Va'eira - The Hardening of Pharaoh's Heart

In Parshas Va'eira we read of the first seven of the ten plagues that God inflicted upon the Egyptians. Before the plagues, God instructed Moses to go and speak to Pharaoh, demanding that he allow the Jewish people to go free. In the course of these instructions, God tells Moses (Exodus 7:3), "ואני אקשה את לב פרעה" - "And I shall harden Pharaoh's heart" - and that Pharaoh would not listen to his pleas and God would perform many "signs and wonders" and would take the Jewish people out of Egypt "with an outstretched hand". And indeed, we find that after the sixth, eighth, ninth, and tenth plagues that "God strengthened the heart of Pharaoh", ultimately culminating in the destruction of the Egyptian army in the Red Sea.

Many commentators discuss how we are to understand the concept of God "hardening" Pharaoh's heart. if God hardened Pharaoh's heart, then how could he be held responsible for his actions? Moreover, one of the most basic principles of Judaism is the concept of free-will. Yet these passages imply that free-will is not guaranteed, and that it is possible that a person could lose his free-will.

Maimonides
Traditional Depiction

Indeed, Maimonides explains that it is possible for a truly wicked person to be punished with the loss of his free will, making it impossible for him to repent for his evil deeds. He writes (Hil. Teshuva 6:3):

It is possible that a person would commit so great a sin, or so many sins, to the point that justice demands from the True Judge that the punishment appropriate for the willful sins of this sinner is that teshuva (repentance) should be withheld from him and he should lose the ability to turn from his evil, so that he will die and be lost in the sins he has committed. ...

Therefore it says in the Torah (Exodus 14:4), "I shall strengthen the heart of Pharaoh," for Pharaoh had sinned on his own volition and was wicked towards the people of Israel that dwelt in his land.... Justice required that teshuva be withheld from him until he had been punished. God therefore hardened his heart. 

In his commentary on this verse, the Ramban also addresses this issue and provides two answers. The first answer is identical with the approach of Maimonides. In his second answer, however, the Ramban argues that the "hardening" of Pharaoh's heart does not refer to a loss of free-will, but the opposite, that God gave Pharaoh the strength of will to be able to defy God despite the incredible pressure brought about by the plagues. At no point did Pharaoh actually desire to let the Jewish people go. It was only that, after all of these plagues, he simply did not have to strength to continue fighting. Thus God strengthened the will of Pharaoh, leaving him free to make the choice that he wished to make.

This approach is also taken by the Seforno (commentary on Torah by R' Ovadia Seforno, d.1550) and the Sefer HaIkkarim (philosophical work by R' Joseph Albo, d.1444) and appears to be the dominant approach taken by most later commentators as well. Among these later commentators is the famous Dubno Maggid, R' Yakov Kranz (d.1804), in his commentary (Kochav L'Yakov on the haftara of Lech Lecha) on the verse (Isaiah 40:29), "He gives strength to the weary, and for the powerless He gives abundant might." The Dubno Maggid cites the famous medrash about Joseph in the house of Potiphar, that states that Joseph was on the verge of succumbing to the seductive ploys of his master's wife, when God sent him a vision of his father, Jacob. This vision inspired Joseph to absolutely reject the sinful advances of Potiphar's wife. The Dubno Maggid asks why the Sages revealed this fact, which would appear to reflect so poorly on Joseph, as he was on the verge of committing such a severe sin and was only prevented from doing so by a Divine vision? Moreover, doesn't this diminish the free-will of Joseph? (Indeed, the Sages view Joseph's resistance to Potiphar's wife as one his greatest acts of righteousness - "for he sanctified the Name of God in secret" (Sotah 10b). Yet how many people would commit a sin immediately after receiving a prophetic vision?)

The Dubno Maggid therefore explains that the reality was that Joseph had absolutely no desire to sin and had resisted Potiphar's wife with all his strength. But ultimately, the pressure of her campaign had simply become too much for him. He simply did not have the strength to fight any longer (which, if we imagine his circumstances, as a young slave in a foreign land with no moral support of any kind, is not surprising). He was on the verge of succumbing to sin, not because of desire, but because he had reached the limits of his strength to fight. At this point, God gave him renewed strength by sending him a vision. This is the idea expressed in the verse that God "gives strength to the weary," which, the Dubno Maggid explains, is fundamentally the same thing that happened with Pharaoh. In both cases, God gave them the renewed strength of will to resist what would otherwise have been overwhelming pressure. The difference between the two is only that in the case of Joseph his true desire was to do what was right, and in the case of Pharaoh his true desire was to do evil.

These two approaches may be reflected in the debate between the Sages, R' Yochanan and R' Shimon Lakish, in the medrash (Shemos Raba 13:3, cited in the Ramban):

"For I have hardened his heart." (Exodus 10:1) - R' Yochanan said, "This gives an opening for heretics to claim that he had no opportunity to repent!" R' Shimon ben Lakish said to him, "May the mouths of the heretics be sealed! Rather, [the true understanding is] "He mocks the mockers" (Proverbs 3:34) - He warns him once, twice, and a third time, and he [still] does not repent, and He closes his heart to repentance in order to punish him for his sin. So it was with the wicked Pharaoh. Once God had communicated with him five times (i.e. the first five plagues) and he paid no heed, God said to him, 'You have stiffened your neck and hardened your heart, behold, I shall add impurity upon your impurity!"

The Yefeh To'ar (commentary on Midrash Raba by R' Shmuel Yafa Ashkenazi, 16th century) argues that R' Yochanan follows the second approach that we have described, that Pharaoh did not lose his free will. Thus he says that a simple reading of the verse would seem to support to the claims of the heretics that Pharaoh had no free-will and therefore did not deserve to be punished. R' Shimon ben Lakish, however, following the approach of Maimonides, says that Pharaoh did indeed lose his free will, but that the arguments of the heretics are nevertheless baseless, for this was his punishment for his extreme wickedness.

R' Elya Lopian

Whether we follow the interpretation of the Yefeh To'ar or not, it would seem clear that R' Shimon ben Lakish is the following the approach of Maimonides, that Pharaoh did indeed lose his ability to repent for his sins. However, in Lev Eliyahu (vol.2, p.49), R' Elya Lopian (d.1970) argues - emphatically - that teshuva is always possible, stating:

Know and remember this: That one who says, "I am unable to break my desire and stand up against my nature," this is heresy. As we see in the debate between R' Yochanan and R'Shimon ben Lakish... that both agree that this is what is said by heretics.

(Thus, in a lengthy note on the Lev Eliyahu (p.49-51), R' Sholom Schwadron (d.1997) argues (based upon a later passage in Hil. Teshuva) that even according to Maimonides, it is possible for a person to regain his ability to repent through prayer.)

Instead, R' Elya Lopian (p.44) understands the opinion of R' Shimon ben Lakish to mean not that God takes away the sinner's ability to repent, but rather that God ceases to reach out to the sinner to motivate him to repent.

This idea is also found in the Kedushas Levi (R' Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev, d.1809). The Kedushas Levi (Deuteronomy 28:1) states that the Sages tell us that there is a Heavenly voice that calls out every day, "Return, O wayward sons!" (Jeremiah 3:22). This Heavenly voice is heard, on a spiritual level, by every Jew, and it serves to arouse his soul to repentance. However, the Sages tell us of certain Sage, R' Elisha ben Avuya, who became a heretic and became known as Acher. On a few instances, when asked why he did not repent from his sins, he responded that he had heard a Heavenly voice call out, "Return, O wayward sons! - Except for Acher!" (Chagiga 15a)

The Kedushas Levi explains that Acher did not lose the ability to repent, and if he had repented, his repentance would have been accepted. What Acher had lost was the daily Divine inspiration towards repentance that is the normal state for every Jew. Acher's sins were so great that the Heavenly voice no longer functioned to arouse his soul to repentance. For Acher, without that Divine inspiration, repentance would be far more difficult than for an ordinary Jew, but it remained within his power to do.

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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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Parshas Re'eh - On Excessive Mourning

In Parshas Re'eh we read (Deuteronomy 14:1-2):

בנים אתם לה' אלקיכם לא תתגדדו ולא תשימו קרחה בין עיניכם למת: כי עם קדוש אתה לה' אלקיך ובך בחר ה' להיות לו לעם סגלה מכל העמים אשר על פני האדמה: 

You are the children of Hashem your God; you shall not cut yourselves or make a bald spot between your eyes for the dead. For you are a holy people to Hashem your God, and Hashem has chosen you to be for Him a treasured people from all peoples that are upon the face of the earth.

In this passage, God forbids us from engaging in self-mutilation as an expression of mourning and grief when someone passes away. (Such practices were commonplace in many ancient cultures, and still exist today among some groups.) The Torah tells us that to engage in such mourning practices somehow contradicts the idea that we are "the children of Hashem" and a "holy people to Hashem." What is the connection between these two concepts?

In his commentary on the Torah, Rav Avraham ibn Ezra (d.1167) writes that the message here is that God loves us even more than a father loves his children, and therefore we should trust Hashem like a small child trusts his father, even when he cannot understand his father's actions, that no matter what happens, everything God does is truly for our benefit.

The Ramban (Rav Moshe ben Nachman, d.1270) cites the explanation of the ibn Ezra, and adds that part of the underlying message here is that, as the children of God and His treasured people, we should have absolute confidence in the reality of the afterlife. For this reason, excessive acts of grief and mourning, such as self-mutilation, are inappropriate, for they imply that the loss of our loved ones is absolute. However, the Ramban continues, the Torah does not prohibit crying over the death of a loved one, for it is natural for those who love each other to cry upon their separation, even in life.

Rabbi Mattisyahu Salomon, the famous mashgiach of the Lakewood yeshiva, expanded upon this idea in a speech (printed in With Hearts Full of Faith, p.75):

A father and mother send off their son to a yeshivah in Israel. They are the ones that encouraged him to go. They helped him choose the yeshivah, and they are the ones paying for it. Nevertheless, when they take their son to the airport and say good-bye, they cry. Why do they cry? Isn't everything going exactly as they wanted it to go? Why does a mother cry at her daughter's wedding? Because it is human nature to cry at times of parting with a loved one.

When a loved one dies, it is a moment of parting, not only for a certain period of time but for as long as we live on this earth. This is the pain we are allowed to feel. This is the pain that we are supposed to feel. It is right to feel the loss of a departed loved one, and it is right to give expression to that loss with our tears. But excessive grief? That is forbidden. Did we ever see parents mutilating themselves and tearing out their hair in the airport when they are sending off their children to study in a distant land? Not very likely. Self-mutilation expresses something much deeper than the pain of parting. It expresses the shock at the immensity of the tragedy and horror at coming face-to-face with evil. These have no place at a Jewish death. 

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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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