When does a tribal story become a sacred national text?
When it grows louder.
Karen Armstrong, in The Lost Art of Scripture, writes that
"Scripture was usually sung, chanted, or declaimed in a way that separated it from mundane speech. Even after a scripture became a written text, people often regarded it as inert until it was ignited by a living voice, just as a musical score comes fully alive only when interpreted by an instrument…Scripture was, therefore, essentially a performative art, and until the modern period, it was nearly always acted out in the drama of ritual and belonged to the world of myth."
Today’s chapter of Nehemiah is on some levels the pinnacle of the Ezra-Nehemiah narratives in which the national identity is restored and reinvented. First temple, then wall, and now the ritual of Torah-teaching that will determine the nature and culture of the people - up to now.
While scholars debate how much of this chapter could be actual history - and whether Ezra and Nehemiah even knew each other let alone worked side by side -- there is no debate that what is described here is the birth of the bible as we know it - and the dramatic way with which it was first presented to the public: As a performance that fused the written word with spoken interpretation, a religious rite that would with time replace the sacrificial sanctity of the temple.
This chapter is very meaningful to me, personally -- and I think it is one of the more important chapters in the Bible. It gives us a clue to the creation of this book as the central text of the people of Israel - and then beyond.
I first ‘discovered’ this chapter in the last year of the 20th century, curious to find out more about the origins of the traditional Torah Service that is still conducted each Saturday in synagogues around the world. As a theater maker and Jewish educator I was curious to find out the origins and evolution of this storytelling-ritual, and how it might become more engaging and critical to new audiences. This discovery led to much more reading and exploration, and to the establishment of the Storahtelling Theater Co. that would eventually become the Lab/Shul congregation. I’ve spoken and written about this journey a lot (a book is on the way!) including the conversation on this podcast a few years ago.
So what’s actually going on here?
In short, per popular demand, Ezra appears mid-way the narrative of Nehemiah, on stage in the city-square in front of the temple and for the first time in Jewish history reads aloud from ‘the Scroll of the Torah of Moses’. He is flanked by twelve dignitaries, likely tribal leaders of some sort, and around them stand a group of people identified by the role - Mavinim, or Mavens - they are the one to translate and transmit the Hebrew words of the scroll to the Aramaic that the people comprehend. At the end of the ritual the people weep, are sent home to eat, drink and feed the hungry. It will repeat the next day.
The Torah Service is born. Few rituals in Jewish history are as consistent and continuous - a version of this public proclamation of the sacred story, on a regular schedule of reruns, is still in place today, 2,500 years after Ezra and Nehemiah.
But not all of it continues. The most important and dramatic element of this ritual was discontinued over time, for various reasons.
Until 1,000 years ago each time the Torah was publicly read-aloud from the scroll, the Hebrew chanting was accompanied, as Ezra models, with a live translation into local language, delivered by a local sage - Mavin, or Meturgeman - teacher/translator, who knew enough to hear and speak more than one language.
This is what it looked like to the people gathered in Jerusalem on that first day of the seventh month mid 5th century BCE:
וְיֵשׁ֡וּעַ וּבָנִ֡י וְשֵׁרֵ֥בְיָ֣ה ׀ יָמִ֡ין עַקּ֡וּב שַׁבְּתַ֣י ׀ הֽוֹדִיָּ֡ה מַעֲשֵׂיָ֡ה קְלִיטָ֣א עֲזַרְיָה֩ יוֹזָבָ֨ד חָנָ֤ן פְּלָאיָה֙ וְהַלְוִיִּ֔ם מְבִינִ֥ים אֶת־הָעָ֖ם לַתּוֹרָ֑ה וְהָעָ֖ם עַל־עׇמְדָֽם׃ וַֽיִּקְרְא֥וּ בַסֵּ֛פֶר בְּתוֹרַ֥ת הָאֱלֹהִ֖ים מְפֹרָ֑שׁ וְשׂ֣וֹם שֶׂ֔כֶל וַיָּבִ֖ינוּ בַּמִּקְרָֽא׃
Jeshua, Bani, Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodiah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, Pelaiah, and the Levites explained the Teaching to the people, while the people stood in their places.
They read from the scroll of the Teaching of God, translating it and giving the sense; so they understood the reading.
Nehemiah 8:7-8
Some of the names are familiar - they were on the lists of Levites that came along with Ezra, and/or on the list of leaders who were married to foreign women.
It’s hard to tell exactly who’s who here and what exactly they did or how they were trained for this task - but we can tell that the role was to explain the ancient (or newly written and curated, pretending to be old, we can’t be sure) words and demonstrate the fluidity and flexibility of scripture. The holy text can only survive if it keeps being translated and adapted to each generational need. These Mavens are our early adopters of technology (writing) into public domain (speaking) - and are our pioneer Jewish educators with a title all their own.
The Talmud in Tractate Nedarim understands these Mavens to be the predecessors of the translators that were a common feature in later generations and breaks down verse 8 to the elements that were and still are part of the performance of the Torah in communal settings - the fusion of the written and oral Torah.
“They read from the scroll of the Teaching of God,” this refers to the reading of Scripture; “translating,” to Targum - the Aramaic translation; “giving the sense,” to the division of sentences; “so they understood the reading,” to the accentuation; others say, to the traditions, that determine the proper vocalization of each word.”
Simon Schama, in his epic The Story of the Jews (both books and TV series) writes a lot about this game-changer chapter:
“Jewish reading is literally loud-mouthed: Social, chatty, animated, declamatory, a demonstrative public performance meant to turn the reader from absorption to action; reading that has necessary, immediate, human implications; reading that begs for argument, commentary, questioning, interruption and interpretation; reading that never, ever shuts up.
Jewish reading refuses to close the book on anything.
Ezra‘s performance takes on the austerity of a legal code -The Torah - into the realm of collective public theater: a holy show. It is the climax of the three act drama of reconsecration and reawakening: first the repair of Jerusalem‘s walls; then the building of a second temple in situ, and finally the public manifestation of the law of Moses, without which the other two acts would have had no meaning. None of these deeds were merely ceremonial. Together, they meant to assert an unapologetic Jewish singularity.”
Jacob Wright in Why the Bible Began also has helpful words that frame this innovation:
“Even if more imagined than real, this moment represents a tectonic shift: a scribe, scroll, and the activity of reading usurp the place long occupied by the high priest, altar, and the performance of sacrifices. The people are no longer mere spectators, looking on while priests carry out rites and rituals; they now actively participate in the proceedings. And their participation includes communal prayer (in the place of priestly sacrifice) as well as cognition and comprehension: when they celebrate at the end of the day, it is “because they understood the words that [Ezra and others] had imparted to them.” However, this moment is about more than religious history. What we witness here is nothing less than the birth of “the People of the Book” (perhaps more properly, “the People of the Scroll”), along with a new approach to education that informs this text-based identity.”
The people go home to celebrate their heritage, and as it is the seventh month - to also celebrate Sukkot, the pilgrimage holiday that they forgot about and now renew with zeal. They will celebrate for a week and more, reunited with their history and part of a new public story.
But what happens next? Nehemiah and Ezra are builders of a nation that already required walls and a temple, exclusion policies and rigid definitions of binary belonging.
With a text in hand, authored by the sacred sources of authority - what else measures will be reinforced? The story goes on, the storytelling ritual has been activated, and its on the modern mavens - those who translate and adapt, talk back to the text and talk loud about its meaning - to keep doing what our ancestors once did - not just broadcast the book but revise and adapt it to our evolving moral stands and social needs.
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