A Inquiry into the Meaning of Where we Break our Weekly Shabbat Torah Reading
We think we know what the Torah is - that book over there in the aron kodesh. But not so fast: The text of the Torah is Torah Bichtav, but what IS the text - after all, its preservation, the form of its presentation, its vocalization and certainly its realization in public reading are all functions of Torah Sheb'al Peh.
We are given rules regarding how to break an aliyah. We are bidden to conform to the presentation of the text when possible - the breaks between parashiyot were given to Moshe to reflect between each matter, and that is where we should break. We should not stop our reading in the middle of a story. Also, we are not to end an aliyah on a "downer", a negative note.
The story of Lemech comes as a coda to the story of Kayin. Lemech is the seventh generation from Adam down the Kayinian line. Like his progenitor, it seems, he kills a man, and seeks to invoke divine protection from human retribution. In a sense, it seems, Lemech is the climax of what was initiated by Kayin (especially according to the midrash, brought by Rashi, which identifies the "ish" killed by Lemech as Kayin himself). At the end of this ending passage, right as we are approaching the break between parashiyot, we are told that Adam fathers another son, Shet, who replaces Hevel, and then, as the last words of the parashiyah: az huchal likro b'shem Hashem. Translated literally, it reads: Then, it was begun to call upon the name of Hashem. To call upon the name is an idiom repeated frequently in the Torah, and it means - to invoke the name in the context of worship.
Now, this would certainly constitute a positive, uplifting ending to the parashiyah, and that is where we should break. Only we find that many communities have the tradition of ending the fifth aliyah in a different spot, a few lines back: "v'achot Tuval-Kayin Na'amah". "Tuval Kayin's sister was Na'amah". On the face of it, this spot has nothing to recommend it, especially with so natural and positive a breaking point only a few pesukim further on.
Enter the Torah She'bal Peh. (Bereshit Rabbah 23:6-7; see also Rashi, Radak, Rambam (Hilchot AZ Perek 1). Understanding "huchal" not as "begun" but rather as "desecrated", "made secular", it asserts that here begins idolatry. Humans have been given the power to name the objects, animate and otherwise, which they encounter. A name is more than just a convention: Hashem creates by linguistic utterance and so does man - according to the Ba'al Shem Tov, the name is intrinsically connected to the root of the soul. Fixing the name is fixing the nature. To call a name to Hashem is to "define" Him - in short, idolatry. That is: with the beginning of the spiritual quest begins too the ever-present danger of freezing the ever-in-flux stream of being which overwhelms us, in order to get a handle on it, and clutching fast to that fragment as though it was the whole.
Na'amah, on the other hand, is identified by the Torah Sheb'al Peh as the wife of Noach. With their marriage, the two streams of humanity, the self-activating hubris of the Kayinian line finds its redemption in the self-deprecating, other-recognizing humility of the Shetian line ("I have gotten/created a man with G-d" vs. "G-d has given men other seed in place of Hevel". She is the sister of Tuval-Kayin, who perfects his greatgrandpappy's crude husbandry and metallurgy, and provides better and more efficient weapons for murder. Brother splits, separates, and makes an end, sister unites, rejoins, and smoothes.
Rav Yehoshua Kahan
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Rav Yehoshua Kahan is a teacher at Yeshivat Bat Ayin. He has held pulpits in Knoxville, Tennessee and Los Angeles, and served as educational director of Livnot U'Lehibanot. He blogs on Parashat Hashavua here |