Yesterday, we read about Hannah praying for a child and how that teaches us about prayer. Today we read about Moses praying for God to spare the Israelites after the sin of the golden calf and we learn more about prayer. We start with a really fascinating discussion of the Jewish view of evil and God’s role in evil.

The Christian conception, and hence popular conception, of evil, is the devil at war with God seeking to overthrow heaven. Humans are tempted into sinning and becoming in league with the devil against God as part of this war. That is not the Jewish conception of evil.

Jews believe God created everything, including evil. Evil is not separate from God or at war with God. God is merciful, for Jews, because God gave us the evil inclination and free will. We begin today’s Daf with a set of proof verses to show that God created evil and God has the power to stop us from being evil. One of these verses is Michah 4:6 (“On that day – the word of the Lord – I will assemble the limping one and gather in the one driven away, and the one I caused to be evil.”).

A corollary to the proposition that God gave us the evil inclination, is that God can take evil away from us. A further corollary is that because God gave us the evil inclination, we should be treated mercifully for our transgressions by God. God’s creation of evil does not excuse our transgressions, because we have free will. But God’s role in our transgressions should be a mitigating circumstance when weighing between judgment and mercy.

Interestingly, when discussing the Golden Calf and other sins of Israel, the Jews are referred to as “the enemies of Israel”. The Talmud considers speaking about misfortune about the Jews to be inauspicious. Instead of talking about the sins of Israel, we talk about “the enemies of Israel.”

The Talmud uses several analogies to illustrate the concept of God as the creator of evil. My favorite is as follows, “A lion does not roar amid a basket of straw but rather amid a basket of meat.” Rashi explains this metaphor. The Jews were given an abundance of Egyptian gold and valuables when they left Egypt as one of the miracles God performed for them. The Jews would not have had the means to sin, if God had not provided the opportunity. There is another statement that “Filling the stomach ranks among the types of evils.” When we are sated, we become haughty. We believe we deserve our bounty and we forget that our fortune is not really self-made.

The Talmud begins a discussion of the Golden Calf. While Moses is on top of Mount Sinai receiving the revelation of Torah, the Jews build a Golden Calf and begin to worship it. God is angered and says to Moses, “Let me alone and I will destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven, and I will make you a nation far more numerous than they.” (Deuteronomy 9:14). Moses realizes that he needs to act to save Jewish people. He needs to intervene with God. Moses says God cannot violate the promise made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to create a great nation from their descendants by replacing their patriarchy with the patriarchy of Moses. Moses knows that if the merit of three patriarchs cannot save a later generation, then neither can his lone merit. He also worries that the earlier Patriarchs will feel that Moses is trying to supplant them.

The Talmud then considers Moses’ statement in Exodous 32:13 (“Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, how You swore to them by Your Self and said to them: I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven, and I will give to your offspring this whole land of which I spoke, to posses forever.”) Moses tells God that God made the oath to the Patriarchs on God’sown name. Therefore that oath is inviolable, because there is nothing more permanent than God.

The Talmud considers multiple options for punctuating the verse quoted above. One theory is that “the land I spoke” refers to the incident with the burning bush. Moses was told by God to tell the Jews that God would bring them to the land of Israel. Moses relayed this message to the Jews and God cannot now renounce the promise.

The Talmud then turns to Moses’ prayer to God when God threatened to destroy the Jews after the incident of the spies. Moses says that if God destroys the Jews, the other nations of the world will say, “It must be because the Lord was powerless to bring that people into the land He had promised them on oath that he slaughtered them in the wilderness.” The Hebrew verb tense at the beginning of the quote (Y’cholet) is an awkward verb tense. From this we learn that the non-Jews will say that God exists, but so do their gods. God was able to defeat the single God of Egypt, but not the thirty-one gods of the Canaanites.

The Talmud then looks at another prayer of Moses, “I pleaded with the Lord at that time, saying, ‘O Lord God, You who let Your servant see the first works of Your greatness and Your mighty hand, You whose powerful deeds no god in heaven on earth can equal! Let me, I pray, cross over and see the good land on the other side of the Jordan, that good hill country, and the Lebanon.'” Deuteronomy 3:23-25. From this the Rabbis derived the order of the blessings of the Shemoneh Esrei. First, we acknowledge God loves us. Then we acknowledge God’s power over everything. Then we acknowledge we are completely dependent on God. The first three blessings of the Shemoneh Esrei follow this order. Only then, in the fourth blessing, do we make a request of God.

The Talmud then turns to a set of rankings. We learn prayer is greater than deeds (which I find ironic because much of the Talmud is really about deeds (even the parts about prayer)). Fasting is greater than charity because fasting takes a toll on our persons while charity takes a toll on our possessions (I am not sold on this one). Most controversially, the Rabbis posit that prayer is more potent than sacrifice.

We then discuss whether prolonging prayer makes our prayers more potent or is futile. We conclude that long, sincere prayer versus insincere prayer explains the difference between the proof texts. Indeed, if our prayers go unanswered, we should pray more. However, the real cure for unfulfilled expectations is more Torah study. Ultimately, we learn four things require constant effort: (i) Torah study, (ii) good deeds, (iii) prayer and (iv) earning a living.

The Talmud then turns to Isaiah 49:14-15 to explain God’s relationship with Israel. “Zion says, ‘The Lord has forsaken me, My Lord has forgotten me.’ Can a woman forget her baby, Or disown the child of her womb? Though she might forget, I never could forget you.” The Talmud asks why we need both “forsaken” and “forgotten”. Aren’t they the same thing? The Talmud considers a man with a wife who marries a second wife. He remembers the first wife, even though he spends more time with the second wife. In this case, we believe God has forgotten and forsaken us.

We finally return to our Mishnah from two days ago. Recall that we said that we should tarry before prayer to get into the right frame of mind. The Talmud also proves that we should tarry after prayer. In fact, the Talmud says that the “early pious ones” would tarry for one hour before praying, pray for one hour, and then tarry for one hour after praying. If we are supposed to pray three times a day, that is nine hours of praying every day! The Talmud rightly wonders how the “early pious ones” had time to do anything else. The Talmud concludes that their extensive and heartfelt prayer meant that they remembered Torah study very easily and their work was far more productive, so required less time. One commentator states that we need to tarry a brief period of time before and after prayer to establish the right frame of mind, not a whole hour. In modern synagogue practice, we have prayers before and after the Shemoneh Esrei. These prayers are our tarrying required around the Shemoneh Esrei.

Our Mishnah from two days ago also said we should not interrupt the Shemoneh Esrei even if we are approached by a king. The Talmud clarifies that this applies only to Jewish kings. We should interrupt our prayer if approached by an idolater king because we need to preserve our lives.

One other note about today’s Daf. There is an interesting note about the role of interpreting scripture as the last two Dafs did extensively. The note comes from Rashba (Rabbi Shlomo ben Avraham ibn Aderet (1235-1310)), Rashba states that the stories Rabbis tell and the reinterpretation of verses is not because the Sages believe that the verse has a different meaning than its plain meaning. Rather they use these devices to promote recall of important ideas. Not all commentators agree with Rashba. Some believe that there are actual hidden meanings in odd phrases and syntax. We need to pay attention to this debate as we move forward.