malkah's little crush on ba'al

She's not supposed to. He's not part of her tradition.  Except as a traditional enemy, I suppose. He's somebody else's god. And not even the top dog at that. So. I was asked the other day what drew Malkah to Ba'al. And I suppose I should come up with something that makes it all sound reasonable.

Believe it or not, it started with the Tetragrammaton. One night, a very long time ago, Malkah discovered that everyone she cared about seemed to act out one of the letters of the Tetragrammaton.

There were Yud people. They were El people. Frequently bullies in their insistence on (white) male privilege. They had created something (as a head of a pantheon ought) but then they didn't want any more change. "I made it.  Now leave it alone." Creation. Just as I put it there, and not a drop of evolution since. Yud people. Not very attractive.

There were Upper Hei people. As watery as El was fire. These folks just wallow. They gripe and moan, and nothing, just nothing, is ever quite right for them.  They sulk when they're supposed to be incubating.  They take a sabbatical and spend the whole time obsessing about how short it is.  And then they get nothing done.

I should say right now that we all do these things. Sometimes. But El people. Fucking control freaks. And Upper Hei people.  Too many anti-depressants.

And then there's Vav. Upright and slim. And tall, with his head held high. Ambitious Ba'al wanting to make a difference in the world. Baal people are fucking activists. Thwarted by the powers that be at every turn. And shadowed by the loving gaze of Upper Hei —Asherah (Athirat, if you will) at every other turn. Ba'al wants to change the world. He's the original ecologist. An agriculturalist. An inseminator. Of the earth, that is. He makes things fertile, if given half a chance. Not that El will leave him be. And, well, Ba'al's been shtupping the wife, Athirat, so yah, I guess El has kind of a reason to be pissed.

There's no reason to make such a fuss about Ba'al's peccadillos. It's in his nature to spread seed. That's what he's supposed to do. The real deal, though. No Monsanto for him.

I had a student once who burst into tears when I started talking about Ba'al. Really wailing. And shaking too. She was of African origins and was raised to believe that Ba'al was the devil himself. So. Just speaking his name gave her the willies. And hearing something positive about him —like that he was just one of the top four deities in the pre-Abrahamic pantheon of Ugarit— just was too much to bear. I might as well have been talking about Saddam Hussein (more of an El character than a Ba'al one, for sure, but you get the idea). Say something good about the devil and you've got to expect a bit of a rocky response.

In all fairness, I must say Malkah was drawn to Ba'al's sister, Anat, (the lower Hei on the Tetragrammaton)—but she didn't have a crush.  No.  Instead she wanted to be the fierce and loyal lady of the hunt. A natural born killer.  I think Malkah didn't take that part too seriously though.  She saw Anat as just incredibly competent and able to get shit done. She killed. But she didn't kill. Can you hear the difference?

So. Malkah's crush on Ba'al is a bit weird, I suppose, in that she started with YHVH and worked her way backwards in time instead of going along with the program.  Back and back and back until she met Abrahams's contemporaries in the land of Cana'an. And found those top four, El, Asherah, Ba'al, and Anat had all gotten carried over into the Judaic godhead, sight unseen, having a good laugh, maybe, and blithely going about their business in the god department as if they hadn't been slaughtered by the invasion of the monotheists.

So. What's the problem with telling Malkah's secret? I think it's that almost nobody's going to believe it.  But if they do, there's sure to be someone saying she took up with the devil. Or that she's gone all pagan on us. But I'd like to think that she's just gone deeper. Deeper into the history of her own tradition.

She came up for air, and there he was.

I know, I know. Alchemy makes for pretty crappy punchlines.  Either that, or I'm just very bad at it.

abraham, sarah and hagar, oh my

The question is do we feel sorry for Abraham, or do we say goddamn it, you knew what you were getting us into? Or is there some other way to resolve the whole bit? I've been thinking about this for at least a thousand years, maybe two. Maybe three. The whole situation sucks.

There's this couple, see. They're married. And their stagnant. They produce nothing — no offspring to call their own. Barren. And Sarah by now is way past menopausal by almost half a century. No issue will come from there, right?

But Abraham sticks with her. He doesn't take another wife. He's loyal. She matches. She's of the same basic lineage as he. Good solid stock, and lineage matters in the Middle East. Today, perhaps not as much as in Abraham's day. But today the wars over this still take a higher toll than they did back then.

He sticks with her. And finally, in a moment of enlightenment, she has an epiphany. By now she's old and gray, and set in her ways. Stubborn as hell. But her maidservant isn't. A bit exotic, from the other side of the tracks, so to speak, Hagar has something fresh to offer. And the two of them — Abraham and Hagar — produce something beautiful. A treasure, really. A first born — created out of their instant resonance. No plodding fruitless decades. No marriage just because she's a relation. They simply join forces and voilà, they birth something miraculous.

This must be fairly common on the horizon. Reminds me in part of Chango and his travails. Let me know what you think. Though this tale looms much larger. It has real-life consequences that are dire and bleak and current.

Ishmael means, quite literally, 'God hears' or 'God is listening.' And what does that mean to us? It means that this union is sanctioned, if not by tribal authorities and custom (ie, the State) then by a powerful spiritual force that cannot be denied.

But the Torah isn't terribly interested in any of this. It takes off, quite strategically, ignoring the potential paradigm shift here. Something new — this new couple might not match, but they definitely fit. Call it heterosis, if you need to explain it. Hybrid vigor. They produce something powerful. Who could have predicted it?

Sarah flips out, of course. Some angels come and calm her down a bit with promises. (I'm skipping tons here of course but it'll have to do for now). And she just cracks up, laughing at the prophetic angels. As does Abraham. And so, when miracle of miracles, she too produces a son, it is incumbent upon her to call him Yitzhak, for their (irreverent) laughter.

The difference in these names is extraordinarily telling. Ishmael, produced out of a resonant union, is blessed with God's grace. Yitzhak, emerges from a relentless ache of emptiness. He elicits derision, if not scorn.

But now for Abraham, there are two of them. Two women. One of whom (the illegitimate non-wife) produces his firstborn (legitimate heir), and the other (the correct and proper spouse) produces the second born with not much hope for the future under the prevailing inheritance laws.

But Sarah isn't stupid. She figures it out pretty quick. Get Hagar and Ishmael out of sight asap. Banish them to, I don't know, just make it far. How 'bout a desert they can't possibly survive?

What kind of parent can allow such a thing? (And of course, it gets worse — but the Akedah is for another day).

A new form of inheritance is introduced in the bible. Primogeniture, the right of the firstborn, is no longer the law of the land. Instead, manipulation of inheritance comes into fashion (more on that, too, some other time maybe).

Sarah wins, of course. And we've been paying the price ever since.

Sarah sees her son accede to legitimized inheritance. The bible makes it sound like Yitzhak is chosen for the Akedah. The line of Abraham-Isaac-Jacob is the foundation of the Jewish lineage and the root of Christian faith.

And Hagar wins, of course. And we've been paying the price ever since.

These are terrible ways of winning.

Hagar, in her suffering, takes her child out into the desert, and a desert people is born. The Almighty plants a black pearl under the sea, and the pearl begins to cry for her. A sea of liquid ebony amasses way under the dunes she traverses. She wanders. A new line is formed. Arabs are born, and then — the Prophet. And a religion arises that comes to span the globe. And then, much later, the discovery of those ebony tears...

Is one line better than the other? Is one endowed with greater grace?

And what of Abraham? Did he make choices? Or did he just follow orders. Did he just say yes to every opportunity. God says go and so he goes. God says sacrifice your son, and he says sure. Sarah says get Hagar and the goddamned thing you produced with her the hell out of here, and he sends her off into exile.

Islam teaches us that Ibrahim and Ismail have a bond no shrill and jealous mother/wife can rend. The two go off and build the Ka'aba together — a place where all can come and meet, mourn, and rejoice — and pray. It's not just that they experience God's grace. It's that they found a place where others gather to do so. Not just our own lineage. But a community that spans across all national and racial and ethnic borders.

The new paradigm of Islam addresses the inequality of inheritance very differently than does the Torah. The Torah foments sibling rivalry generation after generation — trickery, selling a brother into bondage, jealousy and strife. Islam says let all brothers be equal in their share, and let daughters inherit as well — another innovation. Calm the chaos of each generation's feuding. Well, that was the idea. Not that Islam solved that one, but Shariat Law did try. Then again, I'm not sure Freud did much better.

I put all this on the stiff and proud head of Sarah. Sarah who must reaffirm her priority and legitimacy of status. Sarah, who sends a mother and child into the desert, expecting them to die. It's that part that outrages me perhaps more than any other. Though there's still plenty to be pissed off about in here.

And Abraham. It takes him so long to get his act together. He too could have saved us all a lot of grief.

Next time, Abraham. Next time. Maybe in your next life. Take a stand. The three of you, please. I might even pray for it, if that's what it would take. And save us the disasters which follow you if you don't. Give us a new model. Cooperation. Mutual aid. Some new paradigm shift. Anything to end the agony that comes from experiencing one mother against the other. And their children at war. You can fix this. I know you can.

a kaddish for the Israeli flag, may it rest in peace

People say that there are a lot of reasons to open up a bible. Here's one of them you might not have ever been asked to think about. And a reason why using the bible — especially לך לך — as a basis for validating nation-building is not a terribly good idea. We can lay all this quite literally at the feet of Abraham.

And then there's the flag. And you might ask, well what does the Israeli flag have to do with Abraham? And any Arab or Muslim on the planet is likely to have a ready answer. And which we're going to look at. But first, let it be said that—

Abraham does good microcosm.

If all the rest of the Torah disappeared except for the passages on Abraham, we'd all still have plenty left to argue about. I'm not sure the world would be any different than it is now. The essential arguments are right there. Starting with לך לך (lech l'cha).

And YHVH says to Avram — take yourself out from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father's house and go to the land that I will show you ...

And the trouble has begun. Right there.

Maybe that's not fair. Maybe the trouble has already begun a whole lot earlier. But I tend to date trouble right here, starting with Avram. Starting with Avram's troublemaking, paradigm-shifting deity. Known affectionately as the Tetragrammaton — the four-part piece of grammar.

So YHVH orders Avram out. And stranger things, I suppose, have happened, but this one's at the top of my strangeness list. Instead of downing his meds, Avram follows the incorporeal orders and ships himself off. He goes, and schlepps everyone with him. Now what's with that?

Yes. I fault Avram right there. He clearly wasn't raised the way I was raised. The tzaddik and Mrs Tzaddik insisted on questioning everything. Everything. Maybe we've got to do it, (religiously, I might add) because Avram didn't. He's just terrible at being what we now call Jewish. Why doesn't he argue?

So, to speed things up here. First his god orders him to go and points him in the 'right' direction. And gives Avram the great big come-on — it could as easily have been Jim Jones speaking.

Do what I say, and I'll bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you...

How's that for power tripping?

It's not like trouble is coming out of nowhere. It's right there at the beginning: plenty of warning. If you're not thinking Jim Jones, how 'bout the Godfather?

Because wait, there's more. When Avram gets to Canaan, YHVH makes him an offer he can't refuse.

Over and over again.

—I will give this land to you and your offspring ...

—For all the land that you see, I will give it to you and your offspring forever ...

—I'm the god who took you out of Ur (Casdim) in order to give you this land as an inheritance ...

—[my personal favorite:] To your descendants I have given this land, from the Egyptian River, as far as the great river the Euphrates, — the land of the Kenites, the Kenizites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Yebusites...

Yup, kiddies. Occupied territory. And map it out: it encompasses about five distinct sovereign contemporary nations.

And note the structure:

—Go
—I will give
—I give
—I have given

It's word magic: Abra'cadabra: I create as I speak. Abraham's YHVH utters the magic word, et voila...

And only then comes the bit with Hagar and the birth of Ishmael. Yitzhak is still not even conceived of being conceived, if you know what I mean.

But wait, there's more.

—To you and your offspring I will give this land where you are now living as a foreigner. The whole land of Canaan shall be yours eternally, and your descendants.

—All you have to do is keep my covenant, circumcision. [Pretty good deal, if you ask me. I'd do it... I think.]

Turn the page. Okay. Plot thickens. Now we've got Yitzhak to worry about. And the deity makes it clear — or rather the text makes it clear that the deity makes it clear that the 'covenant' is with Yitzhak, who isn't even born yet.

Gevalt.

And we haven't even gotten to the Akedah yet.

Okay. Close your eyes. And picture a map of the Middle East.

—Picture Egypt, with the Nile flowing from south (Upper Egypt) to the Mediterranean (Lower Egypt).

—Turn your eye eastward toward the great Tigris and Euphrates (running north to south, and dumping into the Chott el 'Arab — around where Ur used to be— and then into the Gulf).

—Picture the Nile as one blue stripe. And way on the other side, picture the Euphrates as another.

—Now draw a Star of David right smack encompassing all the land between them. Can you see it?

It looks (strangely enough and what a surprise) exactly like the Israeli flag.

Not to Israelis of course. Not to Jews everywhere. No, to them the flag looks like the Jewish prayer shawl.

But it doesn't look like that to the Arabs, or to Muslims everywhere.

Skip the Akedah for now. We'll deal with that one another time... For now, just look at that flag.

I think the flag's a problem. It illustrates visually (to those sensitive to it, which is a good chunk of the planet's human inhabitants), the assumed Israeli agenda. That they intend to and will appropriate all the land between those two great rivers. And can back up the land grab by just pointing to those passages in Lech L'cha in the bible.

I've never met an Israeli — or even a Jew anywhere — who has any idea of what I'm talking about. Even Abba Eban. I talked to him about it, when he came to speak honoring my father. He had no idea what I was talking about.

But to Arabs everywhere? To Muslims everywhere? To the PLO pamphlets distributed a whole generation ago? The Israeli flag screams "biblically sanctioned land grab." From Egypt to Iraq. Including (if you follow the geography of the YHVH passages) southern Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel and Palestine, and even the northernmost tip of Arabia. Now that's a chunk of change.

So. How's about a simple act of visual redefinition? An Israeli flag (if there must be one at all—which is a different question altogether) of less provocative design. Not screaming 'land grab' with no alternate interpretation to trump the visual landscape on the flag. How 'bout something a little more modest. And it's got to do away with those two distinctive stripes of blue! As long as those two stripes are there, the biblical allusion is the only one that will come to mind for those who care.

Change the flag, and much becomes possible. A re-thinking of intention. A flag that doesn't look like a colonizer's wish list. All blue, with a white Star of David is a little too much of a 'pushed-into-the-sea' look, so that won't work. And all white with a blue Star of David looks a little too much like the white flag of defeat. We want no losers here. None at all. Losers insist on revenge. It's the Middle East outside, remember? Keep it simple. But make it work. I have no idea how.

And most of all, make it something the neighbors can live with. Something that when they see it waving across a friendly little border, doesn't invoke Abraham's out-of-line deity giving away the neighborhood, or Yitzhak's descendants appearing to peer covetously across some invisible line.

And when you redraw that map, please think before you hoist it up the flagpole for all to see.

the fourth rabbi

When M was little, my dad gave him a book of Bible Stories. I think it changed my son forever.

That night I heard this scream from upstairs, and ran up to see what was wrong. He was tucked in bed with the book in his lap, outraged. He got right to the point:

"How could God want Abraham to sacrifice his son?" my only son and oldest child demanded.

Maybe it was my moment of crisis, not his. I'm not really sure. I taught this stuff, you'd think I'd have an answer for my kid. But no. I realized that any answer I gave him would not be good enough. So, at least for that night, we switched reading materials to something more manageable. A real cop out. I'm not sure what we read instead. I mean, what's the antidote to God demanding one's son be sacrificed — when it's your own son reading this stuff. He wasn't quite old enough for Kafka.

I decided to research the Abraham problem. I started to call the rabbis. And I know this is going to sound like a joke, but this, I swear is true. It just sounds like a joke.

The first rabbi I called was the head rabbi at a conservative congregation in the City.

"I tell them that everyone has to make a sacrifice for God," he answered promptly. Like that was going to satisfy my kid.

Before continuing, I should tell you that there actually was something at stake. My son had been begging to go to Hebrew School. I don't even know where he heard about Hebrew School. I had been insisting I could teach him Hebrew at home — along with Arabic. I figured a nice balance was in order for the next generation. My firstborn just rolled his eyes at me. He wanted the real deal.

One day I was driving home form work and the emergency car phone (remember those?) rang.

"What's wrong?" I asked, "What's the emergency?"

"You haven't signed me up for Hebrew School!" he insisted.

"Is this an emergency?"

"Yes!" he answered.

"Ok, I see you're serious about this. I promise I'll take care of it." And we hung up. I still had 45 minutes more to my commute before we could have a chat about the Hebrew School thing at home. But ten minutes later the phone rings again. I'm not even to Palo Alto yet.

"Did you sign me up yet?" he asked.

So, okay, he was that kind of kid. And I figured that the first rabbi who could come up with an answer that would satisfy my son, would get our business in the Hebrew School department. Well, the first rabbi failed.

The second rabbi I called was the head rabbi at one of the large reform synagogues.

"I teach," he said, "that Abraham made the wrong choice. He should have refused." He paused. "But that doesn't really work with the rest of the parsha," he added. And he stopped. Good start, but I wasn't impressed with the lack of follow up.

The third rabbi I saw in person. He was in town running workshops in Jewish Renewal, and I still think of him as my own mentor. The third rabbi was of course, Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. And when I've had questions, he has shown me that I also have answers. And so, I asked him my son's question about the Akedah, and Abraham bringing Isaac up the mountain for sacrifice. And I trusted that at last I'd have a satisfying answer.

Reb Zalman got a big smile on his face. He always had a wonderful, wise smile.

"Such a blessing," he beamed, "to have a son who asks such questions!"

I waited.

That was it. That was the answer. And of course he was right, but that kind of an answer wasn't going to satisfy my kid. And so, I went back to my dad and complained to him of this. And here's what my dad said:

"You see, in those days all the deities demanded human sacrifice. So it wasn't so odd that Abraham would just comply. Human sacrifice was well within the dominant paradigm of that era. The importance of the story is just the opposite — that here was a god that seemed at first like all the others — just another ethnic god demanding his due. But this god changed all the rules. The Akedah teaches us that human sacrifice stops now. The paradigm shifts, and animal sacrifice will suffice."

I love my dad. I think he's why I'm an anthropologist. And I thought it was an answer that my son would be satisfied with as well — although it meant I still didn't have any place I was willing to send him for his Jewish education. But at least I had an answer.

So that night, at bedtime I went up to give M his grandpa's satisfying midrash on the Akedah and the end of human sacrifice. He nodded, briefly at the answer, not terribly impressed, and looked down. He had the Bible Stories book in hand, and clearly he had continued reading on his own. He was pointing to the page he was on, and said:

"So why does God kill Pharoah's son, then, huh?"

The fourth rabbi was Reconstructionist. He said, "well, God's got a problem, doesn't he? We all do! And we get to think about consequences of our actions..."

My kid signed himself up and sent himself to Hebrew School.

And then he went to Law School.