Cardozo on the Parashah: Essays on the Weekly Torah Portion: Volume 2 - Shemot/Exodus

By Nathan Lopes Cardozo

In this collection of essays, Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo looks at the weekly Torah portion through the eyes of philosophy, contemporary controversies, and personal struggles. Written in his unique style, this book offers something for many different types of readers: laymen and clergy, full-time students and intellectually curious practitioners, Jews and non-Jews alike.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kasva Press
• Release date: Jan 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781948403276

Nathan Lopes Cardozo

Rabbi Dr. Nathan Lopes Cardozo is the Founder and Dean of the David Cardozo Academy and the Bet Midrash of Avraham Avinu in Jerusalem.A sought-after lecturer on the international stage for both Jewish and non-Jewish audiences, Rabbi Cardozo is the author of 13 books and numerous articles in both English and Hebrew. He heads a Think Tank focused on finding new Halachic and philosophical approaches to dealing with the crisis of religion and identity amongst Jews and the Jewish State of Israel. Hailing from the Netherlands, Rabbi Cardozo is known for his original and often fearlessly controversial insights into Judaism. His ideas are widely debated on an international level on social media, blogs, books and other forums.

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Praise for Cardozo on the Parashah

The biblical prophets raised eyebrows with antics that would have kept the tabloid headline-writers of the ancient world on their toes. Alas, Rabbi Cardozo received no divine imprimatur to perform stunts of this ilk. But the flamboyant philosopher-rabbi does his best to implement their literary equivalent. The prevailing value of this book is its potential to jolt the reader from a religious somnambulism that idealizes robotic routine over spiritual search for meaning, empty ritual over an attempted relationship with God.

— Shmuel Phillips, author of Judaism Reclaimed: Philosophy and Theology in the Torah

I find it impossible to resist the combination of humanity and spirituality wrapped up in a lucid and even humorous morality that is Cardozo. Warning: The book is addictive!

— Rabbi Daniel Landes, former Director of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies

Original. Provocative. Iconoclastic. All of these adjectives can be used to describe the prolific writings of Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo. The essays in this book were written specifically to be topics of (hopefully fierce!) debate around the Shabbat table. Without a doubt, this book will achieve that goal, and enable you to study the Torah in new and exciting ways.

— Rabbi Professor David Golinkin, President of The Schechter Institutes, Inc. Jerusalem

Rabbi Lopes Cardozo is a fierce and courageous proponent of rational thinking. His honest and open exploration of Judaism, challenging fundamentalism and conformity, is a breath of sanity and fresh air.

— Jeremy Rosen Professor at FVG and Rabbi of the Persian Community of Manhattan

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Praise for Jewish Law as Rebellion A Plea for Religious Authenticity and Halachic Courage

[Rabbi Cardozo] is a rebel fighting for a most worthy cause — a genuinely pious Jew deeply concerned for our Jewish future.

— Rabbi Professor Daniel Sperber, Professor of Talmud, Bar Ilan University

[This book] is full of insights that will challenge and inspire Jews and non-Jewish alike. Immensely enriching.

— Rowan Williams, Former Archbishop of Canterbury

What a great pleasure it is to discover this book. What an interesting, creative and off beat mind its author has!

— Rabbi Professor Avraham Yitzchak (Arthur) Green, Rector, Hebrew College Rabbinical School, Boston

To think with [Rabbi Cardozo] about the challenges he raises is one of the great experiences of modern Jewish thought.

— Susannah Heschel, Professor of Jewish studies at Dartmouth college

Taste and see that God is good and that Cardozo’s wisdom is the stuff of a better life.

— Rabbi Irving (Yitz) and Blu Greenberg, international known scholars

Cardozo on the Parashah

Shemot | Exodus

With Questions to Ponder from the David Cardozo Academy Think Tank

Kasva Press

St. Paul / Alfei Menashe

Copyright © 2021 by Nathan Lopes Cardozo

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without express written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Cover photo by Claudia Kamergorodski

Kasva Press Alfei Menashe, Israel St. Paul, Minnesota

www.kasvapress.com [e-mail]

Cardozo on the Parashah: Shemot

ISBN:

Hardcover: 978-1-948403-37-5 Ebook: 978-1-948403-27-6

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Civility is Made from the Broken Tablets of the Ten Commandments. We are all exiles, living within a strange painting. Those who know this, live greatly.

Godfried Bomans

Celebrated Dutch Author

1913-1971

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This book is dedicated to the memory of Mr. Nejat Yigal Zarabi z"l A wonderful loving father, an exemplary grandfather and a kind and caring human being. May his memory be a blessing to our entire family.

Dedicated by Frank and Desiree Zarabi and their children

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Preface

It is a great pleasure to present my second book on the Torah: Cardozo on the Parashah, this time on the book of Shemot.

As those who read the first book on Bereshit know, the Foreword was written by none other than God Himself, and although He gave Kasva Press permission to publish it, I did not escape unharmed.

This was also true of my readers.

Like God, several people were astonished by the book’s daring but nonetheless serious content. Many praised it, others condemned it. In fact, the book became a hit especially because of all those who attacked it. As often happens, those condemnations raised the interest of many. So I thank all those who criticized the book for helping it to disseminate.

I am reminded of Arthur Guiterman’s famous quote:

The stones that critics hurl with harsh intent, a man may use to build his monument. (A Poet’s Proverbs, 1924)

I was therefore more than a little surprised when the Satan (aka, the attorney for the prosecution) appeared to me in a dream, and asked that he be allowed to write the foreword for the next book. He thanked me for often playing devil’s advocate in my last book, but said that he had initially been rather upset about the book, because it seemed I was taking his job away from him. I was asking the sort of questions that he was supposed to ask—questions that trip people up and test their faith. Only after studying the book more carefully and discussing it with his fellow attorneys, did he find that all my questions were in fact authentic from the perspective of traditional Judaism.

No greater praise could I receive!

The Satan indeed hit the nail on its head. I have tried to discuss issues in this book which I know many people—including very religious people—are bothered by. These are issues that make even the devout begin to doubt the Jewish tradition’s wisdom. I have tried to respond to this and show why Judaism and the biblical stories and commandments carry enormous weight, that they give us new religious insight in our often-complicated lives.

Nevertheless, I politely declined the Satan’s request to write a foreword to the book. A foreword by God is one thing, but one by His least popular flunky is another!

I pray to the Lord of the Universe that this book may help readers to come closer to Him and love the Torah as much as I do, if not more.

Nathan Lopes Cardozo,

Jerusalem / Herzliya, September 2020 / Tishri 5781,

In a Corona stricken world.

Acknowledgments

This is the second of several volumes discussing certain halachic-moral and philosophical topics within Parashat HaShavua, the weekly Shabbat readings of the Torah in the Synagogue. The commentary on the Book of Bereshit, Genesis, was published in 2019. Now it is the turn of the book of Shemot, Exodus.

This book contains essays that have some relation to the issues discussed in Shemot. Some of these essays are deep, others controversial and perhaps shocking to some mainstream religious or non-religious people, while others are merely quirky. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide which is which!

There is no consistency among these essays. All topics stand on their own (with one or two exceptions) and do not have to be read in any particular order. Some topics have been discussed from very different perspectives in different parashiot.

Most of these essays were first published as Thoughts to Ponder which I write every week for the David Cardozo Academy website. Many of them have appeared in the Times of Israel and the Jerusalem Post, as well as other Jewish or non-Jewish journals, papers, and books.

As always, I want to emphasize that I did not write these essays with the purpose of persuading people to agree with me, but with the aim that they would become topics of (hopefully fierce!) debate around the Shabbat table. But I also hope that they will be read at Sunday assemblies in churches and other houses of worship, and even in secular gatherings or at family get-togethers. For the benefit of non-Hebrew speakers, Hebrew words are defined in a glossary at the end of the book.

You will find conflicting ideas among the essays, reflecting the rabbinic tradition (Talmud: Eruvin 13b) that religious disagreements are all rooted in the word of God, Whose words cannot be captured in any final truth. I am not even sure I always agree with myself. If I did, I would be ashamed of myself, as it would mean that I am no longer spiritually alive. It would also reflect a belief that the word of God has been exhausted, a great insult to God Himself.

Having said all this, the reader should be aware that my observations are deeply rooted in the Jewish tradition, which I have chosen as the spiritual guide in my life and that of my family. Still, many of the classical sources I quote are not well known.

I thank Urim Publications in Jerusalem, and especially Tzvi Maor, for allowing me to use some of the essays which were published in several of my earlier books.

The publication of this book was made possible by Family Frank and Desiree Zarabi of Los Angeles in memory of Mr. Nejat Yigal Zarabi. z.l. I thank them profusely for their help. I want to thank Kam and Lily Babaoff of Los Angeles for making the connection with family Zarabi. Chazak Baruch to all of them, not only for their financial support, but also for their ongoing encouragement.

I also wish to thank Rony and Toby Hersh of New York for all their support. Thanks also to Nery and Ester Alaev from Austria, Edward and Orna Cohen from Yerushalayim, Joseph and Leelah Gitler, Jonathan and Tamar Koschitzky, Gerald and Naomi Braunstein from Ra’anana, David and Marcia Nimmer from Los Angeles, Menno and Louise Paktor, Doron and Sharon Sanders, Alex and Marguerite Schottland, Micha Eitje from Amsterdam, Wim and Gerry Van der Hoek from the Netherlands, Sid and Judith Tenenbaum-Cardozo from Jerusalem, Alan Webber and Family from Jerusalem; Charles and Ariella Zeloof from Herzlia Pituach, Robert and Elizabeth Kurtz from New York, David and Karine Morris from London, Amy Bernstein from New York, Family Feldmar from Los Angeles, Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz from Phoenix, Arizona, Rabbi Jeremy Rosen from New York.

I also thank Rabbi and Mrs. Zeev (Wim) van Dijk for their great friendship, as well as Benja and Grace Philipson, previously of Haarlem and now Jerusalem.

As always, I want to express my gratitude to my late parents, Jacob and Bertha Lopes Cardozo, my brother Dr. Jacques Eduard Lopes Cardozo, may he live long, together with his family, and my late parents-in-law Grisha and Rosa Gnesin, who encouraged and supported me while studying the Jewish Tradition and growing in wisdom.

The late Aron and Betsy Spijer and the Board of the Dutch Spijer Foundation, Dr. Leo Delfgaauw, Dr. Hans Wijnfeldt and Mr. Eldad Eitje have been responsible for many of my achievements and have enabled me to teach, publish, and run the David Cardozo Academy.

I thank the Think Tank of the David Cardozo Academy (run by Yael Shahar and Jonathan Rossner, and formerly by Yael Unterman and Yael Valier) which constantly challenges me to come up with new ideas, and whose members wrote the questions after each parashah in this book.

The Boards of the Israeli Ohr Aaron Foundation together with our foundation in England, especially Mr. David Yamin-Joseph, the American and Canadian Foundations are all the be thanked.

Special thanks to my editor and good friend Chana Shapiro, Yehudah DovBer Zirkind, and to Yael Shahar who make sure my English is as flawless as it humanly can be.

Again, very special thanks to (Rabbi) Yehudah DovBer Zirkind and to Yael Shahar for going through my essays, putting them together in order of the weekly Torah reading, and carefully checking all the sources. A major undertaking!

Chazak baruch to my secretary Esther Peterman who takes care of our administration and all other matters related to our Academy.

A special thanks to Yael Shahar who has been sending my weekly Thoughts to Ponder via Internet to thousands of people. She and her husband Don at Kasva Press have done an outstanding job at publishing this series! Yael is also responsible for many of the questions at the end of the parashiot. This is a lot of work and much appreciated.

A special thanks to my children, children-in-law, grandchildren, and great grandchildren who give me much joy and who are a constant source of inspiration. Their commitment to Judaism is my life-line.

Many thanks to Shoshannah Nasch, and Ilana Manzour of Beth Juliana, Parents Home, in Herzlia.

Last but not least, my dear wife Frijda Rachel who endures my long hours at my office, writing and teaching, with great patience and supports me in every way possible. Being married to her for 53 years is a great blessing. May it continue for a long time! Not one of my many books would ever have appeared without her help.

Above all, thanks to the Lord of the Universe who made all this possible. To Him all praise!

Nathan Lopes Cardozo

Jerusalem, Herzlia,

Cheshvan 5781, November 2020

For more acknowledgments, see the end of book.

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Encountering Shemot

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The Theology of the Halachic Loophole

The book of Shemot is the first book of the Torah dominated primarily by commandments and laws. In its pages we are introduced to the mitzvot (commandments), the mishpatim (laws) and the hokim (ordinances). These together have become the basis for the great system of Halakhah, which regulates the lives of Jews and Jewish communities to this day.

To a great many people, the authority of Halakhah derives from its divine origin; these are the very laws that God has ordained for the Jewish people. For others, Halakhah is authoritative precisely because it has benefited from centuries of human input from some very great thinkers.

In this essay, I will try to describe where I stand in this ongoing debate.¹ Let me start by saying that I believe that the Torah is min haShamayim (from heaven) and that its every word is divine and holy. But I do not believe that the Torah is (always) historically true (sometimes it seems like Divine fiction) nor that it is uninfluenced by external sources. What’s more, I am reminded of the observation by the famous Chassidic leader Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Rimanov,² who suggested that the children of Israel heard only the Alef of Anochi of the Ten Commandments, which means that they did not hear anything, since one cannot pronounce the Alef!

Nor do I believe that the Torah’s laws, literally interpreted, are all morally acceptable. They are not. Rather, I believe that the Torah is often morally, deeply, and deliberately flawed, and that furthermore, God Himself intentionally made it flawed.

It is the latter issue that I will discuss in this essay.³

Far-fetched arguments and halachic loopholes

My belief that the Torah is morally flawed is closely related to an altogether different topic: The halachic loophole, which our Sages and later poskim (halachic decisors) frequently used to solve halachic problems.

Many of these loopholes are legal fictions, used by the Rabbis to deliberately ignore straightforward biblical pesukim (verses) or halachic standards.⁴ They often made use of far-fetched arguments and twists that violated the very intent of these verses or halachic norms, and they seem to have done so with no compunctions and without much resistance. To the Rabbis, this method was seemingly a normal procedure whenever it was convenient to achieve their goals. To us, however, some of these loopholes are not only far-fetched, but misleading; they seem like a kind of trickery.

The Sages declared that certain implementations of Torah laws never were and never will be. These included the Ben sorer umoreh (the stubborn and rebellious son, who was to be executed),⁵ and the Ir hanidachat (the subverted city, which was to be entirely destroyed because its inhabitants worshipped idolatry).⁶

In addition, they decided that lex talionis, the principle of an eye for an eye, meant financial compensation, while the text does not even hint at this.⁷

To solve the problems of mamzer (a child born from an adulterous relationship), the Sages invented mechanisms that the Torah never mentioned.⁸

There are numerous other such cases. In all of these instances, the Rabbis used arguments that are highly problematic, and seemingly dishonest and deceptive. How could they do this with a clear conscience?

The Torah as a divine compromise

We believe that a profound reason stands behind the Sages’ willingness to adjust the Torah in this manner. While the Sages believed that the Torah is absolutely divine,⁹ they did not see it as the final text. They realized that the Torah’s text was a stage in God’s plan at a particular moment in Jewish history.

Revelation is a response to the human longing for a relationship with God; it can succeed only to the extent that human beings can relate to it. The Divine Will, therefore, is limited by what human beings are able to pragmatically and spiritually understand and accomplish at a given time and in a given place.¹⁰

The Torah is anthropocentric, while its aspirations are theocentric. In other words: While the Divine Will may want to accomplish the ultimate, it is constrained by the limitations of human ability. The Torah, then, is really a divine compromise, filtered through the mindset and mores of its intended audience.¹¹ It is necessarily flawed in the sense that it must sometimes allow or introduce laws that are far from ideal, but were the best possible option at the time they were revealed to the Jewish people. In some cases, they were never meant to be applied literally, as we will see.

Rambam: the outdated sacrificial cult

One famous example of this view is given by Maimonides (known by his Hebrew initials as the Rambam), in his Moreh Nevuchim. There he deals with the sacrificial cult in the Tabernacle and later in the Temple. He suggests that the Torah carefully limited the already existing practice of sacrifice, and kept it for the sole purpose of weaning the Jewish people away from the primitive rituals of their idolatrous neighbors. In other words, Rambam believed that the sacrificial cult in Judaism was established as a compromise to human weakness:

For a sudden transition from one opposite to another is impossible. And therefore man, according to his nature, is not capable of suddenly abandoning those things to which he is accustomed…. Therefore He, may He be exalted, suffered the above-mentioned kinds of worship to remain, but transferred them from created or imaginary and unreal things to His own name…commanding us to practice them with regard to Him.¹²

To give the sacrificial cult a more sophisticated, dignified, and monotheistic meaning, the Torah introduced many laws to refine this kind of worship. This would slowly move people towards allowing it to be abolished altogether, which was the divine objective.

Still, the numerous and intricate sacrificial