Being Attractive

Friday, August 28, 2009
Rabbi Seymour Rossel

    Our Torah portion this week is a collection of laws and commandments, some ritual and some ethical. There are many opinions on why they are all grouped in this one place. Josephus calls them "scattered," saying that Moses put them down in the order that God gave them, without arranging them into categories or putting them into any kind of framework. Other commentators think that the laws are arranged to make them easy to memorize. A word in one leads to a word in the next one; or a phrase in one law suggests a phrase in the one that follows. The mystics believe that the laws comment on one another and we should study them until we understand the secrets behind the way the laws are arranged.

     At times, though, we do not even understand the laws themselves, let alone the arrangement. The ancient rabbis thought that laws we do not understand are especially important. These are laws that God uses to test our loyalty. If we follow these inexplicable laws, then we are obviously faithful to God in all that we do. The most famous example is the law regarding the bird's nest.

If, along the road, you chance upon a bird's nest, in any tree or on the ground, with fledglings or eggs and the mother sitting over the fledglings or on the eggs, do not take the mother together with her young. Let the mother go, and take only the young, in order that you may fare well and have a long life [Deut. 22:6-7].

     It is not clear why the mother should be spared when you take the eggs or the fledglings. But we can accept the fact that a choice should be made because it is inhumane to eat a meal made with both the mother and the eggs or the mother and the chicks. So, letting the mother go, it could be argued, is an act of mercy. What is most unusual about this law is that, unlike most of the laws in the Torah, the reward for this one is specific: If you let the mother bird go, you will "fare well and have a long life."

     The Talmud relates an instance when this law caused great damage. There was a learned man, a sage named Elisha ben Abuyah, who once witnessed a man who had set up a ladder against a tree to reach a bird's nest. As he watched, the man on the ladder carefully collected the eggs and sent the mother bird away, following the law. While Elisha was thinking that the man was being righteous and would surely be rewarded with a long life, the ladder broke and the man fell and broke his neck, dying on the spot. The more that Elisha thought about this terrible scene, the more he came to believe that the commandment was a lie. If God could not deliver the promised reward for such a simple commandment, why should God be trusted to deliver a reward for any commandment? In the end, because of this law and because of other disappointments, Elisha dismissed all his students and became an apostate, a nonbeliever -- the most famous nonbeliever in all of Jewish history.

     But this is not the only oddity among the commandments in this week's portion. Just before the commandment regarding the bird's nest is another well-known commandment: "A woman must not put on man's apparel, nor shall a man wear woman's clothing; for whoever does these things is abhorrent to Adonai your God" [Deut. 22:5]. Here, too, we could argue about the reason for the commandment. Some take it to mean that we must not wear the clothing of the opposite sex because this blurs a distinction which God made in separating man from woman. We should not be transvestites. God wants women to be women and men to be men. But the command belies the custom. In biblical times, men and women dressed in nearly identical ways, both wearing large swaths of cloth as robes. There were some differences in the way these were fastened and in the underclothing, but these were minor differences.

     Other commentators believe that a man dressing as a woman, or vice versa, might be intended to make it easier for a person to mingle with persons of the opposite sex and thereby facilitate sexual transgressions. So the intent of the commandment would be to keep the sexes separate to keep them from committing any indiscretions. Still other commentators see this as a commandment against behaving like the pagans who would dress up as the opposite sex for magical purposes or for pagan rituals. We do not know of any specific evidence for this being a pagan practice, except for an older Babylonian tale about an Amorite who said to his wife, "You be the man and I will be the woman," but we no longer know what he meant by this anyway.

     One thing that strikes us as we look more closely at the words is that the first time clothing is mentioned the word used is k'li, which probably did not mean "clothing" in biblical times. Some commentators take the word k'li to mean "weapons," in which case the idea is that women should not carry weapons normally used by men and men should not wear the simlah or "robe" usually worn by women. I don't want to go into the Freudian symbolism of male weapons here, but it is true that men were known as masculine because they carried weapons.

     But what if we turn the law around? What if we look at it not as a negative commandment, but as a command which has a positive sense? The point would then be that men and women should do what they could to be opposites in order to attract the opposite sex. The first commandment in the Torah is the command to "Be fruitful and multiply." So it is possible that this commandment against blurring the distinctions is meant to suggest to us that, by not blurring the distinctions we make ourselves more desirable to persons of the opposite sex -- and that this is a good thing, for it means that we will not be confused about our basic purpose.

     Sociologists remind us constantly that the first principle of any society or organization is the same as the first principle of life itself: to continue existing. It stands to reason that we can only continue to exist if we reproduce. And we can only reproduce if we entice members of the opposite sex to be attracted to us. The Torah is the building block of an ethical society. There is nothing in it to suggest that we should be animal in our instincts. Quite the opposite. The Torah wants us to mate for life and to respect one another. We are told again and again about the importance of family life.

     Family is the building block of Jewish community and this was as true in biblical times and rabbinic times as it is today. Just a few verses later, we read "If a man is found lying with another man's wife, both of them -- the man and the woman with whom he lay -- shall die. Thus you will sweep away evil from Israel" [Deut. 22:22]. The point is to protect the family. There is no such law regarding homosexuals or single men and single women. The law is very carefully worded, the crime here is only adultery because adultery undermines the sanctity of the family. And the law is both extreme and cruel. You do not stop to ask who started the affair, you simply put both parties to death. In point of fact, if I ever saw any Jew attempting to carry out this law, I would be like the great sage Elisha ben Abuyah. I would dismiss all my students and stop trusting in the Jewish way of life.

     No such thing ever happened in all our recorded history. No man and woman were ever put to death summarily for having an affair. And no one should ever be punished for putting on the weapons of a man or the robes of a woman, either. If the law does not mean what I take it to mean -- that we should be attractive to one another -- we should seek some other explanation which makes sense to us in our time. If we do not keep looking for new ways to explain or understand the commandments of the Torah, we will have every good reason to lose faith instead of strengthening it. And let us say: Amen.