Of Toilets and Athletic Competitions

It’s time for me to say something about a controversy that seems to be in the news almost every day, some of the issues regarding people labeled as Trans. I have several qualifications I believe permit me to speak about the issue. First, a life-long commitment to human rights. Second, more than fifty years of association with issues of community health, including fifteen years as a commissioner on the Community Health Board of Washtenaw County (Michigan). Third, thirty years as a manager of staff who included every imaginable variety of human expression. Fourth, decades of experience teaching students of every imaginable background. And fifth, but hardly last, more than forty years of marriage to one of the world’s experts on issues of gender and sex. While I certainly can’t claim her scope of knowledge, much of what I have learned over those decades comes from being willing to soak up the knowledge she has shared with me.

Almost daily now the news provides some sort of story, complaint, or fracas having to do with people we now designate as “Trans.” Trans people represent a tiny minority of our population (credible estimates run from .5to 1.5%) so why is there such a furor over them, and why do so many people harbor hateful feelings about them?

Not so long ago it was fashionable to demean gay people, deny them their civil rights, even imprison them for what we now know of a scientific fact is simply their human nature. Before that, prejudice against Jews was common and in the open–golf and business clubs which could legally exclude them, for example. Go back far enough and you can even find outrageous prejudice against left-handed people. Many of these bigotries have fallen out of fashion, so it seems like Trans people now garner all that hatred which has nowhere else to go.

As near as I can tell, many of the people who are outspoken about their prejudice seem to be motivated by a distaste for the notion that Trans people have “done this to themselves.” Two aspects seem to get most of the attention. Which public toilet should a Trans person be allowed to use, and should men who have transitioned be allowed to compete in women’s athletics. The notion is, of course, completely absurd that a person would voluntarily surgically remove their genitalia in order to use a different bathroom or compete in an athletic event. But that is how prejudice works.

To demonstrate that it is prejudice without any rational basis, we have only to consider the scientific truth that there are Trans people who are born that way. To put this in a way that some might understand, some Trans people are  that way because God made them that way.

In recent weeks, I’ve been posting on social media about two types of Trans people described in the Talmud, a work of the Jewish religion from the period 350 CE to 550 CE. The Talmud recognizes two types of Trans people. First, people who are born with both sets of genitalia, male and female. These are called “androginos” in the language of the Talmud, the more modern term is “hermaphrodite.” The second type is a person who is born with neither sexual genitalia. The Talmud refers to these people with the term “tumtum,” probably the most common modern term is “eunuch.”

In every passage where these intersex categories is listed, the Talmud demands that the people be treated with respect, that their communities support them. I find not a trace of prejudice or hatred in any of these texts.

Various legislatures, including Congress, are either considering, or have actually passed laws which restrict Trans people in some way according to their “biological” sex. My question is, I think, very simple. What bathroom does a eunuch or a hermaphrodite have to use? If a eunuch or hermaphrodite wishes to compete in athletics, which team do they have to play on?

Now, once you realize that politicians can’t possibly answer that question with laws, can they really be trusted to do the right thing for people who have resolved to adjust their sex or gender via the means modern medical science offers?

These two categories but scratch the surface. There are dozens of intersex possibilities because our genetic makeup is not limited to “XX” or “XY” configurations. As often seems to happen with prejudice, legislators either from their own personal ignorance, or because they are responding to mob psychology, will be content to satisfy their need for contempt or hatred of their fellow human beings. But we have won some significant battles against prejudice in recent decades, so I am not without hope that we will win again in this realm.

RFK Confirmation Hearing

Yesterday (1/29/25), RFK jr was interviewed for confirmation of his nomination as Secretary of Health and Human Services. He was unable to correctly answer some of the most basic questions about the agency he is supposed to lead. As one example, a committee member asked him to estimate the percentage of people who choose Medicare Advantage plans over traditional Medicare. He answered that since Advantage plans are so much more desirable, about 90% choose those.

The truth is the exact reverse. Because so-called Advantage plans are actually more expensive, 90% of Medicare recipients choose traditional Medicare.

This is important not merely because it demonstrates his ignorance, but because it suggests willful ignorance. Trying to toe the Republican line that private is always better than public, he misunderstands the issues and should he be confirmed, can be expected to make decisions based on incorrect data and prejudice.


In the interest of full-disclosure, I should note that when I do transition to Medicare (within the year) I will almost certainly be on an “Advantage” plan, not because of preference, but because my employer-provided retirement healthcare will require it.

Hanukkah 2024

Writing about the history of Hanukkah has become something of an annual tradition for me and the story remains much the same, with an embellishment or two here and there. This year, I want to begin by emphasizing that Hanukkah is my favorite Jewish holiday. How could it not be? As a child of 4 or 5 years, one of my oldest memories is reciting the blessings over the Hanukkah lamp as taught to me by my Bubby, my grandmother, in the Jewish language of Yiddish. I didn’t recite those blessings in Hebrew until I turned 6 and started my Hebrew education.

Hanukkah was always a time for eating oily food, especially the potato pancakes we called latkes. The newer custom of jelly doughnuts played no role in my childhood, but that Israeli version of the holiday did begin making inroads when I got to college and started participating in celebrations at our University of Wisconsin Hillel Foundation, a program for Jewish students.

In 1972 I started reading about the history of Second Temple Judaism in earnest. That December, I wrote a column for the Jewish student newspaper explaining some of my findings, namely, that Hanukkah began not as some sort of war for religious freedom, but rather as a civil war between competing factions of Judeans. One of those factions appealed to the regional power of Syria (at that time ruled by Antiochus IV), and it was truly remarkable that despite receiving that support, it was the other side that won the day. What most folks miss in all this is that the winning side was hardly some group of religious Jews as we think of them today, but rather every bit as much in favor of Greek (and later Roman culture) as anyone else. The rulers who emerged as the dynasty of Hasmoneans and later Herodians largely spoke Greek, adopted many aspects of Greek culture, and brutally suppressed anyone who dared oppose them–up to and including crucifying them. I explained all this in my article for the student newspaper.

I arrived at the Hillel building just a little late, people were already gathered to light the menorah (a word which means “lamp,”) these days Israelis prefer the modern Hebrew word hanukkiah which is specific to the 9-branched candelabra used on Hanukkah. Our Hillel rabbi, Alan Lettofsky, had already left on winter break, but he arranged for our brand-new Chabad rabbi (one of the first Chabad rabbis dispatched by the Lubavitcher Rebbe to college campuses) to lead us for the holiday. His name was Rabbi Shmodkin (maybe Shmudkin). I entered the hall and stood towards the rear. Rabbi Shmodkin saw me and exclaimed with wink in his eye, “I see that Jack Love has joined us, but perhaps he would like to excuse himself until after we honor the Maccabees.” The most amazing thing to me about this is that I had no idea he knew who I was or could recognize me!

I’ve revisited the Hanukkah story every year since, and posted my conclusions many times and in many places. What Rabbi Shmodkin failed to understand, and what I have tried to make clear these many years, is that I love Hanukkah precisely because it is the first and most original holiday of a religion that differs enormously from the religion of the Maccabees and Hasmoneans. It is a religion I think should be termed “Rabbinic Judaism” because it is the religion which was created by the earliest rabbis in the wake of the disastrous conclusion of the Hasmonean era.

The Maccabees and Hasmoneans subscribed to a religion which promoted government by kings and led by priests. They accepted the idea that some people were endowed by God with religious authority and vision, and deemed these prophets. They acknowledged that there was a role in some aspects for “elders” whose age endowed them with wisdom. But nowhere do we find any sense that religious authority could be wielded by dint of education, that people could study, learn, and earn authority through that education. That was path of the rabbis, and the historical record for documenting them begins more than a century after the fall of the Second Temple.

When we finally do see rabbis, beginning around 200 CE, not only do they claim that their studies endow them with authority, but they even claim that their authority supersedes all others. Priests and even kings can only exercise their authority after consulting with a rabbi. As for prophets, the rabbis simply declared that prophesy was dead, there could no longer be new, legitimate prophets.

The rabbis who gave us the Talmud and the classic interpretation of the Bible had no interest in promoting the Hasmoneans. When they created the canon of Jewish Scripture, they did not include the two books of the Maccabees which had been written to justify the kingdom established by the Maccabees and which continued through the Hasomoneans and Herodians. The reason we know about the books of the Maccabees is that Christians included those books in their version of Scripture. And the preservation of the works of the historian Josephus was also accomplished by Christians.

The rabbis obviously knew that they could not prevent the general population from celebrating a solstice holiday, a holiday centered on light during darkness. It is in that context that we suddenly find a story about a miracle–a supply of oil which should only have lasted one day which lasted eight. No mention was made in the story that this coincided with the eight day festival proclaimed by the Hasmoneans to celebrate their royal accession. For the first thousand years of rabbinic Judaism, this story of the oil was the only rationale provided for the celebration of the Hanukkah holiday.

You might wonder how it is that contemporary Jewish sources celebrate the Maccabees and their holiday. More than a thousand years after the Maccabean revolt, some rabbinic Jews realized that stories of ancient courage and military prowess might be useful in inspiring their communities to protect themselves against increasingly hostile environments. They knew of the books of the Maccabees and Josephus from Christian sources. One remarkable Jewish author living in southern Italy around 1000 CE translated large parts of this material and wove it together with various legendary stories creating a work which he attributed to “Joseph ben Gorion,” apparently intending this to be Josephus, although that would have been an error since Josephus tells us that his father was named Mattathias. In any case, these days the book is referred to as either Josippon or Yosippon.

And so it was that the various stories we now have of Maccabean courage, the fight of the few against the many, and the victory of the faithful against the faithless, could find their way into our prayer books and songs.

An End Must Come for All Things

Note: I wrote this 2 years ago but somehow forgot to push the “publish” button…

Wednesday, August 31, will be my last day as a member of the faculty of University of Tennessee. It wasn’t supposed to be, but that’s how things worked out.

Several months before the start of the semester, I became concerned that I was seeing much lower than typical enrollment in my beginning Biblical Hebrew course. I notified the department Head (at U of Tennessee we have “Heads” rather than “Chairs” at most other schools) and she sent my concern along to the faculty member leading our Judaic Studies group. Together we put together a bit of a poster which was tweeted out via some sort of established publicity framework. To little avail. As the semester drew closer, enrollment rose from 3 to 5.

There is no hard-and-fast minimum enrollment at UTK, but any course under 12 can be canceled for that reason should the Powers-That-Be make that decision.

One complication for me is that the first course in Biblical Hebrew is the first in a four-semester sequence. That creates something of an obligation to provide all four semesters to any students who wish to complete the sequence. Over my 11 year career, this had never been an issue, because after the second time it was offered, I exceeded minimum enrollment every year. Still, most students do not want the full four semester sequence. Some want as little as a single semester because that is sufficient to satisfy several University breadth requirements. Others just want the two semesters during which we cover all of Biblical Hebrew grammar as well as two complete books: Jonah and Ruth.

As you can imagine, I was quite anxious as opening day loomed. I sent a memo to the Head stating my concerns and wondering if she might prefer to cancel the course. But as it turned out, I was wrong about one critical point. My course was not unusual within the group of foreign language courses at UT. Rather, there were many in the same situation. While it can be difficult to assess why any given situation might arise, one factor was very clear: the decision by one of the University’s largest schools, the School of Business, to end a degree requirement of four semesters of a foreign language, had crippled enrollments in many courses. When the dust had settled, it turned out that foreign language enrollments in the various departments that offer them had dropped by five hundred students.

You might wonder why Biblical Hebrew would have been affected–after all, how many Business majors register for Biblical Hebrew? But that misses the point. Classes are offered at various times during the day, and students try to get into the classes when they want to be on campus. So if the Spanish classes at that hour are full, they look around for other classes meeting at that time. That’s why almost every year my courses did not fill until late in the enrollment process. But this year, those Spanish classes and other more popular language classes, did not fill and there was therefore less reason for students to look deeper into the catalog.

Another significant point is that there are only a few foreign language courses where students can learn a great deal about a language but not need to actually speak the language. All ancient language, not just Biblical Hebrew, fall into this category. So the student who might have been shy about enrolling in Spanish or French might find a more comfortable place in Greek, Latin or ancient Hebrew.

The College of Arts and Sciences could see what was happening, and felt a strong need to preserve the strength of our language programs. They therefore had a meeting in which all the Heads were informed that the College would back their decisions to continue low-enrollment classes. One Latin class is running with just one student. The Heads of all the foreign language departments contacted the College and every request to allow the course to proceed was granted. Had my Head contacted the College, she would have been granted the same privilege. But she didn’t bother and instead canceled my course. I know that this was contrary to the wishes of the College, because not knowing that she had already acted, the Associate Dean in charge of such things wrote to her and assured her that my course could run.

I found out that I didn’t have a class when I showed up to teach it and there was just one student in the room. I asked him to check his email and sure enough, he had a message from the Registrar notifying him that he had to find another course because Biblical Hebrew had been cancelled.

This gave me the “honor” of being the only foreign language teacher at UTK to lose a course over enrollment issues. Every other instructor with similar issues is continuing, including as I mentioned, a Latin course with one student.

This did not end my appointment at UTK because I still had a functioning Intermediate Biblical Hebrew course. But this meant that I now had to arrange my life around a job that required my presence on campus for just 1 hour, three days per week. And while it might seem all that important to some folks, in one push of a button my Head had literally cut my salary by 50%.

As my friends know, I recently exceeded 70 years of age and I have some health issues. I’m not willing to go to campus for just one course, and I’m also not willing to take a salary cut of 50% to continue.

As I said at the outset, it’s not the way I would have chosen to do it, but as of the end of August, I have retired from the University of Tennessee. Not that as a part-time lecturer the University will give me any status as a retiree. I’ll simply disappear from the campus as if I had never been there.

Capital Punishment: The View from Judaism

There is not the slightest doubt that throughout the historical period when the Bible was composed that capital punishment was an accepted and indeed commonplace fact of life. Not only does the Bible authorize capital punishment, but prescribes and demands it for many offenses. Lift a stone on the Sabbath? The Torah requires a death sentence. Commit adultery? Death to all parties. And adultery is hardly the only sexual offense for which the death penalty is meted out–incest, bestiality, male homosexual relations. Leviticus 20 details all these and adds such things as consulting with a ghost–some sort of communion with a supernatural being. Apparently seeking your fortune from a Gypsy could be a capital crime in the eyes of Leviticus. Oh, and be careful what you say to your parents, insulting one is another capital crime. All this is in Leviticus 20, but there are references to the necessity for capital punishment in every book of the Torah and throughout the rest of the Hebrew Bible.

One might have expected change with the introduction of Christianity, after all, it would not be any kind of exaggeration to suggest that the most infamous case of capital punishment in human history is the execution of the man Christians claim was the Messiah, the anointed of God and later celebrated as God’s son. But nowhere do we find any suggestion that the execution of Jesus was anything but the legitimate exercise of government power. As described in the Gospels, Jesus was accused of a capital crime, received a fair trial by the standards of his time, and executed according to the dictates of the law. But far from resulting in any condemnation of capital punishment, nations adopting Christianity accepted capital punishment for an ever widening set of infractions. In nineteenth century England, wags noted that spectators who came to see the public hangings of pick-pockets often discovered that their own pockets had been picked.

The history of capital punishment takes a major turn with the meditations of the post-Biblical rabbinic movement. It is easy to say that this resulted from the fact that Jews by and large ceased to be self-governing in the wake of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. If a Jew were charged with a capital crime, they would be at the mercy of a non-Jewish legal entity. Confronted with what were almost certainly many executions for such crimes as “blasphemy”–or simply because gentiles wished to confiscate their belongings–such circumstances might well lead to a questioning of the fairness of capital punishment.

But how could the rabbis of that post-Temple era question the legitimacy of capital punishment? Did we not begin this discussion by noting that capital punishment is quite literally demanded by every book of the Torah?

What we find is that they found a weak spot in the logic of capital punishment: the legitimacy of the courts which are required to mete out the sentence. How does anyone know that one of the enumerated crimes has occurred? In most cases, it could only happen by the testimony of witnesses. In various texts the rabbis found ways to undermine relying on such testimony. They enacted such protections as requiring the testimony of at least two eyewitnesses to a capital crime. They admonished the witnesses that they could themselves be charged with a capital crime if they lie or distort the truth. And in one text they declared that any court which sentenced more than one person to death within 70 years is a homicidal court and must be disbanded (Makkot 7a).

The modern State of Israel has experienced a wide variety of crimes which surely merit the death penalty, but Israel has executed just one person in the more than 70 years of its existence: Adolph Eichmann.

Most western democracies and many American states have outlawed the death penalty out of a recognition that certainty will always elude us. But elsewhere in the world, and among many US states, the death penalty remains. As I write this, two Americans have been executed in two different states who may very well have been innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted. And a man in Texas is awaiting execution for a crime he almost certainly did not commit.

This barbarism simply must end.

Teaching the Bible in Public Schools

The news in recent days has included many reports about various state governments attempting to require “biblical” education of some sort or another in public grade schools. Of course this can only be a violation of the bedrock US constitutional demand that there be a separation of church and state. But let’s set that aside for a moment and wonder if these legislators actually understand what is in the Bible they profess to hold by.

One of the loudest supporters of these proposals is none other than Donald Trump, who also expressed support for the posting of the Ten Commandments in public spaces including classrooms. Seems a little peculiar since there is good evidence that he has violated every one of those commandments.

There is no universal agreement on how to parse those ten statements but no one would dispute that among the most important within that important set of principles is “Do not murder.” The Hebrew for this commandment is, לֹא תִרְצַח, translated “Thou shalt not kill” by the King James version, language which is retained in many English versions. The Hebrew verb, however, has a more specific meaning, namely, “murder.” The distinction becomes important because it is obvious that “kill” is too general. After all, the Bible itself demands capital punishment for many infractions, so how could it also demand that one not kill? For this reason, the New Jewish Publication Society (NJPS) translation renders it as I did, and a few Christian Bible translations, for example, the New American Standard Version (NAS) do as well.

The Bible these government officials want our children to study in public schools also provides an excellent example of the need to hold even the highest office-holders to account for their crimes. The story is familiar to most of us: David and Bathsheba. And the narrator does not mince words in his description of the events. King David sees Bathsheba bathing and inquires about her. He is told that she is the wife of Uriah the Hittite, who is at that moment fighting for David on the front lines. David summons, sexually assaults and impregnates Bathesheba. I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide whether acceding to the wishes of a ruler should be classified as rape or not.

Learning of Bathsheba’s pregnancy, David summons Uriah back from the front and gives him leave, hoping that he will bed his wife and be able to take credit for the pregnancy. But Uriah is such a good soldier that he declines that part of the invitation, instead standing guard for David.

David returns Uriah to the front with a message for his commander Yoab—get rid of Uriah. And so Yoab positions Uriah in a place where the fighting is particularly heavy, and is killed.

David imagines himself to be in the clear. He is visited by Nathan, who we are told is a prophet of God. Through a parable, Nathan convinces David to incriminate himself, and David famously declares, חַי־יְיָ כִּי בֶן־מָוֶת הָאִישׁ הָעֹשֶׂה זֹאת “By the life of the LORD, the man who behaved this way deserves to die.” To which Nathan replies, אַתָּה הָאִישׁ “You are that man.”

But the story does not end with this. David has been found guilty of murder. The narrator explains that God will not take his life in exchange, but demands a life to compensate for the life, and so the child that Bathsheba conceived is stillborn. And this also becomes part of the fabric of the explanation why the Temple was not constructed in David’s lifetime, that holy task will be left to Solomon, Bathsheba’s son born to her and David after these events have transpired. David’s final years are anything but peaceful. His children battle each other, his wives conspire against one another, and David himself declines into senescence.

The lesson is complete. No one is exempt from God’s justice. The dues must be paid. And murder is murder, there is no way to cleanse the blood debt except by blood.

And so we now turn to modern times. A modern day president filled with contempt for the electoral process summons a mob and launches it against the very government he leads. In the melee that follows, violence leads to the deaths of nine people including five peace officers. Four of the deaths were participants in the mob. A total of five peace officers died either directly from the event or its aftermath. One officer, Brian Sidnick, died as a direct consequence of the riot. Four more officers died via suicide, and so far one of those has been declared a result of the insurrection.

There is simply no doubt whatsoever that the former president instigated the events that resulted in these deaths. Now, under US law, he could not be found guilty of homicide. In fact, there is at least some possibility that according to a recent Supreme Court decision, if he claims sending a mob to the capitol is somehow an “official act” he could be given immunity from any accusation of murder (or treason).

But that isn’t what the Bible would say. If the prophet Nathan were here today, he would undoubtedly say to the former president, “You are that man.” You must pay with blood for the blood you have stolen from the families of the deceased.

Just remember that if you think the Bible has credibility and use for our times, you do have accept its views on things like this: justice must be served.

Sad News on the JHS 44 Front…

I’ve been remiss in posting news about my friends, so apologies for the late notice.

In recent times two of the classmates referenced here have passed, Mitch Turbin and Robert Slayton. Mitchel left us on November 26, 2021 after a long illness. He had relocated to a new home for retirement in Portland, Oregon. Robert (Bobby) Slayton died just a few weeks ago (March, 2024) in his longtime home in Southern California after a distinguished career at Chapman University.

May the cords of their memory be bound with ours so that they live on forever through us.

Of Dragons and Sea Beasts

On The Presence of Dragons in The Hebrew Bible

Note: this entry in my blog is a midrash, that is to say, a textual commentary on Scripture rather than a scholarly analysis. I hope the reader will find some evidence of scholarship in it, but it is intended more to edify and entertain than to present any new scholarly finding. So enjoy!

For the occasion of the Torah reading for January 13, 2024, Va’Era, among the very interesting aspects is the question of the presence of dragons in biblical Israel. The question arises, as it often does, from the fact that there are many Hebrew words in the Bible which have no certain translation into English (or other languages, for that matter).

The biblical reading for the day is largely concerned with the various “signs and wonders” that Moses (and sometimes his brother Aaron) used to prod Pharaoh into “letting the people go.” Exodus 7:9 tells us, “When Pharaoh says,’Show us a sign,” say to Aaron, ‘Take your cane and throw it down in front of Pharaoh.’ It shall turn into a serpent.” The Hebrew word translated here as serpent (other translators render it snake) is: תַּנִּין. And that translation certainly makes sense in this context, after all, it’s pretty easy to imagine a cane morphing into a snake.

Fanciful Dragon

Someone’s Idea of A Dragon

But here’s a problem. That word תַּנִּין occurs in many other places, and it might be more difficult to understand it as snake in those other places. Let’s look at a few of them.

The first time we encounter the word תַּנִּין in the Hebrew Bible is quite literally in the beginning: Genesis 1:21 tells us: וַיִּבְרָא אֱלֹהִים אֶת־הַתַּנִּינִם הַגְּדֹלִים “and (on the fifth day) God created the great sea creatures (תַּנִּינִם).” It’s the same word, so why not translate this as, “God created the big snakes”? But nary a professional translator feels that’s the correct meaning of תַּנִּינִם in this verse. Most of the modern translators offer “great sea monsters,” the King James prefers to render it whales. At this point it might be worth noting that biblical Hebrew had no word for whale so the creature which swallowed Jonah was דָּג גָּדוֹל a big fish.

Isaiah Chapter 27 gives us an interesting combination of notions for תַּנִּינִם:

בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא יִפְקֹד יְהֹוָה בְּחַרְבּוֹ הַקָּשָׁה וְהַגְּדוֹלָה וְהַחֲזָקָה עַל לִוְיָתָן נָחָשׁ בָּרִחַ וְעַל לִוְיָתָן נָחָשׁ עֲקַלָּתוֹן וְהָרַג אֶת־הַתַּנִּין אֲשֶׁר בַּיָּם:

Someone’s idea of a Leviathan

On that day, the LORD will punish with his powerful sword Leviathan the fleeing Serpent and Leviathan the coiled serpent and slaughtered the sea monsters (or dragons, or serpents!) of the sea. Notice again the use of תַּנִּינִם.

The name Leviathan would almost certainly have been evocative of Near Eastern creation myths to audiences of ancient Israel. In this verse Leviathan is compared (twice) to some sort of serpent

A dragon makes another appearance in Isaiah, chapter 51—which by most scholarly accounts would make the author different from the First Isaiah of Chapter 27:

עוּרִי עוּרִי לִבְשִׁי־עֹז זְרוֹעַ יְהֹוָה עוּרִי כִּימֵי קֶדֶם דּוֹרוֹת עוֹלָמִים הֲלוֹא אַתְּ־הִיא הַמַּחְצֶבֶת רַהַב מְחוֹלֶלֶת תַּנִּין:

Arm of the LORD, arise, arise! Arise as in olden days, generations past! Are you not the one (arm) who dismembered Rahav? Did you not pierce the Dragon?

While many readers might wonder about “Rahav,” this is not a reference to the woman of Jericho who sheltered the Israelite spies as related in Joshua. Although sounding similar in English, the woman in Joshua is named רָחָב with a het rather than a heh. Rather, it is another reference to some sort of sea creature from ancient Canaanite myth. A perplexing verse becomes easier to understand as the prophet is calling upon the arm of God to repeat her (arm is feminine in Hebrew) victories against the sea creatures depicted with names drawn from those Canaanite tales.

A psalm names creatures to be vanquished at 74:13:

אַתָּה פוֹרַרְתָּ בְעָזְּךָ יָם שִׁבַּרְתָּ רָאשֵׁי תַנִּינִים עַל־הַמָּיִם:

By your strength you split the sea, and smashed the heads of the dragons (sea monsters?, serpents?) in the waters.

The new JPS translation renders תַנִּינִים by “monsters,” KJV and NRSV both choose “dragons.”

Job 7:12:

הֲיָם־אָנִי אִם־תַּנִּין כִּי־תָשִׂים עָלַי מִשְׁמָר:

Am I the sea or a dragon that you set watch over me?

Here we find a different distribution of renderings for תַּנִּין than usual. The NJPS which tends to stay away from “dragon” does render it “dragon” here, and that is also the rendering of the editions of the Revised Standard Version (RSV and NRSV). But the King James, which seems to enjoy translating the term as “dragon” elsewhere, here renders the word, “whale”! Meanwhile, other versions such as the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) and the New American Standard Bible (NAS) both prefer “sea monsters.”

Robert Alter has a particularly interesting take on this verse. He translates it, “Am I Yamm or the Sea Beast, that You should put a watch upon me?” As you can see, he renders תַּנִּין as “Sea Beast” (and note the capitalization), but for me the interesting departure is translating יָם as Yamm. I’ve mentioned several times that all these terms are evocative of ancient Near Eastern creation stories, and Alter here signals this by using the Hebrew term to mean one of the names of the god of the sea. Notice that as vocalized by the Masoretes, the הֲ is not the definite article “the” but rather a particle which introduces a question. Still, Alter shies away from “dragon” preferring “Sea Beast.”

Ezekiel mentions תַּנִּין in several verses, 29:3 is of particular interest here:

דַּבֵּר וְאָמַרְתָּ כֹּה־אָמַר ׀ אֲדֹנָי יְהֶֹוִה הִנְנִי עָלֶיךָ פַּרְעֹה מֶלֶךְ־מִצְרַיִם הַתַּנִּים הַגָּדוֹל הָרֹבֵץ בְּתוֹךְ יְאֹרָיו אֲשֶׁר אָמַר לִי יְאֹרִי וַאֲנִי עֲשִׂיתִנִי:

Say: This is what my LORD God is bringing upon you, Pharaoh King of Egypt: the great dragon (sea creature, sea beast, etc) who lies (perhaps “lurks”) in the Nile, who declares, “The Nile is mine, because I made it.”

The word תַּנִּים here has the usual assortment of translations across the English versions—I went with dragon in agreement with good old King James as well as the RSV. NJPS renders it mighty monster. But perhaps the most interesting take is that of the NJB, which says, “the great crocodile wallowing in his Niles”. Not only does this actually make sense from the perspective that there actually are crocodiles in the Nile, but they also noted that the Hebrew form of the Nile is plural.

An actual Nile Crocodile

And so that gives us yet another rendering into English of תַּנִּים, namely, crocodile. But do note that it’s still the same Hebrew word.

And so we reach the end of today’s path through great sea monsters, crocodiles, and other sorts of beasts. And yet, for many of us, there is no word more evocative than dragon. Could that be the image our various texts really wanted to convey?

On the Notion of the Rabbinate

A topic arose in a meeting I attended for my local congregation which reminded me how much certain Jewish institutions are misunderstood. We were discussing how best to go about filling the position of rabbi for our congregation and because of our financial situation, we are forced to consider things like part-time rabbis. One of the participants said that we had to have a rabbi because of performing conversions and participating in a Bet Din (a Jewish court convened these days most often to approve conversion, but also used, for example, for the Halitzah ceremony which will await another time for explication).
I spoke up at this point and pointed out that no rabbi is necessary for any of these things. I should add since I’m writing at greater length here that in most congregations rabbis are usually performing such chores because, after all, they are educated in the necessities.
But there is no requirement for this.
One reason there is no such requirement is that, in fact, there are no rabbis today who can fulfill the traditional demands for ordination as a rabbi. The last person who had some claim on the title was Rabbi Chaim Vital, who died in 1620. It’s by no means historically certain that he had authentic smikhah, the Hebrew term for ordination, but his contemporaries largely accepted him so we can leave it at that. Since his passing, not a rabbi in the world has been able to claim authentic ordination.
This seems to have led to title inflation in some parts of the Orthodox Jewish world. One of the briefer ones is “HaRav HaGaon” (something like the The Genius Rabbi), which of course is quickly eclipsed by “Maran Harav Hagaon” (“Our master the Genius Rabbi”). And of course, we see that many find it necessary to add the trailing honorific, Shlit”a (short for Sheyikhye Le’orech Yamim Tovim Amen, “May he live a good long life, Amen”).
All for folks who do not, in fact, have authentic smikhah.
Now, before some of you get riled up, I’m not dissing the modern institution of the rabbinate. There are wonderful schools in every modern Jewish movement who produce well-trained scholars of Judaism who are fit to lead congregations. I’m simply explaining that conferring the title of “rabbi” on them does not, by Jewish tradition or law, provide them with the authority discussed in the Mishnah, Talmud, or Halakhic codes.