Category Archives: Jewish Thought

Pekudei – One Thing Leads to Another

It’s intriguing that, just as Chazal place importance on being masmich geulah litfillah – placing a reference to redemption immediately before prayer, i.e. the amidah (Berachos 4b, 9b) – we find something similar in the Torah itself.

The first part of Sefer Shemos, the Torah’s book of geulah, concerns, of course, Yetzias Mitzrayim, the redemption from Egypt. And the latter parshios deal with the mishkan, the place of korbanos, which were accompanied by, and eventually replaced by, tefillah. And the sefer is followed by Vayikra, the sefer of korbanos.

What’s more, the segue into the concept of tefillah is hinted at as well in the final parsha of Shemos. As the Yerushalmi notes, there are 18 times in parshas Pekudei that the phrase “as Hashem commanded Moshe” is used, corresponding to the 18 brachos of the amidah. (And the phrase “as Hashem commanded” occurs without an object once, which could correspond to the added nineteenth bracha, birchas haminim.)

And, although the Gemara regards the introduction to the amidah, the short prayer “Hashem, open my lips and let my mouth speak Your praises,” as part of tefillah, it, too, may itself hint at the geulah, since the word for “my lips” is rooted in the word for the seashore, the “al sfas hayam” of kri’as Yam Suf we reference in Shacharis leading up to the bracha of Go’al Yisrael.

Why being masmich geulah litefillah is a desideratum isn’t obvious, but it might be because, as we are about to beseech Hashem, hakaras hatov, recognition of His favor toward us, embodied in the concept of geulah, is something on which to concentrate..

May our tefillos lead, in turn, to the geulah ha’asidah.

Ki Sisa – Wealth Recycles

A famous palindromic word in the Torah is venasnu, in the second pasuk in the parsha. It means “and each man must give,” in the context of contributing the machatzis hashekel, which the Torah describes as “monetary atonement for [the giver’s] life” (Shemos, 30:12). The word reads the same forward and backward.

The Baal HaTurim sees that as a hint to the Gemara’s contention that one should “tithe so that you will become wealthy” (Taanis, 9a), that giving charity will result in the giver’s benefit .

The Vilna Gaon discerned a somewhat different message in the palindrome, namely, that life plays havoc with fortunes, and therefore giving tzedakah to others will merit others’ supporting us or our descendants in our times of need. What goes around, in other words, comes around.

He cites the Gemara in Shabbos 151b:

“Rabbi Ḥiyya said to his wife: When a poor person comes to the house, be quick to give him bread so that they will be quick to give bread to your children. She said to him: Are you cursing your children?

He said to her: the yeshiva of Rabbi Yishmael taught that galgal hu shechozer ba’olam – it is a ‘cycle that repeats in the world’.”

In other words, wealth and destitution come and go, in individual lives and in family lines. Great fortunes are made and lost, and rags can lead to riches.

Media mogul and billionaire Oprah Winfrey was born into an impoverished family in Mississippi; she went to college on a scholarship.

Socialite Jocelyn Wildenstein, who inherited billions from her art dealer husband, died dependent on $900 Social Security payments.

And those people’s descendants might find themselves in entirely different statuses from their antecedents. Wealth recycles, something to remember when approached by a beggar.

A DELICATE DANCE

No matter our desire to embrace a country or leader as a truly reliable friend, we all — especially we Jews — do well to remember that there may not be any such thing, a truism about which Chazal warned us millennia ago.

To read what evoked that thought, please click here.

Tetzaveh – When Obscenity is Apt

The imperatives of civility and refined speech are strongly stressed in the Talmud and in halacha. Yet, like all ideals, even those have their limits. An exception – the only one – to the imperative to avoid verbalizing crude characterizations is when it comes to idolatry.

As Rav Nachman says (Megillah 25b): “All mocking obscenity is forbidden except with reference to idol worship.” And the examples the Gemara offers are almost all about defecation. The characterization of all idolatry as “avodas gilulim” in various places in Tanach may also be intended as a scatalogical reference, since galal is a word for biological waste.

And then there is the specific case of Pe’or, the major idolatry whose entire service involves hallowing the act of defecation itself.

Rav Shimon Schwab, zt”l, brings up Rav Nachman’s dictum to suggest an intriguing understanding of one of the bigdei kehunah, the “priestly garments.” Rashi points out that it seems to him that the garment is apron-like, but worn in reverse of how aprons are usually worn, tied in the front with the bib in the back.

The Gemara, Rav Schwab reminds us, assigns an atonement that is effected by each of the bigdei kehunah. The ephod atones for the sin of idolatry (Arachin 16a).

Idolatry, notes Rav Schwab, is ultimately about worship of the physical, about veneration of the base. And that is why, as per Rav Nachman’s statement, it is derided by the navi, and permitted to be derided by us, as scatalogical in its essence.

And so, he then posits, it is fitting that the ephod, the beged kehunah that atones for the sin of idolatry, is worn, oddly, in a way that covers the wearer’s lower back, subtly recalling its particular role among the bigdei kehunah.

Terumah — Sanctifiers

The word mikdash in the pasuk “They shall make for Me a mikdash so that I may dwell among them” (Shemos 25:8) should, by reason, be mishkan, as various meforshim point out. It is, after all, a directive to build the mishkan, the temporary sanctuary not the final edifice, the Beis Hamikdash.

Another anomaly in the pasuk is the change of object, from “They shall make for me a mikdash” to “and I will dwell in them.”

The simple approach to that latter incongruity is that the second phrase is, in effect, a new sentence, and that its object (the people) is different from the object of the first sentence (the mikdash). So that the pasuk is rendered: “Let them make me a mikdash. [And that structure will make it possible for me] to dwell among [the people].”

What occurs, though, is that a key to the second curiosity may lie in the earlier problem, the unexpected use of mikdash for the mishkan.

To wit: The mishkan may not actually be a mikdash, but kiddush is what it does: It effects a kiddush Hashem. It declares Hashem’s glory to the people and the world.

We Jews are charged with being mekadshei Hashem, too. Not only, when required, to die al kiddush Hashem, but also to live al kiddush Hashem, to proclaim, by our demeanor and deeds, the glory of Hashem to other Jews and beyond.

So perhaps the use of the word mikdash for the mishkan is meant not to define the structure but, rather, to describe what it does. And the second part of the pasuk could be alluding to the fact that what the mishkan does – namely, creates kiddush Hashem – is what we as Jews are likewise to do in every era of history, that we are to be walking, talking batei mikdash – mekadshei Hashem.

And so, as a result, Hashem says, vishachanti bisocham, I will dwell in them, in their essences, in who they are, mekadshei Hashem.

Yisro – Iron and Irony

I’ve long fixated on a phrase Yisro uses. When he rejoins Moshe and joins Klal Yisrael, he declares why, although he had been a guru in countless cults, he came to the conclusion that “Hashem is greater than all the powers.”

“Because,” he explains, “of the thing that [the Mitzriyim] plotted against them [i.e. Klal Yisrael]” (Shemos 18:11).

Rashi, in explanation, cites the Mechilta: “… the Mitzriyim thought to destroy Yisrael by water and they were themselves destroyed by water.” And he quotes Rabi Elazar (Sotah 11a), punning on the word “plotted,” which can also mean “cooked,” that “in the pot that they cooked up they ended up being cooked.”

What strikes me is that it is irony – here, that the means the Mitzriyim employed to kill Jews ended up as the agent of their own downfall – that moves Yisro to perceive the Divine hand.

It is such a Purim thought. In Megillas Esther, too, although Hashem’s name is entirely absent, His hand is perceptible through the irony that saturates the story: Haman turns up at just the wrong place at just the wrong time, and ends up being tasked with arranging honors for his nemesis Mordechai. All the villain’s careful planning ends up upended, and he is hanged on the very gallows he prepared for Mordechai. Haman’s riches, according to the Book of Esther, were given to Mordechai. V’nahafoch hu, “and it was turned upside down.”

Amalek may fight with iron, but he is defeated with irony.

Shortly after Germany’s final defeat in WWII, an American army major, Henry Plitt accosted a short, bearded artist painting on an easel in an Austrian town and asked him his name. “Joseph Sailer,” came the reply.

Plitt later recounted: “I don’t know why I said [it, but] I said, ‘And what about Julius Streicher?’” – referring to the most vile and antisemitic of Nazi propagandists.

“Ya, der bin ich,” the man responded. “Yes, that is me.” And it was.

A reporter later told Major Plitt that, had only “a guy named Cohen or Goldberg or Levy… captured this arch-anti-Semite, what a great story it would be.”

Major Plitt, in fact, was Jewish.

Stars and Stripes in late 1945 reported that Streicher’s possessions were converted to cash and used to create an agricultural training school for Jews intending to settle in Eretz Yisrael.

And when Streicher was hanged at Nuremberg in 1946, his final words, shouted just before the trap sprang open, were: “Purim Fest 1946!” – a rather odd thing to say on an October morning.

Bishalach – The Nation Newborn

I’ve always found it delightful that the term we use for when the amniotic sac ruptures, releasing the fluid within and beginning the birth process, is “breaking of the waters.” Because the birth of the Jewish nation, after its gestation for centuries in Mitzrayim, also involved the “breaking” of the waters of the Yam Suf.

The comparison is not whimsical. A newborn is empty of worldly experiences and intelligence, unable to speak or move in willful ways. What it is, though, is a dynamo of potential. So was the nation that was comprised of our ancestors. They had sunk to the penultimate rung of tum’ah in Mitzrayim and they still pined, when trapped at the sea, to return to their nation-prison. Their worthiness lay in their potential, which began to emerge weeks later at Har Sinai.

The Maharal (in his Gur Aryeh supercommentary on Rashi [Beraishis 26:34] and in his sefer Ner Mitzvah) assigns a stage of human life to each of the year’s seasons. We tend to associate nature’s awakening in spring with childhood, the heat of summer with petulant youth, autumn with slowed-down middle age and cold, barren winter with life’s later years.

The Maharal, however, describes things differently. He regards autumn, when leaves are shed and nature slows down, as corresponding to older age; summer’s warmth, to our productive middle-years; spring, to reflect the vibrancy of youth. And winter, to… childhood.

It seems counterintuitive, to put it mildly. Winter is, after all, stark, empty of vibrancy, activity and growth. Childhood is, or should be, full of joy, restlessness and development.

But spring’s new plants and leaves don’t appear suddenly out of nothingness. The buds from which they emerge were developing for months; the sap in the seemingly dormant trees was rising even as the thermometer’s mercury fell. The evidence of life that presents itself with the approach of Pesach was developing since Chanukah. In the deadest days of deepest winter, one can see branches’ buds, biding their time, readying to explode into maturity when commanded.

Winter, in other words, evokes potential. And so, what better metaphor could there be for childhood, when the elements that will emerge one day and congeal into an adult roil inside a miniature prototype? When chaos and bedlam may seem to be the norm but when potential is at its most powerful? “The Child,” after all, as Wordsworth famously put it, is indeed “father of the Man.” Every accomplished person was once an unbridled toddler.

And we read of the potential that lay in our ancestors at the “breaking of the waters” of the sea while winter still envelops us. And as the days are few until Tu B’Shvat, the Rosh Hashanah of the trees.

Bo – The Sound of Silence

The dogs in Egypt were still as they watched the Jewish people leave the land (Shemos, 11:7). The Midrash contends that, in keeping with the concept that “Hashem does not withhold reward from any creature,” dogs are the animals to whom treifos should be cast (ibid 22:30; see Rashi).

Another Midrash, however, notes a different“reward” for the canine silence: The fact that dogs’ dung will be used to cure animal skins that will become tefillin, mezuzos and sifrei Torah.

How intriguing that the lowly refuse of a lowly creature should be cast to play a part in the production of the most sublime and holy of objects. And that silence seems somehow key to the ability to sublimate the earthy into the hallowed.

Rabi Shimon ben Gamliel (Avos 1:17) states “I have found nothing better for the body than silence.” The phrase “for the body” (or “the physical”) seems jarring. Unless it, too, hints at precisely what the Midrash seems to be saying – that silence somehow holds the secret of how the physical can be transformed into the exalted.

We humans’ hope for creating holiness here on earth lies in our aptitude for language, our ability to clothe subtle and complex ideas in meaningful words. That is why when life is breathed by Hashem into the first man, the infusion is, in the words of the Targum Onkelos, a “speaking spirit” (Beraishis 2:7). The highest expression of human speech lies in our ability to recognize our Creator, and give voice to our recognition.

So isn’t it speech, not silence, that leads to holiness?

It is. But silence is in a way the most salient symbol of the power of speech.

After all, aren’t the things we are careful not to waste the things we value most?. We don’t hoard old newspapers; but few – including billionaires – would ever wrap a fish in a Renoir.

Our ability to use speech meaningfully is the most valuable thing we possess. Someone who truly recognizes the worth of words’ will use them only sparingly. The adage notwithstanding, talk isn’t cheap; it is, quite the contrary, a priceless resource, the means, used properly, of coaxing holiness from the material world.

And so silence – choosing to not speak when there is nothing worthwhile to say – is perhaps the deepest sign of reverence for the potential holiness that is speech. And can help the base yield the sublime.

Vo’eira – The Seed’s Decay is All We See

It’s all too easy to disassociate the beginning of a parsha from the end of the preceding one. But Rav Shlomo Yosef Zevin, in LaTorah UlaMoadim, sees Hashem’s declaration at the opening of Vo’eira as connected to Moshe’s question toward the end of parshas Shemos. That question was (Shemos 5:22) “Why have You treated this nation badly?” And Elokim’s response (6:2) is “I am Hashem.”

Rav Zevin compares the apparent question/answer disconnect here with what transpires in Ki Sisa, when Moshe asks Hashem to “Let me know Your ways” (33:13) and is responded to with “You will see My back but My front will be unseen” (33:23).

What gives?

In both cases, explains Rav Zevin, the response expresses the reality that we cannot perceive justice, or even any sort of sense, with our limited purview of history. We are like a person first seeing the “burial” of a wheat kernel and its decay in the ground without having ever seen the stalk of wheat that emerges as a result, and the loaf of bread to which it will eventually contribute.

Elokim – the midas hadin, strict justice, name of Hashem – tells Moshe to rest assured that the din he perceives is not detached from “I am Hashem” – the sheim havaya that implies rachamim, benevolence. The din is but a prelude to rachamim, and the redemption of the Jews is at hand.

And the ultimate redemption, too, as hard as it may be to spy, is forthcoming no less.

Shemos – Nameless

While parshas Shemos (“Names”) does begin with names, those of the shevatim, and introduces the naming of Moshe, it is ironic that, when the parsha’s narrative begins, anonymity seems the rule.

“A man went out from the house of Levi and took a daughter of Levi” (Shemos, 2:1). We know the references are to Amram and Yocheved, but their names are not provided. Likewise with Moshe’s sister (2:4) whom we know to be Miriam but is unnamed. Same with Doson and Aviram, who are named in parshas Korach (Bamidbar 16) but not here in Shemos. And “the daughter of Par’oh,” we know, from Divrei Hayamim, was named Bisya. But in our parsha she has no name .

And what names are introduced for other dramatis personae seem pedestrian in their meanings. See Rashi 1:15 on Shifra and Puah.

What occurs as a possible message in the abundance of namelessness is that even simple people, those who haven’t established any sort of “name” – fame or distinction – for themselves, are capable of accomplishing great things; of, by their choices and actions, “making a name” for themselves. Every Tom, Debby and Harriet, in other words, can play a role as pivotal as those played by Amram, Miriam and Bisya. What matters isn’t one’s credentials but, rather, one’s actions.

And the idea that we should not feel limited is something the Kotzker famously commented on with regard to the Midrash stating that Bas Par’oh’s hand, extended to baby Moshe, elongated to reach him. She apparently reached out for something that was well beyond her reach, which is why the miracle had to happen. And yet she reached out all the same.

When one is seeking to do good, she (or he) should not feel constrained by “reality,” be it physical distance or any lack of credentials.

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Reflections on Jews, Judaism, Media and Life