Category Archives: Personalities

Vo’eschanan – Requited Love

The obvious problem posed by the commandment to love Hashem (Devarim 6:5) is that love is an emotion. How can one possibly be told to love?

One understanding of that commandment is provided by Abaye in the Talmud (Yoma 86a): “That [one should cause] the name of Heaven to be beloved [by others] through you.”

He explains that if one conducts himself properly, studying Torah, serving scholars and conducting business with honesty, people will say “Fortunate is his father who taught him Torah, fortunate is his teacher who taught him Torah” – thereby engendering observers’ love for Hashem.

The Rambam (Yesodei HaTorah 5:11) echoes that statement, adding the importance of taking care to not “separate [oneself] too far [from normal life]”.

Causing others to love Hashem is arguably easier today than ever. Since society is so often crass and rude, even conducting oneself in a normal, reasonable way does not go unnoticed. A “please” or “thank you” or “good morning,” not to mention a smile, stands out. And if offered by an identifiable Jew, can create love for Hashem.

Another approach to the mitzvah of loving Hashem is recorded in the name of Rav Akiva Eger, based on the fact that emotions can be cultivated and harnessed.

A key to observing the “love Hashem” commandment, he suggests, is provided each day just before we recite the Shma, which introduces it. The final brachah before krias Shma in the morning ends with “Who chooses His nation Yisrael with love”; and the one before the evening recitation, with “the One who loves His nation Yisrael.”

In other words, recognizing Hashem’s love for us yields reciprocal love for Him.

As Shlomo Hamelech teaches in Mishlei (27: 19), Kamayim hapanim lapanim… – “As water reflects a face back to a face, so is one’s heart reflected back to him by another.”

What is true in human relationships is equally true in our relationship with our Creator.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

“‘Zionist’ Contains Multitudes” — WSJ

An opinion piece of mine appeared in the Wall St. Journal. Its text is below:

I am a Zionist. I am not a Zionist.

Both statements are true, because the word, something of a war cry these days, has lost its meaning. Or, better, has multiple meanings. And it’s worth the while of anyone who cares about the Middle East, antisemitism or religion to tease out the details of the multiplicity.

As a haredi, or “ultra-Orthodox” (we dislike that pejorative), Jew, I do not subscribe to the foundational principle of the movement created by Theodor Herzl in the late nineteenth century that resulted in the establishment of the state of Israel.

Before Israel’s founding, in 1948, the religious leaders to whom most haredim like me looked for guidance opposed the establishment of a political state for Jews, even one self-defined as “Jewish.”

Theologically, they insisted, the return of Jews en masse to the Holy Land needed to await the arrival of the messiah predicted by the Jewish prophets of old (Herzl, an avowed secularist, didn’t quite fit the bill). And from a practical standpoint, they feared that a “Jewish state” would only serve to spur the hatred of Jews that forever lurks and seeks some excuse to express itself, often with violence.

So, as a Jew who believes that the Jewish religion, not any political state, is the essential expression of Judaism, I’m not a Zionist, at least not if one defines the word in its historical sense, as a believer in the Herzlian Zionist program.

At the same time, just as the religious leaders who did not back the creation of Israel in the end accepted the state once it became a fait accompli, and urged their followers in the Holy Land to participate in the country’s civil and political processes, I feel a connection with Israel and a deep concern for the welfare and safety of its citizens, many of whom are my friends or (closer or more distant) relatives.

So I am a Zionist, at least if one defines the word as a “accepter and supporter of Israel.”

There is, though, a third definition of Zionist, a new one, this one a slur, intended to refer to anyone who supports Israel’s current war against her enemies.

How Israel is waging that war is rightly open to criticism, but it is subject, too, to reasoned defense. When  “Zionist!” is angrily shouted at those who seek to offer the latter, the word is used to portray defenders of Israel as moral monsters – for the slurred’s conviction that Hamas and other terrorist entities need to be destroyed, the Israeli government’s goal.

When that government’s goal is characterized, instead, as genocide, the accusers have gone from righterous protesters to ignorant haters. And when they vent their animus by intimidating random Jews or attacking them or their synagogues or institutions, they expose themselves as nothing short of old-fashioned antisemites hiding behind kaffiyehs.

It is unfortunate – no, tragic – that a terrible toll on civilians is so often taken in the prosecution of justifiable, even necessary, wars. And eradicating the engines of terrorism in Gaza necessitates attacking the places from which they operate (including, sadly, hospitals and mosques).

But, in the end, whatever one may think of Israel’s actions, if words are to have meanings, “Zionist” can only mean either a subscriber to Herzl’s vision or a rejector of the same  who nevertheless supports the security of Israel’s citizens. When the word  is twisted to mean murderers, the twisters reveal nothing about Israel, and much about themselves,

(c) 2025 WSJ

Letter Published by The New York Times

To the Editor:

In his lengthy lamentation about Israel’s ostensible descent into genocide, Omer Bartov somehow overlooks a most germane distinction between Israel’s war to vanquish an enemy bent on its destruction and murderous campaigns like those that took place in Bosnia, Darfur, Armenia, Rwanda and Cambodia — and certainly the one carried out by Nazi Germany.

How Israel is waging its war against an enemy that has loudly declared its genocidal intentions is rightly open to criticism, and subject, too, to a reasoned defense. But it is a strange sort of “genocide” that can end immediately with the rulers of the attacked region simply laying down their arms, releasing those they kidnapped who are still alive and leaving the scene.

(Rabbi) Avi Shafran

Staten Island

Balak – Judge, Jury and Executioner

Moshe Rabbeinu couldn’t recall the halacha about the proper course of action when encountering a Jewish man engaging intimately with a non-Jewish woman (Sanhedrin 82a).  Pinchas had to remind him that Moshe himself had taught him that kana’im pog’im bo, “zealots have permission to attack the violator.”

Even then, though, after being reminded of the halacha, Moshe demurs, telling Pinchas that “the reader of the letter should be its contents’ executor.”

It is an interesting aphorism, but was there any compelling reason why Moshe didn’t rise to the task of dispatching Zimri and Kozbi himself? It is hard to imagine the ultimate defender of Torah and Klal Yisrael not wishing to himself undertake what needed to be done to defend the Torah and protect his people. After all, the immediately preceding psukim have him punishing those who engaged in worship of Baal Pe’or.

Rav Shlomo Ganzfried, the author of the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, in his sefer Aperion, suggests a reason, beyond the upshot of the aphorism, for Moshe’s hesitancy.

He points out that Zimri had challenged Moshe, asking if Cozbi was forbidden to him. “And if you say that she is forbidden, what about the daughter of Yitro to whom you are married? Who permitted her to you?” (ibid).

Moshe feared, Rav Ganzfried suggests, that if he were the one to dispatch the sinners, it might be seen as the settling of a personal score, not the heeding of a Torah law. It might be perceived not as an act of kana’us but rather of negi’us.

It occurs to me that Moshe may not so much have been concerned with what others might think but rather demurred and invoked the aphorism of the letter-reader because of the singular nature of kana’im pog’im bo.

Normally, a violator of the law must appear in court and his case properly adjudicated. Kana’im pog’im bo is an exception to that. Thus, the executor of the punishment is acting in a way like a judge. Halacha disallows a judge from adjudicating a case if he has any relationship of pre-existing bias for or against a litigant. So Moshe may have felt he could not halachically assume the role of a kana’i here. As to who could, well, he said to Pinchas, “You read the letter.”

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Korach – Schism and Stereopsis

His “eye,” not his “eyes.”

That’s what Chazal point to with regard to how a pikei’ach (perceptive person) like Korach could undertake a shtus, a “stupidity” like fomenting a rebellion against Moshe Rabbeinu.

The words of the Midrash, brought by Rashi (Bamidbar 16:7), are: “His eye misled him. He saw [in a prophecy] that Shmuel would be one of his descendants” and assumed that he, Korach, was thereby licensed to foment a rebellion.

Why his “eye,” in the singular?

The fact that we have a pair of eyes allows, of course, for a special sort of vision, stereopsis, which gives us the ability to perceive depth and three-dimensional structures by combining the slightly different images received by each eye. That facilitates our ability to judge the relative distance of objects and perceive depth.

Korach was focused on only one aspect, his genealogical legacy, his future descendant Shmuel. He didn’t employ the full complement of vision, and remained blind to the larger issue of what he was actually about to do – foster a schismatic rebellion against Hashem’s chosen messenger. He saw a picture, yes, just not the big picture.

Chazal famously teach that “falsehood has no feet” – that the word sheker teeters on the single “foot” of the letter kuf – while truth is stable, as each letter of the word emes is firmly grounded (Shabbos 104a).

But that same Gemara also notes that the letters of sheker are adjacent to one another in the alphabet, while those of emes span the entire aleph-beis. That fact, Chazal say, teaches us that falsehood is easily found, but truth, only with great difficulty.

I understand that to mean that one can be misled by focusing on only one aspect of something. Perceiving the truth, by contrast, requires spanning the entirety of what is seen, the “big picture,” complete with stereopsis. It’s a lesson much needed in our polarized, black-and-white, one-dimensional times.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Korach — Schism and Stereopsis

His “eye,” not his “eyes.”

That’s what Chazal point to with regard to how a pikei’ach (perceptive person) like Korach could undertake a shtus, a “stupidity” like fomenting a rebellion against Moshe Rabbeinu.

The words of the Midrash, brought by Rashi (Bamidbar 16:7), are: “His eye misled him. He saw [in a prophecy] that Shmuel would be one of his descendants” and assumed that he, Korach, was thereby licensed to foment a rebellion.

Why his “eye,” in the singular?

The fact that we have a pair of eyes allows, of course, for a special sort of vision, stereopsis, which gives us the ability to perceive depth and three-dimensional structures by combining the slightly different images received by each eye. That facilitates our ability to judge the relative distance of objects and perceive depth.

Korach was focused on only one aspect, his genealogical legacy, his future descendant Shmuel. He didn’t employ the full complement of vision, and remained blind to the larger issue of what he was actually about to do – foster a schismatic rebellion against Hashem’s chosen messenger. He saw a picture, yes, just not the big picture.

Chazal famously teach that “falsehood has no feet” – that the word sheker teeters on the single “foot” of the letter kuf – while truth is stable, as each letter of the word emes is firmly grounded (Shabbos 104a).

But that same Gemara also notes that the letters of sheker are adjacent to one another in the alphabet, while those of emes span the entire aleph-beis. That fact, Chazal say, teaches us that falsehood is easily found, but truth, only with great difficulty.

I understand that to mean that one can be misled by focusing on only one aspect of something. Perceiving the truth, by contrast, requires spanning the entirety of what is seen, the “big picture,” complete with stereopsis. It’s a lesson much needed in our polarized, black-and-white, one-dimensional times.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Reaction to Zoharan Mamdani

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani was asked about the phrase “Globalize the Intifada,” He declined to condemn the phrase and, in its defense, said that “The very word [Intifada] has been used by the Holocaust Museum when translating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising into Arabic because it’s a word that means struggle.”

Yes, and in math class, an equation has a “Final Solution.”

Shelach – Meaningful Metaphor

In their declaration that the conquest of Cna’an will proceed successfully, Yehoshua and Calev employ an odd metaphor: The idolatrous residents of the land, they say, will be vanquished because “they are our bread” (Bamidbar 14:9).

What has always occurred to me about their use of that word is that a daily factor in the lives of Klal Yisrael in the desert was a “bread” of sorts: the mon. It is called bread in several places, including Shemos 16:4 and Tehillim 78:25.

The mon, of course, was an unprecedented and undeniable miracle, a heavenly intervention that nourished Klal Yisrael. So perhaps the metaphor was meant to reassure the people that, despite the fears expressed by the meraglim about the fearsome occupants of the land, the conquest would proceed apace, just as miraculously as the food that had fallen each day to nourish them.

It’s a truistic idea but one worth focusing on these days: Wars are fought with manpower and weapons, but are won only with the help of Hashem.

The Chasam Sofer, I discovered, also saw the mon as the metaphor’s reference, and he expounds on it more deeply (echoing the Ohr Hachaim). The produce of the Holy Land, he explains, contains not only a physicality but also a special spiritual element. Ahead of the invasion of Can’an, that element was divinely withdrawn from the land’s produce and transformed into the mon. It was that embodiment of holiness that sustained Klal Yisrael over all the desert years.

And its removal from Cna’an’s produce left only the raw physicality of the land’s produce — mere “bread,” devoid of its erstwhile holiness — for the Cna’anim. And that, in turn, left them entirely vulnerable to being vanquished.

May we merit that all who threaten Klal Yisrael meet the same defeat.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran