Category Archives: Jewish Thought

Parshas Yisro – The Barrel’s Secret

Our ancestors’ acceptance of the Torah was imperfect: It included an element of coercion. 

The Gemara (Shabbos 88a) teaches that “Hashem held the mountain over the Jews’ heads like a gigis (a barrel).” The Maharal explains that the stunning nature of the experience, the terrifying interaction of human and Divine, left no opportunity for full free will. Directly interacting with Hashem, how could one possibly say no?

And that “coercion” remained a moda’ah, a “remonstration,” against Klal Yisrael, the Gemara teaches, until… the events commemorated by Purim.

In the time of Esther, the Jews chose, entirely of their own volition, to perceive Hashem’s presence where — diametric to the Sinai experience — it was anything but obvious.  Instead of seeing the threat against them in mundane terms, Persia’s Jews recognized it as Hashem’s message, and responded with prayer, fasting, and repentance.  And so, by freely choosing to perceive Hashem’s hand, they supplied what was missing at Sinai, confirming that the Jewish acceptance of the Torah was — and is — wholehearted and sincere. 

The Gemara’s image of Hashem “holding the mountain over their heads” at Sinai is a striking metaphor. But why “like a barrel”? Isn’t a mountain overhead compelling enough?  Who ordered the barrel?

One of the ways a person’s true nature is revealed is “b’koso” – “in his cup” – in his behavior when his inhibitions are diluted by drink. (Eruvin, 65b).

On Purim, in striking contrast to the rest of the Jewish year, we are enjoined to drink wine to excess.  And what emerges from that observance, at least among Jews who approach the mitzvah properly,  is not what we usually associate with inebriation, but rather a holy, if uninhibited, mode of mind.

Thus the revelation of our true nature provided by the Purim-mitzvah perfectly parallels the revelation of the Jews’ wholehearted acceptance of Hashem that took place at the time of the Purim events.  With our masks (another Purim motif, of course) removed, we show our true selves.

In Pirkei Avos (4:20), Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi teaches us not “to look at the container, but at what it holds.” 

A gigis, throughout the Talmud, contains an intoxicating beverage.  

Hashem doesn’t look at the container — the coercion symbolized by the barrel held over our ancestors’ heads — but rather at how Jews act when they have imbibed its contents. He sees not our ancestors’ lack of full free will at the Sinai experience but the deeper truth about the Jewish essence, the one revealed by Purim’s wine.

© 2021 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Parshas Bishalach — Arms Race

The fundamental struggle of humanity, stripped of all of history’s dross, is between two views: The recognition of a Creator (and the resultant meaningfulness of human life) and the belief that life is the product of mere chance and, hence, essentially meaningless.

It is the worldview-struggle between Klal Yisrael and Amalek, introduced at the end of this week’s parsha in a military showdown.

We read how the Amalekites attacked the Jews after our ancestors’ exodus from Egypt, and how Moshe Rabbeinu, from a distance, influenced the course of the battle. 

“When Moshe lifted his arm, Yisrael was stronger; and when he lowered his arm, Amalek was stronger.” (Shemos 17:11)

The name Amalek, whose final letter is“kuf,” can be parsed as “amal kof” — the “toil of a monkey.” (Kuf and kof are spelled identically, and kof meaning monkey is found, in its plural form, in Melachim I, 10:22 and in Divrei Hayamim II, 9:21.)

Ki adam l’amal yulad — “For man is born to toil” (Iyov, 5:7).  We humans are here l’amal, for toil, to work to rise above our base natures and serve our Creator according to His will. Our lives have ultimate meaning.  This is the credo of Yisrael.

Amalek, by contrast, sees man as a mere product of chance happenings and random mutations, with no more inherent worth than any animal, including his closest “relative,” the ape.

Curiously, and perhaps significantly, only two creatures are able to lift their arms above their heads: apes and humans.

Might Moshe’s raised arms during the Amalek-Yisrael battle signify Yisrael’s anti-Amalek conviction, that there is a G-d in heaven?  

Amalek, too, denying the divine, can raise its arms, but its gesture is meaningless. It is a monkey’s mere and quite literal aping of what Yisrael is doing when it raises  its arms heavenward. 

Amalek’s “toil” is amal kof, that of a monkey, using its arms only to swing from vine to vine, without any higher aim than getting from here to there. 

The pan-historical Yisrael-Amalek struggle is thus a pitting of dedication to Hashem, signified in our parsha by Moshe’s raised arms, against the meaningless toil of human creatures who deny what being human truly means.

While we cannot know the identity of the Amalekites today, the philosophy identified with that people is everywhere around us.  But Yisrael and its understanding of life’s meaningfulness will prevail in time.

© 2021 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Parshas Bo – Letter from Egypt

Chazal describe the Jewish people as a miracle. Our foremothers, for instance, were physically incapable, the Midrash informs us, of bearing children. Yet, despite the laws of nature, they did.

Jewish history, no less, testifies to the miraculous existence of Klal Yisrael. Despite the vicissitudes of our history, our repeated scatterings and exiles, and the insane but ever-present desire of some to wipe us out, we have persevered, and persevere, as a people. 

The alpha-point of our peoplehood is in our ancestors’ exodus from Egypt, their leaving behind of their servitude to men for the holy calling of servitude to Hashem. And in this week’s parshah, we read of the preparation for doing that, which includes the first Pesach sacrifice and, perplexingly, the placing of some of the animal’s blood on each Jewish home’s doorposts and lintel — a ritual referred to as an ōs — a “sign” (Shemos, 12:13).

But ōs can also mean a letter of the aleph-beis, the Hebrew alphabet.

The celebrated 16th century Torah luminary, Rabbi Yehudah Loew ben Betzalel, the Maharal, famously associates the number seven with nature, and the next number, eight, with “above” or “beyond” nature — what we would call the miraculous.

Picture the Jewish doorways in Egypt just before the exodus. Imagine away the edifice itself, leaving only the sign of the blood, in two vertical parallel lines along the doorposts and one horizontal one, above and connecting them.

The image is that of a ches, the eighth letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

© 2021 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Parshas Vo’eira – A Partnership of Opposites

Only one of the Ten Plagues visited upon Par’oh and Mitzrayim elicits a declaration of guilt and admission of Hashem’s righteousness from the Egyptian leader.“

This time I have sinned,” Par’oh admits. “Hashem is the righteous One, and I and my nation are the wicked ones.” (Shemos 9:27). 

It is the plague of hail. Why, of all the other punishments, that one?

What occurs is that the answer may lie in the Midrash brought by Rashi (ibid, 24), that each piece of hail contained a flame, and that water and fire “made peace with each other” in order “to do the will of their Creator.”

Par’oh was an idolater.  The Egyptians worshipped the Nile and, according to historians, the sun.  Idolatry entails choosing a “team” to be on.  One can be on Team Nile, Team Sun, Team Water, Team Fire…

Monotheism entails the recognition that all the “teams” (elohos) are subservient to the one Creator of all the elements (Elohim).

Perhaps Par’oh was forced to confront and internalize that fact by having witnessed, during the plague of hail, the “partnership” of opposites.

Truth be told, we are all comprised of opposites: souls and bodies.  Each has its own desideratum. The only way to “make peace” between them is doing the will of our Creator, which requires both elements to work together.

© 2021 Rabbi Avi Shafran

parshas Shemos: Pathetic Persecutors

As the Jewish population in ancient Egypt swelled, the Torah tells us that vayakutzu — The Egyptians “were disgusted” (Shemos 1:12).  Rashi explains that “they were disgusted with their [own] lives.”

A superficial reading of vayakutzu would lead to a simpler understanding, that the Egyptians, out of fear (as pesukim 8 and 9 describe), found the Jews, not themselves, disgusting. What is the significance of Rashi’s comment?

The Mei Marom (Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Charlop, 1882-1951) posits that the pasuk is teaching a psychological truth: It is impossible to embitter the life of another unless one is embittered with himself. Anyone who appreciates and cherishes his own life will perforce be concerned about the lives of others.  

And so, Rabbi Charlop concludes, if one sees someone oppressing another, one can surmise that the oppressor’s cruelty is fundamentally sourced in self-loathing.  

© 2021 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Parshas Vayechi – The Real Man in the Moon

In a good example of Talmudic humor, Rav Nachman reacted to Rav Yitzḥak’s recounting of what Rabi Yochanan said, that “Our patriarch Yaakov did not die,” with a wry question: “So was it for naught that the eulogizers eulogized him and the embalmers embalmed him and the buriers buried him?” (Taanis, 5b).

The way to understand the contention that Yaakov didn’t die, I think (and it’s borne out of the verses quoted in that Gemara), is that he lives on — as the patriarch whose children, all of them, became the progenitors of Klal Yisrael — through the eternal Jewish people.

The Midrash in Vayeishev, commenting on Yosef’s dream about the sun, moon and stars bowing to him, has Yaakov wondering, “Who revealed to him that my [secret] name is ‘sun’?”

It’s interesting to reflect (pun intended) on the fact that the moon — the symbol, in its waxing and waning, and in its role in the Jewish calendar, of Klal Yisrael — reflects the light of the sun.  We reflect Yaakov, are the continuation of his life.

Even more interesting, according to the Tikkunei Zohar, “the image of Yaakov is carved out [i.e. visible] in the moon.”

© 2020 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Mask Ask

Back in the day — by which I mean this past spring — I was a resolute non-masker. When shopping, of course, I followed stores’ rules. But in shul, I was part of the majority of attendees who, while shunning hand-shaking and coughing in other people’s faces, chose to not self-suffocate. In my long-favored hashkamah minyan, which required masks, I was granted permission by the maskers to sit behind a mechitzah in the back of the room.

But today I wear a mask religiously, both meanings intended. Because my objection to masking had only been because I felt that the benefit of covering my mouth and nose was outweighed by the danger to my health in not receiving sufficient oxygen. I could feel, I felt, that I wasn’t getting enough air.

But then I found research that showed that oxygen levels did not decrease as a result of masking — even when the masker was engaged in strenuous exercise (a category in which I don’t think even energetic shukkeling belongs).

And so, I realized that it was really just the discomfort of breathing warm air and enduring fogged eyeglasses that argued against the public health benefit of wearing a mask. I was being a shul snowflake.

Though there are the inevitable gadflies who claim there is no benefit to masking, the evidence for its helpfulness in stemming the spread of infections is compelling. To be sure, there is only limited evidence that mask-wearers are less likely to contract Covid-19, but the real benefit of masking is to prevent infected but asymptomatic people from spreading the virus — in other words, to protect others. For that, there is ample evidence, both from lab experiments and, more importantly, from analyses of the rate of virus spread in communities and countries where masking is routine and others where it is spotty.

And so, masking in groups, is, most simply put, an act of chesed.

Then there is the public perception. Although I write as a private individual, my day job is with Agudath Israel of America, where I interact with the media and the public. The image of the chareidi community, despite that it is very large and very varied, is that its members shun masking. That is a problem.

Because — at least to the limited extent that the perception of chareidi mask-shunning is true — it gives people, other Jews and non-Jews alike, the impression that our community doesn’t care about others.

At the Keynote Session of Agudath Israel of America’s recent (virtual) national convention, the organization’s executive vice president, Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, offered a heartfelt, impassioned reiteration of the imperative to follow current health authorities’ advice, and declared that religious Jews who disregard precautions like masking and distancing not only potentially harm the health of others but bring about the opposite of the fundamental Jewish imperative to make “Hashem’s name beloved to others.” Chalilah on both counts.

Personally, ever since I’ve become a masked man, I have come to better appreciate something my dear father, a”h, would often say. And, having been yanked by the Soviets at the start of World War II from the Vilna yeshiva in which he had been studying and banished with his friends and their rebbe to the frozen taiga of Siberia, he was amply credentialed to offer the lesson.

“A person,” he taught his children, “can get used to anything.”

What he meant was that, whatever new situation might confront us, it should never be seen as an insurmountable obstacle. With equanimity and time, we can handle things we never would have imagined were handle-able.

As challenges go, wearing a surgical mask around others rather pales compared to chopping wood in 40 degrees below zero weather. But the lesson is the same.

And, indeed, now I’m so accustomed to my mask that I sometimes forget that I’m even wearing it.

Many hands are being wrung over what, oy vey, the “new normal” might be for perhaps even years to come. I understand the angst.

But I imagine my father just saying, reassuringly, don’t worry, you can get used to it.

© 2020 Ami Magazine

Parshas Vayigash – Being Pushed, Being Loved

One of the hardest of life’s lessons to learn, a truth born of challenges we all first encounter in childhood but that persist well beyond, is realizing that being shouldered with responsibility needn’t bespeak lording but love.

Rashi comments on Hashem’s repetition of Yaakov Avinu’s name, calling him “Yaakov, Yaakov” (Beraishis, 46:2), as a lashon chibah, a locution of endearment.

The full Midrash from which Rashi quotes, though, adds “lashon ziruz” — a locution of motivation, of pushing to action. 

In last week’s parshah, the Midrash has Yaakov hinting to Hashem a desire for an end to the relentless challenges that confronted him throughout his life, regarding Lavan, Esav, Rochel, Dina, Yosef, Shimon and Binyamin (43:14).

But in this week’s parshah, Hashem hints back that what might seem to be burdens are in truth opportunities. Yaakov’s life was unimaginably hard, but by living it he became Yaakov Avinu.

With the term “Yaakov, Yaakov,” Hashem signals that being given the responsibility to shoulder challenges — ziruz — can be inseparable from, indeed an expression of, chibah — love.

And that is true not only when the “pushing” is coming from Above, but also when it’s coming from a parent, spouse or friend.

Parshas Miketz — 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 beardless 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.

Perhaps 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 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 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 preconceptions, how blinding they can be.  Even when faced with overwhelming evidence for the truth of something, it can still remain for millions of people an unthinkable thought, and render what is right in front of them effectively invisible.

© 2020 Rabbi Avi Shafran