Category Archives: PARSHA

The Far-Reaching Import of a Vav

Your Uber driver might be pleasant to you because he values another human being, but his desire for a four-star rating likely plays a larger role in his affability.

A sure way to anger an atheist is to challenge him to explain why anyone should be pleasant, or ethical or moral – beyond the mere utilitarian gain of a social contract. He will jump up and down and insist that goodness and badness exist. But, in the end, without a Higher Power’s guidance, those words are utterly fungible. Good and bad behavior, sans a Divine Guide, carry no more ultimate meaning than good or bad weather. And flowers appreciate thunderstorms.

Parshas Mishpatim begins with the connection-letter vav, indicating that the laws that follow, many of them dealing with financial dealings, torts and other interpersonal matters, were, no less than the “Ten Commandments” and mizbei’ach laws of the previous parshah, “from Sinai,” as Rashi, quoting Midrash Tanchuma, notes.

Inherent in that vav-connector, says Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin, is the fact that, for Jews, seemingly mundane business and interpersonal dealings are to be conducted ethically not as mere parts of a social contract but rather as the fulfilment of Divine command.

And, he continues, it is a distinction with a momentous difference. “Rivers of blood” have been spilled, he points out as an example, “up to and including the present,” as a result of human reinterpretation of “Thou shall not murder.”

When killing, or stealing, or harming others are only man-made social constructs, ways will be found to sidestep them or “clarify” their application when deemed necessary. By contrast, one who accepts the Torah’s ethical laws as a divine charge will perforce treat them as truly binding and absolute, no matter what.

Those with the custom of saying a “lishem yichud” declaration of holy intent before putting on tefillin or taking an esrog and lulav in hand generally don’t do so before signing a contract or treating another person pleasantly.

But there’s really no reason not to.

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 (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 refuse?

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, without being forced, 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 in the happenings, 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, Chazal teach, 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.

Bishalach – Arms Race

Stripped of all of history’s dross, the fundamental struggle of humanity 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 pointless.

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.

Parshas Bo: A 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 edifices themselves, 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, in ksav ashuris, of a ches, the eighth letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

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 endeavoring to fulfill the will of our Creator, which requires both elements to work together.

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 as Rashi explains it is imparting 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.

Vayechi – The Real Man in the Moon

In a good example of Talmudic humor, Rav Nachman reacted to Rav Yitzcḥak’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 (brought by the Shela and the Bach [Orach Chaim 281]), “the image of Yaakov is carved out [i.e. visible] in the moon.”

Vayigash — Being Pushed, Being Loved

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

Rashi comments on Hashem’s repetition of Yaakov Avinu’s name, calling out to 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, a 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 had 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, features, not bugs. 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, a spouse or a friend.

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.

Vayeishev — However, Reality

The Hebrew word for “mourning” is introduced in Vayeishev to describe Yaakov’s response to the apparent death of his son Yosef: “Vayis’abel (Beraishis 37:34).

The word “eivel” — “mourning” — is composed of the same letters, in the same order, as the word “aval” — “however.”

“However” bespeaks an interruption of a thought. And mourning — the facing of mortality forced by the death of someone close — is an interruption of life, of living, as we all do, without constantly thinking about death.

It’s interesting to note that the parsha includes not only the interruption of Yaakov’s life by Yosef’s disappearance – the source of his aveilus – but a striking interruption, too, of the narrative flow of the parsha itself, by the account of Yehudah and Tamar.

And that narrative also presents yet another interruption, this one, of Yehudah’s life. He is suddenly, unexpectedly, forced to confront the reality of his responsibility for the fact of Tamar’s pregnancy.

Tamar tells him, when he seeks to punish her, that he seems innocent and she seems guilty. But, she continues, please recognize these personal items… (38:25). That, for Yehudah, is an aval – a “however” – moment too.

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Reflections on Jews, Judaism, Media and Life