August 27, 2008
Dennis Prager: ‘By The Time I Was 47, I Had Achieved Ten Times As Much As Barack Obama’
Filed under Dennis Prager, barack obama by Luke Ford
It’s a blueprint for an ethnocentric state. Luke Ford, Joey Kurtzman discuss the week’s Torah portion.
Recorded live at the hovel this afternoon:
…Teacher-student chemistry is what sparks much of the best work that goes on at universities, today as always. It need not be reckless; it need not be realized. It need not even be articulated, or mutual. In most cases, in fact, it is none of these. In most cases, academic eros works from behind the scenes. It lingers behind the curtain and ensures that the production onstage is strong. It ensures that the work in the classroom is charged, ambitious, and vigorous. In most cases, it would be counterproductive for it to emerge, itself, into the limelight. That said, it occasionally does. And when it does, it must not be criminalized. For the university campus on which the erotic impulse between teachers and students is criminalized is the campus on which the pedagogical enterprise is deflated. It is the campus on which pedagogy is gutted and gored. This, unfortunately, is the scenario that confronts us today.
…
My own success would have been perfect had I elected in the last few years to sue my fiance, a professor at the university where I am completing a doctorate, for our relationship. In fact, the suit was very nearly made on my behalf, and against my will. When his superiors learned of our relationship, the wheels of justice and punishment began, immediately, to turn. No matter that I had never taken a class with him, or that I worked in a different department; no matter that we had met off-campus, or, most importantly, that I did not feel in any shape or form harassed by him. Nobody cared. My view of the matter was declared “irrelevant.” As a graduate student, I was presumably too “disempowered” to judge of my own abuse. Deans wrote letters; chairs made calls; hiring committees were warned of the “seriousness of the offense”; jobs were threatened–and I went unconsulted.
…
My own success would have been perfect had I elected in the last few years to sue my fiance, a professor at the university where I am completing a doctorate, for our relationship. In fact, the suit was very nearly made on my behalf, and against my will. When his superiors learned of our relationship, the wheels of justice and punishment began, immediately, to turn. No matter that I had never taken a class with him, or that I worked in a different department; no matter that we had met off-campus, or, most importantly, that I did not feel in any shape or form harassed by him. Nobody cared. My view of the matter was declared “irrelevant.” As a graduate student, I was presumably too “disempowered” to judge of my own abuse. Deans wrote letters; chairs made calls; hiring committees were warned of the “seriousness of the offense”; jobs were threatened–and I went unconsulted.
…
…In our enlightened contemporary university, men walk on eggshells and women run from shadows. Every gesture is suspect: if a colleague compliments you on your dress, it smacks of sexism; if a professor is friendly, he is readying you for future sexual abuse. There is no kindness so innocent that women educated in the “patterns” of harassment cannot recognize it as an instance of the newly identified activity experts refer to as “grooming” the victim for the kill. Academic encouragement, easy jesting, an affectionate epithet–all of what used to be the currency of good fellowship as well as teaching–have become cause for vigilance, fodder for complaint, the stuff of suits.
…
Were the rhetoric of the sexual-harassment authorities pursued with any consistency, it would deepen the rift between classes and between races just as fast as it has, in effect, restored the rift between the sexes. For what is the main trope of university harassment discourse? “Power differential.” Under no circumstances, we hear with metronomic regularity, may we countenance a “power differential” in intimate relationships. A teaching assistant not only should not but cannot give consent to a union with an assistant professor, suggests Billie Dziech, speaking for the consensus of harassment experts in the Duke Journal of Gender Law and Policy (1999)…
…
The crackdown on power differentials in student-professor (or senior colleague-junior colleague) relationships presupposes a power-balance in non-pedagogic relationships that is completely fictitious. Where, one might ask, are the symmetrical relationships? If a student falls in love with a lawyer, is that more symmetrical? Should we outlaw relationships between students and nonstudents too? What about between good students and bad students? Rich students and poor students? Were we honest about our disdain for power imbalance we would have to legislate as emphatically against discrepancies in cultural, economic, and racial clout (to give a few examples) as against those in professional clout. It would be well-nigh impossible because of the endless and conflicting ways in which power manifests itself once we relinquish a simplistic model. (If there is “power” in academic rank, for instance, there is power in youth too–in physical attractiveness, in energy. There is power, even, in yet-to-be-fulfilled promise–power in time.) To the extent that such legislation succeeded, it would be a disaster–a reactionary dystopia, a hierarchical hell to which the way had been paved with liberal intentions.
One of the astonishing strengths of love and sex is that it can make boundaries between people so easy to break. It can glide, smiling, around social, vocational, and linguistic roadblocks; it can disarm difference, banish history, slice through power divides. It can ease the passage into another culture, mind, generation, or world. As was discovered by Jane Gallop–who seduced her professors as a student and her students as a professor (for which she was accused of sexual harassment in 1992 with far more reason than most)–sex is a great “leveler.” As suspect as Gallop may be in her egotism and promiscuity, in this she is right. Sex is a great leveler, and not just in the bedroom. The most surprising thing you learn when you fall in love with a sage or a student, a prince or a pauper, is not that you can sleep with him but that you can talk with him. This is something understood–unexpectedly, perhaps–by Philip Roth. The highly cultured hero of his new campus novel, The Dying Animal, may have been “inaccessible to [his student lover] in every other arena” but the sexual when they first met–so he says, and, given his general misanthropy, this is probably true. But for all the ways in which their liaison is compromised, what the mannerly Cuban coed and the transgressive Jewish pundit discover is that they can actually talk to each other. The same is true of the cleaning woman in Roth’s previous novel, The Human Stain, who discovers that she can arouse the college dean mentally as much as physically. He can confide in her more than he ever could in his yuppie kids and bookish colleagues. She finds in the privileged, overeducated septuagenarian her first playmate, the first person she can tease and trust.
Legend has it that love is blind. And lust is blind. Just sometimes, though, they are clairvoyant. They take the glaze from our eyes. They prompt us to look through the odd, unfamiliar exterior of our neighbors and detect a familiar soul, a soul with which, to our surprise, we can communicate. Indifference and industry have made more men blind than eros. If Cupid wears a blindfold now and then, Mammon wears a hood.
…
One of the least disputed objections to classroom erotics is that they constitute, in the words of harassment author Leslie Pickering Francis, a “distraction from teaching, learning, and research.” Nothing could be further from the truth. To say that chemistry between a student and a teacher distracts from learning is like saying that color distracts from seeing. It does not distract; it enlivens, enhances, intensifies: it fixes the gaze. It gives teeth to the eyes, a digestive tract to the brain.
I will go out on a limb and admit that if crushes between students and teachers could have been prevented when I was in college, I would never have made it through. The fact that I graduated summa cum laude is testimony to the number of crushes that sustained me, that kept me edgy, and eager, and engaged. At the beginnings of quarters I shopped around for teachers to have a crush on, and it was a sad term, a long term, when I found none. I tried. I fanned the flame of minor lights–knowing full well that if I could not generate at least a little heat my mind would freeze.
…
I do not advocate making a habit of sleeping with professors, but then I would not advocate making a habit of sleeping with plumbers, or realtors, or artists either. I do advocate the exception. If a professor and student fall in love mutually–and let us admit that there are more occasions for this to occur than exist for a professor and a plumber–then there should not be a law or code or set of mores to stop them from giving that love an opportunity to succeed. It may not: as the new campus moralists observe, “the vast majority of students who enter into affairs with their lecturers … do not subsequently report that they were glad to have had the experience. Quite the contrary.” Most relationships don’t succeed–most non-faculty-student relationships don’t succeed, if by success we mean that they go on forever. And when people come out of them, they unfortunately do not often “report that they were glad to have had the experience” either–at least not right afterward. Divorce courts are full of people who say the opposite. We do not, therefore, outlaw marriage.
…
I learned about more than Renaissance literature from the man I loved as a freshman. Contrary to popular opinion, the relationship did not reinforce my student sense of inferiority; it eliminated it. As much as I admired my teacher, I also found I could talk with him; I had something to offer him that had nothing to do with the old cliches of youth and beauty. Or if it had to do with them, then long live mixed motives, for they certainly were not the most important or lasting cause of our understanding–an understanding that has grown over the last decade and sparked a vivid and voluble literary correspondence. The relationship enfranchised me intellectually; it gave me a voice, and faith in it. And it did this even though, at the outset, it also drew me into the goofiest excesses of adolescent adoration. It drew me to abandon my slot at a top university in order to trek across the country to an obscure one, at which my teaching assistant had just accepted his first professorship. It prompted me to fake an interest in that school’s religious affiliations while working a job as a live lingerie model in a shady local bar to pay my increased private-school dues. It also led me to flee the lightest coffee invitation from my idol. It was not until I returned home (my funds ran out; my talents as a model were limited) that our conversations really began. But even this–the experience of following my heart, however on the surface, vainly–was good for me. It made the love poems I was reading real, immediate, and practical. It was the laboratory component of the Amorous Theory I was assimilating.
All is fair in love and war; people must take their chances, and students are no exception. University students are not children, and women are not children, though to hear harassment officers talk one would think so. They are also not desireless deadwood; they do not drift about aimlessly until angled by a “Lecherous Professor.” They are perfectly capable of finding a professor themselves and seducing him–in fact, I would guess, on the basis of admittedly anecdotal evidence, that this happens far more frequently than the reverse.
…
Harassment specialists seem unable to believe that female students have the desire or enterprise of an Alcibiades. They do. And the position that they do not–albeit held, as it often is, by bedrock feminists–seems strangely sexist. Why should Greek men have initiative and eros, and American women none? Why should contemporary coeds emerge from a romantic encounter with a teacher–even, as a textbook on the subject tells us, “the most `consensual’ appearing”–with “devastation … real and intense” and “self-esteem” so shattered it demands “years of therapy and reconstructing,” when nobody thinks for one moment that young men like Alcibiades or Agathon sustain incurable wounds? It is only women’s experience that is assumed to be traumatic beyond comprehension or repair. It is only women who are taken to be as frail and faltering as they are devoid of lust and luster. Sexism can be paternalistic as well as aggressive (historically, it more often was), and this is sexism writ large, no matter who’s spreading it.
…
And it is bad for pedagogy. It’s one thing to disarm a certain type of old-school professor who thought that his students’ bodies (as well as their research and briefcase-toting services) were his birthright. It’s one thing to discourage gross sexist speech and to counsel caution in the initiation of student-teacher relationships. But it is another to stamp out playful and affectionate discourse just because it carries a sexual innuendo and may even, on occasion, make us “uncomfortable.” It is quite another, also, to try to ban professor-student relationships altogether. Knowledge is unremittingly personal: the best students fall in love with teachers; the most engaged teachers respond strongly–and variously–to students. The campus on which the chance of sexual harassment–of sexual “impropriety” between teachers and students–is eliminated is the campus on which pedagogy is eviscerated. It is the campus on which pedagogy is dead.
…
It is a part of our safety-obsessed culture that we try. In a country where we give children crash helmets with their tricycles (and kneepads with their strollers), perhaps it is no wonder that we give them The Lecherous Professor with their college admissions. Perhaps it is no surprise that we lament, with Leslie Pickering Francis, the possibility that they may not prove “rational consumers of romantic relationships in the way they might be rational consumers of products”; and that we consequently forbid them any romance with a teacher in which they are, to quote David Archard, another expert, “unlikely to be able to determine, for instance, how long it lasts”–as though one were ever able to “determine” how long a relationship lasts; as though lovers were supposed to be “rational consumers.” Love is not commerce; a relationship is not a safety-tested Tonka toy–and any attempt to make it such is bound to be catastrophic. It leads, among other things, to the bizarre situation of our contemporary American society, in which we are in principle forbidden to have relationships not merely with our students (if we are teachers) and our teachers (if we are students) but also with our doctors, lawyers, counselors, therapists, deans, co-workers, clients, employees, or employers–virtually anyone, in fact, with whom we might come into natural contact in the course of everyday life. The result? We find ourselves driven in numbers to dating services and singles clubs, where we spend large amounts of money to meet normal people in abnormal and usually highly stressful contexts. We join volunteer organizations that feel like meat markets, as a majority of members look out more vigilantly for the available bachelor than for the nominal cause of the day. Artificial contexts provoke artificial behavior: we make ill-informed and hasty choices–dating, after all, is such a chore this way–and end up in marriages from which we soon ache to escape. If this is an overstatement, it is less of one than those we hear regularly from the sexual-harassment police.
…
Should we have forbidden Camille Claudel and Rodin? Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger? Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud? Allan Bloom and his student lovers? Professor bell hooks and her student boyfriend? Heloise and Abelard? To be sure, not one of these relationships, each initially pedagogic, was perfect (which is?), but all were spectacularly productive, revelatory, heated, and formative for both parties–in several cases, formative for Western culture and philosophy. The most beautiful and authentic and complex love poems I know were written by a teacher to his student. They were written by John Donne, in the early seventeenth century, to his employer’s niece, with whom he eloped, and for whom he suffered loss of reputation, money, and career for the next quarter century. Not long after Donne penned these poems, John Milton–whose marriage sustained no similar power differential–drafted “The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce.”
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If you wish, you can write to me directly at dankprofessor@msn.com
Guest commentaries should also be submitted for consideration to the same email address.
If you wish, you can write to me directly at dankprofessor@msn.com
Guest commentaries should also be submitted for consideration to the same email address.
Barry M. Dank aka the dankprofessorTM
© Copyright 2008
© Copyright 2008
I often get hit with attacks of shame. I find it devastating.
I’m just starting to understand it with the help of this new book by psychiatrist Stephan B. Poulter, The Father Factor: How Your Father’s Legacy Impacts Your Career.
He writes:
The superachiever fathering style is the emotional foundation for developing a shame-based personality. One of the developmental reasons for your shame was the constant emphasis on the appearance of success and achievement. Large parts of your personality, your self-esteem, and your emotional independence tend to be underdeveloped and ignored by the constant mandate to excel and look good. Now…when you encounter a problem at the office, suddenly you are immobilized with a flood of shameful emotions ranging from feeling worthless, no good, phony, and fraudulent, to believing you are a horrible person, and you should quit your job immediately. These feelings are deeply rooted in trying to live up to the invisible standard set forth by your super achieving father many years ago. It is an impossible hill to conquer until the issue of shame is healed, understood, and actively removed.
Shame is one of the most insidious emotional issues adults will ever deal with in order to heal in their personal lives and careers. There is no quicker way to develop a more productive and functional self in the workplace than by resolving your feelings of shame and inadequacy. Shame is considered by many mental health professionals…the biggest emotional cancer that a person will develop in his childhood, which may last well into his adult life.
On countless occasions, bouncers, publicists and even police have tried to restrict my ability to stand freely on a public sidewalk and report (take pictures, video tec) on what’s going on.
Most of the time, I’ve grown tired of the aggravation and left the scene. Other times I’ve stood my ground.
Either way, it is exhausting.
I admire the producer in this story who stood his ground and let the police arrest him.
I hope I’ll have his courage the next time I get into this type of confrontation.
My natural peaceful disposition is to do whatever police tell me.
DENVER–Police in Denver arrested an ABC News producer today as he and a camera crew were attempting to take pictures on a public sidewalk of Democratic Senators and VIP donors leaving a private meeting at the Brown Palace Hotel.
Police on the scene refused to tell ABC lawyers the charges against the producer, Asa Eslocker, who works with the ABC News investigative unit.
(Click here to watch video of the arrest.)
A cigar-smoking Denver police sergeant, accompanied by a team of five other officers, first put his hands on Eslocker’s neck, then twisted the producers arm behind him to put on handcuffs.
A police official later told lawyers for ABC News that Eslocker is being charged with trespass, interference, and failure to follow a lawful order. He also said the arrest followed a signed complaint from the Brown Palace Hotel.
Eslocker was put in handcuffs and loaded in the back of a police van which headed for a nearby police station.
Video taken at the scene shows a man, wearing the uniform of a Boulder County sheriff, ordering Eslocker off the sidewalk in front of the hotel, to the side of the entrance.
The sheriff’s officer is seen telling Eslocker the sidewalk is owned by the hotel. Later he is seen pushing Eslocker off the sidewalk into oncoming traffic, forcing him to the other side of the street.
It was two hours later when Denver police arrived to place Eslocker under arrest, apparently based on a complaint from the Brown Palace Hotel, a central location for Democratic officials.
During the arrest, one of the officers can be heard saying to Eslocker, "You’re lucky I didn’t knock the f..k out of you."
Eslocker was released late today after posting $500 bond.
Eslocker and his ABC News colleagues are spending the week investigating the role of corporate lobbyists and wealthy donors at the convention for a series of Money Trail reports on ABC World News with Charles Gibson.
Filed under Journalism, Personal by Luke Ford
Joe says: "Am I having search problems or did none of the big Jewish media outlets cover the bloggers convention? I can’t find it on the Forward, JTA, Jewish Week or Jewish Press websites. I’m not saying it is the event of the decade but it was all over Israeli news. They’ve all had puff pieces about blogging from time to time, and they could have just watched it online without leaving their offices."
Amy Klein writes in this week’s Jewish Journal:
JERUSALEM — They use names like Urban Kvetch, My Shrapnel, What War Zone? and Cannibis Chasidis — monikers under which they write on the internet.
In a crowded hall in Jerusalem’s Givat Shaul neighborhood on Aug. 20, they were tossing around terms like "cross platforms," "H.D.L." "revenue streams" "microblogger" and "Twitter."
Welcome to the Jewish world of blogging: the J-Blogosphere.
While some bloggers know each other by name — having actually met in the "real" world — many only know each other by their handles or their opinions. This may have been the biggest draw of Jerusalem’s First International Jewish Blogging Conference, hosted by N’efesh B’nefesh, the organization that helps North American and British Jews make aliyah, or move to Israel.
The five-hour conference allowed some 250 Jewish bloggers to finally meet, as another 200 watched via live webcast. Panel discussions included topics such as "Taking J-blogging to the Next Level" and "Building Israel One Post at a Time."
"I didn’t know there were non-Jewish bloggers," joked Likud leader and blogger Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu, who made a last-minute appearance to speak to the bloggers. As leader of Israel’s opposition party, he encouraged the bloggers to use their words to encourage others to make aliyah and to support Israel.
"All of you who are listening — come to Israel. This is your land, and this is your city, and it’s going to remain our city," he said.
Veteran journalist and newbie blogger Haim Waitzman posts: "Shouldn’t journalistic ethics apply to bloggers? Specifically, shouldn’t bloggers refuse to accept perks from companies, organizations, and power brokers they write about? I’m a newbie in the blogging world, but I believe that any blogger who seeks credibility and independence must accept this standard."
This is a tired and dull line of thought, one frequently trotted out by mainstream journalists who see that the old model for presenting news is not sustainable and that the new model is online and strange.
Blogging is just another form of communication technology like a pen or a typewriter or a fax machine. Many journalists such as Haim Waitzman use this form of technology and therefore are bloggers. Many bloggers do journalism, but only the tiniest percentage of bloggers, less than 1%, claim to be journalists (because most of what they write does not purport to be journalism).
Waitzman criticizes Jewish bloggers for taking the Nefesh b’ Nefesh free flight to Israel for the first Jewish Bloggers conference. But none of these bloggers primarily identify as journalists even though some of their work may at times be journalistic.
I suspect that almost all bloggers have written fiction at some time but few of them identify primarily as poets or novelists.
I’m one of three people (Matt Drudge and surely someone else) who’s made his living as a blogger for more than 11 years. During this time, I’ve freely taken freebies (from blowjobs to loans) from people I wrote about. If I didn’t, I would not have been able to survive (financially or psychologically).
I believe that many of the favors I received not only did not damage my credibility as a reporter, but enhanced it. They gave me a deeper understanding of my subjects.
I’m not ashamed to say that I am a better man for having known Kendra Jade, Kimberly Kummings, Kitten Natividad, Hailey Rivers, et al. They humbled me. They made me realize that I am a sinner in need of G-d’s grace.
I would not today have as much love in my heart and wisdom in my head if I had not first fallen.
Haim Waitzman, he who is without sin, let him throw the first stone!
I’ve long found that the best way to get to know somebody is to sleep with her.
That’s true knowledge. That’s not hearsay. And you can’t Google for such insights.
The only reason I don’t do this anymore is because of G-d’s eternal and immutable moral law, not because of man-made journalistic ethics.
Catholic priests are not supposed to screw around, but who will dare say that Father Ralph de Bricassart did not become a better man after his passionate weekend with Rachel Ward in The Thornbirds? Even a gay man could not help but be elevated by this taste of the divine.
I wonder if Haim Waitzman — while the sap was still running in his tree — was doing an in-depth profile of a young Rachel Ward, would he have said no to her for the sake of journalistic ethics?
Would that be something he’d be proud to tell his grandkids? That he turned down Rachel Ward for the sake of The Journal of Higher Education?
The Bible instructs us to not be overly righteous. So if some diseased hag is offering you a quickie, by all means say no. But when King David saw that hottie Bathsheva bathing naked, he acted like a real man by murdering her husband and possessing her. Sure, afterwards, he did all this moaning about having sinned, but that’s just what any journo should do when his boss catches him nobbing a source.
Journalistic ethics were promulgated to point to the One who would come and fulfill these laws — me — and thus all who believe in me are no longer under law but under grace.
You’ll never get to journalistic heaven (the Pulitzer Prize) through legalism but rather through love.
Did not the greatest teacher of journalism, the Apostle Paul, say that the greatest of these is love?
I’m not ashamed to say that I have loved, that I have lived a bohemian life filled with non-conventional post-modern relationships, and that in the name of love I have violated many bourgeois norms.
Thus I no longer think of myself as a journalistic rabbi but as a spiritual artist.
Filed under Blogging, Journalism by Luke Ford
Click here to join the fun.
Joey Kurtzman is president of Jewcy Partners, LLC, and co-founding editor of Jewcy.com. Prior to joining Jewcy he was an on-air contributor to Ireland’s political and cultural radio program, The Wide Angle.
He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Kendra, and their diabetic dog, Maddie.
Here’s the Wikipedia entry on this week’s Torah portion Re’eh:
Re’eh, Reeh, R’eih, or Ree (ראה — Hebrew for “see,” the first word in the parshah) is the 47th weekly Torah portion (parshah) in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and the fourth in the book of Deuteronomy. It constitutes Deuteronomy 11:26–16:17. Jews in the Diaspora generally read it in August or early September.
a reconstruction of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, the site that God would choose as God’s habitation, within the meaning of Deuteronomy 12
Blessing and curse
Moses told the Israelites that he set before them blessing and curse: blessing if they obeyed God’s commandments and curse if they did not obey but turned away to follow other gods. (Deut. 11:26–28.) Moses directed that when God brought them into the land, they were to pronounce the blessings at Mount Gerizim and the curses at Mount Ebal. (Deut. 11:29.)
[edit] Centralized worship
Moses instructed the Israelites in the laws that they were to observe in the land: They were to destroy all the sites at which the residents worshiped their gods, tear down their altars, smash their pillars, put their sacred posts to the fire, and cut down the images of their gods. (Deut. 12:1–3.) They were not to worship God as the land’s residents had worshiped their gods, but to look only to the site that God would choose as God’s habitation to establish God’s name. (Deut. 12:4–5.) There they were to bring their burnt offerings and other sacrifices, tithes and contributions, offerings, and the firstlings of their herds and flocks. (Deut. 12:6.) There, together with their households, they were to feast before God, happy in all God’s blessings. (Deut. 12:7.) Moses warned them not to sacrifice burnt offerings in any place, but only in the place that God would choose. (Deut. 12:13–14.) But whenever they desired, they could slaughter and eat meat in any of their settlements, so long as they did not partake of the blood, which they were to pour on the ground. (Deut. 12:15–16.) They were not, however, to consume in their settlements their tithes, firstlings, votive offerings, freewill offerings, or contributions; these they were to consume along with their children, slaves, and their local Levites before God in the place that God would choose. (Deut. 12:17–18.)
7th century B.C.E. alabaster Phoenician figure probably of the Canaanite goddess Astarte, now at the National Archaeological Museum of Spain
[edit] Not following other gods
Moses warned them against being lured into the ways of the residents of the land, and against inquiring about their gods, for the residents performed for their gods every abhorrent act that God detested, even offering up their sons and daughters in fire to their gods. (Deut. 12:29–31.)
Moses warned the Israelites carefully to observe only that which he enjoined upon them, neither adding to it nor taking away from it. (Deut. 13:1.) If a prophet appeared before them and gave them a sign or a portent and urged them to worship another god, even if the sign or portent came true, they were not to heed the words of that prophet, but put the offender to death. (Deut. 13:2–6.) If a brother, son, daughter, wife, or closest friend enticed one in secret to worship other gods, the Israelites were to show no pity, but stone the offender to death. (Deut. 13:7–12.) And if they heard that some scoundrels had subverted the inhabitants of a town to worship other gods, the Israelites were to investigate thoroughly, and if they found it true, they were to destroy the inhabitants and the cattle of that town, burning the town and all its spoil as a holocaust to God. (Deut. 13:13–19.) Moses prohibited the Israelites from gashing themselves or shaving the front of their heads because of the dead. (Deut. 14:1.)
[edit] Kashrut
Moses prohibited the Israelites from eating anything abhorrent. (Deut. 14:3.) Among land animals, they could eat ox, sheep, goat, deer, gazelle, roebuck, wild goat, ibex, antelope, mountain sheep, and any other animal that has true hoofs that are cleft in two and chews cud. (Deut. 14:4–6.) But the Israelites were not to eat or touch the carcasses of camel, hare, daman, or swine. (Deut. 14:7–8.) Of animals that live in water, they could eat anything that has fins and scales, but nothing else. (Deut. 14:9–10.) They could eat any clean bird, but could not eat eagle, vulture, black vulture, kite, falcon, buzzard, raven, ostrich, nighthawk, sea gull, hawk, owl, pelican, bustard, cormorant, stork, heron, hoopoe, or bat. (Deut. 14:11–18.) They could not eat any winged swarming things. (Deut. 14:19.) They could not eat anything that had died a natural death, but they could give it to the stranger or you sell it to a foreigner. (Deut. 14:21.) They could not boil a kid in its mother’s milk. (Deut. 14:21.)
[edit] Tithes
They were to set aside every year a tenth part of all the yield of their harvest. (Deut. 14:22.) They were to consume the tithes of their new grain, wine, and oil, and the firstlings of their herds and flocks, in the presence of God in the place where God would choose to establish God’s name. (Deut. 14:23.) If the distance was too great to transport, they could convert the tithes or firstlings into money, take the proceeds to the place that God had chosen, and spend the money and feast there. (Deut. 14:24–26.) But they were not to neglect the Levite in their community, for the Levites had no hereditary portion of land. (Deut. 14:27.) Every third year, they were to bring out the full tithe, but leave it within their settlements, and the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow in their settlements could come and eat their fill. (Deut. 14:28–29.)
[edit] The Sabbatical year
Every seventh year, the Israelites were to remit debts from fellow Israelites, although they could continue to dun foreigners. (Deut. 15:1–3.) There would be no needy among them if only they heeded God and kept all God’s laws, for God would bless them. (Deut. 15:4–6.) But if one of their kinsmen fell into need, they were not to harden their hearts, but were to open their hands and lend what the kinsman needed. (Deut. 15:7–8.) The Israelites were not to harbor the base thought that the year of remission was approaching and not lend, but they were to lend readily to their kinsman, for in return God would bless them in all their efforts. (Deut. 15:9–10.)
[edit] The Hebrew slave
If a fellow Hebrew was sold into servitude, the Hebrew slave would serve six years, and in the seventh year go free. (Deut. 15:12.) When the master set the slave free, the master was to give the former slave parting gifts. (Deut. 15:13–14.) Should the slave tell the master that the slave did not want to leave, the master was to take an awl and put it through the slave’s ear into the door, and the slave was to become the master’s slave in perpetuity. (Deut. 15:16–17.)
[edit] The firstling
The Israelites were to consecrate to God all male firstlings that were born in their herds and flocks eat it with their household before God in the place that God would choose. (Deut. 15:19–20.) If it had a defect, they were not to sacrifice it, but eat it in their settlements, as long as they poured out its blood on the ground. (Deut. 15:21–23.)
[edit] Three pilgrim festivals
Moses instructed the Israelites to observe Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot. (Deut. 16:1–15.) Three times a year, on those three festivals, all Israelite men were to appear before God in the place that God would choose, each with his own gift, according to the blessing that God had bestowed upon him. (Deut. 16:16–17.)
A Guardian Angel (18th Century painting)
[edit] In classical rabbinic interpretation
[edit] Deuteronomy chapter 11
The Rabbis taught that the words of Deuteronomy 11:26, “Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse,” demonstrate that God did not set before the Israelites the Blessings and the Curses of Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 to hurt them, but only to show them the good way that they should choose in order to receive reward. (Deuteronomy Rabbah 4:1.) Rabbi Levi compared the proposition of Deuteronomy 11:26 to a master who offered his servant a golden necklace if the servant would do the master’s will, or iron chains if he did not. (Deuteronomy Rabbah 4:2.) Rabbi Haggai taught that not only had God in Deuteronomy 11:26 set two paths before the Israelites, but God did not administer justice to them according to the strict letter of the law, but allowed them mercy so that they might (in the words of Deuteronomy 30:19) “choose life.” (Deuteronomy Rabbah 4:3.) And Rabbi Joshua ben Levi taught that when a person makes the choice that Deuteronomy 11:26–27 urges and observes the words of the Torah, a procession of angels passes before the person to guard the person from evil, bringing into effect the promised blessing. (Deuteronomy Rabbah 4:4.)
The Mishnah noted the common mention of the terebinths of Moreh in Deuteronomy 11:30 and Genesis 12:6 and deduced that Gerizim and Ebal were near Shechem. (Mishnah Sotah 7:5; Babylonian Talmud Sotah 32a.) But Rabbi Judah deduced from the words “beyond the Jordan” in Deuteronomy 11:30 that Gerizim and Ebal were some distance beyond the Jordan. Rabbi Judah deduced from the words “behind the way of the going down of the sun” in Deuteronomy 11:30 that Gerizim and Ebal were far from the east, where the sun rises. And Rabbi Judah also deduced from the words “over against Gilgal” in Deuteronomy 11:30 that Gerizim and Ebal were close to Gilgal. Rabbi Eleazar ben Jose said, however, that the words “Are they not beyond the Jordan” in Deuteronomy 11:30 indicated that Gerizim and Ebal were near the Jordan. (Babylonian Talmud Sotah 32b.)
[edit] Deuteronomy chapter 12
Rabbi Jose son of Rabbi Judah derived from the use of the two instances of the verb “destroy” in the Hebrew for “you shall surely destroy” in Deuteronomy 12:2 that the Israelites were to destroy the Canaanite’s idols twice, and the Rabbis explained that this meant by cutting them and then by uprooting them from the ground. The Gemara explained that Rabbi Jose derived from the words “and you shall destroy their name out of that place” in Deuteronomy 12:3 that the place of the idol must be renamed. And Rabbi Eliezer deduced from the same words in Deuteronomy 12:3 that the Israelites were to eradicate every trace of the idol. (Babylonian Talmud Avodah Zarah 45b.)
The Tabernacle
The Mishnah recounted the history of decentralized sacrifice. Before the Tabernacle, high places were permitted, and Israelite firstborn performed the sacrifices. After the Israelites set up the Tabernacle, high places were forbidden, and priests performed the services. When the Israelites entered the Promised Land and came to Gilgal, high places were again permitted. When the Israelites came to Shiloh, high places were again forbidden. The Tabernacle there had no roof, but consisted of a stone structure covered with cloth. The Mishnah interpreted the Tabernacle at Shiloh to be the “rest” to which Moses referred in Deuteronomy 12:9. When the Israelites came to Nob and Gibeon, high places were again permitted. And when the Israelites came to Jerusalem, high places were forbidden and never again permitted. The Mishnah interpreted the sanctuary in Jerusalem to be “the inheritance” to which Moses referred in Deuteronomy 12:9. (Mishnah Zevachim 14:4–8; Babylonian Talmud Zevachim 112b.)
Tractate Chullin in the Mishnah, Tosefta, and Babylonian Talmud interpreted the laws of the slaughter of animals for purposes other than sacrifice in Deuteronomy 12:15–25. (Mishnah Chullin 1:1–12:5; Tosefta Shechitat Chullin 1:1–10:16; Babylonian Talmud Chullin 2a–142a.)
Tractate Bikkurim in the Mishnah, Tosefta, and Jerusalem Talmud interpreted the laws of the first fruits in Exodus 23:19, Numbers 18:13, and Deuteronomy 12:17–18 and 26:1–11. (Mishnah Bikkurim 1:1–3:12; Tosefta Bikkurim 1:1–2:16; Jerusalem Talmud Bikkurim.)
[edit] Deuteronomy chapter 13
The Jerusalem Talmud interpreted Deuteronomy 13:2 — “a prophet . . . gives you a sign or a wonder” — to demonstrate that a prophet’s authority depends on the prophet’s producing a sign or wonder. (Jerusalem Talmud Berakhot 12a.)
Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:4–6 and Tosefta Sanhedrin 14:1–6 interpreted Deuteronomy 13:13–19 to address the law of the apostate town. The Mishnah held that only a court of 71 judges could declare such a city, and the court could not declare cities on the frontier or three cities within one locale to be apostate cities. (Mishnah Sanhedrin 1:5.)
[edit] Deuteronomy chapter 14
Tractates Maasrot and Maaser Sheni in the Mishnah, Tosefta, and Jerusalem Talmud interpreted the laws of tithes in Leviticus 27:30–33, Numbers 18:21-24, and Deuteronomy 14:22–29. (Mishnah Maasrot 1:1–5:8; Tosefta Maasrot 1:1–3:16; Jerusalem Talmud Maasrot 1a–46a; Mishnah Maaser Sheni 1:1–5:15; Tosefta Maaser Sheni 1:1–5:30; Jerusalem Talmud Maaser Sheni 1a–.) Mishnah Peah 8:5–9 and Tosefta Peah 4:2–10 interpreted Deuteronomy 14:28–29 to address the tithe given to the poor and the Levite.
[edit] Deuteronomy chapter 15
Tractate Sheviit in the Mishnah, Tosefta, and Jerusalem Talmud interpreted the laws of the Sabbatical year in Exodus 23:10–11, Leviticus 25:1–34, and Deuteronomy 15:1–18, and 31:10–13. (Mishnah Sheviit 1:1–10:9; Tosefta Sheviit 1:1–8:11; Jerusalem Talmud Sheviit 1a–87b.)
Mishnah Sheviit chapter 10 and Tosefta Sheviit 8:3–11 interpreted Deuteronomy 15:1–10 to address debts and the Sabbatical year. The Mishnah held that the Sabbatical year cancelled loans, whether they were secured by a bond or not, but did not cancel debts to a shopkeeper or unpaid wages of a laborer, unless these debts were made into loans. (Mishnah Sheviit 10:1.) When Hillel saw people refraining from lending, in transgression of Deuteronomy 15:9, he ordained the prosbul, which ensured the repayment of loans notwithstanding the Sabbatical year. (Mishnah Sheviit 10:3.) Citing the literall meaning of Deuteronomy 15:2 — “this is the word of the release” — the Mishnah held that a creditor could accept payment of a debt notwithstanding an intervening Sabbatical year, if the creditor had first by word told the debtor that the creditor relinquished the debt. (Mishnah Sheviit 10:8.)
Rabbi Isaac taught that the words of Psalm 103:20, “mighty in strength that fulfill His word,” speak of those who observe the Sabbatical year. Rabbi Isaac said that we often find that a person fulfills a precept for a day, a week, or a month, but it is remarkable to find one who does so for an entire year. Rabbi Isaac asked whether one could find a mightier person than one who sees his field untilled, see his vineyard untilled, and yet pays his taxes and does not complain. And Rabbi Isaac noted that Psalm 103:20 uses the words “that fulfill His word (dabar),” and Deuteronomy 15:2 says regarding observance of the Sabbatical year, “And this is the manner (dabar) of the release,” and argued that “dabar” means the observance of the Sabbatical year in both places. (Leviticus Rabbah 1:1.)
[edit] Deuteronomy chapter 16
Tractate Pesachim in the Mishnah, Tosefta, Jerusalem Talmud, and Babylonian Talmud interpreted the laws of the Passover in Exodus 12:3–27, 43–49; 13:6–10; 34:25; Leviticus 23:4–8; Numbers 9:1–14; and Deuteronomy 16:1–8. (Mishnah Pesachim 1:1–10:9; Tosefta Pisha 1:1–10:13; Jerusalem Talmud Pesachim 1a–; Babylonian Talmud Pesachim 2a–121b.)
Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah argued that Jews must mention the Exodus every night, but did not prevail in his argument until Ben Zoma argued that Deuteronomy 16:3, which commands a Jew to remember the Exodus “all the days of your life,” used the word “all” to mean both day and night. (Mishnah Berakhot 1:5.)
The Mishnah reported that Jews read Deuteronomy 16:9–12 on Shavuot. (Mishnah Megillah 3:5.) So as to maintain a logical unit including at least 15 verses, Jews now read Deuteronomy 15:19–16:17 on Shavuot.
Tractate Sukkah in the Mishnah, Tosefta, Jerusalem Talmud, and Babylonian Talmud interpreted the laws of Sukkot in Exodus 23:16; 34:22; Leviticus 23:33–43; Numbers 29:12–34; and Deuteronomy 16:13–17; 31:10–13. (Mishnah Sukkah 1:1–5:8; Tosefta Sukkah 1:1–4:28; Jerusalem Talmud Sukkah 1a–; Babylonian Talmud Sukkah 2a–56b.)
Mishnah Chagigah 1:1–8 and Tosefta Chagigah 1:1–7 interpreted Deuteronomy 16:16–17 to address the obligation to bring an offering on the three pilgrim festivals.
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