Hammurabi & My Crisis of Faith
Or: Maybe No One is quite the truth-seeker we imagine ourselves to be
I was in my early 20s and teaching Torah in an Orthodox women’s Yeshiva in Jerusalem, when I had a meltdown. I freaked out. And all because I had stumbled upon the writings of Hammurabi.
First a little background. I was in love with the Torah and in love with Jerusalem. It seemed everybody there was crazy for Torah, as in the Five Books of Moses, and it didn’t matter if you were a believer or not, a Sabbath observer or not, although most of the people I met were. I loved how a dental hygienist might share a Torah thought while scraping plaque off my molars, or how a bus driver knew the entire book of Psalms cold.
But it wasn’t just a cerebral thing. Entire communities were high on bringing Torah to life, celebrating the holidays with relish, performing chesed, acts of kindness, or else trying to set you up with someone. It seemed even the trees conspired to marry you off in this family-centered country. Naturally I wanted to marry some scholar or talmudist and create a home thick with holiness, and so I went on an outrageous numbers of blind dates — shidduchim, they’re called — dating with a serious eye toward marriage. Nothing worked out on that score, though. When this “meltdown” took place, I probably had already gone on at at least sixty shidduchim.
One day I stumbled upon a book about the Babylonian king Hammurabi. I flipped through the pages and was horrified to discover that the Torah laws I sometimes struggled with — an eye for an eye, for instance, or, say, the one about Canaanite slaves — also appeared in the Hammurabi Code of ancient Iraq. I didn’t understand what I was reading. Had the Torah influenced Hammurabi, or maybe, God forbid, was it the other way around? The Torah was supposed to be straight from the mouth of God. It’s what I’d been taught and what I believed. The mere suggestion of Hammurabi’s influence made the Torah tainted in my eyes.
It wasn’t as if I’d been sequestered in some intellectual bubble. I’d always enjoyed asking subversive questions and thrived on mental challenge. If sometimes the answers I got to thorny questions didn’t quite satisfy, I could put parentheses around my questions, until the right one arrived.
But when Hammurabi hit me — this was something new and devastating — like I’d been hit with Crohns Disease or some other chronic illness.
To all those who can’t relate to how disturbing this was, imagine if you’re a lifelong entrenched Democrat or ingrained Republican, and one day you discover information that makes it near impossible to have allegiance to that party and nearly forces you to switch sides. Not pleasant, I imagine.
Suddenly other questions began to gnaw at me. Like, was the Torah really divine, or something cobbled together by a group of wise people? Well, you might ask — why didn’t I just speak to a mentor or scholar or brilliant teacher? But I just couldn’t. I was supposed to be a role model to the ba’al teshuva, the newly Orthodox Jews I taught. To come to someone with my questions was like — I don’t know — exposing my dirty refrigerator with slimy moldy cucumbers and ancient thighs of chicken for the world to see.
At a certain point, I spoke with a yeshiva dean, both a Talmudist and well-versed in Biblical criticism. He said the Torah wasn’t given in a petri dish; it had to reflect the economic, legal and social realities of the times, and yet it was the Torah that took those sad realities — slavery, for instance, or the degraded way that women were treated — and, through progressive laws, rectified those entrenched systems.
He showed me a passage in the Zohar, a foundational text of Jewish mystical thought — “If I were writing the Torah, I could’ve done a better job” — which for some reason calmed me down a little. He spoke on and on about the complicated nature of divinity and how most people’s conception of what happened at Mount Sinai got arrested in sixth grade.
Finally he folded his arms and gave me the rabbi look. “You’re unhappy,” he told me. “If you’re asking these sorts of questions, your sadness is as plain as the nose on your face.”
My breath caught. He was totally dismissing my theological questions. “I want to know the answers,” I shot back. He said, “Okay,” and loaded me down with scholarly tomes. I’ll show him, I thought, and went home to my apartment.
My roommates were out on dates. Me, I was still recovering from a horrendous break-up. Haim was brilliant, spiritual and good-looking, but over time he found ingenious ways to say how defective I was and how my neediness went miles deep. By the time the “relationship” ended, my identity was in tatters. He’s just a jerk, I tried to dismiss him, but his ideas about me kept spinning in my head. Was I really one aching raw need? Oy, who would ever want to marry me?! Not long after this I was struck by the Hammurabi episode.
So yeah, the dean was right. I was sad, no, more likely deeply depressed. But did that mean my theological questions weren’t real? How dare he contextualize them. They were coming from my marrow!
I kept those books for months, until one day I returned them all, barely read. Too dry and antiseptic. They seemed to have nothing to do with my passionate quest, or with life itself.
Meanwhile, I continued to go to my teachers for Shabbat, participating in all the Torah discussions (but never revealing the heretical thoughts swirling inside me), feeling like some puppet in a show, a faker, a phony, living a lie.
And then — I sought out a kabbalist, and I use the term loosely. Someone wise, holy, righteous, connected to a more supernal wisdom, at least more than your average rabbi. Someone in touch with the secrets of the universe who might help me.
It was not such a strange thing to do in Israel, particularly Jerusalem. Prime ministers and heads of state spoke with kabbalists at critical ventures, as well as beauty queens and star soccer players and Israeli Arabs, too. Some people come for good advice, or to have someone bear witness to their twisted journey, or sometimes a supernatural problem requires a supernatural answer.
When I think about it, it made no sense to go to a kabbalist. My question was academic! But no, it wasn’t knowledge I wanted, but wisdom. and I couldn’t generate it for myself or get it from google.
There was a kabbalist yellow pages of sorts circulating at the time, with rankings and descriptions. (I doubt it exists anymore). And so I saw a few. Obviously, not all kabbalists are created equal. Then I found the Amshinover rebbe, who came with excellent recommendations. There was one caveat: He lived according to a different idea of time. His morning prayers bled into the afternoon, I think, and the Sabbath ended on Tuesday, I’m pretty sure. I was told the wait could be very long.
I came at 11 p.m., and the place was buzzing with people trying to get in. All kinds. These beefy bearded guys with sidecurls — his Hasidic bouncers — they blocked everyone’s entry. The shorter one asked me bluntly, “Did you come here for a brocha?” — a blessing?” I shook my head no, then wanted to kick myself for saying the wrong thing. But it turned out to be the right thing because he then said, “Good. You can come in.”
I walked into the rebbe’s simple simple living room, not even a coffee table or lamp in sight, just a couch, walls and walls of books, a table and chairs. Apparently the sexes had been separated, and all the males had been crowded into the kitchen, because I was alone in the living room. Doors open and shut, and here it was, nearly midnight. I seemed to be the only female who had ventured to see the Amshinover Rebbe. And now I had to think strategically. Who knew how much time would be allotted to me when my time came — five minutes? Even ten seemed too generous. I decided it was best to focus on my old bugaboo, “An eye for an eye” — a verse I felt had been misused throughout the centuries to justify lynchings and brutal slayings. A very dangerous verse, I thought.
Past midnight, I nodded off to sleep on the couch. At one point, a small turbanned woman, his wife, shyly placed a quilt on me. A bit later, she woke me up and whispered, “You’re next,” and I bolted off the couch and grabbed a seat at their bare dining room table.
The Amshinover rebbe entered and took a seat. He was younger than I’d expected, in his 40s with a still-dark beard, and thin like a stick of chewing gum. He leaned forward, his shoulders hunched in his black kapote. There was a tremble about him in his neck and shoulders. I heard it in his voice, too. Didn’t know what to make of that, so I plunged into my question:
The Talmud’s interpretation for “an eye for an eye” — if someone caused another loss of limb, he had to compensate the victim through monetary payment — had never satisfied me. What in the text led the rabbis to money when the verse didn’t mention money at all? It seemed a big leap. Say “shekels for an eye” if that’s what it meant! Really, I was questioning the relationship between the Written Law and the Oral Law — the commentary. Between the Bible per se and the Mishna and Talmud.
The rebbe shared a brilliant answer of the legendary Talmudist, the Vilna Gaon, but I’d heard it before and it wasn’t what I wanted. I needed proof from the Torah itself that “an eye for an eye” was never meant to be taken literally.
The rebbe rocked in his seat a bit, and then reached over to his bookcase and pulled out Bamidbar, the book of Numbers, and another book, Leviticus 24:18. “Whoever kills an animal must pay for it — a soul to replace a soul.” “This” — his finger landed on the word “pay” — “proves the Torah understood the eye for an eye verse to be a metaphor.” He spoke in Hebrew. I think he used the word mashal, or parable.
I read it, and the breath went out of me. Clearly, “A soul to replace a soul” meant not death, but financial re-enumeration.
The rebbe brought out more books to illustrate his point, from the Zohar and the Talmud and the Bible itself, proving that the best commentary on the Torah is the Torah. We studied together. Best chevruta or study partner I ever had.
He didn’t look at me, though. Normally I would have felt put off by that, but when I glanced at him, I saw such goodness concentrated in his eyes that I didn’t feel bad. But I couldn’t look at him too long myself. There was so much sincerity and goodness in his expression, it was almost painful to see. It’s how I imagine Moses’ countenance when he came down from Mount Sinai — so blinding, he had to wear a veil over his face.
Meanwhile, the Hasidic bouncers kept sticking their heads into the dining room, muttering, “Nu, nu….” I realized I’d been hogging the kabbalists’ time — we’d been studying for nearly half an hour — but the rebbe “latered” them, flicking his wrist. I was moved. Here it was, nearly 2 a.m., but the rebbe kept studying with me as if he had all the time in the world.
But I knew my time was running out. I blurted something about my awful dates, and his eyes clouded with zayde-like sorrow. Just before I left, I managed to nab a blessing, even though he apparently wasn’t your typical blessing-giver rebbe. Dang, I thought on the way home — I’d forgotten to ask about the Canaanite slaves and other things. Still, I felt a certain relief, as if I’d already received answers. After all, if rabbinic sages had grappled with some of my issues centuries before I had, maybe I could relax a little. Surely, the integrity of the Torah didn’t rest on my bony shoulders.
As the days passed, I felt my spiritual migraine lifting. What was it about the rebbe? So he had studied with me, tried to give answers. Well, so had the dean, and, come to think of it, the dean’s answers were better. But I could still feel the warmth of the rebbe’s blessing. There in his dining room, I’d sensed holiness buzzing like some bee in the air between us. His tremble spoke of someone who lived in the presence of God. He gave me not just words or ideas, but also a feeling of love, as we bent over ancient texts: A feeling that Torah and God mattered, and that I mattered even more.
Over the next few months, I still researched the Canaanite slave question, but minus my former angst. Gradually the Code of Hammurabi loosened its hold over me. I imagine a true intellectual would have pursued the answers to the very end, to the depths, but I discovered I wasn’t a true intellectual. The problem was, I felt happier in my life. I’d started seeing a therapist, and dating again, too. I no longer felt my theological issues tainted me or were something I had to hide.
We like to imagine that our beliefs inhabit hermetically sealed compartments, entirely separate from our emotional states, when in truth, these two worlds leak into each other all the time. Belief systems are entwined with the people we meet and experience. A rupture in a relationship can cause a tear in the fabric of belief. When Horrible Haim dumped me, I became vulnerable to the seductions of the Hammurabi.
I think about this often here on Medium. Not about kabbalists or Hammurabi, but about our porous belief systems that are not nearly as airtight or solid as we imagine, unaffected by prejudice.
Yes, I’m going in a wildly different direction here. And yes, I’m referring to the ugly invective surrounding the Hamas-Israel war, that I and others have experienced here on Medium, and that I have probably dished out myself. But no, I’m not talking to the Israelis who are licking their terrible wounds and massively defending their citizens, and I’m not talking to the Gazans whose homes and most tragically children are getting crushed. Nor am I talking to Jews in the Diaspora who fear and feel the brunt of this war in their every day lives, or to any Muslims who have experienced Islamaphobia. All of you above have skin in the game.
No, I’m talking to everyone else, you in some comfortable home in the West, or in your college dorm, watching Ryan while far from the threat of war or annihilation, or really any physical discomfort at all. All of you with no skin in the game are the ones I’m addressing.
What propels you? What makes some of you write the deeply hurtful, distorted and dangerous things you do? I wish, how I wish your anger was truly about the dead and dying Gazan children, but I don’t believe you. I can’t even put my finger on it. There’s just something too lusty and pleasurable and exhilarating and yes, childish, that comes across in the shouts and protests I hear on the campuses and streets, the students with their sheets, and die-ins and rage against Zara and Starbucks, all those youths standing with the oppressed. You’re having too much fun. When’s the last time you felt this alive and full of purpose, meaning? When’s the last time you were allowed to show hatred toward Jews this openly? It’s been decades, I know.
Believe me. I didn’t intend this piece to go off into Israel. I wanted to go back to the usual topics that grab me, about writing or spirituality or parenting. I wanted to go back to that novel I’m writing. But my fingers on the keyboard got hijacked. What can I do. I have skin in the game.