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)

Serving God with "You yourself"

An age-old question on the Cain and Abel story is: why does God accept Abel's offering and reject Cain's?

The Hasidic Master, Rabbi Judah Leib Alter of Gur, known as the Sefat Emet, suggests that the answer is to be found in a close reading of two phrases from the story (Gen 4:3-5):

3. And in process of time (literally: at the end of days) it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground as an offering to the Lord.
4. And Abel brought, he too, of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat of it. And the Lord accepted Abel and for his offering;
5. But Cain and for his offering he did not accept.

The Sefat Emet quotes another Hasidic master, Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Przysucha, that the phrase "At the end of days" reveals to us why Cain brought an offering in the first place - it was due to the fear of his own death, which brought him to a thoughts of repentance and a desire to cover his bases. However, Abel brought "he too" (literally "himself too"), meaning while he was still alive, in life.

In other words, elaborates the Sefat Emet, Cain did not offer with his full heart and soul, he was merely afraid of his death, while Abel brought the fullness of his own being to the sacrifice; and that is the key in sacrificing to God, that one intends to use it as a way to become closer to God. To serve God with one's entire existence, not a behavioral gesture stemming from other motivations.

That is, in fact, the point of the all of the commandments. They are empty if not joined with the intention of deveykut, cleaving to God.

This reminded me of the book of Iyov/Job). In the first verses, Job is described as a righteous man and God Himself describes him as "blameless" to Satan. In the book, Job indeed rejects his friends' attempts to attach blame to him.

And yet - at the risk of joining Job's friends - I have to say that the explanation of the Sefat Emet made me think of the book of Job, and puts Job in the role of Cain.

From the outset, we hear that Job would always make sure to sacrifice, in case his sons had sinned while feasting. To me, that sounds like piety out of fear, out of covering his bases - and not out of fullness of connection to God. I feel as if the suffering God made him go through, along with the vision of the whirlwind at the end, were all designed to force him to bring "himself too", to move from being a meticulous saint who immediately checks to see if he has sinned in the minutest place but without actually serving God, to someone who by the end has been cracked wide open, discovered his own darkest places, and in that way can come to admit that he never really knew God before :

I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees you (Job 42:5)

The word for knowledge, daat, appears over eighty times in the book of Job. Jewish daat is not just in the mind - we need to know things intimately, with our entire selves, which is why the biblical Hebrew verb for conducting sexual relationships is leyda, the same verb as for to know.

We need to know G-d not through habitual actions covering ourselves in case we sinned, but with our heart cracked open and our full, flawed being.


> With thanks to my teacher Dr Elie Holtzer for his marvelous classes on Sefat Emet.

4 Banim, and Why I am Not Choosing to Become a Rabbi

My truth tends to emerge from my experience.

The traditional assumed evolution of the Arba banim in the Haggadah is from last to first: from the One Who Does Not Know How to Ask, to the Simple, to the Wicked, to the Clever. But my lived experience suggests the reverse direction: according to the order in which they are actually written.

For years I struggled with typecasting as the clever child. I was the intellectual, and to the extent that I could do that successfully, I was given a place in the world. Had I been a man, I would have become a rabbi. Being a woman freed me to take my journey with fewer prying eyes, fewer consequences.

In my late twenties, I carefully began to discover the wicked child in me, questioning the existing order, make changes in my dress and my thinking. Thus I evolved and still do. The wicked child continues to live in me, occasionally racing around and roaring inside; but she has become part of the whole. As I hit middle age, I aim to run with the wolves. That’s still a work in progress.

In my late thirties I discovered meditation. I was taught to approach the world with beginners’ mind, “What’s this?” My journey of rejecting the intellect and embracing my experience and the body became more full and rich. I evolved again. learned to know life biblically rather than in a western mode. I’m still learning how to ask “What’s this?” or “Tell me about you,” and practice listening to the other’s perspective cleanly, without bringing all the baggage and assumptions the wicked and the clever child bring.

Now I am wondering if perhaps the end point is to get to a place where you don’t even ask. You sit in silence, and let the other person tell you what they choose to. At the end of the book of Job, after all of his fierce questions, G-d appears in a whirlwind and gives him no answers, just a full-on experience, opening his eyes to creation. Job stops asking his questions. Something changes; he repents and is silent. He even "forgets" how to ask; he has become an experiencer, who learns simply by taking in the Being of all things.

In one of the most powerful books I’ve ever read, Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, Siddhartha transitions from being a young man, religiously talented, arrogant, (“I can think, I can wait, I can fast”), to a man of the world, rich, a gambler, with a lover, and finally to an old man sitting by the river, ever listening for its message. I believe Herman Hesse would concur that the evolution of the Arba Banim is actually in the reverse direction as I argue, as exemplified in the life of Siddhartha.

Perhaps the above answers why I haven’t chosen to become a rabbi now that the doors have opened to Orthodox women, despite my obviously leanings in that direction. Orthodox ordination would take me in the opposite direction to my life journey. When being a rabbi comes to mean asking “What’s this” – or not asking at all, just listening, just being – then I may consider it. Till then, I am content with my journey.