Pnina Navè Levinson

Deborah – A Political Mother Myth

[German]

It’s well known that people who know Hebrew place a great deal of emphasis on the meaning of names. Devora is “the bee” that makes honey and defends itself when threatened. Men have a saying, “Give me neither stinger, nor honey!” That image expresses the fears men develop so readily.

Male fears led to the statement that Deborah’s gift of prophecy was taken from her temporarily because she praised herself in song: (all this evil prevailed) “until I, Deborah, arose, arose, a mother in Israel!” The reprimand appears in the Talmud tract Pessakhim (66b), which proves that the common interpretation of “until you arose” does not correspond to conventional Jewish understanding.

Is this a bourgeois effort intended to save the honour of the Jewish prophet from the accusation of a self-confidence found so undesirable in women? There is a whole series of such disarming phrases, among others in the translation of the of the Song of Solomon and in the “wife of noble character” at the end of the book of Proverbs where a strong woman peer is made into a “virtuous wife”.

In the song, Deborah is called “a mother in Israel”. We also hear incidental reference to her husband, Lapidot, but no children are named. What does the Jewish interpretation of the Bible have to say about this unusual circumstance? One interpretative method used by rabbis is philological comparison. The question here is whether we use the term “mother in Israel” in a non-biological sense. There is such a text in 2 Samuel 20, which tells of bloody deeds during an uprising against King David. A general orders the destruction of a town. During the siege a wise woman negotiates with him, reminding him of the significance of the town’s role. She calls to him (19), “You want to kill the town and the mother in Israel”.

“Mother in Israel” has an integrative meaning here. It is also a sign of Deborah’s political office. The paraphrase from the Aramaic Bible is corresponds as follows: “The unfortified towns of the land of Israel were empty, the residents captured and carted away, until I was sent, I, Deborah was sent to prophesise about the House of Israel."

But some men in the late ancient period wondered why God sent a woman and not a man who was close to God. They were not at a loss for names. A feminist colleague responded to them, “I will call witnesses from heaven and earth that the ruach hakodesh (the Holy Spirit) rests on the deeds of people, be they non-Jew or Jew, man or woman, knave or maid.” (Midrash Eliyah Rabba, Chapter 9)

In Deborah’s case it is a matter of a particularly strong social position. In the Israel of 1200-1000 B.C. there were twelve consecutive tribal leaders called “Judges”. The eleven men led armies during times of strife. None of them was a prophet. Debora held all three positions – judge, prophet and general – and these not only for her tribe but also as a judge for all of Israel. (Judges 4,5). The period was one of oppression by technically advanced neighbours from Canaan, who had a threatening potential for destruction. In contrast to the Israelis, who only had conventional hand-held weapons, the Canaanites had 900 iron chariots (Judges 4,7). In addition, they lived in the mountains.

Deborah is portrayed as a second Moses or a new Miriam, without whom Moses would have been ineffective. Just as Pharaoh’s army did when the Jews escaped bondage in Egypt, the advancing Canaanites sank in mud due to the weight of their equipment and Israel, still threatened with demise, experienced a vision of God (Judges 5, 4-5, 20-22). The country then had peace for forty years (31) and the perennial word of comfort, “Those who love God are like the sun that rises mightily.” (5, 31). In biblical terms, 40 years means a “long time”. It is not to be taken literally. Thus the childless woman became a rescuer, just as once did the unmarried, childless Miriam, who according to our tradition was kept alive with Israel for 40 years in the desert at a life-giving spring.

The text describes Deborah’s residence as follows: “She sat under the Deborah palm between Rama and Bet-El in the mountains of Ephraim.” (Judges 4,5). The keeping of a woman’s tradition is marked by that description because the palm grew on the grave of another Deborah who had lived 600 years earlier, in the time of the mothers and fathers of the tribe. This was Deborah, the nurse and confidante of mother Rebeccah. When Rebeccah’s son Jacob returned home after many years, he built an altar on the site in Bet-El where he had once dreamed of the angel’s ladder. In the next verse it says, “There Deborah died, Rebeccah’s nurse and she was buried below Bet-El, beneath an oak that was then called the oak of tears.” (Gen. 35,8) The women who carried the legend on said a palm grew there that was the symbol of both Deborahs.

Here a brief women’s historical note: “Rebeccah’s nurse” was a familiar presence for Jews in the 17th century, because that was the name of a widely circulated book of ethics in the Jewish-German language. The author, Rebecca Tiktiner, the daughter of a rabbi, worked during the period around 1520 and died in 1550. Her manuscript was printed in Prague in 1609 (24th edition, Krakow, 1618). The publisher hoped that each woman who looked into it would buy the book because it was an unusual event: “A woman had conceived of a book with Bible verses and sermons,” and that it would be “... a memorial to her and an honour to all women that a woman can be an author and write about ethics and explain things well, just like a man.”

Back to the judge “under the palm.” Some Jewish commentators say her house was also on the site. Others say it was her court, located in the open air to avoid ambiguous situations that could result from being alone in the house with strange men. What were the questions surrounding pay during the biblical period? Accepting money could lead to corruption, just as pity for the poor could cause one-sidedness. The commandments of the Torah warn of both dangers.

In the rules for legal decisions it says (Lev. 19,15): "Do not be unfair in trials! Do not favour the small nor elevate the mighty! Judge your neighbour in fairness!” The rabbis say Deborah worked for free. This is completely consistent with the Jewish tradition according to that, at least until the new time, the learned of the Torah accepted compensation at the most for lack of time to earn their bread any other way. The great masters were always craftsmen, doctors, salesmen, vintners, landowners and fathers! The did not live in monastic ivory towers.

This helped fill in the blanks about Deborah, about whom it was said that she lived between “Rama and Bet-El in the Ephraim Mountains. She was counted among the major landholders who have been portrayed since biblical times. That is how she is described in a paraphrase of an Aramaic Bible verse that served as an aid to preachers and it is the way Rashi described her in his popular commentary. He lived in the 11th century in Troyes, Champagne, where he had a vineyard and founded a college before the Sorbonne was founded in 1253. His students came from all over central Europe. They worked in the vineyard, receiving in return food, lodging and schooling. They were also Rashi’s assistants and worked in many Jewish communities in the German and Slavic language areas.

When Rashi and his students spoke of farming, it was not merely theoretical. In Rashi’s commentary about the verse mentioned from Judges 4.5, we read, “She lived in the town of Atarot and fed herself from her own property. She had palms in Jericho, citrus groves in Rama, olive trees with good oil in the Bekaa valley, irrigated vegetable fields in Bet-El, fine clay in Tur-Malka.” Finally, Rashi mentions, “...fields of white vegetables.” Could this be asparagus as he knew and loved it? Deborah was independently wealthy and had no husband. She is the classic Judaic model for the well-rounded, circumspect, independent career woman.

According to exegetic opinion, Deborah’s husband - “Deborah, wife of Lapidot” (Judges 4.4) – is identical with her comrade in arms, Barak, because this name means lighting and Lapidot, torch. Perhaps Barak was his nickname. Other commentators interpret Lapidot out of existence completely. The Hebrew Eshet Lapidot is not taken to be “the wife of the torch”, but as “torch woman”. In a common commentary from an annotated Hebrew Bible of the18th century it was written, “...a capable and skilful woman is described as ‘fiery as a torch’.” Alongside appears a less harmless interpretation from the philosopher Gersonides (Provence, 14th century), “She reached such a high level of prophecy that the light of fire surrounded her when she prophesised, just as the Torah reports of our master, Moses.” That is in a similar vein to the tradition of honour shown by a saying of the Mystics, “Come and see. In the world there were two women who spoke in praise of God in a way no man on earth could! Who were they? Deborah and Hannah. And all this was so because the men were in a state of sin and were not worthy that the spirit of sanctification resided in them, truly.” (Sohar 3, 19b).

“The wisest of her princesses answers here, “First they must divide the spoils of war, each man will receive one or two girls, many beautiful coloured garments, many necklaces!” (Judges 5, 25-30). This is a reflection of the bitter experiences of Jewish women who were often carried away, enslaved and raped. That is why in the Torah there is a law about the protection of the fairer prisoners of war, whose female dignity must be protected (Deu. 21,10-14). This is one of the many imperatives of charity towards women. Because it happened so often in the course of history, a large proportion of the Jews of today are the descendants of purchased and freed female slaves who were accepted into the Jewish faith – black, yellow and white women.

This brings us to the non-Jew, Yael. Together with Deborah she saved the northern tribes of Israel. Whether she is a traitor or a hero is in the eye of the beholder. Her situation is no different than that of the whore, Rahab of Jericho, who chose Israel. Yael was tribally related with the non-Jewish wife of Moses (Num. 10, 29). She took it upon herself to kill the general who was fleeing, dealing a final blow to break the power of Hazor and avert danger. Her husband was an ally of that city, but her loyalty was to Deborah.

The Jewish masters came to the conclusion that Yael acted in self-defence when she killed Sisera. They interpret that from the text of Judges 5,7, where seven verbs are used for kneel, lie and fall, between her legs. That is the source of the opinion, “The scoundrel raped her seven times,” cited in the Babylonian Talmud (Jevamot 103a). Others say God testifies that she fended him off in time (Midrash Leviticus Rabba 23,10). She is consecrated “with” or “through” or “more than the women in the tent”. (Ri. 5,21) Those are the matriarchs of Israel. Yael is deemed worthy to be set among them. In the place of the lost honour of Jael, the daughter of Cain, are ages of gratitude from those who were once. She is embedded in Midrash tradition as one who has found the way to Israel through “uncritical solidarity”.

Excerpts from a lecture at the conference, “Women in the Bible”, held in Hohenheim in December 1991. Reprinted with the kind permission of Rabbi Prof. Dr. Nathan Peter Levinson.

Prof. Dr. Pnina Navè Levinson (Berlin 1921 - Jerusalem 1998) became the first woman to receive a doctoral degree from the Jerusalem Faculty for Jewish Studies in 1952. During the 1960s she returned to Germany to teach, most often at the University and College for Jewish Studies in Heidelberg. She was for a long time the only well-known Jewish feminist theologian in Germany.