The Rabbinic Imagination
Vayera, 5785
Pop Quiz: What is the most famous kosher rule? That is to say, if somebody says “I keep kosher,” what do you expect that means? For most people, the most famous rule is not eating pork, but slightly close behind it is “Not eating meat and dairy together.” No cheeseburgers, no chicken parmesan, no steak and butter. Your average Joe might not know that eating the sciatic nerve is verboten, or that certain parts of the animal fat (the suet) also must be discarded, or that bread should be made pareve so that no one gets confused and uses it to make a deli sandwich. But no meat and milk? That one is pretty famous. So it may surprise you to hear that we see Avraham, our father, breaking that rule in this week’s Torah portion.
Avraham has just seen three men coming through the desert. They are angels, but he does not know that fact: he just sees three wanderers, in need of refreshment. He bids them come, rest, and have פַת־לֶחֶם, a morsel of bread, before being on there way. Of course, he then goes to prepare a feast for them, instructing Sarah to quickly bake three loaves of bread of קֶמַח סֹלֶת, fine flour. He also gets a choice calf, slaughters it, and quickly prepares some meat. Finally, we are told, וַיִּקַּח חֶמְאָה וְחָלָב וּבֶן־הַבָּקָר אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה וַיִּתֵּן לִפְנֵיהֶם. He took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and served it to them. Now wait a second. That’s meat and dairy in the same meal! Served up by Avraham! What is going on?
Well, you might say, this is all before Mt. Sinai. How would Avraham be expected to know the laws given to the Israelites in the Torah when the Torah had not even been given yet? And indeed, this is the obvious answer that makes sense in the context of the Torah. The patriarchs don’t follow the rules of the Torah before it has been given. The Da’at Zekenim, a commentary attributed to the Tosafists of France, who were masters of literary readings of the Torah, say plainly “מלמד שהאכילם בשר וחלב” “learn that they ate both meat and dairy.” In fact, the Da’at Zekenim goes on to say (cheekily) that when the angels complained that the Torah was being given to humans who would surely violate its laws, God reminded them that they ate meat and dairy together with Avraham when they descended to earth. But clearly, Avraham eating meat and dairy together is not an issue when looking at the timeline of the Torah. In fact, most of the ink of the commentators is focused on what happened to the bread that Avraham ordered Sarah to make, but then is never described as serving (answer: straightforward, there was no need to mention the bread again, or midrashic: Sarah was impure at the moment and couldn’t bring the bread out). Meat and dairy? Not a problem.
But for some rabbis, the meat and dairy is a problem. There is a strain of rabbinic thought, of rabbinic imagination, that imagines the patriarchs and matriarchs keeping all of the laws of the Torah before the Torah was even given. How then could Avraham serve meat and dairy at the same meal? Radak comes in with a solution: He offered them meat or dairy, and the angels were allowed to pick which one they wanted. In this way, the text is preserved and Avraham could continue to follow the commandments.
This is far from the only time the rabbis bend the timeline to imagine our patriarchs engaged in anachronistic behavior. Again in this parsha, the rabbis notice that after the Akeda, the binding of Yitzchak, the only Avraham is mentioned as returning, not his son. Where is Yitzchak? He went off after his near-death experience to study Torah in the Beit Midrash! With his ancestor Shem! Yitzchak was a Yeshiva bochur! His son too. Ya’akov, says the Talmud, went to study with Ever, another one his ancestors. In fact, even before Ya’akov left home, when the Torah says that he was a mild-mannered man who dwelt in tents, we should understand that means he was at home learning Torah!
Why would the rabbis say such things that were clearly not true, that clearly is not the meaning of the text? If we traveled back in time to meet Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, we would not see them studying the Torah given on Mt. Sinai. And yet. The rabbis were able to imagine that they were.
Imagination is the keyword here. We are not meant to literally believe that the patriarchs studied Torah, and followed all the laws that Moshe gave to the people of Israel on Mt. Sinai. But by imagining that they did, the rabbis were able to see themselves in the patriarchs. They were able to make the characters of the Torah relevant, to ask questions of themselves and state their values by imagining the patriarchs working through those questions or living those values. Yitzchak and Yaakov took time to study Torah. Surely, that shows how valuable Torah study is. Avraham offered his guests a choice of meat or milk. Even before he was required to keep the Torah! That shows how valuable kashrut is. The rabbinic imagination allows the patriarchs and matriarchs to live multiple lives. They all cannot be literally true. But they can still resonate with us.
There are those still engaged in the process of imagining today. Perhaps you have heard of the ongoing debate of whether or not David and Yonatan (Jonathan) were in love with each other as blood brothers or as romantic lovers. It doesn’t matter that, by the simple text of the Torah, which didn’t understand what homosexuality (or heterosexuality) is, the debate is moot. It doesn’t matter that, probably understanding the text of the Torah in its time, that David and Yonatan were not intimate with each other, but close to each other in a way that is discouraged by the masculine standards of our time. What matters is that, regardless of the literal truth, that we can imagine David and Yonatan in a certain way, using the text to see and understand ourselves. It is not to say that one interpretation is most certainly correct: that Avraham ate meat and dairy separately, that David and Yonatan were lovers, and the other explanations are wrong. There are seventy faces of the Torah: they are true, and their opposites are true. Avraham can both eat meat and dairy together and avoid it, and David and Yonatan can both be blood brothers and lovers, because of the power of our rabbinic imagination.
Which leads me to my challenge. The rabbinic imagination is not just something that belonged to the rabbis of old. It is our birthright. Our inheritance, as rabbinic Jews. We have the power to look at the text and imagine. See ourselves in it. See our situations and life stories reflected back at us. We can use the text, and the gaps in the text, to ask questions, and attempt to supply answers. What was it like for Miriam, being the eldest daughter, watching her youngest brother float down the river Nile in a wicker basket? How did Moshe feel when God told him that his sons were not worthy to carry on his name? What happened in Yosef’s childhood, beyond what is mentioned in the Torah, that caused his brothers to hate him? We have the rabbinic power of imagination. We can see ourselves in these stories. We can fill in the blanks. Our answers may not be “literally” true: but they are our midrash, and that gives them both power and truth. Our power. Our truth. Our stories.
