Category Archives: Jewish Thought

Chayei Sara – “If Only…”

It’s human nature, when faced with something tragic, or even just disturbing, to say to oneself, “If only…”

“If only I had done this… or we had done that… or not done this… or not done that, we could have avoided this outcome.”

But human nature can be misleading. A thought I once heard repeated by Rav Chaim Yehudah Polak, who couldn’t remember its source suggests that the repetition of the phrase, “the years of Sarah’s life,” in the first pasuk of the parsha, even though the pasuk opened with “And the lifetime of Sarah was 127 years,” teaches us to resist our proclivity to imagine that things could have been different had we only acted differently. The years of Sarah’s life were… the years of Sarah’s life – the years allotted her.

To be sure, there are rightful regrets that we may have. Someone grown obese and unhealthy after overeating junk food for years has good reason to say, “if only.”

But more often than not, post-facto calculi are wrongheaded. We might think that had Sarah not been told (as per a famous Midrash) about her son having been bound on an altar, she wouldn’t have died at the moment she did, having been spared the shock.

But Sarah’s death was divinely ordained for that moment. “The years of Sarah’s life” were the years granted her. The proximate cause of her death wasn’t its ultimate cause. Its ultimate cause was Hashem’s will.

Someone who comes down with a contagious virus might kick himself for having worn only a simple mask, not an expensive, surgical-quality one. Or for having spaced himself only 6 feet from others, instead of 10. But we are required to do what is normative practice to prevent sickness – and only that. And if one had done that and still became sick, he is wrong to agonize over not having done more. He needs to recognize Hashem’s will and now do what is normative practice to, with Hashem’s help, recover.

Vayeira – When Innocence Really Isn’t

Remarkably, in response to Avimelech the king of Gerar’s protest over being punished for taking Sarah, Hashem confirms the king’s insistence that he had acted innocently, believing that Avraham and Sarah, as they had claimed, were brother and sister.

“I, too, knew,” Hashem tells Avimelech in a dream, “that it was in the innocence of your heart that you did this” (Beraishis, 20:6).

Which raises the question of why the king and his entourage were punished. The postscript to the narrative states that “For Hashem had shut every womb of Abimelech’s household, because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.”

Hashem prevented Avimelech from touching Sarah. So what grounds were there for punishment?

The answer may lie in what Avraham told Avimelech in explanation for having misled him: “Because I said ‘There is no fear of G-d in this place’ ” (ibid, 11).

Avraham had sensed a spirit of licentiousness in Gerar. And a leader of a country has the ability, and responsibility, to influence the mores of his society.

If the society evidences lack of “fear of G-d,” its leadership is implicated.

Lech Lecha — No, Thank You

When, as they approach Egypt, Avram asks Sarai to pretend she is his sister, he explains “so that it will be good for me and I will remain alive because of you.” (Beraishis, 12:13)

Rashi’s comment on the words “it will be good for me” – “so that they [the Egyptians] will give me gifts” – puzzled me, as they surely have many, for years. Avram, who later in the parshah (14:23) spurned even a shoelace from the king of Sdom, is concerned with gifts?

An intriguing understanding of Rashi’s words may be suggested based on what Shlomo HaMelech, in Mishlei (15:27), teaches us: “He who who hates gifts will live.”

It may be that the greatest expression of that attitude isn’t only “in theory,” in hating the idea of gifts, but in actual practice – namely, in one’s attitude toward an actual proffered gift that helps ensure life.

And so, perhaps Avram wanted gifts to be offered to him, so that he could “hate” the fact that he was offered them… with the result being that, as he in fact continues, “I will remain alive…” – echoing Shlomo HaMelech’s words.

Interestingly, the concept of shunning gifts as bolstering life is reflected in a snippet from a 1960s folk song:

“Some people never get, some never give;

Some people never die and some never live.”

There is, Chazal teach us, “chachmah bagoyim,” wisdom among the nations.

Noach – Our (Temporarily) Un-Whole World

The word “toldos” introducing the “account” of Noach is spelled in a subtly different way than its first appearance in parshas Beraishis, where “eleh toldos hashamayim vi’ha’aretz” (Beraishis 2:4) concludes the account of the creation of the world. There, in its first usage, it is written malei, “full,” with two vavs, one after the tav and one after the daled.

Gershon Zev (William) Braude was a respected Jewish studies scholar and Reform rabbi who befriended me, a much younger man, when my family and I lived in Providence, Rhode Island, from, roughly, the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s.

He once asserted that there are 13 places in Tanach where the word toldos is used. In only two of those places, he pointed out, is the word written malei: The first one is in parshas Beraishis, and the second, at the very end of sefer Rus (4:18), where the genealogy leading to the birth of Dovid, the progenitor of mashiach, is recounted.

Thus, Gershon Zev suggested, “wholeness,” or perfection of human history, existed at the creation of the world and will emerge again with the arrival of mashiach.

In the interim, though, as we all vividly sense, the world remains unfulfilled, imperfect, unarguably un-whole.

Ha’azinu — Chain of Three

The Gemara (Shabbos 88a) quotes “a certain Galilean” as having said “Blessed is the Merciful One, Who gave a three-fold Torah [in the broad sense, Torah, Neviim and Ksuvim] to a three-fold nation [Cohanim, Levi’im and Yisraelim] by means of a third-born [Moshe] on the third day [of separation of men and women] in the third month [Sivan].”

The stress on threes concerning the giving of the Torah, it occurs to me, may reflect the essence of mesorah itself, its transmittal. Just as the most elemental physical chain needs three links, so, too, the conceptual one. Each of us is a middle link; we must have received the mesorah and then transmitted it. And our recipients then become middle links themselves.

In parshas Haazinu, we read, similarly: “Ask your father and he will tell you, your grandfather and he will say to you” Devarim 32:7). The threesome chain again.

And, intriguingly, the word employed for the father’s telling is “viyagedcha”, from the root lihagid — which Rashi elsewhere (Shemos 19:3) says implies harshness; and for the grandfather’s telling, the word is viyomru – whose root, omer, Rashi (ibid) characterizes as a “soft” communication.

The Torah may mean to teach here that a father must be an authority figure, and his transmittal of the mesorah more demanding, while a grandfather’s guidance is to be, well, grandfatherly, imparted with a more gentle touch.

Vayeilech – Prepared to Not Progress

Children brought to shul need to be controlled by their parents, of course. They mustn’t be permitted to disturb those gathered there to daven. But, at least from an age when they can be effectively controlled, they should be brought.

Ah, but won’t the need to control them perforce prevent their parents from focusing fully on their tefillos?

Too bad. That’s part of a parent’s job, being hindered.

The mitzvah of Hakhel, described in parshas Vayeilech, entails the gathering, in the time of the Beis HaMidkash, during the first year of the Shmitta cycle, on the first day of chol hamoed Sukkos, of all the nation’s “men, women and children” (Devarim 31:12).

The men, Rashi quotes Massechta Chagiga (3a), must come in order to study (from the portions of the Torah the king reads); the women, to absorb the words; and the children… “to give reward to those who brought them.”

Seems rather circular. Bring them because it’s a mitzvah to bring them?

It is said in the name of R’ Nosson Adler (the first rebbe of the Chasam Sofer), and also in the name of the Baal Shem Tov, that the meaning of the Gemara is that the parents’ reward is for bringing their children even though controlling them makes their fathers’ and mothers’ learning and listening difficult.

Chinuch, training children, in other words, is important enough to require parents’ discomfiture and loss of personal, even spiritual, opportunity.

The Amora R’ Yochanan (Chagigah 15b) said, based on a pasuk in Malachi, that only if a rebbe is “similar to an angel of Hashem” should one “seek Torah from his mouth.”

R’ Pinchas HaLevi Horowitz, the “Hafla’ah” (and, interestingly, another rebbe of the Chasam Sofer), suggests that, since angels are described (Zecharia 3:7) as “omdim,” “standers still,” implying changelessness, R’ Yochanan means to say that a rebbe has to be prepared to “stagnate,” to not progress personally, if that is the toll of his dedication to his students.

And parents, of course, are the ultimate rabbaim, the most influential molders of their children. They must be prepared to be hindered in their personal progress for the sake of their young.

More Than Mere Gratitude

The very first Rashi in the Torah, quoting a Midrash, indicates the importance of Bikkurim, the first fruits offering that opens parshas Ki Savo. Bikkurim is one of the “raishis” concepts that the word Beraishis (understood as “for the sake of something called raishis) refers to.

And Bikkurim, as evident from the words that are spoken when they are brought, is an expression of “hakaras hatov,” a truly fundamental Torah concept that is usually, though, not entirely accurately, thought of as “gratitude.”

In truth, it is something more subtle and sublime, indicated in a direct translation of the phrase: “recognition of the good.” That is why an example of the concept, as per the Gemara (Bava Kamma, 92b) is the commandment that “You shall not abhor an Egyptian, because you were a stranger in his land,” in last week’s parsha. And why the maxim expressing it is “Don’t throw a clod of dirt into a well from which you drank” (ibid).

So even someone who intended you nothing good, and even an inanimate object, deserve hakaras hatov. How does that work?

My understanding is that the recognition, even while being properly expressed to a person, people or object, is ultimately to Hashem, for causing the good – in the case of the Egyptian slavery, the “purification” (kur habarzel) needed to prepare Klal Yisrael to receive the Torah; in the case of the well, its appearance when one was thirsty. The action of hakaras hatov is through the Egyptians and through the well, but its ultimate expression is to Hashem.

I remember having negative feelings when on rare occasions I would see a certain person who in effect once forced me, without reason, to leave a position and community I loved. But then, pondering how what resulted in the end was in fact a tremendous brachah for me and my family, I realized that I needed to feel hakaras hatov toward him. Well, toward him, which I indeed came to feel, but only as a path leading to true recognition of the good that Hashem had bestowed.

We’re All the “Beautiful Woman”

It’s edifying to compare the larger world’s celebrations of its various New Years and the Jewish celebration of Rosh Hashanah.

The former is characterized by revelry, drunkenness and, hat tip to Auld Lang Syne, a smidgen of sentimentality. The latter, by trepidation and regret of the past year’s missteps.

Greater society’s preparation for their New Years Days consists of buying fireworks and alcohol. Ours is Elul, the month during which, as the Eastern European folk saying has it, even the fish in the rivers tremble.

The law of the yifas to’ar, the “beautiful woman” encountered among the enemy and fallen for by a Jewish soldier in war, is a strange one. The captive, after a month’s time during which she, shorn of her hair, is to cry over the loss of her father and mother, is permitted to be taken by the soldier as a wife.

Much has been written in explanation of the counterintuitive law. But the Zohar Chadash has a metaphorical comment.

Seizing on the word used in the law for “month” (“yerach”), the mystical text comments, “da he yarcha d’Elul” — “this is the month of Elul.”

The yifas to’ar is leaving her past behind, entering a new world. According to Rabbi Akiva in the Sifri, the “father and mother” over whom she cries refer to the idolatries of her past, as per the prophet’s rebuke: “They say to the wood, ‘You are my father,’ and to the stone, ‘You bore us’ ” (Yirmiyahu 2:27). Her tears are tears of regret, for having been in idolatry’s thrall. And, perhaps, tears of joy at entering a new world, as part of the Jewish nation.

During Elul, we mourn our pasts too, and express joy (V’gilu bir’ada — rejoice in trembling -Tehillim 2:11), as we enter a new world, a new year.

After the night’s drunken revelry, a New Year’s Eve celebrant may find himself experiencing delirium tremens, the infamous “DT’s”.

Jews who fully embraced Elul will wake up as BT’s.

Shoftim – The Riddle of the Egla

There is something disturbing about the egla arufah ritual.

It is commanded in a case where the body of a murder victim, presumably a wayfarer, is found on a road between cities. The procedure, which involves the elders of the nearest city dispatching a calf, is called a kapparah, an atonement, yet there seems to be no sin for which the elders need to atone. That’s because part of the ritual is their declaration that they did everything they could to ensure the safety of the visitor during his visit, including supplying him with his needs before he left.

And it certainly isn’t atonement for the killer; if he is ever discovered, he faces a murder charge and its penalty.

So whom is the atonement for?

It seems clear to me that it is for Klal Yisrael.

Rav Dessler, in Michtav Me’Eliyahu, teaches that the concept of arvus, the “interdependence of all Jews” implies that when a Jew does something good, it reflects the entire Jewish people’s goodness. And the converse, too.

Thus, when Achan, one man, misappropriated spoils after the first battle of Yehoshua’s conquest of Canaan, the siege of Yericho, it is described as the sin of the entire people (Yehoshua, 7:1). Explains Rav Dessler: Had the people as a whole been sufficiently sensitive to Hashem’s commandment to shun the city’s spoils, Achan would never have been able to commit his sin.

So it may be that in the case of the murdered wayfarer, too, even if no particular person was directly responsible for the murder, what could have enabled so terrible an act to happen might have been a “critical mass” on the part of many Jews, of lesser offenses, perhaps things that Chazal likened to murder, such as causing another great embarrassment or indirectly causing a person’s life to be shortened.

In which case, the atonement would be for Klal Yisrael as a whole, interconnected as all its members are.

The idea, in fact, inheres in the very words the elders are to recite. After they declare their lack of any personal involvement in the murder, they plead with Hashem to “atone for your people Yisrael…”

And the Baal HaTurim’s comment on that phrase makes the idea explicit: “From here we see,” he writes, “that all members of Klal Yisrael are interdependent.”

Re’ei – What’s With the Wealth?

Affluence isn’t something the Torah extols. In Judaism wealth is neither a praiseworthy aspiration nor a meaningful achievement.

Which makes Rabbi Yochanan’s homiletic interpretation of the Torah’s words “A tithe shall you tithe [te’aser]” (Devarim 14:22) somewhat puzzling.

The Torah, he says, is hinting “Take a tithe [asser] so that [in the merit of your charity] you will become wealthy [tis’asher]” (Taanis 9a).

Even aside from the elsewhere-unduplicated promise of wealth here, we are taught that a person’s financial state is something that is decreed at the beginning of the Jewish year and cannot be changed by things he or she may do.

As Rabbi Tachlifa (Beitzah 16a) put it: “All of a person’s income [for the coming year] is determined for him [during the days] between Rosh Hashanah until Yom Kippur, except for the money he spends for Shabbos and holidays, and to pay for his children’s Torah education. If he spends less [for any of these] he is given less, and if he spends more he is given more.”

So what’s with the wealth? Why is it suddenly offered as a reward for a mitzvah?

What occurs is that Chazal define wealth elsewhere, and it does not mean a large bank account or abundance of possessions.

“Who is wealthy?” asks Ben Zoma in Avos (4:1). “The one who is happy with his lot.”

Wealth – with apologies to Wall Street – is not a tangible thing; it is a state of mind.

The millionaire who is pained by his lack of a larger yacht isn’t wealthy. The pensioner who hasn’t the slightest desire for a boat and finds joy in his modest possessions is.

And so perhaps the Torah is promising those who invest wisely in charity true wealth: joy in what one has.

A most valuable reward indeed.

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Reflections on Jews, Judaism, Media and Life