Category Archives: PARSHA

Devarim – The Rock’s Lost Lesson

In Moshe Rabbeinu’s parting rebuke of Klal Yisrael for “not believing in Hashem” (Devarim 1:32), for all its complaining in the wake of the report of the meraglim and beyond, he refers to Hashem’s decree that the “generation of the desert” will not get to see the promised land. 

And then he says, “Hashem was also angry with me because of you, saying, ‘Neither will you go there’” (1:37).

“Also?” “Because of you?” What are those words saying? 

Moshe, though, is more than the leader of the nation; he reflects it, embodies it. He is called a melech, a king. And Chazal tell us that ein melech b’lo am, there is no king without a nation. That means something beyond the obvious. It means that, in a way, the king isthe nation. Which is why a king has no right to forgo his honor (Kiddushin 32b); it is the nation’s honor.

And so, in a way, the “sin” that prevented Moshe from entering Cna’an, the striking of the rock to provide water, was a reflection, even embodiment, of the nation’s sin. How?

Moshe’s mistake was not hitting the rock but rather not speaking to it (as he was commanded).

And thereby not advancing kiddush shem Shomayim by conveying to the people (as per the Midrash Rashi brings in Bamidbar 20:12) the lesson that if an inanimate object fulfills Hashem’s mere words, His mere declaration of will, so much more so should human beings.

Instead, the idea unintentionally conveyed was that only punishment spurs heeding Hashem. 

The people, apparently, weren’t ripe for the intended lesson. And so, Moshe’s act necessarily reflected that fact. Had Moshe spoken to the rock as ordered, Chazal say, he would have been able to enter Cna’an and there would never have been any exile of the Jews from their land. 

Like the rock, we have been smitten – with the rod of galus and all its tribulations. May the lesson that the rock was meant to teach be internalized, quickly and in our day.

© 2023 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Matos-Mas’ei – The Final Word

Although Sefer Devarim is the final “book” of the Torah, in a sense, Sefer Bamidbar is. That is because, while Devarim includes many new laws and accounts, it also repeats some, and is thus characterized by Chazal as “Mishneh Torah” – the “repetition” or “second” Torah.

Which gives Matos and Mas’ei, Bamidbar’s final parshios, the status, on some level, of the “end” of what began in Beraishis.

The thought is intriguing, since those parshios reflect elements we find at the Torah’s start. The first sin in history (after Adam and Chava brought sin into the realm of possibility) was murder – that of Hevel – and Kayin’s subsequent peripatetic life. And at the end of Sefer Bamidbar, we have the law of orei miklat, the cities to which an accidental murderer (which, in a way, Kayin was, as he had never before witnessed death) flees. And the detailed masa’os, wandering-stops of the Jews in the desert, are reminiscent of Kayin’s na vanad, “wandering to and fro.”

Also prominent at the end of Sefer Bamidbar is the subject of speech: Like vows and the tenai – “condition” – made with Bnai Gad and Bnei Reuvain (with its halachic ramifications for verbal agreements). Even Bil’am’s death by sword reflects the idea of the power of speech (see Rashi Bamidbar 31:8).

Speech is what, in parshas Beraishis, is identified as the essential human attribute: the Targum of nefesh chayah, “a living soul,” famously is ruach memalela, “a speaking soul.”

And, thus, it is the defining power of the nation Hashem chose to be an example to mankind. Forces of evil come with swords, guns and bombs. We come with tefillah and talmud Torah.

A particularly worthy thought during this period of the Jewish year, when we focus on the destruction of the Batei Mikdash and hope for the speedy arrival of the third and final one.

© 2023 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Pinchas – Selfless Act, Boundless Portion?

Tzelafchad, according to one opinion, was the mekoshesh, or “wood gatherer,” who was executed for violating Shabbos. According to the Targum Yonasan (and a Midrash quoted by Tosfos in Bava Basra 119b), his act was high-minded, intended to ensure that others would recognize the sanctity of the day.

Thus his sin, although a capital crime, was a selfless one.

If so, might his act have been the merit that resulted in his daughters earning not only a portion of the Holy Land but two prominent mentions in the Torah (our parsha and parshas Mas’ei)?

It is intriguing that Rabi Yochanan, in Shabbos 118a, says that “One who ‘delights’ the Shabbos” is afforded “a boundless portion.”

The stance of Rabi Yehudah in Gittin 8a is that any place that is directly west of Eretz Yisrael is considered part of Eretz Yisrael. Though that approach is not the one accepted as halacha, and meforshim understand it in different ways, its simplest meaning would seem to imply that Eretz Yisrael stretches west around the world.

The portion in Eretz Yisrael proper of Menashe, the shevet to which Tzelafchad belonged, includes much of the western coast of Eretz Yisrael.

Might Tzelafchad’s daughters’ land-portion have been on the actual coast itself? And, if so, might the women (at least according to Rabi Yehudah)  have received “a boundless portion” of the Land because of the merit of their father’s selfless act on behalf of Shabbos?

© 2023 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Chukas – Echoes of “The Snakey Thing”

It’s commonly, but erroneously, assumed that the symbol commonly used for the medical profession, a snake, or a pair of them, wrapped upon a pole, is meant as a depiction of the nachash hanechoshes that Moshe Rabbeinu fashioned, as per Hashem’s command. The Jewish people were to gaze upon it and be cured of the plague of poisonous snakes they were facing.

But the symbol used today comes to us from Greek mythology, associated with the imagined divinities, a depiction of the “Rod of Asclepius” (or, when there is a pair of reptiles, the caduceus). 

How a staff and snake (or snakes) came to be associated with those Hellenistic “gods” is anyone’s guess. But it is certainly possible that the Torah’s narrative about the nachash hanechoshes found its way into ancient cultures, which may have repurposed the image for inclusion in their own idolatrous belief systems.

But that the symbols have come to represent the power of medicine is fascinating. Because the original staff and snake, although it was intended to focus our ancestors’ attention on the dangers of the desert and how Hashem had been protecting them (see Rav Hirsch), was kept over generations by the Jews and eventually came to be an object of worship. The melech Chizkiya put an end to that by deriding it as nechushtan (“the snakey thing”) and grinding it to copper dust (Melachim Beis, 18:4). 

The medical profession itself has followed a similar trajectory.

It has enjoyed the public’s reverence since the time of Hippocrates and Galen. Even when the reigning medical theory revolved around the “four humors” or when lobotomies and trepanning were considered normative treatments for mental illness. 

Medicine has come a long way since then. But even today, it is considered legitimate medical practice to abort healthy fetuses for any (or no) reason and to help people end their lives.

Medical knowledge is a blessing. As are doctors who employ it without hubris. But medical professionals who see themselves as gods (tov shebirof’im…) are self-made idols. And those who revere them as such mistake the messenger for the true Rofei cholim.

No modern-day Chizkiya has yet appeared. But the contemporary snake and staff deserve the treatment the ancient one received.

© 2023 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Korach – Monkeys in the Crowd

The model for all subsequent demagogues in history, Korach told the people that his grievance was really their grievance, that he was standing up not for himself but for them. And he used snideness as a tool to ingratiate himself with his audience.

As Rashi, quoting the Midrash Tanchuma on the words “And Korah assembled the entire congregation” (Bamidbar 16:19), elaborates:

[Korach assembled them] with words of mockery. All that night, he went to the tribes and enticed them [saying,] “Do you think I care only for myself? I care for all of you. These [people] come and take all the high positions: the kingship for himself and the kehunah for his brother,” until they were all enticed.

“The entire congregation,” Rav Yaakov Moshe Charlop, the Mei Marom, points out, certainly did not succumb to the blandishments and deceptions of Korach. Most of the crowd surely perceived, at least logically, the essential self-centeredness of the rally speaker, and recognized the cynicism of his characterization of the Mitzrayim from which they fled as a “land flowing with milk and honey” (16:13).

Which, Rav Charlop explains, is why, when Moshe and Aharon pleaded with Hashem to not destroy the nation (16:22), they invoked Hashem’s knowledge of “the thoughts of every man” – the fact that there were true followers of Korach but also others who may have attended his rally and enjoyed his mockery but knew in their hearts that the populist inciter was evil (see Rashi).

Yet, in the moment of the rally itself, they nevertheless “were all enticed” by the agitator’s words. Why?

Explains the Mei Marom, because “it is one of human beings’ weaknesses” that they are pulled to conform to the behavior of those around them, to “act like monkeys” in imitation of the crowd. The Rambam (Hilchos Deios 6:1) calls such conformity part of “the way humans are formed.”

And so the warning here, as timely today as ever, is to beware not only of dangerous demagogues but also of falling prey to the pull of others’ embrace of them.

© 2023 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Shelach – Memento Mitzvah

It might seem peculiar, even morbid, to suggest that looking at tzitzis evokes the specter of death. But, at least for me, it does.

That might be because of photographs I saw in a book many years ago of ancient but fully recognizable hair braids found during the excavation of Masada in the 1950s and 1960s. 

Tzitzis are tight braids themselves and, in fact, the word tzitzis itself is used to mean braids of hair, as Rashi points out in our parshah (Bamidbar 15:38), based on the pasuk “He took me bitzitis roshi” – “by a braid of my hair” (Yechezkel 8:3).

Hair’s chemical composition (and, ironically, its tightly coiled protein structure) makes it difficult for enzymes or microbes to break it down. Thus, hair is among remains that can, well, remain, for a long time – and remind us of the fact that a person once existed on earth but no longer does.

Magnifying the morbidity is the fact that the coils and knots of tzitzis are reminiscent, at least, again, to me, of bones, the other resistant-to-decay parts of a person and another reminder of mortality. And, as it happens, the word for the coils of tzitzis is chulyos, which is the word used as well in messechta Chullin to refer to a spine’s vertebrae. 

Might tzitzis be a sort of memento mori? Well, they are, after all, intended to spur thought. The Torah tells us not only to place tzitizis but to look at them. And to thus be reminded of “all the mitzvos of Hashem.”

The things, that is, that we take with us to the next world, when our physical remains, at least for the time being, are left behind.

As Rabi Levi bar Ḥama said, if all else fails in the quest to having one’s good inclination trump his evil one, one should “remind himself of the day of death” (Berachos 5a). 

Might tzitzis be a spur to such remembering?

© 2023 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Biha’aloscha – Where There’s a Will, There is a Will

A reference to “The Seven Books of the Torah” might raise some eyebrows, but Rabi Yehudah HaNasi gives the two pesukim in our parsha (10, 35-46) that describe the movement of the aron, and the Jews, to a new location, the status of an “important book unto itself” (Shabbos, 116a). And so what we think of as Sefer Bamidbar is, in that opinion, three books of the Torah. 

And, following that idea, the mishneh in Yadayim, 3:5, noting the number of letters in those two pesukim, teaches that a faded Torah scroll that preserves 85 consecutive letters retains its holiness. 

Rav Hirsch points out the strange fact that the two psukim of that “important book” seem to say that it was after Hashem gave the signal for the aron to move and the movement had actually begun that Moshe “ordered” its movement. 

Rav Hirsch explains that what is taught us here is that Moshe so fully absorbed Hashem’s command that it became part of his own resolution – exemplifying the concept of “make His will your will” (Avos 2:4). Hashem’s will became Moshe’s.

Interesting is the fact that “85” in Hebrew spells peh, “mouth.” Perhaps that is the key to understanding the Torah’s description, later in our very parsha, of Hashem and Moshe speaking peh el peh, “mouth to mouth” (Bamidbar 12:8).

“Mouth to ear” would seem a more apt metaphor. Why “mouth to mouth”?

In consonance with Rav Hirsch’s observation, though, the phrase becomes poignant. What came from, so to speak, Hashem’s mouth – His will – came immediately, as a result, from Moshe’s ow mouth. It came to constitute his will, as he totally absorbed the Divine will as his own.

© 2023 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Naso – Playing Favorites or Paying in Kind

Parshas Naso

Playing Favorites or Paying In Kind

The Divine answer seems to beg the angels’ question.

Hashem’s angelic entourage, Rav Avira recounts (Berachot 20b) asked Him: “Master of the Universe, it is written in Your Torah (Devarim 10:17) that You do not show favor or take bribes. And yet, You show Yisrael special consideration, as it is written, ‘May Hashem lift His countenance to you’! (Bamidbar 6:26).”

Hashem replied:”How can I not favor Israel? For I commanded them, ‘When you eat and are satisfied, you must bless Hashem’ (Devarim 8:10), and yet they are punctilious [to say birkas hamazon, the blessing after eating a meal] over even an olive-sized piece of bread.”

Imagine a mortal judge excusing his showing favoritism to his nephew by explaining “but he’s such a good nephew!”

I think the explanation of Rav Avira’s description of the heavenly interaction lies in the words “and are satisfied.” Hashem’s retort was not that Jews say birkas hamazon even when they are not satisfied (which, arguably, would be an unwarranted and thus illegitimate bracha) but rather that they are satisfied with even a paltry meal. 

Jews are called Yehudim, after Yehudah, whose name reflects his mother’s acknowledgement that, with a fourth son, she has received “more than my share” (Rashi, from Midrash Rabbah). The quintessential Jewish characteristic is the conviction that we are unworthy of the blessings we receive.

And so, we are always, inherently, “satisfied,” even if what we are apportioned is limited. 

Thus, as a middah keneged midah, a “measure for measure,” Hashem is “satisfied,” so to speak, with even our limited service to Him. 

His “special consideration” is but a payment in kind.

© 2023 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Bamidbar – Life is for the Giving

The Torah’s pointed note (Bamidbar 3:4) of the fact that Nadav and Avihu had no children (according to the Midrash, because they did not marry) is understood by Chazal as having contributed to their deaths. “Contributed,” because the Torah itself states that the reason the two sons of Aharon died was because “they brought illicit fire before Hashem” [ibid]. Leaving the meaning of that phrase aside, though, what role did their having had no children play in their deaths? Not marrying, after all, isn’t a capital crime.

Addressing that question, the talmid chacham and inventor R’ Meshullam Gross, in his sefer Nachalas Tzvi, notes a comment of the Chasam Sofer on the words “And Hashem your G-d will make you abundant for good… in the fruit of your womb” (Devarim 30:9). The Chasam Sofer asserts that there can be a situation where a person’s time on earth has expired but where his death can be postponed by the fact that he is needed on earth to provide guidance to a child or another person dependent on him.

Thus, suggests Rav Gross, had Nadav and Avihu had children, dependents on their elders’ tutelage and guidance, the elders’ deaths might have been spared by that fact. 

It’s an invaluable thought for every parent, grandparent or teacher, when facing a difficult charge – in fact, for every person with a difficult friend: The very fact that you are being tried by your charge or friend, that you are needed to help with the challenge presented you, may just be affording you the gift of life.

© 2023 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Behar – What’s Special About Shmita

The problem surely occurs to every reader of the first Rashi in parshas Behar. The Rabban shel Yisrael, quoting a Midrash, recounts the famous question, “What does shemita have to do with Har Sinai?”

The reference, of course, is to the Torah’s introducing the mitzvah of letting fields lie fallow every seventh year as what “Hashem spoke to Moshe on Har Sinai.” 

The Midrash’s answer is that the Torah means to teach us that “just as with shemitah, its general principles and its finer details were all stated at Sinai, likewise, all [mitzvos were similarly stated and elaborated upon].”

The problem: The answer seems to not address the question. Why, though, of all mitzvos, is the point made specifically with shmita?

It is brought in the name of the Chasam Sofer that shmita is chosen because it establishes, to the frustration of the scoffer who contends that the Torah isn’t in fact from Hashem, that it is.

Because, logically, shmita is a self-defeating law. Enjoining the Jews in the Holy Land to let all their fields lie fallow every seventh year (and at the end of 49 years, two years in a row) is an assured recipe for economic disaster.  No human lawmaker would be cruel or dim enough to lay down such a law – only a Legislator Who could in fact ensure, as Hashem does, that the sixth year crops will be sufficiently abundant to carry the populace through could decree such a law.

Thus, says the Chasam Sofer, shmita’s having been divinely commanded at Sinai isn’t merely part of our tradition (a powerful enough status in its own right) but, in its very essence, an indication of its source in the divine.

And so, “just as with shemita” – which law telegraphs its source in Hashem – likewise all mitzvos are sourced in Him. 

© 2023 Rabbi Avi Shafran