Rashi, quoting the Gemara, understands the nation’s “weeping about its family” (Bamidbar 11:10) as referring to ‘matters of family’ – to the fact that relatives who were once permitted to be joined  in marriage were now, post-Sinai, forbidden to marry.

Rav Yonason Eybeschutz has an alternate, and very pith, take on the phrase. 

He asserts that wealthy people don’t wear expensive clothes and eat expensive meals primarily because of the enjoyment they may provide but, rather, because of the status they convey. (Think of Lamborghinis that need repairs more often than Hondas, or Rolexes that keep time no better than drugstore watches.) Put most bluntly, members of the upper class want to show that they are different (implying, presumably, better) than the hoi polloi. “That,” writes Rav Eybeschutz, in his sefer Ahavas Yonasan, “is the nature of man.”

The mon, though, served as a great equalizer, allowing the poorest person to taste whatever delicacy he imagined as he consumed it. 

Taking the word for “the nation” as referring to the upper class of the midbar-society; and “family” to mean social stratum, he sees the complaint of the wealthy as being about the erasure of the possibility to adopt status symbols. The removal of that option deeply pains those accustomed to believe their worth can be telegraphed by what they wear or eat (or drive).

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Haftaros always have some connection to something in the parsha, but few are as explicitly related to what was read from the Torah as the haftarah of parshas Naso, which haftarah , like part of the parsha itself, deals with a nazir.

That nazir, of course, was Shimshon, whose mother, Tzalphonis, was visited by an angel predicting his birth and establishing that he was to be a protector of his people – and a nazir, from birth and beyond. She, too, she was instructed, was to refrain from ingesting anything forbidden to a nazir.

When she related the details of the visitation to her husband Manoach, he beseeches Hashem to offer instructions for raising the child they will be having.

But, wonders Rav Shimon Schwab, the laws of nazir were well known and established. What was Manoach asking for?

What’s more, when his prayer was answered and the angel appeared again, the heavenly visitor seems to add nothing to his previous instructions. “The woman,” he says, “must abstain from all the things against which I warned her… She must observe all that I commanded her.”

Rav Schwab suggests something novel. He sees Manoach’s request as having been about the challenge of a non-nazir like himself raising a nazir. It was a request, so to speak, for chinuch advice.

And, Rav Schwab,  points out, the Hebrew word for “she must observe,” tishmor, can also mean, when spoken directly to a man, “you must observe,”  indicating that not only should Manoach’s wife heed the laws of nezirus, but so should he. The only way to successfully  raise a nazir, in other words, is to be a nazir. 

Thus, asserts Rav Schwab, the chinuch lesson delivered by the angel was one that is a lesson to all Jews for all generations: If we don’t ourselves model what we want our children to become, we cannot expect them to develop as we wish. What children see in their parents is the single most important part of their upbringing. 

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

There are a number of common English aphorisms that parallel (or are sourced in) Talmudic statements.

What Chazal said in Avos (1:15), “Say little and do much” echoes in “Actions speak louder than words.”

As does “Don’t judge a book by its cover” in “Do not look at the container, but at what is in it” (Avos 4:20).

What the Gemara teaches (Bava Metzia 71a) with “The poor of one’s own town come first” is conveyed in “Charity begins at home.”

“No pain, no gain” is rendered by Ben Hei Hei as “According to the effort is the reward” (Avos 5:26). 

Sometimes, though, a subtle difference in how an idea is rendered by Chazal carries meaning.

Like the “Golden Rule,” which, in popular usage is rendered “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Hillel’s version (Shabbos 31a) is, of course, “What is hateful to you do not do to your fellow.” While the popular version may seem, at first glance,  nicer, Hillel’s is without question more demanding, and more meaningful. 

In parshas Behar (Vayikra 25:35), we read: “If your brother becomes poor… strengthen him.” The word for “strengthen” – vihechezakta – can also mean “take hold of.” Which leads the Midrash (Sifra, Behar), quoted by Rashi, to convey that one should try to intervene before a crisis becomes serious.  When a person has already fallen into poverty, “it will be difficult to give him a lift, but rather uphold him from the very sign of the failure of his means.” The mashal offered is of a donkey whose load is tottering. It can be held in place by one person, but if it has already fallen, it will take many people to right the donkey and replace its load. 

“A stitch in time saves nine” or “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” are how an uninformed-by-Torah pundit might put the idea.

What makes the Midrash’s meaning more meaningful, though,  is that it is in the context not of saving oneself time or work or trouble but, rather, of how best to help another person. 

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Faced with a forced choice between continuing to live or committing one of three sins –  idolatry, murder and arayos, forbidden sexual relations – a Jew is commanded to forfeit his life.

In the case of any other sin (unless the coercion is part of an effort aimed at destroying Jewish practice), the forbidden act should be committed and one’s life preserved.

That law is derived from the phrase vichai bahem, “and live through them” (Vayikra 18:5).

The Chasam Sofer notes the incongruity of the fact that vichai bahem is written immediately before a list of arayos, one of the three cardinal sins – not in the context of sins where life trumps forbiddance. And he writes that “it would be a mitzvah” to explain that oddity.  

One approach to address the incongruity is offered by the Baal HaTurim. He sees an unwritten but implied “however” between vichai bahem and what follows. So that the Torah is saying, in effect, life is paramount except for cases like the following.

A message, though, may lie in the juxtaposition itself without adding anything: that living al kiddush Hashem – “for glorification of Hashem” – is as valued as dying for it. When one is commanded to commit a sin in order to preserve his life, that, too, is a kiddush Hashem. Because in such cases, one’s choosing to live is Hashem’s will.

What also might be implied is what the Rambam writes (Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah 5:11), that the way a person acts in mundane matters can constitute either a kiddush Hashem or its opposite. If one’s everyday actions show integrity and propriety, that constitutes a glorification of Hashem’s name.

And so, perhaps, writing the words teaching us that concern for life in most cases requires the commission of a sin as an “introduction”of sorts to the imperative to die in certain other cases may be the way the Torah means to impress something upon us: the essential equality between dying al kiddush Hashem and living by it.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Nega’im, “plagues” that consist of certain types of spots of discoloration that appeared on the walls of a house after Klal Yisrael entered their land, signaled tzarus ayin, literally “cramped-eyedness,” what we would call  stinginess. (See Arachin 16a and Maharsha there.)

Thus, the house’s owner is commanded (Vayikra, 14:36) to remove utensils from the house before it is pronounced tamei, spiritually unclean – letting others see things he has that he may have been asked to lend but claimed he didn’t have (and, by Hashem “saving” the vessels from tum’ah, demonstrating the very opposite of tzarus ayin).

The Kli Yakar explains that the words that translate as “[the house] that is his” (Vayikra 14:35), reflect the miser’s mindset, that what he has is really his. What he misses is the truth that what we “own” is really only temporarily in our control, on loan, so to speak, from Hashem.

Puzzling, though, is that Chazal also describe nig’ei batim, the “plagues of houses,” as a blessing, because the Emorim concealed treasures in the walls of their houses during the 40 years the Jews were in the desert, and when a Jew whose home was afflicted would remove the diseased wall stones, he would discover the riches. (Rashi, ibid 14:34, quoting Vayikra Rabbah 17:6).

A reward? For having been stingy? 

No, but perhaps a lesson in the form of  a reward.

Being stingy bespeaks a worldview, as noted above, that misunderstands that what we have is “self-gotten,” not on loan from Above. And that mistaken worldview yields an assumption: that we need to hoard what we have, lest anyone deprive us of it.

The once-tzar-ayin-afflicted homeowner, having had to remove a stone from his wall and belongings from his house, is presumably chastened by the experience. But now he is shown something to fortify his new outlook: a demonstration that wealth can come (and, conversely, go) unexpectedly and suddenly, and that we waste our energy and squander our good will by “cramped-eyedness.” We get what is best for us to have. And it comes from Above, not below.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

The imperatives of civility and refined speech are strongly stressed in the Talmud and in halacha. Yet, like all ideals, even those have their limits. An exception – the only one – to the imperative to avoid verbalizing crude characterizations is when it comes to idolatry.

As Rav Nachman says (Megillah 25b): “All mocking obscenity is forbidden except with reference to idol worship.” And the examples the Gemara offers are almost all about defecation.  The characterization of all idolatry as “avodas gilulim” in various places in Tanach may also be intended as a scatalogical reference, since galal is a word for biological waste.

And then there is the specific case of  Pe’or, the major idolatry whose entire service involves hallowing the act of defecation itself.

Rav Shimon Schwab, zt”l, brings up Rav Nachman’s dictum to suggest an intriguing understanding of one of the bigdei kehunah, the “priestly garments.” Rashi points out that it seems to him that the garment is apron-like, but worn in reverse of how aprons are usually worn, tied in the front with the bib in the back.

The Gemara, Rav Schwab reminds us, assigns an atonement that is effected by each of the bigdei kehunah. The ephod atones for the sin of idolatry (Arachin 16a).

Idolatry, notes Rav Schwab, is ultimately about worship of the physical, about veneration of the base. And that is why, as per Rav Nachman’s statement, it is derided by the navi, and permitted to be derided by us, as scatalogical in its essence. 

And so, he then posits, it is fitting that the ephod, the beged kehunah that atones for the sin of idolatry, is worn, oddly, in a way that covers the wearer’s lower back, subtly recalling its particular role among the bigdei kehunah.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran