Liars and Statisticians

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Today when we want to prove something we often quote statistics. For example, if I wanted to convince you that women were more religious than men, I might tell you that studies have found that women are 14% more likely to pray regularly and to hold more traditional religious beliefs.

But statistics don’t always demonstrate when they seem to demonstrate. If we explore the statistics about women and religion that I just mentioned, we discover that it’s a bit more complicated than it might seem. Older people tend to pray more frequently than younger people, and people with less higher education tend to hold more traditional religious views than those with more higher education. In the population, there are more older women than men, and fewer women, until the baby boomer generation, had access to higher education. Control for those two variables, age and education, and the two differences I highlighted between men and women disappear. That is why Benjamin Disreali, the well known British Prime Minister, is often quoted. He said:

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."

Another way that people make their points, both today and even more so in the past, is to quote the Bible. Here too the proof doesn’t always hold up to closer scrutiny.

Our Torah portion this week includes one of the texts quoted most frequently in the pre Civil War period by those attempting to prove a divine sanction for the enslavement of African people. It was commonly understood at that time that Noah’s curse of Canaan was the explanation for race based slavery even though the Biblical story had nothing to do with race and probably little to do with slavery.

As Kaitlin told us in her Torah introduction, after coming out of the ark, Noah plants a vineyard and as he harvests his first crop becomes drunk. In a story that leaves much unsaid, Noah’s drunken cavorting is seen by his son Ham who possibly molests his father. The other two brothers acting more respectfully, cover Noah, and perhaps also figuratively cover over this incident. When Noah wakes up he curses his grandson Canaan, the son of Ham, and says that he will be “a servant of servants”.

Nowhere in this story is there any mention of race. Later in the genealogy of nations that follows at the end of this Torah portion, Ham is the ancestor of the peoples of Africa, but also of the great empires of Egypt and Mesopotamia. The Canaanites were the ancient residents of what today is Israel and not Africa. The association of this text with racial prejudice is found first in a fourth century Christian commentary called “Cave of Treasures” but later in many other sources as well.

In the great debates of the 19th century, both sides quote the Bible in attempting to prove that slavery was approved or disapproved of by God. A well known Reform rabbi of the period, Rabbi David Einhorn of Congregation Har Sinai in Baltimore, was forced to leave his pulpit after a sermon he delivered on Noah’s curse. His sermon: “A Biblical View of Slavery”, an abolitionist viewpoint, delivered in German and then translated into English by his wife, was so inflammatory in that southern state that a mob gathered and threatened to tar and feather the rabbi. Rabbi Einhorn left Baltimore under cover of darkness to resume his rabbinic career in the northern cities of Philadelphia and New York.

When I was a rabbinical student we were taught to be careful about the difference between exegesis and isogesis. Exegesis involves an extensive and critical interpretation of Scripture while isogesis is reading things into the text. We used to joke around and call them the text and the pre-text sermon.

Understanding Noah’s curse in its original setting, the text is badmouthing the Canaanites as it also badmouths the Ammonites and Moabites, the children of Lot’s daughters, all three enemies of the ancient Israelites.

The basic teaching on race in this section is a very different one than the southern preachers read into it. This Torah portion, consistent with last week’s Torah portion, stresses that we are all the descendents of one family. Even as humanity evolves in this portion into the 70 nations of the world, each speaking its own language, the overriding message is that we share a common humanity, represented by a common descent. In a pre- PC world, this was often called, the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man.

As we become more sophisticated we learn to examine carefully the statistics that are presented to make a point. Similarly we should be watchful for Biblical arguments that rest on a single verse out of context, rather than upon the lesson of the text.