Bamidbar/Shavuot: Coincidence or Happenstance? (Part 1/2)
In a Biblical passage that the Talmud (Megillah 31b) ordains ought to be read immediately before the holiday of Shavuot, the Torah foretells of a whole set of horrible ordeals that are the lot of those who fail to uphold the Law (Lev. 26:14–46). A recurring theme within that pericope of rebuke is the notion that if man serves Hashem flippantly or haphazardly, then Hashem too will deal with man in an offhand, dismissive way such that without Divine protection, all sorts of calamities may befall him. The term used to refer to this “flippancy/randomness” is keri (Lev. 26:21, 26:23, 26:24, 26:27-28, 26:40-41). That term (which appears nowhere else in the entire Bible) literally means “occurrence/incident,” with the implication of that happening not being premediated, but instead transpiring almost randomly. In this essay, we seek a deeper understanding of the word keri and its apparent synonyms, te’unah and i'rua.
The root of the word keri is KUF-REISH-(HEY/ALEPH). Readers might be familiar with other declensions of that root, like mikreh (“occurrence”), or the word koreh as in the phrase mah koreh (“what is happening?”). The word mikreh appears in the Bible in several cases to mean a "random happening." For example, when the Philistines were Divinely punished after capturing the Ark of the Covenant, they wanted to run an experiment to determine whether those calamities were really a punishment from Hashem or were simply a mikreh (I Sam. 6:9). Likewise, King Solomon cynically writes: “For the mikreh of mankind and the mikreh of animalkind — there is one mikreh for them, the death of this one is just like the death of this one” (Ecc. 3:19), and again he later writes: "There is one mikreh for the righteous and for the wicked... there is one mikreh for all" (Ecc. 9:2-3). The upshot of King Solomon’s statement is that since everything is Divinely pre-ordained, it is hopeless to try to escape one’s fate.
In Mishnaic Hebrew, the term keri assumes a very specific meaning in reference to a man who had a seminal emission (Brachot 3:4-6, Terumot 1:6, Avodah Zarah 3:4, Avot 5:5, Tamid 1:1, Middot 1:9, Keilim 1:5, Mikvaot 3:4, 8:4, Niddah 5:1, Zavim 1:1-2, 2:3). This follows the general practice of the Hebrew Language of refraining from explicitly referring to matters related to sexuality and instead referring to them euphemistically. In this case, such a seminal emission is simply referred to as “an incident.” This rabbinic usage of the term keri actually has precedent in the Biblical usage of the word mikreh (Deut. 23:11, I Sam. 20:26) in reference to an occurrence related to ritual impurity.
In his work Cheshek Shlomo, Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim offers an extended discussion of the biliteral root KUF-REISH, whose core meaning he sees as related to a “strong impact.” He lists many different words as deriving from this root, with one group of words referring to a physical point of impact/stress: korah (“wooden beam”) and tikrah (“ceiling”), on account of the fact that thee horizontal beams’ weight comprise the ceiling weigh down on a building’s support creating a point of “impact”; kir (“wall”), because vertically-positioned beams bear the weight of a structure; kiryah (“city”), because such urban settings are comprised of multiple walled structures; kurei (“spider web”), because it is a wall-like structure used for capturing small insects; and krum (“covering”) because that ceiling-like membrane covers one’s internal organs. Likewise, Rabbi Pappenheim sees kor/kar (“coldness/cold”) as derived from this root because homeostasis ensures that the body remains warm in a way that encountering something cold causes a clash of differing temperatures, which results in a “strong impact.”
Given this rubric, Rabbi Pappenheim explains the word mikreh in the sense of an “occurrence” or “happenstance” as referring to the sudden, unanticipated collision of a person and a new set of circumstances. For example, when Hashem speaks to Balaam, Balaam had not prepared himself for his prophetic experience, thus the word vayikar (Num. 23:4, 23:16) is used to denote Hashem speaking to him “out of the blue.” Similarly, when Jacob is scared that an accident might befall his son Benjamin if Benjamin is allowed to descent to Egypt with his brothers, the word karahu is used to denote the accident "happening" (Gen. 42:38, 44:29). Likewise, the Bible uses the word karcha when relating how Amalek "happened to encounter" the Jews exiting Egypt (Deut. 25:18), and similarly uses the word yikareh when referring to a person who happens to come across a bird nest (Deut. 22:6). Likewise, when the Book of Ruth relates that Ruth went out to the fields and "ended up" in the field of Boaz, who was her father-in-law's relative, it says vayiker mikreh (Ruth 2:3) — "an occurrence occurred." [For a fascinating study on the Bible’s understanding of the Divine Hand behind all cases of mikreh, see Professor Stephen B. Chapman’s essay “Miqreh and YHWH.”]
Although many commentators (like Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch to Gen. 42:4, Lev. 26:21) understand keri in the Biblical sense to refer to a non-deliberate, glib way of acting, Rabbi Pappenheim takes a slightly different approach. He sees the term keri as referring to the sinner’s attitude of trying to “anger” Hashem through his perfidious actions. In that sense, the problem with such a sinner is twofold: one that he committed the sin itself, and one that he maintains this antagonistic attitude towards Hashem. According to this, Rabbi Pappenheim explains that the term keri in the context of the Levitical rebuke refers to the “stronger impact” that such a person’s sin has in his clash against the Divine and the stronger Divine reaction that this impact induces.
Likewise, the seemingly triliteral root KUF-REISH-ALEPH (kara, kriyah, vayikra) in the sense of “calling” somebody refers to a means of “getting their attention” and serves a catalyst for bringing about a meeting (“impact”) of the various relevant parties. Rabbi Pappenheim writes that it too can be traced back to the biliteral KUF-REISH (with the ALEPH seen as extraneous to the core root). Additionally, the Biblical Hebrew term li’krat (“towards/greeting”) refers to coming closer to each other in a way that brings a “meeting/impact” closer to reality. In Targumic Aramaic, these terms are often rendered as inflections of the root AYIN-REISH-AYIN (which also refers to “meeting” as the Targumic terms for pegiah and pegishah as we will see below). Rabbi Pappenheim connects a whole slew of other words to the root KUF-REISH, but we will leave those discussion for another time.
Interestingly, Malbim as cited in Sefer HaCarmel sees the term mikreh as almost synonymous with metziah (MEM-TZADI-ALEPH, usually meaning "finding"). He attempts to differentiate between them by explaining that the when the cause of something that happens is unknown or irregular, then the occurrence is called a mikreh, but when the cause is not so out of the ordinary, then the occurrence is called a metziah. He explains that when Jacob's sons related to their father all the bizarre occurrences that happened to them when they went to Egypt, they used the word korot (Gen. 42:29, which means "resume" in Modern Hebrew) because all that transpired was totally unexpected. Yet, when Joshua's spies related back to him what they encountered in the Land of Canaan, the Bible uses the word motzaot (Josh. 2:23) because since they were dispatched as scouts/spies in the first place, they were anticipating the transpiring of incidents about which they would report back.
To be continued…
