Ki Savo – Getting it into Our Heads

From its opening words through many of the parsha’s laws and instructions, Eretz Yisrael is central: Bikkurim, maasros, the settings-up of the Torah-inscribed stones, the brachos and klalos on Har Grizim and Har Eival.  The brachos that precede the tochachah are “on the land that Hashem swore to your forefathers, to give you” (Devarim 28:11), and exile from the land is part of the tochachah.

Yet, even as Moshe speaks about Eretz Yisrael, he adds: “Pay attention and listen, Yisrael! This day, you have become a people to Hashem, your G-d” (27:9). 

A people. This day.

Comments Rav Shamshon Refael Hirsch:

“Today, before you get the impending possession of the Land, the possession of the Torah is what makes you into a nation. You can lose the land, as indeed you may, but the Torah, and your everlasting duty to it, remains your everlasting unloseable bond which united you as a nation.

“This fundamental fact, deeply buried in Yisrael’s being, differentiates it sharply from that way all other nations have been formed, the secret of the national immortality of the Jews, with all the consequences for Israel’s future that are attached to it.”

That echoes Rav Saadia Gaon’s declaration: “Our nation is only a nation through its Torah.”

It’s a timely thought, when the Jewish presence in Eretz Yisrael is threatened from multiple directions. A merit for preserving the safety and security of Klal Yisrael in Eretz Yisrael lies in commitment to what makes us a nation.

Rav Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev noted how the assurance that “the peoples of the earth… will fear you” (Devarim 28:10), which R’ Eliezer Hagadol ties to our wearing “tefillin shebirosh” (Berachos 6a), doesn’t seem to work.

He explained that shebirosh isn’t the same as al harosh. It isn’t the fact of wearing tefillin that protects us from our enemies. It is our internalization of the words and message that inhabits the tefillin. It has to penetrate “into our heads.”

© 2024 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Ki Seitzei – Butterflies and Baker’s Bread

The ben sorer umoreh is judged al sheim sofo – because of where, on the evidence of the present, the youth’s life is headed. And his very existence, Chazal say, is the result of his mother’s having become “hated” by her husband. And that fact itself was born of the man having married an eishes yifas to’ar. And so, as the Midrash Tanchuma quoted by Rashi notes (Devarim, 21:11), the order of the topics in the parsha is meaningful.

The fact that “one small thing can lead to more significant ones” – as the old proverb has it, “For want of a nail… the kingdom was lost”  – seems to be a theme here.

The idea is whimsically called “the butterfly effect” – evoking the fancy that the flutter of an insect’s wings could eventually affect the weather in a distant land. The idea is particularly operative at beginnings, at initial stages of development. And so, it is very much a Rosh Hashanah idea. Because each year itself unfolds from its beginnings, no less than a single fertilized cell evolves into a baby, and the baby, in turn, eventually, into an adult.

That metaphor is particularly apt, since Rosh Hashanah commemorates haras olam, the conception of the world (and, not coincidentally, is the day on which, Chazal say, childless women in the Torah conceived their first children).

The Shulchan Aruch tells us to conduct ourselves in a particularly exemplary manner at the start of a new Jewish year. We are cautioned to avoid anger on Rosh Hashanah itself.  And for each year’s first ten days, we are encouraged to avoid eating even technically permitted foods  (like pas palter, “baker’s bread,” kosher bread baked by a non-Jew), and to conduct ourselves, especially interpersonally, in a more careful manner than during the rest of the year.

What is the point, though, of pretending to a higher level of observance or refinement of personality when one may have no intention at all of maintaining those things beyond the week?

Might it be that things not greatly significant under other circumstances suddenly take on pointed importance during the year’s first week, because those days have their analog in the concept of gestation?

Might those days, in other words, be particularly sensitive to small influences because they are the days from which the coming year will evolve?

© 2024 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Whatever

Dear Reader,

I’ll get to the “whatever” a bit below. 

But first: You may not realize it but, if you’re part of the American Jewish community, especially if you’re part of the Orthodox world, you have benefitted from the work of Agudath Israel.

From protection of religious rights to promotion of Jewish values and Torah study, from fighting antisemitism to ensuring that Jewish citizens can live as Jews where they wish, from obtaining permitted funding for Jewish schools to advocating for the defense of Israel, Agudath Israel has been, and remains, at the forefront of shtadlanus – legislative, diplomatic and political activism – in Congressional halls and court chambers, as well as in ongoing interaction with elected officials.

It has been my deep privilege to have been a cog in the well-oiled and constantly humming Agudah machine for some 30 years now. The legendary Rabbi Moshe Sherer, z”l, recruited me and it was a great honor for me to have been able to work alongside him for four years until the end of his amazing life. And it has been a great honor, from that time on, to have worked with people like Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, Rabbi Abba Cohen and so many others who tirelessly advocate for the community.

Above all, it is humbling to continue working for a Jewish organization that takes its direction from a body like the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah. Agudath Israel is truly unique.

And it is currently poised to launch a drive to ensure that it can continue its work into the future without hindrance or pause.

If you know enough about the Agudah to cherish it (and if you don’t, please spend some time at https://agudah.org/ ), or if you just want to show appreciation for the articles that I produce (whether for the Agudah or, independently, for various media, which the organization gives me rein to do), please visit:

https://charidy.com/agudahnational/AShafran

Now, to the “whatever.” Please offer whatever you can, no matter how little, to help further the cause. If you can sign on to a recurring donation, click on the relevant button after “donate.” Please do what you can, but know that no donation whatsoever is too small to say: “I appreciate the Agudah.” 

And I appreciate you for that.

Avi Shafran

Shoftim – The Consequentialness of a Court

In the U.S., offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting something of value in exchange for influencing a judge’s or other public official’s actions is illegal (U.S. Code, Title 18, Section 201).

The Torah’s prohibition of bribery differs  in two surprising ways. Firstly, the prohibition is on a judge alone, for taking a bribe,  not on a litigant offering one. (Though, in the latter case, the offerer is nevertheless responsible for “putting an obstacle before the blind” – causing the judge to sin – Shulchan Aruch, Choshen Mishpat 9:1)

And, secondly, a judge is forbidden to take a bribe not only to influence his decision in a particular direction but even to execute his judgment properly. Even, according to the Derisha (ibid), if both litigants offer the same bribe for that purpose alone.

It seems that the Torah’s law against bribery isn’t aimed at preventing quid pro quo per se (forgive all the Latin). It’s not, in other words,  a law about wrongdoers but, rather, about maintaining a purity of justice. Anything superfluous at all, whether or not it actually affects a verdict, that is injected into the holy mission of judging a case contaminates the enterprise.

Because a Jewish court isn’t a simple adjudication of a dispute between individuals; it is the performance of a holy act.

That might seem a slight distinction, but it really isn’t. So momentous is the undertaking to judge a case that the Talmud says it is as if the judge has partnered with Hashem in the act of Creation (Shabbos 10a). And that a judge who misjudges “causes the Divine Presence to withdraw from Klal Yisrael” (Sanhedrin 7a).

Which is why the Shulchan Aruch  considers a compromise reached between litigants to be preferable to an actual court hearing and law-based ruling (Choshen Mishpat 12). Judgment, it seems, is so daunting, so charged  an endeavor, it is best resorted to only when necessary. The stakes, no matter how small the financial impact may be to the litigants, are just too high.

© 2024 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Re’ei – Killing’s Toll on Killers

Killing takes a toll – on the killed, of course; that’s pretty obvious. But also on the killers.

That is something that the Ohr Hachaim introduces in his commentary on the pasuk “And He will give you mercy and have mercy upon you” (Devarim, 13:18).

That “give you mercy” is his focus. He writes:

“This act of killing [here of the idolaters of an ir hanidachas] creates a natural cruelty in the heart of a person.”

He continues by referring to what “we are told by the sect of Yishmaelim who murder at the command of the leader, that they experience a great euphoria when they kill a man, and the natural feeling of pity is extinguished in them…”

Therefore, he explains, “Hashem assures the Jews that [after their commanded act of killing], their innate feelings of mercy… will be returned to them anew” despite their having been weakened through the act of killing. 

And, further, that they will thereby be granted Heavenly mercy themselves, since “Hashem has mercy only on the merciful.”

Modern psychiatry recognizes something called “perpetrator trauma,” a presentation of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms caused by an act or acts of killing.

But what the Ohr Hachaim is expounding upon is a different upshot of perpetrating violence: the erosion of the natural human instinct of mercy.

And his report about not only the post-murder desensitization of assassins (the word “assassin,” as it happens, derived from an Arabic name for the reputedly murderous Nizari Ismaili sect) but of their being enthralled by taking lives resonates all too strongly today, when we have seen Yishmaeli murderers exulting  after killing men, women and children. Even the mere imagining of murdering Jews is enough to enrapture some, as they joyfully and mindlessly chant their hope to rid the Holy Land of Jews “from the river to the sea.”

© 2024 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Agudath Israel Condemns Biased UN Tribute to Terror Victims

The omission of any mention of Israeli victims of terrorism from an International Day of Remembrance of and Tribute to the Victims of Terrorism display at the visitors’ hall of United Nations headquarters is nothing short of despicable.

The U.N. informs us that “Acts of terrorism propagating a wide-range of hateful ideologies continue to injure, harm and kill thousands of innocent people each year,” and that the international body “has an important role in supporting Member States to implement the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy by standing in solidarity and providing support to victims of terrorism.”

And, indeed, the visitors’ welcome area’s display of large photographs of such victims includes tributes to victims of 9/11 and of terrorist attacks in Boston, Indonesia and Kenya, among other places.

Conspicuously missing, though, is any mention of the countless Jewish victims of Islamist terror over so many years. And this, less than a year since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israelis, the most deadly attack on Jews since the Holocaust.

Many have long judged the U.N. as a hypocritical, corrupt and useless institution. Ample evidence for that contention is displayed at the U.N. today.