Last week I spent my time at Haus Ohrbeck in Osnabrück, discussing the book of Ezra with both Christian and Jewish colleagues and friends at the Jüdisch-Christliche Bibelwoche (if that sounds like fun for you, come next year!). We wrestled especially with the last two chapters, in which Ezra and the Judean exiles return from Babylon and enact a social cleansing which splits apart Israelite men from their ‘foreign’ women and children. To justify this act Ezra quotes a verse from ‘Your servants, the prophets’:
“The land which you are about to enter, to seize her, is a land made filthy by the filthiness of the peoples of the land: by their disgusting things with which they have filled her, from orifice to orifice, with impurity. So now, don’t you give your daughters to their sons and don’t let their daughters take your sons; do not seek anything for their peace or their benefit, then you will forever be strong and you will eat the good things of the land and occupy it for your children forever.” (Ezra 9:11-12)
Which verse is this, which Ezra uses to justify the actions of his new vassal state? It is far away from the command that God gave to us through Moses, which we read in synagogue last week, saying: “doing justice for orphan and widow, loving the stranger, giving to them food and clothing: and you all must love the stranger, for strangers were you in the land of Egypt.” (Deut. 10:17-18). Nor is it a verse in our parsha today. No, it is a verse which does not actually exist: an amalgam of the priestly language of purity in Leviticus 18 and 20 and the ban on intermarriage in Deuteronomy 7 and Exodus 34, a ban instituted for fear of idol-worship and subsequent loss of land. Ezra innovates a new reading in which intermarriage is forbidden, not due to a safeguard against the ultimate evil of idolatry, but rather because of the degradation assumed to occur through the intermixing of Israel’s “seed of holiness.” (Ezra 9:2)
This phrase, the “Zera HaQodesh”, is only found in this context in Ezra. For Jews, Ezra is not read liturgically. It is, then, quite easy to keep it far from our minds. Yet this is why studying the TaNaKH so thoroughly, with people who approach the text from a different position, is so useful. Ezra’s justification of his actions by a “quotation” from Torah has forced me to read our text through a different lens. Our parsha this week has a flavour of Ezra, as we are commanded to:
“Destroy! You shall destroy all the places where they worshipped, those nations which you will dispossess, their “gods”…throw down their altars, smash their pillars, put their sacred Asherah-posts to the fire, and their idols cut down: obliterate their name from that place.” (Deut. 12:2-3)
Is this the word of God? Do we agree with it? If not, why are we being challenged so? It would be convenient to easily reject Ezra as an extremist, the story as a warning for what a fundamentalist understanding of our texts can create. However, the flavour of Ezra’s actions confront us in this week’s Torah: a complete intolerance to other cultures, beliefs, and traditions. Violent and total iconoclasm, directly preceded by a radically universal call towards loving the other. Both are God’s commandments. How are we to walk in both their ways?
This tonal whiplash teaches us something about power. This week our Torah opens with two oppositional poles of thinking, “blessing and curse” (Deut. 11:27). I have learnt at my time in Osnabrück to read our texts not simply as abstract theology or the historiography of ancestry. We are taught to remember what it is to be powerless, to be refugees without land or safety. We are shown what can happen when power falls into our hands. We are commanded to practice forms of cultural separation, but we are shown what can happen when these forms become tyrannical. We see examples of leaders who create seemingly sacred words for political ends, relying on blind obedience to authority to carry out their own agendas. Ezra interprets his way. We can interpret our way. We can cleave to the command to love so that we can make sure we never fall into the command to destroy. We can choose the blessing, against the curse.
(With many thanks to Rabbi Mark Solomon, whose sermon at Haus Ohrbeck on Parshat Eikev influenced this one greatly.)
Shamaya Mirviss-Carvajal, LBC rabbinical student
The views expressed in this D’var Torah do not necessarily reflect the position of Leo Baeck College.