Mimi Farb, Grade 8 Jewish Studies
One of my favorite things about working with middle schoolers is the way they challenge traditional teachings—and helping them see that their challenges and questions are not harmful, but in fact integral to the tradition.
- Regarding the mitzvah of milah (circumcision) in Parashat Tazria, Midrash Tanhuma (Tazria 5) shares Tineius Rufus’s challenge to Rebbe Akiva. He begins with a simple question:
‘The wicked Tineius Rufus asked R. Akiva: “Which is better—the works of God or the works of human beings?”
R. Akiva said to him: “Human beings!”’
Already, we have a surprising claim from a Talmudic sage. Where we might expect submission of human intellect and creative ability to that of God, Akiva centers humanity and its creativity, elevating it above God’s. Tineius Rufus then challenges Rebbe Akiva:
- Tineius Rufus said to him: “Can a person make anything like heaven and earth?!”
…Tineius Rufus said to him: “Why are you Jews circumcised? … If circumcision is something God wants, why aren’t babies born circumcised?”’
In a similar vein to other recorded debates between these characters, Tineius Rufus is puzzled as to why God would create us in our natural form while commanding us to alter our bodies, rather than creating us in the desired state that results from the milah that we are asked to perform. Tineius Rufus’s questions pose logical challenges to both the premise that God created the world, and that God would want us to alter it.
In response, Rebbe Akiva brings stalks of wheat—a raw, natural material—and loaves of bread—the product of complex human synthesis of materials—to Tineius Rufus.
- ‘[Rebbe Akiva] said to [Tineius Rufus]: “These sheaves are the work of God, and these loaves are the work of people. Aren’t these loaves of bread better than the sheaves?!”’
With his rhetorical question, Rebbe Akiva reaffirms his position that human works are greater than God’s.
- Why, then, does wheat grow in fields rather than completed bread, and are humans born not only with foreskins, but also with umbilical cords that need to be cut, as Rebbe Akiva counters?
- The midrash ends with Rebbe Akiva’s answer:
“לְפִי שֶׁלֹּא נָתַן הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא אֶת הַמִּצְוֹת לְיִשְׂרָאֵל אֶלָּא לְצָרֵף אוֹתָם בָּהֶם”
“For God only gave the mitzvot to Yisrael l’tzareph us.” - The word לצרף (l’tzareph) is commonly translated here as “to purify.” Yet this translation begs Tineius Ruffus’s question: why didn’t God just create us circumcised, or, more broadly in regard to these parashiyot about purification rites, why couldn’t God just create us “pure”?
This story reminds me of a text we learned in eighth grade as we considered the interpretive nature of Torah she’b’al Peh. Speaking to the place of Torah she’b’al Peh in our tradition, Tana d’vei Eliyahu Zuta (2) brings a parable about a king who gives two beloved subjects stalks of wheat and flax. Months after giving the gifts, the king visits his subjects and is delighted to find that one of them had turned the flax into linen, wove it into a beautiful cloth, and ground the wheat into flour, eventually making a fine loaf of bread. The other subject shrinks in shame as he holds his unchanged piles of wheat and flax.
This parable is brought to show the value of interpretation. The written Torah is compared to flax and wheat; the oral Torah to woven cloth and fine bread. While we have received the written Torah from God, it is God’s desire that we add ourselves—our hearts—to what we receive—turning Torah into Talmud and Halakhah through our interpretations. This process is what Rabbi Jonathan Sacks would call “the great partnership” between humans and God.
To return to the story in Midrash Tanhuma on Parashat Tazria, we see that God desires our partnership not only for interpretation, but for action as well. God makes us impure, so we can partner with God by doing mitzvot that will make us pure, connecting us to God and transforming creation with God. The root of the word l’tzaref originates in metalsmithing. A smith melts the metal to purify it, but also to shape it and join it with other pieces. While we are asked to purify ourselves through our mitzvot, we are not only achieving new states—we are joining with God in partnership in the creation of ourselves.
As I look at the beautiful Torah that resulted from Tineius Rufus’s question, I have trouble understanding why Hazal painted him as “wicked.” I think that in fact by using this description, the narrator is asking us to look again. When we encounter challenges to our tradition as “wicked”—perhaps in the voices of young teens that seem rebellious, if we embrace them as opportunities to deepen and enrich the tradition, we can help them turn wheat into bread, becoming partners in creation.
