Category Archives: Jewish Thought

Vayeira – When Innocence Really Isn’t

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

So, if Avimelech was innocent in taking Sarah, why didn’t Hashem merely prevent the king from approaching her? Why were he and his family and entourage physically punished?

Perhaps the answer lies in what Avraham told Avimelech, when the king demanded an explanation for having misled him:

“Because,” Avraham explained, “I said ‘There is no fear of G-d in this place’” (ibid, 11).

A leader, that tells us, has the ability, and responsibility, to influence the mores of his society. And if a society evidences lack of “fear of G-d,” its leadership is implicated in the evil.

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 possible understanding of Rashi’s words occurred to me. Shlomo HaMelech, in Mishlei (15:27) teaches us that “the one 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, that it’s the 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 continues, “I will remain alive…” – echoing Shlomo HaMelech’s words.

Postscript: 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 other nations.

Noach – Taking on the Divine

What were the builders of the Tower of Bavel thinking?

How could people presumably aware of Hashem think they could somehow stand in opposition to Him?

The “Mei Marom” (R’ Yaakov Moshe Charlop, zt”l) offers a tantalizing thought: The place m earth called Bavel possessed a deep spiritual nature of “overcoming the Divine” – which eventually expressed itself properly in the cases recorded in the Gemara (e.g. Bava Metzia 59b, Rosh Hashana 57b) where a beis din “overruled” Hashem – that is to say, asserted the ability He gave them to do so.

Perhaps, Rav Charlop suggests, it was that spiritual reality of the place that inchoately resonated with its inhabitants, leading them to feel that, indeed, in their own way, they had the “ability” to challenge Hashem.

Plumbing the Meaning of the Torah’s First Word

The Torah’s first verse is purposely unclear. As the Ramban (Nachmanides) points out, the deepest truths of how the universe was created are unfathomable and inscrutable, hidden, ultimately, in the realm of mysticism, not physical science.

It is intriguing, though, that the Torah’s first word, “Bereishis,” implies, as the Seforno explicitly states, that time itself is a creation – a notion that comports with traditional cosmological physics (if not with scientists who, terrified at the notion of a “beginning,” postulate a “multiverse” of universes, conveniently beyond observation).

Likewise intriguing is that, according to the Talmud, the Torah’s first word can be split into two words, “bara” and “shis.” While the Gemara sees in “shis” a hint to an Aramaic word meaning “conduit,” hinting to an underground channel into which liquid poured on the mizbe’ach, the altar, would descend (a channel created at the beginning of time – Sukkah, 49a), the word can also, and most simply, mean “six.”

As in the six types of quarks, currently believed to be the fundamental particles of which all matter is, ultimately, comprised.

“He created six”?

Vizos Habracha – The Bridge-Idea

The Chasam Sofer notes that the Torah’s last word, “Yisrael” and its first one, “Braishis,” share the letters aleph, shin, resh and yud… spelling ashrei.

Ashrei can be translated as “praiseworthy” or “fortunate.” That latter meaning may be the key to the “bridge idea” connecting the end of the Torah and its beginning, which we seek to connect on Simchas Torah when we complete the yearly Torah-cycle and begin it anew.

Our recognition of how truly fortunate we are – to have been granted existence and the opportunity to play a role in the Divine plan, to daily receive Hashem’s gifts of life and sustenance, to be part of Klal Yisrael – should inform every Jew’s outlook and attitudes.

And the joy it yields should be front and center of our minds during z’man simchaseinu and Simchas Torah.

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.

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.

Nitzavim – Putting a Hold on Gold

There is idol worship and there is idol worship.

As Rav Elchonon Wasserman wrote, even today, when the urge to worship literal idols is absent, there are a number of “isms” that represent still–beckoning idolatries of the modern era.

In warning against assimilating other nations’ idolatries, Moshe Rabbeinu tells our ancestors that

“You saw their abominations and their detestable idols, of wood and stone; of silver and gold that were with them” (Devarim, 29:16).

Rashi explains the separation (reflected in the cantillation notes) of the phrases “of wood and stone” and “of silver and gold” by noting the latter’s proximity to “that were with them.” He explains that the idolators of old had no compunctions about exposing their wood and stone statues to public view but took pains to protect their valuable metal ones by keeping them “with them,” under lock and key.

I wonder if there may be another way of reading the pasuk’s separation of the phrases.

The “silver and gold” phrase doesn’t explicitly mention idols, although it’s certainly reasonable to assume that the early reference to “abominations and… detestable idols” refers as well to the final phrase of the pasuk.

But maybe that last phrase can also be read as a discrete reference, not to idols per se but, rather, to literal “silver and gold” – in other words, to other nations’ infatuation with precious metals, with amassing wealth.

With, in other words, one of the modern idolatries, one of the “isms” that would tempt Jews in the future: materialism.

The Midrash in Koheles Rabbah (1:13) observes that: “One who has one hundred [units of currency]wants two hundred”; and implies that the progression only continues on from there.

Aspiring to being able to provide for one’s family’s needs is obviously proper, as is aiming for wealth to support good causes. So, in the modern economic system, is saving for the future.

But aspiring, when one has “100,” to attain “200” simply for the sake of having more – and billionaires have no need to double their wealth – is something else. It may reflect the aspiration of societies around us, but it should have no place among Jews. We are not to imitate others in either their literal idolatries or in their addiction to “silver and gold.”

Time Travelers

As is the case with any question about nature, when a child asks why the sky is blue, the answer one gives (here, that blue light is scattered more than other colors) will elicit a subsequent question of why (because it travels as shorter, smaller waves). And then that answer, in turn, will yield yet another question: Why is that? Eventually, the final answer will always be: “That’s just the way it is!” In other words, it’s Hashem’s will.

Rav Dessler famously explained that every aspect of nature is no less a miracle than a sea splitting, an act of G-d. What we choose to call miraculous is just a divine-directed happening we’re not used to seeing.

The most fundamental element of nature, arguably, is time. The past, from our perspective, is past, and time proceeds relentlessly into the future. But time, too, is a divine creation. Commenting on the Torah’s first words, which introduce Hashem’s creation, “In the beginning…,” the Seforno writes: “[the beginning] of time, the first, indivisible, moment.”

Time is the bane of human existence. The Kli Yakar notes that the word the Torah uses for the sun and moon—“me’oros,” or “luminaries” (Bereishis, 1:16), which lacks the expected vov, can be read “me’eiros,” or “afflictions.”

“For all that comes under the influence of time,” he explains, “is afflicted with pain.”

Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner, zt”l, notes, similarly, that the term “memsheles” (ibid), which describes those luminaries’ roles, implies “subjugation.” For, the Rosh Yeshiva explains, we are enslaved by time, unable to control it or escape its relentless progression. Our positions in space are subject to our manipulation. Not so our positions in time.

But time,, like the rest of nature, can be manipulated, of course, by Hashem’s will. Indeed, as it happens, astoundingly, it can be manipulated by our own as well.

In Nitzavim, which is always read before Rosh Hashana, are the words: “And you will return to Hashem…” (Devarim 30:2).

Teshuvah, Chazal teach us, can change past intentional sins into unintended ones. Even, if the teshuvah is propelled by love of Hashem, into merits (Yoma 86b). Quite a remarkable thought. Chilul Shabbos transformed into reciting kiddush on Shabbos? Eating treif into eating matzah on Pesach? Telling lashon hora into saying a dvar Torah?

By truly confronting our past wrong actions and feeling pain for them, and resolving to not repeat them, we can reach back into the past and actually change it. We are freed from the subjugation of time. Is that not the temporal equivalent of the splitting of a sea?

Which thought might well lie at the root of the larger theme of freedom that is so prominent on Rosh Hashana. Tishrei, the month of repentence, is rooted in “shara,” the Aramaic word for “freeing”; the shofar is associated with Yovel, when servants are released; we read from the Torah about Yitzchak Avinu’s release from his “binding”; and Rosh Hashanah is the anniversary of Yosef’s release from his Egyptian prison, and of the breaking of what can be thought of as Sarah and Chana’s childlessness-chains.

And that ability to manipulate time may be why, on Rosh Hashanah, unlike on every other Jewish yomtov, the moon, the “clock” by which we count the calender months of the year, is not visible. The moon is, famously, a symbol of Klal Yisrael. It receives its light from the sun, just as we receive our enlightenment, and our mission, from Hashem; it wanes but waxes again, as Klal Yisrael does throughout history.

The subtle message in the moon’s Rosh Hashana invisibility may be the idea that time need not limit us, if we successfully engage the charge of the season. We are guided to imagine that the sky, with its missing “Jewish clock,” is reminding us, at the advent of the Aseres Yimei Teshuva, that time can be overcome in an entirely real way, through the Divine gift of teshuvah, powered by our heartfelt determination.

Ksivah vachasimah tovah!

Ki Savo – The Future of Wood and Stone

It is said in the name of the Vilna Gaon that the “idols of wood and stone” that Klal Yisrael will come to worship, referenced in the tochacha (Devarim 28:36 and 28:64), are hints to the religions that would come to dominate much of mankind in the future. The “wood” refers to the cross; and the “stone,” to the kaaba, the stone building housing a revered stone, in Mecca.

Although there have been apostates among the Jewish people over the centuries, Rashi’s comment on the latter of the references above is germane. He writes: “[This does] not [mean] worship of their gods literally but rather the paying of tributes and taxes to their clergy.” Targum Onkelos (which Rashi cites) indeed translates the phrases as “You will worship [i.e. be subservient] to nations that worship wood and stone.”

And indeed, history has borne out the fact that our long galus has included subservience to Muslim rulers and Christian ones. Even at times when our ancestors were not being vilified and killed by those rulers and their societies, when we were “tolerated,” we were, well, tolerated, but always subjects – subjected, that is to say, to rules, regulations and whims of the dominant religion.

Even today, when human rights are seen, at least in theory and law, as encompassing Jewish rights, the de facto situation – imposed by members of societies if not necessarily rulers – sets Jews apart as worthy of scorn. Whether the animus is vomited forth from the mouths of people like Louis Farrakhan, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens or any of a host of similar deriders of Jews, or from Islamists the world over, we remain subservient – in the sense of victims – of champions and espousers of faiths that followed (indeed borrowed copiously from) our own.

As galus goes, the current victimization of Jews pales beside the horrific things that our ancestors, distant and not-so-distant, endured. We must hope that that signifies a weakening of the domination, a lessening of our subordination to others… and the advent of what the navi Tzephania foresaw when he channeled Hashem saying “For then I will convert the peoples to a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of Hashem, to serve him with a unified effort” (3:9).

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Reflections on Jews, Judaism, Media and Life