his life, understands even his settlement on his own land.

Now, knowing that we are gerim, we must redouble our vigilance so as not to prove unworthy of this mission that has been entrusted to us. You see Avram: he makes a descent — and that is the mark of every person of worth: to lower oneself, to come down to the level of the other in order to speak his language, to reach an understanding with him and to try to raise him up along with oneself — and not to show him contempt or, in some way, to disregard his existence. […]

[…] “You grant truth to Yaakov, kindness to Avraham”; “to save their soul from death” […]. I translate: a famine spreads in the land — “in the land”; it is not written “in the land of Egypt.” Avraham goes down to Egypt lagur sham, to sojourn there, not to dwell there. It is written: the eye of Providence watches over all who fear Him, and over those who hope for His kindness, who wait for His kindness. So: hinneh ein Hashem el yerei’av — “behold, the eye of the Eternal is upon those who fear Him.” Zeh Avraham — this refers to Avraham, because Avraham was given the title yerei Elokim, one who fears G-d: ki yerei Elokim attah, “for you are one who fears G-d.” Lamyachalim lechasdo — those who hope for His kindness, His love — as it is said in the verse of Micah: titten emet leYaakov, “You grant truth to Yaakov,” hesed leAvraham, “kindness to Avraham” — kindness being what is proper to Avraham. Lehatzil mimavet nafsham, “to save their soul from death”: to save their being from death. Whose death is meant? Mimitato shel Nimrod — from the death decreed by Nimrod.

Nimrod is the unbeliever par excellence; he is the one who rejects every divine yoke, and who is indeed condemned to perish. Ulechayotam bara’av, “and to keep them alive in famine”: even in famine, they benefit from G-d’s kindness and go on living. This is the introduction to the exile in Egypt, through which the identity of Israel is forged. And where is the Jewish people born? We were born in exile; we are not a product of Eretz Yisrael; we came to build ourselves in Eretz Yisrael. We set up our home in Eretz Yisrael, but it was through the ordeal of this exile that we forged our identity among the peoples — that is to say, through contact with other cultures and other peoples — that we found ourselves in the land of Israel. And the proof of it today, thank G-d, is that in the space of a few decades we have built an extraordinary country, on every level — on every level.

And that is ulechayotam bara’av: because we have this — we have accumulated treasures, both our own and those of the other nations, and we have succeeded, and we are in the process of perfecting what is called kibbutz galuyot, the ingathering of the exiles: this blending of all the exiles, this blending of all the cultures. Vayehi ra’av ba’aretz — “there was a famine in the land” — another interpretation. Rabbi Pinchas, in the name of Rabbi Chanan of Tzippori: “Happy is the man whom You chasten, and whom You teach out of Your Torah.” What is written about Avraham? What did You write concerning Avraham? What You wrote was: “I will make your name great.” I have already told you: “I will make your name great.”

And there — when he went out, when he left Charan and had sojourned for only a short while in the land of Canaan — […] and suddenly, a famine takes him by surprise, doesn’t it? The text is not up here; perhaps it should be shown — excuse me — the reference, yes. […] Thank you, you can stop there. But he did not rebel, he held nothing against [Him]: vayered Avram Mitzraymah lagur sham. He accepted. Here is this promise contradicted by the famine spreading over the land of Israel, and Avraham is forced to go down to Egypt — and Avraham makes no complaint. He applied to this situation [the verse]: “He gave prey to those who fear Him.”

Not “prey” [but, read differently, “unsettling”]: He unsettled those who fear Him in this world, but in the world to come He will remember [them] forever. What is written of Avraham? What is written concerning Avraham? Va’avarekhekha va’agaddelah shemekha — “I will bless you, and I will make your name great.” That is what He said […]. And set against what He promised him, there is now famine: so where is the blessing? Where is the promise that his name would become great among the nations? No — it is he who is dependent on the kindness of other peoples; and in spite of everything, velo kara tigar: he makes no complaint.

Why does he make no complaint? Because he considers that the mission in Eretz Yisrael certainly has value, but the one he will have to fulfil outside Eretz Yisrael is no less. The two go together; there is no complaint to be made the moment we are deprived of the land of Israel, or of our days in the land of Israel. It is that we ourselves need to fulfil ourselves beyond the borders of Israel, and we also need to bring other peoples to fulfilment outside the land of Israel, in order to draw them closer to our own values, to divine values. For we know very well that any morality that remains dependent on human reason is bound to undergo successive mutations, according to regions and according to cultures; whereas if its common denominator is something like faith in a Creator of the world, then it is uniform, it is stable, it is common to all humanity. That was the aim. But this aim — and we will see this, I think, next time, because we do not have the time now — this aim will be achieved by way of the feminine, when Avraham comes to realise that his relationship of ish and ishah becomes one of ach ve’achot, brother and sister.

And to understand this properly, know that there are four stages, four dimensions, in this relationship of masculine and feminine, of man and woman: kol dodi dofek, pitchi li — “the voice of my beloved knocks: open to me” — achoti, my sister; ra’yati, my spouse; achoti ra’yati yonati: my dove; tammati: my twin sister, my twin — te’omati. Al tikrei tammati ella te’omati: the literal translation of tammati is “my perfect one,” but read it as te’omati, “my twin.” We will come back to this theme. It is already time now — it is ten to nine — but I would like to leave room for questions, if you have any. This, perhaps, I could also move forward so that we can [see it] — it is the text of vayered Avram Mitzraymah lagur sham: asarah re’avon ba’u la’olam.

Ten famines came into the world, spread across the course of history. One was in the time of Adam, the first man. […] We do not know what exactly that famine was. There is one, and another […], and all of them are of the same nature, up to the famine of the time to come. At that time, the famine will not be for bread and the thirst will not be for water — not from want of bread, not from want of water — ki im lishmo’a et divrei Hashem, but only to hear the word of the Eternal […] as with the ground that was cursed by the Eternal.

We will come back to this text; I am not going to neglect it or rush through it now. I will return to it next time. If you have questions to ask, with pleasure. — I have a question for you about titten emet leYaakov, hesed leAvraham. I understand the meaning of the words, but I do not understand the direction of this quotation. For titten emet leYaakov would seem to say that Yaakov had difficulty telling the true from the false; and hesed leAvraham, that Avraham would be lacking in hesed — whereas Avraham himself embodies hesed. — Yes; well, the answer is very simple, because emet is an axis of reason — one would tend to think so — while hesed is an impulse of the heart.

Now, we know very well that this hesed, this impulse of the heart, if it overstepped its bounds, would end in a rotting of morals. Hesed carried to the extreme is zimmah, an abomination. It needs to be mastered; it needs gevurah — that of Yitzchak, which is not mentioned here. But the emet of Yaakov is a hesed held in check by gevurah, by reason; and that is what emet is. Now, we know very well that it is emet which, in reality, ought to be — I would say — the measure, the plumb line, the barometer of every development of thought. That is not the case, we are told: [here truth] depends on hesed. And that is indeed the reason why, in our prayers — and prayer is an impulse of the heart, and prayer lies beyond the study of Torah; although our Torah, our study, must of course also become an act of prayer, that is, there must be a study leshem Shamayim, for the sake of Heaven, born of an impulse of the heart — it is this blessing that opens the Shemoneh Esreh: Magen Avraham.

We always begin our prayer with the hesed of Avraham — bekha chotmin velo bish’ar ha’avot, “with you they conclude, and not with the other fathers.” We begin first with Avraham, with hesed; then gevurot, which gives life to those on the brink of death; the kedushah, of course, is that of emet — it is what has brought this hesed to its perfect expression. That is what titten emet leYaakov, hesed leAvraham means. In proper order one should have said titten hesed leAvraham, and then emet leYaakov. That is not what the text adopts, because — let me remind you of the Midrash — at the creation of man, He cast truth down to the earth.

Emet me’eretz titzmach — “truth shall sprout from the earth”: He decreed that truth should sprout from the earth, that it is man — that it falls to man — to reveal the truth. Had He imposed it from above, man would no longer have free will and would have no means of expressing himself. So He left this truth, quite relative at the outset, in order to allow the development of man, who becomes, in a way, G-d’s partner in the work of creation. There — another question? But there, we will have to stop, I imagine. — Thank you very much, Rav Benizri. — Thank you […]. I would like to stress that the last link you received for the Zoom is the link we will use throughout the month of January.

I will see whether I can keep this link for February, March and so on. In any case, from now on you can keep this link for the following sessions. And on the other hand, we are now breaking for two weeks, because… — Yes, alas, because if I count correctly, we will not meet again until January 10. — Very well, agreed. But then it might be much better to send a reminder. — I didn’t understand. — Of course — today the notice was really last-minute. — Absolutely, a little reminder is an excellent idea. There. So, a big thank you to you. — Thank you very much. Good evening. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good evening.