Torah in Context – Ancient Light for a Modern Heart – Episode 0

Nehemia: We have these traditions in America where we’ll set off fireworks and people are very, very deeply emotional. And then I look as a Jew, as, “Oh, we’ve only been doing that for 1,800 years, that’s a new thing.” But then I have to step back and think, “Okay, 1,800 years kind of is a long time. Maybe we should have a little bit of respect.” Well, this is the difference of Nehemia today versus when I did the Torah Pearls 15 years ago. “Oh, that’s some nonsensical thing made up in the 12th century, I don’t want to hear about that.” Right? Okay, 12th century is kind of a long time. So, if it’s not contrary to the Torah, maybe it is something that we should have some respect for.

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Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to The Weekly Torah Portion, a new series that Lynell and I are going to be doing. Fifteen years ago, I recorded a series on the Parashat Ha’Shavua, the weekly Torah portions, and 15 years is a long time. It’s time now to do a new series. We’re going to go through, I believe it’s 54 Torah portions, from Bereshit all the way through… what’s the last one? I want to say it’s V’zot Ha’Berachah. And yeah, so let’s get started. Genesis.

We’re not going to read every verse in this discussion because it’s not possible timewise, but we’ll discuss things. And let’s start. I know you have a bunch of questions, Lynell, on the Torah portion. Let’s get started with your questions, and then I have pages and pages of notes. I don’t know if we’ll get to all of them, but I’d like to discuss some of the issues.

Lynell: Should we tell people the scriptures that we’re going through?

Nehemia: Yeah, so it starts in Genesis 1:1. And where does it end, Lynell?

Lynell: It ends in Genesis 6:8.

Nehemia: Okay, why Genesis 6:8? Why not Genesis 6:1, or the end of chapter 5? Because the chapters hadn’t been invented when the weekly Torah portions were established. There were actually two different systems for Torah cycle readings. So, in Deuteronomy it talks about how you gather the people every seven years and you read the entire Torah, and then we see them actually doing this in Nehemiah chapter 8. The idea of reading the Torah throughout the year, that’s something that developed later. When exactly? During Second Temple period, presumably. Where it became a fixed Torah portion, we don’t exactly know.

So, the two main cycles are what’s called the triennial cycle, which was the system where they read the whole Torah over a three-year, or sometimes three-and-a-half-year period. This was the tradition of the Land of Israel. And then there was a tradition of the Jews of Babylonia who read it over a one-year period. And they actually begin and end it around the time of Sukkot. So, in other words, they’re saying, “Look, it was supposed to be every seven years we would read it on Sukkot; instead, we’ll read it over a year, and we’ll begin and end it around… it’s actually the eighth day, right, but let’s call it Sukkot for our purposes, meaning, it’s part of that Sukkot cycle.

So, the one we’re doing is the Babylonian one. And why is that? Because that’s the one everybody uses today. Nobody today uses the three-and-a-half-year cycle. I was just in a meeting this morning of the scholars of the IHBMR, Institute for Hebrew Bible Manuscript Research, and one of the scholars brought up this issue of how we have these notations in the margins of the manuscripts that show you where the triennial cycle sections begin for each section (the three-year cycle that was used in Israel) but in many of the manuscripts they’re not really used; they’re using the annual cycle of Babylonia, and it’s not clear why they’re even recording the triennial cycle if they don’t use it.

But there was a synagogue in old Cairo where there were Jews from the Land of Israel (and that’s actually where the Cairo Geniza is from, right; it was their synagogue) and in that synagogue, as late as the 12th century, there’s a traveler who comes to Cairo and he says, “Oh, they’re still using this Land of Israel three-year cycle.” But most Jews, let’s say going back to at least the 11th century, had been reading it in the Babylonian cycle, which is what we’re going to be doing here.

Lynell: So, what does parashah mean?

Nehemia: Parashah means portion.

Lynell: Portion. And…

Nehemia: So, that’s interesting. So, the word for the three-year cycle isn’t parashah, which is portion, it is seder, and so, plural sedarim, right? And what does seder mean? Seder means order. So, there’s a statement in Acts chapter 15 which says Moses has those who read him every week in the synagogue. It’s not clear whether, when that was written (meaning, sometime in the 1st century CE or AD) whether they had a fixed cycle. So, in other words, Moses has those who read him every week in the synagogue. What are they reading? They’re not reading the Torah portion of Bereshit, that’s almost certain, because that was a Babylonian tradition. Maybe they’re reading a much smaller section. Maybe they’re just saying, “Hey, we’ll read whatever we want to read this time.”

The earliest references to the triennial cycle are in the Talmud; there’s allusions to it. And then we have these Midrashim, which are these collections of Rabbinical teachings, and they’re ordered according to the triennial cycle. In other words, they’ll have a midrash section on… and we have, for example, Leviticus Rabbah; instead of it being the Torah portion of Vayikra, which is the first one in Leviticus that we read around the world today in every synagogue, right (almost every synagogue) they’ll have it according to the triennial cycle. So, there’s a lot more sections, right? Because if you’re reading it over three years, you’re breaking it up into smaller sections.

What were they doing in the 1st century? We don’t know. It could have been just ad hoc, meaning, somebody picks up the scroll and he says, “I’m going to read 30 verses until I’m done, and then I’ll give a homily on it.” Or maybe they did have some fixed system, but we don’t know what that system would have been.

Lynell: What is aliyot?

Nehemia: So, an aliyah literally means to ascend. Like, when you move to Israel, it’s called ascending; it’s called, to make aliyah. So, they would read the Torah from a platform, right? And they still do. The platform is called a bimah, which is interesting, because it’s related to the word bamah, high place, but we’ll leave that for a different discussion.

All right, let’s back up. If you go into any synagogue anywhere around the world, they’ll have a place where the cantor, the person who leads the prayer, stands for most of the service. But that’s not where they read the Torah scroll from. The Torah scroll is read from a separate platform called the bimah, and it is a raised platform, and you ascend onto this platform. And look, that comes from the Tanakh, meaning, this is something that it describes... I didn’t prepare to discuss this, so I have to find it first.

Lynell: I’m sorry, but here’s the thing. So, you know, when I was looking up what we were doing…

Nehemia: Yeah…

Lynell: … so, I’m looking up, and I’m like, okay, perashah; what’s perashah? And then it mentions aliyot…

Nehemia: Pa-rashah.

Lynell: Pa-rashah…

Nehemia: Yeah, you said pe-rashah, right? There’s no eh in Biblical Hebrew. No, it’s fine, go ahead. No, you’re good.

Lynell: So, can we redo that, and that’s fine. So, when I was looking…

Nehemia: No, we don’t, it’s adorable. Keep it.

Lynell: You just think everything’s adorable.

Nehemia: You are adorable.

Lynell: But I also read about something called aliyot, and I was like, “Okay…”

Nehemia: So, an aliyah is, they break up the Torah portion into seven sections...

Lynell: Okay…

Nehemia: … and each one of those sections is called an aliyah, an ascent. And why is it called an ascent? Because they’re reading the Torah from a platform, and so, you literally go up to the platform. Today people just make the blessing, and a professional reader reads it. But back in the day, seven different people read it, and so there’s seven aliyot, seven subsections within the Torah portion.

Lynell: So, you take the Torah portion and just divide it into seven sections. So, you read one each day. Is that correct?

Nehemia: No. No. On Shabbat you read all seven.

Lynell: Oh!

Nehemia: And then, on Monday and Thursday they read three aliyot in the morning.

Lynell: Then why break it into seven?

Nehemia: Because seven’s like a nice typological number. Meaning, it’s a number that the Hebrew mindset likes.

Lynell: Right…

Nehemia: And here’s the really interesting thing; so, the seven aliyot: the first aliyah, as a matter of honor, is given to a Kohen, meaning, someone who’s a direct male line descendant from Aaron, the brother of Moses. The second aliyah is always given to a Levi, somebody who’s a direct male descendant from the tribe of Levi, but not Aaron. Aaron was also from the tribe of Levi, right? So, this is why you’ll meet Jews, and they’ll say, “Oh, I’m a Levi. I’m a Kohen.” This is why it was important to know that, because it made a difference in the practical reading of the Torah.

So, the first one’s always a Kohen, second one’s always a Levi, three through seven are always for an Israelite who’s a Jew, who’s not a Kohen or a Levi. And what’s interesting is, the third one’s not called Yehudah, it’s called Yisrael. So, that’s really interesting; there’s this kind of idea that, oh well, the Jews are only two of the tribes, the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, because they’re from the kingdom of Judah. Which may be true, right? But in medieval Jewish thought and writing, we’re not called Jews, we’re called Israel. So, it’s Kohen, Levi, and then Yisrael, Israel.

So, three, four, five, six and seven of the aliyot, there’s someone who’s a Jew who’s not a Kohen or a Levi. Are you with me?

Lynell: I’m with you.

Nehemia: That’s what the seven aliyot are. Now, what do you do if you have a synagogue and there’s only 12 people and there’s no Kohen? So, then Levi goes first. And what if there’s no Levi, but there’s only a Kohen? Well, then Kohen, and then Israel is second, right? And then if you have no Kohen or Levi, which I guess could happen in very small synagogues, then the Israel goes first, right?

Lynell: There’s one more term.

Nehemia: What’s that?

Lynell: There’s one more term I learned that I have a question about.

Nehemia: What’s that?

Lynell: Haftarah.

Nehemia: Ah! So, haftarah, which some American Jews (or non-Jews, especially) think is “half-Torah”. No.

Lynell: It sounds like it, just saying.

Nehemia: So, haftarah has nothing to do with the word Torah, even though they’ll say “haf-Torah”, and even Jews, like Ashkenazi Jews, will say “haf-Torah”, right, so it sounds like Torah. Torah is from the word… Torah means instruction, from the root Yud-Resh-Hey. Everything has a three-letter root, right? Every noun, adjective and verb. Haftarah isn’t spelled with a Tav, it’s spelled with a Tet; different letter. So, haftarah means something like the exemption, right? So, it’s from the root Peh-Tet-Resh, which means to exempt somebody. Literally, it’s to open up.

Lynell: So, what does that have to do with…

Nehemia: Parashah?

Lynell: Parashah.

Nehemia: So, every Torah portion has a haftarah. The haftarah is what can be referred to as the Prophets portion.

Lynell: Oh! Okay, now I get it. Now I get it.

Nehemia: And what is the idea of haftarah? So, haftarah literally means that which makes you exempt. So, what does that mean? So, there was this belief that we’re required to read from the Torah every week. The story we’re told (and I say the story we’re told because I don’t know if this is actually what happened, but the story we’re told) is that the Greeks, the Seleucid Greeks, and then later the Romans, made it forbidden to publicly read the Torah. So, the Jews had a workaround. They said, “All right, we’ll be executed if we read the Torah. Instead, we’ll read the Prophets, and we’ll find something in the Prophets that reminds us about something in the Torah portion we would have read.” So, if there’s a Torah portion that talks about the dedication of the Tabernacle, they’ll read something from 1 Kings that talks about the dedication of the First Temple. And the Greeks were so stupid, they didn’t realize, “Oh, the Jews are pulling one over on us.” Right?

Lynell: Right when you said that, in my head, I was saying, “Yeah, the Jews are so smart.”

Nehemia: Yeah, well…

Lynell: Yeah, Jews were so smart; it was brilliant.

Nehemia: Now, whether that’s what actually happened is unclear, but that’s the standard explanation of why it’s called haftarah. Why would you have a section from the Prophets called “the exemption portion”? It exempts you from the duty of reading the Torah, because it reminds you of the Torah portion you’ll be executed if you read. After we defeated the Greeks, the story is, we continued to read both the Torah and the haftarah.

What’s interesting about the difference between the weekly Torah portion… There’s two things that are different. So, first of all, the weekly Torah portion within the Babylonian system that most Jews follow today is almost perfectly fixed. Meaning, with very few exceptions, almost every synagogue in the world, that’s following some traditional system, is going to read the same verses. And when I say almost, there’s one exception: the Jews of China had 53 Torah portions, not 54. And that’s because they combined two of the very short portions. I want to say it was Nitzavim and Va’yelech, but I don’t remember off the top of my head.

Lynell: Who decided to break these up?

Nehemia: Oh, so, why 54, you say, when there’s 52 weeks in a year? Well, there aren’t 52 weeks in a Hebrew year. So, a Hebrew year is between 353 and 385 days, depending on the new moon and depending on the leap year. The leap year is an extra month.

Lynell: Are you going to tell me this has something to do with the calendar?

Nehemia: It a hundred percent has to do with the calendar.

Lynell: Oh, my goodness! Does everything come back to the calendar?

Nehemia: Well, not everything.

Lynell: Almost everything.

Nehemia: But why is it between three and three-and-a-half years for the three-year cycle? Because in a three-year period, you could have two leap years. Two leap years gives you an extra approximately 60 days. What if you have only one leap year, right? So, I’m not going to do the math here, but if it’s between 353 and…

Lynell: Okay.

Nehemia: … I want to say 385 or 386 days, then you could have a delta of about 60 days. And before the calendar was fixed, it could actually be 60 days. You could have a three-year period with no leap year, and it’s normal to have a three-year period with two leap years, or one leap year, right? Meaning, in the modern Rabbinical system, you’ll always have one or two leap years. And a leap year is an extra approximately 30 days, or 60 days if it’s two of them, right? So, that’s why it’s three to three-and-a-half years, presumably.

And there’s all kinds of other things we won’t get into. I guess we will get into them, but not with details. For example, if a holiday falls out on Shabbat, well, you don’t read a Torah portion that week because you’re reading the special holiday portion, right? Are you with me on that?

Lynell: I didn’t know there were special holiday portions, so, I don’t know.

Nehemia: There are special holiday portions. So, this is why most synagogues around the world to this day have multiple Torah scrolls. Because let’s say the first day, and I’m not sure in the Rabbinical system if that works, because… doesn’t matter. Let’s say, if you have a certain holiday… let’s say you have what they call Rosh Hashanah, or we call Yom Teruah; let’s say that falls out on Shabbat. Or let’s say this is something that happened in the year 1349. The Shabbat portion on March 21st, 1349, was… I want to say it was a new moon, meaning, it was the beginning of the Hebrew month. Let’s look it up. Off the top of my head, I want to…

Lynell: When you say the Shabbat portion, are you talking about the aliyot? Are you talking about the Torah?

Nehemia: No, I’m talking about which Torah portion.

Lynell: Okay, the Torah portion. Which is the parashah, same name, right?

Nehemia: Right. Right.

Lynell: Okay.

Nehemia: So, I started to explain. Okay, so, March 21st, 1349, was the first of Nisan in the year 5109 of the Rabbinical calendar, and there was a massacre of the Jews of Erfurt. And we can actually see in these Torah scrolls that have survived… they’re in the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin. You and I have seen them, and we’re about to travel to see them, although this will be broadcast after that. So, the Jews were massacred, and four Torah scrolls were taken as war booty by the Christians who massacred them. The Jews were massacred because the claim was that they caused the Black Plague, that Jews were poisoning the wells. That was the accusation, right?

And so, they killed all the Jews of Erfurt, according to one estimate 5,000 people, and they took, I think it was 14 manuscripts or 15 manuscripts, as booty. And they were kept in a monastery up until a few centuries ago, and now they’re in the Staatsbibliothek, which is like the city library of Berlin. Staat is a city in German, right. In English it’s state.

So, one of the Torah scrolls is burned exactly on the portion that they would have been reading on that Shabbat. In other words (you handled this with your own hands), there’s a section in the middle of the scroll that’s burned, and that was the Torah portion they were reading that Shabbat on March 21st, 1349. So, why do they have multiple Torah scrolls? Because it’s a real pain, in the middle of the service, to move from the weekly Torah portion…

Lynell: Yeah…

Nehemia: Oh, so, I forgot to mention; if there’s a new moon, meaning, not actual new moon, but the beginning of the Hebrew month, then you read a second section. You read the weekly Torah portion, whatever that is, plus a special section for the new moon. So, now you’re going to roll from that one section to the other. That’s a lot of work. Right?

Lynell: Yeah, it is.

Nehemia: It takes time. So, to make it go faster, they would have a Torah that was always open to that section, to the new moon section.

Lynell: So, when you get to the Stabi, when we get to that place, let’s try to do a video there.

Nehemia: If we’re in the main reading room, we won’t be allowed to, because…

Lynell: And we’ll see where we’re going to be.

Nehemia: You have to be quiet. But if we’re in the vault in the basement, then we could, you know... It wouldn’t bother them.

Lynell: Of course, we’ve been there, and people have not been quiet, and they have not gotten their hands slapped.

Nehemia: Okay. No, but if you’re in the basement, you can, because there’s nobody else there, it’s fine.

Lynell: Okay.

Nehemia: Meaning, in the vault. All right. So, there are certain Shabbats… let’s say the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, or Passover, falls out on Shabbat, which it did in 1349, and the Jews who weren’t murdered, meaning, the ones who weren’t in Northern Europe, they wouldn’t have read the weekly Torah portion, because they would have read instead… I think I’m getting this right; they would read a special portion instead for that holiday, right?

So, on the Shabbat of new moon, you’re reading both the regular weekly portion and the new moon portion. And guys, fact-check me on this, I think this is right. But then on a holiday, then you’re reading the holiday portion. This is why, if you look up, sometimes the Jews of Israel and the Jews of the Diaspora read a different Torah portion. Why is that? Because the Jews of the Diaspora (Orthodox Jews at least; not let’s say Reform Jews) will observe every holiday for two days, with the exception of Yom Kippur.

So, in other words, they have the first day of Unleavened Bread and the second day of Unleavened Bread, of Passover. They also have the seventh and the eighth day. So, let’s say the eighth day of Passover, which, there’s no eighth day in the Torah, but in the Diaspora Orthodox Jews will observe an eighth day; so, let’s say the eighth day falls out on a Shabbat, so they won’t read the Torah portion that the Jews of Israel are reading because for them it’s a holiday portion. Does that make sense? And I don’t know off the top of my head if the eighth day can fall out on a Shabbat, because there’s special rules in the Hillel II calendar, but let’s not worry about it.

In other words, there are certain times when the Jews of the Diaspora are reading a holiday portion that the Jews of Israel are like, “No, we’re onto the next Torah portion.” So, how do they resolve this; to always end at the same week, or the same day? The way they resolve it is, of the 54 sections, you can combine Torah portions.

Lynell: So, someone just doubles up.

Nehemia: Right! So, you’re going to double up some Torah portions. Almost every year you’re going to double up some Torah portions. And then, some of them are very long. Like, if you’re doubling up Va’yakel and Pekudei, boy, you’re spending a lot of time reading the Torah portion; that’s a lot.

Lynell: Let me tell you why I thought that knowing what this was was important. I mean, I’m just going to be real, I’m just going to be real frank. And that is, I didn’t even know what this was until probably four years ago.

Nehemia: Okay.

Lynell: And even when we started doing newsletters, and it went out, and I was managing part of that, I had no idea. I was like, “Why are we sending out these readings?” So, I think it’s really important for those of us that really don’t have a background in this, that this is just like… this is the basis of it, before we go into the Torah portion, to explain why we’re doing this.

And guys, I just want to throw out there, because, you know, I’d like to say I have a Jewish mindset. I don’t. I know I don’t. I think you grow into it if you’ve been in it a long time. And especially for those who are just starting to keep Torah, or those that have been doing it for years, I want to put something out there, and let’s check your mindset, okay? Nehemia and I, we mentioned we’re going to Stabi to do some studies there; it’s in Berlin. And we ended up with some extra time there that we didn’t think we were going to have, because it was so expensive to… we were going to go to Israel afterwards and see family, because we thought it’d be a lot cheaper just to pop over from Europe. And it was not; it was like a gazillion dollars. It’s like over $4,000 for tickets, and we were like, “Yeah, we’re not going to do that.” So, I was like, “Well, what’s close to there?” And then I was like, “Oh, you know, we’ve always wanted to go to Vilna, Lithuania, where your family’s from.” And there was some research we were supposed to do there, and there were some people who were going to…

Nehemia: Yeah, they’ve got some important scrolls.

Lynell: Yeah. And I was like, okay. So, we were looking at inexpensive ways to get there, because we’re always looking for the cheapest way to get somewhere. And I was like, “You know what? Let’s take a train. We can take a train. It’ll go right across Poland; it’ll go right in there. Look, there’s a direct line, or we can go around the edge.” And he looked at me strangely. And I was like, “Okay, you know, trains are fine. I know you get motion sick.” And he looked at me with… and he’s all serious. He’s very serious, and he said, “I have no… I try to avoid…”

Nehemia: I’ve been trying to avoid taking a train from Germany to Poland, because it’s impossible for me to think about a train through Poland without thinking about Auschwitz, which, you know, the iconic symbol of Auschwitz is the train tracks. When I was a senior in high school, I went on a trip with a Jewish group to Poland, and we went to Auschwitz and other places (Majdanek and Treblinka) and there were Jews who had bought a first-class ticket from Belgium. They were told, “You’re being sent to the east to work,” and they said, “make sure you mark your name on your suitcase, so that when you arrive at the work camp, you’ll get your suitcase.” And they were in their tuxedos and their fancy outfits, and the train arrived to Auschwitz, and they were stripped and sent to gas chambers and killed.

Lynell: So, guys…

Nehemia: So, I’ve been trying to avoid taking trains through Poland, especially…

Lynell: So, what he actually said to me… now, he didn’t bring up any of this, okay? None of this that he just said, you know, that he was thinking, none of this did he say. He looked at me… there was a strange look on his face. We’ve been married for six years, so, I mean, I know his looks. He looked at me, he said, “I try to avoid trains that go into Poland from Germany.” And I said, “Oh.” It took me a minute. I mean, I honestly, it didn’t click, and I went, “Oh. Oh!” Then it did click.

So, I’m just saying that the mindset that even myself and my husband have about things, like we really wouldn’t… he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t take a train. Maybe it’d be the cheapest way to go. He probably wouldn’t take a bus, but we would get there. We could probably get in a car and drive and be there, okay, in 10-and-a-half hours. But long and short of it is, with a parashah, I may ask questions that you guys who’ve been doing this for years go, “Why would you ask that?” Well, it’s because my mindset is different, guys. I grew up studying the Bible every day, but I don’t have a Jewish mindset on these things…

Nehemia: So, it’s really interesting. So, you know, we’re told this sort of narrative that, you know, it’s this beautiful thing that every synagogue in the world reads the same Torah portion. And I just showed you how that’s actually not exactly true, because they’re often off by a week between Israel and the Diaspora. But sure, close enough. And then, there were Jews, up until the 12th century, who were reading a different cycle.

But look, this idea… and I mentioned this, but I want to read it. Here, I’m going to share my screen. So, here, this is Acts chapter 15. And this is significant, guys, because this is the earliest reference to this, I think, anywhere. Meaning, we don’t have Jewish sources from this period that refer to this practice, because most of our Jewish sources… Like, I don’t think Josephus mentions the weekly Torah portion, or Philo, and then the next one we have is the Mishnah, which was compiled around the year 200.

He says, “Therefore, I have reached the decision that we should not trouble the Gentiles who are turning to God, but we should write to them to abstain only from things polluted by idols, and from fornication, and from whatever has been strangled, and from blood. For in every synagogue for generations past…” Right? And that means this has been going on for a long time. “In every synagogue for generations past, Moses has had those who proclaim him, for he has been read aloud every Sabbath in the synagogues.”

What that shows you is, this is taking place sometime around, you know, in the 40s or 50 AD roughly; you know, we could argue about the exact year, but in the middle of the 1st century AD it already was something that had been done for many generations, that they were reading the Torah aloud in the synagogue. Now, it’s interesting; when you look in Nehemiah chapter 8, it was this novel thing that they’re reading the Torah. Let’s look at Nehemiah 8. Why don’t you pull that up?

Lynell: “When the seventh month arrived, the Israelites, being settled in their towns, the entire people assembled as one man in the square before the water gate, and they asked Ezra the scribe to bring the scroll of the teaching of Moses…”

Nehemia: That’s sefer Torat Moshe, the book of the Torah of Moses.

Lynell: “… with which Yehovah had charged Israel.” And I just want to tell you, before you ask, I’m reading in the JPS Hebrew-English. So, it has the Hebrew, it has the English, so that’s what I’m reading in. “On the first day of the seventh month, Ezra the priest brought the Torah before the congregation, men and women and all who could listen with understanding. He read from it, facing the square before the water gate…” Trying to think about where that is right now.

Nehemia: We don’t know exactly where it is.

Lynell: “… from the first light until midday, to the men and the women and those who could understand.”

Nehemia: And by the way, this isn’t what’s commanded in the Torah. The Torah says to do it on Sukkot. So why are they doing this? Because they’re gathering for Yom Teruah, and it’s an opportunity to read from the Torah, and they don’t even know about Sukkot. One of the things that comes out of the story, they’re like, “Uh-oh, in two weeks we’ve got this holiday we didn’t even know about and we haven’t been observing.” All right, keep going.

Lynell: “The ears of all the people were given to the scroll of the teaching. Ezra the scribe stood upon a wooden tower made for the purpose, and stood beside him…”

Nehemia: And this is where we get the idea in modern synagogues; modern meaning, going back to, I don’t know, the 1st century AD, right. Because what we call the bimah, which is the central part of the synagogue where you go… Why is it called aliyah? Because aliyah means going up, and you’re going up. It’s not a tower per se, but it’s a raised platform from which you’re reading the Torah. And why are you doing that? Because they don’t have a microphone. This is how you project the sound out; you have elevation.

Lynell: So, I’m going to read the names in the way that they are written here.

Nehemia: You can skip the names.

Lynell: All right.

Nehemia: A bunch of people stood next to him. Why are they standing next to him, by the way? That’s not entirely clear. Are they reading it, too? Are they helping with the reading? It’s not entirely clear why they’re standing next to him.

Lynell: And someone’s standing to the right and someone’s standing to the left. “Ezra opened the scroll in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people. As he opened it, all the people stood up.” Oh, they stood up to read.

Nehemia: They stood up out of respect. And there are some synagogues where people will stand during the reading. Most synagogues don’t do that, but as far as I know, almost every synagogue in the world, when they read the Ten Commandments, everyone stands up.

Lynell: “Ezra blessed Yehovah, the great God, and all the people answered: Amen, Amen, with hands upraised.” Now, I could just ask, but I’m not going to ask questions. I’m going to read it.

Nehemia: No, it’s fine. “Hands upraised” is an act of worship. And it says, “and they prostrated and bowed down,” or “bowed down and prostrated to Yehovah with their noses to the earth,” is what it literally says. So, they’re bowing down in full prostration after… number one, they start standing up. And it says, “and Ezra blessed Yehovah, the great God.” And so, the tradition in most synagogues; each person who goes up for an Aliyah, to read from the Torah, he’ll say, Barchu et Adonai ha-mevorach, which is, bless ye, right? Barchu is a commandment to the congregation: bless the blessed God or bless the blessed Lord. And they’ll say, Baruch Adonai ha-mevorach le’olam va’ed, blessed is the Lord forever.

And it’s really interesting, because there’s this very famous American song, written by Jews, and it’s a parody of that. In a sense it’s a parody, or maybe in a sense it’s an homage. You ever hear this song, It Ain’t Necessarily So? And it’s about different things in the Bible, saying it ain’t necessarily so. And it’s to the tune of Barchu et Adonai ha-mevorach, Baruch Adonai ha-mevorach le’olam va’ed. So, these chutzpah Jews, I’ll call them, who had been in the synagogue and heard the Torah read, they wanted to say, “We don’t actually believe what’s in the Torah. We can’t put those words in our own mouth because nobody will accept that on Broadway,” or wherever it was at the time, so they put that into the mouths of their characters, who in this case were African Americans. I believe that’s what the context of It Ain’t Necessarily So is, right?

But they’re taking the opening blessing, introducing the reading of the Torah, in order to say, “we don’t believe what’s in the Torah,” So, it’s quite diabolical. But think about how deeply that’s ingrained into Western and American culture. Many people who have never been to a synagogue have heard that song, It Ain’t Necessarily So. They don’t even know what the song’s really about, right? They don’t know the song is saying, “we don’t believe in the Torah”. Did you know that? Have you heard that song, or is that just me?

Lynell: No, I’ve heard that song, but I didn’t know that’s what it meant. My question is… and that’s terrible, because that’s one of those things where we read in Proverbs…

Nehemia: It’s from Porgy and Bess, which is some kind of play or something, or musical, act 2, scene 2. And the words are… we’re not going to read the whole thing. But: “It ain’t necessarily so, it ain’t necessarily so, the things that you’re liable, to read in the Bible, it ain’t necessarily so. Little David was small, oh my, yes, David was so small, but oh my. He fought big Goliath, who lay, lay down and dieth. Yes, David was small, but oh, oh, oh my.”

So, they’re saying these things that you read in the Bible ain’t necessarily so, which is just disgusting. And to take the music that introduces the reading of the Torah… so, this is what they call a two-percenter. Apparently, it’s George Gershwin, according to Google here, right? I don’t know. So, George Gershwin, who grew up in the synagogue, and he heard, Barchu et Adonai ha-mevorach, Baruch Adonai ha-mevorach le’olam va’ed, and then he heard the words of the Torah read. And he takes those very words to say, “What you’re liable to hear in the Bible, didn’t really happen, ain’t necessarily so.” And the two-percenter part is, 98 percent of the audience has no idea that he’s alluding to what he heard in the synagogue. Two percent of the audience knows exactly what that music is. They hear it when they hear “It ain’t necessarily so”, Barchu et Adonai ha-mevorach. Obviously, it’s a different cadence, or whatever. I don’t know what the musical terminology is.

So, think about it; we have this direct thread from Nehemiah 8 verse 6, va’yevarech Ezra et Yehovah ha’Elohim ha’gadol, “And Ezra blessed the great God, and all the people answered: Amen, Amen,” which develops over time into this, Barchu et Adonai ha-mevorach, Baruch Adonai ha-mevorach le’olam va’ed, bless ye the Lord who is blessed, blessed is the Lord forever, to a 20th century Jew who is then taking that to mock what Jews have been hearing every week in the synagogue for 2,000 years, and at least annually since the time of Ezra.

Lynell: Okay, so, there are places in the Bible where it talks about this great evil. And it’s not just being arrogant; it’s talking about ‘with a high hand.’

Nehemia: This is a high hand, yes.

Lynell: This is a high hand. And if you don’t know what a high hand is, go back and look at some of the times where we talk about it.

Nehemia: Well, it’s open defiance. Meaning, it’s not just like…

Lynell: Open defiance of…

Nehemia: … in other words, there’s a category of sin…

Lynell: God, of God.

Nehemia: … to quote a great ancient Jewish teacher from the Galilee, “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,” right? In other words, there’s a certain category of sin where, like, “I want to do the right thing but it’s hard to do, and I don’t always live up to what I’m supposed to.” But then there’s the high hand, which says, “No, I’m going to defiantly reject what God says.” We call that in Modern Hebrew doing dafka, or davka. To do davka is to do… “I know this is a sin, and that’s why I’m going to do it.”

Lynell: And God holds people responsible for that, guys, so don’t be that way.

Nehemia: That’s the person who says, “Not only am I going to eat on Yom Kippur, I’m going to make sure it’s a shrimp wrapped in bacon,” right? That’s to do davka with a high hand. And look, there’s people who eat shrimp wrapped with bacon who don’t know any better, who don’t realize that, you know, this is a big deal. But there’s people who do it davka.

Lynell: Then there are people that don’t even think… you know, they believe different things, and that’s fine.

Nehemia: For sure. They think, “Well, this has been done away with.”

Lynell: Yeah, exactly.

Nehemia: Look, this is a really interesting thing...

Lynell: God lives in our hearts.

Nehemia: … if we go to Acts 15, and obviously, this is maybe less relevant to our Jewish audience, but in Acts 15, where he says, “Moses has those who read him every week in the synagogue,” there is this parallel in Acts 21. And I was just discussing this with somebody in a podcast, I don’t remember who, but someone will find it and share the link. So, it says, “as touching the Gentiles which believe…” Let’s read the NRSV: “But as for the Gentiles who have become believers, we have sent a letter with our judgment…” meaning, when did we do that? In Acts 15. “… that they should abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what is strangled, and from fornication.” So, four things, basically, right? And some of these are broad things. Fornication is any forbidden sexual act in the Torah, right? So, it could be, you know, sleeping with your sister, to adultery, to other things we’re not allowed to say or we’ll be banned. So, that’s what this word porneia is.

So, some of these are very broad. And what is “from blood?” Blood is probably something like eating blood, which is Genesis 9, commanded to Noah and his descendants, like blood sausage. And then, this is a shortened version of what’s in Acts 15, so he doesn’t mention Moses being read in the synagogue. What’s interesting is, in the King James there’s some extra words: “as touching the Gentiles which believe, we have written and concluded that they observe no such thing, save only…” which means “except only”, right? So, it’s not that there are these four things, and then the rest they’ll hear in the synagogue because Moses has those who proclaim them, he’s saying these are the only things they have to do.

So, I have this beautiful software here that shows me… it’ll show me the Greek word, like “Gentiles”, you’ll see here, is ethnon, right? So, ethnon is the nations, or the ethnic groups in the world who are not Israelites, who are not Jews, right? So, the word “no” here or there… it doesn’t always work here exactly perfectly. “A letter” is epesteilamen, right, “we have sent a letter.” It’s actually multiple words in English. So, what are the English words? It’s “save only”, and in the Greek they’re not there, not in the Nestle-Aland 28. And here, we won’t get into it, there’s textual variants.

What’s interesting is, somebody had to add the words “save only”, lest you think you start with these four things and there’s other things you’ll hear every week in the synagogue from the Torah being read. In other words, there’s two interpretations of this passage in Acts 15 and Acts 21. One interpretation, the standard Christian interpretation, is that we’re not going to burden the Gentiles telling them they’ve got to keep everything on day one. There’s four things you need to get started, and then you’ll hear the Torah read every week in the synagogue and you’ll figure out what the rest are, right? That’s what you would call… that would be the standard teaching you’d hear from people who believe in the New Testament and keep the Torah. But the standard…

Lynell: Does the Codex Vaticanus have those words? I’m just asking.

Nehemia: I would have to look it up, I don’t know.

Lynell: Since that is the foremost New Testament.

Nehemia: Well look, it’s one of the key manuscripts. It’s not the only one. I mean, let’s leave that for a different discussion. I could look right now… let’s…

Lynell: No, no, you’re good. I’m just curious. I mean, is this debatable, or is this an accident?

Nehemia: Here’s the debatable part, okay, if you really want to get into it…

Lynell: No, but I mean, just since we’re there.

Nehemia: So, the debatable part is that in the Textus Receptus, which the King James is the translation of, you have the words ei mē. So, here you see, or ei, right, meaning… in other words, there’s a word here that doesn’t appear in the standard scholarly New Testament version, which is based on manuscripts, which is in the Textus Receptus. What’s interesting is to look here… so, I have a module here. Can you see my screen?

Lynell: Yes.

Nehemia: Okay, so, it’s not always clear to me. And here is Vaticanus. So, does Vaticanus have ei mē? I don’t know. It does not have ei mē. It skips from autous to to.

Lynell: It doesn’t have “just only”?

Nehemia: It doesn’t have ei mē, which is “save only.”

Lynell: Save only.

Nehemia: Or something, right? That’s how they’re translating…

Lynell: I just wondered. Okay, so somebody decided that it’ll just be this, for whatever.

Nehemia: But the point is, the standard Christian interpretation is this. In other words, the standard Christian interpretation is: it’s only these four things. What’s interesting is, whoever added ei mē was familiar with the other interpretation and wanted to remove the ambiguity by adding these two words. That’s the cool thing to me.

Lynell: That’s a cool thing, and it’s also adding and taking away from the Bible...

Nehemia: Well, I mean, I’ll leave that…

Lynell: That’s my opinion. I can give my opinion…

Nehemia: I’ll leave that to the Christians to work out amongst themselves.

Lynell: I can get that opinion.

Nehemia: You know, it’s not for me to say which one’s original and which one is not, although, like you said, Codex Vaticanus doesn’t have it. I’ll do a separate podcast someday with somebody who’s an expert on this, and they’ll tell us…

Lynell: Okay, so, that wasn’t even my question. My question, in Nehemiah 8:6, “Ezra blessed Yehovah the great God.” Right?

Nehemia: So, he recited a blessing. And this is where we get the idea of, when you begin your Aliyah, you bless God.

Lynell: The word blessed; so in Hebrew it says he blessed?

Nehemia: Huh?

Lynell: Okay, that’s all I was asking.

Nehemia: He blessed the great God, which might mean he said something like, “blessed is the great God”, or maybe he said something like Barchu et Adonai ha-mevorach, or Baruchu et Yehovah ha-mevorach. I don’t know what he said, I wasn’t there.

Lynell: But the word is… atzra? What is the Hebrew there for “blessed” that we’re looking at?

Nehemia: Hold on. So, you’re in verse 6?

Lynell: Yeah.

Nehemia: It’s not going to be ve’yatzrah, it’s going to be the root barach.

Lynell: Berach. Okay, berach.

Nehemia: Let’s look. Let’s see. Va’yevarech Ezra et Yehovah ha-Elohim ha-gadol.

Lynell: Okay.

Nehemia: “And Ezra blessed the great God.”

Lynell: Okay, so, the reason I was asking is, I was just looking at…

Nehemia: And he might have said something like “Barchu et ha-Elohim ha-gadol,” blessed be the great God.

Lynell: Yeah, maybe that’s what he said, “blessed be the great God”.

Nehemia: Or he could have said Baruch et Yehovah ha-Elohim ha-gadol, blessed is the great God. We don’t know exactly what he said, right? It’s sort of a paraphrase.

Lynell: He could have said anything, but he blessed God.

Nehemia: He blessed Yehovah the great God, is what it says.

Lynell: He blessed Yehovah the great God, and all the people said… and they raised their hands…

Nehemia: And they said, “Amen, amen.”

Lynell: All right. Excellent. Okay. You can see, guys, these are really how we do our studies. And I can’t help it; I want to know.

Nehemia: And what’s interesting is that in verse 7 it says, “And Yeshua, and Bani, and Sherevyah, Yamin, Akkuv, Shabtai, Hodiyah”, these are names, “Ma’aseiyah, Kelita, Azaryah, Yozavad, Hanan, Pelayah, and the Levites…” right? So, these people were presumably not Levites, or maybe they’re the leaders of the Levites, right? Because then the Levites could be “and the other Levites.” “…mevinim et ha’am la-Torah…”

Lynell: Explain the teaching. What does that mean?

Nehemia: “They cause people to understand the Torah.” And this is really interesting, because there’s this belief among secular scholars, which I was taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, that the Torah… well, the extreme group is the Norwegian camp, or the Scandinavian school, which says the entire Torah is a fiction that was made up in the Second Temple period in the time of Ezra. That’s what you’d call the minimalists, or maybe those are the maximalists. And the minimalists say, “Well, no, Ezra was the editor, and he used ancient sources.” And here we’re finding out that the people heard the Torah, and it was in a different dialect of Hebrew from what they spoke.

Lynell: Oh!

Nehemia: Meaning, the language of the Torah was not immediately comprehensible, at least not everything in the Torah.

Lynell: Is that because they’ve been in exile?

Nehemia: They’ve been in exile for 70 years. They came back presumably speaking Aramaic, or if they spoke Hebrew, it was an Aramaicized form of Hebrew, and you see that in the Book of Daniel. When you read Daniel, you read phrases where you’re like, “This is not normal Hebrew; this is a different dialect of Hebrew. This sounds like somebody who thinks in Aramaic and is speaking Hebrew or writing in Hebrew.” And here’s an example I love. So, there’s something called a calque. A calque is when you translate something literally from a different language. So, in Modern Hebrew you say hitkalachti, I showered. But an American goes to Israel and he says asiti miklachat, I did a shower, right? Why do you say that? Because I say, “I took a shower.” And an American who really doesn’t know Hebrew will say lakachti miklachat, and the Israeli will say, “Where did you take it to?”

Lynell: Where did you put it?

Nehemia: Where’d you take it? So, that’s called a calque, right? A calque is different than a loanword. A loanword is, I don’t even bother to translate it. So, there are these calques, C-A-L-Q-U-E, in the Hebrew of Daniel, right? It sounds like he’s talking Aramaic, like, even the grammar is Aramaic. But it’s Hebrew, right? It’s a way that people spoke Hebrew.

And you see that in the Dead Sea Scrolls to a large extent as well, right? Like, one of my favorite examples is, there’s a verse that talks about, I don’t know, it’s yahelu oram or something, “their light will shine.” And in 1Q Isaiaha, nobody knew what yahelu was, so they said ya’iru oram, I think I’m getting that right, which is a more common word for “they will shine”.

So, the point is, they’re speaking a different dialect of Hebrew. And their Hebrew is heavily influenced by Aramaic, and they require somebody to explain to them what’s in the Torah. When Moses spoke the Torah to the people and read it to the people, nobody needed to explain anything; it was all self-evident. There were exceptions, like the laws of leprosy in Deuteronomy. It says to go ask the Levites, who are experts in this, right? Because it’s very technical information. But when he says, you know, “Don’t wear a garment of sha’atnez,” it’s clear what that means. Today, we might not know what sha’atnez is, and you get even ignorant Jews who say, “Oh, I grew up Orthodox. I didn’t wear mixed fabrics.” No Jew who actually has any kind of Orthodox education thinks that sha’atnez means mixed fabrics.

Lynell: But I’ve heard that.

Nehemia: I know, and Christians think that…

Lynell: They do!

Nehemia: …and ignorant Jews think that. But it’s explicit in the Torah that sha’atnez is wool and linen, that’s really a single fabric. But let’s say it’s even wool and linen, like, if you have wool socks and a linen pair of pants, that’s one interpretation, fine. But nobody thinks it’s cotton and rayon, right? No Jew thinks that, let’s put it that way.

Lynell: Okay, so, those are some of the discussions in our roundtable, in our Scholar Club.

Nehemia: And why does no Jew think that? Because it defines sha’atnez in the Torah itself, right? So, we have this structure in the Torah, which we’re really, I suppose, blessed to have it. But there’s a structure in the Torah where it’ll give a… it’s a tautology. A tautology is where you say the same thing twice, right? In English I might say, “It was a clear day, it was not raining.” Okay, why do I need to say it wasn’t raining? You just said it was a clear day.

So, Hebrew loves that structure. So, in Leviticus 19:19, it says, “and a mixed garment sha’atnez shall not go upon you”, meaning, you shouldn’t don it. You shouldn’t put it on. Okay, well, what’s sha’atnez? I don’t know. I know it’s a mixed garment, a mixed fabric, but I don’t know exactly what. Not any mixed fabric, a mixed fabric that’s sha’atnez. Sha’atnez in Hebrew is a foreign loanword. Why is it using a foreign loanword? Because this is some fabric that was made somewhere in the ancient world, I don’t know where, somewhere they spoke an Indo-European language. I don’t need to go into that now.

And why are they using a foreign loanword? Because when they’re selling this in the market, they’re like, “What’s this thing?” “Well, this is sha’atnez,” right. And how do you know it’s called that? Because the merchant told me that’s what it was called, right? And we have lots of words like that. We have a word in the Torah, kinamon. Kinamon is literally the word cinnamon. It does not come from English, it comes from whatever the native language, probably Tamil, or whatever they spoke in ancient Sri Lanka. And why is it used, the word kinamon, from the ancient language of Sri Lanka? Because it came from Sri Lanka. And when the merchant arrived in a boat, they said, “What is this called?” And he said kinamon, right? Or that was his corruption of what it sounded like, right? I don’t know what it actually is in Sri Lankan, or whatever that ancient language…

Lynell: But they didn’t have that trouble in Nehemiah, because if we go in the next verse in 8, it says…

Nehemia: Hold on. So, Deuteronomy 22:11 says, “you shall not wear sha’atnez, wool and linen together.” So, there’s this tautology where it defines a term that was self-evident in the ancient world. Why does it do that? Because Biblical Hebrew likes to do that. It’ll say, “The woman will go out for free, without silver.” Well, I know what free means; why do you have to say, “without silver”? Because that’s how ancient Hebrew talks, it likes to say everything twice. And that’s actually very helpful for us, because sometimes we don’t know what one of the times means, sometimes we don’t know what either time means, right, and that becomes very difficult.

All right, so, what do we have in…

Lynell: So, verse ten goes on, and it says, “they read from the scroll of the teaching of God…”

Nehemia: Right, which is Sefer Torat ha’Elohim.

Lynell: “… translating it.” This is where I’m going…

Nehemia: Oh, no! So, it doesn’t say, “translating it”.

Lynell: That’s what I thought!

Nehemia: So, it says meforash; dividing it. And this is in the New Testament. You have the phrase “rightly dividing the scriptures”, or something like that. What does that mean? So, the Hebrew word for interpretation is literally to divide something. What do I mean by that? The way I divide a verse, or even a phrase, can change the meaning of the verse. And I’ll give you the most… do you want an example, or should we save it for when we get there?

Lynell: No, I want you to give the example, but I want to go to the next piece and then give that example, because it says, “translating it”, so it’s not… it’s “dividing it and…”

Nehemia: Yeah.

Lynell: “… giving the sense.” What does that say in Hebrew, for real?

Nehemia: “… and giving understanding.” Giving wisdom, literally. It’s giving wisdom.

Lynell: Oh! That’s even different.

Nehemia: “And they caused them to understand that which was written” or excuse me, “which was read.” “And they caused them to understand that which was read.”

Lynell: So, explain to me how the…

Nehemia: So, in other words, there were things they didn’t understand, and because they didn’t speak the Hebrew of… they spoke Biblical Hebrew, but they spoke the Hebrew of the Second Temple period, a heavily Aramaicized Hebrew. Hebrew had evolved over time. Every language changes over time. A really beautiful place to see this is when you compare Chronicles with Kings and Samuel, but more Kings.

Lynell: Right, right, right, right.

Nehemia: There are entire paragraphs in Kings that are taken over into Chronicles verbatim, literally letter for letter, word for word, and all of a sudden two words will be changed. And you’re like, “Why did they change those two words?” Because in the Second Temple period nobody understood what those words meant. And why do I say the Second Temple period? Because the Book of Kings ends with King Jeconiah being taken out of prison in Babylon.

So, what’s missing from the end of 2 Kings? So, it ends with a happy ending, right? The Jews have been taken into exile, and the happy ending is, the second-to-last king, or third-to-last king, Jeconiah, who is taken into exile in the year 597 BCE, is sitting in a prison. Zedekiah was executed, so he never made it to Babylon. But King Jeconiah is sitting in a prison in Babylon, in a dungeon, and he’s taken out and given food from the king of Babylon. And what’s missing is what should be the happy ending, which is the Jews go back to the Land of Israel. The Jews are given the decree of Cyrus and allowed to return to Israel. That should be the culmination of the history that begins with Genesis and ends with Kings. And it’s not.

And why is it not? Because Kings was written before the decree of Cyrus, right? So, we can date the Book of Kings very precisely, right? Or let’s say the ending of the Book of Kings, right? Of 2 Kings; in Hebrew it’s just Kings. So, 2 Kings ends sometime from when Jeconiah came out of prison until the decree of Cyrus, which is a span of a few decades. And then you go to Chronicles, and Chronicles ends with the decree of Cyrus. So, Chronicles begins with Adam, the same place as Genesis, roughly, and it ends with the decree of Cyrus.

So, all of human history, from the perspective of Kings, is Bereshit bara, what we’re starting with, to Jeconiah has been let out of prison but the Jews are still in Babylon. They’re in Babylon, but it’s not as bad, because their king has been given a little bit of respect; he’s not in a dungeon. Chronicles is from the Second Temple period. Chronicles begins with Adam, literally the first word is Adam, and it ends with the decree of Cyrus, with the Jews being given permission to go back to the land. And the continuation of Chronicles is the book of Ezra. Literally! Meaning, the opening words of Ezra are identical to the closing words of Chronicles.

Lynell: So, this is where we take our parashah from. Well, the different places; this is one of the places to do this, to actually do this particular thing. So…

Nehemia: So, the idea of reading the Torah in public comes from Deuteronomy. There’s something called the Hakhel; it’s the gathering every seventh year on Sukkot. But what they’re doing in Ezra is not that! Because they’re doing it, not on Sukkot, they’re starting at least on Yom Teruah. Later, they do it on Sukkot. Why are they doing it on Yom Teruah, on the first day of the seventh month? Because everybody gathered, so they’re like, “Okay, Ezra’s here, let’s have him read the Torah. The people don’t know what’s in the Torah.” And the people are flabbergasted! They want to cry when they hear what’s in the Torah. And he says, “You’re not allowed to cry. Today is a holy day to the Lord. Don’t cry today. Tomorrow we’ll get together and we’ll discuss this, and you can cry then.” And then they do, they get together and they’re sad.

Lynell: So, it’s related to the parashah, this particular section in Nehemiah, because this is what they’re doing is, they’re reading…

Nehemia: But they’re reading the whole Torah…

Lynell: … it all in one day. Yeah, in a whole day.

Nehemia: Yeah. That must have been a really long day.

Lynell: But I think it’s really interesting, guys, here, that they had people that weren’t Levites, but people that were well-known in the word to explain, give wisdom.

Nehemia: Right.

Lynell: It says it caused the people to understand; they gave them wisdom, they divided it. Dividing it rightly is having discernment.

Nehemia: So, what does it mean, dividing it rightly? Yes and no. Meaning, dividing it rightly is a linguistic phenomenon.

Lynell: So, are they linguistically, phenomenally dividing it? Is that what they’re saying here?

Nehemia: So, the way you divide a sentence changes the meaning.

Lynell: Of course.

Nehemia: I’ll give you an example; I’m going to show you an example here in the Torah. It’s a very famous example. Deuteronomy 26:5 is what’s called the Vidui, the confession. And that’s: every certain number of years you go to the Temple, and you have a basket, and you say, “I’ve removed all the tithe from my house, and I’ve given the tithe I’m required to.” It says, “You shall then recite as follows before Yehovah your God.” And it says here, “My father was a fugitive Aramean, and a wandering Aramean was my ancestor. My father was a wandering Aramean.” Okay, that’s one way of reading it.

So, I’ve three words here: Arami oved avi. Arami means Aramean; can’t do anything about that. Avi is my father. Oved is the verb. So, if oved is attached to the word avi, it means my father, comma, was a wandering Aramean, literally a lost Aramean. He’s wandering through the desert and he’s lost. Who’s the father? The father there is Abraham. So, there’s two ways of reading this. The first is Arami oved avi, my father was a wandering Aramean. Who’s my father there? My father is Abram. So, in other words, the word oved, the verb, which means to wander… it doesn’t really mean to wander, it means to be lost, right? So, Arami oved is, a lost Aramean was my father. So, in other words, Abram is depicted as, he’s wandering through the desert, he’s lost. He’s not really lost though, because God’s guiding him, so, it’s a bit odd.

There’s an ancient Jewish interpretation, which actually appears in the Masoretic Text. In other words, the text you’re seeing in front of you doesn’t say, “my father was a wandering Aramean.”

Lynell: Wow!

Nehemia: It says: Arami oved avi, an Aramean destroyed my father. Well, who would the Aramean who destroyed my father be? That’s Lavan, Laban. And the father isn’t Abram, the father is Jacob. And what it really means then is: an Aramean tried to destroy my father. The verb here is a participle, meaning, an Aramean was a destroyer of my father. He tried to destroy my ancestor Jacob, but God wouldn’t allow him. And so, there’s two ways to divide the text.

Now, what’s rightly dividing the text? Well, that’s a matter of interpretation. I mean, it’s literally interpretation. In other words, the Hebrew word for interpretation is to divide the text. So, in English we have “interpretation”, which really means to translate, in a sense. Somebody who translates a speaker is called an interpreter. In Hebrew, perush, from the root Pey-Resh-Shin, is exactly what appears in Nehemiah 8:6, where it says to divide the text, right?

And by the way, this is really interesting… what verse is it here? It’s Nehemiah 8:8. Ah, okay. Okay, so, meforash is literally to divide.

Lynell: Wow.

Nehemia: So, the JPS has “translating it”, which is an anachronism. So, in a later period, the rabbis discuss this passage, and they say, “What did that mean that they were meforash?” Meaning, that they were interpreting it? “Oh! They were giving the Aramaic translation,” right? So, that’s an anachronism from like 600 years later that the rabbis give that explanation.

Lynell: Wow.

Nehemia: But at the time, they weren’t translating into Aramaic, they were dividing it; they were reading it properly, saying Arami oved avi as opposed to Arami oved avi, right? And there’s many verses that, based on the way I divide the text, I change the meaning. That’s what it means to rightly divide, right? Or to divide, just at all, right? And that’s why NRSV has “interpretation”, right?

Lynell: Right.

Nehemia: Because any way of dividing it is an interpretation. Look, there’s the famous example, with seven words in English: “I did not say that she stole the money.”

Lynell: Right.

Nehemia: And depending on which word you emphasize, changes the meaning. I didn’t say that she stole the money.

Lynell: I love this example. I love this example.

Nehemia: I didn’t say that she stole the money. So, she did something else with the money. I didn’t say that she stole the money; he stole it. I didn’t say she stole the money; she stole something else, right? So, depending on where you put the emphasis, you completely change the meaning of the same seven words. And the way you divide a sentence changes the meaning of a sentence. And so, when it says here that they read in the book of the Torah of Moses, dividing it, meaning, they were very deliberate in how they read it. They weren’t just reading words they’d never looked at before, and, based on the spur of the moment, is it Arami oved AVI or Arami OVED avi? They brought with them to the text some conception of how it should be divided. Was that the correct one? Well, you can go argue with Ezra, if you’d like. I’m going to stick with Ezra.

Lynell: [Laughter]

Nehemia: And then v’som sechel is “giving sense” or “giving wisdom”, and they caused them to understand that which was read. So, how did they do that? So, that was probably a commentary that was tacked on. They would read a passage and they’d say, “Hey guys, in the ancient world there was a fabric known as sha’atnez, and it contained both wool and linen in a single piece of fabric, and that was imported from some foreign land.” And that’s why it’s not a Hebrew word. I mean, it is a Hebrew word, but it’s a foreign loanword.

Meaning, think about, like, the British say, “We hoovered the living room,” right? Hoovered? You mean you vacuumed; Hoover is a brand. No, so, the British will say, “we hoovered”, right? So, sha’atnez is sort of like a brand name. Meaning, it’s whatever they called that in the land that it was made, and it ends in a Z, which is indicative of Indo-European case endings, presumably, right? But let’s not get into that.

All right. So, presumably, they gave some kind of interpretation of what things that were difficult to understand in early Second Temple period, they explained what it meant that the people would understand it.

Lynell: Before we walk into this Genesis 1:1, I want us to pray that Yehovah will give us great wisdom in defining the word, and…

Nehemia: Can we pray the prayer of Psalm 119?

Lynell: Of course.

Nehemia: So, recently, you and I were speaking to someone, I won’t say who, and he was struggling. He’s a scientist, you could call him, a computer scientist. And he said, “Look, I’m trying to understand the Torah, and sometimes there’s three possibilities, and how do I prove definitively that the two of them are wrong and one is right?” What he really said is, “How do I falsify? How do I prove definitively, mathematically, that two are wrong and one is right? Or maybe there’s five interpretations, that four are wrong and one is right?” And I said, “You can’t. You can’t always. I could bring arguments…”

Lynell: We’re talking about the bible.

Nehemia: The Torah specifically.

Lynell: The Torah.

Nehemia: So, here I just gave you two interpretations. Sha’atnez is, based on Leviticus, any mixed fabric, or, based on Deuteronomy, it’s mixed fabric of wool and linen. Now, you could come along and say, “Wait a minute; when it says wool and linen, that’s just an example of a mixed fabric, and it’s any mixed fabric based on Leviticus.” Now, I think that’s patently wrong, and I know I’m right because it’s what I think. But what if you disagree with me? How can we falsify one interpretation over the other? And there, I think it’s easy, but in many cases it’s not. And the answer is, you can’t always; we have to do the best we can with what we have. You know, there’s a passage in Deuteronomy that says, “Who’s going to go up to heaven and bring it down for me, or go across the sea and bring it for me?”

Lynell: Okay, I want you to slow down, because this is really, really important in understanding the word of God. I think it’s a key scripture in the whole Bible about understanding it.

Nehemia: So, let’s look at it. Let’s read it. And this will be the introductory episode; this won’t be the Bereshit episode. I guess it’ll have to be.

Lynell: Well, you don’t know what it’s going to be. I mean, it could be one of the three that we talked about. We don’t know what it’s going to be.

Nehemia: We’ll see. I think this will be the introductory.

Lynell: Maybe not everybody’s interested in…

Nehemia: All right. So, Deuteronomy 30 verse 12. No, this is important background information, right? In other words, what we’re essentially doing is explaining, what is the approach you’re taking in the scripture? When you’re going through the Torah, what approach are you taking? And there’s different approaches you could take. You could take a Midrashic approach that says all of this has symbolic meaning, and when I read about sha’atnez, what I’m interested in is, what is the gematria of the word sha’atnez? And what does that apply to in, I don’t know, in the life of some Hasidic rabbi, right? That could be one approach.

Another approach could be, you know, when it says a red heifer, that refers to the blood of sacrifices, and therefore the blood of Jesus, right? That’s another approach. I’m taking a different approach in reading the Torah. And my approach is, number one… In Deuteronomy, let’s start with the hakhel, because that’s really important. And look, there’s other approaches. Go listen to a different podcast, and you should, right? Meaning, this shouldn’t be the only teaching you hear about the Torah, hopefully, and you’ll hear different approaches, and search it out for yourself in fear and trembling, prayer and study, before the Creator of the universe. But we have in Deuteronomy the hakhel, which is the gathering. Do you want to read that?

Lynell: Am I going to 31 verse 12? Okay, let’s do that.

Nehemia: Yeah, actually, let’s start in 31:10. 31:9, let’s start with that.

Lynell: All right, 31:9.

Nehemia: “And Moshe wrote down this Torah”, it says. Which Torah? The one that we’re reading.

Lynell: “Moshe wrote down this Torah and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who carried the Ark of Yehovah’s Covenant.” Is that what that says?

Nehemia: Yeah, the Ark of the Covenant of Yehovah.

Lynell: “And to all the elders of Israel. And Moses instructed them as follows: every seventh year, the year set for remission, at the Feast of Booths…”

Nehemia: So, remission is the shemitah, during the shemitah year.

Lynell: “… when all Israel comes to appear before Yehovah your God in the place that He will choose, you shall read this Torah aloud in the presence of all Israel. Gather the people; men, women, children, and the strangers in your communities, so that they may hear and so learn to fear Yehovah your God and to observe faithfully every word of this Torah.”

Nehemia: So, my working assumption is that the way that the ancient Israelites in the time of Moses and Joshua were intended… Right? So, here I’m trying to say, “Okay, the entity that wrote this, God, through Moses and Joshua, how did He intend for us to understand this in a way that you could hear it and know what to do?” And so, that’s why gematria (the numerological meaning, of words, or value of words) is fascinating to some people. I’m not interested in that. I’m looking for pshat. And pshat, the plain meaning, is the interpretation based on the language and the context, using common sense, as it would or could have been understood by an ancient Israelite. I don’t always know what that is. There might be three possibilities for pshat, and I have to figure out which one of those makes the most sense.

All right. Verse 13 is extremely important, so, let’s read that.

Lynell: It says, “Their children too.” T-H-E-I-R, “their children too, who had not had the experience…”

Nehemia: It says, “who they did not hear and learn to fear Yehovah your God.”

Lynell: They had to be less than seven years old, I guess.

Nehemia: They’d never heard the Torah to where they could comprehend it before.

Lynell: “… shall hear and learn to fear Yehovah your God as long as they live in the land you’re about to cross the Jordan to possess.”

Nehemia: So, in other words, let’s say there’s a 10-year-old, and the last time he heard it he was three; nothing clicked. He’s now hearing it and saying, “Oh, okay, this is what I’m supposed to do.” He’s not thinking, “What’s the mathematical value of the word shemesh, sun,” right? He’s thinking, “Okay, what do these words mean? What do they mean in their context? I’ve just heard them; what do they mean? I know what the word yamin means, it means right. And I knew what the word smol means, it means left.” How did he know that? Because they spoke Biblical Hebrew.

So, I’m taking an approach based on the meaning of words in Biblical Hebrew which I have to reconstruct. What are the commandments that we’re commanded to do, right? So, if it says that Abraham led 318 men, I say, why 318? Because the 319th guy had diarrhea and he couldn’t come with, and there’s 317 men and one guy joined them at the last minute. I don’t know, right? It just happened to be that there’s 318 men.

A Midrashic approach is to say, “No, the value of 318 alludes to the name Eliezer. So, there was one man named Eliezer, and he had the power of 318 men.” Could it have been that there was one man? Sure, but that’s not the pshat; that’s not the plain meaning. That’s not what a child who’s 10 years old would understand.

Lynell: You always lose me with your boy statements that I would never think of. I can’t help it; it just comes out of you. Okay, let me ask this.

Nehemia: Yes.

Lynell: You always say, Nehemia, that there’s so much that we can’t do because the Temple’s not here, there’s a lot of situations that aren’t here. So, we do the best that we can...

Nehemia: So, that we want to look in Deuteronomy 30.

Lynell: Right. So, that’s where we…

Nehemia: So, in Deuteronomy 30 there’s the passage, and we’re saying… what verse?

Lynell: Verse 11 through 14… 13.

Nehemia: You want to start?

Lynell: Yeah, I do want to read it. So, I love this scripture, guys, and so, for everyone who thinks that the Bible is too hard for them, that it’s too confusing, that there’s so much… and this is, for many of us who’ve been in that place, and we’re like, “Gosh, how are we going to understand this?” Well, God’s really clear here in 30, and He says, verse 11: “Surely…” Okay, and this instruction… what is the word for instruction in Hebrew?

Nehemia: Thismitzvah, this commandment.

Lynell: “This commandment, which I enjoin upon you this day…”

Nehemia: “This mitzvah, that I metzavcha, that I command you today.”

Lynell: “… it is not too baffling for you.” What does that mean; baffling?

Nehemia: Lo niflet, and we’ll come back to that word. It’s from the root pele, Pey-Lamed-Alef. Remember the angel said, “What’s your name?” He said, “Peli, it’s hidden from you. It’s beyond you.”

Lynell: Okay.

Nehemia: I think that was in the story of… which story was that? Was that the Samson story? I mean, the parents of Samson, if I’m not mistaken? So, lo nifleit, it’s not too difficult; it’s not beyond you, it’s not hidden from you. Which is interesting; we’ll come back to that verb; that’s a very important verb. It’s not too difficult.

And by the way, in Modern Hebrew, niflah means amazing, wonderful, right? But in Biblical Hebrew it’s something too difficult, it’s beyond you, it’s hidden. It’s not hidden from you in that sense of being too difficult, and it’s not far away from you.

Lynell: So, it’s not beyond you, it’s not hidden from you, guys, “nor is it beyond reach.”

Nehemia: Yeah. And literally, “it is not far from you,” is what it says.

Lynell: It’s not far from you.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Lynell: Praise God. “It is not in the heavens, that you should say: Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us?”

Nehemia: “And cause us to hear it, that we may do it,” is what it says.

Lynell: “… and cause us to hear it, that we may do it.”

Nehemia: “And take it for us, and cause us to hear it, that we may do it,” is what it says.

Lynell: So, we don’t have to have somebody to go do that for us. “Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, who among us can cross over to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us?”

Nehemia: “… and cause us to hear it, that we may do it.”

Lynell: “That we may do it, that we may…”

Nehemia: Literally, “and take it for us and cause us to hear it, that we may do it.” So, “the matter is close to you,” it says, right? So, there’s a contrast in verse 11. It’s not rechokah, far away, but it’s karov, it’s close. Right? Karov and rachok

Lynell: Verse 14 says, “The thing is very close to you, in your mouth, in your heart, to observe it.”

Nehemia: “To do it,” is what it says. So, what does that mean? What that means is, they had just heard it; they knew what the commandments were. But what about today? What about 10 years later, where you had a 10-year-old who said, “I don’t know what it is?” So, in chapter 31 he tells us how they learned it: they would hear the people read it every seventh year. Now, fast-forward 3,400 years. Nobody today speaks Biblical Hebrew as their native language. Nobody speaks it at all, actually; they speak Modern Hebrew. Which we just saw; in the time of Ezra, they spoke a different Hebrew than that was spoken in the time of Moses. So, even more so today. It was still Hebrew, but it’s a different Hebrew.

So, what do we do today? So, my objective is to try to understand it the way it would have been understood in the time of Moses when it was close to them. But sometimes today it’s far from me. It is far from me. Sometimes it’s literally across the sea. I got on a plane and flew to St. Petersburg, Russia to see the Leningrad Codex and hold it in my own hands. I got on another plane (or in a bus, in that case) and went across town to a certain place in Israel to see the Aleppo Codex. And I saw things in the Aleppo Codex you can’t see in any photograph that was available at the time. So, it might as well have been in the heavens.

So, what do I do if you don’t have the privilege of seeing the Aleppo Codex for yourself? So, this is the answer here. The answer here is: you do the best you can with what you have. And look, I was told once by a friend, he said, “You know, I know you’re this great expert in Hebrew,” and at the time I had a master’s, not a PhD, in Biblical Studies. “You know, you have this master’s from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,” he said, “but I got to God by reading the King James Version. And maybe I don’t know everything that you know.” And I said, “You know what? If that’s the best that you can do, that is your relationship with God. You should strive for more, if you can, but if you can’t, maybe it is across the sea.”

Imagine you’re a young man or woman growing up on the North Sentinel Island in the Indian Ocean. It’s this island where the people are living in the Stone Age, and there’s a debate among scholars whether it’s the Paleolithic or the Neolithic. And the difference is, have they invented fire? But this is a tribe that their contact with the Iron Age is that there are pieces of boats that broke off from a boat, that they made iron spears, right? But basically, they’re living in the Stone Age, and they have no contact with the outside world. They don’t speak any language anybody else can speak to them in.

And you had this burning in your heart, “There’s something greater than me in the universe. I look out over this vast ocean, and there’s 300 people I know about, and then there’s these aliens who come and kidnap our people and murder them every once in a while.” And you think, “I know there must be something greater than me, and it’s not these stone statues and these wooden statues that my grandparents tell me to worship. I know there’s something greater than me.”

So, when that North Sentinelese boy and girl stand before the Creator of the universe, I don’t believe they’ll be punished for not keeping Shabbat. I don’t think they’ll be punished for… I don’t think they have pigs there, but for whatever they eat that they’re not supposed to be eating, the…

Lynell: Shellfish, whatever, clams.

Nehemia: Shellfish or whatever they’re eating. I don’t think God is going to judge them for that, because they’re doing the best they can with what’s available to them. And that God is the judge of all the earth, and He’s merciful. That’s the entire exchange between Abram and God. He says, “The God of all the earth will do injustice?” And God’s like, “No, no, you’re right,” right? “This was a test for you, Abram, to bring this up, but you’re right,” or Abraham, at the time. “I’m not going to do injustice.”

God is a just God, and He meets us where we are, but He also gives us the opportunity to grow. So, every seven years they would hear the Torah read to them. Today we can interact with the Torah every day. I’m told that many Protestants read a chapter of the Bible every night before they go to sleep. I’ve been told that, I don’t know. That’s not how Jews historically have interacted with Scripture. They would read a Torah portion every week, for the last 1,500 years, and maybe even 2,000 years in Babylon.

You know, it’s funny, we have these traditions in America where we’ll set off fireworks and people are very, very deeply emotional. And then, I look as a Jew as, “Oh, we’ve only been doing that for 1,800 years. That’s a new thing.” But then I have to step back and think, “Okay, 1,800 years kind of is a long time. Maybe we should have a little bit of respect.” This is the difference of Nehemia today versus when I did the Torah Pearls 15 years ago. Oh, that’s some nonsensical thing made up in the 12th century, I don’t want to hear about that, right?

Okay, 12th century is kind of a long time. So, if it’s not contrary to the Torah, maybe it is something that we should have some respect for. Where I have a problem is where people say, “Well, you have to do that, Nehemia. Oh, no! You ate beef on Shavuot instead of dairy; you’re violating our traditions.” Okay, get out of here, leave me alone. But hey, wouldn’t that be beautiful to eat dairy? Okay, I can go with that. I might have some meat with my dairy because I’m a Karaite, but okay.

Lynell: [Laughter]

Nehemia: Like, I’m not going to separate them, per se. So, this idea of reading the Torah every week is something that goes back a minimum of 1,500 years in its current format, 2,000 years in some other format, and probably it goes back at least 2,200 years in some format, right? Because the Haftarah, if it goes back to the Seleucid period, means they were also reading the Torah every week in the Seleucid period, meaning, 175 BCE, roughly.

Lynell: So, if you’re listening to this because you want to learn more, excellent. Me too, that’s why I’m doing it. I read the Bible every day because I want to learn more, and I learn more every single day when I read the Bible. But doing this particular series, I just want everybody out there listening who is like… you may learn something here, and you may go, “Oh, no, I’m doing X, Y, Z.” You know, God looks at us… we just read that, you know, this is not too far from you. God looks at us where we are, and He does look at our hearts. And when we’re trying to serve Him, He knows that. And I pray that everybody out there who’s learning and looking to learn from the series that we do, I pray that God will give you great discernment and wisdom, and that God will give us wisdom in what we say and do, that at the end of this you will know more about the word of God than you did when you began, and that your relationship with Yehovah our Creator will be strengthened. Because that’s what it’s all about. If He looks on our heart, you know, it’s not because He wants to see if we… I mean, He can see what we do. He’s looking in our heart to know our thoughts and our mind, and that relationship that He wants with us is important.

Nehemia: Yeah. So, the thought that comes to mind for me is, Abram was 75 years old when he entered the Land of Canaan, but he wasn’t commanded the commandment of circumcision until he was 99 years old. So, he walked with God in the Land of Israel for, how many years is that? For 24 years. My math is bad, but I want to say 24 years. And God said, “Hey, I’ve got something for you that you’re not ready for. I’ll wait until you’re ready.”

And I believe God is merciful to us. He doesn’t require us… He sometimes gives us the opportunity to go across the sea. I had that opportunity, to go across the sea and see a version of the Hebrew Scriptures that very few people in the world have ever seen, in the flesh for sure. But He doesn’t judge us based on our inability to do that. And He walked with Abraham for 24 years before He said, “I’ve got something else for you.”

And I think this is very important. I want people who are hearing this to be as merciful on themselves and their families as God is. Because I know those people will hear this and say, “Oh, last week we were eating clams, now I heard Nehemia and Lynell, and we’ve got to get rid of all the clams in our house that we’ve been eating for 60 years.” Guys, pray about it, ask God for discernment. And that brings us to two other passages, before we end this introduction, that I want to look at.

Lynell: Okay, let’s do that. But before we do that, I also want to say, listen, I also know some of you out there who say, “I refuse to go to my family for Thanksgiving because they’re always going to have a ham on the table.” Okay, God hasn’t spoken to them about that, all right? It’s not that, you know…

Nehemia: Or maybe He did, and they didn’t listen. I mean, I can’t say. It’s not for me to judge that.

Lynell: Let’s don’t ostracize people because they feel or believe differently than we do. Let’s don’t. That, to me, that division is an ungodly thing, an evil thing, unless you have evil people. Now, sometimes there are times of divide, I’m not saying that, but I’m just talking about people who are trying to do the best they can. Let’s not ostracize our families because they don’t believe like we do.

As we learn the word of God, let’s promote unity, just like they did in Nehemiah, and just like God talks about in Deuteronomy; it’s not too hard, it’s not too far. Let’s all get together and learn the word of God together.

Nehemia: So, it’s so interesting to me. We read before from the New Testament, Acts 15, where they say, “Here’s four things to get started, and Moses has those who preach him every week in the synagogue,” right? Meaning, they’re reading some kind of Torah cycle, whether it was three-and-a-half years or one year, we don’t know. Or maybe it was seven years, we don’t know. But there was a weekly Torah cycle already in the 1st century, and they’re saying, “Okay, we couldn’t do these things. How are we going to expect those who have no experience with it to just start?”

And I see this so many times, that people get into Torah and they burn themselves out real quickly, right? So, there’ll be these fanatics… And look, I’m by nature a fanatic, right? I have autism; I’m an extremist by nature. But I think of myself decades ago and myself today, and the me of decades ago, if I could travel in a TARDIS in time today, would see me today…

Lynell: What’s a TARDIS?

Nehemia: …a TARDIS is a Time and Relative Dimension In Space machine…

Lynell: Time machine.

Nehemia: Right, it’s from Doctor Who. If I get in my time machine and travel forward in time, the me of the past would condemn me of the future, because I don’t agree with me of the past. But today, I think I’m right and I was wrong back then. But I know (because I know my own heart) I was doing the best I could with what I had at the time, and I genuinely thought I was right then. And so, if I have that much patience and mercy with myself, then I should have that with other people who don’t agree with me on things. That’s the approach I take.

So, there’s a direct contradiction between what we read, that it is not too difficult for you; that was in Deuteronomy 30, verse…

Lynell: 30, 11…

Nehemia: Was it 11 or 12?

Lynell: … we started in 9 and we went through…

Nehemia: What was the verse that said it’s too difficult for you?

Lynell: Oh, that’s 30 verse 12. No, it’s 11 and 12.

Nehemia: So, it’s 11. Lo niflet… I’m going to share my screen here. I’m going to show you something really cool. Okay. So, here’s the word lo nifleti hi mimcha, it is not too niflah, from the root pele, Pey-Lamed-Alef. And as I said, when the angel says, “My name is peli, it’s hidden,” it’s the same word. It’s not too hidden from you. But then, in Deuteronomy 17:8 it says, ki yipaleh mimcha davar, when a matter is too difficult for you. I thought there’s no matter that’s too difficult. Well, in general it’s not too difficult, but there will be situations that things arise and they are too difficult.

And Deuteronomy 17, 8 through about 13, says, “Then you go to the Levitical priest, and the judge who will be in those days.” So, in other words, the system in the Torah is, you seek prophetic guidance, and you seek this prophetic authority who can answer, and then you obey that authority when there’s a matter that’s too difficult for you. But in general, the Torah is not too difficult. You just heard it; it has just been commanded.

Well, now we have lots of things that are too difficult. What do we do? And we don’t have a prophetic authority. And I’ll admit, that’s my Karaite approach, right? The rabbis will say, “No, our rabbis are our authority and it’s not prophetic,” right? But go listen to Chabad.org if that’s the approach you want. You should listen to Chabad and hear what they have to say. But that’s a different approach, and you can compare the two and figure out which one you feel compelled to follow. But here’s a prayer in Psalm 119 verse 18.

Lynell: Go back one time. Go back, because I have one thing to say about this.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Lynell: I just want to note that what we’re talking about here is a judicial matter. Not that…

Nehemia: For sure, a hundred percent.

Lynell: Okay, it’s a judicial… it’s a legal thing.

Nehemia: A hundred percent!

Lynell: If you can’t understand something legally. Okay.

Nehemia:Ki yipaleh mimcha davar, it’s just la-mishpat, in judgment. And look, it could be something that involves interpretation of the Torah. And I’m struggling to think of an example at the moment, but it could be a situation where it commands something in the Torah. I’ll give you an example that’s in the Torah. There’s a man gathering sticks on Shabbat and they don’t know what to do with him! It says, don’t work. Is this work? So, they bring him to Moses, and Moses says, “I don’t know; let’s go ask God.” And the man is ultimately executed. Now, I would say, “Why wasn’t that revealed in the Oral Law, what to do?” And the answer is: there was no Oral Law, right?

And that’s a beautiful example, because there’s four or five, depending on how you count them, examples in the Torah where the people didn’t know what to do and they went and they asked God, right? Moses didn’t know what to do. And the four or five, right, because the daughters of Tzelofchad is twice, right? And that’s exactly what Deuteronomy 17:8 is talking about. You have a matter, and you don’t know what to do. There’s people who are ritually unclean, and they want to eat of the Passover sacrifice. Moses says, “I don’t know, let me go ask God. It’s a new scenario that I haven’t experienced, so now I’ve got to go ask God.” So, that’s in Numbers 9.

Leviticus 24, there’s a man who curses God. Moses says, “I don’t know what to do. I know it’s bad. Let’s go ask God.” Then there’s Numbers 15, the man who’s gathering sticks. “I don’t know. Let’s ask God.” Numbers 27, the daughters of Tzelofchad. “I don’t know what to do.” And then it’s again in 35, “let me go ask God.” So, it’s four, five cases, if you count the daughters of Tzelofchad twice.

And that’s exactly what Deuteronomy 17:8 is describing. Okay, Moses is going to die, now who do we go ask? And in Numbers 15, it explains that Joshua is going to take over after Moses, but he doesn’t call the shots of what to do in matters of uncertain judgment. He goes and he asks the priest with the Urim and Tummim. In other words, Joshua, who is a prophet, needs to ask the high priest through a prophetic means, through the Urim and Tummim; whatever that is exactly, we don’t know, but it’s part of the Breastplate of Judgment, this plate with stones on it that the high priest wears. The leader of the nation himself, who’s a prophet, has to go and ask God when he doesn’t know what to do in matters of judgment. And that’s what Deuteronomy 17:8 to 13 is talking about.

The rabbis come along 1,500 years, 1,400 years after Joshua, and they say, “Hey, we have the authority of Deuteronomy 17 now that the Temple is destroyed.” Even before the Temple was destroyed, they claim that authority. I don’t believe they had authority. I believe that authority now reverts to the individual because we have no choice. And that’s what it means, “it is not in heaven”.

But there’s a prayer in Psalm 119. So, we have, again, lo nifleit, it’s not pele, that’s the verb. See, if you look down here, it’s the verb, Pey-Lamed-Alef. You see the letters here? Pey-Lamed-Alef, “it is not pele.” You can see my screen?

Lynell: Mm-hmm, I can.

Nehemia: “It is not nifleit,” that’s the nifal form of pele, “it’s not too difficult for you, it’s not beyond you,” right? But then, there’s a matter that’s too difficult, then you go and you ask the prophet, the prophetic priest who can give you an answer, or the judge who’s a prophet. And then there’s this prayer, Psalm 119 verse 18. He says, “Gal enai v’abita,” uncover my eyes that I may see, “niflaot mi’Toratecha.” What are niflaot? They translate in the JPS, “the wonders of your teaching.” NRSV has “your wondrous things out of your law”, wonder, wonderful things. Let’s see what King James has. I don’t even know. King James has “the wondrous things out of your law.”

But what are niflaot? We just found out in two places. Niflaot are things that are too difficult, things you don’t know what to do. “I don’t know how to do this, God. Uncover my eyes that I may see the niflaot from Your Torah.” So, there’s things in the Torah you may not know the answer to, and here is a solution in the Psalms. And the solution is to pray. Pray to God to uncover your eyes to understand and know how to implement the niflaot from your Torah.

Now, what we don’t want to do is say, “You know, I prayed and I got this answer: Now you must obey me.” No. I must obey the answer I got, not you. You have to work it out for yourself in fear and trembling, prayer and study before the Creator of the universe, because I’m neither the prophet nor the son of a prophet. But there is this mechanism in the Psalm 119 verse 18, “uncover my…” It’s a prayer.

And by the way, why does it start with a Gimel? Because this is an acrostic psalm where there’s eight verses that start with Alef, and eight verses (I think it’s eight) that start with Bet, and eight verses that start with Gimel. And the word ga’al, uncover, or to reveal, is a Gimel word. So, it’s “uncover my eyes that I may look,” or “I may see, the niflaot, the difficult, wondrous, hidden things, the things that are beyond my understanding in the Torah.”

And what’s amazing here is, this is in biblical times. There are people who are hearing the Torah, and they say, “I don’t know what that means.” Now, not in the time of Moses. Well, I mean, yeah, in the time of Moses there were things they didn’t know how to implement, then you go and you ask the prophet. But in the Second Temple period there were things they didn’t know how to do, and they didn’t have that prophetic mechanism.

And how do I know that? Ezra 2:63, and it’s also in Nehemiah chapter 2. There are these people who have a tradition that they’re a Kohen. They have a tradition that they’re descended from Aaron the brother of Moses, but they’re looking in the scrolls (they have these scrolls that show the genealogies), and they say, “You know, I can’t find my great-great-grandfather’s name here. That Kohen can find his name, going back father to son all the way back to Aaron, but we can’t.”

So, it says, Ezra 2:63, “And the governor”, who is Nehemiah, the Tirshata (it’s a technical term), “and the governor said to them that they must not eat of the most holy things until a Kohen would stand with the Urim and Tummim.” In other words, there are situations where I can’t fully implement the Torah, even in biblical times. And so, I make a practical decision, but the ultimate answer will come when there’s a high priest with the Urim and Tummim. And that will be in some prophetic future that hasn’t happened yet, even today.

Lynell: And just as a reminder, guys, they were in exile. They were away from the Tabernacle, they are away from the Temple.

Nehemia: Well, no. So, in Ezra they’d come back from exile and they’re in the land, but they still don’t have the means to answer every question. They’re in a time when you have to pray. You can’t go to the high priest with the Urim and Tummim because he doesn’t exist. There’s a high priest, but not with the Urim and Tummim, the, you know, the breastplate of judgment that is this prophetic device. So, the best they could do is pray to God for guidance.

Lynell: Yeah, I’m going to trade your no out for a yes, because I’m not talking about there.

Nehemia: Okay.

Lynell: I’m talking about… there were so many times where Israel was in exile, even today, okay? And they’re wondering, you know, “What am I supposed to do in exile, and how do I do this?” And there’s so many times that God gives… I mean, God didn’t stop talking to people in exile. I mean, Daniel was in exile. You know, He still spoke to His people. He still gave them direction. He still expected them to worship him with all their heart and all their mind, you know. He expected that of them. It’s not that, okay, that doesn’t exist anymore, so let’s throw the baby out with the bathwater. That’s not how God treated what we were supposed to do in the Torah, is all I’m saying…

Nehemia: And by the way, the parallel is Nehemiah chapter 7 verse 65, and it’s verbatim the same words, that they have to wait until a priest would stand with the Urim and Tummim. So, I call it two witnesses; it’s twice, verbatim. And look, we’re in the period where we don’t have the priest with the Urim and Tummim, and we don’t have these knowledgeable Levites who have this linguistic information, so we’re reconstructing a whole lot of it. There’s a great passage in the Talmud where the rabbis don’t know the meaning of a series of words, and it says, “Until they heard the maidservant of Rabbi Judah the Prince say such and such.” So, even the linguistic knowledge has been lost from the greatest of our scholars, and it has to be reconstructed using a linguistic approach. In other words, you hear a peasant who’s speaking some dialect of an ancient Semitic language, and you’re like, “Okay, maybe that’s what this means in the Tanakh.”

And there’s, like I said, numerous examples of that. There’s a great example where the rabbi didn’t know the meaning of this certain word, it says, until he went to Africa. When I first read that, I thought, “What nonsense. What are you going to learn from Africa about Hebrew?” Except Africa meant the Roman province of Africa, which was a Phoenician colony originally called Carthage. That’s what Africa means. Africa, in ancient times, doesn’t mean the continent of Africa, it means the region around Carthage, and they’re speaking a Semitic language there. So, this is an understanding that the Phoenicians are a Semitic people. In fact, the Phoenician language is what we call today Canaanite, what they themselves called Canaanite; they didn’t call it Phoenician. And Canaanite is a sister language of Hebrew. And if that word has a certain meaning in a sister language to Biblical Hebrew, there’s a very good chance it means that in Biblical Hebrew as well. Not necessarily, but it’s a piece of evidence.

And so, already in ancient times we have people who are using what’s called Comparative Semitic Linguistics to try to figure out, “Okay, we’ve got this book; it’s a thousand pages, the Tanakh. What do these words mean? We don’t know what all of them mean.” It was in their heart and in their mouth, because they were native speakers of Biblical Hebrew in Deuteronomy 30 and 31. We’re not. So, we have to reconstruct some of that using modern scientific linguistic tools. And I say modern, but they’ve been used for 2,000 years, which is mind-blowing. They understood 2,000 years ago that Phoenician was a Semitic language.

Sometimes they got it wrong, and sometimes they’re like, “Oh, this is what it means in Greek.” Okay, unless you’re talking about a foreign loan word, it’s irrelevant what it means in Greek, right? Because it’s not a Semitic language, right? So, it didn’t always work. But the point is, I want to understand to the best I can. There’s no excuse to say, “Well, I don’t know what this means because it’s across the sea and up in the heavens.” You do the best that you can. It might be across the sea, but you do the best you can, and God will judge you based on the best that you’re able to do. And we can always strive for more. We are so blessed today. I mean, think of what it would have been like for your ancestors, 2,000 years ago, who were running around the Scottish Highlands painted blue. And they have…

Lynell: He’s talking about mine, guys!

Nehemia: Yeah, yours.

Lynell: Yes!

Nehemia: Well, there was a famous exchange between Benjamin Disraeli, who was a very devout Evangelical Christian, but he was of a Jewish lineage. His father had converted to Christianity. And he was in the House of Lords or something and they called him something like a Jewish heathen, even though he was a devout Christian, but he was of Jewish descent. And he said something to the effect, he said, “My ancestors believed in the one God when yours were running around painted blue,” right? Because the Romans say that about the people of Britannia, that they would paint themselves blue. And then famously in the movie Braveheart, which is a complete anachronism, because Braveheart’s like in the 12th or 13th century, they paint themselves blue, right? In earlier times they were painted blue.

But in any event, imagine if you’re an ancient Celt and you’re running around the countryside painted blue, and you encounter these Jews who have these ancient texts, and you’re like, “Oh, it never made sense to me that God was this statue of stone. That makes a lot of sense, there’s only one God. Now what do I do?” And the Jew’s like, “Leave me alone.” Like, we’re so blessed today that we have access to all this information.

Lynell: Praise God!

Nehemia: What an amazing thing. But we also have access to prayer. And when I say to people, work it out for yourself in fear and trembling, prayer and study before the Creator of the universe, I’m kind of riffing on something that Paul of Tarsus says, but it’s actually based on Psalm 119 verse 18. “Gal einai v’abita niflaot mi’Toratecha,” uncover my eyes that I may see the wonderful, hidden things of Your Torah, the things that are beyond my understanding in the Torah. I don’t have the high priesthood with the Urim and Tummim, but God, You have the ability to help me understand this. Please uncover my eyes.

Lynell: Amen.

Nehemia: And hopefully, today I understand more than I did yesterday, and two days from now I’ll realize how wrong I was today. Unlikely, but it’s possible. Experience suggests that it’s possible and likely, in fact.

Lynell: I love my husband! He does uncover things every day. He does. He is one of the most humble people I’ve ever met, but I love… I love…

Nehemia: It’s hard to be humble.

Lynell: I love his sense of humor. And especially walking through these things. So, I hope that you will enjoy this series. I pray that it will be enlightening. I know it will be enlightening for all of us. It will be enlightening for me; it will be a remembrance of all these things that I’ve read, because I know many of us have read the Bible cover to cover all our life. We grew up with Bible stories and with… I mean, I had a children’s Bible that gave all kinds of stories in it, and every night we had devotions at my house. But I learn things every single day. And that’s the good thing about our relationship with God, you know, the fact that He knows how much we love Him and how much we want to know what He says, we want to be obedient, and He sends things like this so that we can study and remind ourselves of what His word says.

Nehemia: And here’s a challenge for the listeners, as we go through the 54 Torah portions week after week: to go to the original Torah Pearls from 2011-2012 and point out all the differences. “Nehemia, in 2011 you said the explanation was XYZ and that it was so obvious, and now you’ve offered a different explanation.” I’m right now, meaning, I’m correct today.

Lynell: You might be right both times. You don’t know what it is yet.

Nehemia: Well, I’m saying if it’s different. And I think that’ll be really interesting, because I haven’t listened to the Torah Pearls probably ever, let alone since 2011, 2012, so, it’ll be really interesting to see how much I’ve learned and how much I’ve grown, or perhaps devolved, according to some people, in the last 15 years. I think that could be really interesting. And that’s something, guys, go and post that in the comments on nehemiaswall.com and on YouTube and in other places, saying, “Nehemia, but you said in 2012 such and such, how dare you preach what you said today. It’s wrong, and you’re the one who said it was wrong!” Okay, well, I think I’m right now, or I wouldn’t be saying it, and maybe I was right then and I don’t remember that.

Lynell: And maybe we grow…

Nehemia: Maybe I’ve forgotten things.

Lynell: … in knowledge and truth of Yehovah as we grow daily. That’s why the Bible talks about people who are older being wise. Okay, well, there’s a reason for that. There’s a reason you grow, and you’ve learned as you get older oh, that’s not a good thing to do, and, you know, that’s not wisdom to do. And you know that in yourself. Like, I had my girlfriend call me yesterday. She’s been praying for a job for months and months, that God would open up a job for her. And He did. And it’s an incredible job, but it is working nine to five; they have very little flexibility on taking off and when you can change, and blah, blah, blah. But it’s another state job, and she just retired from a state job she started when she was literally in college. She retired from a state job, now she’s doing another. And she’s like, “I’ll have two retirements if I do this.” I’m like, slim. And then she called me last night, and you know what she’s doing? She’s whining.

Nehemia: Is she kvetching?

Lynell: She’s whining, she’s kvetching. We learn as we grow older. And I said to her, because she’s a very good friend of mine, I said, “You realize that you prayed and asked God for a job to take” (she’s a single mom), “to take care of you and your kids.” And this job pays an enormous amount. You know what she’s kvetching about?

Nehemia: What?

Lynell: That it’s boring; there’s not a lot to do. “You know, there’s hardly anything to do. They’re just paying me to sit there.” Oh, poor thing! I feel sorry for you!

Nehemia: Be careful what you ask for, you might just get it.

Lynell: And I said to her, I really did, I said, “Be careful, because you prayed and asked Yehovah to give you a job, and He gave you a job.” I said, “Do you think that God is so incapable of reaching down and doing something really amazing for you?” And she’s like, “Well, what if I took the wrong job?” I said, “How many were you offered?”

Nehemia: So, this is actually really profound, because think about what we just said from Psalm 119 verse 18. If you pray to God “uncover my eyes that I may see the difficult things, or the wonderful hidden things, of Your Torah,” and He reveals something to you, it might just change your life, but it also might change your life. That might be wonderful, and a blessing, and a feeling of release and empowerment, but it also may be like, “Oh, I really like shrimp. I really liked…” you know, whatever. “I really liked,” I don’t know, whatever it is.

Lynell: Someone may have said that at some point in their life.

Nehemia: You know, there’s a scene in one of the Indiana Jones movies where they sit down and they’re eating monkey brains. And really, to me, like, when I see like, clams, and all of that seafood, to me it’s like, “You people really eat this stuff? This is so disgusting.”

Lynell: Nehemia will say to me…

Nehemia: And you’re like, delicious. Yum!

Lynell: Nehemia will say to me, “Did you ever eat that?” And I’m hoping he’s not going to ask that…

Nehemia: And she’s like drooling, like…

Lynell: … because he asks that quite often. I’m like, “Yes, and it’s absolutely delicious.” And he says to me, “But it looks like a cockroach.” I’m like, “It doesn’t to me.”

Nehemia: No, but it literally… what do you call those? Crayfish.

Lynell: No, it doesn’t!

Nehemia: Crayfish could literally be cockroaches.

Lynell: No, they couldn’t!

Nehemia: But you know what’s really delicious is grasshoppers.

Lynell: Disgusting. And kosher.

Nehemia: They’re delicious.

Lynell: Disgusting and kosher.

Nehemia: Permissible.

Lynell: All right, so, there you go with our family discussions.

Nehemia: So, let’s end. Look, we were going to do the Torah portion of Genesis, and we were going to read (and this is me having memorized it decades ago), “Bereshit bara Elohim et ha-shamayim ve’et ha’aretz. I hope I’m getting this right. Ve’ha’aretz hayta tohu va’vohu, ve’choshech al pnei tehom, ve’ruach Elohim merachefet al pnei ha-mayim.” So, we were going to read Genesis 1:1, and we’ll have to do that in the next episode.

Lynell: Yeah, because I have a question on the third word. I’m just saying, and I’m not trying to hold us up.

Nehemia: Elohim?

Lynell: Lo. No, no, no, no, the English version. No, not Elohim.

Nehemia: What’s the third? Okay, give us spoilers, or a teaser for what’s coming up.

Lynell: Okay. It says in different versions, and at the Museum of the Bible, okay: “When God began…” Okay, I’m sorry.

Nehemia: So, in other words, what does Bereshit mean?

Lynell: My version says, “In the beginning.” We’re not going to go there. But “in the beginning.”

Nehemia: Is it “in the beginning”, or “in the beginning of?” Okay, we’ll discuss that in the next episode of the Weekly Torah Portion.