Nehar Deah

Re’eh

Gerizim and Eival, Blessing and Curse

In the Bible, as in the rest of the ancient world, there was a widespread belief in the power of the spoken word in general and specifically in blessings and curses (see the “Nahardeah” discussion on the Torah portion of Mishpatim). In the Torah portion of Re’eh we are told, amongst other things, that the Children of Israel are commanded to perform a ceremony of the giving of the blessing and the curse. There is no mention in this Torah portion of which blessings and curses are to be given, nor whom they are to be given by or in what manner. From the description of the particulars of the ceremony that appeared afterwards in the Book of Devarim (Deuteronomy, chapters 27-28) and in the Book of Yehoshua (Joshua, 8:30-35) it becomes clear that this was a dramatic and impressive ceremony in which the entire nation participated, including the women and children. The literary unit in Devarim 11:26-31 which is dedicated to the blessing and the curse focuses only on three main aspects of the ceremony: its location, its timing and its objective. The unit is constructed in the following manner: At the center there is an extensive and detailed description of the location of the ceremony (end of verse 29 and verse 30). This description of the location is then encircled by the question of the timing, which both precedes and follows it (beginning of verse 29 and verse 31) and the question of the timing is then encircled by a statement of objective, which opens and closes the entire unit (verses 26-17, 32).

At the end of the literary unit we find written that the objective of the blessing and curse is to goad Israel into keeping “all the laws and judgments which I give before you today” (verse 32), and this parallels what is written at the beginning: “in order that you hear the commandments of Hashem your God that I command you this day” (verse 27). The blessings are meant to encourage Israel to uphold their part of the covenant with God, and the curse - to frighten those who try to transgress it: “blessing if you listen, curse of you do not listen” (Devarim Rabbah [Liberman Edition], page 93). Blessings and curses also appear in the Bible in Vayikra (Leviticus) 26 and Devarim 28 and they are in line with the common practice of ancient eastern cultures to declare, at the conclusion of covenants and contracts, blessings for those who uphold the covenant and curses for those who transgress them.

The biblical text explains that the ceremony must take place upon their arrival in the land: “And it shall be when Hashem your God brings you to the land which you come to in order to inherit it” (verse 29), the reason being that the obligation to uphold the covenant with God - that is, to keep the commandments - is essential to the success of the conquest and the continuity of their possession of the land: “Because you cross over the Jordan to come to inherit the land which Hashem your God gives to you and you shall inherit it and dwell therein” (verse 31, and compare Devarim 27:2-4).

The description of the location of the ritual ceremony appears between these two statements, at the center of the literary unit: “and it shall be when Hashem your God shall bring you to the land to which you come in order to inherit and the blessing shall be given on Mount Gerizim and the curse on mount Eival; are they not across the Jordan, after the way where the sun goes down, in the land of the Canaanites who live in the Aravah, opposite the Gilgal at Eilonei Moreh” (11:29-30). The fact that the issue of location lies at the heart of the literary unit and that so much attention is attention paid to it, through the lengthy geographic description, suggest that this part of the text has special significance. Here it is worthwhile noting that in the Bible geographic descriptions often serve to convey ideological messages.

After it is written that the blessing should be given on Mount Gerizim and the curse on mount Eival, we find geographic details which are meant to assist in locating these two mountains. According to what is written, the mountains are found “across the Jordan” and “the way where the sun goes down”, which points to the west bank of the Jordan. This is in keeping with the literary context of the unit, according to which the instructions for carrying out the ceremony were given when the Children of Israel were still on the east bank of the Jordan. After this we find more specific details: “in the land of the Canaanites” and “at Eilonei Moreh”. The phrase “Eilonei Moreh” is found only here and is an alternative name for “Eilon Moreh” which is found in the Bible only in connection with Avraham. It is told of the father of the nation, that he set out for the land of Canaan in response to the voice that said “Lech Lecha” (Go, for your own sake) and when he arrived in the land he reached “up to the place of Shechem, up to Eilon Moreh and the Canaanites were in the land then; and God appeared to Avram and said: to your seed I will give this land” (Bereishit 12:6-7), “and he moved from there towards the mountain, east of Beit-El, and pitched his tent, with Beth-el to the west, and Ai to the east and he built an altar to God” (verse 8). Shechem is also mentioned as a holy place in traditions regarding Ya’akov (Bereishit 33:18-20; 35:2-4 and see also Yehoshua 24:25-27 and Shofetim 9:6). The fact that the Canaanites and Eilon / Eilonei Moreh are again mentioned in this Torah portion is not coincidental. The Torah is trying to say that what happened to the founding father of the nation is an indication of what will happen to his descendants and we see this already beginning to happen here. According to this Torah portion, Israel is commanded to go to the place where Avraham originally pitched his tent. Devarim 27:4 states that Israel is commanded to raise up an altar on Mount Eival. When Yehoshua came to the land in order to conquer it, he will sent spies to Ai “which is next to Beit-Aven, east of Beit-El” (Yehoshua 7:2) and set up an ambush “between Beit-El and Ai, west of Ai” (8:9). After the conquest of Ai, he will built an altar to Hashem the God of Israel on Mount Eival and read all the words of the Law, the blessing and the curse, according to what is written in the Torah (8:30-35). The literary, linguistic and thematic allusions found in the geographical descriptions of the location of the blessing and the curse and are therefore meant to show that the conquest of the land was part of a divine plan coming to fruition, which began with the forefathers and continued with the conquest of the Promised Land.

All the geographic landmarks in Devarim 11:29-30 point to Shechem, except for the Aravah and Gilgal. The “Aravah” is probably the Jordan River Valley and the “Gilgal” must be a well know place, as it is meant to help locate Eival and Gerizim, and Gilgal, which we know from the story of the conquest in the book of Yehoshua, was on the plains of Yericho. The question is therefore asked: what is the connection between the Aravah and Gilgal on one hand, and Eival and Gerizim on the other hand? The mountains of Gilgal are certainly not close to the region of Gerizim and Eival. Are we witness here to two different traditions, one which locates the ceremony of the blessing and the curse in the region of Shechem and the other which connects it to the region of Gilgal, which lies between the Jordan and Yericho?

A definite connection between the blessing-curse and Eival-Gerizim is found in Yehoshua 8:33-35 (and see also Devarim 27:12-13). However, do we also have a similar association to the region of the Jordan crossing and Gilgal? Traditions that connect Yehoshua 8:30-35 (both partially and completely) to Gilgal and the Jordan River crossing are found in the writings of Yosef ben Matityahu (Josephus Flavius) and in the Qumran Scroll (number: 4QJosh).

In “Antiquities of the Jews” by Yosef ben Matityahu there are two references to Yehoshua 8:30-35 - once after the story of the crossing of the Jordan (Book 5, 4) and a second time after the story of the conquest (ibid, 19). According to the Qumran Scroll, the reading from the Torah took place within the Jordan itself, before the priests’ stepped out of the water. In this description, geographical-military logic is waived in favor of theology. Joshua is presented by this scroll as one who meticulously keeps the laws of the Torah and his first action, which takes place while still crossing the Jordan, even before entering the land, is to carrying out the commandment to read from the Torah.

The tradition of the curse on Mount Eival and the blessing on Mount Gerizim were probably encouraged by the Kingdom of Israel, who regarded Shechem as being a holy place. The tradition of reading the blessing and the curse from the Torah in Gilgal could maybe have been developed by a rival temple in Gilgal. Devarim 11:29-30 tries to nullify the Gilgal tradition by presenting the Aravah and Gilgal as places near to Gerizim and Eival, specifically places which could help to pinpoint these two mountains, thereby leaving Gerizim and Eival as the only possible sacred places.

Dr Leah Mazor
Bible Department

Literature of the Sages - Devarim Rabbah

Midrash Devarim Rabbah accompanies the Book of Devarim, but does not occupy itself with each and every verse of this book. It focus on a limited number of verses - only those verses that probably served as the opening verses of the Torah reading as it was in synagogues the land of Israel, where the custom was to complete the Torah in an approximately triennial cycle. On each of these verses the editor builds a lengthy unit, written mostly in Hebrew with a small amount of Galilean Aramaic interspersed, a unit which discusses an issue connected to the verse and includes Midrashim, stories, parables and idioms connected to the verse. Researchers do not agree as to the dating of Midrash Devarim Rabbah, but it can be reasonably assumed that it dates to approximately the year 600 CE and also that it was written in the land of Israel. We have today two different versions of this Midrash. The one, is known to us from the printed format of the Midrash and was commonly used in medieval Ashkenaz (Germany) and it’s surroundings, and the other, published in 1940 by the researcher Professor Shaul Liberman from a manuscript, was commonly found in Spain and surrounding countries.

Among the verses from the Torah portion of “Re’eh” which are discussed in (standard printed version of) the Midrash there is the verse: “When Hashem your God expands your borders … and you will say ‘I will eat flesh’ …” (12:20), a verse which speaks of the license to slaughter animals and to eat their flesh in every place, not only - as the Children of Israel of Israel did in the wilderness - in the proximity of to the mishkan (portable tabernacle). In the discussion on this verse, the Midrash discusses a number of questions connected to its main issues: the permission to slaughter birds and wild animals on festival days provided their flesh is eaten that day; the obligation to cover the blood of the slaughtered animal with sand (while reciting a special blessing on observing the commandment of covering the blood); the loving-kindness God showed to Israel during their wanderings in the desert, when he fed them heavenly food, the manna and quails, and so forth.

The editor continues moving from issue to issue until he comes to the homiletical explanations of the first six [Hebrew] words which open the verse, “When Hashem your God expands your borders” which discus them independently of the issue of the slaughtering of animals. Here he deals with the commandment to give charity, for which the giver merits such great heavenly rewards that it seems that his possessions expand and grow specifically because he gives from it to the poor and other needy persons. Here the Midrash deals with a question: “Could it be that the Holy One, Blessed be He, expands the Land of Israel?” on this apparently innocent question he gives an homiletical answer, which compares between the land and a scroll: “this scroll, no-one knows its length [when it’s rolled] … when it is open, it becomes known to all how long it is. Thus it is with the Land of Israel, most of it is mountains and hills … as it is written ‘a land of mountains and valleys’ (Devarim 11:11) … when the Holy One, Blessed be He, straightens it out … as it is written ‘and the rugged will be made level, and the rough places into a valley’ (Yesha’ayah [Isaiah] 40:4) - at that time it makes known what it is” (Section 4, Paragraph 11). The editor of the Midrash is therefore making a plea that people give charity and promises that this charity will not reduce a person’s resources but will actually cause them to increase, both in term of property and also, miraculously, in terms of an increase in the territory of the land.

Personalities - M.Y. Berdichevsky: “Sinai and Gerizim”

The author and philosopher Michah Yosef Berdichevsky, also known as M.Y. Bin Gurion, was born in Medzhibozh in the Ukraine in 1865 and died in Berlin in 1921. Berdichevsky received a traditional education and after getting married he studied in the Yeshiva (Torah study academy) of Volozhin. There he began to read the literature of the Enlightenment and under its influence, he left the yeshiva, after a serious conflict between himself and his father-in-law in which he was forced him to divorce his wife. Berdichevsky remarried, but this marriage too was unsuccessful. He moved to Odessa - where he met a few of the most important Hebrew authors of his time, Mendele Moicher Seforim (Mendele the Bookseller), Echad Ha’am and others - and he completed his education at the universities of Breslau and Berlin, where he was awarded a doctorate in 1896. While living in Breslau he married for a third time and became on of the key figures of Jewish cultural life. Berdichevsky was also involved in literary criticism, wrote essays, was the author of a number of books including one full length novel (“Miriam”) and did research in Jewish folklore and history. In the field of folklore, his most famous work was “Mimekor Yisrael”, which was published after his death by his son, the author Emmanuel Bin Gurion, during the years 1939-1945. Here we will deal with his book “Sinai und Garizim” (Sinai and Gerizim), that was published in 1926.

His third wife, Rachel, tells (in the introduction to his combined works, Tel Aviv 5711 [1950/1]): “We lived in Breslau for eight and a half years. I worked as a dentist and he again supposed to support the household with his literary work, which he continued in three languages [=Hebrew, German and Yiddish]. We lived in a workers neighborhood and struggled unsuccessfully to survive. The situation at home was so bad that he temporarily agreed to transcribe tombstones from the old cemetery, on behalf of the Jewish community… but these times of poverty and isolation were, for his creative endeavors, fruitful times for him … then he began to edit Chassidic anthologies … and from the Chassidic tale he returned to general Jewish folklore and based on them he created “Me’otzar Ha’agaddah” (From the Treasures of Folklore) and “Tzfunot V’aggadot” (Hidden Things and Legends). In addition to all this, he became increasingly interested in the question of Jewish sects, especially - the Samaritans. He looked for and found in Jewish tradition tiny fragments of Jewish spirit that had been pushed aside and reached his first scientific assumption, which is expressed in the title of the book which he then envisioned “Mount Sinai and Mount Gerizim”. The book was then planned in minute detail, but was only published a half a generation later, after his death.”

In his book, Sinai and Gerizim, which was translated into Hebrew in 5723 (1962/3), Berdichevsky claimed, based on the Bible, its translations and its commentaries, that Samaritan tradition predates Jewish tradition. In his opinion, we can learn through analyzing biblical sources, that, in addition to the covenant made between God and Israel at Sinai and in addition to the covenant that was renewed with God on the plains of Moab before the conquest of the land, there was another covenant made on Mount Gerizim, after the conquest of the land and this covenant was sanctified in the Jewish consciousness as being on an equal status to the covenant at Sinai and maybe even greater than it. However, according to him, it was only the Samaritans that have continued to recognize the supremacy of this covenant.