#Malbim

[mysowa]

ANIOŁ PURYM https://vk.com/wall467751157_2743 O komentarzach Malbima do Księgi Estery [9:17; 9:18], które w pierwszym polskim wydaniu są ale ich nie ma https://sway.cloud.microsoft/6uudPXrWGmLaXRgn "[15.] Żydzi, którzy byli w Szuszan, zebrali się także czternastego dnia miesiąca adar i zabili w Szuszan trzystu ludzi, ale po ich majątek nie sięgnęli. [16.] Pozostali Żydzi, którzy byli w krajach króla, zebrali się i powstali (w obronie) swojego życia, by wyswobodzić się od swych wrogów. I spośród tych, którzy ich nienawidzili, zabili siedemdziesiąt pięć tysięcy, ale po ich majątek nie sięgnęli. [17.] (Było to) w trzynastym dniu miesiąca adar. I odetchnęli czternastego dnia tego miesiąca, i uczynili go dniem ucztowania i radości. [18.] A Żydzi, którzy byli w Szuszan, zebrali się trzynastego i czternastego dnia tego miesiąca, i uczynili go dniem ucztowania i radości" - Księga Estery z komentarzem Malbima. Fundacja Ronalda S. Laudera. Kraków 2004:84 https://www.linkedin.com/posts/stefankosiewski_anio%C5%82-purym-o-komentarzach-malbima-do-ksi%C4%99gi-activity-7185028229995405314-HMro Wydawca z nieznanych przyczyn ocenzurował komentarz Malbima, stąd nie ma niestety w nadzwyczaj starannie wydanej Księdze Estery komentarzy Meira Lejbusza ben Jechiela Michaela (Malbima) do dwóch następujących po sobie wersetów: [17. i 18.], nie ma uwag rabina, kolejno: we Wrześni i Kępnie w Prusiech, Chersoniu i Mohylewie w Imperium Rosyjskim; skazanego za szpiegostwo w Bukareszcie na śmierć, ze zamianą potem na wygnanie 1864 r. Tak samo wyrzuconego następnie w Mohylewie z granic Imperium Rosyjskiego, znowu na skutek działań jego żydowskich wrogów religijnych. Wydawca polskiego tłumaczenia książki ISBN 83-920213-1-2 wydania pierwszego z marca 2004 - miesiąca adar 5764 Stowarzyszenie Pardes ul. Starowiślna 28/8 31-032 Kraków zastrzegł sobie: "Książka ani żadna jej część nie może być przedrukowywana ani w jakikolwiek sposób reprodukowana czy powielana mechanicznie, fotooptycznie, zapisywana elektronicznie lub magnetycznie ani odczytywana w środkach publicznego przekazu bez pisemnej zgody wydawcy. Dlatego jeno eksplikacja niniejsza, z naukowego punktu widzenia 13 kwietnia 2024: Ad. 17.: Zapytać możemy sforim@pardes.pl w tym miejscu, czy Malbim nie wyjaśnił może, dlaczego 75 tys. tych, którzy "nienawidzili Żydów" nie zabiło ich wcześniej i nie sięgnęło przed 13 dniem albo i 13-go dnia miesiąca adar po majątek nie pomordowanych z nienawiści Żydów? Ad. 18.: Z niezależnego punktu widzenia nauk wielu (np.: logika matematyczna, lingwistyka, historia antyczna, prakseologia etc.) istotniejsze są - obecne wszak w książce numerycznie na str. 84., natomiast nieobecne są tekstowo we wydanej po polsku Megilat Ester, rabinackie odniesienia Malbima do nielogicznych obiektywnie zaprzeczeń w tekście, sprzecznych ze sobą dosłownie z każdego punktu widzenia i myślenia, tzn. niezależnie od tego, jakby na to (i kto by tylko) nie popatrzył: Otóż, daje się niniejszym do rozważenia warsztatowego: - Dlaczego we wersecie 9:17 napisano, iż "(było to) w trzynastym dniu miesiąca adar. I odetchnęli czternastego dnia, i uczynili go dniem świętowania i radości" Księga Estery 2004:84 Jeżeli w następnym wersie 9:18 napisano: "A Żydzi, którzy byli w Szuszan, zebrali się trzynastego i czternastego dnia tego miesiąca i odetchnęli piętnastego dnia tego miesiąca, i uczynili go dniem ucztowania i radości". Kiedyż to w końcu Żydzi odetchnęli w Księdze Ester? Czternastego, czy piętnastego dnia miesiąca adar? Jeżeli czternastego dnia miesiąca adar Żydzi już odpoczywali i radowali się, to kto zabił tego samego w Szuszan trzystu ludzi z innych narodów? Kto w takim razie zabił podczas, kiedy żydzi ucztowali i radowali się - tego samego czternastego dnia miesiąca adar - siedemdziesiąt pięć tysięcy ludzi w innych krajach króla perskiego? Może znowu Anioł, jak w Egipcie? Anioł Purym? Dla celów obiektywnego postępowania dowodowego chociażby w Parlamencie Europejskim, gdzie za słupa odpowiedzialnego za walkę z mową nienawiści robi wdowa po "Budyniu", skremowanym prezydencie Gdańska Adamowiczu, z domu Abramska, sporządziliśmy wierną fotkę strony bezbożnej książki (Księga Estery ani razu nie nazywa żadnym słowem Boga, nie nazwany jest w niej Nieobecny!). Niereligijne święto Purim/ Purym, drugie obok Chanuki w Sejmie tzw. Polski po Magdalence '89, nie ma absolutnie nic wspólnego z Torą czy religią żydowską. Jest doroczną okazją do rozpasanego ucztowania i radowania się złoczyńców z powodu cudzej, masowej śmierci (Hamana, dziesięciu jego synów, trzystu ludzi zamordowanych z nienawiści w Szuszan, siedemdziesięciu pięciu tysięcy zamordowanych w innych krajach perskiego króla Achaszwerosza (Ahasureus, Aswerus, Kserkses I) itd., etc. Radość to z Ludobójstwa zaiste! 14 dnia adar "po południu spożywany jest specjalny posiłek, podczas którego nadużywanie alkoholu (adlojada) jest traktowane jako micwa (religijny obowiązek) jak powiada Wikipedia za: »Chabad-Lubawicz: Przewodnik purimowy – Jedzenie, picie i radowanie się«. https://web.archive.org/web/20160611051139/http://www.chabadkrakow.pl/templates/articlecco_cdo/aid/948202/jewish/Przewodnik-purimowy.htm https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purim#cite_note-Przewodnik-17 "Adlojada (aram. עד דלא ידע ad lo jada, jid. adlojade = „aż nie będzie wiedział”) – purimowa parada, której nazwa wywodzi się z talmudycznego zalecenia, by biesiadować w Purim aż do momentu, gdy stan upojenia alkoholem nie pozwoli biesiadującemu rozróżnić „błogosławienia Mordechaja” (ברוך מרדכי baruch Mordechaj) od „przeklinania Hamana” (ארור המן arur Haman). Wartość liczbowa obu stwierdzeń wynosi 502[1]. Pierwsza adlojada odbyła się w Tel Awiwie w 1912 r." pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adlojada Odpoczywali, ucztowali i radowali się do upadłego racząc się alkoholem, czy też trudzili się mordowaniem czternastego dnia miesiąca adar? Shalom, szalom! Audio: https://gloria.tv/post/3X3QgkCjCuiFBKnAzZ7b6Dz1N

[the-resurrection-3d]

The Talmud (Bava Batra 91a) states that Abraham was world-famous for being an unparalleled astrologer and healer. According to tradition, he was also a great mystic. It is believed that he authored, or in some other way originated, Sefer Yetzirah, the “Book of Formation”, one of the most ancient Kabbalistic text. The book explains how God fashioned the universe through the Hebrew letters. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 67a) suggests that mastery of this text would allow the mystic to create ex nihilo, out of nothing, and such was done by Rav Oshaya and Rav Chanina every Friday afternoon. These two rabbis would create a chunk of veal, and make a barbecue! It appears the same was done by Abraham. We read in Genesis 18:7 that when the angels visited him, Abraham hastened to “make” a calf, v’imaher la’asot oto. The Malbim (Rabbi Meir Leibush Wisser, 1809-1879) comments on the Torah’s strange choice of verb by stating that Abraham literally created a calf through the wisdom of Sefer Yetzirah. This is why, he explains, the next verse has Abraham serving butter and milk. It is unthinkable that Abraham would serve veal with dairy—an explicit Torah prohibition—unless the veal was of his own creation, and was therefore not real meat that once had a soul. Abraham may have been the first person to serve vegan burgers.

I know Things Just Be Happenin in the Bible is not a hot take by any stretch but Things Really Do Just Be Happening. By the way, this is what Sanhedrin 67a says:

Abaye elaborates: One who performs a real act of sorcery is liable to be executed by stoning. One who deceives the eyes is exempt from punishment, but it is prohibited for him to do so. What is permitted ab initio is to act like Rav Ḥanina and Rav Oshaya: Every Shabbat eve they would engage in the study of the halakhot of creation, and a third-born calf would be created for them, and they would eat it in honor of Shabbat.

[resplendent-ragamuffin]

A Glossary of Yiddish and Hebrew Words This Rabbi Uses You Might Not Know:

(I’ll transcribe closer to the accent he’s using than ‘standard’ Israeli pronunciation, to make this easier. Not going to translate things he translates himself, for the most part, but erring on the side of over-explaining.

I’m mostly not going to bother with things I translated in a previous chapter.)

Meraglim: Spies, scouts

Rachav: Rahab

Yericho: Jericho

Aveilus: Mourning, mourning period.

Parshat Shlach: A weekly portion of the 5 Books (a parsha), covering Number 13:1-15:41. Includes the story of the 12 spies Moshe sent, which went Poorly. Tldr, ten of them said the land was full of giants and was terrifying and freaked out the people so much that they lost faith. This was part of the reason we ended up wandering for 40 years instead of going straight to Israel. Of that entire generation (of men, anyway), only the two who didn’t fearmonger were able to enter the land--Yehoshua was one, the other was Kalev (Caleb) ben Yefuneh, the husband of Miriam. You should probably read that story to fully understand the parallels to this one.

Al pi: At the request of, because of, based on.

Shlichus: Mission, task. A person sent on shichus is a shaliach (f. shlicha, m.p. shluchim), usually translated as emissary. You might have heard this word used in relation to Chabad couples.

Pinchas: Phineas, the grandson of Aharon (Aaron), and High Priest after the death of his father. Midrash identifies him as one of these two spies, with the other again being Kalev ben Yefuneh.

Rus HaMoaviah: Ruth the Moabite

Giores: Convert (feminine). Masculine form is ger.

Ba’Laila: At night

V’heimah terem yishk’vun: And before they were asleep (beginning of verse 8).

Yetzias Mitzrayim: The Exodus from Egypt

Aleinu: A prayer said at the end of just about every prayer service. The first paragraph ends with a quote from Deuteronomy 4:39: “Know therefore this day and keep in mind that Hashem alone is God in heaven above and on earth below; there is no other.”

Chesed (pl. chasadim): Often translated as “lovingkindness.” Kind of a complicated thing to translate. Honestly the Wikipedia entry isn’t a terrible explanation. The general gist is something kind or charitable.

Siman: Sign

Os: Symbol

Shiur: Lecture, generally religious.

Bonus I thought about doing last time, but didn’t:

Commentaries Mentioned:

Note commentators are often referred to either by an acronym of their name or by the title of their most famous work.

Rashi: Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, France, 1040-1104. Probably the most referenced commentator, tends to be easy to understand and follow. If you have a question about something, he’s usually the first place you look for an answer.

Malbim: Meir Loeb ben Yehiel Michel Wisser, Russian Empire, 1809-1879.

Nechama Leibowitz: Israel, 1905-1997. One of the premier modern commentator, and perhaps the best known female commentator. (She’s so cool.)

Da’as Sofrim: Rabbi Chaim Dov Rabinowitz, Lithuania and Israel, 1909-2001.

Day 2: Joshua 2 // יהושע ב

(Link to full chapter text on Sefaria)

I started working on this draft motzei Shabbos because I was so excited about this particular chapter, but I waited because I wanted to really get my thoughts right. So!

One of the reasons I wanted to start by reading Joshua rather than track the OU cycle (which is currently in the middle of Psalms/Tehillim) is because I absolutely love the character Rahab (/Rachav). Rahab is explicitly described as being a prostitute, and yet the text itself doesn't condemn her for it or try to whitewash it. She is described by her occupation multiple times, and her and her family are spared because of her intuition and bravery in facilitating the Israelite conquest of the city. Like Tamar in Bereshit, the future of the people hinges on the goodness of foreign women (likely converts or their historical equivalent) who engage in commercial sex. In Joshua it's even clearer - she and her family were said to be adopted into the people Israel and she is still described as a prostitute; unlike Tamar (which is a one-time exceptional circumstance that the text is clear did not recur) there is not explicit statement that she renounces this work.

This moment is also a moving reversal of the mistakes of the Israelites during the original spies narrative in the Torah. Notably, Joshua was one of the only two spies (along with Caleb) who tried to convince the people to fight for the land, while the remaining ten instill fear into the people, such that the generation that left Egypt is then doomed to die in the desert before the people can literally and figuratively move forward. Here, the spies sent are fewer in number and chosen by Joshua who, certainly, must be remembering his own experiences as a young man. By having a successful reconnaissance mission, the people are demonstrating the nation's collective teshuva for the sin of the original spies and the people’s reaction to them, and their readiness to enter the land.

The book of Joshua taken as a whole is very focused on the conquest of the land, the various cities that are razed and burned to the ground, and the many people and clans slaughtered. It's a tough book for those of us who oppose war for land or prosperity and care about human rights. But the acceptance of Rahab is a bright spot in a grisly war narrative.

[eretzyisrael]

Don Seeman

In 1845, Rabbi Meir Leibush ben Yehiel Mikhel Wisser, better known by his acronym and nom de plume ‘Malbim,’ published his first biblical commentary, on Megillat Esther. Malbim is often characterized as a conservative commentator who defended traditional rabbinic exegesis and the sanctity of biblical texts. Yet his underappreciated commentary on Esther also contains the seeds of a radical political hermeneutic that might even be described as “proto-feminist” because it explores the political roots and consequences of women’s oppression. We are used to thinking of Esther as a heroine who saved her people, but Malbim’s analysis goes beyond the role of any individual person to describe how it was, in his view, that the systematic disempowerment of women in general helped to create the political conditions for genocide in Megillat Esther. This is a shockingly modern sort of analysis for a commentator better known for his fierce opposition to religious reform in the lands he served as rabbi.

For Malbim, the mise en scene of Esther is Ahasuerus’ meteoric rise to power and the political intrigue that would have accompanied such an upheaval. He notes, for example, that the biblical story begins just three years into Ahasuerus’ reign, when he still would have been consolidating power, and cites a midrash that portrays Ahasuerus as a commoner who seized power.[1] This is not historical research. Instead, it is a form of biblical interpretation grounded in rabbinic exegesis and it needs to be appreciated in that vein.

Crucially for his account of gender politics in this book, Malbim adopts a midrash that portrays Vashti as a daughter of the supplanted royal house, suggesting that her marriage to Ahasuerus would have been a political matter contributing to the legitimacy of his new regime.[2] This in fact is the heart of the story that Malbim wishes to tell, because it helps to make sense of the first two chapters of the book whose proliferation of details about drinking and life in the capital might otherwise have seemed superfluous. For Malbim, Ahasuerus’ political dependence on his wife sets up a dynamic of murderous intrigue that reverberates through the book.

Political Prologue: “It’s Good to be the King!”

In his somewhat lengthy prologue to the commentary, Malbim elaborates on two broad theories of government that would have been very familiar to his nineteenth century readers. In a limited or constitutional monarchy, he writes, royal power is constrained by law and by a conception of the common good. Sometimes the king even needs to demonstrate that he has received the consent of the governed. Not so the absolute or unlimited monarch, who rules by fiat as both lawgiver and king simultaneously. In Malbim’s account—which he tries to illustrate through close reading of biblical and rabbinic texts—Ahasuerus seized power from a constitutional monarch but was set on absolutizing his rule through a series of very intentional stratagems that required him to sideline or eliminate his wife. Faced by the ancient rabbinic conundrum whether to portray Ahasuerus as a wise or a foolish king, Malbim decides from the outset to treat him as someone who knows what he wants and works deliberately to achieve his goals.[3]      

This kind of excursus in political philosophy is unusual among rabbinic commentators, but it is crucial to Malbim’s methodology, lending vital context to the plethora of small details on which he builds his interpretation. Why, for example, would Scripture devote so much attention to the lavish parties Ahasuerus held for his servants and subordinates throughout the whole third year of his reign? Malbim’s answer is that no mere constitutional monarch could have opened the state coffers so brazenly for his own aggrandizement. Ahasuerus understood that people would be less likely to object to the precedent he was trying to set if they were included among its early beneficiaries.[4]

Why specify, furthermore, that Ahasuerus had invited three distinct groups to these parties: the nobles and princes of Persia, the nobles of the (conquered) provinces and ultimately “all the people who were present in Shushan the palace, both great and small?”[5] As a commoner who had seized power in a large and centralized empire, Ahasuerus wanted to signal that the traditional Persian elites (who would have been most likely to challenge the legitimacy of his rule) had no more access to him than anyone else. Extending invitations to lowly servants conveyed to Ahasuerus’ more privileged guests that “both great and small are equal before him for all are [merely] his servants.”[6]

This flattening of the political structure may not have immediately weakened the Persian nobility but it would have stoked the fires of a fiercely populistic loyalty to the new king among the leaders of the disenfranchised, non-Persian provinces and the lower Persian classes who had been systematically excluded from most of the benefits of the constitutional—but colonial and deeply class conscious—state Ahasuerus had come to dominate.        

Malbim certainly gives signs in his commentary of a preference for constitutional monarchy, yet he implicitly lays the groundwork for a critique of both constitutional and authoritarian regimes. Ahasuerus’ attention to the provinces and to the servant class of Shushan could not have been successful unless there were already deep reservoirs of disaffection throughout the empire. Malbim never says this in so many words, but the pretense of a state governed by law for the common good may not have appealed so much to the provincial nobles chafing under imperial rule or the underclass of Shushan whom Ahasuerus had been so careful to flatter. Malbim’s deep personal intuition for the workings of power in social contexts makes him a profound commentator on a book devoted to the intrigues of a royal court, but these same intuitions sometimes seem to outstrip his commitment to critical analysis of the world beyond the text.

Every Man Should be Master in his Own House: On Misogyny and Power

Vashti, we have seen, poses a special problem for Ahasuerus. She is at once the key to his legitimacy in the eyes of the traditional Persian elites and the most distressing evidence that his independent power is limited. So, at the end of his long populist campaign, when his heart was “merry with wine,” Ahasuerus cleverly sends his chamberlains to summon the queen.[7] Sending his own servants rather than those who normally attend upon her was meant, in Malbim’s reading, to signal his disrespect. If she answered his call it would be a symbolic victory for him and if she refused it might present him with an opportunity to move against her. Directly attacking her dignity as the daughter of a royal house, he he also summons her “to show the people and the princes her beauty,” as if her attractiveness outstripped the importance of her royal person and pedigree.[8] By demanding that she appear wearing her royal crown, according to one well-known midrash, the king went so far as to intimate that she should appear before the gaze of his servants, dressed in nothing else.[9]

Malbim pointedly ignores several popular midrashim that attribute Vashti’s refusal of the king’s summons to mere vanity because she had developed a skin disease or even (miraculously) grown a tail.[10] I consider it a scandal of Jewish education that these fanciful midrashim belittling Vashti are often the only ones taught to children, while more substantive readings like Malbim’s are ignored. Ever the close reader, Malbim notes that Ahasuerus called for “Vashti the Queen,” putting her private name first to emphasize that her status was derived from marriage to him while she responds as “Queen Vashti,” emphasizing that her own rank came first.[11] Read this way, her refusal of the king’s summons constitutes a self-conscious act of political resistance because she understood what her husband was trying to accomplish at her expense.

Baiting Vashti in this way would have been a dangerous strategy for Ahasuerus because the Persian nobility was likely to side with her in any serious dispute. Malbim thinks that Ahasuerus still loved her and did not wish her condemned to death but that his advisor Memukhan ultimately prevailed with the argument that Vashti’s public challenge had to be treated as an offense of the state if Ahasuerus’ plans for unlimited government were ever to be achieved.[12] Her offense should not, moreover, be framed in the context of Ahasuerus’ political struggle with the last remaining representative of the old royal house but as a woman’s rebellion against her husband, thus implicating every man in the desire to see her put in her place. Ahasuerus’ cabinet would have to work quickly, because Malbim assumes that both Vashti and the Persian noblewomen with whom she had feasted had already seen through this subterfuge and might work to subvert it.[13] So they released a royal edict banning her from the king’s presence almost immediately before following up with seemingly unrelated letters “to every province according to its writing and to every people according to their language that every man should be master in his own house and speak according to the language of his people.”[14]

On the level of political rhetoric, Ahasuerus’ executive order must have seemed a master stroke because of all that it simultaneously accomplished. Malbim thinks that by emphasizing that the letters were to be sent in the diverse languages of the polyglot empire, Ahasuerus was once again stoking popular resentment against the Persian elites who used to demand that all state business be conducted in Persian.[15]Apparently, “cultural diversity” can be coopted by authoritarian state power as easily as any other ideology under the right circumstances. More importantly, Ahasuerus’ letter would have distracted people from his naked power grab by disguising it as the utterly ordinary resentment of a husband whose wife has defied him, guaranteeing the support of other men who feared the rebellion of their own wives in turn. Could he have found a more potent strategy for harnessing their resentment? In the 1970’s it began to be said in some quarters that “the personal is political,” but Ahasuerus’ letters represent the utter suppression of that frame by insisting that the political is merely personal. Whether or not she was finally executed—as Malbim assumes—Vashti’s resistance had been nullified.

On Purim and Genocide

One of the extraordinary features of Malbim’s commentary is how little it initially focuses on the fate of the Jews. For Malbim, that fate rested not just on divine providence but on an exceedingly subtle reading of contemporary events by social actors holding a wide a variety of different political aspirations. Ahasuerus had no particular brief against the Jews, according to Malbim, but was ultimately manipulated by his advisor Haman the Amalekite, who bore Mordekhai a personal and hereditary grudge. Without mentioning who the targets of his wrath would be, Haman tells the king that “there is a certain [unnamed] people scattered abroad and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of your kingdom . . . who follow their own laws and do not obey the king.”[16] Haman convinces Ahasuerus that extermination of the Jews will be welcomed by all the nations of the empire whose support he has been seeking. Driven by hatred rather than financial gain, Haman even offers to fill the king’s coffers with the Jews’ money rather than keeping it for himself.

Astoundingly, Ahasuerus turns down Haman’s offer of booty because his own intentions at this point are merely to “improve his nation by destroying the harmful religion and its vices.”[17] One may easily perceive here an echo of Malbim’s critique of reformers and state agents in his own day who claimed to be interested in public morality or “progress” but whose efforts were often construed by traditionalists as efforts to assimilate or destroy the Jewish people.[18] Be that as it may, Ahasuerus ultimately accedes to Haman’s request and once more sends letters throughout the land allowing the Jews to be exterminated.[19] Later, when Esther intervenes with the king on her people’s behalf yet a third group of letters must be sent, giving the Jews the right to bear arms in self-defense.[20]

So where does this leave us? A curious Talmudic text suggests that “had it not been for the first set of letters” in Megillat Esther “no remnant or remainder of the Jews would have survived.”[21] As Rashi glosses, the “first set of letters” refers to the one that mandated male control of the household in the first chapter of Esther. The rule that every man should “speak the language of his own people” is taken to mean that women who marry a man from a different ethnic or linguistic group than their own must limit themselves to speaking in their husbands’ language.[22] But such a decree was so clearly daft and unenforceable that it cast all of the king’s subsequent decrees into disrepute.[23] When the letter about exterminating the Jews later arrived, most people dismissed it as another laughable farce, and this allowed the Jews to mount a successful defense against the relatively few who did attack them.

Malbim and a few other interpreters have a different reading, whose direct source in rabbinic literature (if there is one) I have not yet been able to identify. Malbim’s version, which he attributes without specific citation to “our sages” reads “if it were not for the first set of letters, the second set could never have been fulfilled.”[24] On this reading, the second set of letters were the ones permitting the extermination of the Jews, and the meaning is that Haman could never have conspired to kill the Jews in a constitutional monarchy.[25] The first set of letters disempowering women paved the way for Ahasuerus to become an absolute monarch and it was only under those conditions that a genocide of the kind Haman plotted could ever have a chance to succeed. To put it simply, the murder of Vashti and the suppression of women throughout the empire paved the way for Haman’s projected Holocaust.

Though this is bound to be provocative, I have referred to Malbim’s commentary on Esther as proto-feminist for a few reasons. First, because this commentary demonstrates how the systematic domination of women served broader imperial interests and was also enhanced by blurring the relation between patriarchal domination of households and despotic domination of the empire. Under Ahasuerus, women (starting with Vashti) had to be controlled or neutralized so that the household could serve as a model for the state, even while the state claimed to be modeled on the structure of households. This sort of mutually reinforcing dynamic or political cosmology is by now a commonplace of social analysis, but it wasn’t in 1845.[26]

Malbim shows, moreover, that the political project of misogyny formed a necessary prelude to authoritarian rule and genocide. Jews reflecting on Purim ought to reflect as well on the ways in which the fate of the Jews cannot help but be embedded in larger structures of power that also determine the fates of other groups, including women and all those other peoples (some of them also quite vulnerable) who also inhabit our necessarily imperfect political regimes. Though the Megillah and its commentators certainly assume a transcendent significance to the travails of Israel, a reader shaped by Malbim’s commentary would also have to conclude that those travails can only be understood by reference to a much broader canvas of interlocking stories, political calculations, and tribulations suffered by others. “Without the first set of letters,” Malbim reminds us, “the second set of letters could never have been fulfilled.”

Concluding Thoughts

Malbim’s interests in the commentary on Esther bear witness more to his thoughtfulness as a reader than to any explicit political project, and that is why I only referred to his commentary, in all fairness, as proto-feminist. I do not mean to imply that he would himself have subscribed to any of the much later developments in feminist thought or practice, including those that seem to be at issue in contemporary Orthodox Jewish life. Given his attitude toward Reform in his own day, it would be odd to portray him as a hero of religious reforms in ours. But this is actually one of the reasons that his commentary on Esther is so profoundly unsettling. He isn’t trying to sell anything but a better reading, grounded in rabbinic sources, and a more nuanced appreciation for the dynamics of power. The fact that this leads him to an unprecedented analysis of gender politics in Scripture tells me that this is a discussion we ought to be having no matter what our stance on hot-button contemporary issues might be. At the very least, it will make us better students of Torah.

This is not a small thing. Does the fact that Malbim presaged later developments in gender theory and linked his observations about gender and politics to Scriptural interpretation mean that we can begin to have non-defensive conversations about these matters in religious settings? That our sons and daughters might be able to confront the complex realities of power in their own lives as well as Tanakh rather than focusing almost exclusively on fanciful midrashim about Vashti’s physical deformities?  Or that we might recapture the importance of political philosophy to almost any kind of intelligible conversation about sacred Scripture? That may be a lot to rest on the back of one short commentary on a biblical book, but I am hardly deterred. Purim, after all, is a holiday of miracles.

Malbim learned about the dynamics of power on his own flesh in the decades following the publication of his commentary on Esther.[27] In 1859 he became chief rabbi of Bucharest in Romania but was denounced as an enemy of the state because of his fierce opposition to various reforms and assimilationist policies. Moses Montefiore intervened to save him from being sent to prison but he was exiled and forced to seek redress from the Turkish government in Constantinople. He spent the remaining twenty years of his life embroiled in controversies with reformers and state authorities in a variety of cities across Europe and finally died in 1879 while traveling to assume a new rabbinical post. A committed traditionalist of deep learning and broad intellectual horizons, Malbim can be read with profit today not just for the specific positions he took (these are inextricably tied to his time and circumstances) but for the habits of mind and spirit that writings like his commentary on Esther exemplify. Within a traditional frame, he sought more complex and contextually coherent understandings of Jewish literature and Jewish life. At a moment when many are struggling with renewed passion to comprehend the intersection of different potential forms of oppression (racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny) and also questioning the forms of political discourse in which more constitutional or more authoritarian trends might come to the fore of our national life, Malbim should be on the curriculum.

[1] See Esther 1:3; Esther Rabbah 1:4.

[2] See, for example, Esther Rabbah 3:14.

[3] See Megillah 12a.

[4] Malbim on Esther 1:4.

[5] Esther 1: 5.

[6] See Esther 1:3-5.

[7] Esther 1: 10-11.

[8] Esther 1: 11; Esther Rabbah 3: 14.

[9] Esther Rabbah 3: 13-14.

[10] See Megillah 12b.

[11] See Malbim on Esther 1: 9.

[12] Malbim on Esther 1: 16.

[13] See Esther 1:9 and Malbim on Esther 1: 17.

[14] Esther 1: 19-22.

[15] Malbim on Esther 1: 22.

[16] Esther 3: 8.

[17] See Esther 3: 11, in which the king gives Haman the treasure to do with as he sees fit, as well as Malbim’s comment on that verse.

[18] Malbim would not have been alone in that regard. See for example Barukh Halevy Epstein’s account of rabbinic interactions with the Jewish reformer, Rabbi Max Lilienthal, in his memoir Mekor Barukh: Zikhronot Me-Hayyei Ha-Dor Ha-Kodem Vol. IV, chs. 43-44 (Vilna: Rom Publishers, 1928), 1850-1927. For an analysis of this and other relevant sources, see Don Seeman and Rebecca Kobrin, “‘Like One of the Whole Men’: Learning, Gender and Autobiography in R. Barukh Epstein’s Mekor Barukh,” Nashim 2 (1999): 59-64.

[19] Esther 3: 12-14.

[20] Esther 8: 10-14.

[21] Megillah 12b; also see Pesikta Zutrata (Lekah Tov) Esther 1:22.

[22] Rashi on Esther 1: 22. See similarly Hakhmei Zarfat cited on the same verse in Torat Hayyim: Megillat Esther ‘im Perushei Ha-Rishonim (Jerusalem: Mossad Ha-Rav Kook, 2006), 48. See Esther Rabbah 4: 12 and additional sources cited by Torah Shelemah Megilat Esther (Jerusalem: Noam Aharon Publishers, 1994), 50n.187.

[23] See Rashi to Megillah 12b s.v. Iggerot Rishonot.

[24] Malbim to Esther 1:22

[25] Ibid.

[26] For a few ethnographic treatments of the relationship between cosmologies of gender and state regimes, see, for example, Carol Delaney, The Seed and the Soil: Gender and Cosmology in Turkish Village Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Sally Cole, Women of the Praia: Work and Lives in a Portuguese Coastal Community (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); Rebecca J. Lester, Jesus in our Wombs: Embodying Modernity in a Mexican Convent  (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).

[27] See Yehoshua Horowitz’s  entry on Malbim in Encyclopedia Judaica Vol. XI (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing, 1971), 822-23.

[kamil-a]

i love reading books w annotations btw i lovvvve my mom's copy of the annotated alice and my copy of hard times w footnotes and i used to have a copy of romeo and juliet with explanations..... i love it its like reading two books at once

[askokussko]

keske boyle bi seyler olsa da kalbim malbim pitpit etse

[apenitentialprayer]

Nineteenth century Catholic commentator George Leo Haydock wrote:

As God does not here express leave to eat flesh-eating meat, which He did after the Deluge, it is supposed that the more religious part of mankind, at least, abstained from it, and from wine, till after that event, when they became more necessary to support decayed nature.

Gregory of Nyssa, writing in the late fourth century, wrote:

The Lord, after the flood, knowing humans were wasteful, allowed them to use all foods.

Giovanni Menochio, a sixteenth century Jesuit, wrote:

Now, the salt waters of the deluge had vitiated the earth, its plants were no longer so nutritive.

In all three cases, there is an understanding that in their original state, human beings were meant to be vegetarians; that the allowance for meat was a concession, the result of a weakened human condition and a weakened vitality within Creation itself. There are some, like myself, who see vegetarianism as what is known as an “eschatological sign” - a way of living on this earth in a way that is not mandatory for all believers, but who nonetheless see it as a way of more closely resembling what we will be like in heaven. There are others who wouldn’t grant it such an exalted status. There are other opinions, though. For example, the Rabbi David Kimhi (or RaDaK, as he is sometimes called), was an eleventh century Jewish scholar who instead suggested:

Perhaps [...] permission to eat meat became part of Noach's reward for his labor feeding all the animals in the ark for a full year.

Hezekiah ben Manoah, from the thirteenth century, uses similar reasoning:

The reason why God permitted eating living creatures after they had been killed was that all of them had to thank man for having kept them from perishing during the Deluge. As a result, all the animals were now totally at the mercy of man.

The eighteenth century Chaim ibn Attar agrees with his coreligionists above in that he also believed that meat-eating was a reward for Noah’s faithful stewardship, whereas the nineteenth century commentator known as the Malbim actually mixed both reasonings:

For in the day of Adam, people's bodies were strong and the fruits had not yet been damaged and they could sustain a person like meat could. But after the Deluge, when food was damaged, and man was to be scattered to the edges of the land and far off isles, [and] at that point hot and cold [weather] were introduced, so meat was needed for the maintenance of his health. [...] Also, after they lived through the actions of Noah who provided for them in the ark, they were like his acquisitions and in his possession.

So among both Jewish and Christian scholars, there is a wide variety of opinions on the matter; meat-eating can be something we’re just putting up with because of the sinful state of the world, or it can be a reward for maintaining the world. I personally think that the first option is more likely, but Christians are free to believe either.

Were humans originally not intended to eat the meat of the animals around them?

In the garden of Eden when God is showing Adam and Eve everything he has given them, there is a section where he discusses that all of the trees and plants (except for the tree of knowledge obviously) were given to them for nourishment.

“And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” Genesis 1:29

Animals were not mentioned here. However, after the flood, he mentions that the animals also were available for their nourishment.

“Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.” Genesis 9:3

As a first time Bible reader (and a vegetarian) I am curious about these two sections and looking for an explanation if there is one. Why is it that before the flood the animals were not given as food, and after they were? Thanks in advance everyone, I'm just looking to better understand what I am reading.

[torais-life]

5th portion-Parasha Balak(english)

5th Portion: Bamidbar (Numbers 23:13-26)

Chapter 23

13Balak said to him, "Come with me to another place from where you will see them; however, you will see only a part of them, not all of them and curse them for me from there.

14He took him to the field of the lookouts, to the peak of the mountain, and he built seven altars and offered up a bull and a ram on [each] altar.

15He said to Balak, "Stand here next to your burnt offering and I will be chanced on here.

16The Lord chanced upon Balaam and placed something into his mouth. He said, "Return to Balak and so you shall speak."

17When he came to him, he was standing next to his burnt offering, and the Moabite dignitaries were with him, and Balak said to him, "What did the Lord speak?"

18He took up his parable and said, "Arise, Balak, and hear; listen closely to me, son of Zippor.

19God is not a man that He should lie, nor is He a mortal that He should relent. Would He say and not do, speak and not fulfill?

20I have received [an instruction] to bless, and He has blessed, and I cannot retract it.

21He does not look at evil in Jacob, and has seen no perversity in Israel; the Lord, his God, is with him, and he has the King's friendship.

22God has brought them out of Egypt with the strength of His loftiness.

23For there is no divination in Jacob and no soothsaying in Israel. In time it will be said to Jacob and Israel, 'What has God wrought?'

24Behold, a people that rises like a lioness (See Malbim) and raises itself like a lion. It does not lie down until it eats its prey and drinks the blood of the slain."

25Balak said to Balaam, "You shall neither curse them nor shall you bless them."

26Balaam answered and said to Balak, "Have I not spoken to you, saying, 'Everything the Lord speaks that I shall do."

[drjulioduarte]

Nos comentários de Malbim (1809-1879) sobre os Provérbios, aprendemos que um coração puro (lev tahor) capacita o indivíduo na sua busca pelas verdades espirituais.

#Cabala

#Kabbalah

#Judaismo

#Provérbios

#Biblia

#CoraçãoPuro

#Intelecto

#Gloria

#Verdade

#Malbim

#PabloZahav

#EscolaLemida

[valiantlyangryfun-blog]

חפני ופנחס

In my opinion, the liability of the stealing of meat from Bnei Yisrael’s korbanot falls on חפני ופנחס, like the רלב״ג says. There was a huge misuse of power, and the corruption in the Beit Hamikdash made the korbanot a disgrace. I think that the excessive greed of חפני and פנחס led them to disregard Hashem’s commandments and the affairs of the Beit Hamikdash. It is not an uncommon occurrence throughout history, within different cultures and nations for leaders to abuse their power and have the people under them carry out unjust actions. In this case, the leaders had their נערים steal meat from Bnei Yisrael without any regard for what they were supposed to receive and for the order of the שלמים. Malbim states that the נערים had the idea to steal, and therefore, the liability was theirs. However, this represents negligence and accepting of bribes from the leaders, as well as greed and and disresepect from the נערים. It was not their place to either take meat for themselves or to attempt to suck up to חפני ופנחס through unlawful bribery. Both mefarshim present a dire situation within the Beit Hamikdash, resulting in distrust from Bnei Yisrael. However, I lean more towards the opinion of the רלב״ג, because though this situation is still bad, it at least shows that the corruption was mainly within the leadership and not in the other aspects of the Beit Hamikdash.

[wenevergotusedtoegypt]

Usually I spend the last part of Shabbos at a friend’s house, but her family was out of town this week, so 2 other friends and I decided to try out this shiur that one of their roommates had recommended.

It was...such a disaster, oh my gosh. First of all I was not a fan of the shiur itself. Even though it was an hour+ long, almost nothing of substance was actually said (the woman teaching it kept repeating the same ideas over and over again), and what was said was not at all Torah-based. When it first started we were handed a source sheet with a whole bunch of sources, so I was like, “Oh, awesome, this is going to be really text-based!” But she only ended up referencing like 25% of what was on the page max, and she also referenced multiple sources that weren’t on the source sheet, but did so in a way that made it sound like more of what she was saying was from a source than I’m fairly confident actually was, thus falsely legitimizing ideas that she was pulling out of nowhere. This was especially insidious considering that I’m pretty sure a lot of the people in the room weren’t necessarily familiar with the meforshim she was attributing the ideas to, and so wouldn’t have been able to realize something was off (e.g. she attributed something to the Malbim, and since my Nach teacher in sem was a big fan, I was able to think, “uh, I really don’t think the Malbim would have said more than the very beginning of what just came out of your mouth,” but my 2 friends said afterwards they didn’t know who the Malbim was). Basically the gist of the shiur was her trying to reframe the metzora’s isolation as a cure for that person’s own feelings of alienation, and advocating in general that if something in the Torah makes us uncomfortable (e.g. the idea that someone would ever be publicly shamed even if they did something wrong) we should simply completely reinterpret it in a way that makes us more comfortable instead of truly engaging with it as it is.

Besides all that, the audience was...interesting. Highlights included:

a guy who clearly had a huge beef with Torah Judaism - I’m not sure how he got to the shiur or why he stayed or how he didn’t catch onto the fact that his comments were not appropriate to the audience - who suggested that “clearly we all know that the Torah was written by people, not G-d, over a period of 600 years,” mansplained that the Torah hates women multiple times to an observant Jewish female teacher and a majority observant Jewish female audience, and asked how we know that Miriam’s tzara’as was really because of the lashon hara she said about Moshe Rabbeinu and not just a natural disease she was coincidentally exposed to at that time

a woman who tried to use the metaphor of a canary in a coal mine but apparently thought that the canary would be flying around freely in the coal mine and would be the first to leave when it was dangerous, instead of being in a cage and being the first to die when it was dangerous, with highly awkward results for her metaphor

“Political correctness is my yetzer hara”

If I’d been there alone I would have left way earlier but my friends felt too awkward to walk out in the middle because of the way the room was set up. But anyway at least now we know we aren’t missing anything by not going to this shiur other weeks......

[yahuahrapha]

With this understanding, we can understand that Zechariah describes the gentiles travelling to Yerushalayim on Sukkot as an annual commemoration of the great war of Gog and Magog (see Malbim). Isaiah, in our haftarah, is depicting an altogether different purpose to the monthly pilgrimage.  It is not a commemoration of a past event, but instead an opportunity to gain inspiration from seeing this new reality of God’s permanent presence, fully restored, in the Holy Temple.

[cicekruhlukadin]

Kalbim malbim 😍

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Most popular fashion blog for Men - Men’s LookBook ®

[chassidbreslev]

✓ Tizku LeShanim Rabot, Neymot veTovot

...na prática!

A Gemará diz em Massechet Rosh Hashaná, "כל שנה שרשה בתחילתה, מתעשרת בסופה" - Se conseguirmos ser humildes e sentir que somos necessitados, implorando a HaShem por ajuda no início do ano, então será um ano de bênção até o final do ano.

Como podemos nos fazer sentir necessitados? O Rav Menashe Reisman citou o Sefer Ahavat Shalom, que explica o seguinte: Pedimos a HaShem no Birkat Hamazon, "לא לידי מתנת בשר ודם" - que nunca precisemos pedir ajuda a outrem, Porém o Midrash afirma que HaShem diz que o mundo não pode existir sem Tzedakah - "עולם חסד יבנה". Então, como podemos pedir que as pessoas nunca precisem receber dos outros?

Ele traz do Sefer M'galeh Amukot que a palavra Homem (אדם) é composta por três partes: mãe, pai e Hashem. As palavras hebraicas אב (Av) e אם (Em), que significam pai e mãe, têm o mesmo valor numérico que דם (dam) = 44; o Aleph, que equivale a HaShem, vem junto com o דם para soletrar אדם (adam). Quando Adam HaRishon pecou, HaShem tirou o Aleph de seu nome (דם) e ele se tornou apenas "carne e sangue". Parte do nosso Tikun é trazer o Aleph de volta, reconhecendo que precisamos de HaShem para tudo o que fizermos.

Portanto, no Birkat Hamazon, não estamos pedindo para que nunca ninguém precise de Tzedakah. Estamos pedindo para que os necessitados não recebam seu dinheiro de um בשר ודם - de alguém que acredite que foi ele quem ganhou o dinheiro, sem a ajuda de HaShem. Este tipo de pessoa, ao dar Tzedakah, sente que está se separando de seu dinheiro suado. Ao invés disso, devemos rezar para que os necessitados recebam o dinheiro de alguém que saiba que não fez nada para produzir este dinheiro; veio apenas por causa da bondade de HaShem. E quando alguém receber dinheiro de uma pessoa com essa atitude, o dinheiro é abençoado. Como diz a Gemará, aquele que recebeu dinheiro de Avraham Avinu teve bênção nesse dinheiro.

O que significa ter Brachah no dinheiro? No Bet Yisrael, havia um Kollel que dava aos estudantes a pequena soma de apenas US$ 300 por mês. Mas cada indivíduo naquele Kollel sempre teve o que precisava. Não fazia sentido nos cálculos no papel, e os próprios alunos não conseguiam explicar como estavam sustentando suas famílias com tão pouca quantia. O que realmente estava acontecendo? Havia Brachah no dinheiro. Porque os doadores eram puros, entendendo que o dinheiro era de HaShem e que eles tinham muita sorte de ter o mérito de estar entre aqueles que doam.

Os grandes nomes da nossa história obtiveram constantemente grande Chizuk nesta área. Quando Avraham Avinu derrotou os quatro reis, disse ao rei de Sodom: "הרימותי ידי אל ה 'קל עליון" - “Eu levantei minhas mãos para HaShem”; o Malbim explica que Avraham apontou para suas mãos e disse: "Eu não quero tirar proveito do dinheiro provindo dos espólios dessa guerra, pois não quero pensar que são essas mãos que obtiveram meu dinheiro”. Este é um nível muito alto. Avraham Avinu estava com medo de que o Rei de Sodom pudesse pensar que o poder de suas mãos lhe rendera seu dinheiro, então ele não aceitou.

Quando fazemos Tefilah, o Shulchan Aruch diz que devemos colocar nossas mãos sobre nosso coração, a direita por cima da esquerda, como se disséssemos: "Nossas mãos estão atadas", simbolizando que não podemos fazer nada sem HaShem. É assim que devemos nos sentir quando rezamos; somos muito impotentes, não importando quanto dinheiro tenhamos em nossas contas bancárias.

Havia um grande Rebe, Rav Yaakov Koppel Chassid, dono de uma loja. Sempre que os clientes lhe pediam o preço de algum artigo, ele cobria os olhos e dizia "שוויתי ה 'לנגדי תמיד" - HaShem está no comando. Só então ele lhes dizia o preço. Os clientes pensavam que ele era louco, mas ele obteve muito sucesso. Ele explicou: "Quando sentimos que estamos ganhando dinheiro? Quando compramos algo por US$ 100 e o vendemos por US$ 200. Então, nesse momento, quando me perguntam o preço, eu me recordo: tudo vem de HaShem.

Existem diferentes níveis de humildade. Algumas pessoas reconhecem que HaShem está envolvido e dizem: "Por favor, HaShem, me ajude a continuar administrando os negócios do jeito que eu tenho feito". Mas o nível mais alto é a pessoa dizer: "Não é que eu esteja fazendo algo, e Ele esteja me ajudando, mas sim, Ele está fazendo tudo, e eu sou apenas um fantoche. Ele coloca as idéias em meu cérebro; Ele me conduz para encontrar a mercadoria; Ele me traz os clientes; Ele deixa os itens serem aprovados aos olhos deles".

Se alguém chegar a essa conclusão, será capaz de dar Tzedakah com um coração feliz, agradecendo HaShem por ter lhe dado a oportunidade. Além disso, poderá rezar como um necessitado, pois sabe que na realidade é isto o que ele é. E B'ezrat Hashem, tendo esses pensamentos agora, nestes momentos especiais, nos dará o mérito de ter um ano de abundância.

אני כבר אמרתי את שמי : " נ נח " !

נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן

פתק

[torahberurah]

TEHILIM 32:11

11 Be glad in HaShem, and rejoice, ye righteous; and shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart. 11 Alégrense en HaShem y regocíjense, justos. Hagan cantar a todos los de corazón recto. 11 Alegreu-vos en Ha'Xem, i rabejeu-vos, justos; animeu-vos amb joia, tots els de cor recte. COMENTARI: El Retorn al Creador ("Teixuvà"), només és possible adreçant el cor, i idealment, des de l'amor:  precisament, aquest és el Salm 32 --el valor numèric de "cor" en Hebreu ("lev" [לב])--, versicle 11 --i  el número 11, d'acord a Maimònides i el Malbim, significa "Teixuvà". COMENTARIO: El Retorno al Creador ("Teshuvá"), sólo es posible rectificando el corazón, e idealmente, desde el amor: precisamente, este es el Tehilim 32 --el valor numérico de "corazón" en Hebreo ("lev" [לב])--, versículo 11 --y el número 11, de acuerdo a Maimónides y el Malbim, significa "Teshuvá".

Benediccions Festives d'en Haïm. Autor: Haïm Éder. Editor: Joan Iglesias

[rabbiaharon]

What's your opinion on karaite Jews?

They may be jews, but anyone who rejects the validity of the Oral Tradition (mishnah, talmud, and Midrash for example), is not practicing Judaism at all. Even liberal movements like the reform and conservative don't reject the oral tradition as legitimate. And growing up at Temple Sinai in Atlanta, GA I was constantly quoted mishnah and talmud. The Karaite religion was invented near the end of the time of the second temple, around the time of Xtianity, as a continuation of the Tzaddokim (Saduccees) after they (the latter) were torn apart by Shimon Ben Shatach, the accepted leader of the jewish people at the time. Now, if you remember- I mentioned last week on a post discussing the questioning of legitimacy of other people's opinions (and that it isn't in the spirit of judaism), that there is an exception - if someone's opinion is coming from a place antithetical to Judaism (egotism, arrogance) , it is not judaism and never will be. Well, my friends, rejecting the legitimacy of the oral tradition is antithetical to Judaism.There's a story with a tzaddik from a few hundred years ago - the Malbim. The non-Jewish kings of the time were obsessed with being the judges, also for jewish issues, and in this particular time they had found a Torah Scroll which was dated back to the time of the Talmud, maybe to the time of the temple. The Karaites wanted to get it, and we of course also wanted it. So the king asked them to prove which one is the original judaism. So the karaites came with a huge procession and a Torah scroll, dressed in garments of gold and silver, mamash pulled out all the stops. The Malbim came dressed normally, coming only himself. Before going in to the king, the attendants asked them all to remove their shoes. So the karaites removed their shoes, and then their leader went in. The Malbim took off his boots and carried them with him. the 2 of them stood before the king, the karaite carrying a sefer Torah, and the Malbim, his boots. The king raised an eyebrow and asked the Malbim, "What are you doing with your boots?" "Well," the Malbim began, "we have a tradition that when Moshe got to the burning bush, and G-d told him to take off his shoes, there were Karaites dancing around the bush, and when he left his shoes behind, the Karaites stole them. So I did not want to leave my shoes outside with the karaites"The Karaite leader spoke up and said, "See! They're a bunch of liars. There were no karaites then, and there weren't karaites until the second temple! So, we could not have possibly stolen Moshe's shoes!""if that is the case," the Malbim said, "and you only came into existence at the time of the second temple, you clearly aren't practicing the original judaism."