re'eh: from gd's lips
Sholem aleichem,
It's Friday! I only have time for a short note -- work got very busy, and then I had to switch some of my study-time over to another text at short notice.
This Torah portion contains one of the references to the Shmita year (do you think Biden knew?), of which there are several:
Devarim 15:1 (our portion)
there are more after that, but I stopped looking
Thanks to Eliezer Weinbach's source-sheet
As far as I can tell, our reference to Shmita in Devarim is the first case where forgiveness of debts is explicitly mentioned. This is certainly not the only innovation or alteration in Devarim: the book is full of them. And yet, despite all its changes, it used to be called Mishneh Torah, a phrase that appears in next week's portion:
והיה כשבתו על כסא ממלכתו וכתב לו את־משנה התורה הזאת על־ספר מלפני הכהנים הלוים
When he is seated on his royal throne, he shall have a copy of this Teaching [mishneh haTorah hazos] written for him on a scroll by the levitical priests
Why do we call a book of the Torah a copy when it has so many changes? There's a clue in Masekhes Shabbos 88:
ואמר רבי יהושע בן לוי, מאי דכתיב: ״לחיו כערוגת הבשם״ — כל דיבור ודיבור שיצא מפי הקדוש ברוך הוא נתמלא כל העולם כולו בשמים. וכיון שמדיבור ראשון נתמלא, דיבור שני להיכן הלך? הוציא הקדוש ברוך הוא הרוח מאוצרותיו והיה מעביר ראשון ראשון, שנאמר: ״שפתותיו שושנים נוטפות מור עבר״. (אל תקרי ״שושנים״, אלא ״ששונים״)
And Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: why is it written: "his cheeks are like a bed of spices [Shir haShirim 5:13]"? From each and every utterance that went out from the mouth of the holy one of blessings, the whole world (all of it!) was filled with perfumed spices. And since [the world] was filled from the first utterance, the second utterance went....to where? The holy one of blessings brought out the wind from his treasure-house and made the spices cross over/עבר one after another/ראשון-ראשון, as it is written, "his lips are lilies, they drip flowing/עבר myrrh". Do not read שושנים/lilies but ששונים/repetitions/copies.
The first utterance filled the world. Then the Holy One swept the utterance away with treasured wind, to fill the world with each utterance one after another. But the phrase for "one after another" is simply ראשון-ראשון: first first. In a sense, the Holy One made room for each utterance by treating each utterance as if it was the first. And yet, each utterance was also a repetition.
Tehillim 62 tells us (thanks to my psalms chevrusa Meli):
אחת דבר אלקים שתים־זו שמעתי
elokim spoke one thing, I heard two
Benjamin Sommer quotes the Ropshitzer quoting the Rymanover on this verse:
it is possible that we heard from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He, only the letter aleph of anokhi. How beautiful are the words from the mouth of a Sage! (Zera' Qodesh 2:40a)
G-d spoke one thing (the aleph) and we heard two (the aleph with its vowel). G-d's first utterance was the silent letter א, and G-d's second utterance was our transformation of this letter into the vocalized אָ (much as the gemara transformed שושנים/lilies into ששונים/repetitions by revocalization). In this version of the metaphor, we are the wind from his treasury making space for the next first utterance. And indeed, both the Talmud and Shir haShirim refer to this process as עבר (the root for Hebrews.)
Everything is both first and a repetition, new and a copy, and we are glue that holds the paradox together. While the mention of debt-forgiveness in Devarim is the first, it is also a repetition: each prior definition of Shmita includes some requirement to give freely to the needy. New and old. First and repetition.
This paradox also shows up every few months in queer communities, when someone finds a hint of the existence of queer people in history. We had a version this week, when a list of sexes acknowledged in the Talmud made the rounds of social media. This happens once a year or so, and every time the pushback is quite prolific, and centers on a few specific arguments:
this list isn't about genders, but about sexes / intersex conditions
the Talmud is only acknowledging these in order to enforce a legal system of binary sex/gender
"transgender" and "queer" are inventions of modern western society and should not be projected into the past
I agree to an extent with many of these points (send an email if you want to discuss further). In particular, I think it is important for trans people who aren't intersex to be conscious of the first point (though I also somewhat think "intersex" is a less stable and universal historical category than some people in the discourse are claiming.)
But I also think these points come from a misunderstanding of why queer people are excited to learn about history like this. I don't think that most queer people read the Talmud and think "ah, a queer utopia" or read a list of sexes and say "that's transgenderism!" We don't need to be informed that modern-day transsexualism was not an accepted way of life (or even an existing concept) in the days of the Talmud. (And let's not talk about Anglo-Saxon concepts embedded in the English word bad.)
We know that we are new. We know that we are ראשון/first. But we also deeply need to know that we are ששונים/repetitions. That as we fill the world (all of it!) with our newness we are an echo of older utterances, slipping through haShem's lips like myrrh.
The wind of gd is hovering over the face of the waters! Khadesh yameinu k'kedem!
Good shabbos,
ada