It has been brought to my attention that one of the couples in our
congregation is about to celebrate their thirteenth wedding anniversary. Before
wishing Joan and Larry Centor a hearty “mazel tov,” I would like to explore
with you the meaning of shlo’shah ah’sar, the number 13, a number
steeped in mysticism and much unwarranted superstition.
Our society usually marks a marriage with numerical milestones. Certainly,
the first anniversary is significant since the sages tell us that if you live
with another person for a full year, why not a second? A third? A fourth? Then,
of course, there are the traditional markers—5, 10, 25, 50. But why not 13?
After all, does not the word for the One, the Almighty, “Echad”—constituted
of the letters aleph, cheth, dalet—add up to 13? Is all the fear and
superstition surrounding the number 13 not merely a failure to understand the
deeper, fuller aspects of a number so important to us in our lives as Jews, and
even too as Americans?
Was it not, after all, the thirteenth amendment to our great United States
Constitution that freed the slaves? And was it not 13 colonies that freed
themselves from the dominance of a foreign power?
And are not the lyrics for Thirteen Women among the most unappreciated of our
time, transcendental as they are to the central theme of shlo’shah ah’sar—13?
And is it not significant that the other side of Thirteen Women is Rock Around
the Clock, a song in which twelve o’clock and one o’clock also add up to
thirteen? And how many other times of our eternal clock add up to the sanctity
of thirteen?
The number is indeed blessed.
Beyond its derivation from Echad, beyond the mystique of Echad Me
Yodayah, the Pesach rubric that asks us to consider “Who Knows One?”—but,
in reality asking, “Who knows 13?”—is the basic essence by which we
interpret the Torah itself. I refer to the middot—God’s 13 attributes—which
come to us from the Book of Exodus.
“The Lord, the Lord is a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and
abounding in kindness and truth. He extends kindness to the thousandth
generation, forgives iniquity, transgression and sin, and clears the guiltless.”
Our scholars tell us that this passage is not meant to describe God’s
philosophy, but rather to establish a basis for ethical behavior. It is this
basis that the scholars use to guide them in their interpretation of the Torah,
which is, of course, the foundation of our individual and collective lives as
Jews.
It is not without accident that Bar Mitzvah comes at the age of 13, for the
number is regarded as the threshold into the world of responsibility. And here I
would like to inject a personal observation regarding Joan and Larry’s son
Joshua, now 11, but already preparing for the joyous occasion of his own Bar
Mitzvah this Memorial Day weekend, right here in our own sanctuary.
Joshua was born on August 8, 1982—often written 8-8-82, numbers which
individually add up to 26, and when divided by his two loving parents, equal 13.
It is not insignificant that Joan’s birthday is 5-28-47, again 26, which
divided by her parents is again the mystical 13.
And Amanda—born March 18, 1987—written numerically as 3-18-87, numbers
which total 27, again divided by the two parents, this time leaving 13 and a
remainder of one, the joy of their youngest daughter.
The special significance of 13 was recognized by our sages well over 2,000
years ago when they incorporated their basic interpretations of the middot into
the Siddur Ta’ahnoog, a little known but highly relevant book of the
Apocrypha.
They started with Genesis 13:13, convinced that God the One—Echad—had
spoken to His people through that number. Accordingly, they looked to the Bible
and sought out His word. Genesis 13:13 tells us, “Now the men of Sodom were
wicked and sinners against the Lord exceedingly.”
What was God trying to tell them in this veiled message concerning the
relationship between men and women? After much discussion, the sages concluded
with the opening verse of Siddur Ta’ahnoog: “Man is naturally
inclined to the pleasures offered by woman, in which he engaged exceedingly in
Sodom, to the Lord’s displeasure.”
After pursuing, explaining and rationalizing this line of logic for some
portions of the Siddur Ta’ahnoog, the scholars inscribed this next
significant verse in their interpretation of Genesis 13:13. “It, therefore,
devolves on woman to constrain man’s natural inclination to excess by
providing a firm foundation for satisfaction within the confines of the marital
relationship as sanctioned by Him.”
It was here that the sages firmly set for time and all time to come the basis
for matriarchal domination of the Jewish family. It unquestionably required a
great deal of courage for these prophetic and learned men to realize that they
themselves were incapable of accomplishing much more than the simplest of tasks
while constrained by the precepts of Genesis 13:13.
According to Genesis 13:13, as interpreted by the scholars, man is capable of
devoting his entire energy only toward the fulfillment of one basic instinct —
an incendiary relationship with woman. The scholars were seeking His help in
their one guidebook to the essential relationship among man, woman and God —
the Torah.
It devolved upon these sages to reconcile man’s fantasy with hidden and
unhidden, bidden and unbidden, sensate pleasures with the responsibilities of
traditional Jewish life. They did this by instructing woman to nurture man’s
baser instincts within the temple of herself, “to remove temptation by being
temptress, to remove fantasy by being fantastic, to capture and enrapture deep
within your essence.”
Having reached this precept, they went on to Exodus 13:13 which tells us, “And
every firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb; and if thou wilt not
redeem it, then thou shalt break its neck; and all the first-born of man among
thy sons shalt thou redeem.”
I am certain that in their deliberations many pilpuls were delivered on every
phrase of this truly significant verse from Exodus. We can conclude, at the
least, that it is highly suggestive in nature. It poses positive the theorem
that not only is man an ass, a stubborn animal, but in another sense that he is
preoccupied with that anatomical portion for which a multitude of phrases have
come into the vernacular. And here we say, “Thank you, God.”
If, then, man is an ass, then woman is the lamb. It is her responsibility,
pointed out the sages, to redeem man by “breaking the neck” of that with
which man is preoccupied. The sages concluded that “neck” was an allusion,
and woman could resolve the illusion by wilting, or breaking, the allusion—the
“neck.”
“In this way,” wrote the sages, “woman will satisfy man’s natural
instincts while cleaving him to his familial obligations.”
Interestingly, the sages based a portion of their reasoning on an earlier
commentary to Exodus 13:13 which says simply, “Every one would prefer parting
with a lamb to losing an ass.”
The scholars further expressed their conviction that Exodus 13:13 obligated
woman to conceive, so that the generations to come could adhere to the Lord’s
will as set forth in the Torah. Interestingly, it was here that they formulated
the postulate that, “In order for future generations to exist side by side
with the generations which both precede and succeed, then it is incumbent upon
woman to assure the continuity of man.”
It is here that the sages became concerned not only with man’s baser
instincts as expressed in Genesis 13:13, and his character as specified in
Exodus 13:13, but also with the quality of the “lamb’s sacrifice”
necessary to pacify man and allow him to fulfill his patriarchal role as father
and provider in a docile yet respectable manner.
You must remember that all this took place thousands of years before the
women’s liberation movement, a movement that further strengthened the role of
woman as the dominant force not only in Jewish society, but in every aspect of
civilization. The eternal quest for kabootie, however, is outside the scope of
this discussion.
And so, the sages came to Leviticus 13:13. “Then the priest shall look; and
behold, if the leprosy have covered all his flesh, he shall pronounce him clean
that hath the plague; it is all turned white: he is clean.”
This appeared to the sages to be quite straightforward. If the priest—“woman”—an
extremely liberal definition for a time some two millennia back, shall find “his”—her
husband’s—flesh in an irritated, agitated state, it shall be considered a
sign from Him that she shall fulfill her injunction and cause it to be “all
turned white.”
“Thus,” agreed the sages, “would the temple of her body be fulfilled,
and His will be done.”
Numbers 13:13 was approached with much excitement, for it was felt that here
was the crux of God’s message to man concerning the inevitability of
matriarchal dominance. And they were not to be disappointed. According to
Numbers 13:13. “Of the tribe of Asher, Sethur the son of Michael.”
While the verse may, at first, appear somewhat obscure, to the sages it was a
sentence that shone with clarity.
Asher is, of course, Jacob’s second son by Zilpah, Leah’s handmaiden, and
Leah in her joy for her husband’s fortune in having another son named him
Asher, which is translated as happy.
Indeed, in Jacob’s blessing to his sons, which came to be regarded as
prophetic anticipation for succeeding generations, he reached into his son’s
“happy” soul.
“As for Asher, his bread shall be fat,
And he shall yield royal dainties.”
Here the sages agreed that since this derived from Numbers 13:13—a verse
which in reality deals with the spies sent into Canaan by Moses—it was
essential that for man to be joyous and successful in his endeavors, it was
incumbent upon woman not only to vest him with the succor of her temple, but to
offer it in the frequency proscribed by the Torah, by the injunction of the
double 13s, reiterated to the extreme in the verse from Numbers.
“It is clear,” scribed the sages in Siddur Ta’ahnoog, “that in
order to maintain her role as the dominant member of the family, the wife must
offer up her temple at least 13 times in a month, ’One’—’Echad’—aleph,
cheth, dalet—one, eight, four—’13.’”
To this, the sages further deduced that the notation for the sacred verse in
Numbers—13:13—consisted of four characters and one symbol—a total of five.
This when added to 13 gives us—chai—18—“life.”
“While 13 is sacred in terms of the devotion of a woman to her family, 18
should be considered a blessing in the extreme. While it is not commanded of
woman to allow man to pray at her temple 18 times between full moons, God looks
with increased favor upon the woman who assumes this added measure of religious
devotion.”
Finally, the sages looked to the only book of the Bible directly attributed
to the hand of Moses, Deuteronomy. In verse 13:13 of that sacred text it is
written:
“Get you, from each one of your tribes, wise men, and understanding, and
full of knowledge, and I will make them heads over you.”
Here the sages harkened back to Moses’ confrontation with the Burning Bush,
with God, Echad, 13. And God thundered from the bush—itself not an
insignificant allusion—“Go down Moses!”
Moses, of course, himself a product of Genesis 13:13, not to mention the more
specific Exodus 13:13, rushed with word of the revelation to his wife Zipporah,
a wise and prophetic woman in her own right. It is written in Siddur Ta’ahnoog
that she responded, “Moses, if you must go down, whom am I to stand in God’s
way? I will await whatever is to come.”
It was this simple theological statement that forms the concluding verse of Siddur
Ta’ahnoog, that verse which has come to define the essential spirit of
Jewish domesticity.
“It was a bright cold day in Tishrei, and the sun showed that it was 13 in
the afternoon.”
