Text Study
Israel as
Estranged Wives and Widows
The metaphor of Israel as the wife of God receives several potent and
shocking midrashic reinterpretations as the rabbis reflect on Israel's
suffering and persecution.
By Jeffrey A. Spitzer
Although the biblical book of Job presented a radical
critique of the covenantal theology that suffering is punishment for sin, the
rabbis, in general, chose to maintain a belief in the covenant. The most common
rabbinic approach to the problem of suffering, and in particular, the suffering
of the people of Israel in exile, involved relocating reward and punishment to Olam
haBa, the next world. Even so, the rabbis could hardly escape the reality
of the pain that people experienced in this world. In order to explain the failure
of the covenant between God and Israel, the rabbis sought the closest analogue:
the occasional failure of the human covenant between husband and wife.
Love on the Rocks
When the covenant seems to work, the rabbis imagined the
covenant as a love story. Most notably, the rabbis transformed the love poetry
of the biblical book of Song of Songs into the love story of God and Israel.
Yet, if Song of Songs Rabbah and the Targum (Aramaic interpretive translation)
of Song of Songs preserve the love story, then a peculiar midrashic collection
known as Midrash Song of Songs (edited by Eliezer Greenhut) presents the story
of "love on the rocks." The one known manuscript of this midrash was
apparently copied (or maybe even written) during the Crusades and was then lost
during the Holocaust.
"'Show me your countenance'
(Song of Songs 2:14). This is like a man who had an ugly wife whose name was
Hannah. She honored her husband greatly, but he was sad, because although she
had a good name and beautiful deeds, her face was ugly. A dream maker came and
asked why he was distressed, and he explained why. 'Do you want her to be
beautiful?' 'Yes,' came the reply. In the morning, she became beautiful. She
saw herself and she began to lord herself over her husband. In the night, the
dream maker came again and asked what he wanted. 'Please make Hannah ugly
again.' 'For your voice is pleasant and your face becoming' (Song of Songs
2:14). The Holy Blessed One said to Israel, 'When is your voice pleasant to me?
When you are pressed down by persecution…'" (Midrash Song of Songs
Greenhut 2:14).
The flip side of the biblical and rabbinic suspicion of
wealth and good times ("You will eat and be satisfied. Be careful lest
your hearts stray," [Deuteronomy 11:16, and cf. Deuteronomy 8:11-20]) is
the belief that bad times and, in particular, suffering and persecution somehow
foster the kind of relationship that God wants from Israel. Suffering,
according to this view, leads to Israel's devotion and even to a perverse
beauty.
Israel as Loyal Widow
Although the previous passage does not reveal any bitterness
or irony, that is not the case with other uses of the husband-wife metaphor.
The book of Lamentations begins "How has the city, so full of people,
become k-almanah, like a widow!" For the rabbis, the interpretive
crux becomes the single letter-word, k-almanah, like-a
widow. How is Israel like a widow without actually being one?
"'How has the city, so full of
people, become like a widow!'…R. Hama bar Ukba and the rabbis [disagreed]. R.
Hama bar Ukba said: She is like a widow who chose continued support (in the
house of her deceased husband) rather than her ketubah (her marriage settlement which would have required her to
find a new husband)…"
R. Hama's approach needs a little explanation. According to
the Talmud (Ketubot 52b), a woman has two choices upon the death of her
husband. The common choice is that she receives the ketubah settlement that
would support her for a year or so until she could be remarried. Instead,
Israel is seen as a widow who chooses to stay in the house of her deceased
husband rather than go somewhere else.
Although Lamentations mourns the destruction of the Temple
and of Jerusalem, R. Hama's analogy raises the specter of what, in modern
times, would be seen as a metaphor for the death of God. Israel's continued
faithfulness to the land and religion of Israel, is seen as the widow who
maintains a posthumous fidelity towards her husband. Yet, Israel's God/Husband
is not really dead, so Israel is only like a widow and not one in reality.
God as Abusive Husband
The rabbis' parable, however, takes the understanding
of "like a widow" and not
really a widow in a totally different direction.
"The rabbis said: It is like a
king who was angry with his matron and wrote out her divorce document, but then
got up and snatched it from her. Whenever she wished to remarry, he said to
her, 'Where is your divorce document?' And whenever she demanded monetary
support, he said to her, 'But have I not divorced you?'"
"Similarly, whenever Israel
wished to worship idols, the Holy Blessed One said to them, 'Where is your
mother's divorce document?' (Isaiah 50:1); and whenever they wished that God
should perform miracles for them as in the past, the Holy Blessed One, said to
them, 'Have I not already divorced you?' That is what is written, 'I sent her
away and I gave her divorce document' (Jeremiah 3:8)" (Lamentations Rabbah
1:1.3).
For the rabbis in this midrash, God's behavior is that of a
wicked husband who takes advantage of the inequity in Jewish law which puts the
power of divorce exclusively in the hands of the man. Although the woman in
this parable is divorced and not widowed, as in the biblical verse, the woman
is only "like a widow" in that she lacks the support of a husband and
yet, she lacks the freedom of the widow to remarry. Israel suffers, and lacks
the support of God who does not even allow Israel the freedom to depart and
join with other gods.
Together Forever
A final example of the rabbinic response to suffering,
however, contrasts sharply with this last vision of a powerless Israel. R. Joshua
of Sikhnin reports this parable of R. Levi:
"R. Joshua of Sikhnin said in the name of R.
Levi: 'I am the man' (Lamentations 3:1); I am the one who has learned from
suffering. Have I benefited from what you thought fit?!"
"It is like a king who got angry at his wife
and forced her out of the palace. She went and pushed her face up behind one of
the pillars, [staying in the palace, but hiding]. The king saw her as he was
walking by and said 'Such impudence!' She responded, 'My lord king, this is the
right and appropriate thing for me, since no other woman besides me has
accepted you.' He retorted, 'Only because I disqualified all other women [from
marrying me] for your sake.' She said to him, 'If that is the case, why did you
go to that house on that street if not to meet with a woman who ended up
rejecting you?'"
"Similarly, the Holy Blessed
One said to Israel, 'Such impudence!' But Israel said, 'Master of the Universe,
it is right and proper for us since no other nation besides us has accepted the
Torah.' God retorted, 'Only because I disqualified all other nations for your
sake.' Israel said, 'If that is the case, why did you offer the Torah to all of
the nations, only to have them reject it!'" (Lamentations Rabbah 3:1.1)
Although the Temple was destroyed, Israel remains attached
to God. But she is far from powerless. Like the woman of the parable, ejected
from her home, Israel can turn to God and say, "You may be angry with us,
but we're all You've got!" This translation follows the reading of R. Samuel
ben Isaac Jaffe, the sixteenth century author of the commentary Yefeh Anaf.
Jaffe comments:
"'I am the man' who has suffered as a result of
having accepted Your Torah. Instead of You doing good for me, You have done me
evil; had I not accepted Your Torah, then I would be free and I would not have
suffered for having not fulfilled it."
Rabbi
Jaffe affirms the theology of the covenant, but nevertheless bemoans the
consequences. Other rabbinic texts present God in ways that are even more
transgressive of the basic terms of the covenant, including describing God as a
wife-batterer.
Later
theologians developed different kinds of theologies to explain suffering in
this world; in comparison to modern theological responses, the rabbinic
repertoire seems rather limited. Nevertheless, working from within the
covenantal theology that suffering is punishment for violation of the Torah's
norms, the rabbis found effective ways to subvert and rework the metaphor of
covenant to express their own theological discomfort, and more importantly,
their own voices of protest to the suffering which they saw as a violation of a
divine covenant.
Jeffrey A. Spitzer is the Senior Educator at Jewish
Family & Life! and a contributing editor to MyJewishLearning.
