They Became What They Beheld

Last year I put up a post after Ted Carpenter passed away,  Edmund Carpenter 1922-2011, and that was certainly not the first time that this innovative anthropologist and media ecology scholar has come up here on Blog Time Passing.

Carpenter, as you no doubt know, was a colleague of and collaborator with Marshall McLuhan, at the University of Toronto during the 1950s, where they worked together as part of an interdisciplinary group, and put out 9 issues of the groundbreaking journal, Explorations, and here at Fordham University where Carpenter joined McLuhan for his year as the Albert Schweitzer Chair in the Humanities. And in case you missed this last year, click here to see a page on the Fordham website where you can listen to a class that was taught by Carpenter, and one taught by McLuhan.

So, just before McLuhan came to Fordham, his bestselling book, The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects, was published, illustrated by Quentin Fiore, and produced by Jerome Agel. That was in 1967, it was entirely experimental and innovative, and opened the door to a number of other books of a similar nature, as I discussed in a post last month, Dancing the Book.

And one of the books to follow in the footsteps of that awesome Agel production was created by Carpenter, together with the photographer Ken Heyman, and entitled They Became What They Beheld.  The title is an allusion to Psalm 115, which McLuhan also quotes in Understanding Media. Here it is in its entirety, in the King James Version:

115 Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy, and for thy truth's sake.

² Wherefore should the heathen say, Where is now their God?

³ But our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased.

⁴ Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands.

⁵ They have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not:

⁶ They have ears, but they hear not: noses have they, but they smell not:

⁷ They have hands, but they handle not: feet have they, but they walk not: neither speak they through their throat.

⁸ They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them.

⁹ O Israel, trust thou in the Lord: he is their help and their shield.

¹⁰ O house of Aaron, trust in the Lord: he is their help and their shield.

¹¹ Ye that fear the Lord, trust in the Lord: he is their help and their shield.

¹² The Lord hath been mindful of us: he will bless us; he will bless the house of Israel; he will bless the house of Aaron.

¹³ He will bless them that fear the Lord, both small and great.

¹⁴ The Lord shall increase you more and more, you and your children.

¹⁵ Ye are blessed of the Lord which made heaven and earth.

¹⁶ The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord's: but the earth hath he given to the children of men.

¹⁷ The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence.

¹⁸ But we will bless the Lord from this time forth and for evermore. Praise the Lord.

This Psalm stands as an early expression of a media ecological sensibility, the idea being that the technologies we create in turn recreate us, or as McLuhan's associate and former Fordham professor John Culkin put it, we shape our tools and thereafter they shape us.  It also expresses the polemic against imagery that reshaped the media environment and hence the culture of ancient Israel and the Jewish people.

So anyway, I was delighted to come across this video recently by Vi Hart, who has produced some amazing pieces over on YouTube, this one being called They Became What They Beheld: Medium, Message, Youtubery.  Here it is:





Note that her discussion of the relationship between artists and audiences relates directly to the concept of formal causality, as discussed in the recently published Media and Formal Cause by Marshall and Eric McLuhan.  It also brings to mind Walter Ong's wonderful point, that "the writer's audience is always a fiction." And her argument in favor of content connects to Neil Postman's well known critique of television in Amusing Ourselves to Death, and while he'd probably differ on the extent to which content leads the way on YouTube, I know he'd enjoy and appreciate this video. 

As for myself, I am content makes for an interesting pun, don't you think? Me content, you audience? And happiness is a warm medium? Or maybe a cool one...

The Word (A Pecha Kucha on the Walter Ong Centenary)

So, this year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Walter J. Ong, one of the scholars most central to the media ecology intellectual tradition. And in honor of  his centenary, I created a pecha kucha presentation, which I performed live at the 80th annual meeting of the New York State Communication Association on October 19-21, 2012.

A pecha kucha is meant to be a live performance, a short talk accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation in which there are 20 slides, and they are set to advance every 20 seconds, so the entire presentation lasts approximately 6 minutes and 40 seconds. This presentation fudges that slightly because I added a title slide that is not part of the 20, kind of like the front matter in a book that has the small letter Roman numerals and so is not part of the regular page numbering.


Now, you may remember my post from last year, The Medium Is..., where I explained how doing pecha kuchas at NYSSCA was all the idea of Mary Ann Allison. And on the blogpost you can find the pecha kucha I created last year in honor of the Marshall McLuhan centenary. If you haven't seen it before, you might want to take a look. Or maybe not.

Actually, what's over there is not an actual pecha kucha presentation, which as I explained is a live performance, but rather a video I created based on the PowerPoint visuals and a specially recorded version of the talk.  And that is also what you'll find here. This year's video (and that link will take you over to YouTube to see it on its own page) came out a bit rough, audio-wise, and a bit fuzzy, visual-wise, but I decided to leave it that way as it somehow fits with the subject matter.


So now, without further ado, here is The Word:





And as an extra added bonus for Blog TIme Passing readers, I'm going to include the written text of the talk here as well.  I've put into italics any passage that is a direct quotation from Walter Ong, or a close paraphrase of what he's written (as well as book titles).

The Word

A Pecha Kucha in Honor of the Centenary of the Birth of

Walter Jackson Ong, SJ

1
The presence of the word 
Our common human heritage
The cause of great commotion
Commiseration, commemoration
Commitments, commendations
Commerce and commodities
Commandments and their commentary
Communion and community
And the distinctive character
Of human communication

2
The word is spoken
Speech is the word
The human species is hardwired for sound
With a larynx that makes possible
A wide range of vocalization
And a tongue that allows us
A broad range of articulation
So that with the breath of life
Comes the spirit of the word

3
The word is governed
By the human brain
Within the cerebral cortex
Broca's area gives us speech
Wernicke's area comprehension
And language acquisition
Begins in early infancy
With babbling and baby talk
Signaling the readiness to learn

4
The language that we learn
Becomes our mother tongue
And the words that we learn to speak out loud
We later learn to say
In silence only to ourselves
Our outer dialogue becomes
An inner monologue
As the words we speak transform into
Tools for thought
The mind an echo-chamber

5
The words we speak are tools we use
To construct the world we live in
Guiding our senses
Directing our attention
Telling us what to ignore
How to think, feel, and act
Different languages give us different words
And something is always lost in translation
As different words give us different worlds

6
In every village, tribe or clan
In every society known to woman or man
We find the presence of the word
The opposable thumb gave us primitive tools
But more importantly made it possible
To carry things with our hands
Freeing the mouth for making sounds
Opposable tongues gave us
Our tools for talk and thought

7
A gesture requires a line of sight
A warning cry can come from any direction
The survival value of the spoken word
Conferred victory in natural selection
Hand signals can substitute if needed
But no human population known
Chooses sign language over speech

8
But the spoken word is ephemeral
Ong says,
Sound only exists as its going out of existence
When I say the word existence
By the time I get to –tence
Exist is gone, never to be recovered
Pause a video and you get a still image
Pause an audio recording and all that you get
Is silence

9
Ong says, Sound cannot be sounding
Without the use of power
A hunter can see a buffalo
Smell, taste, and touch a buffalo
But if he hears a buffalo
He better watch out
Something is going on
All sound is dynamic
Especially oral utterance
Which comes from inside living organisms

10
Ong says, sounded word is power and action
The Hebrew word dabar
Means word but also means event
Prayers and magic spells are inert
When written in a book
Their power comes
When they are said out loud
Neither do an oath or a curse take effect
Until the moment they are spoken

11
Without writing there is no way
To capture words
And store them over time
And so, Ong says,
You know what you can recall
And what you need to do is to
Think memorable thoughts
Oral cultures depend on mnemonics
Repetition and collective memory
Continual commemoration
To keep knowledge alive

12
Oral tradition uses rhythm and melody
Formulas and clichés
Proverbs and sayings
Poetry and song
Like the epic of Gilgamesh
From Mesopotamia
And the old English Beowolf
And the ancient Greek Iliad and Odyssey
Said to have been composed
By the poet Homer who was blind
And listened as the muses sang to him


13
Oral memory is rarely word for word
Verbatim memorization is based on a text
That can be viewed and reviewed to test
The accuracy of memory and thereby
Achieve perfection
Oral memory instead is characterized
By multiformity, variation
Embellishment and improvisation

14
Sound speaks to interiority
Sight, touch, smell and taste
Give us only surfaces
Sounding gives us depth
Takes us past the exterior
Inside objects, bodies, and minds
We interiorize speech as thought
And exteriorize thought as speech
Every utterance is an outering

15
The spoken word creates community
As a group we listen together as one
Audience is a singular noun
But as readers we split apart
Even when reading the exact same text
We become separate, private individuals
Lost in our own thought-world
As Ong says,
Sight isolates, sound incorporates

16
Sound is sacred, vision profane
In the beginning was the word
And the word was spoken
In the Torah God says out loud
Let there be light!
Voice comes before vision
In Christian theology,
Ong says
God the Father speaks his Son
He does not inscribe him

17
Ong says,
Words are not signs
Signs are seen and not heard
Observations not conversations
While words are sounds and not sighted
Writing is a secondary symbol system
A code of a code representing
Spoken words as visual marks on a surface
Notation for the recording of sound

18
Writing is a technology
It is the technologizing of the word
It's used to study and edit our speech
Giving us rhetoric and poetics as well
Creating interfaces of the word
Writing on parchment
Which is made from animal skins
Turns the word into flesh
While printing turns words into things
Making them objects instead of events

19
Writing, printing and now electronic media
Are transformations of the word
But a flood of information and images threaten
The humiliation of the word
While scholars like Jacques Ellul
Neil Postman and Walter Ong
Serve as defenders of the word

20
Homer spoke of winged words
The Big Bopper sang
That the bird is the word
There are words that delight
And words that excite
Words that bring fright
Words that make us fight
Words that invite
And words we recite
Words that rhyme
And words that don't
But as long as human life remains so will
The persistence of the word

Ann Coulter Out in the Cold at Fordham University

One of the great things about working for a nonprofit, educational institution is that it's not all about making money, maximizing profits, and efficiency. It's not the way to go if your goal is to get rich, but if your interests lie elsewhere, it is a very satisfying and nurturing environment to operate within.

Saturday night at the Meir Ribalow memorial that was the subject of my previous post, Meir Ribalow Memorial at The Players, one of the speakers reminded us of something that I've heard Meir say a number of times, especially at ceremonies where the Harold U. Ribalow Prize was awarded, named after Meir's father, and given by Hadassah Magazine to the author of the work of Jewish fiction judged to be the year's best. It's one of my favorite quotes from Meir, he'd say, "In our family, making money was considered a perfectly legitimate thing to do...  for those without any other talent." Not surprisingly, Meir thrived in the university setting, and I heard from a number of people at the memorial how much teaching at Fordham meant to him.

For myself, I have to admit that it's easy to take it all for granted, especially when it becomes part of your daily/weekly/monthly/yearly routine.  Sometimes it seems like it's just work, just a job. But then there are times I'm reminded that working at Fordham has given me a chance to join together with some very special people, like Meir.  And there are times when I'm reminded about just how special a place Fordham is. Coincidentally, this happened almost at the same time as Meir's memorial.

What I am referring to is the statement that our president, Joseph M. McShane, SJ, made in response to an event planned by our College Republicans student club to invite Ann Coulter to speak. If you're not familiar with this woman, suffice it to say that she is one of those right-wing pundits whose speech is truly hateful and angry, full of putdowns, insults, and incitements to engage in violent activity. I'm sure you can find plenty of examples over on YouTube, I won't bother to embed any videos here, I just don't want her on my blog.

As the parent of an autistic child, what is perhaps the most egregious example of her offensive talk is her use of the word "retard" to characterize President Obama. Beyond the disrespect that she has every right to express in a democratic society, she is using the word in a way that is every bit as offensive, and hurtful as a racial, ethnic, or religious bigot-word, and she has been utterly unapologetic about it.

As much I am lauding educational environments in particular here, I want to note that at most other institutions, inviting Coulter to speak would have been met by a shrug of the shoulders from the administration, and a ducking behind some reminder about academic freedom. And as much as that is a value I wholeheartedly endorse, along with First Amendment rights, I am so very proud of how Fordham's president handled this, that I want to share his statement with you, and preserve it here on my blog of record:

University Statement on Ann Coulter Appearance | November 9, 2012

The College Republicans, a student club at Fordham University, has invited Ann Coulter to speak on campus on November 29. The event is funded through student activity fees and is not open to the public nor the media. Student groups are allowed, and encouraged, to invite speakers who represent diverse, and sometimes unpopular, points of view, in keeping with the canons of academic freedom. Accordingly, the University will not block the College Republicans from hosting their speaker of choice on campus.

To say that I am disappointed with the judgment and maturity of the College Republicans, however, would be a tremendous understatement. There are many people who can speak to the conservative point of view with integrity and conviction, but Ms. Coulter is not among them. Her rhetoric is often hateful and needlessly provocative—more heat than light—and her message is aimed squarely at the darker side of our nature.

As members of a Jesuit institution, we are called upon to deal with one another with civility and compassion, not to sling mud and impugn the motives of those with whom we disagree or to engage in racial or social stereotyping. In the wake of several bias incidents last spring, I told the University community that I hold out great contempt for anyone who would intentionally inflict pain on another human being because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, or creed.

“Disgust”was the word I used to sum up my feelings about those incidents. Hate speech, name-calling, and incivility are completely at odds with the Jesuit ideals that have always guided and animated Fordham.

Still, to prohibit Ms. Coulter from speaking at Fordham would be to do greater violence to the academy, and to the Jesuit tradition of fearless and robust engagement. Preventing Ms. Coulter from speaking would counter one wrong with another. The old saw goes that the answer to bad speech is more speech. This is especially true at a university, and I fully expect our students, faculty, alumni, parents, and staff to voice their opposition, civilly and respectfully, and forcefully.

The College Republicans have unwittingly provided Fordham with a test of its character: do we abandon our ideals in the face of repugnant speech and seek to stifle Ms. Coulter’s (and the student organizers’) opinions, or do we use her appearance as an opportunity to prove that our ideas are better and our faith in the academy—and one another—stronger? We have chosen the latter course, confident in our community, and in the power of decency and reason to overcome hatred and prejudice.

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., President

Now, I think it is pretty clear from this that Fordham is a special place, one where there still are certain core values and principles that speak to the importance of human dignity and compassion. This stems from the fact that Fordham is a Jesuit institution, but of course these are values and principles that are shared across faiths and creeds, by all individuals of good will and ethical character.

Not long after this statement was issued, the College Republican club announced that they had canceled Coulter's appearance. In response to this decision, the following statement was issued:   

University Statement | November 10, 2012 

Late yesterday, Fordham received word that the College Republicans, a student club at the University, has rescinded its lecture invitation to Ann Coulter. 

Allow me to give credit where it is due: the leadership of the College Republicans acted quickly, took responsibility for their decisions, and expressed their regrets sincerely and eloquently. Most gratifying, I believe, is that they framed their decision in light of Fordham’s mission and values. There can be no finer testament to the value of a Fordham education and the caliber of our students. 

Yesterday I wrote that the College Republicans provided Fordham with a test of its character. They, the University community, and our extended Fordham family passed the test with flying colors, engaging in impassioned but overwhelmingly civil debate on politics, academic freedom, and freedom of speech. 

We can all be proud of Fordham today, and I am proud to serve you. 

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., President

So, I am indeed proud of Fordham, as a member of the faculty, and for the past few months as the parent of a Fordham student (my son) as well.  And I am proud as well of our president, for his willingness to take a stand on this issue and rise up in the defense of common decency, for his judicious response in the form of admonition (rather than relying on some more coercive form of ammunition), and for his eloquence in communicating all this, truly exemplifying the Jesuit ideal of eloquentia perfecta.

And I just want to add that I communicated to Fr. McShane my appreciation, and was further impressed by the fact that he is now concerned about reprisals against the College Republican club for having extended the invitation in the first place.

Quite right! Coulter deserves to be left out in the cold. There would be no better response to her vile discourse than to be completely ignored and relegated to the marginal media outlets and platforms that she appeals to. But for our students, this should be nothing worse than a learning experience, a chance to grow, mature, and learn from role models at the university about character and conduct. That's the kind of conservatism, of conservation, or the conserving activity (to use Neil Postman's phrase) that we all can sign on to!

Meir Ribalow Memorial at The Players

Last night, I attended a memorial, or rather a celebration of the life of Meir Ribalow at The Players in New York City, a club that Meir loved dearly, and was very active in. You may remember that I included information about this event in my previous post, In Memory of Meir Ribalow, where I also provided some extensive comments about this extraordinary individual.

The program included multimedia presentations, a performance of Meir's favorite compositions on piano by the composer, Byron Janis, a sing-along of "Amazing Grace," and short talks by about 20 individuals, ranging across his family, youthful friends, colleagues, collaborators, lovers, and protégés.  There were many references to Meir's affection for westerns, his strong sense of self and code of conduct, his creativity—especially his sonnets, and most of all his caring and compassion for others.

The participants included Alec Baldwin, who worked with Meir on the Creative Coalition (and I have to say it was pretty cool to have been inches away from him and hear him speak from the heart about a friend of mine), and Maria Cooper Janis, the daughter of Gary Cooper, who I've met before through Meir, along with some incredibly talented people.  And me. I was there to speak on behalf of Fordham University, and NeoPoiesis Press, and I was told I'd have 4 minutes to do so. So I wrote out some comments, and timed it out at about 5 1/2 minutes, reading fast, so I think I probably slowed down a bit when I spoke last night, but happily there were no complaints.

So, let I would very much like to share my remarks about Meir here now, with the understanding that 40 minutes would not have been enough time to say all I'd want to say about him.

Meir Ribalow Memorial, The Players, November 10, 2012

Meir Ribalow was my colleague at Fordham University, where he taught for over two decades, and was an Artist-in-Residence. But more than that, Meir was my friend, and it was both a privilege and a pleasure to have known him.

Meir was a talented individual who selflessly gave of himself to encourage and develop the talents of others. In other words, he was an educator. I know they say, those who can't do, teach, but that's a cynical view of education, and Meir gave the lie to that old saw. He was a can-do kind of guy, and a can-do kind of teacher, and he brought out the best in others, at Fordham and everywhere else he went. Meir took pride in his achievements, but always with modesty and humility. And he was not jealous or fearful of the accomplishments of others, but rather shared in the joy of their triumphs.

I want to say there's no me in Meir... And I want to say there's no I in Meir...  But what I can say is that Meir is a Hebrew name, and the Hebrew words for me and I aren't in there.  And the meaning of his name in Hebrew is one who shines, or bringer of light. And how very appropriate for one who shone so very brightly, and who shared his light with so many others. 

And how appropriate for someone who taught courses about the movies, who studied them, admired them, and loved them so very much. Every semester, Meir taught two sections of a course named Movies and the American Experience, and they were among the most popular courses in all of Fordham University. And how very fitting that he taught a course about movies; not film as some obscure and elitist exercise in theorizing and throwing around jargon and French language. But movies, as a genuine American, popular, democratic medium that mixes together the vulgar and the sublime, art and entertainment, industry and inspiration. Meir instilled in his students an appreciation for the art of the moving image and the theatrical performance; an understanding of the craft of movie-making; and the aesthetic sense to tell the difference between quality and crap, and between crap that's good, and crap that's just crap.

As a colleague at Fordham University, I feel obliged to mention that in our department meetings, he was always a voice of reason, and if you know anything about academia, you know how rare a quality that is.

I treasure all of the conversations we had about movies and television, science fiction and superheroes, politics and baseball, and religion, by which I mean Judaism and the New York Mets.

I loved the sense of connection and devotion he had to his father, and his father's work, including updating and coauthoring his father's books on The Jew in American Sports, and Jewish Baseball Stars, both surprisingly thick volumes. Six years ago, when I took over the adult education program for my small Reform Jewish congregation in Leonia, New Jersey, Congregation Adas Emuno, and was given no budget whatsoever, I turned to was Meir, and he generously drove across the Hudson to give a talk about Jewish athletes that folks still refer to to this day.

Meir participated in a number of academic and intellectual events that I organized, and he helped to bring in talented participants, such as his close friend Leslie Carroll, who participated on several roundtables featuring celebrated authors. And there was an extraordinary panel about movie heroes that we put together, that was held here at the Players, and that included, in addition to Meir and myself, Susan McGregor, Maria Cooper Janis, Lee Pfeiffer, and Victor Slezak. But what stands out in my mind from all of that was how truly amazing Meir was as a moderator. Panelists were often shocked at how well prepared he was, how well he researched them and understood their work, how appropriate and insightful were the questions he asked, and how much in control he was of the panel discussion. He was an extraordinary moderator and interviewer because of his integrity as an individual, and his empathy for others. For Meir, it was the relationship that counts.

Several years ago, when I told Meir how I helped to start a little publishing group called NeoPoiesis Press, he mentioned that he had written and published quite a lot of poetry, and I asked him if we could put out a book of his work. Last year we published Chasing Ghosts, and this year we followed that up with his book of sonnets, The Time We Have Misspent, and his novel, Redheaded Blues. And I want to share with you that our editor-in-chief, Dale Winslow, made a heroic effort to rush those two volumes into print this past spring, and set up a book party here at the Players where Meir did a book signing, gave a reading, and enjoyed a thunderous standing ovation. This is the kind of devotion and love that Meir inspired in all who knew him. And it has been an honor for us to play a small role in helping to preserve something of Meir's mind, his wit, his words, and make it available for others to share in.

Speaking on behalf of my colleagues at Fordham University, and NeoPoiesis Press, I want to conclude by saying that Meir's life was truly a blessing, we miss him terribly, but we are thankful for the time we had together, thankful for the bright light that he shined, the light he shared with all of us.

My Fall Back Plan

So, this past Saturday night it was fall back, not in the sense of retreat, although I could use a nice retreat right about now, but in setting clocks back one hour.  This marked the end of Daylight Saving Time, and our return to our regularly scheduled standard time, which for those of us on the east coast of the US is known as Eastern Standard Time.

As you may have have noticed, the Daylight Saving Time period has been expanded over the years, week by week by week, so that now it stretches from the second week in March to the first week in November.  That covers about 8 months, or 3/4 of the year, so in what sense is Standard Time still standard?

The reason given for extending Daylight Saving Time is that it saves on energy. This may be true, but the main reason we have it is to serve the interests of commerce, to keep stores open later, as well as other forms of daytime recreation and entertainment. Farmers have traditionally been opposed to Daylight Saving Time, and neither does it serve the interests of businesses based on nighttime activities.  So this actually is a political issue.

And overall, the shifting back and forth can be disruptive and confusing, domestically and even more so internationally, because the whole world does not make the shift at the same time, and some nations don't make the shift at all.  Nowadays, there's often a period of a week or two between the time when North America makes the shift, and European nations do. I once participated in an international conference call where one caller from France phoned in an hour late for this very reason.

The funny thing is, however, that the shift has become less and less of a production for us in recent years. I'm sure most of us remember the days when you had to go around the house, resetting one clock after another, and many watches as well. Today, well, I don't know about you, but we get our time mostly from cable boxes, cell phones, and computers, all of which make the adjustment automatically. I still have to change a clock or two at home, but it's hardly a priority, we almost never look at it for time, it's more of a decoration than anything else now. I did have to fix the time on my car yesterday, and turn my watch back today, but these are more like afterthoughts now, rather than the big deal it once was.

But this year, it was even more of a non-event, simply because it was so much overshadowed by Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath. At my house, we lost electricity on Monday evening, and didn't get it back until Friday afternoon (my Twitter quip about this on Thursday was Another day without electricity. It just leaves me feeling... powerless). All in all, it wasn't too terrible, but it did serve as a reminder of what the nights were like before electricity⎯cold, dark, and highly claustrophobic. I don't want to make it sound like this was some kind of horrible ordeal, there were people who had it so very much worse than we did. But without electricity, especially without the electric light to turn night into day, the relationship to time changes dramatically, and even more so with everything shut down, no school or work, nowhere to go, and no desire to waste gasoline.  The result was that time just didn't have the same meaning as it otherwise would.  

So, having gone through that, and even with power restored having no where to go, and again, with devices making the transition automatically, the time shift went by with more of a whimper than a bang.

But even more so, having lost a week due to all the power outages, gaining an hour seemed so very insignificant by comparison. So my modest proposal is, quite simply this: Let's set the calendar back by one week.  After all, New Jersey Governor Christie declared Monday, November 5 to be Halloween, so why not retroactively make it Monday, October 29.  Now, I know some folks will protest about changing the day that Christmas takes place, but come on, we all know that date was never written in stone, the Greek Orthodox Church celebrates the holiday later anyway, so for once all of Christianity could be more or less in sync.  As for Wicans celebrating the winter solstice, they don't need to follow the calendar, and the Jewish calendar doesn't have to change, so Hanukkah would fall a week earlier on the Gregorian calendar than it does right now.

Of course, having gained a week, we'd need to give it back later, and I know exactly when that should be.  In March.  Everyone hates the month of March, there are no holidays to break it up, it just seems to go on forever, so let's spring forward a week at that time, and get to April that much quicker.

So, that's my fall back plan, how about it? Are you with me?

Appearances

To follow up on my last post, Go Forth, I served as lay leader at Congregation Adas Emuno again this past Friday evening, and in this post I'd like to share my talk for this past Sabbath evening service.  The Torah portion for this week, Vayeira, continues the story of Abraham, and provides a serendipitous opportunity to reflect upon Hurricane Sandy.

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, it is certainly appropriate to gives thanks for our survival, to say shehecheyanu, as this event reminds us of the awesome power of nature, of creation.  And it reminds us of how fragile everything we've built really is, how quickly it would all disappear if we were not able to continually feed and maintain it.  It reminds us of how small we really are, after all.

We call such events acts of God, and even when the phrase is used simply as a metaphor, it serves as a reminder that we are not in control, that there are forces greater than ourselves, that there is so much we don't know and don't understand about the universe, that we are very, very small indeed in the face of it all.

And yet we have these amazing minds, capable of learning, and passing on what we know, of accumulating our knowledge from one generation to another.  We possess minds capable of relating to one another, of feeling empathy and extending a helping hand, of asking for help and asking if anyone needs help, of entering into dialogue to understand each other better, and understand our world better than before. And most of all, we possess minds capable of asking questions, and letting those questions guide us, leading us in search of answers, and while the answers we get may change as our understanding expands, the good questions that we ask continue to serve us over the centuries.

This weeks Torah portion includes the story of another natural disaster, or act of God, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. What it says is

And God caused to rain down upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from heaven. And He turned over these cities and the entire plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and the vegetation of the ground. And Lot's wife looked from behind her, and she became a pillar of salt. And Abraham arose early in the morning to the place where he had stood before God. And he looked over the face of Sodom and Gomorrah and over the entire face of the land of the plain, and he saw, and behold, the smoke of the earth had risen like the smoke of a furnace. (Genesis 19: 24-28)

From a modern, scientific point of view, we can understand these events as being caused by possibly an earthquake, probably a volcanic eruption, much like the well-documented destruction of the Roman city of Pompeii in the year 79 of the common era, less than a decade after the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem (not that I'm implying any connection, of course, but then again, you never know...). The story of Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt uses a common folk motif where the individual is instructed not to look back, does so, and forfeits the rescue being granted by a greater power. And if you've ever traveled to the Dead Sea in Israel, you can see there natural pillars consisting of the sea salts left behind due to evaporation, so her specific fate plays upon that natural phenomenon.  And we can understand the story of Sodom and Gomorrah as an attempt to explain a natural disaster in supernatural terms, but more importantly, it is an occasion for a moral lesson. On a simple level, it's the idea that God punishes the wicked, but there's something more sophisticated at work here.

The Torah portion begins with God appearing to Abraham—the name of the parsha is Vayeira, which means And He appeared, and it continues the story of Abraham from the previous parsha. But of course God does not actually appear in visual form, as that would be contrary to our tradition. What Abraham sees is three men, and he recognizes that they are more than what they seem, and welcomes them and shows them great hospitality. Hospitality is one of the great virtues in the ancient world, one of the highest values, and to be a host is to be under great obligation to treat your guests well.

So God, in the form of the three men, tell Abraham and Sarah that at this time next year Sarah will give birth to a son, and Sarah laughs at the ridiculous notion of giving birth in her old age. How very human that is! But God chides Sarah for questioning Him, and Sarah being afraid, denies laughing, which is also an altogether human, understandable response. And God basically says, don't kid a kidder, I know you were laughing. But that's all He does, He doesn't punish Sarah in any way, which suggests that he accepts her skepticism, and knows that she will be convinced when the miracle of birth actually occurs.

Then God decides to tell Abraham about his intention to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, and this results in what Barry L. Schwartz refers to as one of the great debates of Judaism (see Judaism's Great Debates).  Here's how it reads:

And Abraham approached and said, "Will You even destroy the righteous with the wicked? Perhaps there are fifty righteous men in the midst of the city; will You even destroy and not forgive the place for the sake of the fifty righteous men who are in its midst? Far be it from You to do a thing such as this, to put to death the righteous with the wicked so that the righteous should be like the wicked. Far be it from You! Will the Judge of the entire earth not perform justice?" And the Lord said, "If I find in Sodom fifty righteous men within the city, I will forgive the entire place for their sake." And Abraham answered and said, "Behold now I have commenced to speak to the Lord, although I am dust and ashes. Perhaps the fifty righteous men will be missing five. Will You destroy the entire city because of five?" And He said, "I will not destroy if I find there forty-five." And he continued further to speak to Him, and he said, "Perhaps forty will be found there." And He said, "I will not do it for the sake of the forty. And he said, "Please, let the Lord's wrath not be kindled, and I will speak. Perhaps thirty will be found there." And He said, "I will not do it if I find thirty there." And he said, "Behold now I have desired to speak to the Lord, perhaps twenty will be found there." And He said, "I will not destroy for the sake of the twenty." And he said, "Please, let the Lord's wrath not be kindled, and I will speak yet this time, perhaps ten will be found there." And He said, "I will not destroy for the sake of the ten." And the Lord departed when He finished speaking to Abraham, and Abraham returned to his place. (18: 23-33)

A debate yes, clearly, but what else is going on here? Haggling!  As an archaic practice, haggling may see strange to us, possibly quaint, maybe irritating, but it is important to understand that as far as transactions go, haggling was the norm until the last couple of centuries. Before Gutenberg's printing press in the 16th century, fixed prices were inconceivable. And it took a few centuries after that invention for the idea to evolve of listing prices in print, publishing them, making them public in other words, so they become fixed and non-negotiable.  We have become so distanced from this basic human mode of engagement that almost all of us feel extreme discomfort when prices are not clearly fixed, for example when buying a car, we're never quite sure if we got a good deal or not.  And its even worse when dealing with real estate. But in traditional cultures, haggling is form of social exchange, not just monetary exchange.  It's a sign of respect, dealing with the other person as a human being and not a thing, an I-You not an I-It, to use Martin Buber's terms.  When we go to a society where haggling is the norm and we just want to pay the price and not haggle, it can be seen as an insult, a form of dismissal, rejection, dehumanization. Or at best, it marks us for a fool.  So what this passage indicates is that we can haggle with God, that God treats us not as property or servants, but as beings worthy of respect and engagement.

Understanding haggling also helps us to understand the next series of events in the Torah portion, specifcially Lot's actions before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, when God sends two angels to Sodom, and Lot provides them with hospitality much like Abraham did with the three men:

And the two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom, and Lot saw and arose toward them, and he prostrated himself on his face to the ground. And he said, "Behold now my lords, please turn to your servant's house and stay overnight and wash your feet, and you shall arise early and go on your way." And they said, "No, but we will stay overnight in the street." And he urged them strongly, and they turned in to him, and came into his house, and he made them a feast, and he baked unleavened cakes, and they ate. When they had not yet retired, and the people of the city, the people of Sodom, surrounded the house, both young and old, the entire populace from every end[of the city]. And they called to Lot and said to him, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, and let us be intimate with them." And Lot came out to them to the entrance, and he shut the door behind him. And he said, "My brethren, please do not do evil. Behold now I have two daughters who were not intimate with a man. I will bring them out to you, and do to them as you see fit; only to these men do nothing, because they have come under the shadow of my roof." (19:1-8)

From a modern point of view, this is horrifying. As much as it shows the great importance attached to the value of hospitality in the ancient world, it also seems to reflect the low status of women, treated like property rather than as human beings. But could Lot really have been this callous about his own daughters, as a father, and as a righteous person? I think this part of the story is better understood as Lot attempting to haggle with the Sodomites.  He started with two daughters, then he could have asked them to accept only one, then perhaps asked them to substitute  himself instead of them, then maybe substituted something else of value, say his livestock. For people who are not literate, dramatic gestures and extreme statements are understood an invitation to dialogue and negotiation. That the Sodomites refuse his invitation to negotiate is a violation of the social contract that serves as the foundation for haggling, and further indication of their evil. This part of the story ends with the Sodomites punished by the angels, who strike them blind, a prelude to their annihilation the next day.

So, Sodom and Gomorrah could have been saved if there had been only ten righteous individuals, and ten of course is the required number for a minyan.  For the sake of ten righteous individuals, a community is not destroyed, so what if there are less than ten?  Then, you should leave. That's what Lot did with his wife and daughters.  He tried to bring along their fiances as well, but they laughed at Lot and stayed behind, and perished. But the point here is that it is not enough to be a righteous individual, not enough to be one, you have to be part of at least ten.  The emphasis is not on the individual, but the community. You can't be righteous alone.

I think it's important to stress what is absent. Sodom and Gomorrah do not have ten righteous individuals, making them the archetype of evil. But it is hard to imagine any other city or town or community with less than ten good people present. So what the story also tells us is that even if we are ourselves sinners and not blameless, we must respect and treasure the righteous among us, because it is for their sake that life goes on. And we never can be quite sure when their number might dip below ten, so we're all well served to emulate them, and get others to do so as well. But because it seems so unlikely to find a city where there are less than ten good persons, it all but amounts to a guarantee that God won't punish and destroy our community. Which means, if anything happens like Hurricane Sandy, it's not God punishing us, so there must be some other reason. And that opens the door to alternate explanations, such as supplied by science.

It's the same for the story of Noah. As much as it's about God deciding to punish the entire world for the wickedness of people, in the end it's a guarantee that that is exactly what he will not do ever again, a promise sealed by the rainbow.

This also helps to understand the other major story in this week's Torah portion, the binding of Isaac, which we also read on Rosh Hashanah. On the surface, the story is about Abraham's obedience to God, his willingness to sacrifice his own son, and the understanding that when it comes to acts of God, it's not a democracy, not like this coming Tuesday when we are obligated as citizens to take part in the democratic process.  When it comes to God's laws and decress, we don't get a vote.

And while we might understand that this is meant to indicate Abraham's deep trust and devotion for God, still it strikes a dissonant chord with our modern sensibilities. So we struggle with this story, which has such a central position in our tradition that we retell it during our High Holy Days. But what I want to suggest is that we think about what is missing from the story.

One thing that is missing is the context. In the world that Abraham inhabited, human sacrifice, and the sacrifice of children was not unheard of, and in fact was a part of common ritual practice of many cults in that region, and throughout the world and into the modern era. Some may have practiced this ritual reluctantly, some with great sadness, some may have defied the tradition and been punished, executed, or forced to run away. But others practiced it joyfully, believing that those being sacrificed would be rewarded in the next world, to join with the divine in heavenly paradise. We know all too well that this belief persists to this very day, resulting in suicidal acts of violence.

In that context, God telling Abraham to sacrifice his son to Him, and Abraham being willing to go ahead with it, makes perfect sense, and seems perfectly legitimate. It's simply the accepted norm for cultures of that region in those ancient times, and that's why Abraham doesn't even bother to argue the point, unlike the case of Sodom and Gomorrah which was an unusual, extraordinary case. And if it seems so very difficult to put ourselves in their place, consider the following hypothetical scenario once posed by a philosophy professor: An alien god comes down to earth and makes the following offer to the people of the United States of America.  He says, I will give you a gift that will vastly increase your freedom and mobility, and in return, all that I ask is that you sacrifice something on the order of 30,000,  40,000,  50,000 lives to me every year. Would any of you take the deal?  Of course not.  But that is exactly the bargain we made when we adopted the automobile as a technology.  Cars are the third leading cause of death in the US, and first among our young people.  And yet we celebrate rather than weep when our children get their driver's licenses. Also, consider how going to war was viewed a century ago, when people held parades as boys marched off to battle, and everyone spoke of the glory of war. Today we may view military service as honorable, or some may differ on that point, but no one sees it as desirable.  And what is war, after all, but the ritual sacrifice of young men?

So the great surprise, the shock and awe if you like, in the story of the binding of Isaac is not Abraham's unquestioning obedience, but God sending an angel to stop him, saying:

Do not stretch forth your hand to the lad, nor do the slightest thing to him, for now I know that you are a God fearing man, and you did not withhold your son, your only one, from Me. (22: 12).

What counts is what doesn't happen, that God establishes once and for all that he does not want human sacrifice. So the sacrifice of the ram takes the place of Isaac, and the idea of substitution opens the door to further substitutions, so that after the destruction of the Temple, prayer is used to substitute for the ritual sacrifice of animals, and this ability to substitute words for ritual acts reflects a higher form of consciousness.

Last week, I mentioned that we cannot demonstrate a negative in a narrative, except by showing it in positive terms, and then having it punished or otherwise denied. This was the case in the episode in which Abraham has to say that Sarah is his sister and Pharaoh is punished for trying to take her away (see Go Forth), and the motif is repeated in this Torah portion with Sarah and another king, Abimelech. And in the same way, to dramatize that God forbids human sacrifice, we must tell the story of how Abraham was ready to engage in this ritual practice, and God stopped him. It has the same meaning as a commandment that would say, Thou shalt not engage in human sacrifice.

What this tradition teaches us is how we can struggle to gain higher levels of understanding, of justice, compassion, and humility, how our ancestors struggled to raise their consciousness, and how we can emulate them by carrying on that struggle today, to understand, to help and heal our world, repair and continue the process of creation, through our imperfect efforts at democratic participation, social justice, through education, and as seekers asking questions about the sacred dimension of the universe.

Go Forth

So, for the past two Friday evenings, both pre- and post-Hurricane Sandy, I filled in once more as lay leader for the Sabbath services at Congregation Adas Emuno of Leonia, New Jersey, a temple in the tradition of Reform Judaism located in Bergen County, just west of Manhattan.  And as I have in the past, I'd like to share something of that here on Blog Time Passing, in particular the sermon, or as we refer to it, the D'var Torah, which means Word of Torah, and in fact typically is a talk based on the parsha or Torah reading for that week.  I'll begin in this post with my D'Var Torah from Friday, October 26th.
 
That week's Torah portion was the third in the yearly cycle of readings. Two weeks earlier, the parsha told the story of Creation, which teaches us that all the world is subject to one rule, one set of laws, natural, spiritual, and ethical, that there is an underlying unity and coherence to the universe. And it teaches us that all of humanity is one large, extended family, all descended from the same ancestors, all children of Adam and Eve. 

The idea that we are all blood relations is reinforced in the next Torah portion, which relates the story of the flood, and tells us that we are all descendents of Noah and his wife (who is not referred to by name in Genesis). Ten generations after Noah, Abraham is born, marries Sarah, and migrates along with his father Terah, and his orphaned nephew Lot, from the city of Ur in Mesopotamia towards the land of Canaan. This is where the previous week's parsha ends.

The third Torah portion is called Lech Lecha, which means Go Forth, and it begins with God giving Abraham his marching orders. Ten generations have gone by since anyone has heard God's voice. The Torah makes it clear that divine revelation is not a common occurrence, that after establishing his covenant with Noah, God remained silent for approximately four centuries. 

 In our time, during the 20th century, God's silence became a troubling question for many people of faith. Does it signal God's disapproval, or disinterest in us, or perhaps serves as evidence that God does not exist, or as some said, that God is dead? I remember God's silence being the subject of much discussion when I was growing up during the sixties. Some said that it was not God who was silent, but rather that with all of our modern technology, the world had become too noisy, drowning out the voice of God. (There is some discussion of this in The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History by the Jesuit priest and media ecology scholar Walter Ong.)  Or that we had simply forgotten how to listen for it. Others argued that there are times when God is distant as well as silent, turning away from us, just as there are times that we turn away from God, so that God goes into eclipse, as Martin Buber put it. And then there was the often repeated little poem, an anonymous statement of affirmation found scratched into a wall in a concentration camp during the Holocaust:

I believe in the sun even if it isn’t shining.

I believe in love even when I am alone.

I believe in God even when He is silent.

What the Torah tells us is that Abraham was the exception, not the rule. So we shouldn't expect God to summon us, instruct and command us, in a booming voice from the heavens, or through a telephone call, or by way of engraved invitation. This implies that we have to do the work ourselves, seek God out through study and introspection, to search within ourselves, to find the quiet time when we can listen to that still, small, clear voice, to hear the echoes of the divine within ourselves, and in the world all around us.

So this week's parsha begins with God breaking his four century-long silence, and saying to Abraham:

Go forth from your land and from your birthplace and from your father's house, to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, And I will bless you; I will make your name great, And you shall be a blessing. (Genesis 12:1-2) 

At this time, Abraham was not yet known by that name—he was Abram, and his wife's name was Sarai.  And as this Torah portion opens, they had already left the city of Ur, and were dwelling together with his nephew Lot, and his father Terah in the land of Haran. It was sometime after Terah's death that God tells Abraham to go forth, and the Torah portion tell us that

Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his brother's son, and all their possessions that they had acquired, and the souls they had acquired in Haran, and they went to go to the land of Canaan, and they came to the land of Canaan. (12:5)

So who were the souls they had acquired? Slaves, servants, handmaids, and the like, as was the practice back in ancient times. And while this may not harmonize with our contemporary democratic, egalitarian sentiments, I think it is important to understand that when God tells Abraham, I will make of you a great nation, the beginnings of that nation, the House of Abraham, is a household, an ancient concept that includes not just the blood relations such as Lot, and the relations by marriage such as Sarah, but also everyone else who is associated with this family, this clan, who is, in the language of the IRS, a dependent on the head of the household. We can see here, in the very beginnings of the story of the Jewish people, a pluralistic notion of what we mean by referring to ourselves as a people.

Abraham and his household settled in Canaan, but after a time they were forced to be on the move again, as the parsha relates:

And there was a famine in the land, and Abram descended to Egypt to sojourn there because the famine was severe in the land. (12:10)

 So Abraham's journey extends from Mesopotamia in the north to Egypt in the south, before returning to Canaan for good. And in this way, the story of Abraham bridges the areas where the earliest civilizations appeared, first Mesopotamia, and then Egypt. What we have come to know as western civilization or western culture begins with the first settlements in these two regions, along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in the north, and the Nile in the south. There, the first cities appeared, and the first writing systems were invented. The story of Abraham then represents the meeting and binding together of the world's two earliest civilizations, resulting in a kind of hybrid energy a synthesis and synergy out of which the west was born.

The Torah portion goes on to relate that Abraham feared that the Egyptians would kill him and take his wife for themselves, so he told them that Sarah was his sister, and she was taken by the Princes of Egypt and given to Pharaoh. At this point, God intervenes, and the Torah relates:

And the Lord plagued Pharaoh [with] great plagues as well as his household, on account of Sarai, Abram's wife. (12:17)

In this way, the story of Abraham foreshadows the story of the exodus (to consider it in literary terms), and provides Abraham with his own version of the very experience that defines the Jewish people generations later. 

 But more importantly, this portion of the Torah communicates in the form of a story what is later expressed as laws and commandments, that you shall not covet, or commit adultery, or murder. As an abstract rule, you can say, thou shalt not…  But in a narrative, you can't express a negative concept, except by showing the rule being violated, and the guilty party punished. Abraham is not guilty, because his fears are well-founded. Killing a man and taking his wife was far from unknown in ancient times. In fact, King David was guilty of this sin, although in that case the murder was indirect, sending Bathsheba's husband to the front lines, where he was killed. And as a result of his transgression, David was punished severely for it. 

 The lesson is reinforced over and over again in the Bible, that it is a sin for those in positions of power to abuse that power, for the strong to take advantage of the weak. And while God is the ultimate source of justice in these stories, what they also should teach us is that we ourselves share in this obligation to protect those in need, to fight for social justice.

As the story continues, Abraham returned to Canaan, and his household prospered and grew, but this was not without its problems. So the Torah portion relates:

And also Lot, who went with Abram, had flocks and cattle and tents. And the land did not bear them to dwell together, for their possessions were many, and they could not dwell together. And there was a quarrel between the herdsmen of Abram's cattle and between the herdsmen of Lot's cattle, and the Canaanites and the Perizzites were then dwelling in the land. And Abram said to Lot, "Please let there be no quarrel between me and between you and between my herdsmen and between your herdsmen, for we are kinsmen. Is not all the land before you? Please part from me; if [you go] left, I will go right, and if [you go] right, I will go left." (13:5-9)

Here we find here the idea of making peace by dividing up the land, an idea that has some resonance with contemporary concerns in that region. But this also reflects a different way of life from that of Pharoah's Egypt, or the Mesopotamian city of Ur. It is a tribal, nomadic form of life, as opposed to city life where people crowd together in the same place, and the number of people living together can increase dramatically as more and more are packed together into the same space. In the older, tribal way of life, if the population increases past a certain point, groups split up, and go their separate ways.

What we find here, and throughout the Torah, is a depiction of Abraham and his descendents as rejecting the cities and the way of life that they represent. Abraham leaves Ur, and has trouble in the city where Pharaoh dwells. In next week's parsha, the cities of Sodom and Gommorah are destroyed for their evil, and in Exodus the Israelites are enslaved to build cities for the Pharaoh, while God is encountered in the wilderness, at Mount Sinai. In the Book of Joshua, the Israelites take on the city of Jericho. It is not until David conquers Jerusalem, and Solomon builds the Temple there, that we see the negative view of city life start to change, and even then, the prophets come from outside of Jerusalem, from out of the wilderness, while the city of Babylon is associated with the tragedy of the first destruction of the Temple. (This is discussed by the Protestant theologian and media ecology scholar Jacques Ellul in The Meaning of the City.)

So Abraham (much like Abel whom God favored over Cain according to the story told earlier in Genesis) is depicted as an individual who was close to nature, who had what we would call today an ecological sensibility (the ancient Greek root word from which we get ecology, ekos, means household). And in case that incident in Egypt leads you to believe that he was not a brave man, this Torah portion also tells us about war going on between the many different nations or tribes that inhabit this region, and how Abram comes to the rescue when Lot is taken captive:

And Abram heard that his kinsman had been taken captive, and he armed his trained men, those born in his house, three hundred and eighteen, and he pursued [them] until Dan. And he divided himself against them at night, he and his servants, and smote them, and pursued them until Hobah, which is to the left of Damascus. And he restored all the possessions, and also Lot his brother and his possessions he restored, and also the women and the people. And the king of Sodom came out toward him, after his return from smiting Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him, to the valley of Shaveh, which is the valley of the king. And Malchizedek the king of Salem brought out bread and wine, and he was a priest to the Most High God. And he blessed him, and he said, "Blessed be Abram to the Most High God, Who possesses heaven and earth. And blessed be the Most High God, Who has delivered your adversaries into your hand," and he gave him a tithe from all. (14:14-20)

This parsha also includes the story of how Sarah couldn't bear children, and gave Abraham her Egyptian handmaid, Hagar, who gave birth to Ishmael, who is considered the ancestor of the Arabs. Sarah then gets jealous, and drives away Hagar and her son, but they are protected by God. Again, we have a lesson in justice, and learning to live together in peace.

Through the many episodes contained within this Torah portion, Abraham has been going through what the mythologist Joseph Campbell called a hero's journey.  It begins with a geographical migration, but at the same time it is very much a spiritual journey. Abraham has answered God's call and gone forth, leaving his home, and then gone through a variety of trials, and is finally ready for his initiation and rebirth. And so the Torah says,

And Abram was ninety-nine years old, and God appeared to Abram, and He said to him, "I am the Almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless. And I will place My covenant between Me and between you, and I will multiply you very greatly." And Abram fell upon his face, and God spoke with him, saying, "As for Me, behold My covenant is with you, and you shall become the father of a multitude of nations. And your name shall no longer be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. And I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings will emerge from you. And I will establish My covenant between Me and between you and between your seed after you throughout their generations as an everlasting covenant, to be to you for a God and to your seed after you. And I will give you and your seed after you the land of your sojournings, the entire land of Canaan for an everlasting possession, and I will be to them for a God." And God said to Abraham, "And you shall keep My covenant, you and your seed after you throughout their generations. This is My covenant, which you shall observe between Me and between you and between your seed after you, that every male among you be circumcised. And you shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be as the sign of a covenant between Me and between you. And at the age of eight days, every male shall be circumcised to you throughout your generations, one that is born in the house, or one that is purchased with money, from any foreigner, who is not of your seed. Those born in the house and those purchased for money shall be circumcised, and My covenant shall be in your flesh as an everlasting covenant. And an uncircumcised male, who will not circumcise the flesh of his foreskin-that soul will be cut off from its people; he has broken My covenant." And God said to Abraham, "Your wife Sarai-you shall not call her name Sarai, for Sarah is her name. And I will bless her, and I will give you a son from her, and I will bless her, and she will become [a mother of] nations; kings of nations will be from her. " And Abraham fell on his face and rejoiced, and he said to himself, "Will [a child] be born to one who is a hundred years old, and will Sarah, who is ninety years old, give birth?" And Abraham said to God, "If only Ishmael will live before You!" And God said, "Indeed, your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac, and I will establish My covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his seed after him. And regarding Ishmael, I have heard you; behold I have blessed him, and I will make him fruitful, and I will multiply him exceedingly; he will beget twelve princes, and I will make him into a great nation. But My covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you at this time next year." (17:1-21)

Circumcision is the mark of identity, a tribal rite of initiation denoting membership in the tribe; of course there has also been ample evidence that it confers a variety of health benefits as well. But here it is established as the sign of God's covenant, it is literally God's mark that is inscribed upon the human body. All other forms of alteration to our bodies, such as piercing and tattoos, have traditionally been taboo in Judaism, the idea being that the human form is made in the image of God and must not be altered, but this is the one exception, an exception for the very reason that it is ordained by God.

The initiation and change in status is reflected in the renaming of Abraham and Sarah, which can be connected to the difference in dialect and language between Mesopotamia and Canaan.  But we can also find a modern parallel in Ellis Island, and the renaming that took place for many immigrants coming to America. After all, Abraham and Sarah were also immigrants, and that kind of move represents a change of identity as well as residence.  Name changes are also traditionally associated with marriage, and with the adoption of children, and the covenant with God constitutes a kind of marriage and adoption. But it is also the case in many cultures that a new name is given following an initiation ceremony, and in this story Abraham together with Sarah have been initiated into a new stage of life, in their covenant with God.

But what of God's promise that Abraham will be the father of a multitude of nations? And earlier, God had said to Abraham:  "Please look heavenward and count the stars, if you are able to count them." And He said to him, "So will be your seed." (15:5).

Today, estimates place the population of the Jewish people between 13 and 15 million, in one sense many more than can be counted, so it is not inconsistent with the metaphor of the stars in the sky.  But at the same time, our numbers represent such a tiny percentage of the population of the world, it seems somewhat at odds with what the passage seems to indicate.  It gets a little better when you add the descendants of Ishmael, the Arabic peoples, whose numbers are estimated in the vicinity of 450 million.  But even then, we still are left with a small portion of the over 7 billion people in the world today. 

But when we count Abraham as a father not by blood, but by ideas and inspiration, of the three great monotheistic religions, then the prophecy especially seems to come true. Today we use the adjective Abrahamic to refer as a group to Jews, Christians, and Muslims, all of whom claim Abraham as our spiritual father. The Torah relates that the Jewish people are the inheritors of his covenant and his household through Isaac and Jacob, and it is a legacy that we should be proud to share with over four billion others, over half the population of the planet, all of whom are a part of our extended family in that line of descent symbolized by Noah and his wife, and Adam and Eve.