A Confession

My summaries of selections of Ramban’s comments on the Torah follows a similar series I did for Rashi. In those and other of my endeavors (such as my A Responsum a Day, both in writing at torahmusings.com as well as in audio at ou.org), I have been seeking ways to randomize the Torah that comes my way.

I have been doing this in search of ways to stumble across underlying foci of the Torah; it starts with my realization that arukah me-eretz middah, Torah as a whole is so big and so great, any attempt to summarize it or identify its central concerns runs the risk of being about the person presenting it rather than Torah itself. I tried to do this in one way in my book We’re Missing the Point: What’s Wrong with the Orthodox Jewish Community and How to Fix It. This, repeated assays into randomized selections of Torah ideas, is another.

As I reviewed my studies of Ramban to Shemot, the running themes (which covered most of the comments, but not all) lined up well on two axes: the metaphysical/divine/supernatural, where Ramban comments on how Hashem runs the universe and/or directly impacts the world, and the human, where he sees people as capable of and responsible for their impact on the world.

That worries me a bit, because it feels familiar, like those were central issues in Ramban to Devarim and/or Bereshit, and Rashi as well. It’s possible, and I hope it’s true, that that’s because I’ve discovered a central dichotomy to how Ramban and other Torah giants read the Torah, that there is what we do and what Hashem does. But in case it’s me finding what I wanted, in case I’ve unconsciously chosen those comments that fit what I was looking for already, I wanted to alert you to that ahead of time.

For now, though, this is what I’ve got. To change it up a bit, I’m going to start with the human and then move to what he has to say about Hashem and the supernatural. In Shemot, we saw comments of Ramban’s that addressed the individual, familial, societal, and universal, which seemed to me to put forth a vision of human responsibility in all these arenas.

How We Become Ourselves—Getting Gd Right

For all that I have left the supernatural for later, Ramban individualizes the Jew’s relationship with Hashem in a way that seems to me an inescapable starting point. In his view, Hashem started the Aseret HaDibberot with a reference to the Exodus (and phrased all the Dibberot in the singular) to make clear that each Jew does, should, and is expected to have a personal relationship with Hashem, going back to Egypt.

The flip side, with roots in Ya’akov Avinu’s promise as he left for Lavan’s house, was that no Jew could “have” another god. The ruled out subscribing to, believing in, or accepting anything other than Hashem as an independent power in one’s life.

With Kiddushin 30b as guide, Ramban thought each Jew’s attitude towards his/her parents should closely parallel how to act towards Hashem. The Jew must acknowledge the parent and recognize that that brings an obligation of service with no ulterior motive. Parents are a fact of our lives, to whom we owe fealty and service, as is Hashem. For no other reason than that they brought us into the world we inhabit.

Uplifted Hearts

Aside from what we might call faith issues, Ramban made three points about our internal lives. First, when 35;21 spoke of those who made contributions to building the Mishkan, the verse spoke of people whose hearts lifted them up and others whose spirit moved them to generosity.

Ramban thinks the former were those who found themselves able to perform the various crafts needed to build a Mishkan. We’ll see below that he attributed that ability to Hashem, but the verse’s description makes it also a reflection of something going on inside these people. Their hearts lifted them to this work in some way he does not unpack further.

Others found their spirits moved them only to generosity, to give money or materials at a level that most people did not.  

Then, for a final example of Ramban’s interest in how our internal states affect who we become, 6;9 speaks of where the people do not or cannot listen to Moshe because of the shortness of their spirit and hard labor. Ramban read shortness of spirit as fear Par’oh would kill them and hard labor as the pressure the Egyptians placed upon them, which denied them the mental space to hear Moshe.

He does not say it, but his view seems to be that how we react to news depends partially on what’s going on inside of us, perhaps as much as the news itself. For the Jews of the Exodus, their internal business was too overwhelming to let them hear the good news that came their way. Since we’ll see that Ramban thought the people as a whole were at a low spiritual state, this point about our internal lives becomes more important; had the Jews been able to hear Moshe early on, the rest of the story might have gone differently as well.

What We Do

Turning from the internal to the external, who we are in the world, a first step is how we use our money. When 36;6 tells the people that no more contributions are needed for the Mishkan, it says not to do any more melachah, work. Since most people were not doing materials construction, it makes sense that he would readmelachah to include donations of money.  Buried in that reading, however, is the idea that the money we make, and how we spend/contribute it, is part of our life’s work, part of what we do.

Then there’s our physical actions. Ramban thought the artisans of the Mishkan contributed creatively in addition to technically, for example in that they figured out how to weave gold into the threads that would make up some of the garments and coverings of the Mishkan.

Ramban thought Moshe set up and took down the Mishkan throughout the week of its dedication, by himself. He could have read it as Moshe supervising the Levi’im who did the actual work (as we’ll see with Betzalel), especially since part of the point of this repeated taking down and putting up was preparing them to do it from then on. Instead, he read it simply, that Moshe did it all himself.

He thinks we can also earn credit even without direct action. The beginning of Parshat Pekudei says Betzalel did all that Hashem commanded, when we know that many others were involved. Ramban answered that Betzalel supervised so closely, checked everything before accepting it, he was rewarded as if he did it himself.

Ramban envisions the possibility of credit for that which we want to happen, without our doing anything. 25;10 uses a plural verb for the command that the Jews should make an Aron, an Ark, where the next verses make clear individuals will do the actual work. Ramban suggests several ways the people as a whole could be involved in what was ultimately an individual endeavor. They could designate money for this project in particular, help with some aspect of construction, or they could want the Aron to be built. That opens a whole horizon of who we are and who we become, since the bare fact of wanting or hoping for a certain outcome earns us some status of having contributed to that as well.

How We Treat and Mistreat Others

The last step of Ramban’s view of the individual on his/her own is the responsibility he assigns to how we treat others and/or how we allow ourselves to be mistreated. His starting point is 22;15, which speaks of a man who was mefateh, seduced, a young woman. Ramban thinks the seducer must have lied, or else he would not have any liability.

That assigns more responsibility to the young woman than we might have thought, if she agreed of her own free will and under no false pretenses.

At the same time, he thinks we all are supposed to learn to resist false seductions. He notes that the punishments in the second paragraph of Shema start with our hearts being seduced (pen yifteh levavchem) by false worships, a word with a common root as this seducer. Another place that root is used is in Mishlei 14;15, which terms a peti (commonly translated as simple) as someone unable to distinguish truth from falsehood.

Another actor with more rights than expected is the non-Jewish slave, whose killing brings the same death penalty for the master who beat him as it would for any ordinary human being. Ramban did think that slave was property, and allowed corporal punishment to educate/ discipline the slave, but if he got killed, that was murder.

Family, Nuclear and Generational

That’s the individual on his own (one of the emergent messages of the Torah and of Ramban’s commentary is how infrequently we are in fact all on our own). Most of us, however, live in a web of relationships. The closest are family, who Ramban saw as more a part of us than we might realize. First, when Shemot 21;3 refers to the freeing of an eved Ivri (a Jewish indentured servant)’s wife, Ramban thinks the Torah obligated the master to fulfill all his servant’s familial financial responsibilities, including financial support for his wife and children.

For as long as custom prescribed that for the father. However Jewish families evolved implicated a Jew who purchased another Jew’s labor. It’s more than money that links families. 29;15 says Aharon’s sons would place their hands on the chatat, the sin offering, given as part of the dedication of the Mishkan. Since Ramban thought that chatat came to atone for the Golden Calf, it’s not immediately clear why the sons had to be part of it. Ramban answered that Devarim 9;20 told us Aharon deserved to be destroyed for his role in the Calf, which means kilui banim, the killing of one’s children.

The destruction of his children would have been destruction of Aharon, not just a tragedy or sorrow-inducing event. That works in reverse, too– 20;5 limits Hashem’s visitation of the sins of the forefathers on those of their descendants who continue their ways to the fourth generation. Beyond that, the ancestor has no meaningful link to, connection with, or impact on descendants. Before that, though, he does, which is why the forefather’s sin is part of the descendant’s.

Some Positive Contributions of Society

National societies count as actors as well in Ramban’s comments to Shemot. He thinks Moshe in his role as king of the Jews established a coin that became kadosh, sanctified, because it was put to kadosh purposes, to fund the Mishkan and then pay for the sacrifices of its service. (That was parallel, in Ramban’s mind, to how Hebrew is considered kadosh because it’s used for important purposes like creating the world and Divine communication with prophets).

The Jewish nation also establishes its own calendar to commemorate the Exodus. As Yirmiyahu 16;14-15 taught Ramban, all the redemptions that come thereafter were supposed to be woven into that calendar as well, such as by giving the months names that originated in Bavel.

Where Society Gets It Wrong—The Egyptians

Turning to the negative side, we can start with the Egyptians, whose failures distress us less than those of our ancestors. Ramban assumes the Egyptians had more power to stop Par’oh than we might think. That’s why Par’oh hid his attempt to kill the Jews behind a tax of labor, a secret program of midwives’ killing Jewish babies, and then killing the babies outright. For that last step, he still did not ask Egyptians to do it, he let word spread the government would not prosecute such killings.

That last faltered when his daughter adopted Moshe—she prevailed upon her father to stop—or when word got out, and the people again refused to tolerate their king’s involvement in genocide.

The belief that the Egyptians had the power to produce better outcomes does not mean they had the will to do so. For example, once Par’oh made clear there would be no prosecution for killing Jewish babies, all too many Egyptians were happy to commit that crime.

Nor was it a momentary lapse, he thinks. Eighty years later, when Moshe and Aharon start the redemption process, the officers of the Jewish people (5;21) think they have given the Egyptians a more legitimate reason to kill them. For Ramban, the Egyptians’ interest/desire to kill Jews was always just underneath the surface, ready to bubble up, given the right encouragement.

Nor did the plagues and release of the Jews materially change their view. Ramban thinks Hashem structured the Splitting of the Sea so the Egyptians would not be forced to see it as supernatural, because they did not want to see it that way. In his view, they still longed to hurt the Jews, so Hashem let them see their way to a course of action they wanted anyway.

For Ramban, the Egyptians show us a society with the power to do better, to rein in their king, to treat the Jews differently, to concede when Gd has stepped in, and repeatedly chose not to.

They also taught us the cosmic limits on human endeavor, in Ramban’s reading, when their magicians could not produce lice. Were this a supernatural intervention, it would teach us little about the ordinary workings of the world. Ramban seems more convinced by Midrashim that think lice presented an example of the hard limits on human interference with the world. Whether because that was pure creation or because the lice were so small, Ramban favors the view that there are areas where human creativity and effort cannot help.

Where Society Gets It Wrong—The Jews

Most glaringly, Ramban thinks the Jews limped to the Exodus. They got there thirty years later than they should have, and only because Hashem made significant efforts (2;24-5 use several verbs for how Hashem came to decide to redeem the Jews; Ramban thinks that’s because it took effort—and the Jews’ cries and prayers– to find reason to redeem them).

The delay was their own fault, in that they abandoned much of the tradition while there. They ceased circumcising their sons, worshipped powers other than Hashem, were unable to accept that Moshe was Hashem’s agent for the redemption (that’s why 14;10-11 speaks of people calling out to Hashem and others complaining about being taken out of Egypt. For Ramban, they denied Moshe more than Hashem, claimed that Moshe initiated the Exodus on his own, for his own reasons).

For all that the verse refers to the people believing in Hashem and Moshe his servant after the Splitting of the Sea, not too long later, Ramban has to explain why the Golden Calf is treated as a national sin, when “only” three thousand Jews were killed. He answered that the Jews as a whole returned to believing that powers other than Hashem also run the world. That was how they could donate golden rings for the Calf and watch silently (or approvingly?) as others worshipped the Calf.

It’s another example of where our agreement implicates us, in this case as a nation as a whole.

The Ounce of Prevention

The Jews differ from the Egyptians in that Hashem gives them the way to do better. 15;26 tells the Jews that keeping the Torah will help them avoid the ills that befell the Egyptians. Ramban reads that to mean the consequences of the Egyptians’ actions were natural, the way the world tends to work. Observance of Torah andmitzvot places people outside of the usual workings of the world; Hashem heals the Jews by prescribing the best preventive medicine out there.

The essence of that medicine is found in the Aseret HaDibberot, which he calls avot, organizing categories, of mitzvot as a whole. It segues well into our consideration of his more supernaturally focused comments, since these Dibberot, in their physical manifestation on the Tablets, were the centerpiece of theMishkan, to which we’ll now turn our attention.

Bringing the Divine Into the World, Continuingly

Ramban thought the Mishkan was a way for the Jewish people to continue the experience of the Divine Presence that had started at Sinai. He identified the Aron as the centerpiece of that aspect of the Mishkan (which is why it was the first part described in detail), because the Torah says Hashem would appear and speak to Moshe from on top of that Aron, where the keruvim sat.

Their location there was because that Aron contained the Tablets with the Aseret HaDibberot on them, is what made the Aron a proper chariot for the Divine Presence. In other words, the luchot, which had the avot of mitzvot written on them, the broad categories of Hashem’s service, were the vehicle for the continuing revelation of the Sinaitic Presence.

A Communicative Divine

The content of that continuing revelation was communicated clearly, as Ramban tells us with his distinctive reading of the word leimor. In his view, the Torah is at pains to stress that Hashem’s messages to Moshe were complete and clear, that he words Moshe Rabbenu reported to us were exactly those Hashem conveyed.

That’s not the only form of communication we were given. The Urim ve-Tumim meant that the loss of Moshe and/or all prophets did not cut off the Jewish people’s access to direct information from Hashem. The Kohen Gadol, aside from all his other services, wore the breastplate that contained them, which allowed him to receive answers to questions the nation posed of Hashem. After that was lost, there was still the bat kol, the Divine Voice that would be heard at various junctures of the Second Temple era.

A Minimally Invasive Divine

Ramban was adamant that Hashem is the only power that controls the world, but Hashem does not always disrupt the natural course of events, as happened at the Exodus. Another way to set the course of the world is to implant in people the ability to do that which Hashem wanted. In Ramban’s reading, that’s what happened with the building of the Mishkan, where former slaves with no experience or education contained a population of people who instinctively knew how to work the crafts needed. Ramban saw that as an example of Yeshayahu 41;4’s description of Hashem as korei hadorot me-rosh, sets up generations ahead of time.

Hashem also does not always dictate what will happen, even on the supernatural plane, which is why the sarei ma’alah, the angels that serve as some sort of intermediaries in running the world, could incur punishment for their actions.

Ramban also accepts the idea of a Heavenly Court that brings strict justice as a counterpart to Hashem’s complete compassion. That will change in the future, according to Ramban, but the world we inhabit does not run only as it would were Hashem to do it all on His own, as it were.

An Incomparable Divine

The words “as it were” matter crucially here, because none of what we just mentioned can be allowed to take away from Hashem’s absolute control of all that occurs. As Par’oh’s sorcerers found out, Hashem can stop the usual workings of the world at any time—such that they could not bring forth lice when they usually could, and/or because they came across the limits beyond which Hashem does not allow powers, human, demonic, or other to function.

The Jews noted and praised that inimitability after the Splitting of the Sea, when they said none among the elim, the putative powers that control parts of this world, in any way compared to or competed with Hashem. It’s when Hashem shows that element, when Hashem is nora, awe-inspiring, in ways that lead the Jews to praise Hashem, that that becomes most clear.

The Linchpin and Lodestar of Our Relating to Hashem

Ramban implies a balance between the existence of powers that in some way control events supernaturally, enough to be judged for their actions and for other people to serve or worship, and the absolute control Hashem exerts. That explains why he thinks that the intergenerational punishment mentioned in 20;5 came only for the sin of believing in or worshipping other powers, and why one can qualify for the kindnesses extended to ohavei Hashem, who love Hashem (20;6), with life-forfeiting dedication to declaring that Hashem is the only true power.

In fear of repeating myself, that’s Ramban to Shemot: a world where people have important contributions to make, as individuals, families, and societies, but has a supernatural component, one that interacts with the human world at some times and in some ways, and where Hashem leaves room for others to act while not ceding any meaningful control.

On to Vayikra!

Ramban to Pekudei: Varieties of the Supervisory Experience

Betzalel’s Hands-On Supervision

The beginning of Pekudei tells us Betzalel did all that Hashem commanded Moshe. The next verse names others he had with him, but this verse sounds like he did it all. Ramban explains that he was the one who taught the various artisans what they should do. That would have explained the verse, but Ramban continues that Betzalel oversaw all they did, that they brought everything to him for checking. He delegated tasks, but no product was complete until he signed off on it.

The Mishkan was Betzalel’s to a greater extent than minimally necessary.

Threading and Weaving Gold

That did not restrict the other workers to doing exactly what Betzalel said. They contributed input as well as time and effort, I think he meant. For example, at the beginning of chapter 39, the Torah describes in greater detail than usual how they wove gold into the threads that made up the ephod. I could have imagined Ramban saying that’s because this is the first such garment, and the method they used here was true for them all.

Instead, he says the verse comes to emphasize their creativity. When told that the garments were supposed to have gold mixed in, they were confused and unsure as to how to do that. The Torah tells us their eventual method in such detail to let us see what they accomplished, how they conceived of a way and got it to work. Here, he does not mention Betzalel, which suggests to me that it was the artisans as a group who figured it out, then brought it to Betzalel for his approval.

How the Kohen Gadol’s Clothes Differed

Verses 27-29 tell us about the garments common to Aharon (and all later High Priests) and the ordinary priests. Verse 27 speaks of kutanot, tunics, for Aharon and his sons; Ramban thinks those were exactly the same.

The next verse mentions the mitznefet, Aharon’s head covering, and the migba’ot, the ordinary priests’ head covering. Ramban thinks they were made the same way, but worn differently—as he said in 28;31, a comment we did not see at the time. The High Priest would wrap the material around and around his head, to create a sort of hat, one that has an opening in the middle. Other priests would take that same material but wrap it in such a way that it fully covered the head.

Then, in our third verse of this section, Ramban points out that Chazal in Yoma 12a debated whether the avnet, the belt, of the High Priest differed significantly (he does not elaborate further, but Rashi to Yoma 12a tells us that the issue was whether a regular kohen wore a belt of linen or of mixed materials; the High Priest wore one of mixed materials throughout the year, and of linen on Yom Kippur).

The High Priest had more garments than his brethren, some of which were the same, some the same material worn differently, and some constructed differently despite performing largely the same function. Each of which distinguishes the High Priest, shows how he is both similar and dissimilar to the others.

Moshe Shows How It’s Done

As the work of the Mishkan neared completion, Hashem told Moshe (40;2) that on the first day of the first month, he should set up the Mishkan. Torat Kohanim Tzav191 says that this was the eighth day of the dedication ceremonies, the last time Moshe would disassemble and reassemble the structure. From then on, the Levi’im would do it each time the camp moved.

As he explains that comment, Ramban adds two points that certainly fit the Midrash but are not the only way to have understood it. First, he says the week of taking down and putting up the Mishkan was to help the Levi’im learn how to do it. Since we’ve already seen his view that the Torah said credited Betzalel with making the Mishkan because he thoroughly supervised the process, I expected Ramban to make a similar point here, that Moshe had the Levi’im take down and put up the Mishkan each of the days, so they could practice it under his watchful eye.

That’s all the more sensible because Ramban thinks it didn’t take much time. He convincingly points out that the Mishkan had to be standing the whole day and night, since any service (especially sacrificial) could only take place within the context of a standing Mishkan.

He thinks Moshe would take it down each morning, and then put it right back up. That’s again more plausible if it’s not only Moshe’s hands working, but Ramban insists Moshe did it all alone, and the Levi’im learned by watching.

For Parshat Pekudei, we see varieties of leadership/supervision. Betzalel watched and signed off on everything, Aharon was the same as, and varying levels of different from, the other priests, and Moshe Rabbenu taught by example, the Levi’im restricted to watching and learning, not yet getting hands-on experience with what would be their frequent obligation.

Next week, as we start Vayikra, we’ll also step back to review what was common to the comments of Ramban’s on Shemot.

Ramban to Vayakhel: The Roles of Fire and Money

Rounding Out a Prohibition

At the beginning of Vayakhel, Moshe gathers the people to remind them of proper Shabbat observance. In 35;2, he says not to perform melachah, creative labor, on Shabbat, and verse three adds that they may not burn fires. Ramban records two ways Chazal explained why fire was singled out (either that it is a plain prohibition rather than one that incurs stoning or karet and/or that it tells us that each type of prohibited melachah violates Shabbat independently, such that unwitting transgressions of different categories of melachah obligate separate sacrifices), but Ramban adds another reason verse two needed clarification.

That verse had banned melachah, not all melachah.  People might think fire helps us observe Shabbat better (as melechet ochel nefesh, labors that help with food preparation, enhance holiday observance), so Moshe made sure they understood it was not allowed [Ramban reminds us that the Aseret Ha-Dibberot did say all melachah when it spoke about Shabbat, and does not explain why we would have forgotten that here]. His examples of “helps us observe Shabbat better” are baking bread, cooking meat, and other acts that foster physical pleasure.

Other Uses for Heat

He quotes Mechilta, with a slightly different version of this idea. Mechilta attributes to R. Natan the idea that we might have thought we could light a candle, heat up water, or make a bonfire. Ramban thinks R. Natan used examples not about food, because Moshe Rabbenu had told the Jews, in Shemot 16;23, that they had to prepare all their man before Shabbat, which carried the message that they could not violate Shabbat for that purpose.

We might have thought we could use fire in other ways that enhance our Shabbat pleasure, lighting a candle, a fire for heat, or water for a shower. So the verse tells us not to.

Ramban does not explain why he presented his idea, with the example of preparing food, if he knew R. Natan held that food preparation was already ruled out. Isuspect it’s because he was not convinced the rules for man were obviously universalizable.

Either way, the Torah here makes clear that even that which might enhance Shabbat is not allowed if it requires prohibited melachah.

Fundraising in the Torah

People wryly (or jealously, if they’re fundraisers) note that the campaign to finance the Mishkan was the most successful ever, bringing in more money and donations than those charged with building it could handle. On verse 11, Ramban points out that Moshe tells the entire people all the Mishkan would involve—the structure with all its appurtenances—when only the craftsmen needed those details.

He says this was Moshe Rabbenu’s way of getting them to open their wallets. Just mention a Mishkan, people would give a bit. By telling them the various pieces of the planned building, he was giving them a sense of how big an endeavor they were undertaking.

[Ramban adds that the items are all referred to with an identifying hei because the craftspersons will hear about them in fuller detail—it means something like “the Mishkan which will be described later.” If that’s a possible reading of an identifying hei, Ramban’s view of other identifying heis (such as the one for the Urim ve-Tumim that we saw in Tetzaveh) becomes less compelling; it could just be as it is here, an indication this will be explained in greater detail in a different context.]

For Ramban, the Mishkan needed a fundraising campaign, needed Moshe Rabbenu to convince the Jewish people to give in greater amounts than they normally would. True, one appeal seems to have been enough, and met with wild success, but it did not just happen.

Uplifted or Generous Hearts

35;21 tells us that every man asher nesa’o libo, whose heart lifted him, came to help with the construction of the Mishkan. Ramban says that means only those who came to participate in the crafts work; those who donated money are described with another phrase, nadevah rucho, his spirit moved him to generosity.

He then repeats his view that the artisans had no prior training. The phrase he uses is “matza be-tiv’o she-yada la’asot ken, found in his heart that he knew how to do this.” It’s a remarkable idea, people just found themselves able to work with metal, sew garments, dye material, etc. For Ramban, it’s some element of their heart that lifted them up.

Other members of the people were generous. These people found themselves uplifted to do the actual work of building the Mishkan.

Forms of Work

That’s not to say Ramban ignored the importance of money. When Moshe Rabbenu conveys to the people that they’ve raised more than they can use, 36;6, he spreads word that “al ya’asu ‘od melachah, let them not do any more melachah.” Most simply, that last word means work, but Ramban has already said they were not doing the work.

He adduces texts that show that the Torah also refers to money as melachah. He was telling them not to donate more money, which makes it strange that he used the verb “al ya’asu, should not do.” Before we get to his answer, I want to highlight his point about melachah; he is telling us that the money we amass is also ourmelachah, our work, in a sense.

It’s similar to the idea that money is a way of keeping score, that the money we have (and can use to support various causes—I wrote the first draft of this while in Israel as part of a group touring the very impressive Yeshivot Bnei Akiva in Israel; it’s related to but separate from Bnei Akiva, the youth movement, is a network of 75 institutions, mostly boys and girls high schools, some yeshivot Hesder, some girls’ advanced institutes of learning, and other projects as well. Money we donate to causes like that, Ramban is telling us, is also our work).  

But we don’t do money, we give money. Ramban says the verse used “al ya’asu, do not do,” to include the women who were weaving materials for the Mishkan. That, too, was oversubscribed.

Because it’s a double parsha this week, I’m going to end the discussion here. But fire and money have shown us two ways to bring more light than heat on how the Jews built the Mishkan.

[Ramban to Pekudei coming later this week]

The beginning of Ki Tissa might be more familiar than most sections of the Torah, because it’s also the special reading for Parashat Shekalim (which, this year, was three weeks ago). Hashem tells Moshe to collect a half shekel “of the shekel hakodesh, the sanctified shekel.” Ramban makes two thought-provoking claims.

Coinage Marks a Nation

First, he says Moshe established this as coin for the Jewish people, since he was a great king. He adds that it was called a shekel to indicate that it had the exact weight of silver it claimed. The comment clearly reflects issues of Ramban’s time, when kings set and would debase (reduce the percentage of precious metal in) coins to save money in times of financial stress.

If the king issued coins with only three quarters as much precious metal, that was the coin (although it would be harder to use abroad), and the crown’s reserves were now worth all that much more.

He might be reading his cultural context into this passage, but I’m more interested in his comment that Moshe made these coins. Chazal say that Moshe was a king, so that’s not surprising; but since Hashem was shaping the Jewish nation in many other ways, I would have assumed (and would have thought Ramban would assume) that Hashem set theshekel. Particularly since it’s shekel hakodesh, the sanctified shekel (we’ll see how he understands that characterization in a moment).

Ramban assigns it to human agency. This is a tendency I noted in As If We Were There, that Ramban sometimes tends toward the naturalistic where the plainest sense of the text lends itself to the miraculous, and that despite his repeat insistence that all of existence is miraculous.

The Sanctity of Coins and Language

For hakodesh, sanctified, Ramban says that’s a function of these coins being used for sanctified purposes—when people promise certain values or generally donate money to the Temple, redeem their first born, and all other set amounts, they use these coins.

He says much the same about Hebrew’s title as lashon hakodesh, the sanctified language—it’s that it’s the language of Scripture, which means that’s how Hashem speaks to prophets and to the people, the language in which Names of Hashem are expressed, the language by which Hashem created the world, and named all that’s in it, including angels, heaven and earth, and humanity, including the greatest humans, such as the Avot, the Patriarchs.

That gets it almost exactly backwards from what I would have imagined. I’d have thought we’d say that Hashem chose to do all those actions in Hebrew because it is a special language, where Ramban seems to insist it only became special because Hashem used it for all those purposes. Hashem could equally have used English, Spanish, or Latin, Ramban seems to imply; because it was Hebrew, that became lashon hakodesh (I don’t mean we could switch—once Hashem created the world, gave the Torah, named angels, etc. in Hebrew, he likely thought it was now the only possible sanctified language. But it’s not inherent to Hebrew.)

That’s in explicit contrast to Rambam in Moreh Nevuchim III;8, who sees Hebrew as special for its delicacy, its lack of words for aspects of life we do not discuss in polite company. Rambam held there were no Hebrew words for genitalia or what comes out of them, only euphemisms.

That’s both unnecessary as a defense of Hebrew’s sanctity and untrue, says Ramban. We’ve already seen why he thought it was unnecessary; it’s untrue because we occasionally substitute a more gentle term for one written in Tanach, and the original word was also Hebrew. For example, Devarim 28;3 has the written word yishgalenah, which we read asyishkavenah, will bed her. Apparently, the original word was an indelicate way to express that idea. After offering other examples, he adds that were Rambam correct, we should call the language nekiyah, clean, not kodesh, sanctified.

The shekel shows Ramban at his practical best—Moshe Rabbenu coined it, more honestly than most kings, and coins and languages become sanctified by the uses to which they’re put rather than anything intrinsic to them.

The Call of the Artisan

Building a Mishkan required craftsmen of various sorts. To kick off the team, Hashem tells Moshe (31;2) that He has called Betzalel by name. Ramban thinks that’s telling Moshe that He has implanted in Betzalel the ability to oversee all the necessary crafts for this structure (later in Shemot, he says that about the other artisans of the Mishkan, they found themselves able to do what was needed—how that might be is captured well in Good Will Hunting (starting at 1:50), where Matt Damon’s character explains his genius).

Ramban here and later goes out of his way to stress that the Jews in Egypt were burdened with bricks and mortar construction, they never learned any metalworking or how to engrave gems, etc., did not even see it happening. With training and apprenticing, it takes years to learn those skills, but the desert Jews found themselves to contain a population that could do it off the bat.

Setting the Future?

Hashem had prepared these people ahead of time (Ramban cites Yeshayahu 41;4, which refers to Hashem as korei hadorot me-rosh, Who sets up the generations ahead of time), because He wanted a Mishkan in the desert. (Ramban does not make the point here, but that fits his view that a Mishkan was always part of the plan, not a reaction to the Golden Calf). Shemot Rabbah 40;2 times that back to Adam HaRishon, to whom Hashem showed every person of the future (and his/her role on earth), including Betzalel. Yirmiyahu too was born to his assigned task, was told that Hashem set his role before his formation in the womb.

This touches on questions of foreknowledge and freewill, but that’s not Ramban’s concern here. It is a good counterexample, however, to what we noted earlier. Here, Ramban reaches for the supernatural when he could have offered a simpler and more naturalistic one, had he only accepted the possibility that some Jews were owned by craftsmen and picked up those skills along the way. That would have negated or minimized the miraculous element in Betzalel and the other builders’ work on the Mishkan.

The Sin of the Golden Calf

I once wrote a short story fictionalizing the Golden Calf (“You Can’t Change Human Nature,” in Cassandra Misreads the Book of Samuel and Other Untold Tales of the Prophets). It was then that I first remember noticing that “only” 3000 Jews were killed by the Levi’im. [It seems like a small number compared to the 600,000 Jews of the time, but think about the reaction to 9/11, where about 3000 people died in a metropolitan area of millions].

The number of people killed might mislead us into thinking the sin was not national, but in 32;7, Hashem says the whole nation has gone astray. To Ramban, that refers to their loss of faith, their accepting that other powers than Hashem affect the world. Making the Calf, bowing to it, and sacrificing to it were the external manifestations of where the people had gone wrong, but Hashem knew their thoughts, where many more of them lost their awareness that only Hashem runs the world. They gave some vent to that when the whole nation donated golden nose rings for the Calf.

Neither that nor their thoughts were enough to be punished by the Levi’im, but it was more than enough for Hashem, a reminder that the privacy of our thoughts is no defense when it comes to our Creator. And that it was that which made the Golden Calf the national catastrophe it was.

If the Mishkan was a cooperative result of people giving coins that Moshe had set up, sanctified by the purposes to which people put them, as well as the literally God-given talents of Betzalel and his cohort of artisans, the Golden Calf was all on us, internally and externally. A lesson in where our religious life occurs, within, without, from Hashem directly and not.

In Shemot 28;1, Hashem lays out the process for inducting Aharon and his sons to the priesthood. Ramban points out that the sons had to be in this ceremony, that Aharon’s investiture did not turn all his living descendants into priests. A baby born to a kohen father is a kohen (barring certain disqualifications), but having a kohen father does not do it.

That distinction mattered only for that first generation but some living members of that family did not become kohanim (such as Pinchas, for whom the priesthood is part of his reward for his zealotry in the story of Zimri, later in the Torah). Ramban does not offer a reason, so I will not speculate. But it niggles at me, why Hashem chose that way. For another time.

The Mysterious Urim ve-Tumim

In 28:30, Hashem tells Moshe to put the Urim and Tumim into the breastplate worn by the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest. Those Urim ve-Tumim were somehow to be contained in that breastplate, and were to be on the Kohen Gadol’s heart when he went before Hashem. A verse also tells us the Kohen Gadol will carry the people’s misphat, their judgement, on his heart, tamid before Hashem. ]Tamid means either all the time or regularly].

Beyond that, we are not told what these Urim ve-Tumim were, how they worked, the role they played. Ramban agrees with Rashi that the Shem HaMeforash, the most explicit version of Hashem’s Name (Rambam identifies that as the four-letter Name often written in English as YHVH or Yahweh, neither of which is accurate and is why I allow myself to write them), was inserted into the folds of the breastplate. To him, that’s why the Torah never tells us how the craftsmen made them, whereas verses expound at length on the making of other garments, such as the ephod and the choshen.

The Torah also refers to them as the Urim and the Tumim, with an identifying letter hei, where the other parts of the Mishkan are called “an” (e.g. ve-asita Aron, you shall make an Ark). To Ramban, that’s because Moshe made these, based on secret communication from Hashem, or Hashem Himself did it—as was true of ha-keruvim in Bereshit, the angels set at the entrance to the Garden of Eden after Adam and Chavah were expelled. There, too, the identifying hei shows that this was a special item, specifically made by Hashem.

Light, Then Understanding

Ramban thinks Moshe inserted this writing into the choshen once Aharon was wearing it, which implies it had to be added to an already functioning choshen (it also makes it a separate item from the choshen—were the Urim ve-Tumim to be lost, that significant loss would not take away from the functioning of the choshen itself).

Then Ramban gives us his understanding of their function. Remember that the choshen itself had twelve stones, engraved on which were the names of the twelve tribes plus other words to ensure all the letters of the alphabet were represented. Ramban thinks the kohen who wished to consult with Hashem on behalf of the king or the Jewish people would ask a question, and the power of the Urim would cause letters to light up [hence the name Urim¸ lights].

He gives us an example. The book of Shofetim, Judges, starts with the nation asking Hashem who should lead them into battle against the Canaanites. They asked the kohen the question while he directed his focus to the Names of the Urim [he does not tell us what physically distinguished the Urim from the Tumim, since both were Names of Hashem].

Ramban says the Urim lit up the letters le-einav, to his eyes, meaning this was not a purely physical process; someone other than this kohen would not have seen those letters light up [which complicates the story, since a non-believer could claim it didn’t happen, or the kohen gave the answer he, the kohen, wanted to give].

Another Form of Divine Inspiration

Nor is that the end of the story, since the letters lit up all at once, creating multiple options for how to read them (Ramban gives examples of other possible word combinations of the answer in Shofetim, which was Yehudah ya’aleh, Yehudah should go up. In his introduction to the Torah, Ramban also held that the whole Torahwas given without clear distinctions between the words. We were taught the simple way to read the Torah, but there were other ways that also had meaning. This is another example of his focus on the many possibilities within language).

To get to the correct reading, the kohen would turn his focus to the Tumim, whose power made the kohen’s heart whole (Tumim from tamim, whole) in the understanding of the message. He would immediately know in his heart (again, for Ramban this is not a physical matter) what Hashem was saying.

It is, he summarizes, a level of access to the Divine Spirit, lower than prophecy but greater than a bat kol (a Divine Voice), which was the way that Jews of the Second Temple era received communication from Hashem, after prophecy and the Urim ve-Tumim were lost (a reminder that a bat kol was also not a purely physical experience, it was a quasi-prophetic one).

An Anticipatory Chatat

In 29;14, the Torah tells us that any parts of the par, bull, not put on the altar should be burnt outside the camp. This par was offered as a chatat, a sin-offering, on behalf of the new priests; as Rashi noted, this is the only example of a chatat chitzonah, a sin-offering whose blood is not sprinkled inside the Mishkan/Mikash, that is burnt.

The reason Ramban gives for why this was true yields a bit to Rashi, who thought the Mishkan’s origins lay in the need to find a vehicle to atone for the Golden Calf. Ramban had disagreed, as we saw last time.  But he concedes that this sacrifice was to atone for the Golden Calf.

That raises interesting questions about freewill that Ramban does not pause to address [if Hashem was so sure Aharon would sin such that this sacrifice was already in place, could Aharon have not? What would this sacrifice have meant in the alternative universe where Aharon resisted long enough for Moshe to come down from Sinai before the Calf was worshipped?]. So neither will we.

The Definition of Destruction

Once the chatat responds to the Golden Calf, why would Aharon’s sons need semicha, placing their hands and weight on the sacrifice as symbolic investiture of their persons? The answer starts with Devarim 9;20, which says that in reaction to the Golden Calf, the Divine wrath was kindled against Aharon le-hashmido, enough to destroy him

Ramban defines that destruction as kilui banim, killing his children, so they needed the protection/atonement of this sacrifice as much as their father. [Ramban ignores the other descendants, the ones who were not yet kohanim but should have been implicated in a threat of kilui banim].

This reminds me of an assumption common to many Jewish sources that our individualistic world often forgets. Ramban here, and many other sources, such as when the verse describes Hashem as visiting the sins of forefathers on generations of descendants who continue those ways, sees the sons as parts of Aharon himself. If the sons died, that would be destruction of Aharon, not just a personal tragedy.

We are all links in a chain, and what happens down the chain matters back to us as well. Cutting off the chain destroys us, even if we live a long time after that.

The priesthood started with five individuals, not a whole clan. Some of those kohanim would access answers from the Urim ve-Tumim, a step below prophecy. For them and for us, our ability to continue our chain of generations is a part of not being destroyed. Some of the lessons of Parshat Tetzaveh for Ramban.

Shemot 21;3 tells us about when a master sends free his eved Ivri, that his wife goes with him. The term “eved Ivri” is commonly translated as a Hebrew “slave,” but this parshain particular reminds us that multiple versions of servitude qualify as “eved”; translating it as slave weights it with the experience of African-Americans in the United States, even though that does not reflect any of the Torah’s versions of being an eved. So I will avoid the word slave.

The news that the wife goes free surprises and confuses us, since the Torah had not told us she joined her husband in his servitude, so it is not clear why or what it means to tell us that she is now free. Rashi reports Chazal’s view that the verse informs us that one who purchases an eved Ivri takes on the obligation to feed that man’s wife and children [we are left to assume the value of his labor justifies the purchase price, including room and board for his family].

The Master in Place of the Husband

Ramban takes that rule more expansively. He thinks Chazal meant that the master must fulfill all of the father/husband (now eved)’s financial responsibilities. In the Talmudic version of family finances, the father received all his wife and children’s earnings in exchange for supporting them (for much of history, that was a benefit, since they earned less than they needed to live; it was always true, too, that the wife could turn down the deal, forego support and keep her earnings).

Ramban thinks that same dynamic characterizes the wife and children’s relationship with the master. This is a kindness of the Torah’s, that they’ll be financially sustained, and the father/ husband will not have to watch his family suffer or starve while he is bound to this master, having been forced to indenture himself because of penury or pilfering.

The wife thus becomes the master’s servant too in the sense that the fruits of her labor go to him. With the difference that she can leave at any point she chooses to forego the master’s money [I think the essence of avdut in the Torah is that the person cannot leave. That’s what the multiple versions of eved and adon, servant and master, have in common. There is a continuum of obligations, rights, restrictions, and permitted treatment; in all of them, the eved cannot leave without some new input into the situation].

Once we know she too is connected to the master, we understand why the Torah tells us it ends for her when it ends for her husband, at latest.

The Power of Custom

As for the children, Ramban’s model means the master must support them only when the father would have had to. Or, he adds, when the custom is that a father takes care of his child [this is a vital addition, in that the Gemara’s model was that fathers’ financial responsibility for their children could end at age six. R. Moshe Feinstein (Iggerot Moshe Even HEzer 1;106) assumed the custom in our times went much further, for as long as children lived at home; today, that might continue until college or even graduate school].

The role of custom in this rule explains why Mechilta can logically infer that the master has no such obligation to the eved’s arusah, betrothed, or his shomeret yabam, the childless widow of his brother.  Since the eved does not have financial responsibility for such women (Ramban does know of times the eved would have had to support a certain woman, but the master still would not; we can leave that for another time), the master need not.

Slaves as Property to be Mistreated, Or Not

Later in the chapter, the Torah takes up the case of an eved or amah, a male or female “slave,” whose master beat him/her to death. The verse says the victim must be avenged.Mechilta tells us that this must be discussing be a non-Jewish eved, since they are seen as property in halachah. Ramban adds that this fits the simple meaning of the text, which never refers to a Jew as an eved without the qualifier Ivri, Hebrew [whom the master must treat more circumspectly, since he never loses his status as an ordinary Jew, in addition to being an eved of sorts to this master].

The Torah describes the instrument with which the master beat the eved as a shevet, a rod. That reminds Ramban of Mishlei 22;15, where a rod is an instrument of educative discipline. To beat someone with a makel yad, a stick readily at hand, is to lose self-control and yield to ordinary (inexcusable) fury. The Torah comes here to tell us that even when the master uses a shevet, so we believe that his intent was to discipline/educate [Ramban assumes that which is nowadays out of fashion, that there is a version of corporal punishment that is appropriately educational, even as it can also cross the line into abuse], he is still fully liable if he goes so far that the eved dies.

Ramban says the Torah does not bother to mention the punishment, since it’s the same as killing any other human being. In saying that, he highlights two sides of this evedpuzzle. While the non-Jew is treated as closer to a slave than a Jew, and physical punishment is accepted as a reasonable way to teach a lesson, the non-Jewish eved is at the same time also a full person in the eyes of halachah, such that the master would be liable for capital murder if he goes too far.

The Lies of Seduction

Shemot 22;15 mentions a man who is mefateh (seduces, although there’s more to the story, as we’ll see) a single girl. Devarim 22;29 discusses a rapist, which has some parallels to this case. The Torah says the mefateh must marry his victim, unless her father refuses, in which case he has to pay her the usual bride-price for a marriage. The rapist must pay a fine and marry her, and may not ever divorce her.

To understand the similarities and distinctions Ramban sees between the cases, let’s first define the mefateh better. Rashi read it in the usual sense, that a man found a way to convince a woman to have sexual relations. Ramban disagrees; he thinks the root pitui implies falsehood, such as when the second paragraph of Shema warns us pen yifteh levavchem, lest your hearts be seduced (which he takes to mean that something false will lead us astray, since the verse refers to Jews’ being lured by worship of powers other than Hashem).

That’s what peta’im (peti in the singular) means in Mishlei, people with insufficiently developed intellects, such that they cannot distinguish truth from falsehood; Mishlei 14;15 says this most starkly, peti ya’amin le-chol davar, a peti believes everything s/he’s told.

Ramban assumes that no woman would let herself be lured to a man’s bed without having been promised that which was not true, and, second, that if what we would call a seduction involved no misrepresentations, he bears no liability. If she makes a free choice, that’s on her, however much she later regrets it.

Limited Consequences for the Seducer

He also thinks there’s no fine for the liar who seduced her. The mohar he’s required to pay is to replace the costs of her wardrobe and other preparatory materials for married life that a groom would ordinarily give his bride. The seducer could marry her, but is not required to; nor is the father required to agree to that marriage, since that opens the door to men seducing women as a way to force marriage upon them.  

The mohar he pays is for when either party decides not to let a marriage go through. Since this woman will have a harder time marrying, her father will have to offer financial incentives to make her more attractive to other grooms, and the seducer pays those costs.  

There are obviously elements to this discussion that no longer fully fit contemporary customs of how husbands and wives find each other (although there are communities today where much of this discussion would feel fully applicable). One glaring difference is that this is all about a na’arah, a twelve-year-old girl, still under her father’s financial thumb; another is that it takes for granted that a woman/girl who is “damaged goods” will struggle to find a husband.

On the other hand, Ramban respects even such a young woman’s ability to choose. In his view, she bears responsibility for her choices unless there was fraud. And the punishment/ consequence if the man did lie is only compensation for that which he took from her, her highest level of marriage prospects.

The rapist, wholly and solely in the wrong, pays a fine and must marry her, without any right of divorce (if she and her father are interested, the only reason for which would be, again, because of the difficulties of women finding husbands in such circumstances).

Between the Jewish eved, who enters a largely financial relationship, to a non-Jewish one, who comes closer to being fully owned but still has fundamental human rights, to a woman who’s lured, lied, or forced into a sexual (and then, possibly, marital) relationship, Ramban’s comments this time take us into questions of halachic personhood, free, owned, or something in between.

Parshat Yitro records the events of Matan Torah, the Giving of the Torah, including the Aseret HaDibberot (which should properly be known as the Ten Sayings, Pronouncements, Utterances or some such, since dibberot does not mean commandments). For all that I usually try to spread my choice of comments throughout the parsha, I got caught up in the first few Dibberot, since they expand our understanding of Ramban’s view of faith and its role in our Judaism, a topic I find both endlessly fascinating and of particular importance in this generation, when even highly observant Jews are unaware of some of these commandments [but my letting it take up all the room this time means I will strive in coming weeks and months to look away from such issues].

What Obligates Us to Serve Hashem

The Dibberot open (20;2-3) with Hashem reminding the Jewish people that He took them out of Egypt, freed them from slavery. Ramban argues that that was to remind the Jews they owed Him their service, since Hashem freed them from the yoke of their previous master, Par’oh. He cites a Mechilta as support, although it’s slightly different in a way I find revealing.

Mechilta says “Anochi Hashem Elokecha” preceded the prohibition of other gods because there’s no point in a king making laws until a nation has accepted that monarch’s rule. Hashem therefore first reminds the people, “didn’t you accept My kingship in Egypt [I think this means that was how they merited leaving, by offering the Pesach sacrifice]? Once they agreed, talk could move on to the wrong in worship of other powers.

The minimal reading of Mechilta is that it explains Anochi’s being the first words and that the Dibberot start with Egypt as a way to remind the Jews they had already rendered obeisance to Hashem. Ramban (knowingly, I assume) took it a step further, that the verse is telling us that what Hashem did for the Jews in Egypt obligates them (and us) throughout history.

I like Ramban’s explanation better (he cites the Mechilta as if it meant what he said, but as I’ve pointed out, he seems to add an element), because it explains why Hashem opened with Egypt rather than Creation—the fact that Hashem made the world, set up the laws of physics, itself means we’d have to do what Hashem says. Mechilta might say our acceptance means that even within the parameters of freewill we’ve agreed to be Hashem’s people, but I still would have thought Creation was enough for Hashem to tell us what we have to do to do well in His world.

Ramban’s point, I think, is that Hashem was showing why they (and we) should feel a personal moral debt to Hashem, stemming from a kindness that applies to each of us throughout history. Sure, if we did not follow the Torah, natural consequences would bedevil us (as we saw last time); but Hashem wants us to realize we should feel obligated to serve, not just submit to His force majeure. As part of that, Ramban notes that these Dibberot are phrased in the singular, addressed to each individual Jew, male or female, because each of us should undertake mitzvot as a matter of the personal relationship initiated by the One Who took each of us out of Egypt.

The Definition of Idolatry

The Dibberot say lo yihyeh lecha elohim acherim, you must not “have” another god. Ramban says “having” a god means to subscribe to, to believe in, to accept any power as independently powerful in one’s life. That’s how to read Ya’akov’s words in Bereshit 28;21, when he said that should he return safely from Lavan’s house, Hashem would be his Gd, that he (and we, by virtue of this dibbur) would not turn to any elim, angels or heavenly bodies. That includes not believing in them, not accepting them as a power, not saying to any one of them “you are my Power.”

Ramban offers a good opportunity to remember that avodah zarah, worshipping other gods, is not always about conscious worship or religious activity. The definition ofavodah zarah (and why ‘idolatry’ is such an unfortunate translation) includes the case of a Jew who comes to believe that some other force or being has independent power over his/her life.

This stress matters particularly in the context of Ramban, who himself believes that Hashem in some way delegates some running of the world to other forces (as we’ve seen previously). It’s precisely because he does ascribe some power to those forces that his expansive view of the prohibition brings us up short—however Hashem works them, we may not acknowledge them as any kind of meaningful power, because they are not in any way independent of Hashem.

[To me, this should affect how we speak. When we say that gravity means we’ll fall to the ground if we step off a ledge, it can start us down the path of thinking that natural events must occur. We have to always remember that what we mean by gravity and all other regularities of the world is that Hashem made this the way the world operates in general, even almost universally, and that we are supposed to expect those regularities to continue in just about all cases. But we also must remember that any of that can go differently at any time. A Jew who, Gd forbid, falls off a tall tower, mountain, or into a gorge, is almost definitely going to die; but on the way down, that Jew ideally would realize that the issue isn’t gravity, it’s whether s/he will merit Hashem’s interrupting the regular workings of the world to save him/her].

It can be a delicate semantic point, but an important one. Avodah zarah means much more than bowing to idols or rain dances to spirits.

Hashem is Strict and Jealous in a Narrower Band Than We Think

The verse specifies bowing to or worshipping other powers, then adds that a reason to stay away from that is that Hashem is a E-l kana, a jealous (or zealous) Gd, visits the sins of the fathers on second, third, and fourth generations. Conversely, Hashem does kindnesses for thousands, for those who love Hashem and fulfill His mitzvot.

The simplest reading of this verse seems to me to be that Hashem generally punishes and rewards far into the future. Stay away from wrongful worships, we are being warned, since that will hurt our coming generations, as do all our sins, but this is a particularly serious one.

(That’s clearly only for those descendants that continue that path. Ramban adds that it stops at ribe’im, a fourth generation, because there’s no meaningful connection beyond that. He implies that it was that connection that is why Hashem punishes that far down– since the great-grandfather’s evil mattered to this current sinner, the ancestor’s sin still is part of the problem. Beyond that, there’s too  little impact of the earlier sinner to consider it relevant to this one).

Ramban reads the verse interestingly more restrictively. He says it’s only for this one terrible transgression that Hashem visits the sins of the forefathers on those of their descendants who follow their ways; in all other matters, each person is punished for his/her own sins (so that if a great-grandfather starts eating pork, and the family continues that practice, knowing it violates the Torah, they would still only be punished for their own sins).

How Easy It Is To Be Considered One Who Loves Hashem

Perhaps Ramban’s way is more intuitive than I’ve suggested, since he limits the areas where we might bear the burden of forebears we could not control (for all that a later generation sins, s/he would likely be upset to know that s/he is being punished more than a friend who commits that exact same sin, just because s/he was stuck with a grandparent who did the same). But then he applies his focus on how we relate to powers other than Hashem to the next verse as well, in a way that I think is surprisingly lenient: for him, to qualify as ohavai, as those who love Hashem, ordinary mitzvot are not the issue.

Rather, one must be moser nefesh for Hashem, insist that Hashem is the only Power that runs the world, and deny/reject all other powers. More than just insisting, the person would have to do that at risk of death, in line with a traditional reading of the verse in Shema, that to love Hashem with all our souls means even were we required to forfeit those souls.

It’s possible Ramban thinks we do not become ohavei Hashem unless and until we’re faced with that significant challenge, but that would make the verse a bit of a tease—remember that Hashem rewards those who serve Him well, since He continues to perform kindnesses for generations of descendants of those who give their lives to avoid accepting some other god.

I prefer to think he means that if we cultivate that strong a sense of connection, if we build our insistence that no other power than Hashem runs any part of the world, such that we would firmly intend to assert even at the cost of our lives, that we can qualify as ohavei Hashem.

Because if that’s true, the entry fee to the club is lower than we thought. To reach that august level that Hashem calls us ohavav, we could have imagined that we would need to excel at all or most of the multiplicity of ways Hashem demands we serve—all the intricacies of the many areas of halachah as well as of character and belief.

For Ramban, all it takes is inculcating in ourselves the basic truth that our forefather Avraham taught us: there is one Gd, Who runs the whole world, is the only Power to Whom we need to (or may) relate in building our most successful human lives.

Parents as Representatives of Hashem

Kiddushin 30b notes that Scripture refers to the kavod of parents, the acts of filial piety we owe them, in similar terms to that which we owe Hashem. Ramban uses that to explain why verse twelve, that command, is the first dibbur following the ones about Hashem and not serving other powers. For their children, parents are to be treated as creators, Hashem’s partners.

He then takes it a remarkable step further; while the Talmud lays out the basic requirement as being to perform certain acts of service [providing food and drink, helping them dress, helping them get around], Ramban suggests it’s the same kavod we owe Hashem. That means, first, that we admit this person is our parent, and that we serve this person for no other reason than the bare fact of being our parent. Much as we are supposed to serve Hashem without thought of reward, and just because Hashem is Hashem, Ramban thinks we must not serve our parents for the sake of an anticipated inheritance or for any other ulterior motive.

He doesn’t mean that to the exclusion of what the Gemara said, he says, he means that that needs to be our underlying attitude in all we do for these parents. So that as we do what the Gemara said—help those parents when they need it, and more—the kavod is that we do it as recognition that this person is our creator, a partner with Hashem and therefore deserving of something of the service we owe Hashem.

There’s more to the Aseret HaDibberot than telling us how to Hashem, but that’s already a significant part of those Dibberot for Ramban, since at least four of the ten turn on that question, how and where we should see Hashem in our lives, and what it will do for us when we do.

A Future Full of Compassion

The Jewish people left Egypt visibly accompanied by Hashem, a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night. When 13;21 describes that, it says “and Hashem (the Hebrew adds a vav on to the four-letter Name of Hashem).” Bereshit Rabbah 51;2 says that a vav added to the Name indicates the Heavenly Court.

To Ramban, that means Hashem was with the people during the day (symbolized by the cloud) and the Court at night (the pillar of fire). Another Midrash, Shemot Rabbah19;6, contrasts the Exodus, when Hashem and His Court led the Jews out, with the future redemption, when it will be Hashem alone (as Yeshayahu 52;12 says, Hashem will go before the returning Jews).

Ramban says that’s because in the future, even Hashem’s Court will function by mercy and compassion, as in Tehillim 139;12, “Layla ka-yom ya’ir, night will light up like day,” even the night—until now the time for the Heavenly Court—will conduct itself with the Attributes of the day, compassion (or mercy).

I think he’s saying that in this world, Hashem acts with mercy on His own account, as it were, but incorporates His stricter court as well (he gives no hint as to why that would be at night; I think night was traditionally a more fearful time, probably because of the dark, which was much more enveloping than most of us have experienced, given electric light. It’s also true that most of life occurs during the day, when Hashem acts with mercy; behind the scenes, as most of us sleep, some strict justice comes into play as well). 

In the future, it will turn to all mercy (although we should not confuse that with ignoring wrong or evil when it occurs. It’s that there’s a strict, by rights, way of dealing with wrong, and there’s a compassionate way to do it. In the future, it will be that compassionate way).

A People Divided

In 14;10-11, the verse seems to say the people who called out to Hashem to be saved from the approaching Par’oh at the same time as they complained they had been taken out of Egypt. It’s an odd strategy, Ramban points out, to repudiate Hashem’s past kindness while asking Hashem for more help. He instead believes these verses were the words of different groups of Jews.

Some called out to Hashem, others denied Moshe was Hashem’s Prophet or that the Exodus was a salvation. Those last ones said it would have been better to have been left in Egypt.

That’s why—after the Splitting of the Sea—the verse tells us they feared Hashem and believed in Hashem and Moshe. Because until then some of them still did not believe in Moshe! I always find it interesting that Ramban (and others) assume that the experience of the plagues and Exodus was not yet enough to clinch the case for Moshe’s standing as Hashem’s representative.

Or a Disbelieving People United

This Ramban does not discuss what was different about the Splitting of the Sea. It does remind us that even remarkable miracles will not convince those determined not to believe (which calls into question the claims of people today who say they could believe more if only they witnessed miracles). Ramban returns to that idea at the end of the comment, where he suggests that maybe his original doubt was incorrect, that these verses are in fact said by the same people, that they turned to Hashem for help even as they upbraided Moshe for taking them out.

That’s because they believed in Hashem, they just didn’t believe in Moshe. They assumed he performed the wonders through some form of trickery or technological knowledge, or that the plagues were indeed sent by Hashem, but to punish the Egyptians, not take the Jews out.

The Jews were able to convince themselves of that which they wanted to believe, including that there could be no way Par’oh would be chasing them were Hashem to have been the One Who planned this Exodus. Because we can become (wrongly but supremely) confident that we know what Hashem would or would not do.  

Leading the Egyptians Down the Path They Wanted to Take

Moshe starts the miracle of the Splitting of the Sea by waving his hand over it. Ramban says Hashem structured the miracle in a way that the Egyptians could fool themselves into believing it was natural. They would see the wind blowing (and Moshe waving his hand) and assume that was what caused the sea to split, not Hashem.

[I have heard important rabbis point to examples today where water periodically recedes and leaves a land bridge as if that makes it more plausible that this Sea split; for Ramban, that’s the exact opposite of the point. It wasn’t a natural occurrence, it was fooling the Egyptians into thinking that was happening.]

Ramban also thought this wasn’t usual, which is why Hashem had to strengthen the Egyptians’ hearts– it would take that kind of strengthening for them to not notice that this is out of the ordinary. But it wasn’t that Hashem forced them not to notice the miracle, it was that Hashem helped them do that which they wanted, Ramban says, out of their great desire to hurt the Jews.

Hashem helped them see what they wanted to see.

Hashem’s Inimitability

Once the Jews are saved and singing praises, they say “Who is like you among the elim, Hashem?” The word el means power, says Ramban, and here comes to deny the possible misimpression that other beings rival Hashem’s power. For Ramban, those powers are the angels (who, in his view, functioned in such a way that people could see them as independent powers even though they in fact are not). It’s that contrast that leads Scripture to sometimes refer to Hashem as E-l or E-l Elyon, the Supreme Power, to make clear there is no true other Power.

The end of the verse speaks of Hashem as nora tehillot, awesome (or terrifying) in praise, which Ramban thinks means that we praise Hashem for His most terrifying acts. When Hashem punishes those who contravene His Will, and through that punishment saves His servants, that’s what makes Him most recognized and praised. Whereas human kings terrify through acts of injustice, mostly the expropriation of money they do not deserve, Hashem is nora, terrifying, when He acts in ways so justified they lead Jews to praise Him.

Hashem Who Heals Us

In 15;26, Hashem apparently promises us that if Jews keep the Torah, all the ills that befell the Egyptians will not happen to us, because Hashem is our healer. Ramban objects that masters do not generally promise their obedient and faithful servants that they will not strike them with horrible sufferings, nor do they pat themselves on the back as great healers for that.

Hashem is warning us that what happened to the Egyptians was not unusual, it is the appropriate (almost natural, I think he means) result of their failure to obey Hashem. Hashem is prescribing these observances to us as a healer, as the One Who shows us the way to avoid those outcomes. That’s why Devarim 28;60 includes the warning that if we fail to keep the Torah, Hashem will return to us all the ills of the Egyptians that we feared. It’s not a punishment, it’s letting Nature take its course, although a Nature that includes a physical response to spiritual misdeeds.

Healer, for Ramban, is where Hashem helps us see how to put ourselves on a path that protects us from ordinary travails built into the world’s usual workings.

The simple reading was that Hashem’s protection would be some kind of great reward; for Ramban, it’s that we will not deserve those punishments, so we will not get them. We will also sidestep troubles that are part of how the natural world works. Observance earns the involvement of Hashem the Healer, Who will shield us even from the mundane illnesses of this world, let alone the horrors the Egyptians experienced.

Daily, at the Sea, and in how Jews’ lives go even after their time in the desert, Ramban was clear that they (and we) would and could experience Hashem in a supernatural mode, setting aside the ordinary workings of the world for a better outcome. As long as we manage to deserve it.

Nisan as the First Month

The first mitzvah commanded to the Jewish people as a nation was to make the month in which we left Egypt the first month of our year. Ramban to 12;2 says that it’s supposed to be similar to Shabbat, in that we are always counting to that day—what we call Sunday is really Day One of the return to Shabbat (we make a point of this in the shir shel yom, the Psalm of the Day we say at the end of morning prayers, where we count the days by number; Ramban reminds us that it’s meant as the number on the way to the next Shabbat).

For months, we should do the similar, count Month One, Two, etc. to the month in which we exited Egypt. The verse tells us this month should be lachem roshei chodashim, for you the first month, in that we count years starting at Tishrei [the first Mishnah in Rosh HaShanah lists ways in which Nisan is the beginning of a year and other ways in which Tishrei is; Ramban here points to verses that refer to the month we call Tishrei as the end and beginning of the year]. Nisan is the first month for us, not the first month of the year.

A Calendar of Redemption

Then Ramban addresses a fact I’ve alluded to, that we no longer act this way, that we call the months by Babylonian names, which Yerushalmi Rosh HaShanah says we brought back from that exile. For Ramban, that’s because Yirmiyahu 16;14-15 says that after the redemption, Jews will no longer swear by the Name of Hashem Who took the Jewish people out of Egypt, but rather by the Name of Hashem Who brought the Jews back from the lands of the north.

The easiest reading of the verse in the Torah is that it establishes a simple rule, that the month of the redemption comes first in our calendar. Ramban thinks Yirmiyahu expanded our understanding of the mitzvah, that it wants our calendar to reflect all our redemptions. We have Nisan as the first month because of Egypt, and the name of it because of Bavel.

It suggests that when our next redemption occurs or is completed (however we decide that), we should do something to the calendar for it to reflect this latest (and we hope final) return as well.

Punishing the Egyptian gods

Verse 12 quotes Hashem’s assertion that He will bring judgment on the gods of Egypt, which Ramban takes to mean that wooden gods would rot and metal ones would melt. We never read about that in the Torah because there’s no point—since the whole belief in these gods is silliness, destroying them does little to educate us.

12;29 does tell us Hashem struck the first-born humans and animals, because those caused fear in the Egyptians. Since that happened at night, when no one frequented the idolatrous temples, they did not notice what happened to the idols. (He does not elaborate on why their morning reaction, once they did go to their temples, was not worth sharing. My guess is that by then it did not matter as much, since the Jews were already on their way out).

It’s only worth noting here–we’ve learned before that Ramban thought the Torah omitted that which it found unimportant—because he adds his view that the “gods” Hashem was going to judge were the sarei ma’alah, the heavenly bodies related to Egypt. He says that Hashem lowered those mazalot and the sarim, the officers in charge of those mazalot.

Recall that Ramban thinks Hashem oversees the entire world, but also in some sense leaves aspects to be run by subordinate powers. Although he is often at pains to remind us that those powers have no independence, he here seems to say Hashem lowered their profile, will punish them for what happened in Egypt.

The Nature of Hashem’s Running the World

If they are pure conduits of the Divine Will, there’s no sense in which they deserve to be punished.  We might argue that they’re not really being punished, just that the actions of the Egyptians led to their lowered profile, but that doesn’t quite fit the language of shefatim, that Hashem will judge them.

I cautiously and tentatively suggest Ramban thinks these beings had a certain amount of leeway, especially outside of Israel. They could never act against Hashem’s Will, so there was no independence, but Hashem’s directions were not so specific that it left them pure automatons. It would fit Ramban’s comments better if they have some choices (it also then makes it more sensible that people would worship them, since they do have some power, as long as their actions do not contravene any already-established Divine Will), and then also bear responsibility if their choices lead to undesirable outcomes.

I won’t translate it into more modern terms, but Ramban seems to me to here grapple well with how we could believe that Hashem runs everything and yet also that other forces have an impact.

How Long Were the Jews in Egypt?

12;40 says the Jews resided in Egypt for four hundred and thirty years, where the promise to Avraham said they would be strangers in another land for four hundred years. Here, Ramban says only that Hashem did not bother to mention those extra years, since the promise to Avraham also said the fourth generation would return, which might stretch to include an extra thirty years.

Two verses later, he offers another theory, which he says is the clearest of all, that the nation’s sins extended the exile. That Hashem said four hundred years does not protect the Jews from the consequences of their sins; nor was Avraham promised it would be only four hundred years, he was promised only that the Jews would leave with great wealth (and that only if the host nation was found to have exceeded its mandate in oppressing the Jews).

Over and above all, sin can change matters, an idea Rashi mentioned as a worry of Ya’akov’s throughout his life, and which Ramban does not analyze fully here. But his point is that the difference between the two dates only bothers us if we saw four hundred as absolute, and there’s no reason to think it was.

The Spiritual State of the Jews in Egypt

Especially since the Jews were in fact so sinful. He notes that they ceased circumcising their sons, and that Yehoshua, at the end of his life (Yehoshu’a 24;14), has to plead with them to set aside the gods that their forefathers had worshipped in Egypt (and back before Avraham). [Once Ramban reminds us of it, let’s emphasize this shocking verse we often forget; at a minimum, it means the Jews held onto idols their fathers or grandfathers had worshipped in Egypt. Even if they did not worship them themselves—and it’s not clear they didn’t—they also did not leave them behind, even as they experienced the Splitting of the Sea, the Giving of the Torah, etc.].

As a final proof that sin can delay promised blessings, Ramban reminds us that these very Jews were punished with forty years in the desert, which means they did not arrive back in Israel at the fourth generation mentioned to Avraham. This also helps him explain Sanhedrin 92b’s reference to people of Ephraim who tried to go to Israel thirty years before Moshe came—they counted to when Hashem had told Avraham his descendants would leave, and decided the time had come

They were wrong only because they did not realize all that Ramban stresses here, that unless Hashem guarantees a certain good outcome, at a certain time, it’s not set in stone, and is vulnerable to many different factors. Including our sins.