por Ariel David

Analysis of skeletons in the Philistine city of Ashkelon answers the elusive question of just where the Israelites’ biblical archenemies came from

Science has made a huge leap forward in dispelling the mystery that surrounds the Philistines, the biblical archenemies of the Israelites who suddenly appeared on the coasts of the Levant more than 3,000 years ago.

The origins of this ancient population have eluded scholars for centuries. Now, an analysis of DNA extracted from skeletons unearthed at Ashkelon, on Israel’s southern coast, confirms the theory that the earliest Philistines had at least some European ancestry, most likely from the south of the continent. This supports the long-held theory by some scholars, based on clues from ancient texts and similarities in archaeological finds from the two regions, that the Philistines hailed from the Aegean. 

“This is pretty critical evidence that we are on the right track in understanding the Philistines as a people who came out of the Aegean and reached places like Ashkelon as immigrants,” says Daniel Master, a professor of archaeology at Wheaton College and co-director of the dig at Ashkelon.

The study, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, shows that these early European settlers quickly intermingled with the local population. Within a couple of centuries the Philistine genome became virtually indistinguishable from that of the Levantine peoples among whom they dwelled.

The new research appears to confirm what ancient texts, including the Bible, tell us about the origins of the Philistines. More broadly, it sheds light on the enigmatic Sea Peoples, a loose coalition of marauding groups – which included the Philistines – who have often been blamed, perhaps unfairly, for singlehandedly causing the sudden destruction of major civilizations during the so-called Bronze Age Collapse.

Since the early 19th century, when hieroglyphics were first deciphered, scholars have identified the biblical Philistines with the “Peleset” described in Egyptian records as one of the Sea Peoples who came from “their islands” and attacked Egypt during the reign of Ramses III, in the first half of the 12th century B.C.E.

The Sea Peoples were barely repulsed, but Egypt was diminished, losing its empire in the Levant. Meanwhile, the Philistines settled on the southern coast of Canaan just as other great civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean, including the Myceneans and the Hittites, disappeared entirely. Questions of what role the Philistines and the other Sea Peoples played in this collapse, whence they came from any and why they swept through the Mediterranean have been hotly debated by researchers

But pots and pans can be traded or imitated, and there is an opposing school of thought arguing that the Philistines themselves were not Aegean. Some researchers believe their origins should be traced to the Levant, possibly to southern Anatolia, where a kingdom with the Philistine-sounding name “Palasatini” or “Palastin” emerged after the collapse of the Hittite empire.

While it is possible that European settlers or their influence also reached the northern Levant, it is no longer feasible to theorize that the Philistines were simply a local cultural variation, say the archaeologists behind the new study.

“The DNA shows that no, these were new people who came in and brought with them their own culture and traditions,” says Adam Aja, an archaeologist from Harvard University and assistant director at the Ashkelon dig.

The researchers sequenced the genomes of Ashkelonites from different periods in antiquity, comparing them to each other as well as to ancient and modern DNA samples from across the Middle East and Europe.

While humans share about 99 percent of their DNA, there are some parts of the genome that are more variable and prone to change because they don’t have a biological function, explains Michal Feldman, a Ph.D. student in archaeogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

“Within these sites of the genome you can find differences between various populations if they were relatively isolated from each other for a long period of time,” says Feldman, who is the lead author on the study published in Science Advances. “Using statistical methods we can compare different groups, and place these individuals on the genetic map to know which groups they are closer to.”

Europeans were here

Out of 108 bones sampled at Ashkelon, only 10 yielded sufficient amounts of DNA. The earliest subjects were three individuals who lived between the 18th-16th centuries B.C.E., long before the Philistines arrived, when the city was a Canaanite settlement. These people’s genome is closest to that of modern-day Near Easterners and to Bronze Age samples from across the Levant and Anatolia, the study says.

But things change when looking at the DNA of four infants found buried underneath houses dated to the late 12th century B.C.E., just after the Philistines are known to have settled in Ashkelon, at the dawn of the Iron Age. These babies (who were unrelated to each other) could count European hunter-gatherers amongst their distant ancestors, according to the study.

“In the future, as we get more samples from across the region, we will be able to speak more precisely about the source than we can do now,” says Master, the lead archaeologist on the study. But the genetic modeling, coupled with the archaeological evidence already tips the scales heavily in favor of the Aegean hypothesis.

Still, the study does not provide the last word on the origin of the Philistines. For one thing, it is based on a very small sample and on DNA taken from one city, Ashkelon, rather than from the multiple sites in the region that the Philistines occupied, says Aren Maeir, a professor of archaeology at Bar-Ilan University who did not take part in the study.

Even the genetic data recovered from the four early Iron Age infants cannot be unequivocally interpreted as indicating that these people had a single point of origin, says Maeir, who directs the excavation at Tel es-Safi, once known as the Philistine city of Gath. 

“The Philistines used to be understood as a monolithic culture that invaded from somewhere the coastal plain and took over,” says Maeir. “Today many people argue that when you look at the early Philistines you don’t see a single culture but what we call an ‘entangled’ culture, one formed by contributions from many peoples, with influences from Cyprus, Anatolia, Greece and other places that are all mixed in with local elements to form this Mediterranean salad: and this is what we see in the material culture and in the ancient DNA.”

Whatever the statistical significance of the samples from Ashkelon, Tthere is one more twist in this story, which comes from the DNA of three skeletons recently uncovered in a Philistine cemetery at Ashkelon that were was dated to the 10th-9th centuries B.C.E. 

In these individuals, who lived just a couple of centuries after the Philistines first arrived, the European genetic component is almost undetectable. On average their genome resembles more that of the Canaanite Ashkelonites from the Bronze Age than their chronologically closer ancestors in the early Iron Age.

This means that those European migrants very quickly “intermixed with the local people and became the local people, genetically indistinguishable, even as some of the traditions they brought with them were carried on,” says Aja.

We don’t know for sure whether this means that the new arrivals interbred just with the original population of Ashkelon and its nearby towns, or if they also mingled with members of other local groups, including the ancient Hebrews. But in any case, this finding is fairly in line with what archaeologists have uncovered so far about this long-lost culture.

Going native

The Philistines disappeared from history when the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II conquered them (soon to be followed by Judah and the rest of the Levant) at the end of the 7th century B.C.E. Since they have left us very few inscriptions, the only primary historical sources we have about them are from their adversaries – Egyptians, Hebrews, Assyrians and Babylonians – some of whom may have been prejudiced in describing them as barbaric outsiders, says Master.

In reality, the archaeological record shows that the Philistines were sophisticated traders and their culture very quickly became completely Levantine in character, just like the genome of their people. For example, the few Philistine inscriptions that have survived show that early on they used a Cypro-Minoan script, but in later periods switched to a writing that is almost indistinguishable from ancient Hebrew and other local Semitic languages, Master explains.

There is also plenty of archaeological evidence that the cultural borders between the Philistines and their neighbors were fairly permeable. 

And the Bible itself, while casting aspersions on the “uncircumcised” and polytheistic Philistines, does suggest that intermarriage with them was not unheard of. Even Samson, the biblical bane of the Philistines, attempts to marry one at the beginning of his adventures (Judges 14-15).

“So beneath all the antipathy in the ancient texts, you sense that there is something going on,” notes Master. “People were going back and forth, and even though there was an obvious political difference and a lot of rhetoric, on the ground there was also a lot of interaction.”

The relatively rapid pace at which the Philistine genome – and culture – went native also tells us something about those early European settlers who started it all. Archaeologically, it has been difficult to determine whether their takeover of Ashkelon and other sites on the coastal plain was a violent or peaceful affair – it may have varied from place to place.

But the genetic study proves that the new arrivals must have been fairly small in number compared to the population they eventually merged with.

“It’s not as if they come and establish a beachhead and continue to talk with the people back home,” says Master. “This is a one-time influx of people who are not being replenished and are cut off from wherever they came from: they are on their own.”

They just wanted to live

The scarcity of their numbers suggests that the first Philistines may have been small groups of refugees fleeing from some catastrophe, or even bands of pirates and mercenaries, as they and the other Sea Peoples are often described in ancient texts.

But whatever their nature, it is becoming increasingly difficult to credibly see them as a large mass of barbarians that swept through the Mediterranean and were solely responsible for the Bronze Age Collapse.

They may have been aggressive in their search for a new home – there is no reason to doubt Ramses III’s claim that they attacked Egypt – but it’s hard to believe that on their own they could bring down multiple great empires.

Research on the period has already been going in this direction for a while. Studies like those of historian Eric Cline suggest the Bronze Age Collapse was not sparked by a single cause but by multiple systemic and environmental factors that caused a domino effect among polities that were deeply interconnected. Climate change may have been a major contributor, as scientists studying the pollen record in the Sea of Galilee have shown that between 1250 and 1100 B.C.E. the entire region went through a period of severe droughts, which would have caused famine, unrest and population displacement. 

“The Philistines were probably reacting to their environment, either the movement of other people or environmental stresses,” says Aja. “There must have been a very dramatic reason for them to leave their homes and migrate over what was then a fairly large distance. Why did the leave? Why did they come to the Levant to start from scratch and create new families?”

Answering such questions is important not just to illuminate the Bronze Age Collapse, but to understand the underlying problems that can undermine civilization at any time – especially today, the archaeologist says.

“These are very timely questions when you look at the movement of people in the world today as a reaction to conflict or environmental pressures,” he says. “People will go to great lengths and put themselves in great danger to move because, they want to have better lives, they want to live.”

As taken from, https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium.MAGAZINE-ancient-dna-solves-age-old-mystery-of-philistine-origin-1.7433390?utm_source=smartfocus&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter-daily&utm_content=https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium.MAGAZINE-ancient-dna-solves-age-old-mystery-of-philistine-origin-1.7433390

¿Te sientes culpable porque tu hijo se mete en problemas o no puede salir adelante solo?

Como padre uno se cuestiona si tiene la culpa porque sus hijos constantemente se meten en problemas, se pelean con quien sea o no pueden tener éxito en general. De hecho, desde temprana edad, tienen que escuchar quejas por su mala conducta y falta de disciplina.

Estos niños rápidamente son etiquetados como “niños problema” aunque ellos pueden ser el reflejo de un hogar disfuncional, con padres problemáticos. También pueden ser el resultado del tipo de educación que reciben en su casa, ya sea exceso de autoridad o, por lo contrario, padres ausentes y súper permisivos, o bien simplemente pueden ser seres más conflictivos y difíciles.

Tomando en cuenta que hay padres presentes, amorosos, responsables, funcionales, exitosos y, además, tienen otros hijos con los cuales no tienen problemas, entonces cabe la posibilidad de que la personalidad de este hijo/a sea difícil y el reto para ayudarlo/a a salir adelante sea más complicado.

Cuando esto sucede, es necesario que los padres se recuerden continuamente que: ellos NO son malos padres porque sus hijos no son lo que ellos esperaban. O porque no les puede ir bien en su vida. En realidad, el comportamiento de sus hijos no dice nada de los éxitos o de los fracasos de sus padres. Ellos son personas independientes que tienen su propio carácter y su personalidad.

Cada persona ve y explora el mundo con sus propios ojos y toma la decisión de cómo quiere actuar.

Hay hijos con personalidades más fáciles que otros. Crean menos problemas y su comportamiento es más dócil. Son más accesibles y se les puede entender y comunicarse mejor. Su crianza, dentro de lo que cabe, es una etapa agradable, con las dificultades normales, pero su desarrollo y adaptación al mundo es un proceso manejable.

De igual forma están los hijos que desde que nacen son problemáticos, son intolerantes a muchos alimentos, son inquietos, agresivos, su carácter atrae a los problemas. Ellos no siguen las normas establecidas ni las reglas naturales. Son rebeldes, problemáticos y desde temprana edad, tienen una relación difícil con sus padres y con el mundo en general.

Como padre uno hace lo posible por ayudarlos y proporcionarles las mejores herramientas para que salgan adelante. En muchos casos, a pesar de los múltiples problemas, ellos llegan a crecer con éxito y se pueden incorporar a la sociedad convirtiéndose en seres responsables e independientes.

Sin embargo, el sabor amargo que deja su crianza, el sentimiento como padre y la duda que se carga por tantas dificultades, difícilmente se llega a olvidar.

Cada uno tiene el derecho de tener la vida que quiere. Los padres no son dueños de sus hijos, y a pesar de que se les da todo el amor y entendimiento que se puede, los hijos tienen sus propios pensamientos, sus elecciones y su forma de ser.

La receta: Reconociendo la individualidad de los hijos

Ingredientes:

• Amor incondicional – aceptación, cariño y cuidado sin prejuicios, ni consideraciones
• Respeto – reconocer las diferencias, fortalezas y debilidades con decoro
• Empatía – entender y poder ver el mundo con los ojos del otro
• Límites – establecer con claridad las reglas y las normas a seguir
• Paciencia – aguante y confianza para que la vida tome su camino

Afirmación Positiva para aceptar a los hijos como son:

Mi hijo/a es un regalo muy especial, lo valoro y lo cuido como el tesoro más valioso que tengo. Él no me pertenece y no soy responsable por sus decisiones. Me alegro por sus triunfos y me duelen sus fracasos. Hago todo lo que este en mi alcance para ayudarlo a que sea una persona independiente y exitosa, pero él es el único que puede decidir qué quiere hacer con su vida.

Como manejar la culpa y aceptar a mi hijo/a

1. Los padres siempre buscan lo mejor para sus hijos. Como padres siempre se da todo lo que tiene, entiende y conoce para que sus hijos triunfen y aprovechen su vida al máximo.
2. El papel de los padres es de preparar a sus hijos para que sean independientes y responsables. Los hijos pueden aprender las lecciones y seguir el camino que se les ofrece, o bien tomar otra avenida y vivir sus consecuencias con sus aprendizajes.
3. Los padres también tienen sus limitaciones. Por más amor y paciencia que tengan no siempre está en sus manos poder ayudar a sus hijos a superar sus debilidades o sus problemas.

“Es más efectivo encontrar una conexión sincera con tus hijos en lugar de corregirlos, criticarlos y castigarlos”.

Segun tomado de, https://www.aishlatino.com/fm/recetas-para-la-vida/Por-que-a-mi-hijo-no-le-va-bien-en-la-vida.html?s=mm

The vast trove of Sigmund Freud’s letters sheds light not only on the subjects that occupied the father of psychoanalysis, but also on the role the very act of writing them played in his life

At the age of 17, Sigmund Freud wrote to a friend: “Until now [you] have probably remained unaware that you have been exchanging letters with a German stylist. And now I advise you as a friend, not as an interested party, to preserve them – have them bound – take good care of them – one never knows.”

The young Freud was prescient. His devotion to letter-writing was extraordinary, even in a period that cultivated personal correspondence as an art. He’s estimated to have written 30,000 letters during the 83 years of his life. His estate contains wild and very humorous writing from his youth, passionate and revealing love letters to his fiancée, and the formative – and no less passionate – correspondence with his Berlin-based friend Wilhelm Fliess. Alongside these is correspondence documenting the “self-analysis” chapter of his life, whose peak is the discovery of the Oedipus complex and the solution to the riddle of the dream. By the time he was 30, it was clear that for Freud letter-writing occupied a place not only in his interpersonal relations but also in his discoveries, in the emergence of psychoanalysis as a world scientific movement and in sustaining his unflagging creativity.

Freud’s correspondents could take note of the tension between his positivist aspirations as a scholar and a physician, and the poetic and lyrical elements of his personality; become acquainted with the interplay of revolutionism and conservatism in his thought; and be regaled with his thoughts about femininity, sexuality, parenthood, money, smoking, cancer, ecology, archaeology and “an inhuman law devoid of empathy, which imposes the pursuit of a pregnancy even on a mother who does not want it.”

These correspondents, unlike the readers of his books and his scientific papers, learned how he felt about his public status, about politics, the war of 1914-1918, metaphysics and culture. They were convinced of both his adamancy and his openness in regard to the innovations they suggested, and got to know his changing thoughts about psychoanalytic technique, the interpretation of dreams, the place of early sexual trauma in the life of the psyche and about homosexuality. With some people, he shared his thoughts in the wake of his meeting with Albert Einstein and about the odd fantasy he cultivated in his younger days to analyze the Russian czar and thereby avert another war.

Freud enjoyed surprising recipients of his letters with sensational reports and various items of personal news: about his decision to stop smoking (which lasted exactly until he finished writing the letter in which he described that decision) or about a jolting encounter with Austrian anti-Semitism, which he experienced as a resident in a hospital, as he recounted it to his fiancée, Martha Bernays:

“On Sunday Koller was on duty at the Journal, the man who made cocaine so famous and with whom I have recently become more intimate. He had a difference of opinion about some minor technical matter with the man who acts as surgeon for Billroth’s clinic, and the latter suddenly called Koller a ‘Jewish swine.’ Now you must try to imagine the kind of atmosphere we live in here, the general bitterness – in short, we would all have reacted just as Koller did: by hitting the man in the face. The man rushed off, denounced Koller to the director who, however, called him down thoroughly and categorically took Koller’s side. This was a great relief to us all. But since they are both reserve officers, he is obliged to challenge Koller to a duel and at this very moment they are fighting with sabers under rather severe conditions. Lustgarten and Bettelheim (the regimental surgeon) are Koller’s seconds.

“I am too upset to write any more now, but I won’t send this letter off till I can tell you the result of the duel. […] All is well, my little woman. Our friend is quite unharmed and his opponent got two deep gashes. We are all delighted, a proud day for us. We are going to give Koller a present as a lasting reminder of his victory.”

Similarly, Freud’s enigmatic Jewishness, which has deeply preoccupied his biographers, cannot be understood without reading his letters. The same holds for his attitude toward socialism, his response to the Nazis’ rise to power, his take on the Zionist movement, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the incipient acceptance of psychoanalysis in Hebrew culture, and his thoughts on death, telepathy and archaeology, music and dogs. Above all, without his letters it is impossible to understand his attitude toward the truth – that is, his daily relationship with truth and the depth of his commitment to it, a topic that runs like a thread through Freud’s epistolary writing. In a letter from 1882, he wrote to Bernays:

“For my beloved Marty,

“I am beginning these notes without waiting for your answer, my girl, in order to tell you more about myself and my activities than our personal contact would allow. I am going to be very frank and confidential with you, as is right for two people who have joined hands for life in love and friendship. But as I don’t want to keep on writing without receiving an answer I will stop as soon as you fail to respond. Continuous inner monologues about a beloved person that are not corrected or refreshed by that person lead to false opinions about the mutual relationship, and even to estrangement when one meets again and finds things to be different from what one had thought. Nor shall I always be very affectionate, sometimes I will be serious and outspoken, as is only right between friends and as friendship demands. But in so doing I hope you will not feel deprived of anything and will find it easy to choose between the one who values you according to your worth and merit, and the many who try to spoil you by treating you as a charming toy.”

Public interest in Freud’s letters began with a bundle of his letters that found their way to Paris and in 1937 came into the possession of the French psychoanalyst Princess Marie Bonaparte. When she informed Freud that she had purchased his letters to Fliess from a German bookseller, he wrote back that he would like her to do with them what a Jew does when cooking a peacock: He cooks it, buries it for a week and then retrieves it from the ground and throws it into the garbage. Bonaparte insisted on keeping the letters, and during the Nazi occupation transferred them to London. “Just imagine,” she wrote to Freud, “that we didn’t have Goethe’s conversations with Eckermann, or the dialogues with Plato.”

Like wolves intent on devouring prey, historians of psychoanalysis cast their gaze on the huge wooden closet that stood next to Anna Freud’s bedroom in London, where she had stored her father’s letters.

It was Kurt Eissler, a New York psychoanalyst who founded the Freud Archive in the 1950s and started systematically collecting Freud’s letters from around the world, and who was finally permitted to open the closet and read the letters to Fliess, which are considered the cradle of psychoanalysis. He felt that he held the fate of an entire science in his hands. Hidden within the letters, is there also testimony about sexual exploitation of patients by their parents, which Freud knew about and repressed? Does the Freudian revolution rest on an original sin capable of refuting psychoanalysis and all its thinking from Freud until our day? Those questions will continue to occupy Freud scholars for decades to come. But the interest in his letters to Fliess sparked a desire to become acquainted with the totality of Freud’s epistolary writing. Its contours were gradually revealed as an immense continent made up entirely of letters. And they, in their turn, validated the assertion of Thomas Mann, another of Freud’s correspondents, that Freud’s contribution to German literature is as great as his contribution to science.

Obligatory self-observation

“A single idea of general value dawned on me. I have found, in my own case too, [the phenomenon of] being in love with my mother and jealous of my father, and I now consider it a universal event in early childhood, even if not so early as in children who have been made hysterical […] If this is so, we can understand the gripping power of Oedipus Rex, in spite of all the objections that reason raises against the presupposition of fate; and we can understand why the later ‘drama of fate’ was bound to fail so miserably. The Greek legend seizes upon a compulsion which everyone recognizes because he senses its existence within himself. Everyone in the audience was once a budding Oedipus in fantasy and each recoils in horror from the dream fulfillment here transplanted into reality, with the full quantity of repression which separates his infantile state from his present one.”

That 1897 letter to Wilhelm Fliess contains the first mention of the Oedipus complex, which is identified more closely than any other concept with Freud’s thought. But a perusal of his letters (preserved in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., which is the custodian of the Sigmund Freud Archives, they are addressed to 600 different recipients) shows that the obligation of self-observation – an ideal that drove millions of educated Europeans beginning in the 18th century to keep diaries in which they documented themselves before retiring for the night – reached new heights in Freud’s epistolary writing. The writing of a letter – and in this, the epistolary genre, which by definition involves communication with another individual, surpasses the boundaries of the “ideal self” addressed in a tiresome diary – entails a certain risk. Writing to another person will almost always overwhelm the writing self and bring to light something the author had not intended to reveal to his interlocutor or to himself. I tend to see Freud’s epistolary writing as the continuation of the self-analysis of one who was already convinced that the unconscious needs another in order to tell the subject’s story. Here’s what Freud sounded like in a letter to his fiancée while he was studying under Jean-Martin Charcot in Paris in 1886:

“I consider it a great misfortune that nature has not granted me that indefinite something which attracts people. I believe it is this lack more than any other which has deprived me of a rosy existence. It has taken me so long to win my friends, I have had to struggle so long for my precious girl, and every time I meet someone I realize that an impulse, which defies analysis, leads that person to underestimate me. This may be a question of expression or temperament, or some other secret of nature, but whatever it may be it affects one deeply. What compensates me for all this is the devotion shown to me by all those who have become my friends – but what am I talking about?”

“But what am I talking about?” asks the person who, within a short time, would burst the bounds of the religious confession and the literary confession and teach his patients the advantages of a new form of psychological confession – namely, the basic rule of psychoanalysis: From now on, say everything that enters your mind. When a patient in analysis asks, “But what am I talking about?” it is a sign that the analysis is working and that the patient is in the midst of a new monologue with himself.

Apparently at an extremely early stage, Freud felt that free writing of the sort that appears on stationery (with the addition of a moderate use of cocaine) was for him a condition for original scientific thinking; that he must harness the artist in himself for the benefit of the scientist he so ardently wished to be. And let us not forget that in his letters, far more than in his theoretical writing, Freud shared with his correspondents his process of creation. “I was depressed the whole time and anesthetized myself with writing, writing, writing,” he wrote to the Hungarian analyst Sandor Ferenczi. To the pacifist author Romain Rolland, who wished to interest him in the treasures of Indian culture, he would write, “In our perception, even thinking is a regressive process” (that is, in the psychological sense).

The young Freud was an industrious scientist (400 eels fell prey to his research on the reproductive organs of the wretched creatures). His early articles attest to his also having been a gifted clinician. But it’s doubtful that he would have discovered the healing potential that free association can have – when it encounters a listener who is in a state of free-floating attention and surrenders to the flow of his unconscious thoughts – if he had made do with dissecting eels, scurrying between patients or publishing case histories of hysterical women, without spending long hours alone in his room writing letters. Accordingly, the birth of psychoanalysis should be attributed to a successful fusion between ambition, inquisitiveness and persistence, and the creative imagination and extraordinary verbal abilities with which Freud was endowed. In other words, one can draw a connection between his scientific discoveries and his response to the urge to write, to keep a record, to capture himself in the word and to share with others everything that entered his mind.

“I know that in writing I have to blind myself artificially in order to focus all the light on one dark spot, renouncing cohesion, harmony, rhetoric and everything which you call symbolic, frightened as I am by the experience that any such claim or expectation involves the danger of distorting the matter under investigation, even though it may embellish it. Then you come along and add what is missing, build upon it, putting what has been isolated back into its proper context. I cannot always follow you, for my eyes, adapted as they are to the dark, probably can’t stand strong light or an extensive range of vision. But I haven’t become so much of a mole as to be incapable of enjoying the idea of a brighter light and more spacious horizon, or even to deny their existence.” (Letter to Lou Andreas-Salomé, May 25, 1916)

Freud’s letters are not only texts of “candor,” in the tradition of the confessions of Augustine, Goethe or Rousseau. They are concise documents that possess the power to arouse questions such as “What is thought?” or “What is sincerity?” Freud does not wallow in the impossibility of communication through letters – a motif that has engaged wordsmiths, men and women alike, from time immemorial in their correspondence with their lovers. It’s not the “limitations of writing” or the connection between “truth and creating” that occupy him; it’s the limitations of self-knowledge and self-awareness. Patently he would dispute Franz Kafka’s pronouncement (in one of his letters to Milena) that writing letters is “an intercourse… with one’s own ghost.” Readers of Kafka’s autoerotic love letters are able, in my opinion, to understand why Kafka attributed the calamity of his life to the possibility of writing letters, and why he accused his own letters of “always betraying him.”

Not so for Freud. He takes pleasure in writing, and the words cascade from him generously and assuredly, but as a person of emotional and intellectual partnership, even letters to a beloved one or to an intimate friend are no substitute for the desire to rub up against the lives of others. Accordingly, the recipient of a letter from Freud didn’t feel that the great man had “done him a favor” by replying to him. Freud did not hide from his correspondent his feeling that he, Freud, needed the epistolary presence in his life and acknowledged his dependence on an “intelligent reader” like him. So it’s easy to imagine the surprise of Yohanan Levinson, a dentist from Kibbutz Givat Brenner, when he received a detailed letter from Freud in 1936, who was then at the height of his fame. Forthrightness and love of the truth also characterized his replies to many authors who solicited his opinion of their writing.

‘Excess libido’

“What I have to say about your argument will not surprise you, as you seem to be familiar with my attitude to philosophy (metaphysics). Other defects in my nature have certainly distressed me and made me feel humble; with metaphysics it is different – I not only have no talent for it but no respect for it, either. In secret – one cannot say such things aloud – I believe that one day metaphysics will be condemned as a nuisance, as an abuse of thinking, as a survival from the period of the religious Weltanschauung. I know well to what extent this way of thinking estranges me from German cultural life. Thus you will easily understand that most things I read in your essay have remained unappreciated by me, although I several times felt that the essay contained quite ‘brilliant’ thoughts.” (Letter to Werner Achelis)

When correspondence with a student or a friend loses its flavor, the significance is that the entire relationship is in doubt. Freud did not hide that truth from correspondents. “You will undoubtedly suppose that I am writing to you from practical motives and not from an inner urge after such a long break. And that is so,” he wrote to Fliess in one of the letters concluding long years of intensive relations. When relations with Carl Jung foundered, Freud observed them from an epistolary perspective, writing him: “There can be no doubt that I was a demanding correspondent…  I took myself in hand and quickly turned off my excess libido. I was sorry to do so, yet glad to see how quickly I managed it. Since then I have become undemanding and not to be feared.”

If for his patients Freud was an attentive listener, for his correspondents he was an alert reader, a jumpy seismograph reacting to surface and subterranean layers in the letters they sent him; apologizing for not having succeeded in fully grasping the meaning of a pen-friend; providing a glimpse into the reason for his delay in replying to a letter. The word “empathy,” which we have become accustomed to think is crucial in psychoanalysis, rings so hollow in the face of one simple, true line of Freud’s: “How irksome it must have been for you to put down on paper these difficult matters, which it is so much easier to talk about!” he wrote to Lou Andreas-Salomé, the legendary lover of Rilke and Nietzsche, who was taking her first steps in the world of psychoanalytical thought and had written him a delightful, if somewhat confused, letter. A few days later, Freud dispatched unusually fierce words to the director of a private sanitarium for patients with nervous disorders in Germany, whom he thought had gone a bit overboard in his admiration for him:

“I think you are forcing me into your father-mold, even though I am not in the least suited for the part. One time I fulfill for you the role of an aged and revered father to whom one must bow down and who must be protected at all costs, but who must also be pitied, for his end is approaching and his life was unbearably difficult; another time I am for you a dark leader who disposes of anyone who only dared express himself freely; and here I am, already in the role of Kronos, the god who devours his children. Today I hear from you that I am a person who makes do with himself and is incapable of accepting anything from anyone else. Whereas I think that these are delusions whose source lies in transient reflections. The truth is that I am not all that old, and also quite flexible; am in no need of pity and get along wonderfully with my true children; relentlessly seek to forge new friendships and am ready to make certain concessions for their sake. But what are all these attempts at persuasion for? After all, in true analysis things are done in a similar manner: It is immaterial what the father thinks he is, he will apparently have to fulfill the imago of the father that was burned into phylogenesis.”

Freud’s uncompromising attitude toward truth is also discernible in his letter of reply to the American mother of a homosexual who wanted to send her son to the professor for a cure:

“I gather from your letter that your son is a homosexual. I am most impressed by the fact, that you do not mention this term yourself in your information about him. May I question you why you avoid it? Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.) It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime and cruelty too.”

Freud’s handwriting is large, angular, unruly and mostly legible; the letters of the alphabet are crowded onto large sheets of paper that were cut especially for him. The lines are dense, touching one another. The momentum of the handwriting is not curtailed even when the pen reaches the edge of the page, and long words spill over from one line to the line that follows. The torrent of letters that surged from his study every day for decades continued to accompany him on vacations, too. At the end of every day of analytical work, an hour was devoted to correspondence. Anna Freud related that her father wrote about 10 letters an hour – another reminder of the resemblance between Freud and such geniuses as Bach or Alexander von Humboldt, who were endowed with an incomprehensible capacity for work.

The epistolary corpus that Freud left behind is one of the largest that have been preserved in the modern era. Today, 80 years after his death, it is evident that civilization proceeds without transmitting manuscripts of exemplary figures in human history. It is precisely because of this that the encounter with Freud’s letters brings home the loss entailed in the almost total disappearance of this form of communication and literary genre, which enriched the self-archive of so many people from the dawn of history. The publication of Freud’s letters at this time – to repeat what he wrote at the age of 17 to his friend Eduard Silberstein – is an unmelancholy attempt “to fill that gap.”

Eran Rolnik is a psychoanalyst, psychiatrist and historian. “Sigmund Freud – Letters,” translated, annotated and edited by Dr. Rolnik, has recently been published in Hebrew by Modan Publishers.

As taken from, https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-the-intimate-letters-of-sigmund-freud-1.7417120

por Rabino Elisha Greenbaum

Cuando era chico, en el shul (la sinagoga), había un señor mayor que solía sentarse siempre al final de la fila y mascullar para sí. Nunca estaba satisfecho. El aire acondicionado no estaba a la temperatura correcta, el minián (cuórum de diez personas) llegaba tarde, el jazán (el oficiante) tardaba demasiado, y el rabino hablaba demasiado lento. No era el hombre más simpático del mundo para interactuar, pero al menos venía al shul.

Una semana, mientras sacaban el séfer Torá del arca, lo escuché diciendo para sí: “¿Por qué ese tipo Kohen siempre se lleva la primera aliá?”.

Cierto, ¿por qué?¿Y por qué su primo, Levi, tiene el segundo puesto? No parece algo democrático; ¿por qué venir de una familia de konahim (sacerdotes) o leviim (levitas) debería hacerlo a uno digno de un honor extra? Deberíamos hacerlos esperar su turno al final de la fila como el resto de nosotros, los plebeyos. ¿Qué hicieron ellos para merecer un lugar en los asientos de adelante del autobús?

En los días del Templo, la casta sacerdotal era seleccionada de entre sus hermanos para servir a Hashem y traer bendición al pueblo. Los leviim cantaban durante el servicio y los kohanim ofrecían sacrificios. Beneficiarios de regalos y diezmos de sus camaradas judíos, se pasaban la vida enseñando la Torá a la comunidad y sirviendo a Di-s en nuestro nombre.

Hoy día, ellos hacen menos y reciben menos a cambio. La pequeña medida de honor que se les paga es más una referencia histórica a su herencia ancestral que un reflejo de su fama personal. Los kohanim toman la primera aliá en cada lectura de la Torá y las cinco monedas de plata de un pidión habén (redención de un hijo). Bendicen a la congregación del shul en las festividades, y en ocasiones reciben otras sutiles marcas de respeto. Los leviim se llevan la segunda aliá y no mucho más.

Sin embargo, ser un Levi o un Kohen no se trata en realidad de recibir esas marcas públicas de respeto. El éxito en la vida tiene que ver con dar, no con recibir. La verdadera medida de la distinción de las familias sacerdotales residía en su rol de seguidores de las maneras de Di-s y en enseñar a los demás sobre el judaísmo.

Pero no hace falta haber nacido en una familia de sacerdotes para vivir como uno.

El Rambam enseña:

No sólo la tribu de Levi, sino también cualquiera de los habitantes del mundo con un espíritu que lo motive, y que entienda con su sabiduría que debe apartarse y ponerse delante de Di-s para servirle y asistirle y conocer a Di-s […] es santificado como santo entre los santos. Di-s será su parte y su herencia por siempre y le brindará lo que sea para él suficiente, como se lo brinda a los sacerdotes y a los levitas 1 .

Cuán maravilloso. Cuán igualitario. Todos podemos ser sacerdotes. Todos podemos alcanzar la santidad. Es posible que nunca se nos elija para la distinción menor de la primera aliá, pero tenemos la oportunidad infinita de alcanzar la grandeza en nuestro servicio a Di-s y a toda la comunidad.

No pongas el foco en una nimiedad como la distinción de clases; en cambio, observa tu relación con tu Creador. Di-s tiene un sistema: te guía hacia tu destino y te aplaude por tus esfuerzos.

Notas al Pie

1. Hilijot Shemitá 13:13.

Segun tomado de, https://es.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3372162/jewish/El-judasmo-cree-en-las-castas.htm

Ideas para el crecimiento espiritual.

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Siempre enfrentamos conflictos de una u otra clase. Eso es la vida. En realidad, la esencia de la vida es resolver conflictos; el universo fue creado como un escenario para los desafíos. Nos colocan en este mundo con la ilusión de estar separados de Dios, y nuestra misión es quebrar esa ilusión.

Asimismo el cuerpo y el alma están en un conflicto constante y nuestra tarea es aprovechar la energía del cuerpo al servicio del alma. Deseamos comer para satisfacer nuestras papilas gustativas, pero nuestra mente quiere comer para conservar la salud. El alma quiere tener salud para mantenerse vibrante y aguda en el servicio a Dios. Así como se requiere esfuerzo para entrenar al cuerpo para comer saludable, se requiere esfuerzo para entrenar a la mente a pensar en un propósito más elevado.

La cabalá enseña que el universo está construido sobre un trípode compuesto de dos opuestos y una resolución armoniosa. Este es el patrón de todo en la vida. La estabilidad y la confianza son imposibles sin el apoyo de las tres patas del trípode. No podemos tener shalom sin la presencia de los tres. Este trípode, junto al desafío de la resolución de conflictos, es algo inherente a cada persona, está en todos los aspectos de la naturaleza, en la humanidad en conjunto y también en el mundo espiritual.

* * *

ASUME LO MEJOR

Moshé tuvo que enfrentar muchas rebeliones. Le hubiera sido fácil caer en el patrón de rechazar automáticamente esas rebeliones, pero en cambio se tomó el tiempo para evaluar cada problema y tratar de arribar a una solución razonable. Él no impuso su autoridad, sino que intentó razonar con los que se quejaban. Sólo con Kóraj y su asamblea Moshé recurrió a un enfrentamiento, porque el objetivo de Kóraj era desafiar la autoridad de Moshé (y de Dios).

Así como Moshé se esforzó para razonar con los que se quejaban, también nosotros debemos dar siempre a los demás el beneficio de la duda antes de recurrir a medidas drásticas. Si bien hay patrones de los que hay que cuidarse, debemos enfrentar cada conflicto por separado para encontrar la mejor solución.

Por otro lado, necesitamos tener la guardia en alto por si una persona siempre está esperando la excusa perfecta para atacar. En ese caso no ayudará ni toda la discusión del mundo. Es una pérdida de tiempo y de esfuerzo.

* * *

PONTE EN EL LUGAR DEL OTRO

En una discusión, es muy fácil ridiculizar a la otra persona. Más difícil es intentar ver las cosas desde su punto de vista. Una vez que tenemos una opinión arraigada, la naturaleza humana lleva a que sea muy difícil cambiar la forma de pensar. Estamos insertos en la discusión. Nuestro ego está en juego.

Una discusión acalorada puede pasar instantáneamente a ser una discusión civilizada cuando una persona le dice a la otra: “Nunca lo vi desde esa perspectiva. Lo que dices tiene lógica. Lo voy a pensar y luego volveremos a conversar”.

La naturaleza humana es lo que es, y puede ser que no te resulte fácil hacer esto. Sin embargo, por lo menos analiza el tema en discusión a través de los ojos de la otra persona. Intenta entender su opinión. Quizás ambos opinan lo mismo, sólo que lo expresan desde ángulos diferentes. Un diamante tiene muchas facetas. A veces un tema es como un diamante. Una vez fui testigo de una discusión: Silvia dijo que una persona era ciega. José le dijo: “No, no lo es. Tiene el cabello oscuro”. Esta ridícula discusión se extendió durante un minuto, hasta que llegó a una resolución.

* * *

TRES DEDOS TE SEÑALAN A TI

Cuando señalas a alguien, un dedo apunta hacia esa persona y tres hacia ti. A menudo, lo mismo que te molesta de tu esposa, hijo o amigo es algo que tú mismo tienes en tu interior y que te molesta. Una declaración talmúdica dice: “El que invalida a otro, invalida con su propio defecto” (Kidushín 70a). ¿Esto es psicología? ¿Es un desafío espiritual? No lo sé, pero es muy común.

Una advertencia: Si descubres que un dedo te apunta, no le digas a la otra persona que tiene el problema del que te acusa. No lo verá. Pero pregúntate si es así. Si logras entender esa dinámica por lo menos te resultará más fácil enfrentar la situación.

* * *

¿VALE LA PENA?

A menudo, la mejor manera de ganar una discusión es perderla. Esto se aplica cuando la discusión no justifica la lucha ni los malos sentimientos. Puedes ceder y decir: “Supongo que tienes razón”. No te va a matar, te lo prometo (asumiendo que no se trata de asuntos cruciales de la vida).

Cada tanto en las noticias hablan de un asesinato en un bar por una discusión respecto a qué equipo de fútbol es mejor. Este es un ejemplo extremo, pero en nuestra vida hay situaciones similares en las que permitimos que los malos sentimientos arruinen el día o una buena relación por algo pequeño. Incluso si se trata de temas importantes como el calentamiento global o la política internacional, dado que dos personas comunes no van a cambiar nada… ¿por qué no ceder?

La verdad no siempre es más importante que la armonía.

* * *

Ejercicio espiritual:

Encuentra una discusión en tu vida y resuélvela usando una de las soluciones presentadas en este ensayo.

Segun tomado de, https://www.aishlatino.com/tp/s/viaje-mistico/La-resolucion-de-conflictos.html?s=mm

El Secreto del Bastón de Aarón

por Gal Einai

El Desafío al Liderazgo

La porción de la Torá de esta semana, Koraj, cuenta acerca del desafío al liderazgo de Moshé y Aarón. Koraj era una persona importante y un alma muy elevada; como tal, se engañó a si mismo y a los otros pretendiendo el Sumo Sacerdocio en vez de Aarón (qué koraje). Dios utilizó el simbolismo del bastón de Aarón para probar que sólo este era el elegido para el puesto del sacerdocio eterno.

El Florecimiento del Bastón Estéril

Dios instruyó a Moisés que ponga los bastones de los príncipes de cada tribu en el Kodesh HaKodashim, de tal manera que el que floreciera determinaría cuál príncipe era el designado por Di-s para servir como Sumo Sacerdote. Moisés puso intencionalmente el báculo de Aarón en el lugar más neutral en el medio del Sancta Sanctorum, para prevenir la posibilidad de que reclamen que floreció porque estaba en un lugar más ventajoso.

Una vara es un pedazo de madera estéril que no puede florecer naturalmente. Ese bastón, símbolo del liderazgo, reflejó milagrosamente la belleza Divina al retoñar, florecer y producir almendras. La palabra hebrea para «almendra», shaked, es una permutación de la palabra «santo», kodesh. El milagro probó a todos que Aarón era el elegido por Di-s para manifestar la santidad en el mundo.

El Milagro del Bastón

El florecimiento del bastón consta de cuatro etapas, que por supuesto, corresponden a las cuatro letras del Nombre santo de Di-s, Havaiá, que se deletrea iud, hei, vav, hei.

Etapa 1: La vara inanimada es el punto inicial y todo abarcador, la iud, llamado Aba, «Padre» y corresponde a jojmáh. A diferencia de las otras tres etapas, esta no es milagrosa; por tener una familia –madre, hijo, hija- muestra que no es una imagen de esterilidad. Di-s ha elegido que este padre sea una fuente genuina de autoridad. Esta etapa en potencia es llamada atzmut, esencia.

Etapa 2: La flor, peraj, la primera hei del Nombre de Di-s, es llamada Ima, «Madre» y corresponde a bináh. Esta es la primera de las tres etapas milagrosas de florecimiento de la vara. Es el estado de gravidez, el potencial profundo e intenso que está lejos de su realización, llamado iejolet, capacidad, aptitud o habilidad.

Etapa 3: La yema o capullo, tzitz, la vav del Nombre de Di-s, llamado Zeir Anpin, «hijo» y que corresponde a las seis emociones del corazón. Esta es la etapa de la manifestación, el potencial más inmediato llamado coaj, potencial.

Etapa 4: Las almendras, shkedim, la hei final del Nombre de Di-s, llamado Nukvah, «Hija» y corresponde a maljut. Esta es la etapa de la realización del potencial, llamado poal, realizar.

Etapa	Letra del Nombre de Di-s	Parte de la Familia	Sefiráh	Manifesta-ción	Nombre de la Etapa
Vara Matéh	Iud	Padre	Jojmáh	Una esencia aparentemen-te estéril	Esencia Atzmut
Flor Peraj	Hei superior	Madre	Bináh	Gravidez	Habilidad Iejolet
Retoño	Vav	Hijo	Las seis emociones del corazón	Manifesta- ción del po- tencial	Potencial Koaj
Almendras shkedim	Hei inferior	Hija	Maljut	Concreción	Realización Poal

Las Matemáticas del Bastón

Como Aarón es de la tribu de Leví, su bastón se conoce como el Bastón de Leví, Matéh Leví. La guematria o valor numérico de matéh es 54, la de Leví es 46. Juntos suman 100, un número cuadrado que representa la perfección o consumación en la propia esencia de este bastón en particular. (Cuando cada letra se escribe completa, Matéh Leví suma 611, el valor numérico de la palabra Toráh.)

Las letras iniciales de las palabra Matéh Leví, mem y dalet, suman 70, equivalente a al letra ain. El resto de las letras suman 30, lamed. Ain y lamed forman la palabra al, que significa «sobre» o «arriba», proveniente de la raíz de la palabra en hebreo para «ascenso». La palabra al es la decimotercera en la Toráh. 13 es un número muy importante y es el valor numérico de ejad, «uno», y ahaváh, «amor». También alude a los 13 Atributos de Misericordia Divina.

El bastón de Aarón es al, elevado sobre los otros. Suya es la vara del Sumo Sacerdocio que eleva a los demás y a todas las almas de Israel. Una de las responsabilidades del Sumo Sacerdote es encender las candelas de la menoráh, que representan las almas de Israel, hasta que la llama se eleve por si misma. Sólo él puede realizar esta tarea. El poder intrínseco del bastón de Aarón es que es una fuente de elevación para toda la nación.

El nombre de Aarón estaba inscripto en la vara, produciendo el milagro de sus retoños. El valor numérico de Aarón es 256, que es 16 al cuadrado. El valor numérico de la vara, como se dijo es 100, 10 al cuadrado. 16 más 10 es igual a 26 (el Nombre de Di-s) al cuadrado. Cuando el nombre de Aarón (16 al cuadrado) se suma al de bastón (10 al cuadrado), obtenemos las tres etapas milagrosas del desarrollo de la vara. Más aún, las tres letras del Nombre de Di-s que corresponden a esta etapa, hei, vav y hei, 5, y 5, suman también 16.

Las Chispas Florales

El secreto de la flor, peraj, es la belleza del potencial del niño dentro de la madre, incluso antes de que el capullo se manifieste. El valor numérico de peraj es 288, el número de chispas Divinas dispersas en el mundo. Como las flores, todas estas chispas existen en la realidad, pero todavía no se manifestaron como fruto Divino. Estas chispas deben ascender al útero de la madre para renacer en la realidad como un fruto nuevo, como se explica en profundidad en cabalá.

Un fruto Potente

El Sumo Sacerdote despierta la misericordia sobre Israel y eleva sus almas. Las vestimentas que lleva puestas le permiten hacer incidir su potencial espiritual sobre las almas de Israel. El tzitz es la vestimenta usada en la frente del Sumo Sacerdote. Tzitz, que también significa «observar», es la palabra para «retoño». El Sumo Sacerdote exhibe esta imagen visible de potencial sobre su frente. Es interesante observar que las últimas letras de estas tres etapas milagrosas del retoño de las varas (peraj, tzitz y shkedim) son mem, tzadik, jet, que forman la palabra metzaj, «frente». El tzitz del sacerdote es llamado tzitz nezer kodesh, el retoñar de la corona sagrada. Kodesh, como ya se dijo es una permutación de la palabra para «almendra». El retoñar de las almendras es el hijo y la hija representados en la frente de la esencia del padre.

La verdadera profecía del Sumo Sacerdote está en su poder de bendecir a Israel para que sean fructíferos y se multipliquen. Esto está simbolizado por el báculo del Sumo Sacerdote y sus cuatro etapas desde la esencia hasta la realización. Cuando meditamos en la vara y sus cuatro etapas, también nosotros podemos dar a luz frutos santos y milagrosos en nuestras almas y en la realidad.

Segun tomado de, http://www.galeinai.org/GalEinaiv1/2018/07/12/de-la-esencia-a-la-realizacion/

Daniel Boyarin.

One of the greatest living scholars of the Talmud, Daniel Boyarin ponders the place where the two traditions were born, in brotherly rivalry but with a common biblical origin

If you ask a member of the Hopi tribe, “What is your Hopism?” you won’t get an answer. You can also ask a Romany (Gypsy), “What, actually, is Romanism?” And then meet a Druze and ask, “Excuse me, what is Druzism?” In each case you will have to suffice with the perplexed look of your interlocutor, as though there’s something very basic that you don’t seem to understand. That something has to do with the form and type of the entities about which you’re seeking clarification. Simply put, they are not ideological or religious constructs, but ethnic groups possessing a particular social-cultural heritage.

It’s hard for us to discern this, because our worldview – deriving from the modern Western approach – makes every effort to deny their existence. We are accustomed to subsume every large human group under two primary categories: nation and religion. The two categories are connected at their point of birth: The modern era introduced the nation-state, a political entity in which a particular people acquires self-determination; and religion, which is separate from the state, and with which people are free to form relations privately. Religion, in the sense of being a conception, a totality of the beliefs that an individual chooses to adopt, was born together with the nation-state, and completed from the private angle what the state provided from the public – which is to say, it conferred affiliation and meaning. But the one has nothing to do with the other. As Jesus proposed, unto Caesar is rendered that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s.

Like the Hopi or the Druze, it’s also difficult to associate the Jews with one of the two alternatives. They are not only a nation and not only a religion, nor are they simply a nation that practices a religion. In recent years a number of books have been reexamining the modern (that is, Western-Protestant) perception of Judaism. Leora Batnitzky wrote a brilliant introduction to modern Judaism, titled “How Judaism Became a Religion”; in his book “Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition,” David Nirenberg discussed the construction of Judaism out of the Christian need for an eternal antagonist; Yaacov Yadgar dwelt on the Jewish anomaly that is expressed in Israeli nationalism in his book “Sovereign Jews: Israel, Zionism, and Judaism”; and last year saw the publication of Daniel Boyarin’s “Judaism: The Genealogy of a Modern Notion” (Rutgers University Press), to which the following comments are addressed.

It is almost superfluous to introduce Boyarin, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the greatest living scholars of the Talmud. For the past 30 years he has been a central signpost of contemporary directions in Jewish studies. From the outset of his career he interwove philology with techniques of literary criticism in order to understand the Talmudic text, and beyond that in order to introduce the Talmud into contemporary academic literary discourse. Boyarin possesses the ability of looking at the seminal texts from the scholarly angle and from the traditional angle alike, and with a combination of an astute analytical capability and a sly tendency toward provocation, almost every book he’s published has left a concrete imprint on the research in the field.

If one can distinguish a recurring motif in his work, it is the tension and cross-fertilization between rabbinic Judaism and Christianity (with a probing glance at the Hellenistic world as well), both in the Second Temple period and today. He has devoted considerable attention to the point at which these two traditions were born, in the same place and at the same time, amid brotherly rivalry beneath which lay a common biblical origin. In the course of examining the relations between the conjoined traditions, Boyarin devotes requisite space also to an examination of their approaches to gender and sexuality, weaving critical elements from feminist discourse into the fray. The critical gaze at the tension between Judaism and Christianity enables Boyarin repeatedly to dismantle frameworks of modern categorization, such as, in our case, “Judaism” and “religion.”

His latest book thus joins a series of studies that call into question the popular-naive conception of Judaism. Starkly put, Boyarin asserts that until a few hundred years ago, there was no such thing as “Judaism,” in the sense of an abstract category of thought and thus of life. Indeed, the term is not found in the Torah, Prophets or Writings, the Mishna or Talmud, the works of the early medieval Geonim, of Rabbi Judah Halevi or of Maimonides. None of them knew of the existence of such a thing as “Judaism.” The term’s first appearances date from the 12th century (for example, in the “Midrash Sekhel Tov,” by Rabbi Menachem Ben Shlomo), and even then it denotes not a particular culture or a particular religion but a condition – that is, the condition of being a Jewish person.

In his book, Boyarin traces the origin of the term, naturally not confining himself to Hebrew but also investigating the Greek loudaismos, Yiddishkayt in Yiddish, Judentum in German and “Judaism” in English. The author arrives at the conclusion that “Judaism” is not a Jewish term. Jews talk about the people of Israel, about Hebrews, about the Israelites and the Sons of the Covenant and several other collective attributes, but not about any sort of faith-based or theological structure. This notion of religion originates in Christianity, which began as a voluntary framework (after all, one wasn’t born Christian in the first century) and emphasizes correct faith.

Concurrently, the Jewish sages underscored affiliation with the ethnic collectivity and the observance of laws and customs. It was only beginning in the 16th century that the term trickled slowly into use as denoting religious belief – as something that occurs in the individual’s heart. Not coincidentally, all this arrived together with the Reformation, which split the Church and necessitated a reorganization of theological and meta-theological concepts in Europe.

Until the 19th century, Boyarin notes, it is impossible to find “Judaism” as the subject of a sentence. There is no “Judaism” that believes in one thing or another, there is no “the essence of Judaism.” Those attributes emerged only when modern Jewish avenues were compelled to define themselves: namely, when traditional Jewish society in Europe underwent dramatic processes of modernization and when Reform and Orthodox Judaism evolved. The two denominations sought to determine the basic principles of “Judaism,” each for its own reasons.

The Jewish tradition, then, increasingly resembled the Christian tradition, for it set out to integrate itself into the (modern Western) Christian world. For Christianity, this was of course very convenient. Boyarin makes clear how, already from the first centuries of the Common Era, Christianity constructed Judaism as the fundamental “Other,” vis-a-vis which it defined itself. In other words, there is no “Judaism” other than in a Christian context. There are of course Jews, the halakha (traditional Jewish law) exists, and so forth, but there is no abstract and general term other than through the Christian eye and against the backdrop of Christendom.

With the advent of the Emancipation, “Judaism” became the “religion” of the Jews, a development that helped them exceedingly to integrate into the emerging nation-states – thus, for example, a person could be a “German of the Mosaic faith.” The Jews became equal citizens in Western Europe. That process, Boyarin writes, “destroyed Yiddishkayt as a form of life.”

Which is true: The Jews’ traditional way of life was eradicated. In places where emancipation did not occur, Jews continued to maintain “traditionalism” – so it’s not surprising that Jews who immigrated to Israel from Muslim countries had a completely different attitude toward their Jewish identity than their European brethren. The Judaism of the traditionalists, beginning in the late 18th century and today as well, is not “religion” or “nationalism,” but a comprehensive ethnocultural identity.

Of course, Boyarin understands that there is no way back. Even though he is critical of the modern configuration of Judaism, he, like all of us, derives no little benefit from it. Himself an observant Jew, Boyarin is known as a firm critic of Zionism who perceives the Diasporic Jewish existence as a more authentic and worthier form of Jewish life. His vision involves the establishment of Jewish communities in the Diaspora that would take part in a joint national project with other groups and foment communal Jewish life. But this is achievable today only within a liberal democratic framework, namely the Christian-Protestant model that renders Judaism solely as a religion.

Suffiency of physicality

In an effort to understand Boyarin better, I met with him for a conversation. I asked him about the Christian – specifically, the Pauline – idea that presupposes that we are all first and foremost individuals, and about the fact that this is not only a potent and highly attractive notion but is also, ultimately, a highly advantageous one. After all, liberalism, which is based on this idea, created a beneficent world in which we, as Jews, can also live a secure, thriving life.

Boyarin said that he is definitely not a liberal. “We, the Jews, maintain that a human being is not monadic: Humans do not exist on their own and are not autonomous to decide personally what they are and who they are,” he explained. At the same time, he noted, “The depiction of Jewishness as a non-chosen condition into which one is born does not theoretically inhibit recognition of equality by the state.”

Nonetheless, I asked, isn’t the idea that all people are equal and have inalienable rights based on the Christian perception of the individual as being endowed with universal reason and free choice, which are situated in a nonmaterial soul? In other words, our conception of human equality is rooted in an inner essence that is considered more meaningful than any external feature (such as skin color, ethnic origin or different sexual organs). It’s only on the presupposition of an inner persona, hidden and autonomous, that we legitimize ethical ideas and institutions, such as the social contract, human rights, feminism and transsexual journeys. I have my own reservations about the modern occupation with inwardness, I told Boyarin, but we are bound to recognize that it has engendered much that we cherish.

“I don’t think I share those views about inner essences,” he said. “Is shared physicality not sufficient for solidarity? We resemble others, we mate with them, even when we don’t pretend we don’t, and we use language like them. They are us.”

Well, I replied, we know that historically, shared physicality was insufficient. We do not look exactly alike, and therefore we can treat others as being inferior to us – or, in rare cases, like the Incas’ encounter with Francisco Pizarro and his bearded white men, as superior to us.

Boyarin replied that he “still thinks that the homogenization of human beings through their supposed soul has done far more harm than good.”

But it seems to me that there is an unresolved point here. The modern, Western-Protestant world demands that Judaism change, as it demands of hundreds of other cultures to change. Given enough time, “Hopism” and “Druzism” will also come into existence. There’s something imperialist about this universalism, Boyarin is right about that, but even so, there’s a reward that comes with making the transition. We get human rights, civil rights and equality under the law, even at the moral and pragmatic level. In personal-psychological terms, the reward is still greater: We possess individuality and a sense of autonomy that are inconceivable in traditional societies. How many of us are willing to live a life that “does not exist on [its] own… not autonomous to decide personally what they are and who they are,” as Boyarin put it.

Regardless of how valid it may be, the liberal temptation captures our heart no less than it transforms our Judaism. Without doubt, the homogenization that Boyarin talks about exists, and there’s also a flattening of depths that once existed and are no longer, and there’s also social fragmentation. Our Judaism is not what it was, and what was will not return. But are we capable of giving up our Western individualism, even if we wish to? And is that in fact what we wish?

Dr. Tomer Persico is Koret Visiting Assistant Professor of Jewish and Israel Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and a research fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-how-christians-invented-judaism-according-to-a-top-talmud-scholar-1.7417536?=&utm_source=smartfocus&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=hda-weekend-new&ut

Hace aproximadamente veinticinco años, viajaba en un autobús en Tel Aviv y entablé una conversación con el hombre que se sentó a mi lado. Parecía tener sesenta años, estaba prolijamente afeitado y llevaba una kipá que indicaba que era un judío observante.

Le conté que yo había estudiado filosofía. Él sonrió, me preguntó si había oído hablar de un famoso filósofo secular judío, existencialista, ya que tenía una historia interesante para contarme. (Era tan interesante que bajé del autobús cinco paradas después de la que pensaba.)

“Cuando era un joven, en Alemania, asistí a una de las conferencias del Profesor Martin Buber acerca de ‘Cuentos de los Maestros Jasídicos’. El hombre era un orador inteligente, un cuentista cautivador que me mantuvo literalmente fascinado durante las varias horas que duró su presentacion.

“Pero después de la conferencia, cuando entusiasmado me puse de pie para aplaudir, la persona que estaba sentada a mi lado, me golpeó en el hombro y dijo: “No se sienta tan exaltado. No estoy seguro de que el profesor preste atención a los preceptos básicos de la Torá”

Yo estaba espantado por lo que me decía. ¡La conferencia era acerca de temas jasídicos y de Rebes! “No se preocupe” agregó serenamente, “no es Lashón Hará (hablar mal de otro iehudí) él está orgulloso de ello. Vaya y pregúntele”

Me aproximé al podio donde el Profesor estaba rodeado por sus admiradores y le pregunté: “¿Es verdad que usted no observa los preceptos?”

“Él me miró con ojos inteligentes y dijo con un tono de misericordia: “Mi estimado joven, hay muchos niveles de conocimiento religioso y observancia. Existe el Judaísmo de Moisés que depende de la Palabra Escrita y las Mitzvot y existe el de Abraham; una pura conexión intelectual que es sin dudas la verdad. Y ése, es mi nivel”

“Yo lo miraba en shock y dije: ¡Pero esto es contrario a todo lo que usted ha hablado acerca de los maestros jasídicos!. ¡Y si me pregunta, es sin dudas nada más que puro egotismo!”

“Usted es aún muy joven” me contestó, “cuando sea mayor, entenderá.” Me respondió.

“Bien” mi vecino de asiento continuó, volviendo sus ojos a los míos. “Unos años después vino la guerra. Pasé por los campos de concentración. Vi asesinar a mis padres, a mis tres hermanos y cuatro hermanas. Estuve allí durante cuatro años que fueron como cien en el infierno. Pero entonces, un día finalizó.” -Usted tiene que bajar pronto probablemente, por lo que le haré corta la historia.

“Unos años después de la guerra me mudé a América con mis parientes y viví en Los Ángeles cuando vi un anuncio en un periódico judío que decía que el famoso profesor iba a hablar en un salón de conferencias.

Compré una entrada y fui. Allí estaba el mismo hombre, un poco mayor, con las mismas historias y las mismas conclusiones filosóficas. Esperé hasta que terminó, caminé a él y le dije: “Profesor ¿me recuerda?” Él agitó su cabeza. “No”. Yo continué. “Bien, hace aproximadamente quince años en Berlín le pregunté por qué usted no cree en la Torá y usted contestó que yo entendería cuándo me hiciera mayor.

“Bien, quiero que sepa profesor, que he crecido muchísimos años desde entonces y puedo decirle que, sin duda, ¡¡¡usted está completamente equivocado!! No existe algo así como Judaísmo sin los preceptos.

Me miró y dijo: “¡Usted haga su Judaísmo y yo haré el mío!”

Le contesté: “Usted haga su Judaísmo… ¡Y yo haré el de Di-s!”

Segun tomado de, https://es.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/639880/jewish/Sin-Dudas.htm

En Canadá y en los Estados Unidos, esta época es llamada la temporada de libertad, ya que ambos países pronto celebrarán sus Días de la Independencia. Canadá ganó su independencia lenta y pacíficamente, y para los Estados Unidos fue una lucha larga y violenta. Para ambos, obtener la independencia fue un proceso.

La principal queja de los colonos contra Gran Bretaña fue: obligaciones tributarias sin poder tener representación. Gran Bretaña se enorgullecía de la máxima: “Ningún hombre debe ser forzado a pagar impuestos, sino por su propio consentimiento”, y sin embargo, no se sintió culpable de gravar a las colonias sin permitirles representación en el parlamento.

Dirigiéndose a la Cámara de los Comunes en un vigoroso debate, señaló el filósofo y político, Edmund Burke: “Para probar que los estadounidenses no deben ser libres, estamos obligados a despreciar el valor de la libertad en sí misma; y no parece que tengamos una mísera ventaja sobre ellos en el debate, sin atacar algunos de esos principios, o ridiculizar algunos de esos sentimientos, por los cuales nuestros antepasados ​​han derramado su sangre” 1

El rey Jorge III y su gobierno ciertamente tenían un punto ciego, cuando se trataba de la libertad. Ellos defendieron la libertad y la igualdad, pero solo para aquellos que consideraban dignos. Este punto ciego fue criticado rotundamente por los colonos, quienes, irónicamente, tenían su propio punto ciego. Sus derechos evidentes e inalienables a la libertad y la búsqueda de la felicidad fueron negados a los esclavos.

Los cambios basales de perspectivas vienen en etapas. Cuando se propone una idea radicalmente nueva, podemos adoptarla por sus virtudes, pero no nos damos cuenta de su aplicación completa de inmediato. Gran Bretaña tardó un siglo y medio en reconocer que las colonias eran dignas de independencia. Pasaría un siglo más antes de que Canadá obtuviera su emancipación. No en vano, lo mismo sucedió con los propios colonos. Llevó casi un siglo liberar a los esclavos, otro medio siglo para otorgar a las mujeres el derecho a votar, y otro medio siglo para garantizar los derechos civiles completos para todos. El crecimiento es gradual. Los cambios de paradigma se van arraigando con el tiempo.

Incluso los norteamericanos, que vieron esta falla en sus adversarios, no pudieron discernirla en sí mismos. Es común que aquellos que critican a otros sean víctimas de la misma ofuscación. En el otro, vemos la culpa fácilmente; en nosotros mismos, la ignoramos por completo.

El Baal Shem Tov enseñó 2 que esto es lo que pretendían decir nuestros sabios cuando expresaron: “Di-s castiga al hombre con y sin su conocimiento”. Di-s establece que nos topemos con otros con faltas similares a las nuestras, y cuando condenamos a los demás, nos condenamos sin saberlo. La reprobación se produce con nuestro conocimiento, somos conscientes de que hemos condenado al otro, pero también sin nuestro conocimiento, porque no somos conscientes de que nos hemos condenado a nosotros mismos.

La caída

Esto explica un curioso episodio bíblico. Moisés envió espías precediendo a los hijos de Israel en preparación para conquistar la Tierra Prometida. A su regreso, los exploradores desalentaron el traslado, prediciendo que el ejército de los judíos, no lograría conquistar la tierra. Para exagerar la fuerza de los habitantes, relataron que se encontraron con “los caídos; estirpe de los grandes gigantes.” ¿Quiénes eran estos caídos?

Nuestros sabios revelaron que estos eran los hijos de los ángeles caídos. Poco antes del Gran Diluvio, los ángeles se quejaron del comportamiento abominable de la humanidad. Di-s objetó que estaba mal que juzgaran el comportamiento del hombre en la tierra mientras ellos estaban seguros en el cielo. Los ángeles se ofrecieron a nacer en cuerpos humanos para demostrar que la tentación terrenal puede ser soportada. Di-s consintió, pero los ángeles eran más inmorales que los humanos. Estos ángeles nacieron en cuerpos gigantes, y fue su descendencia la que vieron los espías. Destacaron a estos poderosos gigantes en su informe para disuadir a los judíos de ingresar a Israel.3

Si los espías simplemente querían transmitir que se habían encontrado con gigantes, ¿por qué era importante su estirpe? ¿Por qué los espías mencionaron que estos gigantes descendían de los ángeles caídos?

Crecimiento gradual

Para responder a esta pregunta primero debemos hacer otra. ¿Por qué los espías se tornaron contra el deseo de Di-s de que los judíos ingresaran a la Tierra de Israel cuando la Torá misma testifica que los espías eran, al principio, hombres rectos?

Los espías se mostraron reacios a entrar en Israel precisamente porque eran justos, lo que nos devuelve a entender los cambios de paradigma. En Sinaí, Di-s presentó la nueva radical idea de que es posible vivir una vida celestial, incluso en la tierra. Los espías notaron que esto se podía lograr en el desierto, donde había pocas distracciones y aún menos tentaciones. Pero les preocupaba que en Israel, donde entrarían en la vida real, la Torá se volvería irrelevante. No puedes pavimentar carreteras, cobrar impuestos, cavar alcantarillas y formar ejércitos, estudiando la Torá. Para vivir en la realidad, tendrían que hacer cosas concretas y abandonar lo placentero, espiritualmente hablando; que habían disfrutado en el desierto. Temían que al mudarse a Israel, se alejarían de la gracia divina y llegarían a ser meros materialistas, indecentes y espiritualmente corruptos.

Por lo tanto, remarcaron que incluso los ángeles se habían “caído” cuando se les hizo vivir en el mundo real. Si esto pudiera sucederle a los ángeles, ciertamente podría sucederles a los seres humanos.

Los espías aún tenían que absorber la magnitud completa del cambio de paradigma del Monte Sinaí. La vida celestial no estaba predestinada solo para el desierto. Fue pensada para la vida real. Lógicamente, esto es demasiado pedir, pero debido a que esto es un mandato divino, estamos dotados de la capacidad para tener éxito.

La condena

Los espías juzgaban que su análisis era correcto, pero estaban equivocados. Como los ángeles habían caído, también lo habían hecho los espías, y al condenar a los ángeles por su caída, admitieron inadvertidamente su propia debilidad.

Los espías hicieron esta observación mientras estaban lejos del desierto, afuera de la burbuja. Desde exterior, no percibían la realidad a través de la misma lente que usaban dentro de la burbuja. Ya no estaban mirando las cosas a la manera de Di-s. Lo estaban mirando a su propia manera. Se habían caído y, por lo tanto, llegaron a la conclusión errónea de que la vida celestial en el mundo material es imposible. La verdad, como lo dicen Ioshua y Caleb, es que “si así Di-s lo desea… tendremos éxito”.

Vivir en el mundo real como un verdadero judío es un desafío incluso hoy en día. Pero los judíos han enfrentado desafíos aún mayores a lo largo de la historia y han tenido éxito.

Con demasiada frecuencia condenamos a los que son menos devotos que nosotros y al mismo tiempo nos justificamos cuando somos menos observantes que los demás. Los otros viven en una burbuja de ortodoxia, decimos, esto permite que puedan darse el lujo de ser extremistas. Yo vivo en el mundo real, donde la observancia total es imposible. La verdad es que el estilo de vida espiritual se puede vivir en todas partes. Lleva tiempo darse cuenta de esto porque todo el crecimiento, especialmente el crecimiento que requiere un cambio de paradigma, es gradual, pero con pasos pequeños y un compromiso inapelable, todos podemos ir haciendo un progreso constante.

Notas al Pie

1.Walter R. Borneman, American Spring, [Little, Brown and Company, Nueva York, Nueva York, 2014], pág. 104.2.

2.Likutei Moharan, 1: 113.

3.Números 13:33 (ver Rashi), Génesis 5 4 y Pirkei De Rab Eliezer, cap. 22.

Segun tomado de, https://es.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/4416026/jewish/El-desafo-de-crecer-gradualmente.htm#utm_medium=email&utm_source=94_magazine_es&utm_campaign=es&utm_content=content

The little-known story of the ma’apilim is the historic version of amends made on the perpetrator’s terms without regard for the other.

After the sin of the spies and the Jews’ refusal to enter Israel, G‑d decreed that the Jewish people wander the desert for the next 40 years. A group of Jews insisted on entering Israel anyway and prepared to launch an attack the next morning. Moses warned that their campaign would be unsuccessful, but they took no heed. As the fellowship climbed the mountain to enter the Promised Land, Amalekites, Amorites and Canaanites successfully quashed their attempt and beat them back to Hormah.1

These men are known as the ma’apilim, the defiant men (lit. “those who pushed ahead”),2 and their story is recorded in Numbers 14:40–45 and Deuteronomy 1:41–45.

The Story of the Failed Campaign

After the saga of the spies, G‑d, in a scathing speech to Moses and Aaron, promised that the entire generation that left Egypt would die in the desert: “In this desert, your bodies shall fall . . . because you complained against Me . . . Your children shall wander in the desert for 40 years and bear your defection until the last of your bodies have fallen in the desert.”3

Why did G‑d want the Jewish people to wander in the desert for so long before conquering the land? Maimonides explains that it was difficult for the nation to transition from slavery to courageous warfare automatically. Traversing the desert without the usual urban amenities was meant to instill courage and faith in the people. In addition, they would birth children who hadn’t experienced slavery, forming a generation of people for whom freedom was a given.4

When Moses relayed G‑d’s remarks to the people, they mourned intensely. Immediately, a group of soldiers said, “We are ready to ascend to the land G‑d has promised. We have sinned!” Moses told them not to go. “The Ark of the Covenant is not going with you; this campaign will not succeed!”5

The men didn’t listen. The next morning, they climbed to the hill country and staged an attack. It ended badly.6 In Moses’ Deuteronomical rebuke, he describes what happened: “The Amorites who lived in those hills came out against you like bees and chased you, and they crushed you at Hormah in Seir.”7

The war was lost, but the Midrash offers us some consolation. “‘Like bees’—just as a bee dies instantly after stinging a person, [the Amorites] died upon touching you.”8

Other commentators understand the bee metaphor more simply. When bees feel threatened, they will swarm and attack; these nations did the same.9 In addition, bees simply harass their targets but do not kill them. Likewise, the Amorites successfully chased the Jews away but did not manage to cut them down.10

Who Were They?

Traditional Jewish sources say little about the identity of the defiant men. The Talmud records that Zelophehad, whose daughters take center stage in Numbers 27, may have died in the failed campaign.11 Other sages disagree.12

Why the Change of Heart?

As recently as the night prior to their campaign, the majority of Jewish adults scorned the idea of repossessing the land of Israel. The spies, in their scare campaign,13 managed to convince the Jews that their best bet was to return to Egypt, where they’d be safe from the big, strong men of Canaan.14 In his rebuke of the Jewish people, Moses conveyed G‑d’s anger, but he did not address the actual concerns that the Jewish people raised. So how did the ma’apilim suddenly have a change of heart?

Jewish tradition maintains that we all truly believe in G‑d and His omnipotence.15 Sometimes, however, that belief is obscured by a spirit of foolishness.16 To break that bout of folly, Moses rebuked the Jewish people. Tanya explains that Moses didn’t need to address their claims directly because once the fog is cleared, the faithful nature of the Jew will reappear.17

In their admittance of sin, the men demonstrated their newfound belief in G‑d’s power, but it was too late. G‑d had already decreed that the generation had to die out before entering the land.18 In their zeal to repent, the men went too far. While G‑d may have been pleased with their admittance of wrongdoing, the time was no longer ripe to enter the land. Nonetheless, they went through with their campaign. With this, they demonstrated that their repentance wasn’t completely sincere; if they were ready to turn to G‑d, they would have heeded His servant’s warning.19 Moses echoes this in his Deuteronomical rebuke: “I spoke to you, but you would not listen; you flouted G‑d’s command and willfully marched into the hill country.”20

What Were They Thinking?

Rabbi Naftali Berlin,21 Netziv, explains that the defiant men were willing to sacrifice their lives to enter Israel even if Moses and the Ark remained in the camp. They interpreted G‑d’s discouragement as a test of their resolve. Netziv points to a similar moment in Jewish history. Before Hananiah, Mishael, and Azarya cast themselves into Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace, they asked the prophet, Ezekiel, if G‑d would save them. Ezekiel answered in the negative to ascertain whether their dedication to G‑d was genuine, and indeed it was.22 The ma’apilim were mistaken, but they meant well.

Alternatively, Rabbi Zadok Hakohen of Lublin23 posits that there are times when G‑d seems to close the doors of repentance but still desires that the sinner push through.24 He relates the defiant men to Elisha ben Abuya, who was also told that repentance was not an option. Nonetheless, had Elisha repented out of extreme love, his repentance would have been received by G‑d, for that was His true will.

The ma’apilim, however, were not completely contrite,25 and in this particular instance, G‑d’s decree was non-negotiable.26

Alternatively, the Rebbe explains that the ma’apilim had indeed atoned for the sin of not wishing to enter the land. However, they died as a result attempting to enter the land against G‑d’s will.27

The path to redemption had to be paved by Moses and the Ark. The fact that they remained behind doomed the ma’apilim from the outset. The final redemption, as well, has a clearly defined path in Jewish law. Hastening the redemption is only possible if we follow G‑d’s plan.28

How to Say Sorry

You meant well when you sent those flowers. But seeking forgiveness is not about regaining our own sense of “I’m a good person.” When we’ve hurt someone we have to ask, “What does the one I hurt need right now?” The path to reconciliation is to listen closely to the one we’ve pained and to genuinely seek his or her welfare. The ma’apilim, though they meant well, didn’t listen to G‑d and Moses—whose trust they had broken just a night earlier.

Footnotes

1. An ancient Israeli city.

2.Rashi on Numbers 14:44.

3.Numbers 14:29–33.

4.Guide for the Perplexed 3, 32. For another, more chassidic, interpretation, read So Long in the Desert.

5.Numbers 14:40–43.

6. Ibid. 14:44–45.

7.Deuteronomy 1:44.

8.Numbers Rabbah 17:3, cited in Rashi on Deuteronomy 1:44.

9.Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra and Rabbi Bachya ibn Pekuda on Deuteronomy 1:44.

10.Rabbi Joseph Bechor Shor on Deuteronomy 1:44; see also Rabbi Chizkiya ben Manoach (Chizkuni) ad loc.

11.Rabbi Yehudah ben Beseirah, Talmud, Shabbat 97a.

12. Rabbi Akiva, Talmud, Shabbat 96b, says that Zelophehad died because he gathered wood on the Sabbath (Numbers 15:32).

13.Numbers 13:26–33.

14.See Numbers 14:3.

15. See, for example, Midrash Exodus Rabbah 3:12: “Ma’aminim bnei ma’aminim—believers, children of believers.”

16.Ruach sh’tut. See Talmud, Sotah 3a.

17.Tanya, end of ch. 29.

18.Rabbi Chaim ibn Attar (Or HaChaim) on Numbers 14:44.

19.Rabbi Chaim ibn Attar (Or HaChaim) on Deuteronomy 1:43.

20.Deuteronomy 1:43.

21.19th-century biblical commentary, Haamek Davar, on Numbers 14:45.

22.Midrash Shir Hashirim Rabbah 7:8.

23.19th-century chassidic master, Tzidkat Hatzadik, ch. 46 and Pri Tzadik, Miketz 2.

24.This is an idea that can be traced to the earliest kabbalists (Rabbi Eliyahu de Vidas, 16th century, Reishit Chochmah, Shaar Hakedushah 17:21; Rabbi Moses Cordovero, 16th century, quoted in Alpha Beisa Tanisa D’Shmuel Zeira, vol. 1, pp. 335–339) and is based on the Talmudic dictum “One must listen to one’s host unless he asks him to leave” (Pesachim 86b). The host is G‑d. One must listen to G‑d unless He tells man that he can no longer repent (“leave from me”). Then, man must repent nonetheless because G‑d’s true desire is that he repent. Compare this to a father who warns his son that if he commits a certain crime, he would never look at him again. Ultimately, the parent will forgive the child if he sees his remorse is absolutely genuine.

25. Rabbi Yaacov Tzvi Mecklenburg (Haketav Vehakabbalah on Deuteronomy 1:41) points out that the ma’apilim merely said, “We sinned.” To repent truly, he says, one must ask for G‑d’s forgiveness. In addition, the ma’apilim refer to G‑d in the third person, “We sinned against G‑d,” instead of directing the confession toward Him, “We sinned against You.”

26.A similar interpretation is brought in Eliyahu Kitov’s Sefer Haparshiyot in the name of the Chatam Sofer.

27. Sichot Kodesh, Pinchas 5728, 373.

28.Igrot Kodesh, vol. 7, p. 280.

As taken from, https://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/4408391/jewish/Maapilim-The-Little-Known-Warriors-Who-Disregarded-Moses.htm