Vayikra – Prelude to Prayer

Inordinate stress is put by the Talmud on being somech geulah litfillah, placing a reference to redemption immediately before prayer, i.e. the amidah (Berachos 9b). It isn’t clear why that is so important, but what has always occurred to me is that, before praising and beseeching Hashem, a consciousness of hakaras hatov, recognition of His favor toward us, embodied in the concept of geulah, is essential.

Hakaras hatov, of course, is a fundamental – perhaps the most fundamental – Torah concept.

At the very beginning of history, we read that the vegetation created on the third day would not sprout from the ground until the sixth, because it was necessary that man be created first, to “recognize the good’ of rain and pray for it (Rashi, Beraishis, 2:5).

Hashem, of course, didn’t need Adam HaRishon’ recognition of His kindness to bring rain. It seems that the concept is of such import that it had to be stressed at the beginning of humanity (as well as at the beginning of Klal Yisrael, when the striking of the Nile and the ground in Mitzrayim to effect plagues had to be performed by Aharon, because Moshe Rabbeinu had to feel hakaras hatov to the river and earth that had benefited him).

Which is why Jewish days begin with Modeh Ani and end with Hamapil, and why they are filled throughout with the recitation of birchos hanehenin and birchos hoda’ah.

What occurs, as we end sefer Shemos and begin sefer Vayikra, is that the idea of being somech geulah to tefillah is hinted at by that very juxtaposition. 

After all, geulah is exemplified by Shemos, the book that revolves around the redemption from Mitzrayim and travel toward Eretz Yisrael.  And the sefer segues into the building of the Mishkan, leading to korbanos, the essential theme of Vayikra. “Sacrifices” (or, better, “closeness creators”) are replaced in our day (and even in ancient times were accompanied) by prayer.

So Shemos’ geulah leads immediately to Vayikra’s tefillah. The Torah itself, it seems, is somech geulah to tefillah.

And so the unexpected use of the word “adam” when korbanos are introduced (Vayikra 1:2), explained by the midrash brought by Rashi as a reference to Adam HaRishon, may also hint at something else we know from the first man: that hakaras hatov needs to precede prayer.  

© 2024 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Pekudei – Panic Today, Joy Tomorrow

The parallel in wordings between the Torah’s account of the universe’s creation and of the building of the Mishkan has been noted by commentaries. I won’t cite examples here but they abound.

The late British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks well phrased the upshot of that parallel, writing that “Genesis begins with G-d creating the universe as a home for humankind. Exodus ends with human beings, the Israelites, creating the Sanctuary as a home for G-d.”

A little-known Midrash, I believe, also adds to the parallel.  The Midrash Hagadol, on the parsha’s final pasuk (Shemos 40:38) – which states that “For the cloud of Hashem was upon the Mishkan by day, and there was fire within it at night, before the eyes of the entire house of Israel…” – recounts the following:

“When the Jews saw the cloud resting on the Mishkan, they rejoiced… [but] when night came and fire surrounded the Mishkan, they were anguished and cried ‘All our work was for naught!’ When they awoke the next morning and saw the cloud enveloping the Mishkan again, they rejoiced an even greater rejoicing…”

That account is strongly reminiscent of the Gemara (Avodah Zara 8a) that tells of how:

“On the day that Adam Harishon was created, when the sun set upon him, he said: ‘Woe is me, as because I sinned, the world is becoming dark around me, and the world will return to the primordial state of chaos and disorder. And this is the death that was sentenced upon me from Heaven.’ He spent all night fasting and crying, with Chava crying opposite him. Once dawn broke, though, he said: ‘Evidently, the sun sets and night arrives, and this is the order of the world.’ He arose and offered a sacrifice…”

Both  accounts illustrate that, even when it seems that all is lost, that the world is bearing down and no hope is in sight, reason to rejoice may lie around the corner. 

Living as we are in precarious times and headed toward Purim, when we will read of how a seemingly dire, threatening situation was turned on its head, it is a timely and trenchant message.

© 2024 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Vayakhel — Just Do It

It might be because last Shabbos was the yahrtzeit of my mother, Puah bas Rav Noach HaCohein, a”h. But, whatever the reason, she came to the fore of my mind when reviewing parshas Vayakhel, in particular the missing yud in the word nesi’im

The word for those tribal leaders of Klal Yisrael is spelled without a letter yud where there should be one (Shemos, 35:27).

Rashi, channeling Bamidbar Rabbah (12:16), notes that the truncated spelling reflects the Nesi’im’s declining to make their donations immediately, along with all the other Jews. Although their intention was to make up any shortfall, an undeniably laudable goal, their lack of alacrity is still held against them.

Two years ago, I offered one approach, based on Rav Dessler’s writing, to why that might be so. But this year, the memory of my mother suggested another possible explanation for why the Nesi’im are held accountable despite their good intention.

My mother was well known in Baltimore for warmly engaging everyone she met – and that was many people, since she was a shul rebbetzin. And she made constant efforts to find matches for unmarrieds. Try, though as she did, no marriages resulted from her efforts. 

At least not directly. Because when one makes an effort to do something meritorious, it advances the goal, contributes to the realm of good. No hishtadlus is without worth.

What occurs is that the Nesi’im’s lapse may have been the lack of effort. Instead of acting, even though they left open the door to future action should it be needed, they held back. That missing yud may thus signal the fact that effort is inherently meaningful, no matter the odds of success or the calculus for inaction. The effort itself is a success.

In the end, Hashem’s will will be done. As Mordechai told Esther when he chastised her for hesitating to engage the king on behalf of her fellow Jews, “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and rescue will arise for the Jews from elsewhere.” 

What he was saying was: Hashem has His plan and it will persevere, with or without your effort. But your effort will be meaningful, will advance the goal, and accrue to your everlasting credit.

© 2024 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Cartoons, Canards and Poison Programs

Covered in blood, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is eating a child.

That succinctly describes a cartoon published by a Libyan news organization on this past October 20. 

The next month saw a Bahrain news outlet depicting Mr. Netanyahu driving through Gaza in a blood-soaked tank while pulling the Statue of Liberty and President Biden behind him.

Yet another cartoon, featuring a frocked Jew with a large microphone in place of his nose, is captioned: “The Lie of Zionist Media.” 

That’s rather like the pot calling the glass of milk black. For decades, Arabic-language newspapers and websites have crawled with anti-Israel and antisemitic images and sentiments. And since the October 7 Hamas massacre, according to the Anti-Defamation League, the ugliness has only increased.

A report from the organization cites examples from Palestinian publications as well as in media based in Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Some also appeared in UK Arabic-language news outlets.

Welcome to the warped world of Arab media.

It’s not only the Arab world’s cartoons that evidence hatred for Jews. What passes for actual news reportage in that realm also regularly promotes incendiary falsehoods, claiming, for instance, that Israel wishes to kill Gazan civilians; and provides ample space to opinion writers whom Goebbels would have been overjoyed to have had on hand.

Among the best examples of such propaganda posing as reportage is Iran’s PressTV, which is nothing more than the malignant mullahs’ mouthpiece. It regularly traffics in Holocaust denial and spreads an assortment of antisemitic conspiracy theories. (Iran isn’t an Arab land, but its rulers share their Arabian coreligionists’ sentiments when it comes to Jews.)

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television station, based in Lebanon, is another contender. Its director let his less-than-journalistic sentiments show when, speaking about Mr. Netanyahu, he explained that “We want to get close to him, not to interview him, but to kill him.”

And then, of course, we have Qatar’s Al-Jazeera network. It does a good job of pretending to be a neutral, objective medium. But not good enough.

Recently, a laptop belonging to an Al-Jazeera reporter, Muhammad Washah, was found at one of Hamas’ bases in Gaza. It contained photos and intelligence materials linking him to Hamas.

“In the morning a ‘journalist’ on the Al-Jazeera network and in the evening a terrorist in Hamas,” was IDF Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee’s comment on a social media platform.

Apparently, according to Mr. Adraee, Mr. Washah is a senior military operative in Hamas’ anti-tank missile system and has worked in the research and development of aerial weapons for the terror group. Photos show him with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and weaponized drones.

On October 7 itself, it eventually came to light, at least two Al-Jazeera journalists entered Israel with Hamas terrorists and photographed atrocities. Ahmed Najjar accompanied some of the terrorists and filmed several kidnappings. Ismail Abu Omar filmed the Hamas slaughter in Kibbutz Nir Oz, even sharing a video in which he is heard saying: “The comrades have progressed, may Allah bless.”

Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, a cleric who praised Hitler, condoned Palestinian suicide bombings against Israeli civilians and appealed for people to “kill Zionists and Jews, down to the very last one…” was, until his death in 2020, a frequent guest on Al-Jazeera’s Arabic channel. 

As to moderate Arab voices, Jordan Cope, of the think tank Middle East Forum, asserts that “Other than in Israel… freedom of expression in the Middle East is limited.” There must be some prize for understatement.

And need we even mention Hamas’ own Al-AqsaTV? Renowned for its children’s programming, a medium in its own right, its broadcasts have featured cute furry characters like “Nahoul,” a giant bee, who encouraged his young fans to “punch” Jews and “turn their faces into tomatoes”; and his co-host, an actual little girl, responded to one of her pint-sized peers who expressed the wish to grow up and “shoot the Jews” – “all of them” – with: “Good!”

When some of the cuddly creatures suddenly disappeared from the program, the kiddies watching were solemnly informed that their beloved friends had been “martyred” by Israelis.

That particular “educational” program aired back in 2014. I find myself wondering if any of the young people who watched it back then might have been, ten years later, in the vicinity of the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel on October 7.

© 2024 Ami Magazine

Ki Sisa — Knot Theory

The Hebrew words panim and achor (as in lifnei and acharei) are used in both a spatial and temporal sense – either as “front” and “back” or as “before” and “after.”

One approach to the  mysterious revelation of Hashem’s glory to Moshe as he gazed from a cleft in a rock (Shemos 33: 18-23) sees forms of those words as referring not, as they most simply read, to the dimension of space but, rather, that of time.

“You will see My ‘back’ but My ‘face’ [or ‘front’] will not be seen” is what Hashem tells Moshe. The Chasam Sofer and Rav Tzadok HaCohein both understand that along the lines of “You may understand My ways when they are behind you in history, but the future (and even present) will not be perceptible.”

I wonder if what permeates and drives both the past and the future might lie in what Chazal comment on the word for “My back”: “He showed Moshe the kesher shel tefillin, the ‘knot at the back of the phylactery [placed on the head]’” (Berachos 7a). 

And indeed, the Gemara (ibid, 6a) says that Hashem, in some sense, “wears tefillin.” 

What occurs is that the word kesher can mean not only knot but also “bond.” The Gemara tells us that, while our own tefillin contain pesukim praising Hashem, the divine tefillin contain a pasuk praising His people (ibid).

Might “kesher shel tefillin,” here, be a pun of sorts, referring to the eternal bond binding Hashem to Klal Yisrael? And may that bond be the essential thread that runs through human history – past, present and future?

© 2024 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Tetzavah – Divine Right vs. Divine Role

There’s really no such thing as a kohein.

At least not the way we generally pronounce the word in conversation, with the accent placed on the first syllable. In the Torah, the stress is on the second syllable, a hint to the fact that the word is not a noun but rather a verb. 

That is Rashi’s observation in the parsha (29:30), on the words hakohein tachtav, which can only be properly translated as ‘who ‘koheins’in his stead” – with kohein meaning “serves.” (The cantillation, Rashi notes, would not support translating the phrase as “who is a kohein in his stead.”)

That may be nothing more than an interesting grammatical observation. But it may also signal something deeper.

Kohanim, of course, derive their status from being descendants of Aharon. In the non-Jewish sphere, special roles can also be transferred genealogically, as in monarchies.

But the “divine right of kings,” whereby monarchs claimed authority that rendered them unaccountable for their actions by earthly laws and courts (a topic that remains germane, oddly, even today, even in democracies) could not be further from the divine role of kohanim. A kohein is as governed by the Torah’s laws as any other Jew.

Kohanim are verily defined as “servers,” as being charged to do Hashem’s will. They are not defined by a noun but a verb – referring to performing the acts they are commanded to perform.

To be sure, kohanim have a special status in Klal Yisrael and are deserving of honor. But their specialness is born of mission, not license or immunity.

Truth be told, every one of us is, each in his or her way, special, whether we happen to carry a particular title or are just the unique individuals each of us is. And we all are likewise defined not by our particular statuses or identities, but by our missions. 

© 2024 Rabbi Avi Shafran