More URJ Arrogance: A Real Reform BA'AL Teshuvah Alright...

Richard Furman has hutzpah to be saying the following. Why did Moshe address the men, by the way? Moshe addressed primarily the men with He said to the people "'Be ready for three days, don’t go near a woman.'" The Ivri men and women understood this as that the men were not to have sexual relations with the women (and vice versa) during Hayamim L'Kiddush. And the ishim, being the roshim l'ishot, had to be addressed. Moshe was not being chauvinistic or "not do[ing] all of what he was told".




The moment of the revelation at Sinai is a curious moment; It begins with our text telling us how God tells Moses to prepare the Israelites:

וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָֹה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה לֵךְ אֶל־הָעָם וְקִדַּשְׁתָּם הַיּוֹם וּמָחָר וְכִבְּסוּ שִׂמְלֹתָֽם: וְהָיוּ נְכֹנִים לַיּוֹם הַשְּׁלִישִׁי כִּי | בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁלִשִׁי יֵרֵד יְהוָֹה לְעֵינֵי כָל־הָעָם עַל־הַר סִינָֽי:(שמות י"ט: י"-י"א)

God said to Moses “Go to the people and sanctify them today and tomorrow; they shall wash their clothes. They shall be ready on the third day, for on the third day Adonai will descend before the eyes of all the whole nation upon Mount Sinai.”(Ex. 19:10-11)

The actual delivery of this message is rather different:

וַיֵּרֶד מֹשֶׁה מִן־הָהָר אֶל־הָעָם וַיְקַדֵּשׁ אֶת־הָעָם וַֽיְכַבְּסוּ שִׂמְלֹתָֽם: וַיֹּאמֶר אֶל־הָעָם הֱיוּ נְכֹנִים לִשְׁלשֶׁת יָמִים אַֽל־תִּגְּשׁוּ אֶל־אִשָּֽׁה:(שם, י"ד-ט"ו)

Moses descended from the mountain to the people. He sanctified the people and they washed their clothing. He said to the people “Be ready for three days, don’t go near a woman.”(Ibid, 14-19)

That Moses here is injecting a misogyny into the moment that God did not command is noted by Ellen Frankel in the Five Books of Miriam (117-118). Indeed, even the קול סתם, the narrative voice of Torah, tells us that Moses addresses “העם” whereas God told him to address "כל־העם", thus suggesting that Moses did not do all of what he was told. The injection of that misogyny, however, is not the main problem with this disparity, but rather that the change took place at all. This introduces the fundamental problem of mediated experience: the mediator necessarily changes the message.