A fight between two men becomes a brawl, when one of them resorts to words more powerful than punches. Among the laws of holiness a story surfaces that seems to hide more than is seen. One man emerges, we’re told his mother is a Hebrew and his father an Egyptian. The man he’s fighting with is pure-bred Hebrew. And whatever is upsetting the first man ends up becoming a problem:
וַ֠יִּקֹּ֠ב בֶּן־הָֽאִשָּׁ֨ה הַיִּשְׂרְאֵלִ֤ית אֶת־הַשֵּׁם֙ וַיְקַלֵּ֔ל וַיָּבִ֥יאוּ אֹת֖וֹ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֑ה וְשֵׁ֥ם אִמּ֛וֹ שְׁלֹמִ֥ית בַּת־דִּבְרִ֖י לְמַטֵּה־דָֽן׃
“ The son of the Hebrew woman pronounced the Divine Name in blasphemy, and he was brought to Moses—now his mother’s name was Shelomith daughter of Dibri of the tribe of Dan” (Va. 24:11)
Cursing God is apparently a serious new crime and Moses has to consult the Deity to judge the offender. It won’t end well. But first - there are several legends that attempt to make sense of this cryptic tale that add a lot of missing details. Where did this man emerge from? The Talmud claims he walked out of court, where he was trying to secure a plot among his mother’s people - the Tribe of Dan. But since land rights are the patriarchal right he lost the legal battle - and so he left the court, cursed God, the judges, and got into the fateful fight. His mother’s name is the only woman’s name to be mentioned in the third book of Torah. What’s her story? Well, the legends go like that: Back in Egypt, Shlomit was one of the slaves, and her husband worked in compulary construction. An Egyptian overseer raped her in her home, and when her husband found out he tried to defend her - but the Egyptian had the upper hand. Enter Moses - a young Egyptian prince just figuring out his Hebrew roots and going on about town when he sees the Egyptian beating up Shlomit’s husband. Moses kills the Egyptian and that’s how his saga as a runway who will become a prophet begins. Fast forward: The son of Shlomit and that Egyptian (there is one version that it was romance, not rape) is the one fighting for inheritance and cursing God. he finds himself in custody and Moses is the man in charge. God’s judgment calls to execute the man. And it is done: He’s stoned to death.
What is this mysterious tragedy all about? Perhaps both Moses and Shlmoit’s son are us - insider/outsider, liminal, at the margins, echoing the ways we do and don’t know how to treat and handle the other, the stranger, the traumas we bring along - not as kindly as we’d like to believe?
Aviva Zorenberg writes: “Perhaps the story of the blasphemer may be considered as a way of telling the story of the Exodus. For its traumas are also part of the history of all those who emerged from the violent field of Egypt. Perhaps for this reason, the story of the blasphemer is given in both the stark mystery of its biblical form and in the traumatic elaborations of its midrashic form. The effect on the reader is complex and, I suggest, ambivalent. There is repulsion and empathy, alienation and identification.”
When it comes to mysteries, this one is deep and troubled, inviting us for deeper post patriarchal probing and untangling the mythic layers. We can’t avenge the man but we can hold the trauma. What would his mother say today if more than her name would be known to us?
I'm interested in Dibri...Can this name be seen as a play on the word "dvar"? If so, then perhaps the story is mytho-lexical. (Is Shlomit related to shalom?) So the first of the words was peace: wholeness. The wholeness---when word and thing are one---is broken when the priesthood must define the holy against profane, the sacred use of language against the forbidden. By such divisions and enforcements a priesthood---perhaps by its institutional nature (never mind patriarchy) will make capital punishment possible...hmmmm: what indeed would the mother's say. Or Miriam?