Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Arami
oved avi

The Passover haggada contains the memorable phrase “Arami oved avi”, which is from the passage in Ki Tavo regarding the ceremony of bikkurim, the bringing of first fruits to Jerusalem.
Most but not all of this passage is cited in the haggada to explain how the Children of Israel (NB: not the Jewish people) arrived in Egypt and were rescued from there.


ה וְעָנִיתָ
וְאָמַרְתָּ לִפְנֵי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ,
אֲרַמִּי אֹבֵד אָבִי, וַיֵּרֶד מִצְרַיְמָה,
וַיָּגָר שָׁם בִּמְתֵי מְעָט; וַיְהִי-שָׁם,
לְגוֹי גָּדוֹל עָצוּם וָרָב.
5 And thou shalt speak
and say before the LORD thy God: 'A wandering Aramean was my father, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there, few in number; and he became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous.

This phrase is itself hard to understand and each word can be questioned

In the context of the verse, the plain meaning of arami oved avi seems to be “A wandering Aramean was my father” however many haggadot, notably ArtScroll, follow the rabbinic understanding of this and translate it as “An Aramean
attempted to destroy my father”.

This translation has been challenged by more grammatically minded commentators, such as Rashbam, who say that the verb oved is intransitive so the verse cannot have this meaning and in any case this is not a verb at all.

The suggestion that oved can mean “wandering” or “gone astray” can be seen from other verses in the Hebrew Bible, a striking example being from Psalms 119:176


קעו תָּעִיתִי--
כְּשֶׂה אֹבֵד, בַּקֵּשׁ עַבְדֶּךָ:


כִּי מִצְוֹתֶיךָ, לֹא שָׁכָחְתִּי.
176 I have gone astray
like a lost sheep; seek Thy servant; {N}

for I have not forgotten Thy commandments. {P}


So, having established that oved
means wandering, this raises question - who was “Avi” the alleged
wanderer?

The “usual suspects” here are the three forefathers, so it makes sense to look briefly at each candidate.

Abraham’s original name was Avram which is understood in rabbinic tradition as meaning Av le-Aram (father to Aram) so he fits as an Aramean. He also wandered the land and of course went to Egypt.

Isaac did not do that much wandering as he never left the land of Israel, this is according to the rabbis because he counted after the akeda as “sanctified” and so could leave the “sanctified” land of Israel.

Jacob, of course, fits the sense of the Haggada and to be fair this does fit the sense of the rest of the verse “and sojourned there, few in number”.

If you can’t make up your mind there is a compromise suggestion that avi means all of three of the forefathers!

However, the question remains why the rabbis changed the plan meaning in the haggada, which is also found in the halakhic midrash (Sifre) on this passage in Devarim?

In addition, the Septuagint, which was composed by Jews under Egyptian rule, also changes the meaning of the words 'arami 'obed 'abi. Its texts render the phrase as though it read 'aram y'obed (or
ye'abed) 'abi
, which is forced into the sense of "My father
forsook Aram."

It is possible that the authors of the Septuagint, like the Midrash, hesitated to identify the ancestor of Israel, specifically Jacob, as an Aramaean. The idea here is perhaps that Jacob had “transcended” his Aramean roots to create
a distinct national identity – or simply that at the time there were bad political relations with the Arameans! In addition, the Arameans appear to have been a nomadic people, whereas the Children of Israel are intended to have fixed portions in the Land of Israel (and Transjordan)
so it may have been felt that this comparison was inappropriate.

Looking at this within the context of rabbinic derash, as noted above, the context of arami oved avi is the Bikkurim (first fruits) ceremony which they associated with being rescued from our enemies – the Mishna in Bikkurim says
when they are brought the Levites would sing the Psalm Mizmor
Shir Hanukat HaBayit LeDavid
specifically:


ב אֲרוֹמִמְךָ
יְהוָה, כִּי דִלִּיתָנִי; וְלֹא-שִׂמַּחְתָּ
אֹיְבַי לִי.
2 I will extol thee,
O LORD, for Thou hast raised me up, and hast not suffered mine enemies
to rejoice over me.

Aside from Esau, who was after all his brother, Laban is the most obvious enemy of Jacob. Further we can see that the rabbis identified Laban with the word oved in the sense of “enemy” rather than wandering from Bereishit Rabba on Genesis 24:60 (And they blessed Rebekah, and said unto her: 'Our sister, be thou the mother of thousands of ten thousands, and let thy seed possess the gate of those that hate them.'):

    ...R. Berekiah and R. Levi in the name of R. Hama b. Haninah said: Why was Rebekah not remembered [with children] until Isaac prayed for her? So that the non-Jews might not say: ‘Our prayer bore fruit’; but, “And Isaac entreated the Lord for his wife” (Gen. XXV, 21). R. Berekiah said in R. Levi's name: It is written, “The blessing of the destroyer (oved) came upon me” (Job XXIX, 13). ’ The blessing of the destroyer (oved)’ alludes to Laban the Syrian, as it says “An Aramean sought to destroy my father” (Deut. XXVI, 5).

In the view of the rabbis, did Laban want to physically destroy the Jewish people or to spiritually destroy them?

Rav Soloveitchik is reported to have suggested that the haggada asks this question and says it was not physical destruction rather when Laban caught up with Yaakov on Har Gilead, at the end of Vayetze he says:


מג וַיַּעַן
לָבָן וַיֹּאמֶר אֶל-יַעֲקֹב, הַבָּנוֹת
בְּנֹתַי וְהַבָּנִים בָּנַי וְהַצֹּאן
צֹאנִי, וְכֹל אֲשֶׁר-אַתָּה רֹאֶה, לִי-הוּא;
וְלִבְנֹתַי מָה-אֶעֱשֶׂה לָאֵלֶּה, הַיּוֹם,
אוֹ לִבְנֵיהֶן, אֲשֶׁר יָלָדוּ.
43 And Laban answered and said
unto Jacob: 'The daughters are my daughters, and the children are my children, and the flocks are my flocks, and all that thou seest is mine; and what can I do this day for these my daughters, or for their children whom they have borne?


Specifically, look
at the contrast that the Haggadah provides. Pharaoh only wanted to destroy the males, and we have verses to that effect, saying
כָּל-הַבֵּן
הַיִּלּוֹד, הַיְאֹרָה תַּשְׁלִיכֻהוּ, וְכָל-הַבַּת, תְּחַיּוּן
.
Rav Soloveitchik understood the verses above as Laban claiming both sons and daughters - both the daughters and the sons of Jacob are claimed for his own.

On this basis, the threat that Laban posed to Yaakov and all of Israel was not a physical one, but a spiritual one, namely one concerning the very character of the Israelites.

To make this case, the Rav's claim is that even in the derasha in Haggadah, the Arami is Jacob, so he combines the peshat
and the derash, to read this as “As an Aramean, my father 'perished'."
(This corresponds to the parsing provided by the leyning). As a result of this threat, Jacob had to leave to prevent the assimilation, and so eventually descended to Egypt – which is why we now have to celebrate Passover!

This does relate to something which has puzzled me whenever I have read the haggada.
After all leaving the daughters alive would allow for the Jewish people, as we understand our identity today, to continue – the children of the surviving women would still be Jews (subject to litigation anyway).


However, at time of Pharaoh the rabbinic idea of the Jewish people did not exist in this form and there was instead a tribal concept of the Children of Israel, based around patriarchal descent. We can see this as, for example,
one follows the tribe of one’s father (as is still the case, e.g. for Cohanim, Levites and “Israelites”).

Pharaoh therefore felt that if he killed the boys the girls would marry Egyptians and become part of that culture. He wasn’t in a position to anticipate that when the haggada emerged, there would be a concept of matriarchal
descent which led to the analysis in the haggada!


In practice, it seems quite likely that Pharaoh did indeed intend to wipe out the Children of Israel and this would have been the sort of aim that one would expect in those days. Indeed, the first mention of the Children of Israel
in a non-biblical source is the Merneptah Stele which claims “Israel is wasted, bare of seed.”

As for Laban, whether or not it is about assimilation, the verse above seems to be effectively saying that Laban claims some sort of ownership over his extended family.

In summary, however one understands all the above, it seems that the Jewish people are indeed still around and continuing their traditions. Within this, there is a rich tradition of study, scholarship and ongoing interpretation
for our days inside the Jewish world and also in academia – so go and learn, and don’t take anything at face value – even (especially) this essay!

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