Category Archives: Jewish Thought

Parshas Noach – Strongmen

The closest word for “hero” in Hebrew is gibor, often translated as “a strong man.” And its true definition is provided in the fourth chapter of Pirkei Avos: “Who is a gibor? He who conquers his natural inclination, as it is said: ‘Better is one slow to anger than a strong man, and one who rules over his spirit than a conqueror of a city’ (Mishlei 16:32).”

True strength in Judaism is evident not in action but in restraint, not in outrage but in calm.

In parshas Noach, we meet a very different kind of gibor, a gibor tzayid, a “strongman hunter” (Beraishis 10:9). His name is Nimrod, his goal was power and, as Rashi notes, based on the Targum Yerushalmi and midrashim, what he hunted was human followers, attracting them with braggadocio and bluster.

Nimrod was the first “hero” to harness power in order to, in Rav Shamson Raphael Hirsch’s words, “trap men for [his] own egoistic purposes.” He sought to “subjugate the less strong and clear-sighted, to keep them under his yoke until he would need them…”

As such, Nimrod exemplifies, continues Rav Hirsch, “the evil of tyranny which [has] continued so perniciously through the history of nations.”

And which remains as true today as ever.

And Nimrod was a gibor tzayid lif’nei Hashem, a strongman hunter before Hashem. Explains Rav Hirsch: “[Nimrod] misuse[d] the name of God, cloak[ed] his domination under the show of its being pleasing to God… to demand[ing] recognition of his power in the name of God.”

Indeed, today, too, we daily witness the scowls of scoundrels and liars bent on amassing personal power invoking divine “values” as a means of attracting religious followers who mindlessly regard the speechifying would-be dictators as “heroes.”

May we be spared such gibborei tzayid. And merit to see – and be – true gibborim, those described in Avos.

Beraishis – Of Sons and Suns

It is said in the name of the Vilna Gaon that the essential meaning of any given Hebrew word lies in the word’s first appearance in the Torah.

A traditional hope declared by those gathered for a bris milah after the circumcision is performed is “Zeh hakatan gadol yih’yeh!” – May this small one become a great [literally, “large”] one!

The words for small and large, katan and gadol respectively, first appear in parshas Beraishis, in the context of the creation of the sun and moon, the most prominent luminaries in our sky.

The midrash, quoted by Rashi (Beraishis 1:16), notes how both luminaries are at first called “large,” but then the sun alone retains that adjective, and the moon is called “small.” Both, the narrative goes, were originally equally powerful, but the moon complained, “Is it possible for two kings to use one crown?” To which Hashem replied, “Go, then, and make yourself small.”

The sun did not enter the conversation, allowing the moon its day in heavenly court. And it ended up retaining its “large” status while the moon was diminished.

A baby is entirely self-centered, demanding its food and comfort and oblivious to the needs of others (as many an exhausted parent can confirm). Perhaps our blessing that the newly circumcised boy will go from “smallness” to “largeness” is a hope that he will progress from being a demanding creature, like the example of the moon in the midrash, to a serene one, like that of the sun.

The Talmud (Shabbos 88b) describes such people as “those who are insulted and do not insult, who hear their shame and do not respond, who act out of love and are joyful in suffering.”

And, interestingly, it applies to them the pasuk “And they that love Him are as the sun going forth in its might” (Shoftim, 5:31).

The Care and Feeding of Empathy

I used to pass the fellow each morning as I walked up Broadway in lower Manhattan on my way to work. He would stand at the same spot and hold aloft, for the benefit of all passers-by, one of several poster-board signs he had made. One read “I love you!” Another: “You are wonderful!” The words of the others escape me, but the sentiments were similar.

He looked normal and was decently dressed, and he smiled broadly as he offered his expressions of ardor to all of us rushing to our offices. I never knew what had inspired his mission, but something about it bothered me.

Then one day I put my finger on it. It is ridiculously easy to profess love for all the world, but it is simply not possible. Gushing good will at everyone is offering it in fact to no one at all.

By definition, love must exist within boundaries, and our caring for those close to us is of a different nature than our empathy for others with whom we don’t share our personal lives. What is more, only those who make the effort to love their immediate families and friends have any chance of truly caring, on any level, about others.

Likewise, those with the most well-honed sense of concern for their own communities are the ones best suited to experience true empathy for people outside of their communal worlds.

It’s an appropriate thought for this time of Jewish year, as Sukkos gives way, without a second’s pause, to Shemini Atzeres.

Sukkos, interestingly, includes something of a “universalist” element. In the times of the Beis Hamikdash, the seven days of Sukkos saw a total of seventy parim offered on the mizbeiach, corresponding, says the Gemara, to “the seventy nations of the world.”

The families of people on earth are not written off by our mesorah. A mere four days before Sukkos’s arrival, on Yom Kippur, we read Sefer Yonah. That navi was sent to warn a distant people to repent, saving them from destruction. The Sukkos parim, the Gemara informs us, brought divine blessings down upon all the world’s peoples. Had the ancient Romans known just how greatly they benefited from the merit of karbanos, Chazal teach, they would have placed protective guards around the Beis Hamikdash.

And yet, curiously, Sukkos’s recognition of humanity’s worth is juxtaposed with Shemini Atzeres, which expressed Hashem’s special relationship with Klal Yisroel.

The famous parable:

A king invited his servants to a large feast that lasted a number of days. On the final day of the festivities, the king told the one most beloved to him, “Prepare a small repast for me so that I can enjoy your exclusive company.”

That is Shemini Atzeres, when Hashem “detains” the people He chose to be an example to the rest of mankind, when, after the seventy parim of the preceding seven days, a single par, corresponding to Klal Yisroel, is brought on the mizbeiach.

We Jews are often assailed for our belief that Hashem chose us from among the nations to proclaim His existence and to call on all humankind to recognize our collective immeasurable debt to Him.

And those who are irritated by that message like to characterize the special bond Jews feel for one another as hubris, even as contempt for others.

The very contrary, however, is the truth. The special relationship we Jews have with each other and with HaKodosh Boruch Hu, the relationships we acknowledge in particular on Shemini Atzeres, are what provide us the ability to truly care – not with our mere lips or poster boards – about the rest of the world. They are what allow us to hope – as we declare in Aleinu thrice daily – that, even as we reject the idolatries that have infected the human race over history, one day “all the peoples of the world” will come to join together with us and “pay homage to the glory of Your name.”

Ha’azinu – The Secret, Unveiled

Although I appreciate most humor, even jokes about Jews, I have always found comedian Alan King’s wry summary of Jewish holidays, “They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat!” profoundly unfunny.

Not that we Jews don’t deserve a bit of mockery for our… enthusiasm… regarding things culinary. But the “They tried to kill us” introduction is too painfully true to be even part of a bon mot. Whether the “they” tried to kill us spiritually or physically, from ancient times in Egypt and Babylonia and Persia and Greece and the Roman Empire and the Crusades to more recent history including the Holocaust and Soviet Communism, there have been just so many they’s.

Mark Twain famously observed in 1898 – even before the the USSR and the Holocaust – that “Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of…

“He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished.

“The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”

The secret is Hashem, of course, and the merit of our forefathers. And our eternal survival is encapsulated in the parsha, in the words “I will exhaust my arrows” (Devarim 32:23). Which the Midrash, cited by Rashi, expands upon: “My arrows will come to an end but they [Klal Yisrael] will not.”

Parshas Vayeilech – No, No, No, It Ain’t Me

A time will come, the Torah warns, when Hashem, as a result of Klal Yisrael’s actions, will seem to “abandon them and hide My countenance from them” and “many evils and troubles will befall them” (Devarim 31:17).

And “on that day,” the people will say: “Surely it is because Hashem is not in our midst that these evils have found us” (ibid).

That common translation, however, isn’t literal. What the pasuk really says is “because my Hashem is not in my midst that these evils have found me.”

The straightforward understanding of that expression of anguish is that Hashem’s “hidden face” will cause the Jewish people to doubt His love for them. The singular possessives and object would then simply be personifications of a collective feeling of abandonment.

But the use of the singular may point to a source of behavior that can lead to the “many evils and troubles,” a singularly personal attitude: Jewish individuals – as individuals – imagining that Hashem, although He is “my Hashem,” isn’t truly in me.

That, in other words, there isn’t within me inherent holiness and the attendant ability to unlock it.

And, indeed, Torah-study and mitzvos, so many Jews think, just aren’t them. They’re fine and doable, but for others.

For rabbis.

“Orthodox” ones.

And the delusion that we don’t have momentous potential isn’t limited to Jews estranged from their religious heritage. Dedicated observant Jews are vulnerable, too, to feelings of despondency born of feeling “unholy,” incapable of what they may know the Torah asks of them, but feel just “isn’t them.”

None of us, though, is “unholy.” Hashem took the trouble, so to speak, to grant each of us existence, and that means His plan includes us as essential players, capable of holiness.

Each and every single one of us.

NItzavim – The Holy Land Has a Name

“Hashem… will return and gather you in from all the peoples to which [He] has scattered you… and He will bring you to the land that your forefathers possessed and you shall possess it…” (Devarim 30: 3-5).

“The land.”

Eretz Yisrael isn’t its name. It is our description of the fact that it was bequeathed to Klal Yisrael.

But it did have a name: Cna’an. We don’t call it that anymore, but that was its name, and presumably has some meaning. And its meaning must be meaningful.

In his sefer Nachalas Tzvi, Rabbi Meshulam Fayish Tzvi Gross (who had a weekly chavrusa in Kabbalah with Rav Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn and whose sefarim had haskamos from some of the greatest Gedolim of his time; and who, as Herman Gross, patented several inventions) ventures an answer.

He sees the name rooted in the Hebrew noun hachna’ah, “deference” or “submission.” While other lands, he explains, are overseen by malachim – divine middlemen, not Hashem Himself – Eretz Yisrael is different; hence the palace of the King demands a special degree of hachna’ah.

He cites the fact that the phrase “me’od me’od” is used both to refer to the goodness of the land (Bamidbar 14:7) and to the degree to which we are to feel shfal ruach, lowly (Ravi Levitas in Pirkei Avos, 4:4).

What occurs to me as well is the idea that, when in possession of Eretz Yisrael, we Jews are to be constantly cognizant that it is a yerushah, a bequeathal, to us from Hashem. And that, even when we rightly tell the world that the land is divinely meant for us, we must ourselves always fully and humbly remember that it isn’t our political or military power that maintains our possession of the Holy Land, but Hashem’s kindness in having allowed us to return to it.

Parshas Ki Savo – Discarding Despondence

The horrors of the tochacha, the parsha’s description of what Klal Yisrael will endure should it drift from heeding the Torah, left our ancestors dejected. As Rashi writes at the beginning of parshas Nitzavim (Devarim 29:9), when they heard the 98 curses in our parshah, in addition to the 48 in parshas Bichukosai, “their faces paled” and they said, “who can possibly persevere through this?”

Significantly, in the yearly Torah reading cycle, these parashos coincide with Elul’s march toward the Yimei Hadin. And despondence this time of year is a seasonal affliction.

We, too, can feel dejected as Rosh Hashanah comes close, as we will be judged on things that we repented for last year but may need to do the same once again.

But feeling despondent is counterproductive.

The late comedian Mitch Hedberg would deadpan: “I used to do drugs.” And then, after a short pause, add: “I still do. But I used to, too.”

The line may have been a throw-away absurdity. But I think he was describing how he had once (perhaps more than once) quit drugs, only to come to re-embrace them. When he was clean, he “used to do drugs”; now, off the wagon, he does them again.

Many of us can relate, having resolved each year to improve in some of the very same ways we had resolved to improve the year before. We “used to” do things that we currently do too.

In a famous letter, Rav Yitzchok Hutner, zt”l, told a despondent student to realize that one can “lose battles but win wars,” that what makes life meaningful is not beatific basking in the sublime company of one’s accomplishments but rather in one’s dynamic struggles.

Shlomo Hamelech’s maxim that “Seven times does the righteous one fall and get up” (Mishlei, 24:16), Rav Hutner continues, does not mean that “even after falling seven times, the righteous one manages to gets up again” but, rather, that it is only and through repeated falls that a person achieves. The struggles – even the failures – are inherent elements of what can, with determination and perseverance, become an ultimate victory.

Facing our mistakes squarely, and feeling the regret that is the bedrock of repentance, is essential. But it carries a risk: despondence born of battles lost. But the war is not over. We must pick ourselves up. Again. And, if need be, again.

And, as to the curses in the parsha, as Moshe reassured the people (see Rashi, Devarim 29:9), despite all the past and possible future failures, “You are still standing.”

Ki Seitzei – Principal Parenting Pitfall

A rather stark contradiction seems to lie in how Chazal describe the judgment meted out to a ben sorer u’moreh, the boy who, at the tender age of 13, demonstrates indulgences and worse, and how they treat Yishmael.

The former is judged al sheim sofo, based on what his “end” will likely be: a murderous mugger (Devarim 21:18). The latter, although his descendants will prove to be cruel tormenters of his half-brother Yitzchak’s descendants, is judged “ba’asher hu shom”: where he is at the current moment (Beraishis 21:17).

Granted, the case of a ben sorer u’moreh is virtually impossible to happen, given Chazal’s requirements for prosecution (see Sanhedrin 71a), and, according to Rabi Yehudah, indeed never did. But the explanation of the boy’s irredeemability is at least intended as a lesson, and still clashes fundamentally with the allowance Yishmael is given to become a better person (and, presumably, influence his progeny to follow him in that).

The Mizrachi and Rav Shlomo Zevin address the problem by noting that the ben sorer u’moreh has already himself acted in an ugly manner, whereas Yishmael’s cruel descendants lay generations in the future.

But that ignores the fact that Chazal describe Yishmael himself as having already demonstrated bad behavior, including, according to one opinion, shooting arrows at his half-brother (Rashi, Beraishis 21:9).

What occurs is the possibility that such behavior is only bad when unbridled. One can pull the yetzer hara into the beis medrash (Kiddushin, 30b), channeling it to good effect. And the urge to “violence” can be expressed in milchamta shel Torah, the “warring” of arguments between Torah scholars, lisheim Shomayim.

But, by contrast, the mire of materialism – virtual addiction to luxuries – has no redeeming value. And the young boy sufficiently sunken in it is hopeless.

Which, if true, offers a vital lesson to parents: Be less alarmed by a child’s propensity to bad behavior and violence than to his growing addiction to luxuries. And be very careful not to create, cultivate or feed that fixation.

Shoftim – Waste Not

The belief that Jews are cheap has merit, though “frugal” would be the more perceptive word. Valuing everything, no matter how small or seemingly trivial, is a fundamental Jewish ideal.

My parents rinsed and reused plastic cups and refrigerated even small amounts of a meal’s leftovers rather than consigning them to the garbage. My mother darned holey socks instead of tossing them. That wasn’t cheapness, it was Jewishness. And the placing of even pennies in a pushke was, and is, the fulfillment of a mitzvah.

We live at a time and in a society that sees so much of value as disposable. That attitude is among the many contemporary ones we Jews are meant to struggle against.

There are certainly people who are stingy for selfish reasons, but focused frugality bespeaks an appreciation of the worth of every single resource with which Hashem has gifted us.

The Sefer HaChinuch (mitzvah 529, commenting on a pasuk in parshas Shoftim) explains that the prohibition of gratuitously cutting down a fruit tree telegraphs a larger lesson, that of the general forbiddance of bal tashchis, wastage.

It aims to “teach our souls to love what is good and useful, and to then cleave to it,” adding that “through this, the good will cleave to us and we will distance ourselves from every evil thing and every destruction. This is the way of exemplary Jews…

“They do not destroy anything – even a mustard seed – and it pains them to encounter any destruction or harm. If they can act to save anything from destruction, they use all their strength to do so.”

“Not so,” he adds by contrast, is the way of “evil people… the cohorts of destructive forces, who rejoice in destroying the world.”

That attitudinal polarization is well evident in our world. Broken windows, smashed bottles and graffiti-marred walls, not to mention assaults and murders, are the yield of one end of the spectrum.

And rinsed-out plastic cups in dish drainers, with filled-to-their-brims-with-pennies-and-nickels tzedakah boxes on nearby kitchen window sills, the other.

Evolution of a Thought

An old piece with a connection to Rosh Chodesh can be read here.

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Reflections on Jews, Judaism, Media and Life