Berakhot 075

23:
The third, and last, berakhah of the first subsection of the Amidah is termed Kedushat ha-Shem [God's Sanctity] – often abbreviated simply to Kedushah [Sanctity]. Its topic is as simple as the previous topic was convoluted: Our God, the Deity of the Founding Parents, the Deity who liberates the oppressed and controls the keys of life and death – our God is holy. In the text of the Amidah that is currently accepted this concept is illustrated by allusion to the angelic chorus envisioned by the prophets (e.g. Isaiah 6:3). By custom, when the Cantor repeats the Amidah out loud this short berakhah is greatly expanded.

To be continued.

Several items of mail have accumulated during our rather lengthy excursus on Meĥayyeh ha-Metim.

In Berakhot 070 I posted a message from Elizabeth Weinberg, the gist of which was: Seminal emissions are impure [because] death is the great source of ritual impurity. A man with a seminal emission has lost a life. Reuven Boxman disagrees:

I understood that a seminal emission renders the male impure, whether the emission was inadvertent, or intentional, e.g. during procreation. In the latter case, its hard to make a convincing case for an explanation based on lost life.

Alan Ganapol writes about Teĥiyyat ha-Metim:

Give life to the dead… resuscitation of the dead… injecting life to the dead… very difficult concepts… Daniel 12:2, Ezekiel 37:12-13 and Isaiah 26:19 all offer views of the dead living once again… Meĥayyeh ha-Metim if you will. Clearly, we can take these verses to be metaphorical… not that hard. However, it appears that the rabbis chose to go with a literal interpretation of these verses… IMHO very hard. My question… why did the rabbis choose the literal in this case while for other verses of the Tanakh were perfectly comfortable with the metaphorical. Maybe there is a broader question… what was the rabbinical basis for deciding that a given poetic text was a metaphor while others needed to be literal?

I respond:

Having propounded the item of belief what would be more natural than to attach it to Biblical verses in order to enhance its authority? I think the sages always understood the Biblical text literally – what is called in Hebrew peshat, the literal meaning of the text. This did not prevent them from offering also derash – a non-literal interpretation of a text whose object was to draw some kind of lesson.

Jon Levisohn has sent a very long message full of interest. Unfortunately I can only offer a small part of it for your consideration:

Re Sally Esakov's questions on resurrection: Your explanation of Ezekiel was concise and articulate, but I was surprised by your explanation of Elijah and Elisha – particularly when you note that the stories "should be read with modern understanding." I wonder: What do we gain from explaining away the wondrous elements of the narrative, which are central to its literary and/or theological value? To contemplate what "actually" happened, from the perspective of modern medical understanding, seems to me to be as misguided as reconstructing what "actually" happened at the Plagues or the Reed Sea or Sinai. It simply misses the point of the texts in question. (What would Buber say?!)

But to address Sally's question, one of the central dynamics in these stories (particularly the second) is immediacy: speed is of the essence in saving the boy, or resuscitating him from a coma, or bringing him back from the dead – it doesn't matter which. This, then, is the exception that proves the rule about resurrection. The dead cannot be brought back to life, the text assumes, except in these extreme circumstances, involving (arguably) broken promises, a noted miracle-working prophet, and especially immediate action.

Finally, Mordechai Miller send this glorious piece of humour:

Your reflections on the issue of Olam ha-Ba and Teĥiyyat ha-Metim remind me of a cartoon I once saw in an accountant's office. It was of an IRS office with the regional director surrounded by a group of his agents. He was saying to them: "Just because we don't understand it doesn't mean we can't enforce it!"