Job IS the Phoenix

Did you know that the phoenix appears in Jewish tradition?
There are a number of sources for it.

It is said to have been at the Garden of Eden, the only animal that did not accept Eve’s offer to eat of the forbidden fruit.“It lives a thousand years, and at the end of a thousand years, fire emerges from its nest and burns it. An egg-bulk remains of it and it then grows limbs, and lives again," the midrash tells us.

It is also said to have been in the ark, where, in an alternative explanation for its longevity, Noah blessed it with eternal life after it modestly did not want to trouble him to feed it.

But both interesting and odd is to find it referenced in Job (29:18).

And I said [to myself], I shall die in my nest;
and my days shall be numbered like the sand.

Rashi, drawing on the midrash, explains on the word “sand”:

This is referring to a bird known as חול (the Phoenix), and the punishment of death was not laid upon it, for it did not taste from the tree of Knowledge [at the sin of Adam and Eve]. After 1,000 years, it renews itself and returns to its youth.

In other words, Job had expected his days to be numbered like the sand bird, namely the phoenix. He had expected to live a long life.

Now what is intriguing about the phoenix is that it is not a creature that is simply immortal – that simply lives forever without death. Rather, the intriguing and unique aspect of the phoenix is that it dies and is reborn. Its old self dies in flames and its new self is reborn.

The verse in Job is meant to be a lament for what is lost.

That chapter (29) begins with the bereft and broken Job crying out “O that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me.” Those were the days when he expected to die peacefully at home of old age.

And yet, the unusual connection made by the midrash between this verse and the phoenix made me think about it in greater depth. And I realised: Job indeed was like the phoenix. His old life went up in flames, he lost his children, his possessions, his health - everything. And yet, after going through an excruciating process of pain and questioning, Job is finally given a mysterious revelation and rests his quest, accepting that the divine plan cannot be known, it shall always remain beyond human grasp.

At that point, in the final verses of the book (chapter 40) we are told:

12. So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning; for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand female asses. 13. He also had seven sons and three daughters. 14. And he called the name of the first, Jemima; and the name of the second, Kezia; and the name of the third, Keren-Happuch. 15. And in all the land no women were found so pretty as the daughters of Job; and their father gave them inheritance among their brothers. 16. And after this Job lived a hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his grandsons, four generations.
17. And Job died, old and full of days.

Phoenix-like he is reborn and has, if anything, even more vigor and vitality than before, like a young bird emerging from its egg.

The connection, through the word chol, sand, teaches us this – that after destruction, rebirth can (hopefully) ensue.

(With thanks to Shaatnez - a group dedicated to Judaism and speculative literature)

Pointing to the Divine Soulmate

The talmud in Taanit 31a describes an incredible scene:

Ulla Bira'ah said in the name of R. Eleazar: In the days to come the Holy One, blessed be He, will hold a circle/dance for the righteous and He will sit in their midst in the Garden of Eden and every one of them will point with his finger towards Him, as it is said, And it shall be said in that day: Lo, this is our God, for whom we waited, that He might save us; this is the Lord for whom we waited, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation (Isaiah 25:9)

There is something so striking about this image of the righteous dancing in a circle and pointing at God. The word for "this", zeh, in its essence implies pointing, according to the rabbis. In the first commandment of the Torah, החודש הזה לכם = this month shall be for you the head of the months, the word hazeh (this) is taken by Rashi to mean that God is pointing at the moon.

Similarly in the second chapter of Genesis, when Adam, after searching in vain for his helpmate amongst the animals, finally awakes from his slumber and sees Eve, he exclaims (Gen 2:23):

This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

His use of the feminine word for this, zot, implies he is pointing to and identifying the woman, sensing viscerally that she is his true soulmate.

Just as Adam points to and identifies his beloved, so too the righteous dancing in the circle point to and identify God as their true "soulmate" so to speak. (The reference to God sitting in the Garden of Eden also helps us make the connection between the two disparate texts).

For anyone who goes beyond superficial worship, and is truly authentic about it, relationship with God is complex. But this is the work of faith, to come to recognise God as your soulmate with tremendous clarity: as clear as the moon in the sky.

Often it takes many years of wandering, lost, in various wrong directions before such a thing can occur. Just as it was Adam's time spent fruitlessly trying to find a match amongst the animals that led him to his clarity when finally meeting Eve, it is precisely this wandering that leads eventually to finding the path of truth, and feeling the absolute clarity of the discovery.

And if you are looking for an even higher level of spiritual functioning:

Michael Attias has pointed out that in a dance you move into the place occupied by your friend a moment ago. Thus, each of the dancers described in the talmud gets to see what God looks like from his friend's perspective.

So I would add to this: in this dance, we get to understand how God is a soulmate for another person, in a way different from our own. This is challenging. It truly is work on an elevated spiritual level. For this, someone can be called "righteous".

Fruit for fruit

Genesis 4:3

And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD.

Why motivated Cain to bring an offering of the fruit of his land to God?

Many answers could be given, but in the dozens of Bibliodramas I have done with this story, one intriguing suggestion pops up quite frequently: Cain had heard all about the wonderful Garden of Eden in which his parents started their lives, standing in stark contrast with the laborious, demanding life they were now living. He wished to get back to that Garden; he wished to get back into God's graces. 

So he reasoned: God became upset when my mother took a fruit. I will give back fruit. 

This has logic. Yet he is not successful - God ends up accepting Abel's offering and rejecting that of Cain. Again, many explanations for this may be offered. But perhaps one message emerging from this is that you cannot fix things simply by reversing them. If you have hurt someone with offensive words, you cannot simply say to them the opposite or "I didn't mean it" or "I was joking". Rather, a process of apology and genuine conciliation, and a true process of repentance, must take place.

This was Cain's mistake. He ought to have tried to rectify the root cause of his parents' sin inside himself. Instead, he thought a technical action would do the trick.

Abel, on the other hand, brought the choicest of his flock. In this he was putting God above his own desires; and this, perhaps, was a (partway?) rectification of Eve's sin in priveleging her desires above God. Hence, his was accepted.