Community Blog

Shabbat Shalom! Tonight is our penultimate night of the Omer - Day 48 (Shmonah v’arba’im yom sheheim shisha shavuot v’shisha yamim)! The blessing for the counting of the Omer is on page 570. The Kabbalistic realm for this night of the omer is Yesod SheBeMalkhut, which Rabbi Jill Hammer translates as “connectivity within majesty”, and she assigns Batsheva to this day of the Omer. Batsheva, one of the wives of King David and the Mother of Solomon, has an unfortunate start to her narrative and a grand finish. Rabbi Hammer writes, “She begins as yesod shebemalkhut in one sense: she is the sexual and fertile woman who creates Davidʹs dynasty. But she also becomes yesod shebemalkhut in a different sense: the foundation of the kingdom, a wielder of regal eloquence and power.” 

This week’s Torah portion is Parashat Bamidbar, the opening of the Book of Numbers, and it comprises mostly the census of the men of fighting age among the Israelites. It counts the men by tribe, describes how they are arrayed around the Mishkan in a defensive militaristic formation, and breaks down what each family clan of the Levites are responsible for within the Mishkan and in its travels. The Haftarah reading is from Hosea, Chapter 2, verses 1-22 (which is most of but oddly not quite the entirety of the second chapter of the prophet’s book). The main connection between the parasha and the haftarah is the references to numbers. The Book of Numbers famously opens with a census while Hosea reiterates God’s promise to Abraham that the Israelites will be too numerous to count. The Parasha makes a point of naming the chieftains who will do the counting for each of their own tribes and report their numbers to Moses (as distinct from the census in Exodus, where the tribes and their numbers are given, but no individuals are named), and in the Haftarah, Hosea’s children are given new names. The Haftarah ends with a beautiful promise from God, often used in Jewish wedding ceremonies, which may also coincide with someone changing their name, or leaving one “tribe” for another. 

Hosea is an intriguing prophet. We know very little about most of the nevi’im, the prophets of the monarchic era, and of course the shorter their book, the less we know about them beyond their poetic prophecies. Hosea is the longest of the “minor prophets”, and still his book is only about a quarter of the length of Ezekiel, the shortest of the three “major prophets,” so details of his personal life are largely lacking from the story. The book of Hosea opens with the command for the prophet to go take a “wife of whoring,” and basically use her as a metaphor for the idolatry of the Israelites. While an adulterous woman is a common metaphor in other prophetic books and in the Book of Lamentations, in those it is very clear that there is no actual woman being put through the shaming practices described that also serve as the metaphor for the Israelites’ exile and punishments from God. With Hosea and his wife, Gomer, it is unclear how real she or their relationship is. In chapter 3, Hosea is again told to love a woman who has a “companion” but is loved by many lovers. It is not entirely clear if this is still Gomer, and the companion is Hosea, or if this is another sex worker who has a husband or a more regular “John” as the companion. And again, it is not entirely clear if she exists at all. 

It seems to me, that based on the fact that she is given a name, we are told explicitly that Hosea married Gomer, and that she has children, that she is meant to be understood not as pure metaphor as we see in Lamentations and Jeremiah, but as a real person, regardless of how historically accurate that may have been. Yet, despite this partial personalization and humanizing of this archetype, Gomer is still noticeably silent, just as Batsheva is when her first husband’s death is orchestrated by the king, when she is sexually preyed upon by the most powerful man in the world, and when her first child dies. The Talmud offers a midrash that God tells Hosea to turn out his unfaithful wife and the children who may not be biologically his, and Hosea cannot bring himself to do it. Though the Biblical text demonstrates his scorn for her, it does also speak of the redemption through their children, and indicates his embrace of them as his own, which is perhaps where the Talmud draws its fanfiction on this story from. Because Hosea defends his marriage and family, while acknowledging their shortcomings, God decides not to sever ties completely with the Israelites, and turns to the promise of redemption after their kingdom’s destruction and the people’s exile. According to this midrash, Hosea teaches God something about forgiveness and love. And still, Gomer is silent. She is really not given any redemption arc such as Batsheva's through birthing Solomon and becoming the queen mother and regent. She starts as an embodiment of yesod shebemalkhut in the first sense that Rabbi Hammer offers: she too is a sexual and fertile woman who brings forth a generation of resilient children who will survive exile and live to see redemption and reunion with God and the Holy Land. But she does not get the second interpretation of yesod shebemalkhut that Rabbi Hammer offers: her name means “ending” and she will not be remembered as a foundation of a kingdom or a wise and regal woman. She is written into our history merely as “a wife of whoring.” 

Toward the end of the Haftarah, God tells the Israelites that when they repent from their own “whoring” (idolatry), and return to proper worship and are returned to the land, they will call God “Ishi” and no longer “Baali”. Both are terms for “my husband” but Baal is also the name of a Canaanite god that the Israelites are said to be lusting after/worshipping, so the apparent wordplay there is that the Israelites will no longer mistake mere idols (Baal) for their true partner in the world (HaShem). However, baal also means “master”, so the use of the term as referring to a husband indicates a patriarchal and potentially abusive idea of marriage - that the relationship is about ownership and dominance of man over woman. Using “ish” or “ishi” for husband/my husband communicates a more equitable partnership between romantic partners. As far as I am aware, there is only one word for wife: “isha” or “ishti” for “my wife”, giving “ish” a more balanced meaning in conjunction with its feminine counterpart. 

We can’t force people to treat us equitably. David certainly did not treat Batsheva as an equal partner in their relationship, and God did not treat the hundreds of the thousands of uncounted Israelites as of equal importance to the men of fighting age who are accounted for in this week’s parasha. But as we shall see in coming weeks, the Book of Numbers does offer some opportunities for women to reclaim their power, and we can see in Rabbi Hammer’s Biblical Woman for this night of the omer how Batsheva is able to reclaim her power. Hosea is sort of forced into a situation where he is expected to treat Gomer unequally, and yet he tries to offer pathways toward redemption and reconciliation, even if we don’t exactly get to see Gomer reclaim her power. We too can reclaim our own power. We can choose to demand reconciliation and hope it is granted as is told in our Haftarah, and if it is not granted, we can choose to leave situations that degrade our humanity. We can choose to live by our truest values and be our most authentic selves, even when others disagree with our choices. We should always strive to do no harm to others, and to offer repentance when we realize we have done wrong, but living outside societal norms is not inherently bad as we are too often taught. Societal norms must and do change, and we should always be striving for that change to be in favor of greater diversity and acceptance, a wider tent for all to dwell together, a safe place for any to find refuge. May we all work together to build a foundation of majesty, a world where every human may experience the splendor of fully recognized personhood, and may it bring wholeness and peace to our communities. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.