Dvar Torah on Parshat Behaalotecha

There is an ongoing question about religion and ethics that has been discussed for a long time: Where do standards of behavior come from? Is the source for morality and ethics ultimately divine, and to be found in our sacred traditions, or is there validity to human, social notions of how to conduct oneself? Do I look to my religious traditions for guidance on living my life, or can I - should I - rely on what societies come up with on their own when looking for the right way to behave in a given situation? Are human responses to life situations reliable, or do I need a holy helping hand to figure things out?   

At the end of Parshat B'ha'alotcha, Aharon and Miriam, the brother and sister of Moshe, speak badly of their brother. It is not crystal clear what they actually said, but the Torah tells us that it was something about the Cushite woman whom Moshe had married. After they speak, God appears to them, suddenly, and upbraids them for their behavior. Miriam is then punished with the skin disease tzara'at, usually mistranslated as leprosy (there is a kind of poetic justice - called by the Rabbis 'midah k'neged midah', or 'measure for measure' as Shakespeare translates it - in Miriam being punished with a skin disease for speaking badly about a woman identified as being black).

Aharon, in the biblical narrative, seems for some reason to escape this punishment, although the Rabbis ingeniously read the text to say that he, too, was stricken in the same way. Moshe then prays for Miriam to be cured, and God responds in an interesting way: "If her father had spit in her face, would she not be put to shame for seven days? Let her be shut up for seven days outside the camp; afterwards she may be gathered up." This in fact is what then happens; after seven days of isolation, the Jewish people received Miriam back into the camp and continued on their trek through the desert.

In the Mishna in Tractate Bava Kama, which deals with damages done by or to one's livestock, this story is mentioned. There is an argument about how much damage should be paid when an ox attacks another animal or a person in the private property of the victim. The Rabbis feel that the damages paid should be the same as when the attack takes place in public property, whereas Rabbi Tarfon feels that they should be greater, since, in certain situations, the Halacha does view doing damage in the victim's private property as being worse than doing damage while in public property. The Rabbis bring God's speech about Miriam as a proof against Rabbi Tarfon. They point out that God says that if Miriam had been spit on by her father she would have withdrawn in shame for seven days, and He does not then draw the conclusion that, since God has just 'spit in her face' (scolded her and given her leprosy), she should now be shamed for fourteen days - twice as long. Such an assumption may well have made sense; after all, being shamed by God is certainly more severe than being shamed by one's parent, so if it's seven days for dad, it should be 14 for God. But that is not what God says in the story. God is satisfied with giving Miriam the same punishment, the same seven-day cooling off period, which would have been appropriate if it were her father who had shamed her. From this, the Rabbis say, we learn an important Halachic principal - called 'dayo' which literally means 'it is enough' (it comes from the same word as 'Dayenu' in the Passover Haggada).

The idea is that, when we adduce logically from one thing to another, it is enough - dayo - to say that the two things will now have the same rule, and we should not attempt to extrapolate beyond that to the adduced thing. The way dayo works in the case of Miriam is the classic example of this principle - we do NOT make the leap from seven days for the father to fourteen days for God. If it's seven days for the father, than all we can reasonably say is that for a punishment from God, it should certainly be the same seven days. Similarly, the Rabbis want to limit damages done in private property to the same liability as there is in public property; if for this kind of damage done by your ox on public property you would pay x, then all we can adduce is that in private property you will pay the same , even though it is true that we generally view damage done to the victim in his own property as being more serious than damage done on public property.

I find the reasoning of the Rabbis very suggestive. To me it seems similar to the scientific method. I can extrapolate, I can learn from one situation to another, from one phenomenon to another, but, when I do so, I must be careful not to make theoretical leaps which take me beyond what I know to be true. I can assume the seven day to seven day correlation, but not make the leap to 14 days. I also see here an inclination to limit the way in which I relate to the divine, the absolute. The tendency to think like Rabbi Tarfon - if it's this much for humans, it must be twice as much when God is involved - is rejected by God, the Rabbis, and the subsequent Halacha. The Rabbis want us to see our interactions with the divine through the lens of human experience, to measure it with a human yardstick. My understanding of my relationship with the Absolute is something I extrapolate from what I know about my relationship with man. Therefore, when I make that extrapolation, I must be careful to stay within human boundaries, human standards, and not hypothesize overblown, perhaps unrealistic, divine standards. In this case, man is the measure of all things. The principle of dayo - it is enough - as expressed by God and understood by the Rabbis in Bava Kama - tells us that my human, mundane, every-day understanding of right and wrong, of what is appropriate and what is inappropriate, must continue to be the way I see things even when I am dealing with absolute, divine issues. I never stop relating as a person to situations, even when they are in the realm of the religious and metaphysical. I have no right to automatically assume that, with God, everything must be somehow different, exaggerated, amplified, writ large. My relationship to God, to the holy, and to what is moral and right, partakes of the same rules as my relationship to my fellow man, as determined by my fellow men. What is right and decent in one realm is right and decent in the other.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix