January Journal: Favourite midrash
Jan. 1st, 2014 04:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
liv2014 seems to have showed up rather faster than I expected. So I'm going to start on my intended daily blogging, and set aside my planned posts about things like what I've been up to over Christmas and my review of 2013 and so on. Anyway, happy New Year to all.
angelofthenorth asked for my
That kind of thing isn't really midrash in the narrow definition, though, it's not stories that fill in gaps in the Biblical narrative or help to explain ambiguities or contradictions in the text, or draw out spiritual and halachic lessons from Bible verses. Perhaps the midrash that means the most to me is the one from Eichah Rabbah, the major collection of midrash on Lamentations, that I posted about a few weeks ago, up leapt Rachel from her roadside grave. I can't exactly call it my favourite because it's about theodicy and entirely uncheerful topics.
I am also fond of the extended dialogue between Jonah and the great fish which I think comes from one of the early Aramaic translations of the Bible. (I'm a little embarrassed that I'm just writing this post from memory and not referencing any of the midrash I'm listing, but if I want to keep up with daily posting through January I need to post things fast and not take too much time to research and include links.) Partly because it's such a wonderful image, Jonah debating with his "whale" about what will happen at the end of time – the fish itself will be served up in a great feast for all the righteous. And partly because of Serach the daughter of Asher, who we are told will teach Torah to all the women who were excluded from religious knowledge in this unredeemed world. There's really not much Serach in Torah, she is one of a very small minority of women who are mentioned in genealogies, and her name is in the list of those who go down into Egypt along with her father Asher and her grandfather Jacob, and also in the list of those who are saved from Egypt four hundred years later at the time of the Exodus. So the midrashic tradition takes her as never dying, and people who don't die are involved in bringing about the Messianic age. (The most famous never dying prophet is Elijah, who was taken up to Heaven in a fiery chariot, but Serach is another.) The midrash has her as musically talented, she soothed Jacob in his final illness by playing the harp, and a scholar.
I always used to say my favourite midrash was the one where God is unlike an earthly craftsman, because the craftsman casts many things with the same die and they are all identical,
I'm sure there are lots more I'm not thinking of, but that's what came to mind when I sawangelofthenorth's prompt.
[January Journal masterlist; there's still quite a few spaces so do feel free to add some more prompts even if you didn't get to it in December! Or indeed to make a second request if you're already in the list.]
angelofthenorth asked for my Favourite Midrash. I think a lot of the midrash I like is lives-of-the-Rabbis type midrash, little bits of biography which of course are there to make homiletic points, but do also give a sense of the rabbis as human characters. And within that category much of what I love is the typical stuff that is talismanic for lots of modern Reform Jews: Hillel teaching Torah while standing on one leg by summarizing: whatever is hateful to you, don't do to others, and the rest is commentary. Honi the circle-drawer meeting the old man planting a tree which will take decades to mature because future generations will benefit long after he's gone. The tragic romance between R Yochanan and the highwayman bar Lakish. The classic classic debate about Akhnai's oven where miracles and even God's voice directly from heaven may not overrule the majority decision of the rabbis. R Hugo Gryn's almost mythological story of being a concentration camp inmate and his father burning their margarine ration to celebrate chanukah because you can live longer without food than without hope. (I'm not sure if that's midrash, since it actually happened and I heard it first-hand from the person who experienced it, but it feels like part of that literary tradition.)
That kind of thing isn't really midrash in the narrow definition, though, it's not stories that fill in gaps in the Biblical narrative or help to explain ambiguities or contradictions in the text, or draw out spiritual and halachic lessons from Bible verses. Perhaps the midrash that means the most to me is the one from Eichah Rabbah, the major collection of midrash on Lamentations, that I posted about a few weeks ago, up leapt Rachel from her roadside grave. I can't exactly call it my favourite because it's about theodicy and entirely uncheerful topics.
I am also fond of the extended dialogue between Jonah and the great fish which I think comes from one of the early Aramaic translations of the Bible. (I'm a little embarrassed that I'm just writing this post from memory and not referencing any of the midrash I'm listing, but if I want to keep up with daily posting through January I need to post things fast and not take too much time to research and include links.) Partly because it's such a wonderful image, Jonah debating with his "whale" about what will happen at the end of time – the fish itself will be served up in a great feast for all the righteous. And partly because of Serach the daughter of Asher, who we are told will teach Torah to all the women who were excluded from religious knowledge in this unredeemed world. There's really not much Serach in Torah, she is one of a very small minority of women who are mentioned in genealogies, and her name is in the list of those who go down into Egypt along with her father Asher and her grandfather Jacob, and also in the list of those who are saved from Egypt four hundred years later at the time of the Exodus. So the midrashic tradition takes her as never dying, and people who don't die are involved in bringing about the Messianic age. (The most famous never dying prophet is Elijah, who was taken up to Heaven in a fiery chariot, but Serach is another.) The midrash has her as musically talented, she soothed Jacob in his final illness by playing the harp, and a scholar.
I always used to say my favourite midrash was the one where God is unlike an earthly craftsman, because the craftsman casts many things with the same die and they are all identical,
yet God stamps all humankind with the die of the first human, and each one is unique. But that's not really a complete midrash in itself, it's more of a simile. And I can't for the life of me remember where it comes from or what the context is. I just like it because it seems to resonate with genetics.
I'm sure there are lots more I'm not thinking of, but that's what came to mind when I saw
angelofthenorth's prompt.[January Journal masterlist; there's still quite a few spaces so do feel free to add some more prompts even if you didn't get to it in December! Or indeed to make a second request if you're already in the list.]
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