Follow-up Sennacherib Thoughts

My article for this past Shabbat was about Shaving Sennacherib, and that’s how I titled my article. Yes, the correct Hebrew pronunciation is more like I wrote it inside the article, Sancheriv. So the copy editors retitled my article to match.

Still, I chose the original title for a reason, which is that Sennacherib is a fun word to pronounce. It sounds like someone is snacking on ribs.

Either way, the title alliterates, but this felt like it rolled off the tongue a bit more.

2) Also, because I wrote an article a bit too long, the graphic I had of Sennacherib was kind of small, so that it was hard to make out his beard.

A zoomed in picture, of Sennacherib on his Throne:

My father points out that there’s likely some feminizing intent here - that the fierce bearded masculine warrior had the hair on his head, beard, and even leg hair removed. So it is then useful too see him depicted as bearded.

3) I received some feedback on the article, from someone who didn’t understand what I was going for in the final paragraph.

Here are some midrashim. Based on a juxtaposition of Avraham circumcising his household and Avraham sitting at his tent door in the sun’s heat, there’s a midrash (Bava Metzia 86b) that this was the third day to his brit, and Hashem was visiting the sick. The midwives in Egypt were Yocheved and Miriam, or Yocheved and Elisheva (Sotah 11b). Contra Rashbam, the brothers were the ones who drew Yosef from the pit (Bereishit Rabba 84). Esther was jaundiced, but Divine grace extended to her (Megillah 13a). Must we think these as intended allegorically, or else be fools?

Why mention those particular midrashim, and what does this add? Also, in general, the last paragraphs aren’t clear. Part of the problem, I suppose, is that at that point in composing the article, I am really hitting up against word limits, and have greatly exceeded them already. So I am often too brief. Really, this could have even been an article into itself, had I expanded it appropriately.

I was kvetching a bit there about how some folks (mis)interpret Rambam to say that anything that can be labeled aggada or aggadeta is obviously authored to be allegory, and you are a fool if you think otherwise.

But, some “midrashim” can be fairly vanilla, and can simply reflect Chazal’s attitudes when approaching the Biblical text. Or, they could involve insights into the pesukim, but not necessarily something that defies the natural order. Let’s consider each of these examples a little more deeply.

1. Saying this was the third day after Avraham’s circumcision, and Hashem was performing bikkur cholim is a midrash. However, the inputs into it could certainly be peshat concerns. Juxtaposition of stories might be done for a reason, to say that one happened following the other.
   
   Also, there is an issue that meforshim such as Rashi and Ibn Ezra contend with. It opens with Hashem appearing to Avraham. And then the men / angels appear in the distance, and Avraham says, either to Hashem, or to the men, please don’t pass from me. At the end, Avraham resumes his conversation with Hashem. On a peshat level, but one that might be heretical, this could be understood as the men, or one of the three men, being Hashem controlling an avatar. But, if you don’t say this, then what is happening?
   
   By saying Hashem was conducting bikkur cholim that was then interrupted by three angels, which gave Avraham opportunity to perform hachnasat orechim, you are also giving structure / explanation to what happens at each stage, and why there are transitions. And this absolutely does not have to be allegorical. And I don’t think Rashi would understand it as allegorical either.
   
   Also, there isn’t anything supernatural about this. The supernatural nature is in the pesukim themselves, with God or the angels visiting. This is just additional context.
   

2. The midwives in Egypt being Yocheved and Miriam / Elisheva. The Torah itself sometimes does not identify people, and sometimes only identifies them later. For instance, we begin with a man from the house of Levi marrying a daughter of (/ girl from the house of) Levi. Only later do we find that this was Amram and Yocheved.
   
   Chazal generally have an approach which has been called The Law of Conservation of Biblical Personalities. It is a “closed canon approach”, in which unnamed figures are not simply unnamed and exist somewhere in the Ancient Near East as random figures, but are people we know from elsewhere.
   
   We can surely find some deeper reason for aligning different Biblical figures, but this is not an astonishing supernatural claim that asks for interpretation. It could make sense as literal.
   

3. The brothers drawing Yosef from the pit, rather than it being passing traders, is personally endorse as peshat. Rashi presents it as peshat. Yes, Rashbam disagrees. But this is a matter of interpreting ambiguous pesukim. Just because Chazal first weighed in on the matter, and any ideas they express in non-halachic contexts could be labeled “aggadah”, and so it would be found in a work / passage labelled midrash, does not mean that they never expressed an opinion about the Biblical story that was intended literally. This is so obviously true. Are we really stripping Chazal of saying anything non-allegorical about the Biblical narrative?!
   

4. Esther was jaundiced. Notice that I did not say green. I was channeling the second of several parshablog articles I authored about two decades ago, critiquing certain proponents of midrashic literalism. The first was The Dangers of Midrashim — A Fisking. The second was The Dangers of Taking Midrashim Figuratively -- Esther's Green Skin. The third was about 180 Billion in Egypt. The fourth was about Vashti’s Tail, with a follow-up linking the green skin and the tail.
   
   In that second piece, in critiquing a piece by a midrashic figurativist, I suggested that “green” as peshat in the midrash might have not meant literally green, like a Martian, but having a sallow or jaundiced complexion. And, asking “Do you think Achashverosh would have been attracted to a “green” girl?” could be reframed as whether he would have been attracted to a jaundiced girl. And the answer is that she was granted from Heaven a certain je ne sais quoi, a quality that make Achashverosh and others like her. So I would translate slightly differently than the article’s author.
   
   The author of that piece suggested that hashgacha peratit was the hidden, allegorical message of the midrash. That is possible, but it is in fact overly stated in the midrash, in the form of chut shel chesed.
   
   So, my point in raising it here was to suggest that a sallow complexion is not so bonkers that it must be allegorical, and someone would be a fool to say otherwise.