Naso – Chinuch 101

Haftaros always have some connection to something in the parsha, but few are as explicitly related to what was read from the Torah as the haftarah of parshas Naso, which haftarah , like part of the parsha itself, deals with a nazir.

That nazir, of course, was Shimshon, whose mother, Tzalphonis, was visited by an angel predicting his birth and establishing that he was to be a protector of his people – and a nazir, from birth and beyond. She, too, she was instructed, was to refrain from ingesting anything forbidden to a nazir.

When she related the details of the visitation to her husband Manoach, he beseeches Hashem to offer instructions for raising the child they will be having.

But, wonders Rav Shimon Schwab, the laws of nazir were well known and established. What was Manoach asking for?

What’s more, when his prayer was answered and the angel appeared again, the heavenly visitor seems to add nothing to his previous instructions. “The woman,” he says, “must abstain from all the things against which I warned her… She must observe all that I commanded her.”

Rav Schwab suggests something novel. He sees Manoach’s request as having been about the challenge of a non-nazir like himself raising a nazir. It was a request, so to speak, for chinuch advice.

And, Rav Schwab,  points out, the Hebrew word for “she must observe,” tishmor, can also mean, when spoken directly to a man, “you must observe,”  indicating that not only should Manoach’s wife heed the laws of nezirus, but so should he. The only way to successfully  raise a nazir, in other words, is to be a nazir

Thus, asserts Rav Schwab, the chinuch lesson delivered by the angel was one that is a lesson to all Jews for all generations: If we don’t ourselves model what we want our children to become, we cannot expect them to develop as we wish. What children see in their parents is the single most important part of their upbringing. 

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Bamidbar – No Date, No Place

We read parshas Bamidbar (Bimidbar, if one wants to be didactic) on the Shabbos before Shavuos. The meaning of that juxtaposition might lie in the  word by which the parsha is known ((however one chooses to render it).

Rav Yisrael Salanter saw a trenchant message in the fact that Shavuos, unlike Pesach and Sukkos, has no set date. Tied as it is to the beginning of the Omer count on the second day of Pesach, its 50th day – at least when Rosh Chodesh was dependent on the sighting of new moons – could have fallen on the 5th, 6th or 7th day of Sivan.

Rav Yisrael explained that since we know that Shavuos is zman mattan Toraseinu (note zman, not yom, as the holiday may not fall on the date of Sivan on which the Torah was actually given), its lack of an identifiable set day telegraphs the idea that Torah is unbounded by time. On a simple level, that means it applies fully in every “modern” era; on a deeper one, that it transcends time itself, as per Chazal’s statement that it was the blueprint of the universe that Hashem, so to speak, used to create creation.

A parallel message, about space, may inhere in the desert, a “no-place,” being the locus of Mattan Torah. Here, too, there is a simple idea, that Torah is not bound to any special place but rather applies in all places; and a deeper one, that it transcends space itself, which, like time, is in the end something created.

That time and space are not “givens” of the universe, but, rather part of what was created at brias ha’olam (aka the “Big Bang) is a commonplace today, although it wasn’t always so, as philosophers maintained over centuries that there was never any “beginning” to the universe and that space is a fixed, eternal grid.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Behar – A Saying That Says Much

There are a number of common English aphorisms that parallel (or are sourced in) Talmudic statements.

What Chazal said in Avos (1:15), “Say little and do much” echoes in “Actions speak louder than words.”

As does “Don’t judge a book by its cover” in “Do not look at the container, but at what is in it” (Avos 4:20).

What the Gemara teaches (Bava Metzia 71a) with “The poor of one’s own town come first” is conveyed in “Charity begins at home.”

“No pain, no gain” is rendered by Ben Hei Hei as “According to the effort is the reward” (Avos 5:26). 

Sometimes, though, a subtle difference in how an idea is rendered by Chazal carries meaning.

Like the “Golden Rule,” which, in popular usage is rendered “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Hillel’s version (Shabbos 31a) is, of course, “What is hateful to you do not do to your fellow.” While the popular version may seem, at first glance,  nicer, Hillel’s is without question more demanding, and more meaningful. 

In parshas Behar (Vayikra 25:35), we read: “If your brother becomes poor… strengthen him.” The word for “strengthen” – vihechezakta – can also mean “take hold of.” Which leads the Midrash (Sifra, Behar), quoted by Rashi, to convey that one should try to intervene before a crisis becomes serious.  When a person has already fallen into poverty, “it will be difficult to give him a lift, but rather uphold him from the very sign of the failure of his means.” The mashal offered is of a donkey whose load is tottering. It can be held in place by one person, but if it has already fallen, it will take many people to right the donkey and replace its load. 

“A stitch in time saves nine” or “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” are how an uninformed-by-Torah pundit might put the idea.

What makes the Midrash’s meaning more meaningful, though,  is that it is in the context not of saving oneself time or work or trouble but, rather, of how best to help another person. 

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Emor – When Shabbos Arrives on Tuesday

The term “afilu biShabbos shel chol” – “even on a weekday Shabbos” – is from the Zohar (Korach 179), as the end of the statement beginning: “The Shechinah has never left Yisroel on Shabbosos and Yomim Tovim…”

“Weekday Shabbos”? It has been suggested, by the Parshas Derachim (Rav Yehudah ben Rav Shmuel Rosanes) in the name of his father that the strange statement refers to the situation presented by the Gemara (Shabbos 69b) of a Jew who is lost in the desert, and who has lost track of the day of the week. There, Rav  Chiya bar Rav maintains that the person should observe the next day as Shabbos and then count six days before again observing Shabbos. Rav Huna argues that he should first count six days and only then observe the first Shabbos. 

In both opinions, though, a weekday could (and most likely would) end up “being” Shabbos.

The Chasam Sofer sees a hint to that approach in the fact that, in our parsha (Vayikra 23:2-3), Shabbos is counted along with holidays – as part of the  mikraei kodesh (“those declared  as  holy”), which refers to the fact that Jewish holidays are “declared,” dependent on when the beis din announces each new month. Thus they are dependent on Jews’ actions, unlike Shabbos, which is set from the creation week and impervious to human intervention.

Except, that is, in the case of the desert wanderer. In that case, the wanderer indeed declares when Shabbos is. And the Shechinah descends on his “weekday Shabbos.”

Evidence, it would seem, of the profound power the human realm wields, able as it is to “summon” the Shechinah to descend. 

Hashem has made us partners in Creation. A timely thought as Shavuos (during the month of Sivan, whose mazal is te’umim) approaches.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Acharei Mos – When Life is the Equal of Death

Faced with a forced choice between continuing to live or committing one of three sins –  idolatry, murder and arayos, forbidden sexual relations – a Jew is commanded to forfeit his life.

In the case of any other sin (unless the coercion is part of an effort aimed at destroying Jewish practice), the forbidden act should be committed and one’s life preserved.

That law is derived from the phrase vichai bahem, “and live through them” (Vayikra 18:5).

The Chasam Sofer notes the incongruity of the fact that vichai bahem is written immediately before a list of arayos, one of the three cardinal sins – not in the context of sins where life trumps forbiddance. And he writes that “it would be a mitzvah” to explain that oddity.  

One approach to address the incongruity is offered by the Baal HaTurim. He sees an unwritten but implied “however” between vichai bahem and what follows. So that the Torah is saying, in effect, life is paramount except for cases like the following.

A message, though, may lie in the juxtaposition itself without adding anything: that living al kiddush Hashem – “for glorification of Hashem” – is as valued as dying for it. When one is commanded to commit a sin in order to preserve his life, that, too, is a kiddush Hashem. Because in such cases, one’s choosing to live is Hashem’s will.

What also might be implied is what the Rambam writes (Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah 5:11), that the way a person acts in mundane matters can constitute either a kiddush Hashem or its opposite. If one’s everyday actions show integrity and propriety, that constitutes a glorification of Hashem’s name.

And so, perhaps, writing the words teaching us that concern for life in most cases requires the commission of a sin as an “introduction”of sorts to the imperative to die in certain other cases may be the way the Torah means to impress something upon us: the essential equality between dying al kiddush Hashem and living by it.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran