There are times when bygones should be allowed to be bygones.
But when what has gone by was a tyrant’s ruthless torture and murder of hundreds of thousands of his countrymen, it’s not one of those times.
To read what I am referring to, please click here.
The average price paid to climb Mt. Everest – for permits, equipment and guides – is between $35,000 and $45,000. And hundreds have died in that exploit.
What impels people to undertake so expensive and dangerous a quest? A misguided search for meaning.
Philosophers argued about what ultimately motivates humans. Nietzsche said power; Freud, pleasure.
Both tapped into something real. The power to, through our choices, change our lives and history, is a manifestation of gevurah, “strength.” In Jewish eyes, though, that doesn’t mean subjugating others; rather, as Ben Zoma in Avos (4:1) defines it, “hakovesh es yitzro,” one who, by force of will, overcomes his nature.
And Freud was on to something too; the Ramchal begins Mesilas Yesharim with the surprising statement that the goal of life is the pursuit of pleasure. Not physical, but rather ultimate, pleasure: “basking in the radiance of the Shechinah.”
The Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard was insightful. He wrote of the human “will to meaning” – the yearning to achieve something truly meaningful as life’s ultimate goal.
Some imagine “meaning” in climbing Everest. Others envision meaningful accomplishment in meriting mention in the Guinness Book of World Records, for, say, the most slices of pizza eaten while riding a unicycle and simultaneously juggling balls.
For those who recognize our divine mandate, though, the ring for which to reach is a spiritual one, achieved through Torah and mitzvos.
All good fortune to the Everest climbers.
Come Shavuos, we look to a different mountain.
© 2023 Rabbi Avi Shafran
Mere hours before a mentally-challenged 30-year-old homeless man shouting at passengers on a New York subway was put in a chokehold by a passenger and died, I was harassed by a man on the Staten Island ferry. My incident ended on a happier note, at least for my harasser.
To read about it, click here.
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
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
It’s unusual—actually, unprecedented — for Agudath Israel of America or any of its affiliates to communicate with the judges who will choose the recipients of the annual Pulitzer Prizes. But it happens. Or, at least, happened. To read about the communication and what precipitated it, click here.
The Baitusim, a sect in Talmudic times often associated with the Tzedukim (or Sadducees), had a congenial approach to establishing the date of Shavuos, which the Torah describes as the fiftieth day from a particular point (Vayikra 23:15-21).
The Sinaic mesorah defines that starting point as the second day of Pesach (designated by the Torah as “the day after the Shabbos” – “Shabbos” here meaning the first day of the holiday), the day the omer sacrifice was brought. Thus, Shavuos could fall on any day of the week.
But the Baitusim seized on the Torah’s reference to that first day of counting as “the day after the Shabbos” as indicating that the fifty days must start after a literal “Shabbos,” on a Sunday, the first one after the omer, ensuring that Shavuos, too, would always fall on an Sunday.
A Baitusim spokesman defended his group’s position to Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai: “Moshe, our teacher, loved the Jews and… established [Shavuos] after Shabbos, so that the Jewish people would enjoy themselves for two days” (Menachos, 65a).
Hashem, he was asserting, certainly wanted His people to have a “long weekend” each summer.
An enticing thought, perhaps. But not what Hashem commanded. And Judaism is all about doing what He commands, whether it sits well with us or we think we have a better, “improved” idea. It isn’t our prerogative to “reform” divine will.
Our mandate is to be tamim, “simple,” “perfect,” “trusting.” It was, after all, our ancestors’ declaration of Na’aseh vinishma, “We will do and [only then endeavor to] hear [i.e.understand]” that earned us the Torah.
Which declaration, of course, took place, according to the mesorah, on Shavuos.
As Rava told a heretic who ridiculed his alacrity, “We Jews proceed with simple purity, as it says [in Mishlei 11:3], ‘The simplicity of the upright will guide them” (Shabbos 88b).
Notes the Shem MiShmuel: The “seven weeks” that are counted from Pesach to Shavuos are pointedly called sheva Shabbasos temimos – “seven perfect weeks.” Weeks, the word is hinting, for us to grow in what merited us the Torah, our temimus.
© 2023 Rabbi Avi Shafran
The haftarah for Acharei Mos, which will be read this week for the double parsha of Acharei Mos/Kedoshim, is from Amos (9:7), where Hashem extols the Jewish people with the famous and famously strange words: “Behold, you are like the children of Kush to Me.”
Kush is identified as the African kingdom of Nubia (roughly modern-day Sudan/ Ethiopia), and the Gemara (Moed Katan, 16b), commenting on the pasuk from Amos, says: “Just as a Kushite differs [from others] in [the color of] his skin, so are the Jewish people different in their actions.”
The Chasam Sofer (who apparently had “the righteous” in place of “the Jewish people” in that Gemara) interprets that Talmudic comment in an interesting and poignant way:
“One Jew may excel in Torah-study; another, in avodah [prayer]; another, in acts of kindness to others; this one in one particular mitzvah, that one in another. Nevertheless, while they all differ from each other in their actions, they all have the same intention: to serve Hashem with their entire hearts.
“Behold the Kushite. Inside, his organs, his blood and his appearance are all the same as other people’s. Only in the superficiality of his skin does he differ. This is the meaning of ‘[different] in his skin,’ [meaning] only in his skin. Likewise, the righteous are different [from one another] only ‘in their actions’; their inner conviction and intention, though, are [the same], aimed at serving Hashem in a good way.”
That people of different skin colors are only superficially different from one another is accepted as a truism by the Chasam Sofer. His point is that in all our diversity of vocations, fields and foci, we can be entirely equal servants of Hashem.
The Gemara (Ta’anis 22a) speaks of a pair of comedians, who used their humor to cheer up the depressed and defuse disputes.
One wonders if the parents of those meritorious men felt disappointed at their sons’ choices of professions. Or whether they realized that there are, in the end, many paths that can lead to the World-to-Come.
© 2023 Rabbi Avi Shafran
Tzara’as, the condition that occupies the bulk of parshios Tazria and Metzora, is characterized by the Talmud as a punishment for sins like speaking ill of others or stinginess at their expense. Thus the Rambam considers it something other than an infection in the normative, medical sense. Other Rishonim (e.g. Daas Zekeinim, Chizkuni), though, seem to regard the condition, at least when it manifests in a human body (it can also affect material and walls) as contagious, evidenced in the requirement that a person with the skin condition “sit alone” outside the camp of the general population (Vayikra 13:46).
Others regard that mandated isolation – which enjoins the afflicted person to call out to passers-by the fact that he is “Impure! Impure!” – as a punishment in itself, or as an opportunity to meditate on his sin (e.g. Sefer HaChinuch).
The Lutzker Rav, Rav Zalman Sorotzkin, zt”l (1881–1966), in his Oznayim LaTorah, takes that latter approach to a higher level, observing that the interpersonal sins that brought about the metzora’s condition were born of his dismissive, negative view of other people, his self-centeredness and misanthropy. Thus, he felt no compunctions about speaking ill of others or withholding things from them.
So, suggests Rav Sorotzkin, the metzora’s isolation may be intended to sensitize him to the importance of society. His being cut off from others will eventually be torturous. Like, Rav Sorotzkin adds, interestingly, the fictional Robinson Crusoe, who, shipwrecked and isolated on a remote island, is tormented by lack of interaction with others. The famous novel’s author (Daniel Defoe) “vividly portrays [Crusoe’s] longing for human interaction and conversation.”
The isolated metzora, writes Rav Sorotzkin, will feel similar pain, and thereby come to realize that the world contains others, others whose existence and whose needs he must value.
The metzora’s calling out of his plight to others, Rav Sorotzkin continues, is intended to inspire them to pray for his recovery. So, added to his existential loneliness, the metzora’s dependence on others will help cure him of his misanthropy.
© 2023 Rabbi Avi Shafran
The abundance of advertisements for gyms, weight loss products, hair restoration drugs and cosmetic surgery testifies to contemporary citizens’ obsession with physical image. To be sure, many people seek to work out or lose weight out of health concerns, or have surgery to correct deviated septums. But many more, as the pitches evidence, just want more perfect abs or biceps or “better” noses.
After sufficient decades of living, it becomes apparent that our shapes and faces can only be adjusted so much. That comes as a shock to some, even a source of depression. What’s truly sad, though, isn’t the elusiveness of physical perfection but the silly quest for it.
The laws of tum’ah, or ritual defilement, are many and complex. But one of its basic rules is that a metal vessel can become defiled by contact with a contaminating material even if the source of defilement touches only its outer surface. An earthen vessel cannot contract tum’ah that way.
But if contaminating matter merely enters the inner space of an earthenware vessel, it defiles it even without contacting the inner surface itself.
The Kotzker Rebbe explained that the reason for that distinction is that a metal vessel has inherent material value, whereas an earthenware one does not. And an earthenware vessel’s only value is in its “space” – in the fact that it can hold something
He went on to pithily observe that a human being is an “earthen vessel,” as the “original” human was made from the earth itself (Beraishis 2:7).
And, like any earthenware vessel, the human is defined not by his physique but rather by what he can hold “within” him – his soul, which he affects with his actions, thoughts and words.
© 2023 Rabbi Avi Shafran