Vayeira — Unreal

Regarding various Jewish laws (e.g. see Bava Kamma 49a), the Gemara sees in Avraham’s words to his entourage on the way to the Akeida, “Stay here with the donkey” (Beraishis 22:5), an indication (based on the word im, “with,” which can be read as am,  “a nation”) that Kna’anim are “a nation similar to a donkey.”

In what way were the “two lads” who accompanied Avraham and Yitzchak on the way to the Akeida considered part of a nation that is “similar to a donkey”? And why is it here, in this particular narrative, that the exegesis is made?

Rav Yaakov Moshe Charlop, the Mei Marom, suggests that something essential and consequential about Avraham and his Yitzchak-progeny is being communicated here.

Avraham was faced with a seemingly unsolvable paradox: He was promised descendants through Yitzchak and yet charged with killing him. There was simply no logical way to square that circle. 

But Avraham was able to embrace those two incompatibles in his mind all the same. Because he was not bound by logic or “reality.” When  Hashem brought him “outside” to look at the stars (ibid 15:5), the Gemara (Nedarim 32a) sees in that word the message “Go outside your astrological ‘reality’.” The same, says Rav Charlop, is the case with what we call “reality.” 

The Kna’ani lads did not have the emunah necessary to “leave reality” and disregard contradictory facts, like Avraham and Yitzchak did. They were hopelessly mired in the physical world of cause and effect and logic. The root of chamor, “donkey,” is chomer, “physicality.” The limitations of the physical world dominated in the lads’ worldview. But not among the Avos and Klal Yisrael. 

The Jewish nation exists outside logic. It resides in the miraculous.

© 2024 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Lech Lecha – Of Banners and Bloodshed

It’s considered uncouth, or worse, these days to assign any sort of “national character” to peoples of different ethnic or geographical backgrounds. And we are well advised to not assume anything about any individual – say, to assume that a German will be punctual or a Canadian, polite. But meticulousness is a prominent aspect of German society; and civility, a notable Canadian middah. Anthropological and sociological cultural norms exist.

Yishmael is commonly perceived as the progenitor of some Arab peoples, an association that would seem to dovetail disturbingly with how Avraham’s first son is characterized in the parsha, as a “pereh adam,” an “unbridled man” given to violence (see Rashi, Beraishis 21:9), someone whose “hand is against all others” and, as a result, causes “all others’ hands to be against him”(ibid 16:12).

The striking savagery wrought by Arab terrorists, from the Hebron massacre of 1929 to October 7, 2023 (and countless attacks on innocents between those events) lend credence to the idea that Yishmael’s middah persists in our world.

Strikingly, the Muqaddimah, a famous 14th century text by Arab historian Ibn Khaldun, seems to agree with the Torah’s characterization of Yishmael. Ibn Khaldun engages in blunt judgments about various populations, including his fellow Arabs, who, he writes, are the most savage of people; he compares them to wild, predatory animals.

The notion that violence is tolerated in – or even embraced by – parts of the Arab world, more than in other societies, is evoked by the flags of some modern Arab states. That of the largest one, Saudi Arabia, features a sword (and the country’s official emblem, two crossed ones).  Oman’s and Hamas’ flags also prominently feature swords. Hands clenching AK-47s are on the Fatah movement’s flag, which also includes the image of a hand grenade and is graced with a blood-red Arabic text that probably (just guessing here) doesn’t read “give peace a chance”. 

The Palestinian Authority’s “national anthem,” called “Fida’i,” begins, “Warrior, warrior, warrior” and ends “I will live as a warrior, I will remain a warrior, I will die as a warrior…”

No individual Arab should ever be assumed to be a violent person, of course. But a proclivity for violence seems to be part of Arab culture, a tragic reality noted not only by Ibn Khaldun but presaged by, lihavdil, the Torah.

© 2024 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Noach – Get Your Own Dirt

It could have been a launch pad for a vehicle to reach the moon. Or a panopticon to monitor people over a large distance. Those are two of the suggested theories for why the people of Bavel sought to build an unprecedentedly tall tower. The first suggestion was put forth by Rav Yonasan Eibschutz; the second, by the Netziv.

Whatever the builders’ aim was, though, it was a development that, as the Torah recounts, merited divine interference. But the words introducing the endeavor are strange. The would-be builders said to one another:

“‘Come, let us mold bricks and bake them well.’ They then had the bricks to use as stone, and the clay for mortar” (Beraishis, 11:3).” What is the significance of their mode of construction?

In 1927, Tomáš Masaryk, then-president of then-Czechoslovakia and a leader friendly to Jews, visited the Yishuv in Eretz Yisrael and was received by its leader, Rav Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld. 

According to the book about Rav Sonnenfeld, Ha’ish al Hachomah, one of the things he discussed with the European leader was the danger posed by technological advances. And he pointed to the pasuk above as an example of how such progress is often born of a misguided attempt to deny the ultimate importance of Hashem. The Bavel builders, he explained, shunned the natural stone available to them, opting instead for their advanced “brick technology.” In so doing, they were declaring their “independence” from the divine.

I’m reminded of the story of the group of scientists who inform Hashem that His services are no longer needed, that their knowledge of the universe now allows them to run it just fine themselves, thank You.

“Can you create life like I did?” the Creator asks. “No problem,” they reply as they confidently gather some dirt and fiddle with the settings on their shiny biologocyclotron.

“Excuse Me,” interrupts the heavenly voice. “Get your own dirt.”

Or, as Carl Sagan said, “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”

© 2024 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Beraishis – The The

Is there any reason why the Torah uses the definite article (“the”) in its first pasuk? Couldn’t it have said “In the beginning, Elokim created heavens and earth” –  minus the “the”s?

While we can never truly know what transpired at the dawn of creation – Mishlei 25:2 says “The honor of Elokim is hiding the thing,” which Rabi Levi in the name of Rabi Chama bar Chanina (Beraishis Rabbah 9:1) applies to the creation week – it’s reasonable to assume that “heavens” refers to space (Rav Hirsch sees the word shomayim as referring to all the “shom”s – the “theres” in all directions); and “earth,” to matter (and, perhaps, what we call energy). So what’s with the “the”s?

I raise the question not to answer it, rather only to ruminate on that Hebrew letter, the one that serves to mean “the” or “that” – the letter hei.

The universe Hashem created, to the best of our perception, has three spatial dimensions and one temporal one. To pinpoint an object, one has to identify its three axes in space and its “place” in time.

To get a fix on a hot air balloon, for instance, we must know its longitude, latitude and altitude; and when it is there.

Which leads to an interesting observation: After the first four letters of the Hebrew alphabet, which might correspond to our four-dimensional universe, we have its fifth, the letter that is used as a prefix to mean “the” or “that” – the words we use to point to a particular thing.

© 2024 Rabbi Avi Shafran

V’zos Habrachah – The Unfolding of History

A subtle and fascinating hint to how history unfolded since the revelation at Har Sinai is pointed out by Rav Hutner – in two words used at the start of the parshah.
“Hashem came from Sinai,” we read, “… and shone forth from Seir; He projected from Har Paran…” (Devarim 33:2).

The word zarach clearly means “shone”; hofi’a, a less common word, implies radiating or projecting. 

The Gemara (Avodah Zarah 2b) and Sifri (Devarim 343) recount how Hashem offered the Torah to other nations but each asked what it contained and, informed of a law that went against its grain, refused to accept it.

Rashi alludes to that account, and identifies Seir with “the children of Esav” and Har Paran with “the children of Yishmael.” Both of which peoples were offered but rejected the Torah.

Rav Hutner (in his Pachad Yitzchak ma’amarim on Shavuos) sees a “subtle and transparent hint” in the verbs “shone” and “radiating.”

Esav, which is Edom, which is Rome, stands for the falsehood of idolatry, the worship of a man. Yishmael, the progenitor of the Arab world, stands for the embrace of a false prophet. Rav Hutner doesn’t get more specific than that. Neither shall I.

The refusals of Edom and Yishmael to reject, respectively, idolatry and false prophethood, empowers the Jews’ ready acceptance of the Torah and reflects what happened at Sinai. 

The “shining” corresponds to the first two of the Aseres Hadibros, which “shone” directly from Hashem upon our ancestors at Sinai. And the less direct “projection” refers to the remainder of the Dibros, which were merely witnessed by the people (after their plea) but transmitted to the ultimate prophet, Moshe Rabbeinu, the “father of all true prophets.”

© 2024 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Amoebas, Aardvarks and Goats

When one thinks about it, it’s clear that the Torah’s most fundamental message is that our lives are meaningful. That what we do makes a difference. And when one thinks about it a bit more, one realizes that the idea – that we are powerful enough for our actions to count in the cosmos – is really most shocking. 

It’s a truth, unfortunately, that’s not embraced by a considerable chunk of humanity, by countless people who choose to view their existence as nothing more than the product of a long series of meaningless, chance happenings. And what they do or don’t do, as essentially meaningless.

I have often wondered how, despite that delusive belief, such rejecters of human purpose justify their glaringly contradictory claim that ethics or morality exist. If humans are not qualitatively different from amoebas, why should there be any more meaning to good and bad actions than to good or bad weather? Why should there be any more import to right and wrong than to right and left?

Some of the “we’re all just the detritus of random events” crowd try to deflect those starkly obvious questions by invoking the idea of a “social contract,” the agreement of all people to behave a certain way in order to ensure everyone a greater likelihood of survival and happiness. 

But a social contract, to the extent that it can actually work, is at best only a practical tool, not a serious imperative. Only if there is a Creator in the larger picture, offering our behavior consequential meaning, can there be true import to human life, placing it on a plane above that of aphids and aardvarks.

Even from a purely secular perspective, seeing life itself, let alone human life, as the product of chance is absurd. Sir Fred Hoyle, who was a famed astronomer but also a deep thinker about science, called the notion of life’s random emergence “nonsense of a high order.” He embraced no religion but felt compelled nonetheless to compare the likelihood of the random emergence of life to that of “a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard… [and] assembl[ing] a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.”

The recognition of human life’s momentousness is poignantly pertinent to Yom Kippur.

Because, when the Beis Hamikdosh stood, as we recount and envision during our Yom Kippur tefillas Musaf, two indistinguishable goats were brought before the Kohein Gadol, who placed randomly-pulled lots on the heads of the animals.  One lot read “to Hashem” and the other “to Azazel” – the name of a steep cliff in a barren desert.

The first was offered as a holy korban; the second, taken to the aforementioned cliff and thrown off, dying unceremoniously, as the Mishna (Yoma 6:6) recounts, battered to pieces before even reaching the bottom.

The goat that is brought as a korban – the word means “closeness maker,” as it brings the offerer closer to Hashem – implies recognition of the idea that we mortals are beholden to a divine mandate.  And the counter-goat, fated to a desolate, unholy place, may imply a perspective of life as pointless, lacking higher purpose.

Strangely, the Azazel-goat is described by the Torah as carrying away Klal Yisrael’s sins. What might that mean?

Consider: The ability to sin stems from not fully realizing how meaningful our lives are; if we truly felt the power that inheres in our actions, we could never do wrong. Resh Lakish in fact said as much when he observed (Sotah 3a) that “A person does not sin unless a spirit of madness enters him.” Sin’s roots lie in the madness born of our doubting our significance.

And so it’s not outside the realm of the reasonable to imagine that the sight of the doomed-to-Azazel goat being led to an aimless, arbitrary death – the opposite of its erstwhile partner’s honored, sacred one – might serve to remind us of the stark difference between the two diametric attitudes toward human life. 

Pondering our lives’ meaningfulness on the holiest day of the Jewish year would thus be most appropriate, generating thoughts of teshuvah, of re-embracing the truth of our power Hashem has given us, “carrying away” our sins.

G’mar chasimah tovah.

© 2024 Ami Magazine

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

SAVE is Moot

Marta, a Honduran noncitizen immigrant who lives in a suburban Atlanta apartment complex, just wanted the two men who appeared at her door and said they were there to help Latinos navigate the election system “to go away.” Fearing she might be deported if she said the wrong thing, when they asked her if she had registered to vote, she just answered yes, hoping that would satisfy them.

It did indeed, though not the way she thought. The men, who surreptitiously videotaped the encounter, were working with the Heritage Foundation on a quest to reveal the extent of noncitizen voting, which is illegal (other than in a few local municipalities for local offices). The group eventually posted a video showing Marta and other noncitizens who also said they had registered to vote.

In truth, though, Marta (who, for obvious reasons, did not want her surname to be publicized) was not registered to vote and had never tried to register in the nine years that she had lived in the United States, according to a private fact-checking group brought in to investigate. Two other women who were featured in the video were also tracked down and confessed to having lied about registering to vote. State investigators found no evidence that any of the seven people on the tape had ever registered to vote. 

Nevertheless, the video concluded that, “Based on our findings, the integrity of the 2024 election is in great jeopardy.” Elon Musk, X’s owner, helped the video go viral (it amassed more than 56 million views).

The issue of noncitizens preparing to vote in droves in November is on the political front burner. It has, in fact, held up approval of the federal budget. Because, appended to the budget proposal has been the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act,” or SAVE, which would require voters to present proof of citizenship, like a passport or birth certificate, in order to be able to vote. 

Last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson failed to pass a six-month extension of government funding with the measure, insisted upon by former President Trump and many Republican members of Congress, attached. Early this week, Congressional leaders reached an agreement (without a SAVE component) to keep the government working for three months, pushing final budget decisions until after the election.

Politics aside, though, the SAVE provision seems sane. Noncitizens should not be permitted to vote. 

And they are not. There is already a federal law that penalizes any noncitizen who tries to vote. Illegally voting in a federal election can land a violator in prison for a year, and a noncitizen found guilty of voting faces deportation and denial of future immigration status. That, opponents of SAVE contend, is more than sufficient deterrent.

And SAVE’s requirement to prove citizenship, they add, would disenfranchise millions of voters. Less than half of Americans hold passports, and obtaining birth certificates, which few people have handy, can be time-consuming and requires payment of a fee.

But whether those critics are correct or not, is noncitizen voting a problem in the first place?

According to the libertarian Cato Institute’s Walter Olson, “Those who levy sensational charges [of widespread illegal voting] should bear the burden of proving them. But they haven’t.” 

Even the Heritage Foundation itself has documented only 23 cases of noncitizens voting – over the course of two decades.

There have been glitches, though. Oregon’s DMV has revealed that, due to a “data entry issue,” it mistakenly registered at least 306 non-citizens as voters since 2021. The error was caught, though, before any of those registrants had a chance to try to vote.

More than any previous presidential election season, this one’s fuel seems to be fomenting fear. Each candidate doesn’t just tout his or her accomplishments or qualifications, and doesn’t just attack the opponent’s. Each claims that if he or she loses the election, the country will be destroyed, pushed off the brink into dictatorship or anarchy or fascism. 

And unfounded fears of things like noncitizens voting en masse ratchet up the fear factor. 

Despite all the panic-purveying, though, and whoever wins, let’s hope that, post-election, the republic will not only, b’ezras Hashem, survive but thrive.

© 2024 Ami Magazine