Unetanah Tokef (and Monty Python?!), Rosh Hashana 5784

The piyyut Unetana Tokef is a tough sell.  Few of us accept its theology, the image of a note-taking God who assigns us to either the Book of Life or the Book of Death.  Then again, even the Talmud does not entirely embrace this image. In Tractate Rosh Hashana 16b – 17a, there is an extended discussion of how God metes out justice, in not quite so deadly a fashion as we read in unetanah tokef. Why does the payyetan write it out so starkly? The complexity of the text, the Biblical allusions, and the literary style point to a talented but selectively draconian writer.

So basically, as in much of the High Holiday liturgy, we have an unrestrained, wildly imaginative, and free-wheeling poet pouring out his heart, centuries and centuries ago, and we still have the privilege of his poem to read.  Alav hashalom – may he rest in peace – I for one don’t care for his theology and I also not offended that I have to read it.  In fact, it’s hard to imagine any writing this season where we’re all on board with all the theology.  I’ve read that the only theology Jews can agree on is that the quantity of Gods in our belief system is a number less than or equal to one.

Sometimes I see the text as simply entertaining. My usual metaphor for Unetanah Tokef is that it’s like a horror movie, allowing a person, deeply but still at a distance, to play out worst fears.  Recently, I heard a bit of a Monty Python song in my subconscious – “bravely rode Fabrangen, off to High Holiday services…They were not afraid to die, oh brave Fabrangen. They were not at all afraid to be killed in nasty ways, brave, brave, brave, brave Fabrangen…Who by fire and who by water, who by earthquake and  who by beast….”

(It really works. Try it in the melody.)

But this year, I’m thinking more about agony.  I read an essay by Chancellor Shuly Rubin Schwartz of JTS, who decades ago lost her adult son in a bicycle accident and then her husband a few months later.  She pointed out that a lot of our High Holiday readings concern agony and loss. Indeed, the list is long. Sarah is concerned about her bullied son.  Hagar weeps over her parched son.  Isaac is carted up the mountain.  Hannah yearns for a son.  The rabbis could have chosen some uplifting Torah text for the yamim nora’im – Ten Commandments or the Holiness Code – but instead, it’s all agony. 

So for me, listening to and singing Unetana Tokef is another deliberate High Holiday choice to expose oneself to a narrative of agony.  The agony might be physical – death by fire, water, sword, beast, hunger, thirst, earthquake, plague.  It might be spiritual – who shall be calm? distraught? serene? tormented?  Actually, it sounds a lot like reading the newspaper. Fire? earthquake? floods?  That’s just the last month.   Are we as provoked by those descriptions when we see them, essentially weekly, in the newspaper?  Probably not – we’re reading the paper over a good cup of coffee, watching all this happened to folks far far away.  For some of those disasters, there is indeed a Knowing, All Powerful, Extra-Governmental, Prosecuting Decisor who has determined who shall live and who shall die.  It’s not God.  It’s probably Big Oil and its lobbyists.  I can rage against Big Oil, but I prefer not to rage against God.  And unlike the God of Unetana Tokef, those guys at Big Oil don’t bother keeping track of us individually, recording our every deed and moment, before condemning us to the Book of  Death.  I think on balance, I prefer Hashem, God.

For me, reading Unetanah Tokef makes me a better person.  I force myself to stay in touch with agony.  It’s in my face, in all these texts, that I might die this year, that someone I love might die this year, that I could do something so manifestly stupid that I could harm my loved ones, that I might live with my yearnings unrequited, that, like real actual people in Hawaii or Libya, I might die by fire or by water.  And that makes me want to enjoy each day – ok, maybe not THIS particular day – a little bit more, and use each day a little bit better. 

Noah, righteous.

The second parasha of the New Year, Noah, begins with this introduction (Genesis 6:9):

                                                                                                          (JPS translation)

The text inserts a qualifier to the Hebrew word tamim (blameless): bedorotav (in his age).  Was this a compliment, meaning that despite living in an age of lawlessness and corruption, Noah was exemplary?  Or is the praise of Noah relative, meaning that in loftier times, his righteousness might not merit special admiration?

Rabbi Yohanan (Sanhedrin 108a) opts for the latter.  For him, Noah was comparatively laudable for his time, but wouldn’t have stood out in Abraham’s generation.  Abraham, for example, pleaded with God on behalf of even ten righteous people in Sodom. In contrast, Noah was alerted to a similar pending annihilation, but simply embarked on building the Ark, as commanded.

Unlike Yohanan, Resh Lakish, who experienced his own struggles attaining righteous behavior, praised Noah. Being righteous in immoral times demanded that Noah display a special capacity for commitment and focus, in order to repel the malevolent influences surrounding him.

The Midrash (Tanhuma 5) also applauds Noah, noting that he participated in his own salvation and that the public construction of the Ark served as a warning to the community around him, encouraging their repentance.

The debate hinges on the ambiguity of the Biblical word bedorotoav (in his age).  It’s hard to argue whether Noah was relatively or absolutely righteous. But there’s an interesting challenge buried here: Can we recognize the subversive ways that culture shapes us, allowing us to identify and withstand its negative imprints?  Did Noah do the best he could?  Could he have done better?

Abraham succeeds at some of this.  The Midrash (Genesis Rabbah 38) provides the story of his breaking the idols in his father’s shop. Despite his immersion in the cultural assumption of divinity in stonework, Abraham has a clarion vision that identifies and discards this falsehood.

In other instances, though, Abraham does not display this acuity in withstanding negative cultural patterns. A common apologetic for the Akedah (binding of Isaac; Genesis 22) is that Abraham would not have considered it unusual for a god to demand child sacrifice. Ironically, Abraham and Isaac are saved by a ram – whose progenitors Noah wisely tucked onto the Ark.

Abram (Genesis 12) also passes off Sarai to Pharoah as his sister.  Commentaries about this sad episode remark that Abram, desperate with famine, would have expected such an encounter with Pharoah. Indeed, he might have lived with social codes concerning a wife-sister family structure that permitted putting Sarai in such a position. Again, Abra(ha)m conducts himself in accordance with his era, perhaps no better than Noah in his.

My further readings about the characterization of Noah in Genesis 6:9 emphasized to me how easily culture insidiously invades our thinking.  Avot de Rabbi Natan 2:5, names a curious list of men who were born already circumcised, some on the basis of the claim that “God created them in His image”.  Noah (citing our verse, Genesis 6:9) is on this list, along with Job, Adam, Seth, Shem, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Bil’am, Samuel, David, Jeremiah, and Zerubbavel.  As a statistician, I was of course delighted to see a list of names, and immediately started pondering what attributes these men shared.  What would put Noah on the same list as Jeremiah?  And remind me again, who Zerubbabel was?  Isn’t it interesting that many of those listed weren’t Hebrews/Jews?  etc….

It took a long moment for me to abandon this urgent foray into analytics and step back. Wait… already circumcised? Image of God?  I am well aware that the Bible can be anthropomorphic (beyad hazakah u’vezeroa netuya: a strong hand, an outstretched arm) but this Midrashic passage was about as blunt as can be about the subversive cultural image we live with:  God is male. God has a penis.

Now, I consider my feminist credentials to be quite decent.  In language, I endeavor to repeat God’s name in a sentence rather than revert to “He”, and I say “Godself” rather than “Himself”.  But it took several moments of living with that passage before I noticed what was apparent:  God’s image includes circumcision; God has a penis.

Often, troubling aspects of our culture are so subversively present that they don’t even appear to us, even in plain sight.

That is why we can give only qualified praise to George Washington, for example, for freeing enslaved people working his property…in his will.  Perhaps, as alleged regarding Noah, he is only righteous “for his age”.  If Washington knew enough to free those people at his death, why do we not criticize him for retaining them during his life? Surely, he could have freed them all while he was still alive and accepted the financial consequences. He was a “man of his age” – a lame excuse.  His enslaved workers were also people of that time. They would have preferred their freedom earlier.

That is why it took me several minutes to realize what a circumcised God implies.  We live with many ideas that are deeply embedded in our bones, too pervasive to identify, name, and evaluate.

That is why we need to consider the ideas of critical race theory.  We live with too many subversive lies, buried so deep they seem like truth.

And so, I stand with Noah in the “blameless” debate. Like us, he lived in an age of rampant and acceptable violence.  He had the vision not to slide into that culture.  Instead, he did something that few of us, at home lazily writing checks to the World Wildlife Fund, achieve: he saved entire species. His back got sore lugging bales of hay, his fingers were full of splinters, and he shoveled remarkable amounts of elephant poop.  Kol hakavod, Noah.

Noah is in the best company in the Bible.  This is what we are told in Genesis 6:22:

Contrast that with this description of Moses in Exodus 40:16, upon anointing Aaron and his sons in the newly completed Sanctuary:

Noah had to pass the scrutiny of Elohim (“God”), who sits on the Throne of Judgement. Moses, in nearly identical language and trop (musical markings), satisfies the demands of the more gracious YHVH (“the Lord”), who sits on the throne of mercy. 

Noah deserves our unqualified appreciation and praise.