Category Archives: Israel

Mikeitz – Lying Eyes

A botanist named Joseph Banks who was aboard Captain James Cook’s 1770 voyage recorded in his diary that while the 106-foot-long Endeavour sailed along the east coast of Australia, native fishermen totally ignored the large boat, the likes of which they surely had never before seen. 

Rashi (Beraishis 42:8) quotes the Gemara that explains the reason Yosef’s brothers didn’t recognize him when they appeared before him in his role as second in command of Egypt: They had last seen him as a teen and now he was a grown man with a full beard. 

But Yosef, the Midrash says, looked just like his father Yaakov, whom the brothers knew as a grown man, if one considerably older than the Yosef facing them. And so, he must have resembled surely bearded Yaakov when his brothers came before him in Egypt.

Perhaps, though, there was another element at play here, too, the sort of cognitive dissonance that might explain the Australian aborigines’ lack of reaction to the sudden appearance of the large ship. It has been speculated that they had no model in their imaginations for a vessel like the Endeavour and so their minds blocked out what was before their eyes, rendering it, for all purposes, invisible.

The very last place Yosef’s brothers could have imagined him being was on a throne in a powerful country. They had left him in the hands of slave-traders and “knew” that he was, if he was even alive, toiling somewhere as a lowly servant.  Might that “knowledge” have been at least part of why his face didn’t register with them, why they couldn’t see him even as he was right before their eyes?

Even in our times, we see the incredible power of assumptions and preconceptions, how blinding they can be. Even when faced with overwhelming evidence for the truth of something, whether a fair election or the need for a country to destroy an enemy pledged to its destruction, the fact can still remain for millions of people an unthinkable thought, and render what is right in front of them effectively invisible.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Haazinu – Nations, Be Warned!

Most commentaries understand Devarim 32:43 as “Nations! Sing the praises of His people, for He will avenge the blood of His servants; He will bring retribution upon His enemies and He will appease His land and His people.”

It would thus refer to the end of history, when the nations of the world will be dazzled by a clarity that eluded them until that point. And so harninu, “sing the praises,” is an imperative (or a prediction, in the sense of “they will sing the praises”).

Rav Hirsch and the Alshich read the pasuk differently (and perhaps in a more grammatically defensible way). In Rav Hirsch’s words (the English translation of the German original), the words refer to the ongoing present: “Therefore, nations, make the lot of His people a happy one.”

As his commentary on the pasuk expands: “The treatment accorded to the Jews becomes the graduated scale by which the allegiance accorded on earth to Hashem is measured…”

So the words, read that way, are not a prediction but rather a warning – an informing of the nations of the world that they will be eventually judged by how they treat the Jews. Rav Hirsch adds that “It was anticipated – as has actually occurred – that this Book of Hashem’s teachings would become the common property of the world, through the hands of its scattered bearers.”

And that its “principles of the equality and brotherhood of all men and the duties of respecting justice and the rights of man… [be] brought into practice.”

Even if the ultimate judgment of the nations of the world will take place only in the future, the passing into extinction of some of the world’s most Jew-oppressive regimes has already occurred. The ancient Romans and Greeks, and more recent oppressors like the Third Reich and the Soviet Union, all molder in history’s compost bin.

Today, unfortunately, there persist not only nations but also forces within otherwise benevolent countries, including our own, that seek to slander and attack Jews, both verbally and physically.

They are all warned.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Vayeilech – Complementary Curses

The fact that the word tzaros in the phrase ra’os rabbos vitzaros – “many evils and troubles” (Devarim, 31:21) can mean not only “evils” but also “complementary” (for instance, as a description of the relationship of two wives of the same man – who are called tzaros) is seen as meaningful by Rav, in Chagiga 5a.

He explained that the Torah is predicting a time when some evils can be “complementary,” in the sense that addressing one will exacerbate the other, and vice versa.

The metaphor he cites is someone stung in the same place by both a hornet and a scorpion. The former sting’s pain is alleviated by a cold compress and intensified by a hot one; the latter’s, alleviated by a hot compress and intensified by a cold one. What can the stung person do? Whatever he chooses to do will leave him in greater pain.

To our anguish, we live in such times. The mortal danger that is Hamas, which is pledged to destroy the Jewish presence in our land, can only be “treated” by its utter destruction. And yet, seeing that goal to fruition is impossible without attacking the genocidal group’s forces, which are routinely embedded in hospitals and mosques, and among civilians.

Which means exacerbating world opinion, which chooses to see only the tragic but necessary wages of the war against Hamas and to ignore the terrorists’ declared goal.

We Jews in the U.S. are experiencing hornet and scorpion stings of our own. The polarization of American society leaves us with the impossible choice of supporting a political movement that largely has embraced us and Israel, which choice brands us as adversaries in the eyes of those who oppose that movement’s antidemocratic tendencies. And if we declare our fealty to the democratic institutions that have undergirded our security and prosperity for so long, we alienate those who have most strongly championed our rights and Israel’s.

To Americans who value respect for the rule of law and political propriety, the MAGA world is a dire threat. To the MAGA world, those upholders of law and liberal (in the best sense of the word) values are the hazard.

And Jews, who have always actively participated in the democratic system and who seek both security and respect for law and propriety, are viewed suspiciously by both camps. And utterly despised by the fringe of each.

We pray for the Divine intervention that alone can alleviate the pain born of galus.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran