Mila's Tale Read Online Free PDF Page A

Ezra was, it should be noted, a period in which women’s orders of the Church were rapidly expanding.)  In the following generation of rabbis, the commentator known as Radak (David Kimche, 1160-1235) asserts that the text does in fact hold that understanding: that the final vav in Jephtha’s vow, generally translated “and” (“ that shall belong to Yahweh and be offered up as a burnt offering”), is here a grammatical variant best translated “or.” 
    Other rabbis point out that had Jephtha been at all familiar with Talmudic scholarship, he would have known that such a sacrifice was not only unnecessary, but unacceptable.  This leads to a Midrashic theory that a long-standing feud lay between Jephtha and the high priest, with Jephtha standing on his dignity as Gilead’s new ruler while Phineas, high priest and son of a high priest, deemed it equally inappropriate to approach the father first with the alternative.  And, the rabbis comment grimly (Midrash Tanhuma), “Between the two of them, the maiden perished.”
    Jephtha’s only-begotten child, his nameless daughter , who comes dancing out to meet him with a joyous tambourine, and meets her death instead.
    The girl’s appearance at the gates is a shock on all kinds of levels.  She is as unexpected to us as she is to her father, and like him we want to push her back inside that womb-like compound, to drive out some nice clean lamb ahead of her, to whisper that she must wait, just a moment, until…
    The Bible is a document that serves many purposes.  It explains, it reassures, it illustrates the development of a people’s faith.  It is not, generally speaking, either a scrupulous historical document or one of carefully composed theological theory; it is storytelling, pure and complex.  It explores, it contradicts itself, it confuses the reader—and sometimes it challenges.  The story of Jephtha’s daughter is one of those challenging places, as the dismay of her appearance makes us—even “us” as Medieval rabbis—want to change it, to find some way of replacing the dancing innocent with, at the very least, a non-human substitute. 
    And as with any difficult story, the more it is studied, the richer and more problematic it becomes. 
    To the feminist, the tale is a stark example of man’s inhumanity to woman, telling of a young woman forsaken not only by the father who should protect her, but by the God who (in the words of the rabbis) ‘answers Jephtha’s vow by bringing him his daughter,’ reaching past the inevitable assortment of creatures that wander through a Palestinian compound to pull her forward, fulfillment of a father’s rash promise. 
    To the faithful, the story is an uncomfortable illustration of what happens w hen one lacks faith.  Yes, the moral of the story is there to be read—a bargain with the Almighty will come back to bite you—but surely a Judge over Israel should be above this?  What are we to think when a man given authority over God’s chosen people begins by being unable to accept the simple, direct, profound gift of God’s presence?  A man who trusts not in God, even as he stands filled with God’s spirit?  Who questions and dickers at the very moment of fulfillment? 
    Even the rabbis find the story frankly incomprehensible, and are driven to the speculative re-tellings of midrash in their attempts to make sense of the episode.  Clearly this is one of Scripture’s more difficult stories, one where the closer one looks, the less one knows. 
    Take a small detail that is noteworthy only because of its absence: the girl’s namelessness.  Why does this young woman, daughter of a Judge of Israel, cause of much troubling speculation, source of an annual four-day lamentation, have no name?  The most obvious assumption is that “Jephtha’s daughter” lacks a name because she lacks an identity, that she is regarded as so unimportant in the patriarchal scheme of things that she shimmers into