My teacher, Rabbi Bernard Zlotowitz (zekher tzadik livracha) told us often that ‘all translation is midrash’. I have had occasion recently to spend time with the text of the Samaritan Pentateuch both in Hebrew and, thanks to a first-of-its-kind recent translation[1], in English.
At a dinner in Israel just before Pesach, I brought up an issue involving the Samaritan community and the reaction of my liberal Israeli friends was equally quizzical and negative. Quizzical because Samaritans and Samaritanism are not well understood even by those who live quite close to them. (We were in Rehovot and the second-largest Samaritan community is in nearby Holon.) Negative because the first thing that came to the minds of some was the continued Samaritan practice of actually sacrificing a lamb at Passover. The image of the sacrifice of a live animal created an understandable but unfortunate barrier to further investigation for some.
Just a few days later, back in New Jersey, I sat in a sparsely-attended first day Pesach service and an accidental but powerful midrash brought my teacher to mind.
In our Torah readings for Passover, and for all other holidays as well as Shabbat, we find the requirement of mikra kodesh. The most frequently found phrase is mikra kodesh yehiyeh lachem. The understanding of that phrase in Jewish communities is essentially uniform and is expressed in its translation. While there are some minor variations among the various translations, the fundamental sense is that it requires a coming together: a holy assembly or holy convocation. ‘There shall be for you a holy convocation’, for example. The Jewish communities now and in the past have understood the requirement as a coming together of the people. Once the people are together, there are other requirements, but it is the gathering that comes first.
That is not the way the Samaritans interpret that phrase and the difference is an interesting one. The Samaritan Pentateuch contains the same language as the standard Hebrew text in all cases where the phrase mikra kodesh is found. But in none of those cases does the recent translation by Tsedaka and Sullivan understand the phrase in the same way the Jewish community understands it. For the Samaritans the requirement of mikra kodesh is ‘a holy reading’. An assembly is required for a holy reading, of course, but for the Samaritans the assembly is apparently a ‘given’; it is understood. It is not necessary to specify that the people will gather. They will. It is only necessary to specify what they are to do once they are gathered.
We might be able to attribute the difference in the understanding of that phrase to the relative dispersion of the Jews versus Samaritans over time. The catalogue of an exhibit by the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary[2] makes the point that ‘The Samaritan community has always lived close to their place of worship, Mt. Gerizim in Samaria…They hold as one of their cardinal principles a commitment to spend their lives in or near the land of Israel.’ So, gathering or assembly or convocation, is an essential characteristic of their community. The same is not true of the diaspora Jewish community.
These two different translations of a seemingly simple phrase provide a powerful insight into two very different communal self-understandings. The contrast between the two provides an accidental midrashic opportunity that I think my late teacher would enjoy.
[1] See Tsedaka, B. and Sullivan, S. ‘The Israelite Samaritan Version of the Torah: The First English Translation Compared with the Masoretic Version.’ Eerdmans. 2013
[2] Introduction to Exhibit Catalogue. ‘Scripture and Schism: Samaritan and Karaite Treasures’. JTS Library. 2000