Blood Water Sacrifice

When Tiamat heard these words,She was like one posessed, .she lost her reason.Tiamat uttered wild, piercing cries,She trembled and shook to her very foundations.She recited an incantation, she pronounced her spell,And the gods of the battle cried out for their weapons.Then advanced Tiamat and Marduk, the counselor of the gods;To the fight they came on, to the battle they drew nigh.The lord spread out his net and caught her,And the evil wind that was behind him he let loose in her face.As Tiamat opened her mouth to its full extent,He drove in the evil wind, while as yet she had not shut her lips.The terrible winds filled her belly,And her courage was taken from her, and her mouth she opened wide.He seized the spear and burst her belly,He severed her inward parts, he pierced her heart.He overcame her and cut off her life;He cast down her body and stood upon it.When he had slain Tiamat, the leader,Her might was broken, her host was scattered....Now after the hero Marduk had conquered and cast down his enemies,.....And unto Tiamat, whom he had conquered, he returned.And the lord stood upon Tiamat's hinder parts,And with his merciless club he smashed her skull.He cut through the channels of her blood,And he made the North wind bear it away into secret places.....Then the lord rested, gazing upon her dead body,While he divided the flesh of the ... , and devised a cunning plan.He split her up like a flat fish into two halves;One half of her he stablished as a covering for heaven.He fixed a bolt, he stationed a watchman,And bade them not to let her waters come forth.He passed through the heavens, he surveyed the regions thereof,And over against the Deep he set the dwelling of Nudimmud.And the lord measured the structure of the Deep....

By not listening to Moshe and Aharon, they we not hearing God's call to them. Why?

Rabbi Howard Cohen, on Parshat Yitro

How often have we failed to hear or understand the “voice of God” speaking to us through nature; or human acts of courage, kindness, and compassion; or through poetic, musical, and other ingenious human acts of creation; or through scientific inspiration? What is it, in the words of Isaiah, that dulls minds, stops up ears or clouds eyes and results in hearing without understanding and seeing without perceiving?

Hearing the call of God, though, isn't only through beauty etc' it is sometimes (often?) upheaval which wakes us up and calls us to attention. The plagues were as much a wake up call to B'nei Israel as they were to the people of Mitzrayim.

The verse raises major moral and theological problems. If Pharaoh is foreordained to reject Moses' plea, if God will arrange for the confrontation to continue, how can Pharaoh be held responsible for his actions and how can we justify his being punished for what God causes him to do? "Although 'hardening of the heart' seems deterministic, events flow naturally from the ambitions and conflicts of a human being, Pharaoh, who is seized with the delusion of self-sufficiency. While events unfold under the providence of God, their unfolding is always according to the motives of the human beings through whom God's will is done without realizing it... Pharaoh conducted himself in conformity with his own motives and his own Godless view of his status. God made it so, but Pharaoh had only to be himself to do God's will."

Aboriginal Judaism is a mindset that views the earth and all of Creation as organic, as alive, as holding within it pieces of the great puzzle we're all trying to complete during our life journeys. Everything, this mindset implies, is a sacred conduit for divine revelation. The Creator Spirit, in other words, communicates with us through the medium of Creation, not just through "prophets".....

The real magic/miracle is the transformation (metamorphosis?) of B'nei Israel from enslaved people, to people able to run away. It is also the miracle of the Mitzrim who are finally able to release themselves from a slave-based economy (or, so in the myth). The plagues tell us not only of a society collapsing in on itself, but also of the transformation of death into life. That is the act of sacrifice.

....Nevertheless, whatever they may focus on, Calasso’s books very often revolve around one central topic: sacrifice. For him, sacrifice is what ties humans to the gods, what brings order into the world and meaning into our lives. In the many mythological traditions that he explores, the cosmos — and the humans within it — came into existence through a primordial sacrificial gesture. That act needs to be constantly re-enacted, through ritual and ceremonies, for the ties between Earth and Heaven to be maintained. Christians partake in such a ritual every time they attend Mass.....“In the act of sacrifice, you establish a relation with something that you recognise as enigmatic and powerful… The unknown itself is in our own mind as well — our mind is in its largest part totally unknown to us. Therefore, it is not only a relation to the exterior world, it is a relation to ourselves.” (From How sacrifice lost its significance, by Costica Bradtan, 2023).

I tell myself this richness of being, singular yet wholly connects, is a breadth of breath that expands beyond the monotony of being I've so carefully contained myself within. And yet the refrain that is housed within me now, in this particular moment we find ourselves in globally - "Please stop, you're killing me" - rings continually, like a chime in windstorm.