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RABBI DANYA RUTTENBERG | DEC 26, 2025, 1:02 PM EST

animal farm

a few zoological midrashim about being a person

This is Life as a Sacred Text 🌱, an everybody-celebrating, justice-centered voyage into ancient stories that can illuminate our own lives. It‘s run on a nonprofit, so it’s 100% NAZI FREE. More about the project here, and to subscribe, go here:

Happy Friday! I hope you had a fabulous rest of your Hanukah, a merry and joyful Christmas, are having a blessed Kwanzaa, and/or are otherwise enjoying this season of rest and celebration.

I thought it might be fun for our last Thurz post of the year to do a few midrashim on the stages of life, through a zoomorphic (and astrological!) lens.

- What do you think of these?

- Do you think they're accurate?

- Any in particular? Any parts?

- What would you change?

- How might you rewrite any of them to be more reflective of life today?

They're all from Midrash Tanchuma, which was composed ca. 500-800 ce, in Talmudic Babylon, aka what's now Iraq. Let's do this thing?

1)

Then the seven stages in the life of a person begin:

In the first stage one is like royalty, for everyone inquires about their health and is eager to look at them. They hug and kiss them, since they are only one year old.

In the second stage they are like a swine that grovels in dunghills, for a child waddles in the dirt when they are two years old.

In the third stage they are like a goat who skips about in the pasture. They are a joy in the eyes of their parents. They skip about here and there, while laughing, and everyone takes delight in them.

In the fourth stage they act like a horse about to run in a race.

This article was downloaded from https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/animal-farm/ on Dec 29, 2025 at 7:20 AM EST.

RABBI DANYA RUTTENBERG | DEC 18, 2025, 9:30 AM EST

Ask the Rabbis! (subscriber only)

It's time!

View this paid post here: Ask the Rabbis! (subscriber only).

This article was downloaded from https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/ask-the-rabbis-2/ on Dec 29, 2025 at 7:20 AM EST.

RABBI DANYA RUTTENBERG | DEC 15, 2025, 10:08 AM EST

Moral Kindling

how the Maccabees -and we- ignite in the face of tyranny

This is Life as a Sacred Text 🌱, an everybody-celebrating, justice-centered voyage into ancient stories that can illuminate our own lives. It‘s run on a nonprofit, so it’s 100% NAZI FREE. More about the project here, and to subscribe, go here:

Trigger warning: Mentions of sexual abuse (not graphic.)

Today we're going to look at a midrash on Hanukah that has far too much resonance for us today, and ask:

What's the communal combustion point for injustice?

As you likely know, the Hanukah story centers around the Maccabees, a small band of rebels who somehow managed to take down a large, oppressive empire: the Selucid Greeks* under King Antiochus IV, ca. 2nd c. BCE.

Antiochus, it might be worth noting, was said to be a lavishly spending narcissist who installed unqualified cronies in high positions as well as a tyrant who was quick to anger. By early in his reign he'd curtailed civil liberties, restricted religious freedom and pillaged his subjects’ resources for his own profit. Huh.

We continue with what's known, simply, as Midrash Hanukah.**

Please join Hannah bat Matitsyahu–see where she takes us:

*Alexander the Great's empire was divided up by his generals after his death in 323 BCE. By the time of Antiochus IV, the Selucid Empire (named for Alexander's general Seleucus) spanned roughly from the eastern coast of the Mediterranean to Central Asia.

**This midrash appears in full in the 1915 midrashic compilation, Otzar HaMidrashim, but parts are quoted elsewhere nearly 1000 years earlier, like the commentaries of the 12th-13th c. Talmudist/Kabbalist Rabbi Eleazar of Worms. This translation is a mix of the Sefaria Community Translation and that of Anat Hochberg and Isaac Gantwerk Mayer, the latter available on the Open Siddur Project. And, of course, my own tweaks, as always. This is a condensed version of the original. I won't get into the weeds re: the sources of this midrash, the Book of Maccabees, etc. today.

The Selucids said, Let's renew decrees upon them until they forsake their God... They decreed: Any Jew who makes a latch or bolt on their door will be stabbed with a sword. (What was the reason for this [decree]? So that there should not be honor and privacy amongst the Jews, because any house that does not have a door has no honor or modesty. And any who wants to enter can enter whether day or night.) Since the Jews saw this, they got up and removed all doors of their houses.

The Greeks set up a surveillance state in order to wage psychological warfare, to remove the Jews' dignity and push them into obedience. The Jews do comply– presumably out of fear for the consequences, but nonetheless, they acquiesce right away.

They were unable to eat, drink or have sex, because of [the possibility of?] thieves, robbers, and pervy Greeks. They did not sleep day or night, and regarding them the verse is written: “You shall be in terror, night and day” (Deuteronomy 28:66).

It's been said that the more aware we are of being surveilled, the more we (even subconsciously) restrict our behavior, just as the midrash suggests.

As Joshua Franco at Amnesty International put it, “The fear and uncertainty generated by surveillance inhibit activity more than any action by the police.”

Because... the perpetual open doors of midrash aren't so distant from the ways in which our digital doors have been blown open by employers and schools, by ICE tapping search engine, email and other data– including, likely, political dissenters– by other government agencies monitoring our social media and more, or Meta giving law enforcement about half a million users' data in 2024.

Thieves, robbers and perverts indeed.

When the Greeks saw that Israel endured the decree and no one violated it in any way, they stood up and decreed another decree.

When the authoritarian state saw that they could get away with one thing, they pushed the envelope again and again. They (in this midrash) demanded Jews violate laws around keeping kosher and agriculture (to which the Jews responded by selling all their animals and going without). The Jews didn't submit, but they didn't complain. Empire saw that it could go further, so it did, decreeing that any woman who went to the ritual bath before sex would be killed. So the Jews stopped having sex. So the authoritarians kept pushing.

Not that the Jews were fine with any of this. But between fear and old frog in boiling water metaphor, it was likely hard for them to know what else to do.

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Each time the people responded with equanimity, the State upped the ante, eventually demanding droit du seigneur –the chance to assault Judean women before their wedding night.

When the Jews heard this, they refrained from betrothals. This situation continued until the marriage of the daughter of the High Priest Matityahu to the Hasmonean named Elazar.

Mattisyahu: The guy in the Book of Maccabees who kickstarts the revolt.

At the time of the wedding feast, all of the great Jewish men were gathered.... And when everyone was sitting down to eat, Ḥannah, the daughter of Matityahu [who was the bride], stood up and clapped her hands and tore off her royal garment and stood before all of the Jewish people, revealed [naked] before her father and her mother and her groom!

When her brothers saw this, they were embarrassed, and they stood to kill her. She said,

“Listen, my brothers and uncles! So what — I stand naked before you righteous men with no sexual transgression and you get all incensed?! And you’re not becoming incensed about sending me into the hands of a Greek man who will abuse me!?!?!

A young woman– possibly a teen girl or younger (given marriage back then)–

bares herself, unashamed,

and reminds the people who've helped normalize all this fascism,

who're feasting like everything's fine

that she is to be handed over to horrific men who will assault her.

Because those men have power. Because they can.

And that there's absolutely nothing normal, nothing OK about any of this.

She declares, with her whole self, that they must stop and look up.

(I don't need to spell out this already pretty explicit metaphor, do I?)

Hannah gives her testimony, speaks truth without embarrassment, and demands, as the great Gisèle Pelicot put it, that

"Shame must change sides."

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“Epiphany”, Karen Cusolito, 2007. Mild and salvage steel, lit on fire. (Steel sculpture of a female figure with shoulder-length hair, from the side, photo cropped mid-thigh; her arms are outstretched before her. There are flames running from her legs all the way up her torso and climbing up her arms.)

Rather, she cries, standing naked before the whole wedding,

"You’ve got something to learn from Shimon and Levi, the brothers of Dinah, who were just two men who became incensed/vengeful on behalf of their sister [after she was harmed] and ... God helped them and they were not destroyed. And YOU are five brothers... and you all, youth of the priesthood, are more than 200 men! Put your faith in the divine and God will help you.”

In other words:

Get up. Get out of freeze state. Find that anger again, let it help you do something. This horror against people who aren't you who are being harmed (against girls and women, if you want to be specific!) matters, and it should be enough to rouse you from your comfort and your feasts.

And, moreover, "Put faith in God," means not, "Sit around on your tush waiting for a magic sign," but, rather,

"Take action and trust that there's life on the other side of your terror."

We, the readers, might occupy various roles in this story (or various roles at various points) but it's undeniable that many parts of this may be... relatable.

Most of us– all of us, really, unless you live off the grid entirely, probably– haven't had doors on our houses in years.

That "terror, night and day"–day in and day out for years and years, as the Jews in this story experienced it, too, in their way –it all takes a toll. On the psyche, on the heart, on overall capacity. On the endocrine system, which gets fried from so much adrenaline and cortisol after so many rounds of ... everything.

We have to trust that if we show up, really show up – not just for the one march that one time, but routinely, as a discipline, like it really matters, because it does, for all of us – there is more of the story that can be written.

Some of us, some or all of the time, might also be those on the front lines of harm, feeling like all we're doing is screaming for others to get up from the feast and take action. When it's safe to (as it was for Hannah, in that moment), sometimes getting vulnerable (and angry! and being right!) might be a path. But staying safe is always the first priority. Always.

As it happens, Hannah lit a spark, and (according to the midrash) kickstarted the rebellion among everyone at the wedding– she's regarded as another Hanukah heroine, in addition to Judith.

(Image of a gigantic column of fire coming off of a long metal torch-like object.)(

Historically speaking, here's what happened, because this is useful, too: After an initial skirmish, the Maccabees ran for the hills and, were soon engaged in all-out warfare with the massive Seleucid army.

They were outnumbered and underarmed; many of the Maccabean soldiers didn’t even have swords and armor. But they knew the terrain better; they were light, quick and mobile, relied on ambush techniques and tactical skill. Slowly, painstakingly, they beat back the Seleucids and eventually gained their freedom.

Just like every whistle, costume and city council meeting against ICE; every student movement against university capitulation; every airport official, foundation and local government that pushes back against the administration's agenda, every act of communal solidarity, every legislative victory and sign of electoral energy changing have begun to do.

Never not gonna use this image, given any excuse. (Image of a protester in a frog costume staring down a bunch of Federal agents, ICE agents, and probably Portland Police.)

Things are moving. In fact, as Erica Chenoweth and their colleagues at Harvard's Nonviolent Action Lab recently concluded,

Protests in 2025 have reached a wider swath of the United States than at any other point on record. And the geographic reach of protest activity... has remained remarkably high throughout the year.

The miracle of Hanukkah is that, against all odds, idealists were brave enough to take on a repressive regime.

Their smart thinking and intimate knowledge of their own country was enough to outmaneuver a government bent on maintaining power through force.

And even if our next move probably isn't, "go hide in caves," we do already know a lot of the right things to do. We must listen to Hannah, to all the Hannahs. We must be, bravely, Hannah, when it's our turn, we must be her brothers who listen, we must be her father who leverages his position, we must be everyone at that wedding if and when it's our turn.

We can and must trust that when we take action, there will be more to the story for us, too.

Burn big, friends.

❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

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HANUKAH'S GREATEST HITS:

We've talked about bravely facing the painful history of Hanukah from one historical / contemporary angle:

Bravely Facing Truth

On History, Heroes, and What’s Possible

Life is a Sacred TextRabbi Danya Ruttenberg

We've talked about integrating the history of the holiday so that we can get to a more adult relationship with that story, this holiday, and religion in general:

Hanukah and Adult Faith

Moving Past Two-Mindedness

Life is a Sacred TextRabbi Danya Ruttenberg

We've reveled in the story of Judith, her multi-use snack bag, and her sharp, borrowed sword:

Beware of Confident Women with Swords

A Tale of Beheadings and Cheese

Life is a Sacred TextRabbi Danya Ruttenberg

And seen how she's manifested in art and poetry over the centuries and across cultures, including in a riveting Bēowulf-era Old English epic:

Jude-Art

The Book of Judith, interpreted across the ages

Life is a Sacred TextRabbi Danya Ruttenberg

And we've traced the origin of the oil miracle story:

Oil Miracles and Textual Puzzles

Space to say true things, with ancient stories serving as mirrors and lights. Now living at LifeIsASacredText.com 🌱

Life is a Sacred TextRabbi Danya Ruttenberg

ALSO NOT UNRELATED:

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keep all your shenanigans in one place

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Very Pedantic Translation Note: I used the slightly anachronistic "Jews" to translate "B'nei Yisrael"/children of Israe in today's midrash; if you want to get reaaally technical, "Jew" wasn't a concept until after exactly the revolt that we're discussing here, as Professor Shaye Cohen discusses in The Beginnings of Jewishness. Nonetheless, "Israelite" could be too easily confused with someone from the geographic region (and that's anachronistic; we're talking about religion/peoplehood), and re: "people of Israel" and variants, it can read clunky and every once in a while someone shows up who gets confused about the nation-state founded in 1948 after the ancient community of people and it's just not worth the hassle. "Jews" is easier for a wider audence and functionally communicates the same thing.

Support independent work committed to telling inconvenient truths

(and offering persnickety footnotes as needed):

This article was downloaded from https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/moral-kindling/ on Dec 29, 2025 at 7:20 AM EST.

RABBI DANYA RUTTENBERG | DEC 11, 2025, 9:30 AM EST

8 Hanukah Traditions + Bonus Goodies

that you might not know about

This is Life as a Sacred Text 🌱, an everybody-celebrating, justice-centered voyage into ancient stories that can illuminate our own lives. It‘s run on a nonprofit, so it’s 100% NAZI FREE. More about the project here, and to subscribe, go here:

Almost-Hanukah sameach!! The first night of Hanukah begins Sunday night! And Advent blessings to all of you celebrating!

I thought it could be fun to share eight (okayyy: ten) groovy (and lesser-known) Hanukah traditions and treats; the Jewish people are expansive and global, and there are so many faces to everything we do.

1) There's a tradition of the Sephardic Jews (the descendants of those expelled from Spain in 1492) who settled in Aleppo to light an additional shamash (helper candle, the one that lights all the other ones) on Hanukah as a sign of gratitude.

(Lighting an additional shamash could be a practice of solidarity with refugees worldwide, honoring their search for shelter and peace.)

2) Here's a probably-new-to-you banger by Albert Rouimi, the Jewish Algerian musician who went by Blond Blond, a reference to his Albinism. Blond Blond was born in Algeria in 1919, spent some years back and forth between Algeria and Paris in the 30s and 40s (avoiding the Vichy years), and pioneered the Francarabe style, a mixture of French chansons and Arabic chaabi. As in other songs, he switches between languages and styles seamlessly. As I understand it, there are a lot of puns and wordplays here– maybe one of you can help?

Here's "El Bonco – Hannouka":

This article was downloaded from https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/hanukah8/ on Dec 29, 2025 at 7:20 AM EST.

RABBI DANYA RUTTENBERG | DEC 4, 2025, 9:30 AM EST

Blessings and Curses?

making sense of loaded theology

On Monday we looked at the crux of the divine covenant– our side of the deal, which comes down to choosing life.

I didn't unpack the specific blessings and curses there, but thought that perhaps we might look at them– and their theological complexity– here, together.

Let's start with the logistics: The covenanting really begins in Deuteronomy 27, on the edge of entering the Promised Land. God-via-Moses tells everybody that when they finally get there, they'll need to get some of the people to stand on Mt. Gezirim, and recite blessings, and some on Mt. Ebal, and recite curses– as well as, per the caption in the photo above, to write the Torah. (The mountains in question are near the biblical city of Shechem and the contemporary Palestinian city of Nablus, in the West Bank.)

I'll quote the Torah at length, and then we'll look at some of the ways various smart people have made sense of this over the centuries:

And all the Levites are to speak up and say to every person of Israel,

[with] voice raised:

Cursed be the one who makes a carved-image or molten-thing and sets [it] up in secret! And all the people say: Amen! [This refrain appears after each of the cursed-bes, but I'm cutting for space– assume all the people say Amen! after each line.]

Cursed be one who insults their parent!

Cursed be one who moves the territory-marker of their neighbor!

Cursed be one leading-astray a blind-person in the way!

Cursed be one casting aside the case of a sojourner, an orphan, or a widow!

Cursed be one lying with the wife of their father...!

Cursed be one lying with any animal!

Cursed be one lying with their sister!

Cursed be one lying with their mother-in-law!

Cursed be one who strikes down their neighbor in secret!

Cursed be one taking a bribe, [thus] striking down a life [through] innocent blood!

Cursed be one who does not fulfill the words of this Torah, to observe them! And all the people say: Amen!

Now it shall be: if you hearken, to the voice of God, taking care to observe all God's commandments, then ...then there will come upon you all these blessings, and overtake you:

blessed be you, in the town,

blessed be you, in the [open] field;

blessed be the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your land, and the fruit of your animals, the offspring of your cattle and the fecundity of your sheep.

Blessed be your basket and your kneading-bowl.

Blessed be you, in your coming in,

blessed be you, in your going out.

May God make your enemies, those that rise against you, be defeated before you;

by one road they will go out against you, but by seven roads they will flee before you.

God will ordain for you the blessing in your storehouses, in all the enterprises of your hand, and God will bless you in the land.

God will open for you God's heavens, by giving the rain of your land in its set-time,

and by blessing all the doings of your hand;

God will make you the head and not the tail, you will only be up, you will not be down... (Deuteronomy 27:13-28:13, condensed slightly)

This article was downloaded from https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/blessings-and-curses/ on Dec 29, 2025 at 7:20 AM EST.

RABBI DANYA RUTTENBERG | DEC 1, 2025, 9:30 AM EST

Our Side Of The Deal

the tl;dr of covenant, and everything since Creation: Choose Life

This is Life as a Sacred Text 🌱, an everybody-celebrating, justice-centered voyage into ancient stories that can illuminate our own lives. It‘s run on a nonprofit, so it’s 100% NAZI FREE. More about the project here, and to subscribe, go here:

This week, after four and a half years of investigations and examinations, journeys and questions, we arrive to what is, in so many ways, the climax of the entire book: the moment towards which the entire story has been building.

The whole narrative arc from the Creation of the world through one family's tribulations, through the Exodus, Revelation, struggles in the desert and beyond– was to get us to this moment:

You are stationed today, all of you, before the presence of God: your heads, your tribes, your elders and your officials, all the householders of Israel, your young, your wives, your stranger who is within your camp, from your woodchopper to your waterhauler, for you to cross over into the covenant of God, and into God's oath-of-fealty that God is cutting with you today.... (Deuteronomy 29:9-11)

It's covenant time.

A covenant: A binding agreement between two parties, in which each is required to uphold their side of the accord.

This covenant (which, we learned last time, subverts the Assyrian vassal treaty model) is presented to everyone.

Everyone. Those with social privilege and those without. Those who are part of the cultural community and immigrants, strangers to the national polity.

And what is the apex of this covenant? The pure, molten core of it?

I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life—so that you and your descendants will live. (Deuteronomy 30:19)

Choose life.

Those two words.

That's the covenant, and where we've been getting to all this time.

Choose it. It's not a given. As many sages and commentators observe, a crucial piece of this is that our free will is involved. Our agency matters.

We see a harkening back to the very beginning, to the original subversive choice: eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Eve used her free will to make that choice, and because of it, we can now discern between good and evil, life and death, blessing and curse.*

*This connection between this verse and the Tree of Knowledge also appears all over the sources, originating, my guess would be, in Midrash Lamentations Rabbah 3:13 and possibly elsewhere.

So what does it mean to choose life?

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You have to actively walk through the door. Again and again. Nils-Udo, Entrance, 1980, Ash, Hazel, Willow, Beech branches. (Image of a gate made of leaves in the forest in Germany.)

Let's start with the basics: The Talmud (Sanhedrin 74a) makes it clear that living is so crucial that, if forced to choose, one should violate just about any mitzvah instead of sacrificing one's own or another's life.*

*Sexual assault, murder and acts of idolatry are the exceptions to this rule. (Understand the third in the context of the Roman Empire and the broader pagan world in which it was created and the speed at which a slippery slope could devastate a whole community.) Later Jewish law, writing from a time of ongoing religious persecution, amended this to say that death was only preferable to idolotry if someone was demanding they do an act in public, in front of ten other Jews who might be thus led astray (Shulchan Arukh, Yoreh De'ah 157:1). If the order to commit idolotry happened in private, the Jew should do what must be done to preserve their own life.

But, of course, there's more to it than that. So let's see what Maimonides makes of Deuteronomy 30:19:

... True principles are called life, and corrupt principles death. Thus God shows that “life” and “good,” “death” and “evil,” are identical.... (Guide for the Perplexed, Part 1 42:4)

I might extend his read of the verse to suggest that good choices are those that lead to life flourishing, and evil ones lead to to death.

In other words, the point of the covenant? The culmination of the the last 183 chapters, everything from Creation until now?

That it's our job to help life to thrive, through our choices,

–for everyone, with and without privilege, enfranchised and not–

– and for all of our descendants.

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Choose life: Pithy words, but the work starts to become obvious when you apply that lens to, well, everything:

It means that everyone has enough to eat, every day.

It means that everybody can access all the healthcare they might need.

It means that people can go about their lives without being gunned down.

It means that people of all ages, abilities and situations are cared for, and care for, in community.

It means not abusing children, or anyone– or protecting the people who do.

It means not caging people because they made a mistake or were struggling.

It means being more concerned about people's welfare and safety than their administrative status.

It means making choices around war and peace that minimize harm for every human being involved.

It means ensuring that everyone has the other things that lend themselves to the flourishing of life, like bodily autonomy; secure housing; economic stability free of exploitation; the ability to navigate society without structural barriers; access to education.

It means stewarding the planet as a nonnegotiable part of our collective thriving.

It's not complicated, really.

When we lift our heads from the weeds and look at the entire forest, it becomes clear how and why so many of the systems in which we are now embedded contravene the two-word mandate.

And then, when we look back at the Torah, the logic behind so many of its demands becomes clear: its calls for im/migrant justice; for worker justice; for economic justice; redeem captives; to protect the Earth and so much more.

(And many other calls are clearer in the context of later Jewish law, and others still may leave us curious or confused from our contemporary vantage, but we can nonetheless engage these details as process, as faithful partners in the ever-ongoing work of receiving the Torah anew.)

In fact, the 12th c. Spanish commentator Ibn Ezra's comment on the meaning of this verse– on what "choosing life" means–

"The explanation is that 'life' is 'to love'."

In other words, as he reads it, the Torah is saying, "Choose to love."

Which brings us back to the heart of Leviticus, the centermost verse of the Torah:

"Love your neighbor as yourself, I am God." (Leviticus 19:18)

Yep.

We have free will. Every choice we make is one that can support the joyful blossoming of life, that can bring us deeper into love and connection – or farther from it, to hate, to death, to disconnection and harm.

The terms of our side of the deal are pretty simple, ultimately:

We must choose life, every day. Every policy. With every risk. Every effort.

Which doesn't mean that it's easy.

Only that it's the most important thing in the world.

🌱 ❤️ 🌱

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There's been a lot of desecration and devastation this last year, these last years, and knowing how to create holiness, once again, in the wake of so much ruin is essential. In the season of Hanukah, we'll look at a couple of texts that might be able to show us how to reignite and purify that which seems like it has been entirely lost, whether in our polity or in ourselves.

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Perhaps the most subversive act of all

Humankind’s first act of free will is a profound act of bravery.

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the point of it all

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This article was downloaded from https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/our-side-of-the-deal/ on Dec 29, 2025 at 7:20 AM EST.

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Life is a Sacred Text: 2025 Dec 26

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