Category Archives: Jewish Thought

Pondering the Season – Electoral and Jewish

You probably think that there isn’t anything that an impending presidential election might have to say to us about the aseres yimei teshuvah. Ah, but there is.

Those of us old enough to have been observers of politics back in 2004 might recall the now largely-forgotten “Dean Scream.” Howard Dean, then the governor of Vermont, was seeking the Democratic nomination for President. He blew his chances in a matter of seconds.

It was at the end of an address that, in an attempt to show his enthusiasm, he let loose a roar somewhere between a jihadi war cry and a leafblower. That decision to express himself in that way left the public – a public that, at the time, still expected a degree of decorum from candidates – wide-eyed with something other than wonder. Some called it the candidate’s “I Have a Scream” speech.

Then there were other blown-in-a-moment presidential campaigns, like that of Maine governor and four-term Senator Edmund Muskie, who, in 1972, defending his wife’s reputation, seemed to shed tears, which some American voters felt disqualified him. There was also Gary Hart’s 1988 marital indiscretion (ah, times were so different back then) and, the same year, Michael Dukakis’s donning of an ill-fitting combat helmet, which helped sink his bid for the White House.

See where I’m going? No? Understandable. Let me spell it out.

Every one of us, too, in our personal lives, comes face to face at times with opportunities of our own that, wrongly handled, can lead to places we don’t want to go. And, rightly handled, benefit our spiritual growth.

And we are vying for something much more important than a mere nomination for public office. We’re in the race to fulfill our missions in this world.

In the bustle of everyday life, it is all too easy to forget that decisions we make, sometimes almost unthinkingly, might be crucial ones, that seemingly minor forks in the roads of our lives can, as Robert Frost famously put it, make all the difference.

Seizing an opportunity to do something good changes one’s world. Letting the opportunity go by unaddressed – which is also choice, after all – does the same. Offering an encouraging word can make a great difference. Doing the opposite can be as self-destructive as Howard Dean’s scream.

As Chazal teach us, “One can acquire his universe” – the one that counts: the world-to-come – or, chalilah, “destroy” it “in a single moment.”

We can even, through sheer determination, create our own critical moments. Consider the case of the “conditional husband.”

A Jewish marriage is effected by the proposal of a man to a woman – the declaration of the woman’s kiddushin, or “specialness” to her husband – followed by the acceptance by the woman of a coin or item of worth from her suitor. If the declaration is made on the condition that an assertion is true, the marriage is valid only if the assertion indeed is. Thus, if a man betrothes a woman on the condition that he drives an electric car, or still has his own teeth, unless he does, they aren’t married.

The Gemara teaches that if a man conditions his offer of marriage on the fact that he is “a tzaddik,” even if the fellow’s reputation isn’t flawless, the marriage must be assumed to be valid (and requires a gett to dissolve it).

Why? Because the man “may have contemplated teshuvah” just before his proposal.

That determined choice of a moment, in other words, if sincere, would have transformed the man completely, placed him on an entirely new life-road. The lesson is obvious: Each of us can transform himself or herself – at any point we choose – through sheer, sincere will.

And potentially transformative situations that present themselves are hardly uncommon. When we make a decision about where to live or what shul to attend – not to mention more obviously critical decisions like whom to marry or which schools our children will attend – we are defining our futures, and those of others. We do ourselves well when we recognize the import of our decisions, and accord them the gravity they are due.

Ksiva vachasima tovah!

Nitzavim – How to Perform a Miracle

As is the case with any question about nature, when a child asks why the sky is blue, the answer you give (here, that blue light is scattered more than other colors) will elicit a subsequent why (because it travels as shorter, smaller waves); and then that answer will yield yet another question: Why is that? Eventually, the final answer is “That’s just the way it is!” In other words, it’s Hashem’s will.

Rav Dessler famously explained that all of nature, no less than a sea splitting, is ultimately a miracle, an act of G-d. What we call miraculous is just a divine-directed happening we’re not used to seeing.

The season of teshuvah, in our Torah-reading cycle, coincides with our parshah, in which we read: “And you will return to Hashem…” (Devarim 30:2).

The most fundamental element of nature, arguably, is time. The past is past, and time proceeds into the future relentlessly. But time itself, too, is a divine creation. Commenting on the Torah’s first words, which introduce Hashem’s creation, “In the beginning…,” Seforno writes: “[the beginning] of time, the first, indivisible, moment.”

And time, too, like the rest of nature, can be manipulated by Hashem’s will. Indeed, as it happens, by our own as well.

Because teshuvah, Chazal teach us, can change past intentional sins into unintended ones. Even, if the teshuvah is propelled by love of Hashem, into merits.

Is that not a changing of the past, the temporal equivalent of splitting a sea?

And that ability to manipulate time may be why, on Rosh Hashanah, unlike on every other Jewish holiday, the moon, the “clock” by which we count the months of the year, is not visible. What’s being telegraphed may be the idea that time need not limit us, if we properly engage the charge of the season.

Ki Savo – Getting it into Our Heads

From its opening words through many of the parsha’s laws and instructions, Eretz Yisrael is central: Bikkurim, maasros, the settings-up of the Torah-inscribed stones, the brachos and klalos on Har Grizim and Har Eival. The brachos that precede the tochachah are “on the land that Hashem swore to your forefathers, to give you” (Devarim 28:11), and exile from the land is part of the tochachah.

Yet, even as Moshe speaks about Eretz Yisrael, he adds: “Pay attention and listen, Yisrael! This day, you have become a people to Hashem, your G-d” (27:9).

A people. This day.

Comments Rav Shamshon Refael Hirsch:

“Today, before you get the impending possession of the Land, the possession of the Torah is what makes you into a nation. You can lose the land, as indeed you may, but the Torah, and your everlasting duty to it, remains your everlasting unloseable bond which united you as a nation.

“This fundamental fact, deeply buried in Yisrael’s being, differentiates it sharply from that way all other nations have been formed, the secret of the national immortality of the Jews, with all the consequences for Israel’s future that are attached to it.”

That echoes Rav Saadia Gaon’s declaration: “Our nation is only a nation through its Torah.”

It’s a timely thought, when the Jewish presence in Eretz Yisrael is threatened from multiple directions. A merit for preserving the safety and security of Klal Yisrael in Eretz Yisrael lies in commitment to what makes us a nation.

Rav Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev noted how the assurance that “the peoples of the earth… will fear you” (Devarim 28:10), which R’ Eliezer Hagadol ties to our wearing “tefillin shebirosh” (Berachos 6a), doesn’t seem to work.

He explained that shebirosh isn’t the same as al harosh. It isn’t the fact of wearing tefillin that protects us from our enemies. It is our internalization of the words and message that inhabits the tefillin. It has to penetrate “into our heads.”

Ki Seitzei – Butterflies and Baker’s Bread

The ben sorer umoreh is judged al sheim sofo – because of where, on the evidence of the present, the youth’s life is headed. And his very existence, Chazal say, is the result of his mother’s having become “hated” by her husband. And that fact itself was born of the man having married an eishes yifas to’ar. And so, as the Midrash Tanchuma quoted by Rashi notes (Devarim, 21:11), the order of the topics in the parsha is meaningful.

The fact that “one small thing can lead to more significant ones” – as the old proverb has it, “For want of a nail… the kingdom was lost” – seems to be a theme here.

The idea is whimsically called “the butterfly effect” – evoking the fancy that the flutter of an insect’s wings could eventually affect the weather in a distant land. The idea is particularly operative at beginnings, at initial stages of development. And so, it is very much a Rosh Hashanah idea. Because each year itself unfolds from its beginnings, no less than a single fertilized cell evolves into a baby, and the baby, in turn, eventually, into an adult.

That metaphor is particularly apt, since Rosh Hashanah commemorates haras olam, the conception of the world (and, not coincidentally, is the day on which, Chazal say, childless women in the Torah conceived their first children).

The Shulchan Aruch tells us to conduct ourselves in a particularly exemplary manner at the start of a new Jewish year. We are cautioned to avoid anger on Rosh Hashanah itself. And for each year’s first ten days, we are encouraged to avoid eating even technically permitted foods (like pas palter, “baker’s bread,” kosher bread baked by a non-Jew), and to conduct ourselves, especially interpersonally, in a more careful manner than during the rest of the year.

What is the point, though, of pretending to a higher level of observance or refinement of personality when one may have no intention at all of maintaining those things beyond the week?

Might it be that things not greatly significant under other circumstances suddenly take on pointed importance during the year’s first week, because those days have their analog in the concept of gestation?

Might those days, in other words, be particularly sensitive to small influences because they are the days from which the coming year will evolve?

Shoftim – The Consequentialness of a Court

In the U.S., offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting something of value in exchange for influencing a judge’s or other public official’s actions is illegal (U.S. Code, Title 18, Section 201).

The Torah’s prohibition of bribery differs in two surprising ways. Firstly, the prohibition is on a judge alone, for taking a bribe, not on a litigant offering one. (Though, in the latter case, the offerer is nevertheless responsible for “putting an obstacle before the blind” – causing the judge to sin – Shulchan Aruch, Choshen Mishpat 9:1)

And, secondly, a judge is forbidden to take a bribe not only to influence his decision in a particular direction but even to execute his judgment properly. Even, according to the Derisha (ibid), if both litigants offer the same bribe for that purpose alone.

It seems that the Torah’s law against bribery isn’t aimed at preventing quid pro quo per se (forgive all the Latin). It’s not, in other words, a law about wrongdoers but, rather, about maintaining a purity of justice. Anything superfluous at all, whether or not it actually affects a verdict, that is injected into the holy mission of judging a case contaminates the enterprise.

Because a Jewish court isn’t a simple adjudication of a dispute between individuals; it is the performance of a holy act.

That might seem a slight distinction, but it really isn’t. So momentous is the undertaking to judge a case that the Talmud says it is as if the judge has partnered with Hashem in the act of Creation (Shabbos 10a). And that a judge who misjudges “causes the Divine Presence to withdraw from Klal Yisrael” (Sanhedrin 7a).

Which is why the Shulchan Aruch considers a compromise reached between litigants to be preferable to an actual court hearing and law-based ruling (Choshen Mishpat 12). Judgment, it seems, is so daunting, so charged an endeavor, it is best resorted to only when necessary. The stakes, no matter how small the financial impact may be to the litigants, are just too high.

Re’ei – Killing’s Toll on Killers

Killing takes a toll – on the killed, of course; that’s pretty obvious. But also on the killers.

That is something that the Ohr Hachaim introduces in his commentary on the pasuk “And He will give you mercy and have mercy upon you” (Devarim, 13:18).

That “give you mercy” is his focus. He writes:

“This act of killing [here of the idolaters of an ir hanidachas] creates a natural cruelty in the heart of a person.”

He continues by referring to what “we are told by the sect of Yishmaelim who murder at the command of the leader, that they experience a great euphoria when they kill a man, and the natural feeling of pity is extinguished in them…”

Therefore, he explains, “Hashem assures the Jews that [after their commanded act of killing], their innate feelings of mercy… will be returned to them anew” despite their having been weakened through the act of killing.

And, further, that they will thereby be granted Heavenly mercy themselves, since “Hashem has mercy only on the merciful.”

Modern psychiatry recognizes something called “perpetrator trauma,” a presentation of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms caused by an act or acts of killing.

But what the Ohr Hachaim is expounding upon is a different upshot of perpetrating violence: the erosion of the natural human instinct of mercy.

And his report about not only the post-murder desensitization of assassins (the word “assassin,” as it happens, derived from an Arabic name for the reputedly murderous Nizari Ismaili sect) but of their being enthralled by taking lives resonates all too strongly today, when we have seen Yishmaeli murderers exulting after killing men, women and children. Even the mere imagining of murdering Jews is enough to enrapture some, as they joyfully and mindlessly chant their hope to rid the Holy Land of Jews “from the river to the sea.”

Eikev – Consumer Goods

It’s remarkable how prominent eating is in the Torah. The designation of which animals one may eat, the consumption of parts of all korbonos except olos, matza on Pesach, seudos on Shabbos and Yomtov… And yet, eating would seem to be an animalistic endeavor, something to be accepted as necessary, perhaps, but not awarded religious value.

But human consumption of food is qualitatively different from animals’ feeding. That is the essence of the words “[Hashem] subjected you to the hardship of hunger and then gave you mon to eat, which neither you nor your ancestors had ever known, in order to teach you that a human being does not live on bread alone, but that one must live on all the words of Hashem.”

That pasuk is often understood as meaning simply that our lives are made meaningful by following Hashem’s words. But its deeper meaning is something else: While we may think that our souls are nourished by the vitamins, minerals, proteins and fats in what we eat, the Torah is telling us that our true life nourishment comes from something ethereal, holy, that permeates our food, something instilled there by Hashem’s will. That was the lesson of the mon, that our lives’ engines and their fuel are not ultimately physical. It’s a concept philosophers call vitalism.

And the wordings of our birchos hanehenim hint at that fact : Shehakol nih’yeh bid’varo, borei pri ha’etz, hamotzi [by His decree] lechem. We don’t just say thank You for what we are about to eat but express the fact that the food is caused by, and imbued with, something divine, and that it is really that invisible element that provides us human life.

R’ Chaim Vital quotes the Arizal as saying that the highest spiritual level is accessible by concentrating on our brachos, because they are not mere expressions of gratitude but, rather, means of sublimating and refining the base element inherent in the physical stuff we are eating. “And he [the Arizal],” R’ Vital writes, “impressed the importance of that upon me greatly.”

Those of us who have been saying brachos from childhood too easily fall into reciting them by rote, often mumbling them without thinking much, if at all, about their words’ meanings.

We do well to watch and listen to the newly observant when they make brachos, and strive to emulate their concentration on what they are saying.

Vo’eschanan – Avodah Zarah Lite

A standard term for idols in the Torah is elohim acheirim, “foreign forces.” At one point in our parsha, though, the term elohim is used without the second word, signaling, perhaps, a less blatant sort of idolatry.

The word comes after Moshe’s prediction that Hashem will “scatter you among the nations.” There, he continues, “you will serve forces, the work of men’s hands, wood and stone…” (Devarim 4:27-28).

What occurs is the possibility that the elohim referred to that Klal Yisrael will fall prey to worshiping in galus are not the sort of avodah zarah foci referenced elsewhere, like the sun or moon or stars; not Baal Tzafon or Pe’or; not things like the Egyptians’ veneration of the Nile.

Perhaps what is being hinted at are “avoda zara lites,” so to speak, ideas or ideologies that may fall short of technical idolatry but are, for all intents, their parallels, as they can ensnare Jews into venerating them as ultimate, in effect, gods, when serving Hashem is a Jew’s true ultimate ideal. The Vilna Gaon is said to have identified the pasuk’s “wood and stone” with Christianity and Islam (the cross and Kaaba, respectively).

And Rav Elchanan Wasserman famously identified “isms” like Communism, Nationalism or Zionism – when embraced as ultimate ideals – as new idolatries.

We might update the list to include Humanism, Feminism and Scientism. And AnimalRights-ism, a Woman’sRighttoChoose-ism, QualityofLife-ism…

And that most enticing and pernicious mini-idolatry, Materialism.

The Shabbos on which Vo’eschanan is read is called Shabbos Nachamu, after the opening words of the haftarah, in which the navi Yeshayahu transmits Hashem’s nechama, or consolation to His people (Yeshayahu 40:1). Nechama though, also means “regret” or “reconsideration” (as in Beraishis 6:6).

When we truly regret our misguided fealties to “idolatry lites,” we will have set the stage for the end of our being “scattered among the nations.”

Devarim – The Ox Whisperer… and Us

The navi Yeshayahu famously invokes a metaphorical bovine and equine at the beginning of his prophecy, which is recited as the haftarah of the parsha,

“An ox knows its owner, donkey its master’s trough. Yisrael does not know; my people does not introspect,” laments the navi (Yeshayahu 1:3).

The animals are reminiscent of two aggados.

Pesikta Rabbasi 14 relates how an ox who was sold by its Jewish owner to a non-Jew refused to plow on Shabbos, causing the buyer to complain. The original owner whispered into the cow’s ear that he was no longer his property and that his new owner had no obligation to keep Shabbos. And so the cow complied.

And in Chullin (7a-b) we read the account of Pinchas ben Yair’s donkey, who refused to eat an innkeeper’s untithed produce until the animal’s owner tithed it.

What created so strong a bond between those animals and their Jewish owners? A hint may lie in the Gemara’s statement that Pinchas ben Yair never benefited from anything that wasn’t entirely his, anything that he hadn’t truly earned and owned. Perhaps that sensitivity to what others owned empowered a special bond between him and what was in fact his.

In any event, such a bond is surely the meaning of Yeshayahu’s lament. The word for “knows,” that he uses – yada – implies the closest of connections. The bond between Hashem and His people, the navi bemoans, has frayed.

In anticipation of Tisha B’Av, the navi’s words in the haftarah are chanted in the lamentation tune of Eicha. The churbanos and other Av tragedies are the tragic outcome of that frayed bond.

But the bond is only frayed, not snapped, and can yet be repaired. After Av will come Elul, whose initials famously stand for – “Ani l’dodi vidodi li” (Shir HaShirim, 6:3) – “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.”

Mattos – Respect and Realities

For a religion derided in some circles as denigrating women, Judaism would seem to have an odd attitude. In a famous aphorism based on the list of adornments in our parsha (Bamidbar 31:50), Chazal state that a man is forbidden to licentiously gaze upon a woman, even at her “little finger” (Berachos 24a).

It’s not asceticism that is being counseled there. We have no similar directive forbidding the passionate craving of a piece of apple pie, or an afternoon nap or one’s easy chair. To be sure, it is good to deny oneself unnecessary pleasures, but there are no parallels to the “forbidden gaze” at women when it comes to food, sleep or furniture.

What then is the reason for that forbiddance, if it is not born of asceticism? Answer: respect for women. In a sense, the Torah’s attitude here is not far removed from that of radical feminists who see the “male gaze” as degrading.

Ah, but a contradiction, it would seem, lies in our very parsha, in its subjugation of women to their menfolk’s will when it comes to nedarim, where a father or husband can annul a woman’s vow.

It seems clear that the lesson here is that being relegated to a particular role bespeaks no lack of respect. Such “limitations” are only belittling if perceived as such.

While women – like men – have particular roles in life, and some of them may seem constricting or even demeaning, they are neither. They reflect only realities, and coexist entirely comfortably with true respect.

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Reflections on Jews, Judaism, Media and Life