Category Archives: Personalities

Ha’azinu — When Bravado is Banned

It’s odd that, when Moshe Rabbeinu and Yehoshua transmit the shirah of Haazinu to the people, the Torah refers to Yehoshua as Hoshea (Devarim 32:44), his original name. Moshe, of course, had changed his eventual successor’s name 40 years earlier.

Rashi and others suggest that the use of Yehoshua’s original name alludes to the fact that, even as he was about to become the leader of Klal Yisrael, Yehoshua’s original name is used to show that he maintained the humility that had always been part of his character. 

A twist on that observation is suggested by Meshulam Fayish Tzvi Gross (who had a weekly chavrusa in Kabbalah with Rav Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn; and who, as Herman Gross, patented several inventions).

In his sefer Nachalas Tzvi, Rabbi Gross calls attention to the differential of circumstances between when Moshe changed Yehoshua’s name and when, in our parshah, the latter’s original name is employed.

When Hoshea bin Nun was faced with the need to stand up to the other scouts of Eretz Cna’an, to have the independence, clearheadedness and courage necessary to state the facts about the land, Then, Moshe was telling Hoshea, who was exceedingly humble (as Sifri in Shelach notes),  to recognize his greatness, his ability to oppose the other meraglim’s report, to not succumb to peer pressure, to have full confidence in himself.

Moshe expressed his hope that Hashem would aid him in that. And so he added a hint to Hashem’s name to Hoshea’s – saying, “May Hashem save you from the intrigue of the scouts” (Sotah 34b).

Now, though, as Moshe is preparing Yehoshua to lead the people into Eretz Yisrael, posits Rabbi Gross, the Torah uses Yehoshua’s original name pointedly, as a message to him – that the independence and bravado that were necessary back when the land was being scouted are not longer needed for – in fact, in a sense diametric to – the assumption of leadership.

A true leader needs what was Yehoshua’s essence: humility. 

It’s a lesson that most contemporary leaders seem ignorant of, and would do well to absorb.

© 2024 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Eikev – Consumer Goods

It’s remarkable how prominent eating is in the Torah. The designation of which animals one may eat, the consumption of parts of all korbonos except olos, matza on Pesach, seudos on Shabbos and Yomtov… And yet, eating would seem to be an animalistic endeavor, something to be accepted as necessary, perhaps, but not awarded religious value.

But human consumption of food is qualitatively different from animals’ feeding. That is the essence of the words “[Hashem] subjected you to the hardship of hunger and then gave you mon to eat, which neither you nor your ancestors had ever known, in order to teach you that a human being does not live on bread alone, but that one must live on all the words of Hashem.”

That pasuk is often understood as meaning simply that our lives are made meaningful by following Hashem’s words. But its deeper meaning is something else: While we may think that our souls are nourished by the vitamins, minerals, proteins and fats in what we eat, the Torah is telling us that our true life nourishment comes from something ethereal, holy, that permeates our food, something instilled there by Hashem’s  will. That was the lesson of the mon, that our lives’ engines and their fuel are not ultimately physical. It’s a concept philosophers call vitalism. 

And the wordings of our birchos hanehenim hint at that fact : Shehakol nih’yeh bid’varo, borei pri ha’etz, hamotzi [by His decree] lechem. We don’t just say thank You for what we are about to eat but express the fact that the food is caused by, and imbued with, something divine, and that it is really that invisible element that provides us human life.

R’ Chaim Vital quotes the Arizal as saying that the highest spiritual level is accessible by concentrating on our brachos, because they are not mere expressions of gratitude but, rather, means of sublimating and refining the base element inherent in the physical stuff we are eating. “And he [the Arizal],” R’ Vital writes, “impressed the importance of that upon me greatly.”

Those of us who have been saying brachos from childhood too easily fall into reciting them by rote, often mumbling them without thinking much, if at all, about their words’ meanings. 

We do well to watch and listen to the newly observant when they make brachos, and strive to emulate their concentration on what they are saying.

© 2024 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Shelach – The Import of an “It”

The Torah’s narratives are pertinent to every generation. But certain accounts resonate particularly blatantly in certain times.

Like the saga of the ma’apilim, the “insisters,” those Jews in the desert who repented of having spoken negatively of Eretz Yisrael and insisted, even against Moshe’s warning, on short-circuiting (pun intended) the prescribed years of desert wandering and “going up” into the Holy Land immediately.

Some, like the Munkatcher Rebbe Rabbi Chaim Elazar Spira, a fierce opponent of nascent religious Zionism during the early 1900s, saw in the ma’apilim a precursor of “those sects that went up to Eretz Yisrael by force to establish colonies and wage war against the nations.”

Rav Tzadok HaCohein, who died in 1900, had a very different approach. He wrote that the ma’apilim felt that, despite the warning against going directly into the land, it was a case of “Whatever the host tells you to do, heed him, except when he says ‘leave’” [Pesachim 86b].

Although the provenance of that text’s final phrase – “except when he he says ‘leave’” – is questioned by some commentaries, the idea Rav Tzadok means to convey is that the ma’apilim felt justified in disobeying the Divine order, that their plan was in fact ultimately consonant with the Divine will. 

But, while they had a point, Rav Tzakok continues, it was not the right time for such brash action. Noting the first word in Moshe’s admonition that “it [the plan] will not succeed,” Rav Tzadok writes: The word ‘it’ is often interpreted by Chazal to mean ‘it, but not another,’ [here] implying that at another time [in history] ‘it will succeed’.”

And, he concludes, “that is our time, the era leading to Mashiach.”

That era has proven prolonged. And the state of Israel is a reality. The question of whether its establishment was a wise endeavor or a dangerous one is moot today. We can only hope that the redemption Rav Tzadok saw implied by the pasuk – even if it didn’t take place in the 1900s – will happen soon, speedily, in our days.

© 2014 Rabbi Avi Shafran

ANC R.I.P.?

Professor David Himbara called South Africa “a classic case of a de facto one-party state with mismanaged institutions and endemic crime and corruption.” It’s also a state with much racism and anti-Israelism. Its president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has been a driver of those sins. Is there hope for the future? My thoughts are here.