Page 16 - SPRING 2024 News and Views

Surprising Insights Len Wigg

When Lymington Friends closed their library I ‘met’ the former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks for the first
time – through two of his books. I had heard him speak quite often on Radio 4 however, and valued his
insights and wisdom.

You are reading this, as you would the books, from left to right, one word at a time, focused on specific
details and gathering the sense progressively, finding their component parts. That demands the activity
of our left brain hemisphere. However Hebrew is written in consonants from right to left. As an
illustration, think of how many English words you can make using ‘B’ and ‘D’ adding one or two vowels,
before, between or after. A few could be: bad, bed, bid, bud, bade, abode, bead etc.

Thus there are clusters of consonants, with which our right brain engages, because we are now reading
right to left. Therefore imagine how much brain effort is needed to find the sense. This hemisphere is
strong on empathy and emotion, moods and ambiguity. In Hebrew this allows a kind of rhyming couplet
we find in poetry, with the key words or theme of the line which provides the echo, because of the
change in the vowel. This is especially true if spoken or sung, because we are not only reading but
hearing– as applies to the Psalms for instance. The Old Testament is full of stories, told and retold over
the generations as families celebrated the sequence of festivals through the year, like the Passover and
harvests.

But it was particularly in Jonathan Sacks many discussions about the significance of the book Genesis to
our understanding of Abrahamic monotheism that has been most illuminating. Sociologists have shown
that we develop a sense of personal identity through conversations with other people, initially parents.
This is shown when God says about the first human ‘It is not good for ‘the man’ to be alone’. He then
creates the first woman, and when the man awakes, he recognises that bone and flesh have been taken
from him, so he calls her ‘woman’ [ishah] because she was taken from man [ish]. What we do not
realise in English is that the name Adam is derived from [adamah] - the earth, so man is a biological
species. However [ish] means a person, and this is the first verse in which [ish] is found. Thus we are
both chemical; atoms of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, calcium etc. but also personal, relating to one
another, and I expect we would wish to add ‘spiritual’ as well.

The story develops; humans may be mortal but something of them survives their death – their children
born in love. At this point Adam gave his wife the name [chavah] Eve which means ‘the mother of all
life’. And this is a name, not a noun. Thus Adam speaks the name of his wife before he can pronounce his
own. This underlies the whole idea of covenants which are about belonging; two people agree to create
a ‘we’, a relationship which is often open-ended and enduring. The simplest example is a marriage.

Covenants are rooted in trust, and are found repeatedly in the Old Testament. We read that God makes
them with all of the significant people through history like Moses, Saul, and David, and also with people
other than the children of Israel. Initially with Abraham’s contemporary, Melchizedek, king of Salem,
while not a member of the covenantal family, but still a priest of the Most High God. Later he is
acknowledged by Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law and a Midianite priest. Two historic and heroic women,
Tamar was a Canaanite and Ruth a Moabite, both had places of honour in Israel’s history, and ancestors
of king David no less. Both are named in the genealogical tree of Jesus which we find in Mathew’s
gospel.

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