The Talmud uses the term “pischon peh,” literally, “an opening of the mouth,” to describe the ability to put forth a compelling argument or excuse.

The pesukim that relay Hashem’s message to our ancestors: “Know this day that it was not your children” who saw Hashem’s majesty and experienced all of the miracles in Mitzrayim and during the exodus thereof and those during the desert years, but, rather, it was “your [own] eyes that saw” Hashem’s great acts (Devarim 11, 2-7), offer us alive today such an argument.

Because our ancestors directly experienced Hashem’s might and direction, and were thus rightly accountable to recognize the import of the same on their behavior. But we, their mere descendants, did not witness the exodus and subsequent wonders. What, then, compels us? Do we not have a pischon peh here, an excuse?

Key here is the vital importance of mesorah, the “handed-down,” usually used colloquially to refer to the handed-down law but no less applicable to “handed-down history.”

No one in his right mind today, despite not having been alive then, denies the event we call World War I, or the one we call the Civil War, or the existence of ancient Rome or ancient Greece. That is because history is handed down to us from when it happened.

And ancient Jewish history, with all of its miracles, has been faithfully handed down to us. We were therefore, in a sense and for all practical purposes, “there.” Our eyes, too – those of every Jew who has ever sat at a Pesach seder – witnessed the exodus from Mitzrayim.

What is more, we have something our ancestors had not: Compelling evidence of Hashem’s might: the fulfillment of Hashem’s words.

The Torah predicts Klal Yisrael’s failures and its exile from its land. It predicts our scattering across the world and our persecutions. All of which we, not our ancestors, can attest to having happened. So while they may have personally experienced Hashem’s hand, we have experienced the fulfillment of His promise.

And the Torah predicts, too, the full return of Klal Yisrael to the Torah and to the land (already begun), and the ultimate redemption. May it come speedily, in our day.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

It’s natural to feel disappointment when one loses – be it a court case, a job, a shidduch or an opportunity.

But it’s a pointless sentiment, and not only because it’s irreversible, like spilled milk. But because it is a denial, in a subtle but real sense, of Hashem.

A seemingly superfluous phrase, or, at least one whose intention is not clear, is appended to the Torah’s admonition “You shall not be partial in judgment. Hear out minor and major matters [or people] alike. Fear not any man.” The pasuk then adds: “For judgment is Hashem’s” (Devarim 1:17).

That phrase could be understood as meaning “For you are doing Hashem’s work, and must do so with pure objectivity.” Or, “For you are but instruments of Hashem.”  But Rashi, basing his words on Sanhedrin 8a, writes:

“Whatever you take from this man unjustly you will compel Me to restore to him; it follows, therefore, that you have thwarted judgment from Me.”

In other words, the phrase implies that an unjust judgment will be divinely rectified. And, it follows that if one judges properly, even if that means that a wealthy party is the winner of a financial case and a destitute party the loser, the judge needn’t fret. If the destitute party is meant to thrive, Hashem will see to it that he does, in some other way.

The implications of that idea – the truism that Hashem can and ultimately does run the show – go well beyond court proceedings. In life, no negative outcome is final, at least not in the larger scheme of things. And so, angst over losing, in any way, is unwarranted.

One can be deprived of a job, shidduch or opportunity. But the “loss” is illusory. And so, angst is pointless; it even borders on heretical, since one must recognize that, if Hashem’s “rectification” of a seemingly unfair verdict or happening is merited, it will happen.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

“Even Ataros and Divon” is the extent of the Gemara’s directive about the halachah (duly codified in the Shulchan Aruch) that Jewish men recite shnayim mikra vi’echad targum – each pasuk of the week’s Torah portion twice and its Targum Onkelos rendering once (Berachos 8b).

The “even,” of course, refers to the fact that Ataros and Divon, as names of places, are proper nouns and hence no different in targum than in mikra. All the same, Rav Huna bar Yehuda in the name of Rabbi Ami says, they, too, must be recited a third time.

Although Rashi explains that the places in that pasuk are rendered the same in Targum Onkelos, our Chumashim do indeed have different  renderings of those names (with the exception of the final one, Be’on), As do the Targum Yonason ben Uziel and the Targum Yerushalmi, with variations.

What’s more, there are dozens of names of places and people throughout the Torah that are rendered the same in targum as in mikra. Why would the Gemara seize particularly upon Ataros and Divon (especially since they do in fact have targum)? And there are other psukim in the Torah that, like Ataros and Divon, consist entirely of proper nouns.

Tosfos (ibid) say that the Gemara’s intention is to direct us to use the alternate targumim even though there is no non-repetitive Onkelos one. (And, presumably, publishers, somewhat misleadingly, included one of those targumim in our editions of Targum Onkelos itself.)

Interesting, though, is the fact that the targum renderings of the names the Gemara mentions, Ataros and Divon, the ones we have in our Chumashim, whether they are Onkelos’ or not, are machlelta and malbeshta, words whose roots seem to mean  “inclusion” and “cloaked.”

I wonder if those renderings may be meant to signify that the Torah includes much more in its words than their simple meanings; and that deeper meanings are cloaked in its every word. And, thus, that repeating even a proper noun a third time is indicated.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Have you ever wondered why, in the Mussaf Amidah of a Jewish leap year (when there are two Adars), we add the phrase ulichaparas posha, “and for atonement for sin”? It is a 13th phrase in the list of brachos at whose end it is added, which makes sense for a year with 13 months. But why “atonement of sin”? The Nachlas Tzvi has a fascinating suggestion.

Our parsha lists a number of special communal korbanos. On Rosh Chodesh, the day of the new moon, among other sacrifices, a chatas, a sin-offering, is brought (Bamidbar 28:15).  Unlike other chata’os brought on holidays, though, it alone is called a chatas laHashem. The halachic import of that fact, as Rashi notes, is that it atones for tum’ah contamination of the mikdash or kodoshim that no person ever knew about, only Hashem.

But the Midrash (also cited by Rashi) says something flabbergasting, that the korban is brought as an “atonement” – whatever that might mean – on behalf of Hashem, for His having “lessened” the moon. The reference, of course, is to the Midrash’s account of how the moon complained that “two kings cannot wear one crown” and, as a result, was divinely demoted.

The reason for a Jewish leap year, says the Nachlas Tzvi, is that the Jewish calendar, which is essentially lunar, requires an occasional additional month, to bring the Jewish months into alignment with the seasons (which are the result of the sun’s rays’ angle toward the hemispheres of an axis-tilted earth). The Nachalas Tzvi suggests  that the “lessening” of the moon may refer not only to a muting of brightness or size but also to the fact that it takes less time for our satellite to orbit around the earth 12 times than it takes the earth to revolve around the sun, rendering a lunar year “less,” in a temporal sense – shorter – than a solar one.

He sees the “atonement” as being for the moon’s complaint. But it would seem that it might better refer to the confounding Midrash cited that Rashi cites, whatever it might mean.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Our ancestors were divinely commanded to gaze at a copper representation of a snake. In order to end a plague of snakebites born of their complaint about the mon (Bamidbar 21:8). Chazal explain that it wasn’t the sight of the copper snake per se that effected the plague’s end.

Rather “when the Jewish people turned their eyes upward and subjected their hearts to their Father in Heaven, they were healed, but if not, they were necrotized [by the venom]” (Rosh Hashana 29a).

So, the obvious question: Why not eliminate the middlesnake and just look directly heavenward?

Rabbeinu Bachya calls attention to the word used to introduce the (real) snakes in the account: hanechashim (Bamidbar 21:6). Not “snakes” but “the snakes.”  The definite article, he says, is a reference to the poisonous  reptiles that, are described (Devarim 8:15) as having been ever-present in the desert our ancestors wandered. 

Rav Samson Rafael Hirsch expands on that observation, explaining that gazing at the copper snake was meant to sensitize the people to the ubiquity of snakes around them – and to the realization that when the snakes hadn’t harmed them, it was because of Hashem’s protection.

That puts me in mind of a pasuk (Tehillim 35:10) included at the end of Nishmas, the beautiful expression of gratitude recited at the end of psukei dizimra on Shabbos. “Kol atzmosai… matzil ani meichazak mimenu” – “All my bones shall say, ‘Hashem, who is like You? You save the poor from one stronger than him, the poor and needy from the one who would rob him’.”

My bones?

Parts of Nishmas describe our bodies’ figuratively praising Hashem. But those parts can be read, too, as asserting that our bodies’ functionings are themselves praises of Hashem.

Our physical bodies are threatened by scores of dangerous invaders, held off, if we are healthy, by an unbelievably complex biological network we call the immune system.

An astounding menagerie of antibodies is produced by the white blood cells in our bodies, each product designed by our Designer to disable a specific bacteria, virus or toxin, thousands of which constantly seek to infect our bodies.

Those protectors, as it happens, are born in the marrow of our bones.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran