There is a blessing in being with and sticking to the ones you know and love. Sometimes it is best to have familiar comfort food, and jokes that only those who know you well can really laugh at, a sense of safety and security that comes with trust in who and what you feel most used to.
Then there is the blessing of the inclusive multi-cultural, the gifts that come with translation and the plurality of identities that change the rules and challenge the assumptions of the tribal.
We are living at a moment when these tensions become much more pressing.
When “America First” is the official doctrine of the United States and when “Jewish Priority and Power” is what’s driving Israeli policy deeper into battle - the liberal realities in which identities are fluid and accepting of the other will increasingly confront conflicting and compromising public opinion.
How did we get here? We’ve always been here. The struggle between maintaining alliance with the familiar, familial, tribal and local vs. the opening to foreign, expansive, and global is at the root of the human drama and at the core of the Jewish story, for better and for worse.
Proverbs, as other biblical books suggest, is suspicious of the other and the foreign, and in today's chapter makes those warnings quite explicit. Framed as the advice to a young man who is about to start a family the threats include several layers, some reasonable and some a little more uncomfortable for more liberal readers.
Adultery is forbidden and sex with another man’s wife is prohibited by the ten commandments and by the basic moral code of the society. The poly-friendly among us will protest and yet this one makes sense in a societal code of conduct that honors the sanctity and safety of home and the family unit.
But what happens when the threat is not just about the other woman who is not yours (let along the male-intended patriarchal tones) but against all things foreign?
It’s this position that Proverbs brings along that merits our critical attention. Half way through the chapter, after several verses warning the young man from foreign women, this metaphor is mentioned:
שְׁתֵה־מַ֥יִם מִבּוֹרֶ֑ךָ וְ֝נֹזְלִ֗ים מִתּ֥וֹךְ בְּאֵרֶֽךָ׃ יָפ֣וּצוּ מַעְיְנֹתֶ֣יךָ ח֑וּצָה בָּ֝רְחֹב֗וֹת פַּלְגֵי־מָֽיִם׃ יִֽהְיוּ־לְךָ֥ לְבַדֶּ֑ךָ וְאֵ֖ין לְזָרִ֣ים אִתָּֽךְ׃
Drink water from your own cistern,
Running water from your own well.
Your springs will gush forth
In streams in the public squares.
They will be yours alone,
Strangers having no part with you.
Prv.5:15-17
This advice brings up stories about segregated water foundations and signs that forbid access to this or that minority. It’s a slipper slope from focusing on one’s own water and forbidden access to the other to the full-on violent behavior that defines so much of contemporary conflict.
What’s more painful and ironic is that these words are supposedly written by King Solomon - the one who had 1,000 wives and concubines, most of them foreign, and many of them princesses of other nearby kingdoms.
So do we walk the talk or live by double standards?
The modern views on intermarriage in the Jewish world reflect this question. Do we keep insisting that Jews only marry Jews or do we embrace the fact that more than 60% Jews in the United States choose love over tribe and marry people who often do not convert to Judaism and yet often celebrate their partner’s jewish lives?
The classical Jewish vote on this is clear and uncompromising. The next verse in today’s chapter makes the leap from water rights to who one must not marry:
וְלָ֤מָּה תִשְׁגֶּ֣ה בְנִ֣י בְזָרָ֑ה וּ֝תְחַבֵּ֗ק חֵ֣ק נׇכְרִיָּֽה׃
Why be infatuated, my son, with a foreign woman?
Why clasp the bosom of a gentile?
Prv.5:20
Biblical Scholar Stefan Fischer frames the context of this prohibition:
“The foreign and strange woman is not an individual per se but rather a symbolic depiction of the negative features of womanhood to be warned against. She represents a concept of an enemy set up to evoke the negative. She has traits oscillating between anthropological reality and a demonic counterworld…
The concepts of wisdom and folly are exemplified by two contradictory women, namely, one man’s wife, signified by Lady Wisdom, and another man’s wife, signified by Lady Folly. While one man’s wife is highly praised and associated with metaphors such as doe, deer, and cistern (5:15– 19), the strange woman comes with tempting words bitter as wormwood and sharp as a two-edged sword (5:3–6). The drastic warning against the latter includes images of death and Sheol, losing the way to life, and being set on a crooked path. The warning has economic implications as well: one’s wealth and strength may go to strange and foreign people (5:10) Hence the group this woman belongs to is also stigmatized.”
The contract that defines a nation and ensures the continuity of a tribe has many features and critical factors, and many of them stand the test of time. For those of us today who still view multiculturalism as an asset and embrace hyphenated realities and identities as blessings and not curses -- there will be much more work to do in talk back to our traditions and finding the sweet spot between what feels familiar and safe and how to open up our doors and homes and hearts to one another.
Proverbs, it seems, offers us these days a way to ponder our inheritance, ask big questions, and respond to old-new norms with convictions that may seem counter-cultural but are deeply grounded in the most moral, loving, and ethical behaviors we’ve always struggled with and always known. Who knows what’s coming up?
Critical thinking and multicultural choices are still the way to go for some of us who favor love driven choices over ones fueled by fears.
To be continued..
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