my father was a wandering aramean meaning

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An Aramean Destroyed My Father

Commentaries on the Haggadah contrast the evil of Laban with Pharaoh and see Laban as a symbol for political, sociological, and psychological evil.

By Jeffrey Spitzer

"They pour him a second cup, and here the child asks the parent [about what makes this night different]–and according to the child’s understanding, the parent teaches, beginning with shame and concluding with praise, interpreting from arami oved avi (‘My father was a wandering Aramean’) until he finishes the entire passage" (Mishnah Pesachim 10:4).

This passage in the Mishnah defines what is seen as the core of the Haggadah. The traditional Passover Haggadah includes a long section of midrash (rabbinic interpretation) in which the verses Deuteronomy 26:5-8 are dissected and associated with other verses and interpreted in light of the spiritual and political history of the Jewish people. The traditional text of this midrash begins:

"Come and learn what Laban the Aramean sought to do our father Jacob. For Pharaoh issued his edict against only the males, but Laban sought to uproot all, as it is said, ‘An Aramean would have destroyed my father, and he went down to Egypt and he became there a nation, great, mighty and populous.’" The Haggadah understands the word oved (wandering) as ibed (destroyed), changing the vocalization of the word. Read this way, Laban the Aramean destroyed my father, that is, Jacob. Of course, Laban did not destroy Jacob; they made a covenant not to kill each other. Consequently, Laban is usually seen as one who would have destroyed Jacob. It should be noted that while the great French commentator Rashi (1040-1105) accepts this reading, the Spanish commentator Ibn Ezra (1089-1164) strongly rejects it, noting the problem with the grammar and the non sequitur with "and he went down to Egypt." According to Ibn Ezra, the verse refers to Jacob, who, when he was in Aram, was lost. Rashbam (c. 1085-1174) also rejects (his grandfather) Rashi’s interpretation, but argues that the verse more appropriately applies to Abraham, who can correctly be identified as an Aramean. The following passages, drawn from commentaries to the Passover Haggadah, understand this passage about the Aramean as different kinds of threat to the people of Israel.

Deriving Intention

"An Aramean wanted to destroy my father." Since Laban did not actually succeed in doing evil to our father Jacob, we must derive his intentions from his words. He himself admitted, "It is in my power to do harm to you" (Genesis 31:29), and this shows his evil intention. Laban wanted to root out the whole, to kill the mother and child when he says "The daughters are mine and their children are mine, and the flocks are mine, and all that you see is mine" (Genesis 31:43), that is, they should be mine, if God had not prevented me. –Isaac ben Judah Abarbanel (1437-1508), Portuguese philosopher and scholar, from his commentary on the Haggadah, written in 1496

Destroying Jacob’s Fatherhood

An Aramean wanted to destroy my fatherhood. When Laban said, "The daughters are mine and their children are mine, and the flocks are mine," he wanted them to still be his and be called by his name. In this, he wanted to destroy Jacob’s fatherhood, that is, his title of "father." In truth [Rachel and Leah] had said "Are we not as strangers to him (i.e., to our father, Laban)?" that is, Laban no longer had the title of "father" over them. –Rav Tzadok haKohen of Lublin (1823-1900), Polish Hassidic Tzaddik, Sefer Dover Tzedek

Laban vs. Pharaoh

Why does the Haggadah consider Laban worse than Pharaoh? Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt because Joseph was already there. Joseph had been sold by his brothers into Egypt because his brothers had envied the way their father favored their youngest brother, who was born in Jacob’s old age. Joseph was born in Jacob’s old age because Rachel’s marriage had been delayed. Rachel’s marriage had been delayed because Laban tricked Jacob by giving him Leah rather than Rachel as a wife. Had Jacob married Rachel first, Joseph would have been the firstborn and his brothers wouldn’t have envied him and wouldn’t have sold him into slavery. If he had not been sold into slavery, Jacob and his sons would not have gone down to Egypt. If they had not gone down to Egypt, their descendants would not have been enslaved under Pharaoh. We learn from all this that if it had not been for the act of deceit of Laban, there would not have been a Pharaoah as we know him. –R. Azriel Hildesheimer (1820-1899), German rabbi and educator, from his haggadah commentary, Hukkat HaPesach

The First Exile of Israel (i.e., Jacob)

The key to the Haggadah’s midrash on arami oved avi is the covenant with Abraham cited earlier in the Haggadah, "?your seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them and they shall afflict them? Afterward they shall come out with great wealth?and the fourth generation shall come here again" (Genesis15:13-16). The language of the text–"stranger (gerut)," "serve (avdut)," and "afflict (inuy)"–applies not only to Israel, but to Jacob who lived in a strange land, served Laban, and was afflicted by him. Then Jacob left Laban’s service with great wealth (and with Laban chasing after him), and his children (the fourth generation) returned to the land. Laban’s persecution of Jacob confronts us with the image that this cycle of exile, persecution, and return predated our enslavement and redemption from Egypt and reinforces the Haggadah’s message that redemption can and does recur in every generation. — Devora Steinmetz, "An Aramean in Every Generation" (unpublished paper), Assistant Professor of Talmud, Jewish Theological Seminary of America

Hatred Without Reason

How can it say "Pharaoh decreed against only the males"? Does scripture not say, "The enemy said:? I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them" (Exodus 15:9)? Pharaoh wanted to destroy the whole! The Haggadah’s intention is to say that in every generation there are those who stand against us and hate us without any reason. Consequently, the Haggadah does not recall the hatred of Esau, who had a reason to hate since Jacob took his blessing, and the pursuit by Pharaoh after Israel was in order to return them to Egypt; if they would not return, then he would make war against them. But Laban had no reason to hate Jacob who had done so much good for him, and similarly, Pharaoh’s decree against the male children was without reason. –Rabbi Judah Loew (Maharal) of Prague, (1525-1609) Sefer Gevurot Hashem, 54, published in the Ostrog Haggadah

Still Seeking Destruction

An Aramean destroys my father. The word oved is present tense and means destroys . Laban was always trying to destroy Jacob and even today, the forces that he represents are still seeking the destruction of Israel. –R. Zalman Sorotzkin (1881-1966), Lithuanian rabbi and communal leader, from his posthumously published Haggadah commentary, Sefer HaShir vehaShevach

The Enemy Within

The Haggadah teaches us through Laban’s example that Jews ought to fear the enemy within as much or even more than the enemy without. While non-Jewish persecutors, such as Pharaoh, have taken their toll of Jewish lives throughout history, even more Jews have been lost through the blandishments of the Labans of the world. Those presumably close to us–our "family"–have caused more danger to the Jewish community through the scourge of assimilation. Their kiss has been the kiss of death. –Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, modern Orthodox rabbi and leader of the Jewish community of Efrat, The Passover Haggadah (KTAV, 1983)

Evil Inclination

I remember when I was a little child at the seder of [my grandfather], Rabbi Jacob Aryeh, I heard from his holy mouth concerning [the verse, "an Aramean would have destroyed my father"] that there are two kinds of yetzer hara (evil inclination). The first is like Esau; it kills through the temptation to sin, which causes a person to forfeit both this life and the life of the world to come. This is the common form, which affects average people. There is, however, another form of the yetzer hara that is like Laban the Aramean, which convinces a person that a mitzvah (a commandment) is a sin or that a sin is a mitzvah. And this kind of yetzer hara can come against even a tzaddik (a righteous person), since it comes through trickery (rama’ut, a pun on Aramean). And this is what the Haggadah means by saying that Laban wanted to uproot the whole, since this kind of yetzer hara can affect everyone, including the righteous. This is what I heard from my grandfather, and his face was lit up like a flame and he appeared like an angel. –Rabbi Jacob Aryeh ben Solomon Guterman of Radzymin (1792?1874), Polish Hassidic Tzaddik quoted by his grandson Aaron Menahem Mendel, Haggadah Commentary Tzemach Menahem

Shame to Praise

In Temple times, people would recite this passage from Deuteronomy when they brought their first fruits on Shavuot. The Mishnah describes its use in the seder as part of the teaching that proceeds from shame to praise. The shame is the desperation brought on by hunger; the root oved is the same as the root of the word in the second paragraph of the shema "[if you stray from God,] the land will stop producing its fruit and you will quickly perish (v’avad’tem) off of the good land" (Deuteronomy 11:17). "My ancestors were starving Arameans." The person bringing the first fruits to the Temple in Jerusalem remembers the shame of the famine that led his ancestor Jacob and the Jewish people into slavery in Egypt and praises God for the redemption from Egypt and the restoration to the Land of Israel with its abundant harvest. The person at the seder recalls this hunger with his invitation, "Let all who are in need, come and eat." And throughout Passover, we remind ourselves of our blessings by eating lehem oni, the bread of poverty. –Rabbi Roy Tanenbaum, Congregation Beth Tzedec, Toronto

Pronounced: huh-GAH-duh or hah-gah-DAH, Origin: Hebrew, literally “telling” or “recounting.” A Haggadah is a book that is used to tell the story of the Exodus at the Passover seder. There are many versions available ranging from very traditional to nontraditional, and you can also make your own.

Pronounced: MISH-nuh, Origin: Hebrew, code of Jewish law compiled in the first centuries of the Common Era. Together with the Gemara, it makes up the Talmud.

Pronounced: MITZ-vuh or meetz-VAH, Origin: Hebrew, commandment, also used to mean good deed.

Pronounced: SAY-der, Origin: Hebrew, literally “order”; usually used to describe the ceremonial meal and telling of the Passover story on the first two nights of Passover. (In Israel, Jews have a seder only on the first night of Passover.)

Pronunced: TORE-uh, Origin: Hebrew, the Five Books of Moses.

Pronounced: TZAH-dik or tzah-DEEK, Origin: Hebrew, a righteous person.

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“My Father Was a Wandering Aramean…”: The Ethical Legacy of Our Origins in Exile (Parashat Ki Tavo, Deuteronomy 26:1-29:8)

Seventy Faces of Torah is a pluralistic Jewish scriptural commentary, produced by Hebrew College.

By Dr. Rachel Adelman

Through two thousand years of diaspora, the Jewish people have preserved a relationship to God and our tradition, keeping alive the promise of return to our homeland. At the center of that promise of return, paradoxically, is a consciousness of the gift of the land, God’s land—neither “your land” nor “my land”. This concept forms the centerpiece of this week’s Torah portion, which begins with the words “ ki tavo /When you come into the land....”, and carries an ethical responsibility that emerges from the way we tell the story of our claim to that land.

Throughout history, the immanent connection of a people to its land has most often entailed a claim of indigenousness. For example, according to ancient Greek myth, the original ancestors of the land were said to be born of the ground itself as autochthones (a “people sprung from the soil”). The Jewish myth of origins also informs our relationship to the land, but our hope of homecoming, and the sense of ourselves as an “eternal people”, is grounded, ironically, in the claim that we were originally strangers in a strange land.

We are not an indigenous people, native to the land, but a nation whose origins reside in exile, and whose fate is exile if we fail to uphold the covenant. Exile serves as bookends, though not the hoped-for ultimate end, of our collective narrative.

This week’s Torah reading opens with a recap of that narrative history in the context of the first fruits offering ( bikkurim ). It is a formula every pilgrim must recite when they bring their first harvest to the priests in the Temple on the holiday of Shavuot. The recitation begins: “Today I declare to Adonai your God that I have come into the land that Adonai swore to our ancestors to give us…” (Deuteronomy 26:5), and continues:

A wandering Aramean was my father [ ’arami ’oved avi ]; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to Adonai, the God of our ancestors; Adonai heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. Adonai brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. (Deuteronomy 26:7-9)

The story is told in the first person singular and conveyed in the ever-present, as if entry into the land happened “today”, though the event was experienced by the collective long ago. Despite the destruction of the Temple, we retell this precis of our collective history yearly over the course of the Passover seder, as the centerpiece of the haggadah. But why is the story told as one’s own story (in the first person singular)? And who is the wandering Aramean, identified as “my father” or ancestor?

Based on rabbinic tradition, the great commentator Rashi identifies this ancestor as the patriarch Jacob, whom Laban his father-in-law, an Aramean, caused to wander and nearly destroyed. The plain sense of the passage, though, favors Abraham (Jacob’s grandfather) as the “father”. From the first imperious Divine command, lekha-lekha, “go you forth from your land…” (Genesis 12:1), Abraham was wrenched from his native home and set on a path to the “promised land” of Canaan. He is the quintessential Hebrew ( ‘ivri, literally “one who crosses over”), from beyond the river Euphrates (Joshua 24:2). Throughout his lifetime, Abraham wanders as a “stranger” and “resident alien”, even within the boundaries of Canaan (Genesis 23:4), the promise of redemption withheld until the future Exodus from Egypt. As God tells him:

Know this for certain, that your offspring shall be strangers in a land not their own, and shall be slaves there, and they shall be oppressed for four hundred years…And they shall come back here [to the promised land of Canaan] in the fourth generation…” (Genesis 15:13-16)

The possession of the land is contingent on a period of oppression and exile. Unlike the Athenians, we emerge as a people from a common ancestor (the “wandering Aramean”) who has no claim to the land other than God’s conditional promise that undergirds the terms of the covenant at Sinai: “Now, then, if you will obey Me faithfully and keep My covenant, you shall be My treasured possession among all the peoples, for the land is mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation…” (Exodus 19:5-6)

Obeying the Divine will as a condition of chosenness for this purpose is reiterated in this week’s Torah reading, in the prelude to the renewal of the covenant in the plains of Moab: “Today, Adonai has obtained your agreement: to be God’s treasured people, as God promised you, and to keep God’s commandments” (Deuteronomy 26:17). The land is a tenuous gift that is conditional upon loyalty to the covenant, and exile is a collective consequence for transgression.

But there is another dimension to this promise. Schooled as “strangers in a land not their own,” descendants of the wandering Aramean, the way we tell our history serves as the basis for a higher ethic, as it says throughout the Torah: “You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt”. It is precisely the consciousness of being alien (with its concomitant sensitivity to the other) that ironically grants the right to dwell in the land.

The short history we recite, again and again--upon recalling the Exodus at Passover and offering the first fruits--reminds us of this tenuous relationship to the land, a contingent gift from God. What raises us to “chosenness” and confers a claim to that gift is the mandate of compassion for the stranger in our midst, and remembering that we were once (and on an existential level, may always be), strangers in a strange land. We are called upon to link living in the land with compassion for and just behavior towards those “strangers” who dwell among us.

Rachel Adelman, PhD is an assistant professor of Bible at Hebrew College .

Interested in a possible career in the rabbinate? Read Rabbi Dan Judson’s article “ Jewish Lessons on Meaningful Work. " Rabbi Judson teaches history, oversees the professional development program, and serves as the placement director for the Hebrew College Rabbinical School. He has a PhD in Jewish history from Brandeis University.

From Our Partner

The Bible A TO Z

Why would the israelites call their father a wandering aramean.

Published by

Andrew Barry

1. A God given liturgy for future generations

Does God tell his people exactly what to say when they gather to serve him? Does he give a liturgy for his people to follow in perpetuity? For the most part, he seems not to. Look throughout the Scriptures and notice that wedding and funeral services are not described in any detail for future generations. There is no chapter and verse like the detail of The Book of Common Prayer within the Bible. But we are not left in the dark. Much is said about marriage. The Christian theology of marriage shapes the way a wedding service is conducted. Funeral customs from different cultures can be shaped by the sure hope of the resurrection for those who trust in Jesus Christ.

But an individual act of confession bucks that trend; and importantly this is found in the monoculture of ancient Israel. When the Israelites first enter the land of promise, they are told to stand before God and bring their first-fruits to his altar.

Then the priest shall take the basket from your hand and set it down before the altar of the LORD your God. “And you shall make response before the LORD your God, Deut 26:4

And then this confession comes condensed in three words in Hebrew, all starting with Alephs. אֲרַמִּי֙ אֹבֵ֣ד אָבִ֔י (Arami Obed Avi)

A wandering Aramean was my father Deut 26:5

2. A God given framing for future generations with first-fruits

Before we examine why they would describe their father as “an Aramean”, and what “wandering” might mean, we must see that in its context, this confession is an enduring expression of the grace of God, a framing for future generations. These are not, in fact, the opening salvos of the liturgy. Before the first-fruits are handed over, a bold statement is made.

And you shall go to the priest who is in office at that time and say to him, ‘I declare today to the LORD your God that I have come into the land that the LORD swore to our fathers to give us.’ Deut 26:3

God has kept his promises; the first-fruits is an expression. Having handed the tokens of his blessing, a theological history is recounted, which starts off with, “A wandering Aramean was my father” (Deut 26:5).

This father is clearly Jacob/Israel, who went down to Egypt “few in number” and came back a “nation, great, mighty and populous” (Deut 26:5). The individual recounts God’s work in bringing them out of Egypt and into “a land flowing with milk and honey” (Deut 26:5-9). They then present the first-fruits of the soil before God and worship and rejoice before him “in all the good the LORD has given to you and your house”. (Deut 26:10-11)

At first reading it seems like this event was a one-off ceremony, but the details also imply that this reenactment could happen every year as the new season arrived. When they enjoy their crop of harvest, God is calling them to remember not just what he has done, but to never forget where they have come from. Never forget in the face of the abundance of wheat, barley or olives, their corporate story, that their father was a wandering Aramean.

3. But was father Jacob an Aramean?

This declaration of a godly Israelite in Canaan states that their father was a Aramean. When we remember that another translation of this word is Syrian, is there a scandal lurking beneath this confession?

Here’s what we do know. Jacob’s mother’s family was Aramean. His maternal grandfather is called Aramean (Gen 25:20; 28:5) and so is his uncle Laban (Gen 31:20, 24). The place Jacob fled to was called Paddan-aram, outside the land of Canaan (Gen 25:20; 28:2,5-7; 31:18; 33:18; 35:9,26). Eleven of Jacob’s sons were born in Paddam-aram (Gen 35:22-26 cf. 33:1-2). It was where he spent the best parts of his life. The children might have identified at least as culturally Aramean. If you’ve moved countries, sweated to create a new life, and raised a family, you do feel like you belong to that new country. Jacob’s is the migrant’s story.

But nowhere else in the Bible is Jacob himself called an Aramean, and his relatives are referred to as Aramean to distinguish them from him. Jacob was of the seed of Abraham. Jacob’s family blessing was focused in Canaan, but he lived most of his life with his other relatives just outside the promised land. If Abram was called from Ur of the Chaldeans, Jacob was called away from the Arameans. Interestingly, God blesses and changes his name only as he left Paddam-aram to return again to Canaan (Gen 35:9).

God appeared to Jacob again, when he came from Paddan-aram, and blessed him. And God said to him, “Your name is Jacob; no longer shall your name be called Jacob, but n Israel shall be your name.” So he called his name Israel. Gen 35:9-10

The much later prophet Hosea tells the whole story of Jacob/Israel from Canaan to Aram, and then to Egypt and back to Canaan again.

Jacob fled to the land of Aram; there Israel served for a wife, and for a wife he guarded sheep. By a prophet the LORD brought Israel up from Egypt, and by a prophet he was guarded. Hos 12:12-13

God’s renewing mercy came to Jacob as a foreigner outside the land of promise in Aram. He was in a sense “an Aramean”. If the Israelites were called out from the nations around them, then they need to remember that they were “once not a people” and the were formerly part of the gentiles around.

4. What sort of ‘Aramean’ was Jacob: wandering, perishing or lost?

My greater difficulty is not the word “Aramean”. When you read the story, that makes sense. The greater difficulty lies with the word “wandering”.

The word in Hebrew is the participle, אֹבֵד (‘bd). You might recognise it from the related word Abaddon, destruction. This particular participle (QAL) form is nowhere else in the ESV translated “wandering”, but rather:

perishing (of animals and people) – Job 4:11, 29:13, 31:19; Prov 31:6; Eccl 7:15
lost (of animals and people) – 1 Sam 9:20 (donkeys); Is 27:13 (exiles); Jer 50:6 (sheep – metaphoric for people), Ezekiel 34:16 (sheep – metaphoric for people), Psa 119:176 (sheep – metaphoric for people);
void (of counsel) – Deut 32:28
broken (of a vessel) – Psa 31:13

What if we read the statement as perishing or lost rather than wandering? Sure he fled and then returned to Canaan, but Jacob worked for his uncle Laban for decades in the one location. Maybe God’s grace is deeper here.

Arguments for “perishing”:

In the context of the first-fruits in Deuteronomy 26, the focus is on food. Because of the famine, Jacob and his family were about to die in Canaan (42:1-3; 43:1). They were saved by their journey to Egypt; and indeed by their mistreatment of Joseph and the plan God had for him. “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” (Gen 50:20) When the Israelites come before God they remember that, in the loins of their father, they were almost dead, but God saved them and brought them through the hardship of Egypt to the bounty of the promised land.

Arguments for “lost”:

Perhaps there is a more metaphoric view here, like the times when the Israelites are referred to as lost sheep (Jer 50:6; Ezekiel 34:16; Psa 119:176)? My father was a lost Aramean. Jacob was a shepherd his whole life and especially at Aram his shepherding of sheep turns around his fortune. He is the first in the Bible to see that God was his shepherd. When blessing his sons he tells that the “Mighty One of Jacob” is “The Shepherd”(Gen 49:24).

“Perishing” and “lost” intersect in their meaning when it is clear that lost sheep would by nature also be defenceless and perishing. Interestingly the New Testament stories of the lost sheep and prodigal son use the Greek “perishing” word when describing the one who was lost and is now found (Luke 15:4, 6, 24).

Probably I would suggest that we follow the King James Version’s more humbling translation.

“A Syrian ready to perish was my father” DeuT 26:5 (KJV)

5. Once was lost, now I am found; once dead, now alive.

As saved people in the New Testament we must never forget who we were. And we have an Old Testament example of personal and family testimony.

The Israelites in one of their only divinely-mandated liturgies are told to remember that they were just one of the nations and that they were perishing, like lost sheep, before God led them to and from Egypt into the promised land.

Saving the perishing and finding the lost is a point of continuity between the Old and New Covenants. Jesus said to Zacchaeus, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost (lit. perishing).” (Lk 19:9-10) Perhaps Jesus is saying that Zacchaeus is very much like one of Abraham’s children have always been at there deepest identity; perishing and lost. When the prodigal son is now enjoying the restored relationship with his father and enjoying his new robe, fattened calf and rings on his fingers, he would need to remember that he was dead and now is alive again, was lost and now is found (Lk 15:24).

And further, perhaps the saving of people from all kinds of nations is hidden in embryonic form in the Hebrew declaration. The essential nature of the Old Testament Israelites is precisely the same as the New Covenant Christians. “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (1 Peter 2:10)

With three Hebrew words, the Israelites, God’s first-fruits, remembered where they came from when they gave their own first-fruits.

“A wandering Aramean was my father” Deut 26:5 ESV

Or, even more helpfully ..

“A Syrian ready to perish was my father” DeuT 26:5 KJV

It may be wrong to look back longingly, like Lot’s wife at what we have been saved from; but it is a God-given practice for us to look back and confess where his grace has led us.

Deuteronomy 26:5

What does deuteronomy 26:5 mean.

The Fugitive Aramean and You

D'Var Torah By: Rabbi Jonathan E. Blake

". . . My father was a fugitive Aramean. He went down to Egypt with meager numbers and sojourned there; but there he became a great and very populous nation" (Deuteronomy 26:5).

Are these words familiar? If you've ever participated in a Passover seder, then they might be! This quotation forms the kernel of the Passover Haggadah. When we tell our story at the seder we begin here.

The line comes from our Torah portion, Ki Tavo. The Israelites await orders to enter the Promised Land. Once they arrive in the Land, settle it, and cultivate it, they must present a basket full of the first fruit of their harvest to the priest. They are told to recite a formula, a compact narrative of the Israelite experience, from nomadic roaming to bondage to deliverance to inheritance of the Land. That formula begins with the invocation "My father was a fugitive Aramean," or so our text translates it.

In Hebrew, the line presents ambiguities that preclude a definitive translation. Arami oveid avi , the Hebrew reads. The words Arami , "Aramean" (meaning a person from the territory of Aram, in modern-day Syria), and avi , "my father," are easily translated. But the meaning of oveid is less clear. Oveid (from the root alef-vet-dalet ) can mean"to lose," but it can also mean"to perish" or"destroy." In the context of the portion, it might mean"to be lost,""to go astray," or, as our translation has it, to be a"fugitive." But Jewish tradition suggests other possible renderings.

A comparison of different translations of the Haggadah proves this. The most recent Reform Movement Haggadah, The Open Door: A Passover Haggadah (ed. Sue Levi Elwell [New York: CCAR Press, 2002], p. 46), says:"My ancestors, wandering Arameans, went down to Egypt and sojourned there, few in number." It adds this explanatory note:"We are descendants of wanderers from the region known as Aram. Abram and Sarai left their home to follow God to an unknown land" (ibid.).

The Open Door identifies the"fugitive" or"wandering" Arameans with our ancestors, Abram and Sarai-that is to say, a patriarch and a matriarch of the Jewish people-pioneers who left home to answer God's call.

On the other hand , The Soncino Koren Haggada (Brooklyn, 1965) says:"AN ARAMEAN SOUGHT TO DESTROY MY FATHER, AND HE WENT DOWN TO MIZRAYIM [Egypt]. . . ."

In contradistinction to our first example, the"Aramean" here is an enemy of our people!"An Aramean sought to destroy my father." Who is this Aramean bent on destroying our people? The traditional Haggadahidentifies him as Laban, who came from Aram. Laban, you might recall, cheated Jacob out of his betrothal to Rachel and presented him instead with Leah-and kept Jacob in indentured servitude for decades. Rabbinic tradition exaggerated Laban's blemishes and made him an archetype of evil and chicanery.

A typical "Orthodox" Haggadah like the Passover Haggadah (ed. Rabbi Nathan Goldberg [New York: Ktav, 1949-1966], p. 12) explains:"Come and learn what Laban the Syrian [Aramean] tried to do to our father Jacob. While Pharaoh decreed only against the males, Laban desired to uproot all."

Thus does tradition present us with a second version of the Arami oveid : not a wandering Jew, but a foreigner bent on destroying our people. We are left with two divergent understandings of the same three Hebrew words.

One translation makes us into intrepid pioneers. Our ancestors were wanderers who left their home, Aram, setting out on a journey of discovery, prompted by God's call to Abraham: Lech l'cha ,"Go forth . . ." (Genesis 12:1).

The other translation makes us into victims of enemies out to destroy us: Laban the Aramean tormented and pursued Jacob, as have countless tyrants and demagogues.

How we choose to translate our verse speaks to our most fundamental beliefs about Jewish history and Jewish identity. Are we Jews essentially pioneers, willing to establish home and heritage in all the new lands to which fate and faith have brought us? Or are we essentially victims, perpetually fleeing the next Laban, Nebuchadnezzar, Caesar, or Hitler who would seek our destruction?

My work as a congregational rabbi, and my life experience as a concerned Jewish citizen of the world, prompt me to worry about anti-Jewish sentiment. The apparent escalation of overt acts of Jew-hatred in parts of Europe, the Arab world, and on college campuses in the United States alarms me. But I worry even more about the detrimental effects of the victim mentality. A couple of years ago, when rockets rained down on Israel, I attended a local solidarity rally. How inspirational it was to stand with more than twelve hundred Jews, of all denominations, of all ages! However, my satisfaction at the dramatic turnout was tinged with regret, because every rabbi knows that opportunities to see twelve hundred people in temple are few and far between. Perhaps it is only natural that we put more passion and commitment into our Judaism when we perceive ourselves as under attack, but imagine a Jewish community that would put the same passion and commitment into learning Torah, observing holidays, creating vibrant and meaningful prayer services, and working for a more just society.

A room in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., houses the shoes of four thousand Jews gassed and cremated at Majdanek. Perhaps you have been there. No one leaves that room unmoved. It contains four thousand reasons to be Jewish. But this room alone does not inspire us to create an imaginative and meaningful Judaism for the twenty-first century and beyond.

Rabbi Jack Stern wrote, "We should take our children back beyond Auschwitz to Sinai. We should take our children forward beyond a system of life defense to a system of life value; beyond a sense of Jewish foreboding to a sense of Jewish commitment, and ultimately to the Shabbat and the Torah that some of our forebears left behind, which, in the final analysis, may be the best way of all to combat Anti-Semitism" ( The Right Not to Remain Silent," Anti-Semitism and Israel," Rosh HaShanah [Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 1983/5744], p. 177). Arami oveid avi.

My ancestors were victims. From Laban the Aramean to the present, we have never been safe.

Arami oveid avi.

My ancestors were wanderers who left Aram at God's call to start a new civilization in a land of promise.

There are two ways to understand this verse, and there are two kinds of Jews. Look into the Torah and see your reflection.

Rabbi Jonathan E. Blake is associate rabbi of Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, New York. A graduate of Amherst College (1995), he was ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2000 and was a regular contributor to 10 Minutes of Torah in 2005-2006.

Daver Acher By: Rabbi Dr. Edwin C. Goldberg

Rabbi Blake writes of two radically different ways to understand the biblical declaration Arami oveid avi . He also reminds us that we Jews are better off remembering Sinai more than Auschwitz, a sentiment that Leonard Fein brilliantly expressed in his 1988 reflection on Judaism, Where Are We? Inner Life of America's Jews (New York: HarperCollins).

Nevertheless, I would like to share a different understanding of the traditional Haggadah's (mis)reading of the verse. The Haggadah understands the verse as"An Aramean sought to destroy my father." This interpretation clearly does not reflect a grammatically appropriate reading of the text, but it does afford an important political interpretation.

How so? We generally assume that Pharaoh (and therefore Egypt) is the antagonist par excellence of the Jewish people. But during the time of the development of interpretation to be featured in the Haggadah, there was a shift in realpolitik. Following the death of Alexander the Great, the Egyptian Hellenistic nation, ruled by the Ptolemies, was an ally of Jerusalem. The Syrian Hellenistic nation became the enemy. It therefore became politically expedient to make the Aramean-and not Pharaoh-the bad guy. In the Haggadah, this new view presents itself with the statement that Pharaoh was not as bad as Laban the Aramean. Pharaoh sought to destroy Israelite males, but Laban sought to wipe out Jacob and therefore all the future Jewish people.

This interpretation is far-fetched, but it served an important purpose. It enabled representatives of Judea (during the Second Temple period) to overlook their traditional enmity with Egypt and build an important political alliance with the Ptolemaic dynasty.

We can learn from this ancient practice as we seek to build bridges with our traditional enemies. How so? If we always revert back to the narratives of competition and hatred, then there is little to bring to the negotiating table. For example, we can easily find stories of how the Palestinians (or Syrians for that matter) make peace seem impossible. Or, we can look for examples of the people, if not the government, reaching out for peace. Those stories are there to find as well. Even with Iran, the scary pronouncements of its government are tempered by stories of its people's more tolerant approach toward the West.

Unlike the Passover Haggadah's rendering of our verse, we need not affirm a traditional enemy by creating a new one. Instead we can hope for a world in which both Pharaoh and the Aramean become our peaceful neighbors, if not allies. Rabbi Blake teaches us there are two kinds of Jews, those who see Auschwitz and those who see Sinai. I would add that beyond choosing how we interpret our texts, we also can choose the stories we tell.

Rabbi Edwin C. Goldberg is senior rabbi at Temple Judea in Coral Gables, Florida.

Ki Tavo , Deuteronomy 26:1–29:8 The Torah: A Modern Commentary , pp. 1,508–1,537; Revised Edition, pp. 1,347–1,367; The Torah: A Women's Commentary , pp. 1,191–1,216

When do we read Ki Tavo

D'var torah author.

Rabbi Jonathan Blake (he/his/him) is the senior rabbi of Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, New York.

Daver Acher Author

Rabbi Edwin C. Goldberg is the senior rabbi of Temple Sholom of Chicago. He is the coordinating editor of the new High Holiday prayer book, Mishkan HaNefesh (CCAR). He has a doctorate in Hebrew Letters from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and has published five books, most recently Love Tales from the Talmud (URJ Press) and Saying No and Letting Go: Jewish Wisdom on Making Room for What Matters Most (Jewish Lights).

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English Translation of Ki Tavo

When Your Dad Is a Wandering Aramean

By the time we get to Deuteronomy 26, Moses has covered significant literary ground and is now giving instructions for corporate worship and specifically how the Israelites were to offer their first fruits and tithes. God, through Moses, is describing what worship in the land will look like and how it is to be done correctly. There is a give and take that occurred between the worshiper and the priest that introduced this segment of worship. And then the Israelites were instructed to repeat an unsettling liturgy:

"And you shall make response before the LORD your God, 'A wandering Aramean was my father. And he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number, and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous.'" (Deut. 26:5)

Really? A Wandering Aramean?

This portion of Israelite worship began in earnest with an unnerving confession of genealogical lore. What a strange title for Abraham. After all, Abraham was the beneficiary of the covenant promise. He was the father of the people of God—a nation by ethnicity and a covenant people by faith (Gal 3:29). He would be the one through whom the Davidic dynasty would be built. He would be a physical progenitor of the long awaited messiah.

Of all the titles that could be justly and in a God glorifying manner be applied to Abraham, why did God choose this one? A wandering Aramean? There is little there to take pride in and little there to build any kind of positive identity.

Or is there?

The Principle - The Humility Requisite for Worship

It is difficult to escape the conclusion from a brief study of Deuteronomy 26:5 that God has explicitly commanded the liturgy of biblical worship to be founded on a deep humility. It is an important principle to remember. As John Calvin insightfully comments in the opening of his Institutes ,

"It is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God's face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself."

There is an aggressive self-scrutiny demanded by God when he commands his people to begin their worship by mentioning a hero of Redemptive History with a less than flattering nickname—a wandering Aramean.

But that is just what we as worshipers both forget and therefore need to remember. There must be a humbling self-scrutiny about our worship that challenges the location of our identity. Our faithful God knew that his people would be prone to stake their identity on a thousand different things not the least of which would be their lineage from Abraham rather than on God's grace and mercy (John 8:39). It would not be enough to simply proclaim that God was great and had done amazing things. His people would also need to simultaneously confess that they were not great and had committed open and serial rebellion against their God. As church history has shown us, we cannot confess God's ultimate glory and simultaneously deny our total depravity.

It is that confession of lack, inability, and a checkered family history that keeps the people of God looking for a savior in some location other than their own spiritual accomplishments. A deep recognition of rampant inability guards against self-worship and reserves for God the right to be called solely and only—the Savior of sinners. Humility is the personal posture of the worshiping people of God exactly because honor, glory, and unapproachable awe is the personal posture of our worshiped God.

A Name In Which to Boast

The worship we see prescribed in Deuteronomy would find its partial fulfillment in the reigns of David and Solomon. Solomon's apostasy (1 Kings 11) marked a sometimes slow and sometimes free-fall decent into a double exile out of which Israel never really recovered. It is into that depressing scene that Jesus, the God-man, entered into human history. His law-fulfilling life, justice-satisfying death, and redemption-declaring resurrection would be the final answer to the question unresolved from Deuteronomy 26:5,

If we can't look to Abraham for our identity, then is there no man in whom we are to boast?

The wandering Aramean gave way to the Son of God. The man of faith gave way to the man in whom we place our faith. The beneficiary of the covenant gave way to the Mediator of the Covenant. The point of Deuteronomy 26:5 is not that there is no man in whom we might place our faith. The point is that our faith must firmly rest in Jesus, the only God and only mediator between God and men (1 Tim 2:5).

It is the work of Jesus that would finally solidify for the worshiping people of God an eternal humility (1 Cor 1:29). And so the people of God continue to open worship with an unnerving pronouncement about our spiritual heritage, a self-indicting and humility-producing liturgical device, a statement that declares simultaneously the profound exposure of our failings and the radiant mercy, power, and justice of God. It is said every Sunday in a dozen different forms. Put simply it goes like this:

"Welcome to worship in the name of Jesus Christ, Savior of sinners."

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Parshat Ki Tavo: A Wandering Aramean

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Rabbi Jesse Paikin

My father was a wandering, oppressed, renegade, refugee • Parashat Ki Tavo

D’var Torah I delivered this past Shabbat at Congregation Beth Emeth in Albany, NY.

Perhaps you’ve seen a recent humour piece in the New Yorker, entitled, “ No, I’m from New York. ” If you have ever lived in New York City, or really have even just spent time there, I think that you will appreciate its sardonic depiction of life in the so-called greatest city in the world, through the eyes of an ex-New Yorker who has moved to Los Angeles:

“A two-bedroom house with a front yard and a back yard? Psh. What do you need all that space for? Yoga? I’m from New York. I once paid… five thousand dollars a month to live in the garbage chute of a postwar luxury condominium on First Avenue. It’s important to live in terrible places when you’re young. A postwar! On First Avenue! That’s how you build character. All of this ‘actual house’ business makes you soft… Move back to New York? Come on. I’m from New York. I’m not going back there.”

Like this New Yorker-cum-Los Angelean, I come from another place – born in Toronto, lived in Montreal, before landing in New York, with a pit-stop in Jerusalem along the way.

I have lived in New York City for 8 years, and have come to call that great city home. At the same time, I maintain my Canadian identity with pride. It is an inextricable part of me. And so I am of two worlds – every day, I feel the magnetic tug towards my own true north – a reminder of my identity as one who left home.

To be sure, it is often when we go somewhere away from the place we call home, that we gain a stronger appreciation for the very things that make “home” — “home.”

Sometimes the differences between my two homes are subtle. We Canadians and Americans share a language and many cultural influences. Sometimes the differences are more noticeable, as they are for the garbage-chute-dwelling New Yorker who moved to Los Angeles and discovered the wonder that is a front yard.

I am not the only one to have had such an experience. We are, after all, blessed to live in an age of great mobility. But the experience is mine, and part and parcel of how I see myself. I share it with you this evening not only as an introduction, but because I believe that it is an experience that we all are meant to share.

Our parasha this week contains one of the most prominent phrases in the Torah: “My father was a wandering Aramean.” Arami Oved Avi . These three words, famous for their recitation during the Pesach seder, speak to the essence of how the Torah understands our identity: Our ancestors were wanderers. Like me, they came from somewhere else.

What does it mean to come from somewhere else?
And what does it mean that we not only have that experience in our own lives, but that it is inherited, part of the very make up of our DNA?
How does our understanding of our selves influence what it means to exist alongside others?

These are questions that are baked into the core of what it means to be Jewish, thanks to these three little words.

Arami Oved Avi . The words themselves are puzzling. Who is the avi – the father? He is not named. Who is the Arami – the Aramean? This character also remains mysteriously anonymous. And what does Oved mean? There are multiple options. We often translate the phrase as “My father was a wandering Aramean.” But this is not the only way to read the text.

Rashi’s classic assumption is that the Aramean and our father are two different characters, and that the phrase is best understood as meaning “An Aramean would have destroyed my father.” In this version, the father is our ancestor Jacob, who was oppressed by his uncle, Laban, while working to marry his beloved Rachel. Jacob would later be forced to leave his home in the land of Israel, and make his way to Egypt, a refugee of a great famine.

Others follow Rashbam’s teaching that the Aramean and our father are the same person – our ancestor Abraham. And it was he who sojourned, from somewhere in the ancient and distant land of Aram, to the promised land of Canaan. This gives us the popular translation, “My father was a wandering Aramean.”

My favourite reading of the text translates it as “My father was a renegade Aramean,” implying the significant changes that our ancestors sought to provoke – rebelling against their polytheistic paths, fleeing from persecution, and seeking to bring about a new order.

What each of these interpretations share is an understanding of our ancestors as having had the archetypal migrant experience – pushed or pulled from their native home; crossing great distances to arrive at a strange, foreign land.

Our parasha originally prescribed reciting Arami Oved Avi as part of the prayer that the Israelites offered after they entered into the land of Israel and harvested the first fruits of the land. I imagine our ancestors, dressed in their whitest clothes, having spiritually purified themselves, offering the choicest fruits nurtured in the soil of their new home to God in thanksgiving.

Later, Arami Oved Avi would be repurposed as the core text of the Passover haggadah, “guaranteeing that it would not languish along with other agricultural relics of early Israelite history,” as Rabbi Martin Lockshin puts it. Every year when we sit around our tables with family and friends, we recall the centrality of freedom in our tradition by reciting, Arami Oved Avi – our ancestors were renegades.

I think these three words are more than a historical memory. We recite them in the very presence of God, at the Pesach seder, and during a Torah reading just before Rosh Hashanah, when we are meant to look deep within ourselves and consider who we have been, and who we want to become.

Ibn Ezra drives the point home: When the worshipper declared, Avi – my father, they meant to say my parent, not someone else’s, but mine – mine was lost, and my relatives suffered, were liberated, and struggled to rebuild their lives.

Arami Oved Avi is not a statement of history. It is a statement of identity. It is one of the ways that we tell other people who we are.

But it is not a backward-looking identity rooted in a depressing history of perpetual persecution and oppression. Arami Oved Avi prompts us to look forward, and to question:

How does our understanding of ourselves as migrants influence what it means to exist alongside others?

Who are we? Are we wandering sojourners? Renegades? Yet another good option is “refugee.” What if we said: “My father was a… refugee.”

Our reading of this parasha falls at a particularly auspicious time, as world leaders gather in New York to address the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War. These leaders are faced with a question that has stymied countless others: what responsibility is owed to those in need of protection? On Monday, the UN held its first ever conference on refugees and migration. On Tuesday, President Barack Obama hosted a summit seeking commitments from countries to protect asylum seekers.

Journalist Joanna Slater describes the immensity of the task:

“The number of refugees and asylum seekers worldwide hit 25 million last year, according to the UN refugee agency. A further 41 million people were forcibly displaced within the borders of their own countries. Together it means that 1 out of every 113 people on earth have left their homes due to conflict.”

66 million refugees. 66 million sojourners. 66 million wandering Arameans.

Nicholas Kristoff, writing in this week’s New York Times, passionately argues that “As today’s leaders gather for their summit sessions, they should remember that history eventually sides with those who help refugees, not with those who vilify them.” In drawing the parallel to the 1938 Evian Conference on the Jewish refugee crisis caused by the Nazis, Kristoff prompts his readers with a haunting question: “Would you hide a Jew from the Nazis?

To us, he might ask: “Would you protect a refugee?”

Arami Oved Avi . “My father was a refugee…” Why does this passage appear here, in this place in the Torah? What is it about this moment in the Torah’s narrative that demands our awareness of our refugee past? It is found amidst a series of laws and rituals that includes the charge to uphold the rights of the weakest amongst our society – the widow, the orphan, and the refugee.

Arami Oved Avi was said precisely at the moment when our ancestors brought their offerings to God. Why, now, at this joyous time of renewal in the land of Israel, is this ritual introduced? Why the need to dwell on a tormented past?

Perhaps it is “essential to recall previous experiences of suffering and distress in times of ease,” as Rambam argues. Recalling our story in this way reminds us that the human experience is a mixed one, of successes and failures; of joys and disappointments. The triumph of freedom takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight. In declaring their refugee past at the very moment that they celebrated their return home, our ancestors powerfully evoked their understanding that nothing is to be taken for granted.

Having once been homeless, the Israelites are now home. Once refugees, they are now stewards of a new land, with the responsibility to internalize this past into a forward-looking vision of what it means to protect the rights of others. Kristoff’s lingering charge echoes in my ear: “Would you protect a refugee?”

Would you? Would I? I have to believe that I would say yes. I don’t think that I am allowed to say no.

I am no refugee. I am blessed with secure homes in two countries. But the Torah demands that we not turn our back on our ancient – and more recent – past as refugees. Our people knows what it feels like to come from another place; to feel lost; to struggle to build a new home. The Torah beckons us to not let that collective memory become a relic, but remain an ever-burning part of how we define ourselves.

When we say Arami Oved Avi – My father was a wandering, oppressed, renegade, refugee… We cannot let our father – our parents – just be two-dimensional characters from an ancient fairy tale. They call out to us today across space and time! So when refugees cry out, we are not allowed to say no. In that way, we might protect those who find themselves caught up in the very same story we have been telling ourselves for 2,000 years.

Deuteronomy “My Father Was a Wandering Aramean…”: The Ethical Legacy of Our Origins in Exile

Through two thousand years of diaspora, the Jewish people have preserved a relationship to God and our tradition, keeping alive the promise of return to our homeland. At the center of that promise of return, paradoxically, is a consciousness of the gift of the land, God’s land—neither “your land” nor “my land”. This concept forms the centerpiece of this week’s Torah portion, which begins with the words “ ki tavo /When you come into the land….”, and carries an ethical responsibility that emerges from the way we tell the story of our claim to that land.

The short history we recite, again and again—upon recalling the Exodus at Passover and offering the first fruits—reminds us of this tenuous relationship to the land, a contingent gift from God. What raises us to “chosenness” and confers a claim to that gift is the mandate of compassion for the stranger in our midst, and remembering that we were once (and on an existential level, may always be), strangers in a strange land. We are called upon to link living in the land with compassion for and just behavior towards those “strangers” who dwell among us.

Rachel Adelman, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of Bible at Hebrew College .

Learn more about Hebrew College’s rabbinical and cantorial programs on November 12, 2018 at Ta Sh’ma (Come & hear), a Fall Open House & Day of Learning for prospective rabbinical, rav-hazzan and cantorial students.

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Yedid Nefesh

Poetry and liturgy by rabbi brant rosen, my father, the wandering aramean….

In this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tavo, God instructs the Israelites, upon entering the Promised Land, to offer up the first fruits of their harvest. They are then to recite a short narrative of their history, beginning with their earliest ancestors and ending with their own arrival at the land.

This narrative, made famous by its central place in the Passover Haggadah, begins thus:

My father was a wandering Aramean. He went down to Egypt with meager numbers and sojourned there; but there he became a great and very populous nation…” (Deuteronomy 26:5)

The opening words of this passage have been the subject of considerable controversy for centuries. According to most commentators, the “wandering father” is identified as Jacob. This would certainly fit neatly into the Biblical narrative, as Jacob did indeed go down to Egypt with his sons during a period of famine.

In the traditional Passover Haggadah, however, the Rabbis translate the Hebrew “My father was a wandering Aramean” (“ arami oved avi “) very differently. By changing the vocalization of the Hebrew “ oved ” (“wandering”) to “ ibed ” (“destroyed”), they render the text to mean: “An Aramean sought to destroy my father.” (The Haggadah identifies this would-be murderer as Laban who, by threatening Jacob, “sought to uproot us all.”)

So which is it?

In true Jewish fashion, the debate rages on. Among the classical commentators, Rashi supports the Haggadah’s reading, while others, including Ibn Ezra adhere to the conventional interpretation. Rashbam accepts the “wandering Aramean” interpretation as well, but identifies the wanderer as Abraham rather than Jacob.

Beyond the fancy hermeneutics, however, I’m struck by the two spiritual models suggested by these respective translations. One highlights our wanderings, identifying our peoplehood with our collective seeeking – our desire to journey toward a better and more blessed future. The second model suggests we are essentially a hunted and hated people, forever on the run from those who would seek our destruction.

These two readings illuminate a critical question that inform our collective Jewish self-understanding to this very day. Centuries later, the question remains: with which narrative will we identify? The narrative in which we are the perpetual victim or the spiritual seeker? Does our story forever pit us against an eternal enemy – or does it ultimately celebrate our sacred purpose and the promise of blessing?

The Telling

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This Friday evening we will gather with family and friends. We will sit down to beautifully set tables, and each of us will open one of the most popular and well-known of Hebrew books—the Haggadah. The name of the book comes from the Hebrew verb lehagid (“to tell”), and if we were to translate “ haggadah ” into English, it would be “the telling.” Not surprisingly, the core of the Haggadah is the section called maggid , a word that also derives from the Hebrew root meaning “to tell.” Clearly these two forms of the verb lehagid communicate the centrality of the activity of “telling” on this night. But here things become less clear.

We might ask, about using the traditional text of the Haggadah on seder night:

What is it that we are telling?
What is it that we will try to tell our family and friends who will gather around our tables?
What is it we will seek to express?

Now, don’t answer immediately. The go-to response is often “We come together to retell the Exodus from Egypt. We were once slaves, and God broke us free from the bondage of slavery and took our ancestors out of the land of Egypt.”

True. But if the Exodus from Egypt really is the focus of “the telling,” then it is strange that large sections from the book of Exodus are not used in the Haggadah. If we want to retell the Exodus, what better source could we find than passages from the book of Exodus?! But the ancient Rabbis of the Mishnah who fashioned the seder ritual did not choose a biblical text from the book of Exodus; instead, as their centerpiece for the evening they selected a passage from the book of Deuteronomy!

The Rabbis of antiquity chose Deuteronomy 26:5–8 as the textual cornerstone for the Haggadah: “My father was a wandering Aramean. . .” I suggest that the ultimate meaning of the seder night and “the telling” are unlocked only when we understand this choice. The very message of the seder depends on the moment when we read this.

Ironically it was at this moment in the seders of my youth that everyone’s eyes began to glaze over. By that point, the high notes of the seder have passed. Gone are the Four Questions and the Four Children. What remains is the seemingly impenetrable rabbinic riffing on a biblical passage that itself feels inaccessible. I can still see my grandfather pointing to his watch, gently indicating to me that the time to wrap up this part of the seder was upon us. His look said, “Speed things up. Let’s get to Grandma’s gefilte fish.” For my family, and I imagine for many others, it is with the rabbinic unpacking of “My father was a wandering Aramean . . .” that the entire seder loses steam and people begin to frantically skip pages.

But it is here—at this very point—when Maimonides encourages us to add our own words and thoughts (Mishnah Torah, Laws of Leaven and Matzah 7:1). Ironically, it is with the passage “My father was a wandering Aramean . . .” that we are asked to add our own voices to the reading of this biblical text. Why here? And again, why was this passage chosen as the foundation for the Haggadah?

Deuteronomy describes the beginning of a new phase of Israel’s spiritual life. At long last the Israelites will be able to lay down foundations and build cities. They will be able to till the soil and take responsibility for their own sustenance. God instructs that every year, from the first generation to have entered the Land with Joshua and to all subsequent generations, each farmer must take from the season’s first produce and bring it to the Temple in Jerusalem as an offering of gratitude. Part of the drama of this moment has the farmer give the basket of his bounty to the priest, who sets it down in front of the altar.

Then the farmer recites a set text (Deut. 26:5–10) that begins with the declaration “My father was a wandering Aramean.” It is this passage that the Rabbis chose as the cornerstone of our seder. I quote it in full here, without rabbinic interruptions. Pay attention to the use of pronouns in this passage:

My father was a wandering Aramean. He went down to Egypt with meager numbers and sojourned there; but there he became a great and very populous nation. The Egyptians dealt harshly with us and oppressed us ; they imposed heavy labor upon us . We cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our plea and saw our plight, our misery, and our oppression. The Lord freed us from Egypt by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm and awesome power, and by signs and portents. He brought us to this place and gave us this Land, a land flowing with milk and honey. Wherefore I now bring the first fruits of the soil which You, O Lord, have given me .

The farmer bringing his first fruits conjures up his people’s distant past. The Hebrew meaning of the first line is uncertain, but it may very well refer to Jacob and his wanderings. He became powerful. But the Egyptians acted harshly against us . Here the farmer merges his identity with that of his ancestors. They are one. We cried; it was our misery, not only theirs; God freed us and brought us to the Land of Israel. However, the key to unlocking the meaning of “the telling” is the last sentence of the declaration: “Wherefore I now bring the first fruits of the soil which You, O Lord, have given me .”

This passage that the farmer declares is not a history lesson. It’s not really about Egypt or the Israelites. It’s a text that is about the possibility of recognizing the experience of God’s presence in one’s life. It is a text that models a certain paradigm of seeing the world, a world view that sees and feels the divine presence. By reciting this text, the farmer adopts this paradigm. He recounts the ways his ancestors recognized and appreciated God’s presence in their lives. Now the farmer is invited to declare how he recognizes God’s bounty in a deeply personal way. With his bounty placed before him, he is asked to speak about the blessings God has given him.

Indeed, this is what we are asked “to tell” on the night of the seder. We invoke a specific story of our ancestors who experienced God’s intimacy and blessings. But this narrative is an invitation to speak about how God and God’s blessings are present in our lives. Exodus is a paradigm. The real task of “the telling” is to speak in an “I” voice. That’s why Maimonides says this is the moment for personal elaboration. In front of our children and friends, we are asked to identify and express gratitude for God’s bounty in our lives. So put the Haggadahs aside for a moment during the seder, come out from behind the wall of all the words in them, and speak in an “I” voice. “Wherefore I now bring the first fruits of the soil which You, O Lord, have given me .”

The publication and distribution of the JTS Holiday Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee ( z”l ) and Harold Hassenfeld ( z”l ).

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The rabbis translate the phrase ארמי אובד אבי in Deuteronomy 26:5 “an Aramean tried to destroy my father” and understand it as a reference to Laban, who they claim was worse than Pharaoh. But whereas the biblical Laban can be read either sympathetically or unsympathetically, he is hardly a Pharaoh-like villain, so why demonize him?

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Arami Oved Avi: The Demonization of Laban

An Aramean Tried to Destroy My Father (f.39v) in the ‘Barcelona Hagadah’ 1325-1350 British Library

A Fugitive Aramean Was My Father

When farmers bring their offering of first produce to the priest at the Temple, after the priest takes the basket of produce and places it before the altar, the farmer recites a declaration “before YHWH.” It opens (Deut 26:5):

אֲרַמִּי אֹבֵד אָבִי וַיֵּרֶד מִצְרַיְמָה וַיָּגָר שָׁם בִּמְתֵי מְעָט וַיְהִי שָׁם לְגוֹי גָּדוֹל עָצוּם וָרָב.

A fugitive (or “wandering”) Aramean was my father, and he went down to Egypt and sojourned there with meager numbers, but there he became a great and very populous nation.

In the simple reading, the text refers to the Israelites who moved to Egypt, and were eventually enslaved there. Concerning its opening words, Jeffrey Tigay writes in his JPS commentary on Deuteronomy:

The precise meaning of this phrase is uncertain …[and] probably very ancient, for it is unlikely that Israelite tradition would have chosen to describe Israel’s ancestors as ‘Arameans’ once the Arameans of Damascus became aggressive toward Israel in the ninth century B.C.E. [1]

This ancient confession thus reflected a belief or tradition that Israel’s ancestors were Arameans who moved to Egypt.

Reading the text canonically, as part of the Pentateuch, the Aramean likely refers specifically to Jacob, who came down to Egypt with his 70 descendants. He is called an Aramean either because;

His grandfather Abraham was from Aram (Gen 12:4);
Jacob’s mother Rebekah was from Aram (Gen 25:20);
Jacob himself lived in Aram for a time and married Aramean women (Gen 29-30).

This understanding of the verse was already noted by medieval peshat commentators such as Rashbam, ibn Ezra, and R. Judah ibn Balaam.

An Aramean Tried to Destroy My Father

Rabbinic midrash however, does not translate the first three words as “my father was a fugitive/wandering Aramean” instead reading the present participle אֹבֵד not as the adjective “wandering” but as the verb “destroying.” They thereby creatively understood the phrase to mean “an Aramean (would have) destroyed my father.” [2]

The midrash thus identifies the Arami as Jacob’s father-in-law Laban, who, after Jacob stole away to return to Canaan, chased after him (Gen 31:23). Once Laban catches up with Jacob, however, before Laban even speaks with him, God appears to Laban and warns him not to harm (literally “speak good or bad to”) Jacob (Gen 31:24). [3]

Laban admits that this visitation from the deity made him rethink any harm he was considering causing Jacob (Gen 31:29):

יֶשׁ לְאֵל יָדִי לַעֲשׂוֹת עִמָּכֶם רָע וֵאלֹהֵי אֲבִיכֶם אֶמֶשׁ אָמַר אֵלַי לֵאמֹר הִשָּׁמֶר לְךָ מִדַּבֵּר עִם יַעֲקֹב מִטּוֹב עַד רָע.

I have it in my power to do you harm; but the God of your father said to me last night, “Beware of attempting anything with Jacob, good or bad.”

The Rabbis even specify the type of harm, noting in the same midrash, well known to many since it forms a key part of the Passover Haggadah:

צֵא וּלְמַד מַה בִּקֵּשׁ לָבָן הָאֲרַמִּי לַעֲשׂוֹת לְיַעֲקֹב אָבִינוּ: שֶׁפַּרְעֹה לֹא גָזַר אֶלָּא עַל הַזְּכָרִים, וְלָבָן בִּקֵּשׁ לַעֲקֹר אֶת־הַכֹּל.

Go and learn what Laban the Aramean wished to do to our father Jacob: for Pharaoh only issued a decree about the [Israelite] males, but Laban wished to uproot everything.

“Uprooting everything” means that Laban intended to slaughter Jacob and his entire family, thus uprooting Israel’s future existence entirely. This is a surprisingly harsh accusation. It is one thing to consider the possibility that Laban intended to murder Jacob—something the text does not quite say—but another to assume he would murder his daughters and his own grandchildren. But this fits with the overall approach the rabbis take towards Laban.

Not an Aramean (Arami) but a Trickster (Ramai)

The Torah presents Laban as fooling Jacob into marrying the wrong sister, thus extending his years of labor. Jacob even accuses Laban of changing the agreed upon pay multiple times (the Torah’s narrator never describes this directly). The Hebrew word for a trickster or deceiver is ramai (רמאי). Genesis uses the verbal form of this root in Jacob’s accusation against Laban (Gen. 29:25), though it never actually calls Laban a ramai —this noun is never found in the Bible.

Nevertheless, the rabbis noted that the word ramai (רמאי) is formed with the same letters as Aramean (ארמי), like an anagram, and they used this arami-ramai pun frequently, especially when interpreting verses that refer to Laban as an Aramean. For example, Genesis 25:20 uses the word Aram three times:

בראשית כה:כ וַיְהִי יִצְחָק בֶּן אַרְבָּעִים שָׁנָה בְּקַחְתּוֹ אֶת רִבְקָה בַּת בְּתוּאֵל הָאֲרַמִּי מִפַּדַּן אֲרָם אֲחוֹת לָבָן הָאֲרַמִּי לוֹ לְאִשָּׁה.

Gen 25:20 Isaac was forty years old when he took to wife Rebekah, daughter of Bethuel the Aramean of Paddan- aram , sister of Laban the Aramean .

Bothered by this three-fold repetition, Genesis Rabbah offers this midrash ( Toledot 63, Theodor-Albeck):

אמר ר’ יצחק אם ללמד שהוא מפדן ארם מה תלמוד לומר אחות לבן הארמי, אלא בא ללמדך אביה רמאי ואחיה רמאי ואף אנשי מקומה רמאין והצדקת הזו שיוצאה מבינתיים למה היא דומה לשושנה בין החוחים,

R. Yitzhak said: “If it just wanted to teach us that he was from Padan-Aram, what does ‘Laban the Aramean’ teach us? It comes to teach us that her father was a trickster and her brother was a trickster, and even the people who lived there were tricksters, and that this righteous woman who came from there can be likened to ‘a lily among the thorn-bushes’ (Song 2:2).”

Interpreting arami as ramai , the rabbis read the verse to say that Laban is a cheat from a family of cheats in a town of cheats. But this is the least of the rabbis’ accusations.

Whitened with Wickedness

The story in which Abraham’s servant goes to Haran to find a wife for Isaac introduces Rebekah and her brother (Gen 24:29):

וּלְרִבְקָה אָח וּשְׁמוֹ לָבָן

Rebekah had a brother whose name was Laban

In commenting on this verse, Genesis Rabbah (60:7, Theodor-Albeck) offers a play on Laban’s name, which means “white”:

ר’ יצחק אמר פרדיכסוס, [4] ר’ ברכיה אמר מלובן ברשע.

R. Yitzhak said: “He was a paradox (i.e., a light name for a dark person).” R. Berechiah said: “He was whitened ( meluban ) in wickedness…”

R. Berechiah’s reading stands out when we contrast it to other rabbinic texts that see “white” as a color with positive connotations, such as “whitened from sin” as in pure (see, e.g., m. Middot 5:4, Abot de-Rabbi Nathan B, ch. 29), or the white clothing of the high priest. It is clear that R. Berechiah is already certain that Laban is filled with sin, and his midrash on the name merely confirms this.

Laban’s Alter-Egos

One particularly popular way of blackening Laban is to say that he is one and the same as some other biblical villain. [5]

Laban is Kemuel

Genesis 22:20-24 lists the sons of Nahor, one of whom is named Kemuel (v. 21), who is described as “the father of Aram” (אֲבִי אֲרָם). Genesis Rabbah comments ( Vayera 57):

ר’ יודן ור’ יהודה בר’ סימון בשם ר’ יהושע הוא לבן הוא קמואל, ולמה נקרא שמו קמואל שקם על אומתו שלאל.

R. Yuden, R. Yehudah son of R. Simon in the name of R. Yehoshua: “Laban and Kemuel are the same person. So why does the verse call him Kemuel? Because he stood ( kam ) against the people of God ( el ).”

The assertion that Kemuel is Laban is particularly strange; Kemuel’s brother is Betuel, Laban’s father—in other words, according to this midrash, Laban is his own uncle! The claim that Kemuel was the father of Aram surely influenced the rabbis, since Laban is consistently referred to as “the Aramean.” The opportunity to play negatively on Kemuel’s name was likely also attractive to the rabbis.

Laban is Balaam

In the story of King Balak of Moab’s attempt to hire Balaam to curse Israel, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan offers the following translation (Num 22:5):

וְשָׁדַר עִזְגְדִין לְוַת לָבָן אֲרַמִי הוּא בִּלְעָם דִבְעָא לְמִבְלוֹעַ יַת עַמָא בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל בַּר בְּעוֹר דְאִיטַפַּשׁ מִסוֹגְעֵי חָכְמָתֵיהּ וְלָא חַס עַל יִשְׂרָאֵל זַרְעָא דִבְנֵי בְנָתֵיהּ וּבֵית מוֹתְבֵיהּ בְּפַדַן הִיא פְּתוֹר עַל שְׁמֵיהּ פָּתִיר חֶלְמַיָא…

He (Balak) sent messengers to Laban the Aramean, who was [called] “Balaam” since he wished to swallow up ( bala ) the people of Israel, “son of Beor” whose great store of knowledge turned him foolish, [6] and he felt no pity for his daughters children, and he lived in Padan, which is called Pethor, since he could interpret ( patir ) dreams…

The story here assumes, as rabbinic midrash does in general, that Balaam was a wicked character who wished to curse Israel, and notes the sad irony, that if Balaam is Laban, he would be cursing his own descendants.

Laban is Cushan-rishataim

The book of Judges lists the first of the many peoples who attacked Israel after the death of Joshua:

שופטים ג:ח וַיִּחַר אַף יְ-הוָה בְּיִשְׂרָאֵל וַיִּמְכְּרֵם בְּיַד כּוּשַׁן רִשְׁעָתַיִם מֶלֶךְ אֲרַם נַהֲרָיִם וַיַּעַבְדוּ בְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶת כּוּשַׁן רִשְׁעָתַיִם שְׁמֹנֶה שָׁנִים.

Judg 3:8 YHWH became incensed at Israel and surrendered them to King Cushan-rishataim of Aram-naharaim; and the Israelites were subject to Cushan-rishataim for eight years.

Noting that this king and Laban come from the same place, the Jerusalem Talmud quotes Rabbi Acha who suggests that Laban and Cushan-rishataim, whose name means “doubly wicked,” were one and the same person (j. Nedarim 9:1):

הוא לבן הוא כושן רשעתיים ולמה נקרא שמו כושן רשעתיים שעשה שתי רשעיות אחת שחילל את השבועה ואחת ששיעבד בישראל שמונה שנה

Laban and Cushan-rishataim are the same person. So why was he called Cushan-rishataim? Because he did two wicked things: he violated the oath [he/Laban made with Jacob] and because he subjugated Israel for eight years.

Here R. Acha draws on the story of Gal-ed, where Jacob and Laban make an oath not to cross the border with malice, to explain why Cushan who subjugated Israel, is one who committed “two wrongs,” the literal meaning of rishataim . The fact that this story is set hundreds of years after the story of Laban and Jacob is not a problem for this midrash.

Laban is Nabal

The latest character with whom Laban is associated is Nabal the Carmelite, who speaks rudely about David and is only spared by David because Abigail, Nabal’s wife, talks David out of hurting him by bringing David gifts. When delivering the gifts, Abigail tries to calm David by punning on her husband’s unfortunate name (1 Sam 25:25):

אַל נָא יָשִׂים אֲדֹנִי אֶת לִבּוֹ אֶל אִישׁ הַבְּלִיַּעַל הַזֶּה עַל נָבָל כִּי כִשְׁמוֹ כֶּן הוּא נָבָל שְׁמוֹ וּנְבָלָה עִמּוֹ…

Please, my lord, pay no attention to that wretched fellow Nabal. For he is just what his name says: His name means ‘boor’ and he is a boor…

In two separate places in Psalms that use the word nabal (Psalms 14:1 and 53:2), Midrash Tehillim understands it as an anagram for Laban:

אמר ר’ סימון הוא נבל הוא לבן, הן הן האותיות, מה לבן היה רמאי, אף נבל היה רמאי,

Rabbi Simon said: “Nabal and Laban are the same person – the names have the same letters. Just as Laban was a swindler, so too Nabal was a swindler…” [7]

This is perhaps the hardest of the four midrashim to understand, since Nabal is not some foreign antagonist but an Israelite descendent of Caleb, who lives in Hebron hundreds of years after Jacob.

Laban Was Many of These People

The Babylonian Talmud ( Sanhedrin 105a) makes the most sweeping identification of Laban, saying that he was both Cushan and Balaam. (Ostensibly it identifies Laban with Balaam’s father Beor, but it seems that the text is actually translating ben Beor not as “son of Beor,” but as “the one with the animal,” i.e., Balaam, famous for the talking donkey story.)

תנא: הוא בעור, הוא כושן רשעתים הוא לבן הארמי. בעור – שבא על בעיר, כושן רשעתים – דעבד שתי רשעיות בישראל, אחת בימי יעקב ואחת בימי שפוט השופטים. ומה שמו – לבן הארמי שמו.

It was taught: Beor, Cushan-rishataim, and Laban the Aramean are all the same person. Beor – because he had sex with an animal ( bair ); Cushan-rishataim, because he did two wicked things to Israel, once in the time of Jacob and again in the time of the judges. And what was his actual name? Laban the Aramean.

In short, the rabbis revel in the ability to find some connection between an ancient villain from the Bible and Laban, so they can pin more sins onto the latter.

Is the Biblical Laban Really So Bad?

Many of these midrashim are well-known, and influence the manner in which we understand the biblical Laban. But what does the Torah actually say about Laban? We first meet him when Abraham’s servant arrives in Haran and wishes to take Rebekah back to Canaan to marry Isaac. While Laban attempts to stall the servant, no motive for this is given. Perhaps Laban wanted to keep his sister close to home. In any event, Abraham’s servant was not to be detained, and Rebekah departed with him forever one day after he arrived.

Skipping many years later, Rebekah’s son Jacob comes to claim another woman in Laban's family, this time his daughter Rachel. This time, Laban devises a way to keep his daughter by him for the next twenty years. Perhaps Laban was hoping for a situation, akin to what is described in some Nuzi texts, where “Jacob would have become like the Nuzi herdsmen, who, through debt and dependence on the livestock owner, affiliated with [Laban’s] family permanently.” [8]

Laban’s stalling succeeds for twenty years, but eventually, Jacob loses patience with the situation, figures out a way to make enough money to gain independence, and rushes off without a word to his father-in-law. Moreover, even his daughters feel like their father has mistreated them and wholeheartedly support Jacob’s unannounced departure.

As discussed above, Laban chases Jacob down and catches up with him in the Gal-ed area. The verses imply that Laban wished to do Jacob harm, but God warns him not to and he does not. In fact, Laban makes a peace treaty with Jacob, and Laban’s only extra stipulation is that Jacob may not marry any other women. He goes so far as to say, “ If you ill-treat my daughters or take other wives besides my daughters—though no one else be about, remember, God Himself will be witness between you and me.” (Gen 31:50)

In other words, his last act is to protect the daughters that rejected him. Even if they rejected him for good reason—that he manipulated their husband and even them—in the end, he behaves honorably. [9] His final act in the treaty may even be fairly described as “repentant.” [10]

In this reading, Laban could be construed as a tragic figure, one who suffered personal loss, and who wished to keep his family together. But even if one wants to read Laban’s acts in a harsher light, and suggest that he was simply a deceiver who wished to make as much money as possible, his character hardly deserves the animus displayed against him by the rabbis.

So why do the rabbis paint him as full of iniquity, the embodiment of Israel’s foes throughout the centuries, and a threat to the very existence of Israel, worse even than Pharaoh himself? In other words, why do the rabbis demonize Laban?

Why We Demonize Others

Fred Guyette, a research librarian at Erskine College, notes how the book of Psalms makes use of animal metaphors to portray Israel’s enemies negatively. [11] Wild animals are bestial, they are not easy to control or dominate. Thus, it is easy to fear and or hate them.

This kind of hatred is often extended to other races or ethnic groups. We “other” them, turn them into enemies. Subsequently, our hatred is accompanied by racialization, as a consequence of the real or perceived threat that one group feels from another. Amy Chua, Professor of Law at Yale, writes of this danger:

When groups feel threatened, they retreat into tribalism. When groups feel mistreated and disrespected, they close ranks and become more insular, more defensive, more punitive, more us-versus-them. [12]

Hatred allows us to define ourselves in comparison to others. We view those outside our group negatively, as hateful and threatening.

Self-Defining

By negating another group and depicting them as monsters we also define ourselves. We are not what we hate. Alexander Wendt, a German political scientist, points out that often our “mutual fear [of the other] is so great that factors promoting anything but negative identification with the other will find little room to emerge.” [13]

The process of hate and demonization of the other reveals the anxieties held by a group and its inverse informs the group’s ideal identity. As Brandon R. Grafius writes,

The monster serves as a way for a social group to construct identity, by constructing a picture that is the opposite of how they see themselves. However, because our self-image is always distorted, this monstrous other will often reveal uncomfortable truths about ourselves. [14]

In short, they are somewhat like us, yet they are a demonic version of us.

Protecting Jacob’s Reputation

One uncomfortable truth the Rabbis may have been facing is that Jacob is depicted as every bit as cunning as his uncle. Jacob’s name can mean the deceiver—certainly that is how Esau understands it when he accuses Jacob of tricking him twice, once out of his birthright and next out of his blessing (Gen 27:36). [15] Later, after being duped by Laban into marrying Leah, he gets Laban back with his peeled-stick trick, to ensure that the baby sheep all come out speckled or spotted.

By calling Laban the deceiver, the rabbis distance themselves from Jacobs’s long history of deception. As Grafius points out, “the monster is a paradoxical embodiment of both Otherness and sameness, seeming to reflect our fears that we are not really as different from the Other as we would like to think.” [16]

Christian Use of Jacob the Deceiver

David Berger points to Christian sources which blame Jacob for deceptive behavior and the need for Jewish sources to counter this by blaming Laban. In fact, as Herbert Basser has shown, Shakespeare uses this reading as a basis for Antonio’s playful jabs against Shylock, for being like Jacob in this regard. [17]

Berger points out that the Jewish answer to this accusation was to blame Laban:

As for Laban, the answer to the Christian critique was that Jacob was the real victim of deception, and his treatment of his father-in-law was marked by extraordinary scrupulousness. [18]

These later sources likely illustrate what the rabbis may have seen in Jacob when reading the biblical stories about his early life.

Begins in the Bible

The distancing of Israel from Aram begins in the Bible. At the beginning of the story, when Jacob appears at Laban’s house, Laban declares that the two are close family, “the same bone and flesh” (עצמי ובשרי; Gen 29:14) and Jacob does not demur.

At the end of the story, when they meet in Gal-ed, Laban suggests that he and Jacob share the same God through their common ancestry (Gen 31:53) and should swear by him. Jacob, however, does not want to acknowledge this connection. Instead, each man swears in the name of his own ancestral God. Moreover, the two men end up referring to the place of their oath in their respective languages, Hebrew for Jacob, and Aramaic for Laban.

Dalit Rom-Shiloni, Professor of Bible at Tel Aviv University, suggests that,

[I]n its insistence on Jacob’s non-Aramaean origin in spite of the family connection , in its presentation of the … distinctions between Jacob and Laban at their parting, Genesis 31 reveals a hidden polemic and establishes its own position within the polemics concerning Jacob’s identity. [19]

Thus, in one sense “Jacob’s return from Haran is as important a foundational story as Abraham’s previous immigration from that place,” [20] since it establishes the break between the future Israelites and their Aramean family of origin.

Descendants of Arameans

Genesis 31 draws this distinction between Israel and Aram because its author is aware of texts or traditions that emphasize how the Israelites are themselves descendants of Arameans, as now reflected in the verse in Deuteronomy “my father was a wandering Aramean” or in the Genesis stories of Isaac and Jacob marrying Aramean women. [21] The author of Genesis 31 is thus saying that Arameans are relatives with whom “we share a common ancestry, [yet we do] not consider Aram to be a direct ancestor of Israel.” [22]

My Father Was Not an Aramean

The distancing that begins in the Bible is taken further by the rabbis into the realm of demonization. Returning to the rabbinic midrash, Jeffrey Tigay points out that the demonization of Arameans

may underlie the fanciful interpretation of the clause as ‘[Laban the] Aramean sought to destroy my father.’ This interpretation, found in the Pesah Haggadah and reflected in the Septuagint and the targums, is due, perhaps, to a disbelief that the Bible would describe one of Israel’s ancestors as an Aramean. [23]

The rabbinic polemic against Arameans likely reflects more than just discomfort with the biblical text. The linguistic hegemony of Aramaic extended past the Persian period and into the Rabbinic period, even when Aram no longer had any political influence. Not only did all of the rabbis’ neighbors speak Aramaic, but the rabbis themselves spoke Aramaic. For them, although “Aramean” became a euphemism for outsiders, [24] these were outsiders with whom they shared a land and a language, and whom the Bible ties together with Israel from its inception.

This is likely the reason that the rabbis felt the need to draw a razor-sharp line between “us” and “them.” What better way to do this than to turn our “Aramean ancestor” referenced in Deuteronomy, into our wicked “Aramean uncle” who tried to destroy us for hundreds of years in his various different guises. And thus the rabbinic villain “Laban the deceiver,” who tried “to destroy our father” was born.

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August 27, 2018

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[1] Jeffrey H. Tigay, Deuteronomy (The JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: JPSA, 1996), 240.

[2] For more on rabbinic readings of this phrase, see Marty Lockshin, “Did an Aramean Try to Destroy Our Father? A Medieval Non-Traditional interpretation,” TheTorah.com (2015). Lockshin points out that the root א.ב.ד in the qal form never means “destroy” in biblical Hebrew, making the rabbinic interpretation even less likely as peshat .

הִשָּׁמֶר לְךָ פֶּן תְּדַבֵּר עִם יַעֲקֹב מִטּוֹב עַד רָע.

Beware of attempting anything with Jacob, good or bad.

[4] This is the Greek word “paradox” (παραδόξως).

[5] See discussion in, Richard Steiner, “The Aramean of Deuteronomy 25:5: Peshat and Derash,” in Tehilah leMoshe: Biblical and Judaic Studies in Honor of Moshe Greenberg , ed. by M. Cogan, B. Eichler and J. Tigay (Winona Lake, 1997), 131, n. 23.

[6] One word for “foolish” in Hebrew is boor , which sounds like Beor.

[7] The text here is from the Buber edition on Psalms 53; the text on Psalm 14 has some slight differences but the point is the same.

[8] Because Jacob would not have been able to leave, Laban would not have to change their relationship and complete the marriage agreement …The re-payment of missing livestock was a fundamental aspect of the herding system of the Old Babylonian period and at Nuzi. Moreover, restitution for stolen livestock is specifically mentioned elsewhere in the biblical record (Exodus 22:12). Because Laban claims to own everything, “he concedes that he had not formally transferred his daughters and their children and the livestock to Jacob.” To rectify the situation, he establishes the covenant which is a sort of peace treaty which also “formalizes the marriage of Laban’s daughters.” Martha A. Morrison, “The Jacob and Laban Narrative in Light of Near Eastern,” The Biblical Archaeologist , 46: 3 (Summer, 1983):155-164, 161.

[9] The great scholar of Semitic languages, Cyrus Herzl Gordon (1908-2001), noted that “‘… in a magnanimous forgiving way, Laban allowed Jacob’s household to depart’. Strictly speaking, Laban has pardoned Jacob for the crime of breach of trust.…” Quoted in Charles Mabee, “Jacob and Laban: The Structure of Judicial Proceedings (Genesis XXXI 25-42),” VT 30.2 (April, 1980): 205, n. 40. [From, C. H. Gordon, The World of the Old Testament (Garden City, New York, 1958)].

[10] For this upbeat derasha see Ronen Ahituv, “Laban at Eye-Level,” http://ozveshalom.org.il/from-old-site/parsha-eng/vayetze5765.html

[11] He writes:

[A]dversaries are often categorized as sub-human creatures. In Psalm 59 they are “growling dogs.” Psalm 22 refers to them as destructive “bulls.” According to Psalm 17:12, the enemy is a predator, “like a hungry lion.”

Fred Guyett, “ Scripture and the Field of Hate Studies: Traversing Biblical Landscapes,” Biblical Theology Bulletin , 41: 2 (2011): 59-60.

[12] Amy Chua, “How America’s Identity Politics Went from Inclusion to Division,” Political Tribes . (Excerpted in The Guardian , March 1, 2018).

[13] He further points to,

Identification [as] a continuum from negative to positive-from conceiving the other as anathema to the self to conceiving it as an extension of the self… In the absence of positive identification, interests will be defined without regard to the other-who will instead be viewed as an object to be manipulated for the gratification of the self.

Alexander Wendt, “Collective Identity Formation and the International State,” The American Political Science Review 88.2 (June, 1994): 386, 389.

[14] Brandon R. Grafius, “Text and Terror: Monster Theory and the Hebrew Bible,” Currents in Biblical Research 16:1 (2017): 35.

[15] Dalit Rom-Shiloni, highlighting the polemics in portraying Jacob as distancing himself from the negative, opportunistic Laban the Aramean, describes Jacob as having negative trickster traits in the beginning of his life and then as Nahum Sarna pointed out “being hoisted on his own petard.” Dalit Rom-Shiloni, “When an Explicit Polemic Initiates a Hidden One: Jacob’s Aramaean Identity,” In Athalya Brenner and Frank H. Polak (editors), Words, Ideas, Worlds Biblical Essays in Honour Of Yairah Amit (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2012), p. 210. She builds upon Yairah Amit, Hidden Polemics in Biblical Narrative (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2000).

[16] Grafius, p. 39.

[17] See Herbert Basser, “Shakespeare Plays on the Questionable Source of Jacob’s Wealth,” TheTorah.com (2015).

[18] David Berger, “On The Morality of The Patriarchs In Jewish Polemic And Exegesis,” Understanding Scripture: Explorations of Jewish and Christian Traditions of Interpretation , ed. by Clemens Thoma and Michael Wyschogrod (Paulist Press: New York, 1987): 49-62. He cites Rosenthal, Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne .

[19] Rom-Shiloni, “Explicit Polemic,” 216. Karin Zetterhorn had argued this earlier; see her, “The Attempted Murder by Laban the Aramean: An Example of Intertextual Reading In Midrash,” in Hanne Trautner-Kromann (editor) From Bible to Midrash: Portrayals and Interpretative Practices (Lund: Arcus, 2005) and Portrait of a Villain: Laban the Aramean in Rabbinic Literature (Leuven and Dudley, Mass.: Peeters, 2002).

[20] Rom-Shiloni, “Explicit Polemic,” 210.

[21] Sarah Shectman notes:

Of Jacob’s twelve sons, we only learn about the marriages of three, but none is a relative, let alone an Aramean: Simeon marries a Canaanite woman (who seems to be one of multiple wives), as does Judah. Joseph marries Asenath, the daughter of an Egyptian priest. All of these unions are reported without a word of censure.

Sarah Shectman, “Rachel, Leah, and the Composition of Genesis,” in The Pentateuch: International Perspectives on Current Research (eds., Thomas B. Dozeman, Konrad Schmid, and Baruch J. Schwartz; Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011): 210.

[22] Yigal Levin, p. 42. On p. 46 he points out that there seems to be an “‘Aramean realm’ that was made up of twelve components, not unlike the future ‘nation’ of Israel. In fact, Israel and its ‘uncle’ Aram seem to have been seen as experiencing parallel stages of development, although Aram was seen as preceding Israel by two generations.”

[23] Tigay in his commentary on “my father was a fugitive Aramean” in Deuteronomy (JPS Torah Commentary), p. 240. Yet, as Raymond Bowman, in “Arameans, Aramaic, and the Bible,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 7: 2 (Apr., 1948): 68 points out,

When the Hebrews had become a nation and experienced difficulties with neighboring Arameans, they naturally sought to sever their ancient bonds and at every opportunity attempted to explain away the confession pertaining to their father, Jacob. It would take a major operation, however, to excise all the evidence for Hebrew-Aramean patriarchal connections.

In fn 12 he points out that “The tendency was operative already in the LXX, where the word obehd was regarded as transitive: ‘My father rejected a Syrian’…”

[24] They are demonized so much that when the Mishnah wants to describe the law against sexual relations with a non-Israelite woman, it refers to her as an Aramean (even though in the Torah story she was a Midianite). The Mishnah’s law ( Sanhedrin 9:6) that “one who has intercourse with an Aramean woman” (הבועל ארמית) can be executed without a trial could hardly be a starker contrast with the stories of Isaac and Jacob. The Aramean at this point is so foreign to us that she is the very embodiment of “enemy.”

Naomi Graetz taught English (now retired) at Ben-Gurion University and still teaches a course on feminist approaches to Jewish texts in the their Overseas Program. She is the author of Unlocking the Garden: A Feminist Jewish Look at the Bible, Midrash and God , The Rabbi’s Wife Plays at Murder , S/He Created Them: Feminist Retellings of Biblical Stories, and Silence is Deadly: Judaism Confronts Wifebeating .

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What does, 'A wandering Aramean was my father' mean in Dt 26:5?
Thus, " A wandering Aramean was my father" will read, "An Aramean tried to destroy my father." Ya'acov lived in Aram, while courting Rachel and working for her father Laban, an Aramean [viz, which we would call a modern day Syrian].
An Aramean Destroyed My Father
This verse from Deuteronomy 26:5, translated as "my father was a wandering Aramean," is part of the formula that was recited when the first fruit offerings were brought to the Temple in ancient times. The Haggadah includes the classic interpretation of the verse, reading it as "an Aramean destroyed my father."
Deuteronomy 26:5 and you are to declare before the LORD your God, "My
Verse 5. - A Syrian ready to perish was my father. The reference is to Jacob, the stem-father of the twelve tribes, he is here called a Syrian, or Aramaean, because of his long residence in Mesopotamia (Genesis 29-31.), whence Abraham had originally come (Genesis 11:31), and because there the family of which he was the head was founded.The translation "ready to perish" fairly represents the ...
"My Father Was a Wandering Aramean…": The Ethical ...
A wandering Aramean was my father ['arami 'oved avi]; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to Adonai, the God of our ancestors; Adonai heard our voice and saw ...
Deuteronomy 26:5 Commentaries: "You shall answer and say before the
Deuteronomy 26:5. A Syrian was my father — That is, Jacob; for though born in Canaan, he was a Syrian by descent, his mother Rebecca, and his grandfather Abraham, being both of Chaldea or Mesopotamia, which in Scripture is comprehended under the name of Syria. His wives and children, by their mothers' side, and his relations, were Syrians, and he himself had lived twenty years in Syria ...
Why would the Israelites call their father a wandering Aramean?
A wandering Aramean was my father. Deut 26:5 2. A God given framing for future generations with first-fruits . Before we examine why they would describe their father as "an Aramean", and what "wandering" might mean, we must see that in its context, this confession is an enduring expression of the grace of God, a framing for future ...
What does Deuteronomy 26:5 mean?
Deuteronomy 26:5. ESV "And you shall make response before the Lord your God, 'A wandering Aramean was my father. And he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number, and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous. NIV Then you shall declare before the Lord your God: "My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down ...
Deuteronomy 26:5
Deuteronomy 26:5. New International Version. 5 Then you shall declare before the Lord your God: "My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous. Read full chapter.
The Fugitive Aramean and You
The Open Door identifies the"fugitive" or"wandering" Arameans with our ancestors, Abram and Sarai-that is to say, a patriarch and a matriarch of the Jewish people-pioneers who left home to answer God's call. On the other hand , The Soncino Koren Haggada (Brooklyn, 1965) says:"AN ARAMEAN SOUGHT TO DESTROY MY FATHER, AND HE WENT DOWN TO MIZRAYIM ...
When Your Dad Is a Wandering Aramean by Joe Holland
There is a give and take that occurred between the worshiper and the priest that introduced this segment of worship. And then the Israelites were instructed to repeat an unsettling liturgy: "And you shall make response before the LORD your God, 'A wandering Aramean was my father. And he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number ...
Parshat Ki Tavo: A Wandering Aramean
My father was a wandering Aramean. These words, so loaded with depth and meaning, are such a reflection of what the Jewish soul should humbly acknowledge. It is an expression of such introspection ...
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There are multiple options. We often translate the phrase as "My father was a wandering Aramean.". But this is not the only way to read the text. Rashi's classic assumption is that the Aramean and our father are two different characters, and that the phrase is best understood as meaning "An Aramean would have destroyed my father.".
Laban the Aramean
First, it understands the words arami oved avi to mean, " [Laban] an Aramean [tried to] destroy my father.". But this cannot be the plain sense of the verse because, as Ibn Ezra points out, oved is an intransitive verb. It cannot take an object. It means "lost," "wandering," "fugitive," "poor," "homeless," or "on the ...
My Father Was A Wandering Arameam: An Analysis of the
Not only is this not "the Land that I will show you"; Avraham, in his own defense to Avimelekh, presents himself as someone who is still wandering: "And when God caused me to wander from my father's house, I said to her, This is the kindness you must do me: at every place to which we come, say of me, He is my brother." (20:13).
Laban the Aramean (Vayetzei, Covenant & Conversation 5780)
First, it understands the words arami oved avi to mean, " [Laban] an Aramean [tried to] destroy my father.". But this cannot be the plain sense of the verse because, as Ibn Ezra points out ...
"My Father was a wandering Aramean…"
In Deuteronomy 26:5-10, God instructs his people to say this whenever they bring their offerings of firstfruits from the Land: "My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous. But the Egyptians mistreated us and made us suffer, subjecting us to ...
Did an Aramean Try to Destroy our Father?
"My Father Was a Wandering Aramean": Medieval Peshat Commentators. In the twelfth century, a number of famous Jewish Bible commentators wrote explicitly that the phrase arami oved avi could not reasonably be interpreted as meaning, "An Aramean would have destroyed my father." Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (= Rashbam; born c. 1080), Rabbi ...
"My Father Was a Wandering Aramean…": The Ethical Legacy of Our Origins
A wandering Aramean was my father [ 'arami 'oved avi ]; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to Adonai, the God of our ancestors; Adonai heard our voice and ...
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A Wandering Aramaean Was Our Father. Our story is Abraham's. Jeremy Berg. Image: Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash. By Jeremy Berg. Our Sunday night class is tracing the ancient roots of our ...
My Father, the Wandering Aramean…
My father was a wandering Aramean. He went down to Egypt with meager numbers and sojourned there; but there he became a great and very populous nation…" (Deuteronomy 26:5) The opening words of this passage have been the subject of considerable controversy for centuries. According to most commentators, the "wandering father" is ...
The Telling
The Rabbis of antiquity chose Deuteronomy 26:5-8 as the textual cornerstone for the Haggadah: "My father was a wandering Aramean. . ." I suggest that the ultimate meaning of the seder night and "the telling" are unlocked only when we understand this choice. The very message of the seder depends on the moment when we read this.
Arami Oved Avi: The Demonization of Laban
Rabbinic midrash however, does not translate the first three words as "my father was a fugitive/wandering Aramean" instead reading the present participle אֹבֵד not as the adjective "wandering" but as the verb "destroying." They thereby creatively understood the phrase to mean "an Aramean (would have) destroyed my father." [2]
The Birth of the World's Oldest Hate
As the overwhelming majority of commentators point out, the meaning of this phrase is "my father was a wandering Aramean", a reference either to Jacob, who escaped to Aram [Aram meaning Syria, a reference to Haran where Laban lived], or to Abraham, who left Aram in response to God's call to travel to the land of Canaan. It does not mean ...

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“My Father Was a Wandering Aramean…”: The Ethical Legacy of Our Origins in Exile (Parashat Ki Tavo, Deuteronomy 26:1-29:8)

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1. A God given liturgy for future generations

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3. But was father Jacob an Aramean?

4. What sort of ‘Aramean’ was Jacob: wandering, perishing or lost?

5. Once was lost, now I am found; once dead, now alive.

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