How I Spent My Summer Weekend

[seekingferret]

- I was quietly furious about a particular section of Artscroll's translation in this past week's Torah portion. I suspect I've been furious about this section in past years, but it's worth recording. The passage, in Deuteronomy, urges us to show kindness to Widows, Orphans, and Gerim because you were Gerim in the land of Egypt. Now, Gerim sometimes means 'converts' in context. But the Israelites were not proselytes in the land of Egypt, so that contextually couldn't possibly be the right way to understand the word in this verse. Gerim has to mean strangers, foreigners. This is a verse obviously urging us to show kindness to the non-Jews in our midst, and it infuriates me beyond belief that Artscroll translates the verse as "Show kindness to Widows, Orphans, and Proselytes, because you were strangers in the land of Egypt." Grah. Sometimes I really hate isolationist Judaism.

-I have ordered a $150 HP Touchpad from the fire sale. Hopefully I will be able to figure out a use for it. I wasn't particularly in the market for a tablet, but at that price...

-Lots of sleep this weekend= yay. Irregular sleep pattern= not so yay. I woke up this morning feeling energized and yet still vaguely out of sorts. And this week's going to have a few nice, long nights. Like tonight. :)

-Looking forward to Kaleidoscope!. I will probably do my nominations tomorrow night. Kaleidoscope is a Yuletide-style rare fandom exchange with a focus on works with non-white creators and characters. I am looking forward to it. Somebody may write me Dhalgen fic!

Comments

[schemingreader]

I think ger should be translated as stranger and the discussion of how to interpret the word put into the midrashic apparatus. It is important to have the ger=convert interpretation with the text, since a lot of Jews fail miserably at the injunction (from this verse!) not to mistreat converts. Yes, it could also be read as evidence of isolationist Judaism, but there is a halachah people are screwing up that's based on reading ger as proselyte.

Of course, we use the Etz Hayim humash at my Havurah, which is JPS with Conservative movement commentary, so you know--I can talk.

[seekingferret]

There are other verses that are clearly commandments to treat the convert as you would a fellow Jew. This verse, I don't believe is one of them. You are absolutely right that it is an essential, fundamental Jewish obligation to show respect and fellowship to converts, and you're sadly right that there are times when we fail this, but I believe this verse is putting an even greater burden on us, to not merely welcome those who've taken on Halachah, but to show kindness even to those who live in violation of Torah law.

[schemingreader]

It's a general frustration to me when a translation picks a midrashic position as a way to translate a word with a broader plain meaning, and Artscroll does that a lot. It creates a more restrictive sense of the pshat which is misleading.

I'm not sure if non-Jews can live in violation of Torah law, since they aren't obligated to it (or not to most of it, anyway.)

[seekingferret]

Agreed. Eventually I will drag out and post the full rant on the Shir HaShirim translation in the Artscroll Chumash, which uses Midrashic drash as pshat in the most insulting and counterproductive ways.

Yes... I didn't mean 'in violation of' so much as I meant 'without observation of'. The whole Jewish exceptionalism/am segulah tradition is in tension with an obligation to show respect and kindness to those outside the nation.

[freeradical42]

I think it's important to note that during the time that the Israelites were in Egypt, being a "stranger" in someone's land often meant that you had to observe their religious practices and worship their gods. "Stranger"/"sojourner" (I prefer sojourner) and "convert" were little different in meaning at that time, and it took many plagues before Pharaoh was even willing to let the Israelites wander off for a few days to worship the sky man of their choosing rather than his selection. There's also support for this in the way the word "ger" is used to describe some of the non-Jews living in Jerusalem at the time of Absalom's coup.

Now, whether the meaning of the verse was meant to evolve the way you think it was meant to evolve is another matter, but it's important to recognize that sojourners often had religious obligations in foreign nations at the time that the verse was written. It's not as if the idea that these people had to be converts popped into Judaism in the Middle Ages while we were being oppressed and even more insular, unlike a great many other things that I object to in our religion.