Jeremy Rosen
Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Numbers 1, In the Desert

Jeremy Rosen | Making Sense of the Bible Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today Numbers 1, In the Desert | 02.28.24

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- Good morning or good afternoon, everybody. We now start the book of Numbers if you take the English version, or Bamidbar In The Wilderness, if you take the Hebrew version. This, the fourth book of the Bible, is the least consistent. But basically, it covers everything from the golden calf episode after Mount Sinai when they were supposed to go into the land of Israel, but were turned back for a generation. And so Numbers talks about what happened in those 40 years, and you would’ve thought there’d be a lot that happened in those 40 years, but most of it is condensed. And so the book has these different elements. Element number one we’re going to start off is the preparation for entering the land of Israel. It’s going to start with a sentence. A census, sorry. Sentence two. It starts with a census of the numbers of people about to enter the land. So this looks as though we’ve jumped 40 years. And as a result of this getting ready to go and then being turned back for 40 years, that is what leads us into a couple of interesting exceptional laws unlike those we did either in Exodus, which we’re talking about ethics, or in Leviticus, which we’re talking about the sanctuary and the priesthood. Then we’re going to get ready to march in, and then catastrophe. And the second half deals with the various highlights of that period of 40 years of catastrophe, but basically skips over those 40 years.

So we’re going to start with Numbers number one, and I’m going to start running here because as you will see, it doesn’t necessarily require the same sort of detailed commentary that we’ve been learning up to now do need. So we start off with Numbers number one in which God says to the children of Israel, “In the wilderness of Sinai by the tabernacle which they’ve built in the second year of coming out of Egypt.” So there’ve been one year leading up to Mount Sinai, you’ve gone to Mount Sinai, you’ve got the golden calf, and now we’re in the second year. And so this is when in verse two, God says. I want you to start counting, literally lifting up, tapping the heads of all the children of Israel according to their families, according to their father’s houses. What does it mean a father’s house? That would be something like a clan or a tribe. So notice how families are very important. They’re made here, they’re mentioned, you’ve got a number of their families, and their tribal clans according to, we’re going to number this by the males according to their heads because we’re looking for people who are going to lead the invasion. And so we need to know what kind of army we’ve got to take place.

And therefore, in verse three it says, “But I only want you to count from 20 years those who are fit to go for military service.” So you can see that military service expected from 20 upwards. I want you to count them, you and Aaron together according to the numbers. And we now introduce a new category. I want you to talk about the tribes. Everybody is going to belong to a tribe. Each man according to the family descent, which if you like, is the reason why tribes were numbered or counted by the father, whereas the people was counted by the mother. And so I’m going to tell you who your tribal chiefs are. We’re going to name them. There’s Reuben from the tribe of Reuben, the eldest son, Elizur ben Shedeur, and then there’s Simeon Shelumiel, then Zurishaddai, and then the second tribe, And then Judah, Nashon ben Amminadab. The famous guy who jumped first into the Red Sea when they were fleeing the Egyptians. Then you’ve got Issachar, whose name is Nethanel ben Zuar. These are common names, some of them. And Zebulun, Eliab the son of Helon, and Joseph and Ephraim. You’ve got two here. Joseph splits into the two sons, Ephraim, Elishama ben Ammihud, and Manasseh Gamaliel ben Pedahzur.

Then Benjamin Abidan ben Gideoni, Dan Ahiezer ben Ammishaddai, Asher Pagiel ben Ochran, Gad Eliasaph ben Deuel, Naftali Ahira ben Enan. The elected chieftains of the community according to their tribes. These are the heads of , of the thousands of Israel or of the heads of Israel. Because can mean a thousand, and can mean the boss. So Moshe and Aaron appoints these guys who we’ve mentioned, and he says to them and gives them instructions. “All the congregation of verse 18 should gather together on the first day of the month of the second month rather, and then they have got to be, it says. They were born according to their families, but it means essentially we’re going to list them according to their families, according to their numbers from 20 upwards as he insisted in verse 19. And so now we’re going to come to each tribe and look at the numbers. Numbers are very interesting. So the numbers of verse 20. The first born of Israel, according to their families, according to the males, so there’s a formula that we’re repeating. So this is a repetitious formula, and they count them, and they say 46. 46, and 500.

Now immediately you’re going to notice that’s a rounded number. Is that really the number? Is that what we really mean? I mean, the chances of it rounding up to zero are pretty remote. Okay, so we’ll say, well that’s the case of Judah. Sorry, Reuben, maybe that’s an exception. So let’s go on to the tribe of Simeon, and the same formula in 22. I mean, we moderners, we modern people we’re like, couldn’t they shrink it down? Why do you have to repeat every time the formula? But, you know, this is part of the style and part of the tradition. So how many are there in the tribe of Simeon? The second one, there are 59,300, again rounded up. That can’t be meant literally. And then Gad, Gad is 45650, and, you know, interesting discrepancy in numbers between them. 46,500 for Reuben, and 45650 for Gad. And then you’ve got Judah, and it’s interesting that Gad comes here as one of the sons of Leah, of Leah as opposed to Rachel. And then we come to Judah, and Judah seems to be this stage, the biggest tribe, 74,600. But again, rounded up at 600. Issachar goes down to 54,400, Zebulun 57,400, and then we go down to Ephraim, 40,500 ‘cause really he’s a half tribe of Joseph. Ephraim Manasseh, but then then 32,200 for his younger brother. Benjamin is 35,400, another smaller one, and then you’ve got Dan is 62,700. 62,700. This is, along with Judah, the sort of the large large, the bigger of the tribes.

Then we’re back to 41 for Asher, then where Naftali has got 53, and we roll down, and altogether you’ve got your 603,550 males between the ages of 20, and there’s no up list but we know elsewhere that 60 happens to be the limitation. So if you have that and double it for the women, and then double it again for children and older people, it’s getting on for a couple of million. Seems unlikely, and therefore, I come back and say, how do we know they counted? What was the significance of the numbers? Was it meant literally? Was it meant figuratively? We don’t know. And then having numbered all the people, we’ve got the soldiers ready. Remember, we’ve got the auxiliaries and who are the auxiliaries? The auxiliaries are the priests, and the priests are also involved but in different roles, and so we’ve got to number every one of the priests. And then we learn that when you’ve appointed all of these in verse 51, in verse 51, it hints at the movement. When the tabernacle starts moving, when the camp moves and they reduce the tabernacle to portable sections, then the Levites have to get involved in breaking it down, building it up, carrying it through. That’s their role.

But then, we come to marching orders, and now the marching orders depend on flags. Each tribe had its flags. Verse 52, they encamp everybody . They camp according to their . Their flag, so we have flags. So then you have the Levites who camp around, and so they have a special place by themselves just surrounding the ark and the tabernacle. And so we come to chapter two, and in chapter two we specify now what are these flags that they’re all going to march according to, and what position are they going to be? So we’re now giving them their marching position. So right in the very front, so imagine this, you’ve got this kind of rectangle, in the middle you’ve got the ark surrounded by the priests, and that’s in the middle. And then north, east, west and south, you have groups of tribes marching in their position. So it’s a phalanx type of structure protecting the ark in the middle, and Judah leads at the front. It’s interesting why does Judah lead in the front and not Reuben? People would then turn around and say, "Yes, because although Reuben was the eldest, the fact is that later on historically, it’s going to be Judah, the house of David and Solomon that’s going to be the dominant element.”

And in fact, we’ve already learnt that when Jacob dies, he says Judah and Joseph are going to be the two main tribes. Judah in the south and Joseph in the north, and whether that was post factum after how things worked out in time and not originally is a matter of speculation. But if you look at the marching orders, you see Judah is in the front once again with Nahshon ben Amminadab. The guy who jumped first into the sea, leading the march into the land of Israel at first stage. There’s going to be another one. Anyway, his troop together has 74,600, again an odd number, and then coming next to it is the tribe of Issachar, and then with his number, and then the tribe of Zebulun, and they come together in their position, and then you have on the south side, then you have Reuben to the south. Notice how so south is described as Temana, which is Yemen, 'cause Yemen is south of where they were. And so you have Reuben, and then round Reuben you’ve got Simeon, Simon, and then you’ve got Gad, and then you’ve got a total number for Ruben of 151 in that block. And then on the west side you’ve got Ephraim, and he’s got 40, and then he’s got people supporting him, and the tribe of Benjamin, and then you’ve got tribe of Manasseh, and then there’s Dan, and Naftali.

They’re all rolled and in their position, and so you have your phalanx of north, east, south, and west all ready to march. And once again, we are talking about the genealogy. Who are these leaders? Who are the people who are carrying on? Well, there’s a hierarchy. The hierarchy consists of Aaron and Moses, and then the sons of Aaron are Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Athimar, and these are the names of the sons of Aaron and these were appointed as priests and that was their role. And amongst those two, remember in verse four there was Nadab and Abihu, the two sons of Aaron, who took the initiative and got involved in making their own decisions without being told, and they were slapped down. Poor guys, and they ended up in a cinder. So we’re mentioning them, if you want to know what happened to the genealogy. Why only the others went on, not them. And you’ll notice that there’s no mention at this stage of Moses’s sons. And we know that he had two sons. They were born before they went down to Egypt, and simply it seems they disappear from the picture, and there are theories as to what happened.

Maybe they died in Egypt 'cause remember, there was a problem on the way down to Egypt because they weren’t circumcised, or there was the theory that comes much later on that Moshe, Moses, was so wrapped up in looking after the children of Israel, of being the father of the children of Israel, that in effect, he didn’t have time for his sons. He neglected them. There is actually later on in the book of Judges a hint, and it’s only a hint, that Moses had a grandson who turned pagan or worshipped other gods. That makes it even more complicated. But the mere fact, I think, that these traditions exist go to show that no matter how big you are, you never know how your kids are going to turn out. But also, if you are a leader, it comes at a price. And for poor Moses, it came at a price. Anyway, these, as we say, was the list of the Levites who came responsible for carrying on the traditions of the nation because we’re describing at this moment, we’re describing the nation and how it’s going to get ready to start the advance into the land of Israel because that’s the assumption that they’re going there, even though we’ve already learned that they’re going to be turned back for 40 years.

And so again, the question of chronology is a really pressing issue. We don’t know what happened exactly when, except this did start off by saying this is taking place in the second year. So they’re still hoping that they’re going to head into the land of Canaan, or alternatively simply that this is their marching orders for the next 40 years, how they’re going to move as they wander around in the wilderness, which is of course why this is called Bamidbar Into the Wilderness. I now then want to come to, I’m going to jump because the fact is that all of this is there for you to read, and there’s no particular narrative going in merely describing the structure of the people, who was in charge, how they were placed, and how they actually proceeded. But I would like you then to turn to chapter five. So I’m skipping all the way now down to chapter five of Deuteronomy, of Numbers, and the strange law that comes in here. Two strange laws that come out of the blue in this position, and we are going to look at them in detail and see why we think they were placed here, and why we think that there is a problem, and that indeed is a problem. So chapter five verse one starts off like this.

We’re talking about the camp. “I want you to command the children of Israel, and I want you to send out of the camp anybody who has a disease, anybody who has a disease which could infect the camp. And so we have the idea of quarantine, whether male or female, they should be outside until they have been declared back to normal. And that’s exactly what they did. So we now have the first example of an exception, somebody who is not physically in perfect health. But we also then move on to make this general statement in verse six that any man or woman who does anything wrong, who in a sense rejects God and is guilty, the first thing they have to do, in verse seven is . To confess, admit what it is they’ve done wrong. It’s very important that one realises what one may have done wrong. This idea of confession. Whereas in, shall we say Christianity, confession comes to the priest or to someone else, according to the Talmud, confession is personal. We do not want to humiliate ourselves or demean ourselves to other people, and therefore, this is a personal act of contrition and confession. And then if anything has been removed, anything has been stolen, or something was misapplied to a religious function that you didn’t keep to, you add a little penalty.

So you have the idea of financial penalty. And if it so happens that somebody who died has nobody there to take on the commitments that the previous person has obliged himself to, then everything goes through to the priest who act on his behalf. So this is the role of the priest in helping the process of atonement, but not actually carrying out the atonement. Being involved so you are bringing something to him to indicate that you’ve done something wrong, but he merely receives it in his role as the ceremonial priest. But now we come to one of the most difficult laws, and the one I’m sure you’re going to be most upset by in the Torah, and bear with me so that I can explain. It’s not quite as terrible as it seems. Verse 11 of chapter five. "And God says to Moses, 'Speak to the children of Israel and say if you have a case or in a situation where a woman has done something wrong, she has betrayed him, and she has, shall we say, offended her, as well as, so she has offended him as well as of offending God by betraying the marital covenant as a parallel of the divine covenant.”

If you betray the covenant, you’ve done something wrong. In verse 13, it actually says in black and white. She did in fact commit adultery. she had sex. But her husband either didn’t know, or it was hidden, or chose not to. She has hidden the fact from him that she has betrayed him. And there are no witnesses. And so she hasn’t been prosecuted. So here we have a situation where something did actually happen, but there’s no evidence, no proof, no court. So do we have another option? So verse 14, . He became jealous. He sensed something was wrong. And he did suspect his wife , and she had defiled him, she had betrayed him. Or maybe he just was jealous and didn’t have any basis, and she hadn’t done anything wrong. It’s just that he went berserk, he got jealous. In verse 16, he can bring this woman to the priest. And she will come with an offering. This is the normal thing, if you appear before the priest, you come with an offering, and this offering, which is made up of . Verse 15, it’s made up of flour but it’s flour of which is barley, which is not as fine as the flour which is from wheat. You’re not pouring any oil over it to make it nicer, and you’re not putting any any incense, or spices on it. It’s got to be absolutely bare minimum.

This is an offering of jealousy. Its function here is to focus on something that might have been done wrong, but we don’t know. The priest brings her forward. And places her before God. In verse 17, the priest gets holy water. Which is in an earthenware pot, in other words, water that is drawn specially for use in the tabernacle, which of course is where Christianity gets the idea of holy water from. And you take some of the dust from the ground of the tabernacle, and the priest takes and dissolves it into water. So dust into water, very symbolic. Verse 18, . And the priest then stands the woman before God. And this term, means to loosen. Not to uncover, as some translated, or to bear, as the translation here says. The term means wild. And so in the book of in the Song of Deborah when she talks about , when people went crazy, loose, there was no control anymore. So means to loosen the hair of the woman. Why loosen the hair of the woman? Well, it seems that in those days, a loose woman had loose hair. That modest women tended to keep their hair whether it’s covered, or in place, or well looked after, but not wild. A wild hair indicated a wild woman. He uncovers or loosens the hair of the woman, he places in her hands this offering of jealousy, and with this water that’s being dissolved from the dust of the tabernacle, which is called bitter.

And then what happens is verse 19. The makes her take an oath. And he says to the woman . If you have not betrayed your husband. And done absolutely nothing you shouldn’t have done. These waters I’m going to give you to drink will prove your innocence, and nothing will happen, and you’ll be cleared of any suspicion whatsoever. But if on the other hand, verse 20, you did do something wrong , and you did defy yourself. You allowed another person to sleep with you other than your husband. He will then declare this oath, and he will say to the woman, if you have done anything wrong, then God will turn you into a curse and a symbol of evil. Your stomach will begin to expand, your loins will begin to fall, your body will slowly deteriorate, and these waters will come into you and they will affect your stomach, your womb, and that’s the curse. And the woman will say, amen, amen. Yeah, I’m prepared to do this 'cause I’m innocent. Amen, amen. I agree. And then having said that, a little post script. And God and the priest is going to write out the words of this curse on a piece of paper, which will include God’s name . And dissolve it, the ink in this paper, in the water. And they will be dissolved into this water. Verse 24, and he’ll make the woman.

She will have to drink this water. And these bitter waters will come and they will infect you. In verse 25, The priest takes this offering from the woman, he waves it, sacrifices it on the temple, and then in addition, scoops up a little bit of the grain from the temple, from the offering, and dissolve it, and burn it up, especially separately on the altar, and the woman drinks the water. And once, in verse 27, she’s drunk the water, and if she has defiled her husband, then the water shall enter her body and it will be begin to deteriorate, and she’ll be accursed. But if not, then she is innocent, and not only that, but she will have children and they will live happily ever after. This is very, very difficult to make sense. I’m going to come back to it to explain it in a minute as best I can. But it goes on to say in verse 29, this is the law of jealousy that when somebody is jealous of a wife because she’s done something wrong, or a person is jealous of a wife because she hasn’t done something wrong, we try either to let the innocent person off, and on the other hand, to make the guilty person suffer.

So this is a classical case of what we call trial by ordeal. And a trial by ordeal was something that has existed in human society for thousands of years. The way witches were treated in America a couple of hundred years ago was also this trial by ordeal. Very often what you would do is throw them into the water, see if they drowned, they must have been guilty, and if they floated or the other way around. If they floated, they must have been guilty and if they drowned, they were innocent. So you couldn’t win. This was common in the ancient world as a way of clarifying when you have no other evidence, and thank God it’s something that we no longer adhere to. And in fact, this idea was actually banned by the rabbis in the Talmudic period. But the truth of the matter is it also fell into disuse as the role of the priesthood declined. Now the fact is it was obligatory, it was an optional, it didn’t have to be, and it’s true that it was in the hands of the husband because in those days, it was a male dominated society, and they had, in a sense, that right.

But interestingly enough, when you look at how the rabbis of the Talmud understood this, they understood it in a slightly different way. And what they said was although here it talks about the woman, the fact is, that the man had to be a hundred percent innocent himself before he could bring any such claim to the court. And therefore, I don’t know how, whether it’s metaphorical, psychological, the waters that the women drunk affected him too so that if he in any way was immoral or had done something wrong, they would rebound onto him rather than onto her. Now that, combined with the fact that the rabbis banned this 2000 years ago, is an interesting reflection on the way they have gone forward to understand that the laws of the Torah have to be understood. And the reason they were able to ban it because the Torah says in black and white that you can’t undo any of these laws is by saying that there are certain laws in the Torah that are what we call . They are dependent on other factors.

That’s to say they are options because for example, if you don’t have a temple, you can’t carry out temple practises, and this was a practise which required the temple because without the priesthood functioning in the tabernacle and in the temple and taking the dust of the ground of the temple, you couldn’t have it. And in addition to this, the concept of a person having the right to impose this on a woman is something that was no longer considered a right that people should have because in the words of the Talmud, men nowadays are not behaving nicely. And if men are not behaving nicely, then there’s no good reason why we should give them the right to do something, and not the woman. This is quite an amazing issue if you think about it. And not only that, but they also made a point of saying that this never actually happened. This was rather more a symbolic warning to people rather than to say, this is something I expect you to do, and that was why they felt perfectly able to, if you like, remove it not from the text because the tradition is not to take anything you don’t like out of the text. You’ve got to leave it there as a sign of the times, but to make it totally inapplicable, and we’ve had several examples like that before. Rebellious son is another one.

So although on the face of it this certainly looks like a male chauvinist act, and something we find offensive, when you look and peeled beneath the surface, you can see that not only was it a feature of its time, but also it was, if you like, something more symbolic than practise. And a way of saying that when we don’t know, when we can’t convict, we in a sense have to resort to some sort of spiritual clarification. You might even say psychological clarification, to use a modern terminology, to resolve problems. Now the question then is, why is this here? And this is in the context of preparing to go in to the land of Israel, or preparing to set up a new society. And in a new society, we’re going to have our laws. But in addition, we have the spirit of the law. So it’s not just the letter of the law, it’s not just what you can get away with, which is why we’re going to see later on a series of laws that are particularly relevant to the land of Israel that consist of things that are done in secret, and can’t be revealed in the ordinary way. So we are saying one of the fundamentals of going into the land of Israel and setting up a society that’s supposed to be an ethical society is to remove suspicion, is try to live on a higher spiritual level, and to do whatever one can to avoid corrupting society by betrayal. So in a sense, just as the golden calf episode was a betrayal of God, this is an example of betrayal of human beings, and we want to avoid betrayal. So at that stage, let’s call it a day for today, and I will turn to the questions and see what we can do.

Q&A and Comments

Q: Yusra Doncic asks, “Is there another census?” A: Yes, census is a very interesting issue. Very interesting issue. And the… There’s a famous census taken by King David that led to also of his armed forces, of the people that led to a curse, and a famine, and a problem. So there was a bias against census. If the purpose of the census was just to say, look how good we are, or look how big we are, there’s another census that’s going to be taken again in the Torah. So there are two in a sense. There are two because remember we’re going to repeat a lot of things, but this is the important one, and you rightly point out that the taking of the shekel was also a form of census which made people donate to the tabernacle. And there’s some debate as to whether this was the same sort of census, or whether it was a different census. The problem of course is, if you do link the two, then you have the problem of the fact that in this census here, it rounds the numbers up. And if you are counting people to donate, there’s no way they would’ve been rounded up all the time to the last hundred. So from that point of view, it is an anomaly, if you like, but censuses were looked on with suspicion, and later on, there was some talk about an evil eye, and some superstitious feature like that. But generally, it was felt that people should not be numbered simply by the accident of birth, but numbered rather by their achievements and what they did.

Barry, thank you for passing on the good wishes from Barry Landy. Please return them. I don’t know which biotech he’s referring to. Certainly anybody who knows Cambridge University is not in London. So I have to check back on which one you’re referring to. Is it on the Lockdown University or is it not? But thanks for pointing it out. I hadn’t bothered to look. And again, please send Barry and his lovely wife my warmest regards.

Q: Shelly Shapiro, “Why are the tribes mentioned in order of Leah’s sons, Rachel’s sons, Rachel’s handmade, Bilhah’s sons, Leah’s handmade, Leah’s sons, and not in order of their birth?” A: And my assumption is, Shelly, that they’re doing it to give status. That there was status to the sons of the main wives and less status to those of the concubines. We then move on to another one from Shelly.

Q: “Were the mixed multitude and Jethro’s children who stayed with the Israelites exempt from fighting because they didn’t have a tribe and aren’t counted?” A: You are absolutely right, Shelly. They were not included in the census. The census was explicitly for the children of Israel. That didn’t mean to say they didn’t have rights, didn’t have citizenship, and we’re going to come to Jethro’s children in due course because there’s a question as to whether they integrated or didn’t integrate. Did they stay or not? Because if you go back to Exodus, then after the encounter between Jethro and Moses, he went home, but clearly they were still around as we’re going to see.

Q: So Elliot asked, “What about the multiple wives and concubines? Does all this contradict the beauty and sacred nature of loyalty? Very confusing.” A: Yes, I don’t think it’s loyalty rather a status. And unfortunately, as in this day and age today, we still have royal families that have status and priorities, and although there might have been second rate or illegitimate children, they just don’t count. So that seems to have been the norm for thousands of years. Fortunately, we no longer have this tribal element. It disappeared basically with the end of the second temple, although it already began to disappear during the end of the first temple. So we evolved from a tribal structure to a different one, and in this one then, you know, everything is a matter of contract. For example, there are many . That, is marriage certificates that were a requirement from the Talmud before you get married. a document. And we have many collections going back for thousands of years, of different kinds. And they all have conditions, and these conditions state what second wise rights are, some of them, what right one has to appoint a wife without the agreement of a wife, what their status is. These were all things that could be fixed by contract and by Jewish law, which is why you have so many laws dealing with these issues in the Talmud, and continue to occupy Jewish legal debate.

Q: Shelly says, “The Torah says a man who has sex with a married woman, no matter his marital status, will be stoned with her. Why then is there no mention of the man in this idea of the ?” A: Well, the answer, Shelly, is because there were no witnesses, and you can’t convict anybody of a crime if there are no witnesses. So here we have a situation where we’re using a device to try to clarify a situation, and to repair things, which is why the rabbis go on to say that if everything works out, the marriage is repaired. This is a kind of a marriage council type of mechanism, which is designed to keep them together, and why they will stay together, and why they will have children and live happily ever after, and this silly nonsense will be forgotten if that’s what it was.

Gala, “I’m glad I could make sense of this 'cause I struggled to make sense of it, but nevertheless.” Susan says, “Polygamy gave protection to unmarried women, especially if there’s a shortage of unmarried men.” Well, you are right, and it’s very interesting because you might know that during the war between Iraq and Iran under the time of Saddam Hussein, and yes they did in those days actually kill each other and they killed many more of each other than the Israelis and the Jews ever have, but nobody wants to mention that more because they’re so blind, and biassed, and prejudiced. But during that time, because so many Persian men died, the mullahs officially declared that you could have multiple wives because having a wife was going to protect the widow or protect a woman who, if she didn’t have a husband to protect her, would be severely handicapped in society and in life.

So polygamy sometimes does have benefits, and really was allowed to marry another woman right up until 1948 when coming to Israel, being expelled from Arab lands, they abided by civil law, as well as adapting religious law because remember, the Ashkenazi had been forbidden to have more than one wife for a thousand years since the time of Rabbeinu Gershom. But in the oriental world, they could, and again, this is why the was so important because if you have a wife, a second wife comes in, she wants to be protected, she wants to know she’ll be treated well, and therefore, that is a possibility and we should respect it.

Or we did once upon a time, now no longer. Although in England, I believe that if somebody comes in with several wives, they’re all supported by the state, and may be given separate accommodation at the expense of the state. I dunno if that happens in France. I’d be surprised, but you never know. Again says, Robert, thank you. Perhaps the role of status could reflect real life reconciling universal lab values with particularistic responsibilities. Robert, I like that idea. I think that’s a very, very important idea, and I’m sure that that underlies the concepts that we’ve been discussing here.

So thank you everybody for joining the debate and the discussion, and look forward to seeing you next week.