In one of the stories included in the 1970s science fiction anthology “Wandering Stars”, creatures called Bulbas that look like, “brown pillows, all wrinkled and twisted, with some big gray spots on this side and on that side, and out of each gray spot is growing a short gray tentacle,” want to be declared Jewish. In the story by William Tenn, the chief rabbi of Venus leads a panel of Neozionists to discuss the possibility of a non-human joining our faith. It turns out that the bulbas are not only already Jews, but that their parents were Jews as well.
I thought of this story as I read through this week’s Torah portion Re’eh, which discusses whether Jews who live too far from the Temple in Jerusalem to properly sacrifice their meat, can keep kosher. Yes, the Torah tells us in Deuteronomy 12:21: “if the place where God has chosen to establish the divine name is too far from you, you may slaughter any of the cattle or sheep that יהוה gives you, as I have instructed you; and you may eat to your heart’s content in your settlements.”
Exceptions are not only included in the laws of the Torah, but they are also part of the rule. You will find them all over both Biblical and Rabbinic law. Carve outs like the string that can turn a normal city into a walled city called an Eruv, that allows even the most Orthodox to carry on Shabbat, or the timers that allow electricity to be used when traditionally it is forbidden come right out of the Torah. This allows a certain amount of flexibility in what, first appears, a very fixed system. A flexibility that extends even to an alien bulbas on Venus. That is in many ways how we have been able to survive for more than three millennia, and maybe even into future eras in outer space.
B’Shalom,
Rabbi Alex