In my opinion, a professor at Hebrew University, when seeking in a New York Times opinion piece to divorce the Shemini Atzeres massacre from Holocaust references, missed the forest for the trees. The reason I think that can be read here.
Letter to the Editor
A letter I wrote to the New York Times was published on Shabbos. It can be read here. Its text is below:
The Evil of Jew-Hatred’
To the Editor:
Re “My Son Is a Hostage. Comparing Hamas to the Nazis Is Wrong,” by Jonathan Dekel-Chen (Opinion guest essay, June 24):
Professor Dekel-Chen misses the point. The parallel indeed fails if all that is analyzed are the particulars of the Third Reich and the Hamas movement. But focusing on the trees here obscures the ugly forest: antisemitism.
The evil of Jew-hatred is a shape-shifter. It may come from political entities on the right or on the left, from one religion or another, from governments and from societal movements. And the ostensible reasons for the hatred vary wildly with time and place. But the target is the same: the Jews.
May the professor’s hostage son, and all those being held by this generation’s Jew-haters, soon be able to rejoin their families.
(Rabbi) Avi Shafran
New York
The writer is the director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.
Chukas – Choose Your Weapon
Approaching the land of Edom, Moshe Rabbeinu sends messengers to the region’s king, requesting passage through his land. Moshe reminds Esav’s descendant of how his ancestor’s brother’s descendants had sojourned in Mitzrayim for “many days” (hundreds of years), how oppressed they had been and how they “called out to Hashem,” Who “heard our voices” and released them from Egyptian servitude.
Moshe reassures Edom that the Jewish desert-wanderers will not encroach on its fields or vineyards, that they will happily purchase food and water (which they didn’t even need, as they had the mon and the be’er).
The request is tersely rebuffed. And Moshe and his people are threatened by Edom’s king with the words: “I will come against you with the sword” (Bamidbar 20:14-18).
Rashi (based on Midrash Tanchuma, Bishalach) fleshes out the response: “You pride yourselves on the ‘voice’ your father bequeathed you… I, therefore, will come out against you with that which my father bequeathed me when he said, ‘And by thy sword you shall live’.”
These troubled days, under the pressure of contemporary enemies’ murderous designs, many Jews are less than fully sensitive to the fact that our “voice” – our prayers and Torah-study – are our most powerful means of undermining those who wish us harm. There may be superficial acknowledgment of the value of our “voice,” but less than full investment in the truth of that value.
We have witnessed colossal failures of physical means intended to protect Jewish lives. That should make us all the more cognizant of the truth of “Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit, says Hashem” (Zecharia 4:6).
Military might, to be sure, is necessary. But what ultimately empowers and protects both those on the front lines and Jews worldwide are our “voice.”
That, and our true, honest and complete conviction that Torah and tefillah are indeed key to effecting victory.
© 2024 Rabbi Avi Shafran
Foodless in Gaza?
There’s something strange I’ve noticed in photos of Gazan civilians. To read what it is and what it seems to mean, please click here.
Korach – Democracy and Its Discontents
Few contrasts in the Torah are as stark as the one between Moshe Rabbeinu and Korach. The latter is propelled by jealousy, a blinding sense of self (and self-entitlement). And, like populists who followed, he used the masses to foster his personal goal.
Moshe is the opposite, “the most humble of all men” (Bamidbar 12:3), and aspired to no leadership position; he had to be drafted. He serves the masses, stands up for them with his very existence – mecheini na, “erase me from Your book” if You won’t forgive them for the sin of the egel, he pleads with Hashem (Shemos 32:32).
And so he is puzzled by Korach’s rebellion. “I didn’t take even one donkey from them. I caused them no harm? (Bamidbar 16:15)” (Rashi sees the statements as expressions of pain.)
To Moshe, leadership is a mission; to Korach, it’s a perk. Like all populist politicians, he claims, “I’m working for YOU” – while Moshe speaks of leaders being picked by Hashem.
Rav Yosheh Ber Soloveitchik notes that Korach invokes “democracy” to push his agenda. Which, Rav Soloveitchik and others note, inheres in Korach’s “arguments.” Why should there be a need for a single strand of techeles if a garment is made entirely of techeles? Why should only two small parshios in a mezuzah be necessary for a house filled with holy books? Why, in other words, should Moshe and Aharon be set apart from everyone else? – The entire nation is holy! (Bamidbar 16:3),
Today, too, there are truly selfless and dedicated leaders of Klal Yisroel – and their detractors.
And some of the contemporary disparagers are “observant.” The religiosity of Moshe’s detractors saved Ohn ben Peles’ life. His wife, wise woman that she was, got him intoxicated enough to take a long nap when he was to be summoned to be part of the mob. Then she sat out front of their tent with her hair uncovered. When the plotters, who she knew were “holy people,” approached the Ben Peles home to fetch Ohn, they turned on their “frum” heels.
Today, too, people who claim to uphold the Torah choose to portray Gedolim negatively. When we read the words that one “should not be like Korach and his eidah” (Bamidbar 17:5), we are being exhorted to reject them.
© 2024 Rabbi Avi Shafran
Make the Ten Commandments Holy Again
Louisiana’s new law requiring the posting of the Aseres Hadibros in all public school classrooms disturbs me. Not because American children should revere the Commandments but for a different reason. Which you can read about here.
The Jewish summer weeks of mourning
Summer, for religious Jews, isn’t all barbecues and vacations. And the fast days we observe are particularly timely these days, when the Jewish connection to Eretz Yisrael is overlooked, or even denied, by some. You can read my thoughts about the matter here.
Saying the Loud Part Out Loud
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was born in Trenton, New Jersey, is 74 years old… and… sit down if you must… is a social conservative!
Who knew?
To read why I wax somewhat cynical regarding that revelation, click here.
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.