Devarim - "How Can I Alone Carry Your Trouble, Your Burden, and Your Disputes?"

Parhas Devarim begins with the first of Moses' parting addresses to the Jewish people, in which he reviews their history and rebukes them - often in veiled terms - for their misdeeds. Early in the speech, Moses speaks of how he came to appoint judges over the people  (as told in Exodus 18). Here too, Moses engages in veiled rebuke. While Moses begins by stating that the reason who could not judge them alone was due to their numbers, and he blesses them that they should continue to increase, he then goes on to indicate that the need for additional judges was also due to less positive issues as well, stating (Deuteronomy 1:12):

איכה אשא לבדי טרחכם ומשאכם וריבכם:

"How can I alone carry your trouble, your burden, and your disputes?"

On a purely peshat (basic text) level, this verse could be interpreted as simply expanding on the idea that, as a numerous and growing nation, there was simply too many issues for one person, even Moses, to handle alone. However, asides from the fact that this would be repetitious, the terms used by the verse clearly carry a somewhat critical tone. In fact, Rashi, quoting the Sages (Sifri), understands these three terms to refer to veiled criticisms, and explains each in the context of Moses' role as a judge:

טרחכם. מלמד שהיו ישראל טרחנין, היה אחד מהם רואה את בעל דינו נוצח בדין, אומר יש לי עדים להביא, יש לי ראיות להביא, מוסיף אני עליכם דיינין:

ומשאכם. מלמד שהיו אפיקורסין, הקדים משה לצאת, אמרו מה ראה בן עמרם לצאת, שמא אינו שפוי בתוך ביתו, איחר לצאת, אמרו מה ראה בן עמרם שלא לצאת, מה אתם סבורים, יושב ויועץ עליכם עצות וחושב עליכם מחשבות:

וריבכם. מלמד שהיו רוגנים:

"Your trouble" - This teaches that [the children of] Israel were burdensome. If one would see that his opponent in court was winning, he would say, "I have witnesses to bring," "I have proofs to bring," "I am adding on judges to you." (See Ramban for a halachic  explanation of the latter.)

"Your burden" - This teaches that they were apikorsin (heretics). If Moses went out early [to judge cases] they would say, "Why did Ben Amram leave [home early]? Perhaps things are not going smoothly at home." If he would delay leaving [home] they would say, "What do you think? He is sitting and getting advice [from his wife (Sifri)] against you, and thinking thoughts against you."

"And your disputes" - This teaches that they were quarrelsome.

Each of these commentaries deserves extended discussion. On the most basic level, Moses was pointing out three problem areas among the Jewish people that made it particularly difficult to judge them.

The first problem was that judging cases between two Jews was exceptionally burdensome because each one was so determined to win that they would drag the case out far beyond reason and would take advantage of every possible technicality. It is important to note that Moses does not accuse them of actually engaging in any kind of dishonesty or violation of the rules but of an excessive drive to win which placed an undue burden on the judge. This behavior indicated that the litigants were motivated less by a desire for justice than by a desire to be victorious over their fellow.

The second problem was that the Jews would interpret any behavior of the judge, even outside of the court, as evidence that he was not judging their case properly. Thus, if he came early, "Uh oh! Must be problems at home! We better watch out!" And if he came late, "Uh oh! He must have been talking over the case with his wife! Who knows what she told him?"

It is significant that the Sages considered those who engaged in this behavior not simply as burdensome, but actually as apikorsim - a term usually translated as "heretics." This is because, contrary to what is commonly assumed, the category of apikoros -  "heretic" - does not refer only to one who does not accept the doctrines of Judaism, but also to one who shows disrespect for the Torah or its scholars. Maimonides writes (Commentary on the Mishna, Sanhedrin 10:1):

ומלת אפיקורוס היא ארמית, ענינה מי שמפקיר ומבזה את התורה או לומדיה, ולפיכך קורין בזה השם כל שאינו מאמין ביסודי התורה או מי שמבזה החכמים או איזה תלמיד חכם שיהיה או המבזה רבו:

The word apikoros is Aramaic, and it refers to one who devalues or disparages the Torah or those who study it. The term is therefore used for anyone who does not believe in the fundamental principles of the Torah, or one who disparages the Sages or any other Torah scholar, or one who disparages his teacher.

To disparage a Torah scholar is to disparage the Torah itself, which is the entire foundation of Judaism. Thus, these Jews who spoke disparagingly of Moses were indeed apikorsim.

The third problem was that they were quarrelsome, i.e. they would engage in unnecessary and unproductive disputes. The Sages (Sifri) describe this as, "they would spend a selah (an ancient coin) to take two selaim, and they would spend two selaim to take three selaim." At first glance this would seem perfectly reasonable, after all, you need to spend money to make money. However, the repetition - one for two, two for three - indicates that what we are talking about here is that they would spend extra money in order to make their opponent pay extra money, even though they would walk away with the same amount of profit. (ראה עמק הנצי"ב) This, like the first problem, was rooted in an inappropriate desire to be victorious over their fellow, even when they didn't stand to gain anything.

The midrash (Eicha Raba 1:1) tells us that there were three prophets who prophesied using the term "eicha," Moses (in this verse), Isaiah (1:21, which we read in the haftara for Parshas Devarim), and Jeremiah (in Eicha - Lamentations). (We have discussed this midrash previously.) This would seem to indicate that there is some continuity between the themes discussed in these verses.

While this topic deserves a fuller exploration than I'm prepared to attempt at this time, the basic idea - that these problems are closely related to the sins that led to the destruction of the Second Temple and the exile of the Jewish from their land - is fairly straightforward.

The Talmud (Bava Metzia 30b) tells us:

דאמר רבי יוחנן: לא חרבה ירושלים אלא על ... שהעמידו דיניהם על דין תורה, ולא עבדו לפנים משורת הדין.

Rabbi Yochanan said, Jerusalem was not destroyed except because they decided their cases according to Torah law, and they did not go beyond the limits of the law.

The issue that Rabbi Yochanan is describing is precisely the issue that we described above as the first and third problem that Moses was describing. We can readily see how such problems are related to the more basic issue of sinas chinam (unjustified hatred) which, the Talmud (Yoma 9b) tells us, was the primary cause of the destruction of the Second Temple.

With regard to the second problem we discussed - i.e. the disrespect for Torah scholars we also find a directly parallel statement in the Talmud (Shabbos 119b):

אמר רבי יהודה: לא חרבה ירושלים אלא בשביל שביזו בה תלמידי חכמים

Rabbi Yehuda said, Jerusalem was not destroyed except because they disparaged Torah scholars.

We see here that disrespect for Torah scholars was one of the main contributing causes of the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the Jewish people. This is closely connected to the famous Talmudic passage in Nedarim 81a that the reason the land was lost was "שלא ברכו בתורה תחילה" - "because they failed to recite the blessing on the Torah [before study]." As the commentaries (ר"ן בשם ר' יונה, ומשנה ברורה ס' מ"ז) explain that even though the Jewish people were studying Torah, they didn't properly appreciate the unique status of the Torah over and above all other wisdom. Torah that is studied without a proper appreciation of its significance is not truly Torah at all. Fundamentally, the failure to give the proper respect to Torah scholars is rooted in the failure to truly appreciate the Torah itself.

At this time of year, when we are in mourning over the destruction of our Holy Temples, it particularly appropriate for us to meditate upon the root causes of our exile, which is ultimately the root cause of all the tragedies and suffering of history. By carefully studying our own behavior and attitudes, and working to bring them in line with the teachings of the Torah, we will ultimately merit the coming of the Messiah and the rebuilding of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. May it happen soon in our days!

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Bamidbar - The Lesson of the Degalim

The second chapter of Parshas Bamidbar discusses the division of the Jewish population in the wilderness into four camps, each containing three tribes, surrounding the camp of the Levites,  with the Tabernacle in the center. Each of these four camps was to have a degel - banner - that symbolically represented the tribes within that camp (and, according to many sources, each tribe had its own banner as well).

The midrashim and commentaries discuss the symbolism and significance of these degalim (banners), and the division of the nation into camps, at great length. However, after all the discussion, we still need to understand what purpose there was in dividing up the nation in this manner and assigning each tribe its own symbol.

Many commentaries note that this system, with the regulated division of forces and the assignment of banners and symbols, closely resembles that of a military organization. Some understand this in the simple manner that this was intended to prepare the Jewish nation for military operations upon entering the land of Israel. Nevertheless, it seems self-evident that this was much more than simply a practical arrangement for pragmatic purposes. The midrashim clearly see in this division - "each man by his banner" - a spiritual lesson of profound significance. Indeed, the Medrash Tanchuma (Bamidbar 14) states that our future redemption will be in the merit of the banners (בזכות הדגלים אני גואל אתכם)!

It would seem that the basic message of the degalim was twofold. The first message of the degalim was to symbolize the unique status of the Jewish people as separate and distinct from all the other nations of the world. Thus, just like a military force moves and camps with banners, so that all who see them will know they exist to serve their king and nation, so too the Jewish people moved and camped with banners to declare that they exist to serve God. Thus, the most basic message of the degalim was that we must recognize that, like soldiers, we live to serve God and to obey His every command. It is this which sets us apart from all the other nations of the world. While every human being is obligated to serve God, just as every citizen is obligated to serve his king and nation, a Jew exists only to serve God, and every aspect of his life must be directed to that purpose.

By contrast, the second message of the degalim is that the fact that we all - as Jews - exist for the single purpose of serving God does not mean that we all are expected to serve God in exactly the same way. On the contrary, we see from the degalim that God not only acknowledges the diversity of the Jewish people but actually celebrates it. Every tribe had its own unique strengths and virtues that enabled it to serve God in its own unique fashion. Thus, the tribes camped separately, but were held together by the central camp of the Tabernacle, symbolizing the Torah, which must always remain our exclusive focus. (See my previous post: Noach - The Value of Diversity.)

When, as a nation, we truly internalize the lessons of the degalim, that we all must devote our lives to the service of God - each in our own way - then we will truly merit the coming of the redemption.

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Science and Creation

This is a video of a presentation I made a few years ago to middle school students at an Orthodox Jewish day school discussing how to think about the apparent conflicts between our current scientific understanding of the age of the universe and the traditional Jewish understanding of the Torah.

 

 As usual, all comments and criticisms are welcome.

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Bo - Do Not Separate from the Community

Parshas Bo tells us of the final three of the ten plagues that God inflicted upon the Egyptians before the exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt. The second from last plague was the plague of darkness, in which the entire land of Egypt experienced a supernatural darkness.

In a famous medrash, the Sages tell us that in addition to functioning as a punishment for the Egyptians, the plague of darkness also served to hide an event that God did not wish the Egyptians to witness. The medrash states (Shemos Raba 14:3, also see Tanchuma, Va'era 14, and Tana D'Vei Eliyahu 7):

Why did He bring darkness upon them? Blessed be the Name of the Holy One, blessed is He, for there is no favoritism before Him, Who delves deep into the [human] mind and examines [their] thoughts: For there were sinners (פושעים, Rashi here has רשעים, "wicked people") in Israel who had patrons among the Egyptians, and they had wealth and honor there, and they did not wish to leave. God said, "If I bring a plague upon [these sinful Jews] openly and they die, the Egyptians will say, 'The same thing that is happening to us is also happening to them!'" Therefore He brought the darkness upon the Egyptians for three days, so that [the Jews] would be able to bury their dead, and their enemies would not see.

There were Jews who were comfortable in Egypt and did not want to leave. The Sages do not accuse these people of any kind of sinful behavior, whether towards God or to their fellow men. Their entire wickedness is summed up in the fact that they did not wish to leave Egypt! 

Moreover, we know that there were some genuinely wicked Jews who did leave Egypt together with their fellow Jews, the best known examples being the famous troublemakers, Dathan and Abiram. And the Jewish people as a whole were far from perfect. The Sages tell us that when God drowned the Egyptians at the Red Sea, the angels challenged the Divine Justice in drowning the Egyptians and not drowning the children of Israel, famously declaring, "הללו עובדי עבודה זרה והללו עובדי עבודה זרה" - "These are idol worshipers and those are idol worshipers!"

The implication of this medrash is that the issue was not that these particular Jews were exceptionally sinful, but rather that they were sinful in a very specific way, one which made it impossible for them to live to see the redemption of their people from Egypt. This was the simple fact that, regardless of any other virtues they may have possessed, these Jews wanted to stay in Egypt. They were quite comfortable in Egypt, and they saw no reason to leave!

As Jews, we have an obligation to see ourselves as part of a larger unit, the Jewish people, to which we are intrinsically connected. Our connection to God as individuals cannot be distinguished from our connection to the Jewish people as a whole. We can never simply go our own way, as if the fate of our fellow Jews means no more than that of any other random group of people.

One of the most famous teachings of the great Talmudic sage, Hillel, was (Avos 2:4), "אל תפרוש מן הצבור" - "Do not separate from the community." The commentaries explain that when the community is suffering, you have an obligation to bear the burden and suffer together with the community, even if the problem does not directly affect you. The Talmud (Taanis 11a) says that one who separates from the community when it is suffering will not merit to see the community's deliverance. This is precisely what happened to these Jews who did not wish to leave Egypt!

Not every sin requires actively violating an explicit prohibition. Indeed, as we see in this case, it is possible that one could be considered a sinful and wicked person even without doing a single forbidden or even improper act. Simply having the wrong mental attitude can be enough, if that improper attitude touches upon fundamental aspects of one's relationship with God and man.

This concept can also help us understand why it is that certain sins which seem to be relatively minor are sometimes given far more significance than others which would seem to be far more severe. One classic example is the case of a Jewish man sinning with a non-Jewish woman. Technically speaking, there is a debate if this is a Biblical or Rabbinical prohibition. And even if it is a Biblical prohibition, it clearly does not qualify for the severe penalty of kareis (spiritual excision) that we find by many other prohibited relationships. Yet, this is actually one of the most severe sins a Jew can commit! As the prophet Malachi said (2:11-12):

Judah has been treacherous, and an abomination has been done in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah has desecrated the holiness of God, which He loves, and has married the daughter of a foreign god. May God cut off (kareis) from the man that does this any living child from the tents of Jacob, and anyone that might bring forth an offering to the God of Hosts.

The prophet applies the penalty of kareis to an act that, according to many authorities, is not even a Biblical prohibition! Indeed, the Sefer Mitzvos HaGadol (R' Moses of Coucy, 13th century) writes (Lavin #112) that, in certain regards, the kareis described by the prophet is actually more severe than that of any other sexual sin. 

The Talmud (Eruvin 19a) states (in a somewhat obscure passage) that, in the afterlife, when a Jew is condemned to punishment in Gehinom, the patriarch Abraham comes and takes him out, "except for a Jew that has had relations with a non-Jewish woman, for his foreskin is pulled forward and he is not recognized" as a Jew. Here we see that a Jew who commits this, technically "minor" sin, is said to have lost his circumcision, the sign of the Jewish covenant with God!

This brings us back to our original topic. Our relationship with God cannot be separated from our relationship with the Jewish people. This is the nature of the Jewish people, we are His people, and He is our God. It is that relationship with God that makes us a nation, and it is as a nation that we have that relationship with God. When we cut ourselves off from the Jewish people, we are cutting ourselves off from God. As Jews, we have a moral and spiritual obligation, unlike that found in any other nation, to remain loyal to our people, both as individuals and as a group. We bear our burdens together, we share in the suffering of our fellows Jews, no matter where they are or how different they may seem, and, ultimately, we will all experience the joy of the final redemption together, as one people.

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Shemos - A Man Married a Woman...

In Parshas Shemos the Torah tells us the story of the birth of Moses, the savior of the Jewish people; the man who would lead them out of Egyptian slavery, who would bring them to a national revelation at Mt. Sinai, and who would lead them for forty years in the wilderness, teaching them God's Torah. The man whom, the Torah tells us, was both the humblest man and the greatest prophet of all time.

We would expect that this account would be one of drama and miracles, yet the Torah tells us the story in the simplest of possible terms (Exodus 2:1-2):

And a man of the house of Levi went and married a daughter of Levi. And the woman conceived, and bore a son....

A man married a woman and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. A more ordinary story could not be told.

Yet, in reality, the Sages tell us that there was a great deal of drama to this story. Moses was not from an ordinary Levite family. As the Torah tells us (Exodus 6:20), Moses was the son of Amram, the grandson of Levi and, the Sages tell us, the leader of the generation, and Jochebed, a daughter of Levi. Amram and Jochebed had been previously married (as we know from the fact that Moses had two older siblings, Aaron and Miriam), but in the face of the decree to cast all male children into the river, Amram had separated from her, and his example had been followed by the rest of the Jewish people. The Sages tell us that this continued until Miriam, Amram's daughter, said to her father, "Your decree is worse than Pharaoh's! For Pharaoh has decreed only against the males, but you have decreed on both the males and the females!" Amram accepted this criticism and remarried Jochebed. As R' Samson Raphael Hirsch writes:

R' Samson Raphael Hirsch

In such times courage was required to become a father or a mother. So it does not say, ויהי איש מבית לוי ויקח וגו' ("And there was a man from the house of Levi that married...") but וילך וגו' ("And he went..."). In this וילך lies the whole great resolution that was necessary for taking such a step.

Note further, that it does not say, ויקח בת לוי ("and he took a daughter of Levi") but ויקח את בת לוי ("and he took the daughter of Levi"), i.e. one who was already definitely known. In any case we know from the sequel that when this occurred, the couple had been married previously. A sister was already there and this sister had already a brother. All this tells us what our Sages say, viz. that this was not their first marriage, but that a man who had separated from his wife in consideration of the King's cruel order, made up his mind to take her back again to oppose this order.

Yet, despite this, the Torah tells us the story in exceptionally sparse and simple terms. We are not even told the names of the parents, only their tribe. Why does the Torah do this?

In his commentary on the Torah, Rabbi Joseph H. Hertz (d.1946) writes:

The explicit language in these two verses brings out an important characteristic of Judaism. In other religions, the founders are represented as of supernatural birth. Not so in Judaism. Even Moses is human as to birth, as also in regard to death (Deut. 34:5).

R' Hertz sees in the simple and straightforward language of the Torah an apparently simple lesson that is actually of profound importance. Judaism emphasizes the human nature of its founders and leaders, and does not see this as in any way diminishing their stature. An "ordinary" child of "ordinary" parents can grow up to reach the highest levels of spirituality. (This point is also made, and developed at some length, by R' Yaakov Kamenetsky in Emes L'Yakov.)

Rav Zalman Sorotzkin (d.1966) sees a related idea in the omission of the names of the parents. If the Torah had stated their names at this point, we might have thought that Amram and Jochebed were somehow predestined to be the parents of the savior of the Jewish people. By omitting the names, however, the Torah teaches us that any righteous Jewish man can be the father, and any righteous Jewish woman the mother, of the savior of the Jewish people.

The Torah tells us the story of Moses' birth in these simple terms, "a man of the house of Levi went and married a daughter of Levi", to teach us to recognize the significance of a Jewish man and woman coming together in marriage and raising a family. To teach us that, ultimately, every Jewish family has the ability to bring about the salvation of the Jewish people.

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Vayigash - The Joy of Jacob

In Parshas Vayigash we read of the meeting, after a separation of many years, between Joseph and his father Jacob. The Torah states (Genesis 46:29):

ויאסר יוסף מרכבתו ויעל לקראת ישראל אביו גשנה וירא אליו ויפל על צואריו ויבך על צואריו עוד

Joseph harnessed his chariot and went up to greet his father, Israel, in Goshen, and he appeared before him and fell on his neck and cried for a long while.

It is hard for us to imagine the incredible sense of joy that Jacob must have experienced at this time, finally seeing his beloved son, whom he had thought dead for many years, and finding him to be not only alive and well, but a father and the ruler of the land of Egypt! Yet, in the description of the meeting, we find that it was Joseph who fell upon Jacob and cried, but Jacob is not described as doing anything at all!

Rashi explains:

יעקב לא נפל על צוארי יוסף ולא נשקו, ואמרו רבותינו, שהיה קורא את שמע:

Jacob did not fall upon the neck of Joseph, and did not kiss him. Our Sages say that he was reciting the Shema.

R' Yehoshua Leib Diskin

Why was Jacob reciting the Shema at such a time? R' Yehoshua Leib Diskin (d.1898) explains (חידושי מהרי"ל דיסקין עה"ת) that when Jacob experienced the extraordinary feeling of love and joy upon seeing his son, he immediately sanctified that love by using it for the love of God, as expressed in the Shema when we say (Deuteronomy 6:5), "ואהבת את ה' אלקיך בכל לבבך ובכל נפשך ובכל מאדך" - "And you shall love Hashem your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might."

R' Yehoshua Leib Diskin's son, R' Yitzchak Yerucham Diskin (d.1925), expanded on this idea by pointing out that the basic theme of the Shema is the absolute unity of God. This means that God is the only power in the universe, and nothing happens - good or bad - outside of His control. This idea is in fundamental conflict with those worldviews that believe that good and bad come from separate powers, an idea that was basic to ancient paganism (and which still exists, in various forms, in modern times).

Thus, when Jacob finally met his son, and was able to see how all the suffering that he had experienced until now from the loss of his son had ultimately been for the benefit of his family, he attained a new level of recognition of God's dominion, and how there is no true distinction between what we perceive as good and what we perceive as bad. Thus, at that point he was inspired to recite the Shema and declare:

שמע ישראל ה' אלקינו ה' אחד

Hear O Israel, Hashem is our God, Hashem is One!

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Mikeitz - The Error of Desperation

At the end of last week's parsha, after Joseph intepreted the dream of Pharaoh's wine steward and told him that he would be freed from prison, he asked the wine steward to intercede on his behalf with Pharaoh. Yet, upon being freed, the wine steward immediately forgot Joseph and did nothing for him.

Parshas Mikeitz begins exactly two years later, when Pharaoh is himself experiencing a dreams that no one is able to explain. Suddenly the wine bearer remembers Joseph, the man who had interpreted his own dreams while he had been in prison.

The Midrash Raba (פט:ג) states that there was a reason for this two year delay:

ע"י שאמר לשר המשקים זכרתני והזכרתני ניתוסף לו שתי שנים

Because he said to the wine steward “remember me… and mention me” two years were added [to his time in prison].”

The Midrash seems to indicate that by asking the steward for help, Joseph demonstrated insufficient bitachon – trust in God. This is extremely puzzling, as we know that it is permitted, even required, to make normal efforts to solve our problems. We are not supposed to simply sit back and wait for God to miraculously help us. So what was wrong with what Joseph did?

The Chazon Ish

The Chazon Ish, Rav Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz (d.1953), in his work אמונה ובטחון, explains that the true essence of bitachon is an absolute certainty that God is always in control of events. A person who genuinely believes this will therefore never give up hope or act out of desperation, because he knows that even if he is not able to do anything himself, God is still in control.

When a person who feels a sense of desperation, i.e. that he has a problem for which he can find no reasonable solution, he will often attempt to solve his problem through methods that are extremely unlikely to succeed. He will do strange and unusual things because he believes that he has run out of alternatives. However, a person with genuine bitachon will never do this, because he always has God to fall back on.

In other words, while we are required to take normal, rational steps to care for ourselves, and we are not permitted to simply rely on God to miraculously provide us with all our needs and solve all our problems, this does not mean that bitachon has no practical expression. Bitachon means that once one has exhausted all reasonable means to deal with a problem, then the problem is no longer your responsibility. A person with genuine bitachon never feels that he has to "do something", no matter how crazy, because "doing something is better than doing nothing." From a Torah perspective, if the "something" is nothing more than a shot-in-the-dark act of desperation, then doing nothing actually is better than doing "something", for doing "something" demonstrates that one doesn't really believe that God is in control.

Based on this concept, the Chazon Ish explains that the nature of Egyptian society was such that it was extremely unlikely that the wine steward - a high ranking nobleman - would repay Joseph - a foreign slave - by mentioning him to the king. Thus, when Joseph asked the steward to remember him and mention him to Pharaoh, he knew that this was really just a wild "shot-in-the-dark", and that it was extremely unlikely to succeed. Such an act of desperation expressed a lack of bitachon that was inappropriate for a person on Joseph’s high spiritual level.

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Vayishlach - The Task of the Yetzer Hara

In Parshas Vayishlach we read of Jacob's nighttime struggle with a mysterious antagonist who attacked him and struggled with him until just before daybreak. When the "man" saw that he could not defeat Jacob, he dislocated Jacob’s hip joint. He then said to Jacob (Genesis 32:27), “Let me go for the dawn is rising.” Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” The man then told him that he would no longer be called Jacob but Israel, for he had become great before God and man. Jacob then asked for the man’s name but he refused to reveal it.

The Sages tell us that the mysterious antagonist was an angel, specifically שרו של עשו – the ministering angel of Eisav - who is also identified as the שטן (Satan) and the יצר הרע (yetzer hara - "evil inclination"). This struggle therefore symbolized the basic struggle between good and evil that takes place on many different levels.

Rashi

Rashi (R' Shlomo Yitzchaki d.1105) explains that when the “man” asked Jacob to release him "for the dawn is risen," his intent was that he had to go at dawn to sing before God, "צריך אני לומר שירה ביום" – "I must recite song by day." The Talmud (:חולין צא) explains:

אמר לו: מלאך אני, ומיום שנבראתי לא הגיע זמני לומר שירה עד עכשיו

[The angel] said to him, “I am an angel, and from the day that I was created, my time has not come to recite song until now.”

This raises the obvious question as to why it happened that the very same day that the angel struggled with Jacob was also the very first time that the angel ever sang before God?

The Koznitzer Maggid (R' Yisrael of Koznitz, d.1814) explains (בשם חכם אחד), that an angel only gets to sing before God when it has fulfilled its purpose of existence. As we mentioned above, the angel that fought with Jacob was the yetzer hara - the so-called "evil inclination" - that tempts man to sin. The struggle between Jacob and the angel was therefore not a simple, physical wrestling match, but an attempt of the yetzer hara to seduce Jacob to sin in some manner. However, the ultimate purpose of the yetzer hara is not actually to cause us to sin, but to tempt us to sin and be defeated! Thus, when Jacob succeeded in completely defeating the yetzer hara  he enabled it to finally fulfill its true purpose, and the angel got to sing before God for the very first time.

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Breishis - The Message of Genesis

Rashi - Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki
(Traditional depiction)

In his opening comment on Genesis 1:1, Rashi (R’ Shlomo Yitzchaki, d.1105) cites a medrash that asks a surprising question:

אמר רבי יצחק, לא היה צריך להתחיל את התורה אלא מהחדש הזה לכם, שהיא מצוה ראשונה שנצטוו ישראל, ומה טעם פתח בבראשית

Rabbi Yitzchak said, The Torah only needed to begin from “This month shall be for you” (Exodus 12:2), for it is the first commandment that was commanded to Israel. Why did He begin with Genesis?

The Ramban (R’ Moshe ben Nachman, d.1174) cites Rashi’s question and asks:

ויש לשאול בה, כי צורך גדול הוא להתחיל התורה בבראשית ברא אלהים, כי הוא שורש האמונה, ושאינו מאמין בזה וחושב שהעולם קדמון, הוא כופר בעיקר ואין לו תורה כלל!

You can ask on this [medrash] that there is a great need for the Torah to begin with “In the beginning God created”, for this is the root of faith, and one who does not believe [in creation] and thinks that the world has always existed denies an essential principle and has no Torah at all!

והתשובה, מפני שמעשה בראשית סוד עמוק אינו מובן מן המקראות, ולא יוודע על בוריו אלא מפי הקבלה עד משה רבינו מפי הגבורה, ויודעיו חייבין להסתיר אותו, לכך אמר רבי יצחק שאין להתחלת התורה צורך בבראשית ברא, והספור במה שנברא ביום ראשון ומה נעשה ביום שני ושאר הימים, והאריכות ביצירת אדם וחוה, וחטאם וענשם, וספור גן עדן וגרוש אדם ממנו, כי כל זה לא יובן בינה שלימה מן הכתובים, וכל שכן ספור דור המבול והפלגה שאין הצורך בהם גדול, ויספיק לאנשי התורה בלעדי הכתובים האלה, ויאמינו בכלל בנזכר להם בעשרת הדברות "כי ששת ימים עשה ה' את השמים ואת הארץ את הים ואת כל אשר בם וינח ביום השביעי", ותשאר הידיעה ליחידים שבהם הלכה למשה מסיני עם התורה שבעל פה:

And the answer is that maaseh Breishis – the act of Creation – is a deep secret that can not be understood from the verses, and which can only be known clearly through the kabbala – traditional knowledge – received through Moses from the mouth of God, and those who know it are obligated to hide it.

Therefore, Rabbi Yitzchak said that there was no need to for the Torah to begin with “In the beginning God created”, [followed by] the story of what was created on the first day, and what was made on the second day and the other days, and the lengthy account of the creation of Adam and Eve and their sin and punishment, and the story of the Garden of Eden and the expulsion of Adam from it.

For all of this [material] can not be fully understood from the Scripture. And this is certainly true of the accounts of the generation of the Flood and the generation of the Dispersal (i.e. the story of the Tower of Babel), which are, in any case, not of as great a [theological] necessity [to know].

It would have been sufficient for the people of the Torah without these verses, and they would believe in the general concept as it is mentioned in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:11), “For six days God made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and He rested on the seventh day.” The remaining knowledge could be left for the [exceptional] individuals as a “law to Moses at Sinai” with the Oral Torah.

Even before we get to the answer, we learn from this medrash an important basic principle for studying the Torah. The function of the Torah is to provide instruction. This is primarily expressed in the commandments, but it applies equally to the narratives found in the Torah. There are no stories in the Torah simply for their own sake. Every bit of information provided by the Torah is intended to convey a practical lesson relevant to us. If we fail to see what that lesson is, then we have not yet properly studied the material, for if there were no relevant lesson then the material would not have been included.

Thus, the medrash asks why the narrative of creation – indeed, the entire book of Genesis (and even the first eleven chapters of Exodus) – is included in the Torah. What practical lessons can we learn from these narratives that justifies their inclusion?

Rashi concludes:

משום "כח מעשיו הגיד לעמו לתת להם נחלת גוים", שאם יאמרו אומות העולם לישראל, ליסטים אתם, שכבשתם ארצות שבעה גוים, הם אומרים להם, כל הארץ של הקב"ה היא, הוא בראה ונתנה לאשר ישר בעיניו, ברצונו נתנה להם, וברצונו נטלה מהם ונתנה לנו:

Because, “The power of His acts He told to His people, to give them an inheritance of nations.” (Psalms 111:6)

For if the nations of the world^[1] say to Israel, “You are robbers, for you have conquered the land of the seven nations!” They shall say to them, “The entire earth belongs to God. He created it and gave it to the one who is proper in His eyes. By His will He gave it to them, and by His will He took it from them and gave it to us.”

The Ramban expands on this answer. First he explains exactly what the basic message is that we are to intended take away from the entire narrative of the first several chapters of Genesis:

ונתן רבי יצחק טעם לזה, כי התחילה התורה בבראשית ברא אלקים וספר כל ענין היצירה עד בריאת אדם, ושהמשילו במעשה ידיו וכל שת תחת רגליו, וגן עדן שהוא מבחר המקומות הנבראים בעולם הזה נעשה מכון לשבתו, עד שגירש אותו חטאו משם, ואנשי דור המבול בחטאם גורשו מן העולם כולו, והצדיק בהם לבדו נמלט הוא ובניו, וזרעם חטאם גרם להם להפיצם במקומות ולזרותם בארצות, ותפשו להם המקומות למשפחותם בגוייהם כפי שנזדמן להם:

And Rabbi Yitzchak gave a reason for this (i.e. the inclusion of the narrative of Genesis). For the Torah begins with “In the beginning, God created” and tells over the entire account of creation until the creation of Adam, and that He gave [Adam] dominion over His handiwork and placed everything beneath his feet, and the Garden of Eden – the choicest of all the locations created in this world – was made into his dwelling place, until his sin expelled him from there.

And the people of the Generation of the Flood were expelled from the world entirely due to their sins, and only the righteous one among them survived with his children.

And their descendants were caused, due to their sin, to be scattered to different locations and dispersed to different lands, and each grasped onto various locations according to their families and their nations, according to their opportunities.

The Ramban here develops the idea that the basic primary message of the narratives of Creation, the sin of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the story of the Flood and Noah’s Ark, and the story of the Tower of Babel is that what we have in this world is dependent on our merit before God.

Thus, Adam was given the Garden of Eden, but lost it when he sinned. The generation of the Flood sinned, and they were eliminated and only the family of the righteous Noah survived. The generation of the Tower of Babel sinned, and were dispersed all over the world.

The Ramban continues:

אם כן ראוי הוא, כאשר יוסיף הגוי לחטוא, שיאבד ממקומו ויבוא גוי אחר לרשת את ארצו, כי כן הוא משפט האלקים בארץ מעולם. ... כענין שכתוב "ויתן להם ארצות גוים ועמל לאומים יירשו בעבור ישמרו חקיו ותורותיו ינצורו." כלומר, שגירש משם מורדיו, והשכין בו עובדיו, שידעו כי בעבודתו ינחלוה, ואם יחטאו לו תקיא אותם הארץ, כאשר קאה את הגוי אשר לפניהם:

From all of this we see that it is proper that if a nation continues to sin, it should be removed from its place and another nation should come to inherit its land. For this has been God’s law in the world for all time. …

As it is written (Psalms 105:44-45), “He gave them the lands of nations, and they inherited the labor of peoples, in order that they should guard His decrees and keep His teachings.” This is to say, that He expelled from there those who rebelled against Him, and He set His worshippers to dwell there, so that [His worshippers] should know that they inherited the land through His service, and if they sin against Him, the land would expel them, as it expelled the nation that preceded them.

The purpose of these narratives is therefore to teach us that our welfare in this world, and in particular, our claim to the land of Israel, is contingent on our obedience to the will of God. If we obey His commandments, then we will dwell safely in the land, but if we sin we will be driven out. It is to develop this fundamental theme that we have the book of Genesis, which first describes how this principle has functioned since the time of creation, and then describes how the Jewish people arose from our righteous ancestors to merit receiving the land of Israel. The Jewish people are not a genetic super-race that has a special right to conquer the lands of other nations. The Jewish people are chosen by God as His servants – a “kingdom of priests”, and it is only as His servants that we have any claim to the land of Israel.

The importance of this message as an introduction to the commandments is self-evident. Ultimately, the only thing that really matters is our obedience to God’s commands. Everything else is a distraction. This basic message is so central to Judaism that we are required to recite it every day in the second paragraph of the Shema (Deuteronomy 11:13-17):

And it shall be, if you will listen well to My commandments which I command you this day, to love Hashem your God, and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul, then I will give the rain of your land in its season, the early and the late rains, and you will gather in your grain, and your wine, and your oil. And I will give grass in your fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied. Guard yourselves, lest your heart be seduced, and you turn aside and serve other gods and bow down to them; and the anger of Hashem will burn against you, and He will shut up the heaven, so that there will be no rain, and the ground will not yield her produce; and you will be lost quickly from upon the good land that Hashem gives you. 

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[1] The midrash often euphemistically describes questions or doubts that can arise in the hearts of the Jewish people as being challenges from the "nations of the world." (נחלת יעקב עה"ת מר' יעקב מליסא)

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Pinchas - The Miracles of Daily Life

At the end of Parshas Pinchas, we read of the various communal offerings made in the Temple on the mo'adim - the special "appointed" times of the year. Conventionally, the term mo'adim includes all the various festivals of the Jewish year, thus the Torah goes on to list the communal offerings of the festivals of Passover, Shavuos, Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Sukkos and Shemini Atzeres. However, the Torah's discussion of the special offerings of the  mo'adim seems to go far beyond the conventional understanding of the term, and includes not only the festivals but also Rosh Chodesh (the new month), the Sabbath, and even the daily tamid offering.

R' Samson Raphael Hirsch (Numbers 28:2 and in his commentary on the Siddur, p.23) notes that the inclusion of the daily tamid offering into the category of the mo'adim conveys "a Truth of no small importance". He writes (in his Siddur):

God appointed מועדים, special occasions that attest to His rule and summon His people to His presence, to commemorate annually His mighty acts in Egypt, at the Red Sea, on Mount Sinai and in the wilderness. These miracles actually involved suspension by God of the natural order which He Himself had instituted, and thus bear eloquent witness to His greatness. In the same manner, God also appointed the transitions of morning and evening, which occur daily with clock-like regularity, to be מועדים too. These daily, "ordinary" natural phenomena are also to serve as messengers testifying to God's power and summoning the people to worship Him, to demonstrate to us the hand of God as it can be seen even in the course of the world, and to call each of us to come before Him.

For the very steadiness, the regularity, of the phenomena of nature is a much clearer, more wonderful manifestation of Divine wisdom and omnipotence than the suspension of these natural laws when God's miracles were executed. In fact the purpose of these special acts of God which interrupted the regular order of nature was to point to Him as the Lawgiver of these natural laws, lest the thought of Him as Regulator, Master, and Lord of the world order be lost through the steady regularity of the natural phenomena.

In this passage, Rav Hirsch is articulating a very basic concept. Contrary to how we often think, the laws of nature are no less a product of God's will and power than even the most dramatic open miracles. In fact, fundamentally, the only distinction between the laws of nature and open miracles is that God apparently prefers the laws of nature to be the "normal" mode of operation for His universe. As Rav Hirsch points out, both here and elsewhere in his writings, the regularity and predictability of the natural laws can cause us to overlook or forget that they are not fundamentally any different from outright miracles. Indeed, the primary function of miracles is precisely to remind us that all of the natural world is subject to God's will, and that even the most ordinary of natural events is actually a miracle.

The principle being taught here by Rav Hirsch can be found in many earlier sources. In his commentary on Exodus 13:16, the Ramban (Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, also known as Nachmanides, d.1270) develops this theme at some length, arguing that the function of miracles is to testify to the truth of the basic principles of belief, that God is all powerful and that He supervises and manages the events of this world. The Ramban summarizes this idea in a famous statement:

ומן הניסים הגדולים המפורסמים אדם מודה בנסים הנסתרים, שהם יסוד התורה כולה. שאין לאדם חלק בתורת משה רבינו עד שיאמין שכל דברינו ומקרינו כולם נסים, אין בהם טבע ומנהגו שך עולם, בין ברבים בין ביחיד.

From the great public miracles, man is led to acknowledge the hidden miracles, for they (i.e. the hidden miracles) are the foundation of the entire Torah. For a man can have no share in the Torah of Moses until he believes that everything that happens to us, whether as a community or as individuals, is entirely miraculous, and there is no element of "nature" or "the way of the world" in them.

Sometimes people, especially children, ask why God doesn't perform miracles for us nowadays. In fact, with the exception of the period immediately following the Exodus from Egypt, miracles have always been relatively rare events. Even in the days of the prophets, the ordinary Jew lived a life governed, on the surface at least, by natural laws. Why doesn't God perform miracles for on a regular basis? Wouldn't that make it easier for us to be better and more faithful Jews?

There are many answers to this question (not the least being that, as we see from the sins of the golden calf and the spies, the mere fact that one has witnessed open miracles does not ensure that one will avoid even obvious sins). This principle that we have just learned from Rav Hirsch and the Ramban gives us a deeper insight into why this is so. Ultimately, the will of God is not that we should recognize Him when He performs open miracles. God wants us to recognize His presence in every aspect of the natural world. In even the most ordinary and mundane elements of life, we should see the wisdom and kindness of the Creator.

Rav Avigdor Miller

One recent figure who truly embodied this idea was Rav Avigdor Miller ז"ל (d.2001). Rav Miller was famous for his ability to appreciate the wisdom and kindness of God in every aspect of life. I once heard Rav Simcha Bunim Cohen, a prominent Lakewood rabbi who is married to Rav Miller's granddaughter, speak of a minor incident he witnessed with Rav Miller that illustrated his unique ability in this area. Rabbi Cohen was accompanying Rav Miller on one of his regular walks in Rav Miller's Brooklyn neighborhood. As they were walking, Rav Miller noticed a peach pit lying on the sidewalk. Pausing in his walk, Rav Miller began to jump up and down on the peach pit. Somewhat bemused by Rav Miller's surprising behavior, Rabbi Cohen asked him what he was doing. Rav Miller pointed to the peach pit and asked him if it appeared damaged. Rabbi Cohen responded that it looked fine. Then Rav Miller pointed out that the peach pit is so hard that he had been unable to break it open even by jumping up and down on it, yet if it was placed in the ground and watered, after a while it would simply open up on its own and a delicate new plant would grow from it, eventually developing into a new peach tree. From this we see the wisdom and kindness of the Creator, Rav Miller continued, for he provided the seed with a strong protective shell, yet that hard shell will automatically open when it is time for the young tree to come out.

This story represents an ideal that we all need to work towards. We need to be aware of God's presence, of His wisdom and kindness, in every moment of our lives. We should see him in the food we eat, in the functioning of our bodies, and in every aspect, both human and natural, of the world around us. Rav Miller himself wrote a great deal about this idea, much of which is based upon the classic mussar work, Chovos HaLevavos. In particular, the second section of the Chovos HaLevavos, called the Shaar HaBechina (The Gate of Examination), focuses on this essential concept.

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The Age of Moses

Recently, one of my chavrusos raised a question that seemed like a really difficult problem. Towards the end of Deuteronomy (31:2, 34:7) the Torah tells us that when Moses died, at the end of the forty years in the wilderness (Deut.1:3), he was one hundred and twenty years old. This would mean that Moses was 80 years old at the time that he and the Jewish people left Egypt and, in fact, we read Exodus 7:7 that "Moses was eighty years old and Aaron was eighty-three years old when they spoke to Pharaoh."

The problem, however, is that this verse is written before the plagues begin later in the same chapter. While Scripture itself is vague as to the exact amount of time that passed from the beginning of the first plague to the last, it was clearly not a matter of a few weeks. Indeed, Jewish tradition (recorded in the Mishna, Eduyos 2:10) is that the ten plagues took place over a period of twelve months. If Moses was eighty years old at the beginning of this period, then he would have been eighty-one years old at the time of the exodus, which would make him 121 years old at the end of the forty years in the desert. (Exactly the same question can also be asked regarding Aaron.)

This would seem to be an obvious problem. In fact, in my opinion, the first hint to the solution is precisely that the problem is too obvious. All the major commentaries - who typically address issues of this sort - ought to be noting the issue, yet, to my knowledge, it is completely ignored by all the major commentaries. 

(רק מצאתי שהחת"ם סופר דחק לתרץ בשני אופנים, אחת בשו"ת ח"ו סי' כט, ואחת - שלא זכיתי להבין על בוריו - בדרשות חת"ם סופר לפרשת שקלים, ח"א דף קיז:)

When we encounters an apparently obvious problem that is apparently ignored by the commentaries, this is usually an indication that the source of the problem is actually a more basic flaw in our understanding of the material. In this case, it would seem that to the commentators, the "solution" was so self-evident that the "problem" never even presented itself. While this might sound self-defeating, it actually helps us a great deal in resolving the issue. If the solution was that self-evident, then the answer should be right there on the page, where any competent reader can see it.

With this in mind, we can return to the text in Exodus 7 and attempt to read it as the classical commentators would have read it. The first thing that we need to bear in mind, which is often overlooked by modern readers, is that the text of the Torah is divided into paragraphs. These paragraphs will be familiar to anyone who has ever read from a Torah scroll. These paragraphs are called פרשיות (parshiyos), and the division of these פרשיות was passed down to us in the written text of the Torah as given to us by Moses as he received it from Hashem. Like paragraph breaks in any text, these פרשיות are essential to a proper understanding of the Torah.

(By contrast, the conventional division of the text the Torah into chapters (פרקים) is not only not of Divine origin, but it is not even of Jewish origin and frequently does not reflect the traditional Jewish understanding of the text.)

When we look at the text in Exodus 7, we find that the verse we are discussing is the final verse of a paragraph. The paragraph in full (7:1-7) states:

And Hashem said to Moses: 'See, I have made you a master over Pharaoh; and Aaron your brother brother shall be your spokesman. You shall speak all that I command you; and Aaron your brother shall speak to Pharaoh, that he shall send the children of Israel out of his land. And I shall harden Pharaoh's heart, and I shall multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt. And Pharaoh will not listen to you, and I shall place My hand upon Egypt, and I shall bring out My hosts, My people the children of Israel, from the land of Egypt with great judgments. And Egypt shall know that I am Hashem, when I stretch forth My hand upon Egypt, and I bring out the children of Israel from among them.' And Moses and Aaron did so; as Hashem commanded them, so they did. And Moses was eighty years old, and Aaron eighty-three years old, when they spoke to Pharaoh.

We see in this paragraph God instructing Moses in a general sense of how he would interact with Pharaoh, and giving Moses an overview of the entire process of the Exodus, covering the entire period of the plagues, followed by the actual Exodus from Egypt. In regard to this overview of the entire Exodus process, the Torah, speaking from the perspective of the reader, tells us that, when it was all over, Moses and Aaron had done all that God had commanded them. It is in this context, speaking after the exodus, that the Torah says, "And Moses was 80 years old... when they spoke to Pharaoh."

Thus, from the context of the verse it seems clear that the verse is speaking of the age of Moses and Aaron, not at the beginning of the plagues, but at the conclusion of their talks with Pharaoh just before they left Egypt. If, instead of being the last verse of the previous paragraph, the verse had been the first verse of the next paragraph, which describes Moses and Aaron actually meeting with Pharaoh, then the problem would present a serious difficulty. However, as the conclusion of the previous paragraph, which is describing the course of future events, the problem disappears.

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Shelach - "What was Wrong with Them?" - Why Didn't the Children of Israel Trust God?

In Parshas Shelach we learn of the incident of the meraglim - spies - in which the spies sent to investigate the land of Israel returned with an evil report about the land. The Jewish people accepted this report and spent the night crying and bemoaning their fate. In the end, God condemned the people to remain in the wilderness for forty years, while the spies themselves died immediately in a plague.

What exactly was the sin of the Jewish people in accepting the report of the spies? God sums up the sin in His initial statement to Moses (Numbers 14:11), "How long will this people anger Me, and how long will they not have faith in Me, with all the signs that I have done in its midst?" The essence of their sin was their failure to have faith in God. After all that God had already done for them, with all the miracles of the Exodus, the Revelation at Sinai, and their supernatural survival in the wilderness (e.g. manna, clouds of glory, the well of Miriam, etc.), the Jewish people were still not ready to wholeheartedly trust God.

As a rebbi (Torah teacher) teaching seventh and eighth grade students, when discussing this parsha, my students would often ask, "What was wrong with them? After everything they had seen with their own eyes, they still didn't believe?" The following is how I would address this issue when it came up in the classroom.

Clearly, the Jewish people believed in God. They knew God in a way that no later generation can even begin to comprehend. Yet, despite their knowledge, they were not yet capable of truly trusting Him. Trust is an emotion, and with all their intellectual knowledge of God, they were incapable of creating the emotion of trust within themselves.

The Jewish people had just experienced several generations of horrific abuse at the hands of the Egyptians. When they had first come to Egypt, they were welcomed, and they had been respected and productive members of Egyptian society. Suddenly, almost overnight and for no apparent reason, that ended and the Egyptians turned against them. The Jews were forced into dehumanizing servitude and became nothing more than property.

Unsurprisingly, this experience, which lasted several generations, deeply scarred the Jewish people. Not only had they been abused, but they had been abused by people who were once their friends! And not only had their friends turned against them, but they had done so for no reason!

Now along came God and rescued them from Egypt, bringing them into a wilderness where they are completely dependent on Him, telling them that He would bring them to a land "flowing with milk and honey". Everything looked wonderful -- yet, deep down inside, the Jewish people were waiting for the second shoe to drop. On some level, even with all that they knew of God, they still had an irrational fear that all of this was just a set-up for a betrayal. In the end it would go bad, because, after generations of slavery, they knew, on an almost instinctual level, that things always go bad.

With this understanding, much of the behavior of the Jewish people in the wilderness (from the sin of the golden calf to the complaints about the food) makes far more sense. While they certainly wanted to trust God, their insecurity in their relationship with God caused them to continually “test” the relationship and to overreact to every possible problem.

This is why, even after the people had repented, they still had to remain in the desert for forty years. The forty years in the desert wasn't really a punishment; it was therapy. The people needed to experience forty years of life in which God directly participated in the daily life of every single person. Only after those forty years would their relationship with God be strong enough that they would be ready to go on to a normal life in the land of Israel.

God certainly understood the internal struggles that the Jewish people were going through, and He knew that they were not truly ready for a healthy relationship. God knew from the beginning that the Jewish people would need to spend the next forty years in the desert. Yet, before this could be made “official”, it was necessary that the people should recognize this as well. Otherwise, the forty years in the desert would have appeared utterly senseless, and would have led to even greater problems. It was therefore necessary for the Jewish people to “sin” in such a manner that they too would recognize that they were not yet ready to enter the land of Israel.

This explains why God told Moses to send the spies, even though He knew what would happen. “Send for yourself men…” – in the end the spies revealed to the Jewish people far more about themselves than they did about the land of Israel.

This also explains why God had to “go through the motions” of “anger” and “forgiveness”, first threatening to destroy them and then, in response to the prayers of Moses, “forgiving” them. (Indeed, the Sforno (14: 20) understands God’s response to Moses’ prayer to mean that God had already forgiven the Jewish people before Moses had even begun praying.) This taught the Jewish people two vitally important lessons. Firstly, it made it clear that this kind of distrust was not acceptable in a proper relationship and that they needed to change. Secondly, it made it clear that even so, no matter what they did, God would ultimately forgive them.

This understanding of the incident of the spies teaches us several important lessons. One lesson we can learn from this is that there are times when God will send us a test that He knows we will fail. This can happen when we are unaware of a spiritual flaw that is impeding our spiritual development. When we fail a test that, by all appearances, we ought to have passed, we realize that we aren't really at the level that we thought, and, hopefully, we are motivated to find those hidden flaws and rectify them. (See Rav Eliyahu Dessler in Michtav M’Eliyahu I:165 and IV:186-187 for a discussion of this concept, based on the Pri Ha’aretz of R’ Menachem Mendel M’Vitepsk.)

A more basic lesson that we can learn from here is the profound connection between our relationships with others and our relationship with God. To the degree that our relationships with other human beings are dysfunctional, so will be our relationship with God, whether we recognize it or not. If our fellow human beings find us difficult to deal with, then the likelihood is that God feels the same way. Thus the Sages taught, “Anyone who is pleasing to his fellow men is pleasing to God, and anyone who is unpleasing to his fellow men is unpleasing to God.” (Pirkei Avos 3:10)

Along the same lines, this also brings out a profoundly important spiritual aspect of our interpersonal obligations. For when we hurt another person, we are not only hurting them physically and emotionally, we are also hurting them spiritually. Every time we betray a friend, hurt a loved one, abuse our authority, or do any of the other cruel things that human beings tend to do to one another, not only do we undermine our own relationship with our fellow human beings and with God but we also chip away at our fellow human being’s relationship with God. On the other hand, every time we do an act of kindness, when we keep our word, when we give of ourselves for the benefit of others, not only are we making the world a better place for ourselves and others, but we are also bringing the world a little bit closer to God.

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Behaaloscha - Humility and Torah

At the end of Parshas Behaaloscha (Numbers 12) we read of the incident where Miriam and Aaron, the elder siblings of Moses, speak critically of Moses. As prophets themselves, they believed that they understood the demands that Moses' position placed upon him, and they believed that this did not justify his actions. (The exact nature of their criticism of Moses is left extremely vague in the text, and is discussed in the commentaries.) God Himself intervenes, and speaks to Miriam and Aaron (12:6-8):

And He said: "Hear now My words: when one of you is a prophet, I Hashem, I make Myself known to him in a vision, I speak with him in a dream. This is not so with My servant Moses; he is trusted in all My house. I speak to him mouth to mouth, in a vision without riddles; and he sees the image of Hashem. Why then are you not afraid to speak against My servant Moses?"

These verses teach us one of the most basic and central principles of Judaism, the supremacy of the prophecy of Moses. Maimonides included this principle as the seventh of his thirteen foundations of Judaism. Maimonides opens his discussion of this principle with this basic summary:

The Seventh Foundation is the prophecy of Moses our Teacher. This means to believe that he is the father of all the prophets, both those that preceded him and those who arose after him; all of them were below his level. He was chosen from all of Mankind, he attained a greater knowledge of God than any other man ever attained or ever will attain, and he rose from the level of man until he attained the level of the angels and, being on the level of an angel, there remained no screen that he did not penetrate and nothing physical hindered him. He was devoid of any flaw, big or small. His powers of imagination,  and the sensual perceptions were nullified by his understanding and the power of his desires was silenced, leaving him with pure intellect.

Maimonides goes on to detail how the prophecy of Moses differed in several basic ways from that of all other prophets.Much of his discussion is based upon the verses that we just quoted above.

But how did Moses achieve this exalted level? What was it about Moses that set him apart, not only from the rest of his generation, but from all mankind for all time? How was he alone able to reach such a great height of understanding and knowledge of God? 

The answer to this question can be found just a few verses earlier (12:3):

And the man Moses was very humble, more than any human on the face of the earth.

While Moses had many virtuous traits, his central virtue was humility. It was this that set him apart from all others, and it was this virtue that enabled him to become the greatest prophet of all time, and the one who would receive the Torah from God.

In the first mishna of Pirkei Avos, the mishna opens by saying:

משה קבל תורה מסיני

Moses received the Torah from Sinai.

Now, of course, Moses did not receive the Torah from Sinai. Moses received to Torah from God. Sinai was simply the location where this happened. Why then does it say that he received the Torah from Sinai? This question is addressed by a number of commentaries on Pirkei Avos, including the Tiferes Yisrael (R' Yisrael Lifshitz d.1860), who writes:

ר"ל משה שהיה עניו מאד, עי"ז קבל התורה שנמשלה למים שמניחין מקום גבוה ומתאספים בנמוך (כתענית ד"ז א'). ולכן קבל התורה מסיני הנמוך בהרים (כמגילה כ"ט א'). להורות דרק ע"י ענוה מקור לכל המדות ישרות יזכה אדם לתורה

The mishna wishes to tell us that it was because of Moses' great humility that he received the Torah, for the Torah is compared to water that flows away from the high spots and gathers in low areas (as it says it the Talmud, Taanis 7a). This is why Moses received the Torah at Sinai, the lowest of the mountains (as it says in the Talmud, Megilla 29a). This is to teach us that it is only through humility, which is the source of all upright character traits, that a person can merit to Torah.

We see that this idea is not only relevant to the initial reception of the Torah by Moses at Mt. Sinai, but is relevant for all of us. Proper Torah study is a reenactment of the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai, and no success in Torah study is possible without humility. This principle is a basic theme in Jewish thought, found repeated in innumerable ways in innumerable sources. Torah can only come through humility.

Why is humility so important for Torah study? There are many layers to the answer to this question. 

On one level, of course, we know that excessive pride and arrogance can be barriers to understanding in secular studies as well as Torah. A degree of humility is necessary for success in all forms of scholarship and this is also true for Torah. R' Eliyahu HaKohen of Smyrna (d.1729) addresses this aspect in his classic mussar work, Sheivet Mussar (ch. 52):

Know and perceive how the Torah remains with one who is lowly (מי שדעתו שפלה עליו), and not by one who is prideful. One who is lowly will not be ashamed to say, "I do not understand," and his teacher will then review with him until he understands it. Also, if he sees that someone who is his social inferior knows more than him, then he will go to learn from him. Similarly, because his humility enables him to recognize his own ignorance, he continually reviews his studies, and this causes his Torah to stay with him.

The opposite is true of the prideful person. His pride causes him to hide his own ignorance, and all the more so does it prevent himself from going to study by someone who is his social inferior, even if he recognizes that the other person has the wisdom of Solomon! Similarly, the prideful person is not motivated to study, because his pride makes him incapable of recognizing his ignorance.

This brings us to a somewhat deeper understanding of the connection between humility and Torah. For not only does pride prevent one from properly studying the Torah on a practical level, it also can cause one to come to false conclusions in his studies. We all recognize the role that our personal biases can play in our understanding and interpretation of what we see and know, in all aspects of life. Pride is the ultimate bias, and Torah knowledge is particularly susceptible to being corrupted in this way. The study of Torah must be done in a state of kabbala - literally, reception - in which the student opens his mind to receive the Torah without imposing his own ideas upon it. The goal of Torah study is only to truly understand what God is teaching us. To study for the sake of true understanding is, as R' Chaim Volozhiner (d.1821) explains (Ruach Chaim 6:1), the essence of studying Torah lishma - "for its own sake." The prideful person, however, will inevitably impose his own thoughts upon the Torah, consciously or unconsciously, thereby creating a corrupted version of the Torah. 

The Talmud (Taanis 7a) states, "One who studies Torah for its own sake, his Torah becomes an elixir of life for him... and one who studies the Torah not for its own sake, it becomes for him an elixir of death." One who studies the Torah for its own sake, allowing the Torah to impose its form upon his mind, experiences the true Torah, which is an elixir of life. The one, however, who studies the Torah without truly striving to understand, creates something else, which is not truly Torah at all, and which is therefore an elixir of death.

This brings us to the deepest, and most basic, level of understanding the necessity of humility for Torah. For ultimately, the Torah is not of this world. The Torah is gift, it is given to us by God, not just once at Mt. Sinai, but continually, every time we study it. To truly succeed in Torah, each of us must emulate Moses himself, in his most basic character trait, humility. For God gives His gift of Torah only to those who truly open themselves to Him, who have eliminated all the various internal barriers of the ego that separate us from Him. (See Ruach Chaim 1:1.) This is what Maimonides is saying in the passage we quoted earlier, that Moses had reached a level in which "there remained no screen that he did not penetrate and nothing physical hindered him."

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Bamidbar - Everything Has Its Place

In Parshas Bamidbar we read of how God chose the tribe of Levi to be His, to a degree above and beyond the rest of the Jewish people. Originally, the Temple service was to have been performed by the first-born sons of the entire nation. When the people sinned with the golden calf, they lost this privilege and it was given to the tribe of Levi. The tribe of Levi was chosen because, at the time of the sin of the golden calf, they answered Moses' cry of "Whoever is for God, to me!" and took up their swords to punish the worshippers of the calf.

In his commentary on Bamidbar, Rav Avigdor Miller notes a surprising irony in this. At the end of his life, Jacob admonished his sons Shimon and Levi for the violent manner in which they avenged the honor of their sister, Dinah. Yet now the descendants of Levi were being rewarded for engaging in a violent battle against their fellow Jews!

Rav Miller explains that this teaches us an important lesson:

...we learn that no natural emotion or character-trait is intrinsically evil: "God made the Man right" (Koheles 7:29), but good or evil depends on the manner in which these emotions and character-traits are exercised. Anger and even cruelty, jealousy and ambition, indulgence and temperance, indolence and alacrity: each has its proper place, and when employed in Hashem's service all of these motivations gain recompense in this life and everlasting reward in the Afterlife. The anger which endangered Jacob's family was cursed and was punished by landlessness, but when the anger was utilized to combat idolatry it was rewarded by an eternal covenant: "The Levites shall be Mine."

This is an important lesson as we come into Shavuos, the festival of Matan Torah (the Giving of the Torah). One of the most basic messages of the Torah is that every aspect of human life has the potential for holiness. Judaism teaches us not to reject our natural drives and desires, but to channel them into the service of God. This is one of the basic symbolic messages of circumcision, which the Jewish people had to undergo before they could receive the Torah, and which every male convert must undergo to enter into the Jewish covenant with God. As Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch writes (Collected Writings III, pp. 78-79 - emphasis added):

All the physical aspects of of our earthly existence, with all its impulses and forces, its riches and pleasures, must be brought under the firm control of the holy will of God. This sign [of circumcision] poses, as the first and indispensable condition for our covenant with God that we must circumcise the ערלה [uncontrolled nature (lit. "foreskin)] of the physical aspect of our body. It is not the consecration of the spirit but the consecration of the body that marks the entry into the covenant of Abraham. This covenant categorically rejects the erroneous concepts of both extremes. It does not condone a mortification of the flesh one earth for the purpose of gaining life in the world to come. But it also rejects the worship of physical appetites and the cult of "beautiful" sensualism.

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What is the Torah?

On the festival of Shavuos we celebrate the event of Matan Torah - the Giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. This was the foundational event of Judaism, from which all else follows. It was at Sinai that God made the Jewish people into His nation, and gave us His Torah.

But what, exactly, is the Torah? By this, I am not asking about the simple definition of the Torah - i.e. the five books of Moses - or even the broader definition of the complete corpus of the Written and Oral Law. I am asking, what kind of "book" is the Torah? Specifically, what kind of information did God intend to reveal to us through the Torah and what kinds of expectations can we reasonably have when studying it?

To clarify, in order to productively read a book, we need to have a reasonably good idea as to what the author is attempting to do. If our understanding of the author's intent is significantly flawed, then our ability to understand and use the book will be, at best, equally flawed. Our understanding of the author's intent causes us to have specific expectations from the book and it is the author's success in satisfying those expectations that we use in assessing the quality of the book. Thus, we have very different expectations from a history book than we have from a cookbook, or a book on car repair, or a medical textbook, or a dictionary.

The same is true for the Torah. In order for us to properly study the Torah, we first need to clarify what the Author of the Torah is trying to accomplish. What is the intended function of the Torah? Thankfully, the Torah itself is fairly clear on what its purpose is; the function of the Torah is to instruct, i.e. to tell us what to do with our lives. As the Torah (Exodus 24:12) says, "And Hashem said to Moses: 'Come up to Me, to the mountain, and stay there; and I will give you the tablets of stone, and the Torah and the commandment, which I have written to instruct them.'" One of the most basic themes throughout the Torah is the absolute importance of obeying God's commands, as given to us in the Torah.

Everything in the Torah is there for the purpose of instruction. This is true not only for the mitzvos, but even for the stories found in the Torah.  The stories in the Torah are intended to teach us lessons, and are presented in the manner that best serve God's educational purposes. They are not there for our entertainment, or even to teach us history, but, like the mitzvos, to teach us how to properly live our lives.

This is an important principle, because it tells us two critical concepts:

• There is nothing extraneous in the Torah. Everything, down to the details of every story, is there to teach us something or it would not have been included.
• The Torah does not include information that is unrelated to its purpose. While there is historical information in the Torah, it is usually vague at best. The Torah is not a history book, or a science book, or even a philosophical work. (It also isn't a cookbook or a book on how to manage your money. But you already knew that.) It is book of Divine instruction.

Much to the disappointment of many a yeshiva student, God did not give us the Torah so that we wouldn't have to study history, or science, or math (or any other area of human study). The Torah is intended to answer questions that we can't really answer for ourselves: What are we here for? How do we fulfill our purpose?

Sometimes people ask why God didn't include scientific or medical information in the Torah, or why He didn't provide more precise historical information. Such questions are no more reasonable with regard to the Torah than they would be with regard to a cookbook (which is also a book of instruction). When we study the Torah, it is perfectly legitimate to ask what we are supposed to learn from a given story, or even a specific detail within the story. It is not legitimate to ask why God omitted the cure for cancer or the Grand Unified Theory for physics.

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Explaining the Torah in Seventy "Languages"

Just finished studying with my Torah Mate. We recently began studying Chumash Devarim with Rashi and Gur Aryeh (the Maharal's super-commentary on Rashi) and we came to Deuteronomy 1:5, "On the other side of the Jordan in the land of Moab, Moses began clarifying this Torah, saying:" On the words "clarifying the Torah" Rashi comments (based on Medrash Tanchuma), "בשבעים לשון פרשה להם" - "He explained it to them in seventy languages."

This comment obviously needs explanation. Is it plausible that Moses actually got up and orally presented the Torah to the Jewish people in seventy different languages? How many languages did the Jewish people speak? Did Moshe get up and "explain the Torah" to them in languages that none of them understood? For that matter, the word used by Rashi is "פרשה" - "explained" - not translate!

So we started looking around. My chavrusa reminded me of the discussion of languages in Genesis 10:5, which, in turn, led us to look at the story of the Tower of Babel, in Genesis 11. One thing we noticed immediately is that, in the entire story of the confusion of the languages in Genesis 11, the Hebrew word "לשון"  (lit. "tongue") is never used (unlike in Genesis 10:5). Instead, the word used for language in Genesis 11 is "שפה" (lit. "lip"). Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch, in his commentary on Genesis 10:5, and again on 11:1, writes that the word "שפה" designates actual language, whereas "לשון" refers to dialect.

This was useful, in that it at least showed us that the "שבעים לשון" - "seventy languages" - mentioned by Rashi need not refer to seventy distinct languages. However, it didn't really make much sense to say that he explained it to them in seventy different dialects either.

At this point, both of us were already thinking that these "seventy languages" probably were not "languages" at all, but seventy different modes of interpretation, related to the famous concept of "שבעים פנים לתורה" - "there are seventy facets to the Torah." But we were hesitant to give such an explanation on our own, without some support. Baruch Hashem, we found exactly what we were looking for in the commentary HaKesav VeHaKabbala (by Rabbi Yakov Tzvi Mecklenburg, d.1865):

Rashi, from the Sages, says, "He explained it to them in seventy languages." They don't mean foreign languages, for what benefit would that be to the Jews? ... Rather, it is the way of the Sages to refer to the intent of a statement by the term לשון..., and so here, with the "seventy languages", it means "seventy intended meanings", similar to the statement of the Sages elsewhere, "שבעים פנים לתורה" - "there are seventy facets to the Torah" - which refers to the inner intended meanings of the Torah, asides from the initial, simple meaning.

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