March 28th: Pekude
THIS WEEK IN THE TORAH
Rabbi David E. Ostrich
One of my favorite Midrashim seeks to explain how some desert-dwelling, escaped slaves have in their possession dolphin skins—something God requests for the crafting and construction of the Tabernacle. The Hebrew term is orot techashim, and it is included in the original list of materials in Exodus 25 as well as the stories of the Mishkan’s construction. This week, we read it in Exodus 39.32ff:
“Thus was completed all the work of the Tabernacle of the Tent of Meeting. The Israelites did so; just as the Lord had commanded Moses, so they did. Then they brought the Tabernacle to Moses, with the Tent and all its furnishings: its clasps, its planks, its bars, its posts, and its sockets; the covering of tanned ram skins, the covering of orot techashim/dolphin skins, and the curtain for the screen, the Ark of the Covenant and its poles, and the cover…”
In this Midrash, written by Rabbi Marc Gellman, we learn that the skins come from dolphins who are involved in the Crossing of the Red Sea. As Rabbi Gellman imagines it, the hallway of dry land in the midst of the waters is not only amazing and confusing for the Hebrews, but it is also something the fish have never encountered. Not understanding about the water ending in a wall, many fish swim right out into the air and fall to the ground, helpless and drowning. Some wise and helpful dolphins see the plight of their fish friends and start patrolling the walls of water and warning the fish away. Then, when the Egyptians pursue the Israelites into the Red Sea and get close, the dolphins flick their tales and knock water onto the dry ground—changing it into mud and slowing the Egyptian chariots. These kindly dolphins are so busy warning the fish and flicking water to stop the Egyptians that, when the waters of the Red Sea return to their normal state, some of them fall onto the spears of the Egyptians and are killed. When God sees the bodies of these brave dolphins on the shore of the sea, the Israelites are commanded to gather them, prepare their skins, and sew them together to make a tent cover for the Mishkan, the Tent Temple. As Moses explains, “Let this tent of dolphin skins remind us that we did not leave Egypt and become a free people without a lot of help.”
(Rabbi Gellman’s Midrash may be found at ReformJudaism.org. Search for “Dolphins Skins?”)
This Midrash was first published in the 1980s, and its dating is significant and a commentary on Biblical translation. As you know, the Bible was almost all written in Hebrew (parts of Ezra and Daniel being Aramaic), but, as time went on and non-Hebrew readers wanted to know the Bible, God’s Word was translated into Aramaic, Greek, Latin, and many other languages. Translating can be a challenging process, especially as the years between the original text/context and the translation increase. Words and connotations change. Plant and animal species change or go extinct. Colloquial terms change as time goes by or people move from region to region. Though the stories and rules remain the same, details get harder and harder to translate with confidence.
Such is the situation with “orot techashim”—a Hebrew term translated differently in various versions of the Bible.
The King James Version (1611) renders the term as badgers’ skins.
The 1917 Jewish Publication Society Version renders it sealskins.
The Revised Standard Version (1952) says it means goatskins.
The (Catholic) Jerusalem Bible (1966) translates orot techashim as fine leather.
The translation dolphin skins does not appear until the 1962 Jewish Publication Society “New Translation.”
The first JPS Bible translation (1917) had continued the Elizabethan English of the King James Version but adjusted the translation to both (1) reflect Jewish understandings of the text, and (2) remove the KJV’s Christian biases. However, with the major archeological and textual finds of the 19th and 20th Centuries—as well as a desire to render the Holy Scriptures in modern (non-Elizabethan!) language, the Society mounted in 1955 a new Jewish translation, and presented it in three volumes: The Torah in 1962, The Prophets in 1978, and The Writings in 1982. The relevance for our discussion is that this new 1962 Jewish translation was a sensation in the Jewish world and would have been studied by Rabbi Gellman when he was in university and later the Hebrew Union College. So, whereas previous students of the Torah had considered badgers’ skins, goatskins, or fine leather, now Torah readers found themselves considering this new translation’s rendering of orot techashim as dolphin skins. I was not privy to Rabbi Gellman’s creative process, but one can imagine him thinking about these hides and what we know about dolphins being intelligent and friendly to humans—and the nearest source for such sea creatures. What emerged is a spiritual and social justice “backstory” that gives new meaning to the ancient list of building materials. Rabbi Gelman’s Midrashic vision takes that tent covering and uses it to teach us about selflessness, sacrifice, and appreciation.
Meanwhile, there are other Midrashim and commentaries exploring this question, and some of them were taught by Rabbi Seth Goren in his recent Ten Minutes of Torah essay for the Union of Reform Judaism (urj.org or ReformJudaism.org). What exactly were the orot techashim? Some modern researchers think that the term refers not to a species but rather to a technique of preparing leather—thus leading to translations of “tanned leather” in Rabbi Everett Fox’s 1995 Torah translation or “fine leather” in the 1983 Birnbaum Chumash. Some Talmudic Rabbis (Shabbat 28b), however, teach that the tachash is a special creature that only existed in Biblical times. Some say that it had a single horn on its forehead and that it voluntarily presented itself to Moses. One Targum (an early Aramaic translation of the Bible) holds that the tachash was multi-colored and took pride in its rainbow-like appearance. The RAMBAN (Rabbi Moses Nachmanides) suggests that the tachash's skin was waterproof and used to protect the Tabernacle from rain. Other commentators write of its immense size—that it had enough skin so that the Israelite artisans could make curtains thirty cubits long! Many modern commentators are convinced that the tachash was a sea creature—leading to translations like dolphins, seals, duogongs, manatees, or sea cows. So, if it were a sea-creature with a single horn, perhaps the nachash was something like the modern narwhal.
It is an unsolved Biblical mystery that leads to all kinds of speculations and possibilities. But what is not a mystery is how the people take from what they have and construct a place of holiness and purposeful gathering. They invite God to dwell in their midst, and they seek to live in holiness.