Russian Revelation

No one familiar with Russia’s penchant for poisoning dissidents or arranging for their unfortunate defenestrations should be surprised by the recent revelation of Moscow mayhem. To read about it, please click here.

Bo – The Sound of Silence

The dogs in Egypt were still as they watched the Jewish people leave the land (Shemos, 11:7). The Midrash contends that, in keeping with the concept that “Hashem does not withhold reward from any creature,” dogs are the animals to whom treifos should be cast (ibid 22:30; see Rashi).

Another Midrash, however, notes a different“reward” for the canine silence: The fact that dogs’ dung will be used to cure animal skins that will become tefillin, mezuzos and sifrei Torah.

How intriguing that the lowly refuse of a lowly creature should be cast to play a part in the production of the most sublime and holy of objects. And that silence seems somehow key to the ability to sublimate the earthy into the hallowed.

Rabi Shimon ben Gamliel (Avos 1:17) states “I have found nothing better for the body than silence.” The phrase “for the body” (or “the physical”) seems jarring. Unless it, too, hints at precisely what the Midrash seems to be saying – that silence somehow holds the secret of how the physical can be transformed into the exalted.

We humans’ hope for creating holiness here on earth lies in our aptitude for language, our ability to clothe subtle and complex ideas in meaningful words. That is why when life is breathed by Hashem into the first man, the infusion is, in the words of the Targum Onkelos, a “speaking spirit” (Beraishis 2:7). The highest expression of human speech lies in our ability to recognize our Creator, and give voice to our recognition.

So isn’t it speech, not silence, that leads to holiness?

It is. But silence is in a way the most salient symbol of the power of speech.

After all, aren’t the things we are careful not to waste the things we value most?. We don’t hoard old newspapers; but few – including billionaires – would ever wrap a fish in a Renoir.

Our ability to use speech meaningfully is the most valuable thing we possess. Someone who truly recognizes the worth of words’ will use them only sparingly. The adage notwithstanding, talk isn’t cheap; it is, quite the contrary, a priceless resource, the means, used properly, of coaxing holiness from the material world.

And so silence – choosing to not speak when there is nothing worthwhile to say – is perhaps the deepest sign of reverence for the potential holiness that is speech. And can help the base yield the sublime.

Pills to the People!

Have you heard of Perkycet®️? No? Well read all about it, and about drug ads, here.

Vo’eira – The Seed’s Decay is All We See

It’s all too easy to disassociate the beginning of a parsha from the end of the preceding one. But Rav Shlomo Yosef Zevin, in LaTorah UlaMoadim, sees Hashem’s declaration at the opening of Vo’eira as connected to Moshe’s question toward the end of parshas Shemos. That question was (Shemos 5:22) “Why have You treated this nation badly?” And Elokim’s response (6:2) is “I am Hashem.”

Rav Zevin compares the apparent question/answer disconnect here with what transpires in Ki Sisa, when Moshe asks Hashem to “Let me know Your ways” (33:13) and is responded to with “You will see My back but My front will be unseen” (33:23).

What gives?

In both cases, explains Rav Zevin, the response expresses the reality that we cannot perceive justice, or even any sort of sense, with our limited purview of history. We are like a person first seeing the “burial” of a wheat kernel and its decay in the ground without having ever seen the stalk of wheat that emerges as a result, and the loaf of bread to which it will eventually contribute.

Elokim – the midas hadin, strict justice, name of Hashem – tells Moshe to rest assured that the din he perceives is not detached from “I am Hashem” – the sheim havaya that implies rachamim, benevolence. The din is but a prelude to rachamim, and the redemption of the Jews is at hand.

And the ultimate redemption, too, as hard as it may be to spy, is forthcoming no less.

Those Dirty Zionists at The Times

For once, something positive about Israel has been served up by The New York Times, albeit unintentionally. What’s more, Al Jazeera spoke the truth.

Moshiach’s arrival seems imminent.

To read about those media’s accomplishments, please click here.

Shemos – Nameless

While parshas Shemos (“Names”) does begin with names, those of the shevatim, and introduces the naming of Moshe, it is ironic that, when the parsha’s narrative begins, anonymity seems the rule.

“A man went out from the house of Levi and took a daughter of Levi” (Shemos, 2:1). We know the references are to Amram and Yocheved, but their names are not provided. Likewise with Moshe’s sister (2:4) whom we know to be Miriam but is unnamed. Same with Doson and Aviram, who are named in parshas Korach (Bamidbar 16) but not here in Shemos. And “the daughter of Par’oh,” we know, from Divrei Hayamim, was named Bisya. But in our parsha she has no name .

And what names are introduced for other dramatis personae seem pedestrian in their meanings. See Rashi 1:15 on Shifra and Puah.

What occurs as a possible message in the abundance of namelessness is that even simple people, those who haven’t established any sort of “name” – fame or distinction – for themselves, are capable of accomplishing great things; of, by their choices and actions, “making a name” for themselves. Every Tom, Debby and Harriet, in other words, can play a role as pivotal as those played by Amram, Miriam and Bisya. What matters isn’t one’s credentials but, rather, one’s actions.

And the idea that we should not feel limited is something the Kotzker famously commented on with regard to the Midrash stating that Bas Par’oh’s hand, extended to baby Moshe, elongated to reach him. She apparently reached out for something that was well beyond her reach, which is why the miracle had to happen. And yet she reached out all the same.

When one is seeking to do good, she (or he) should not feel constrained by “reality,” be it physical distance or any lack of credentials.

SHUT DOWN!

Much of the “pro-Palestinian” (read: anti-Israel—and, more often than not, anti-Jew) activism has been angry, crass, disruptive and destructive.

And, at least in one recent case, counterproductive.

To read about it, click here.

Vayechi – People Can Be Mere Stones

It’s easy to resent being mistreated.

It’s also misguided to be resentful.

Yosef reassures his brothers that he harbors no ill will for their having plotted against him. “Although you intended me harm, Elokim intended it for good” (Beraishis 50:20), he tells his siblings, echoing his earlier words “It wasn’t you who sent me here, but rather Elokim (ibid 45:8).

Those statements, Rav Yeruchom Levovitz, the famed Mir mashgiach, explained, were not mere polite, comforting words of forgiveness. They meant precisely what they say: that Hashem was ultimately the reason for his having been mistreated and sold into servitude. [Note the use of “Elokim” in both psukim, indicating din, pure justice]. It was part of a plan.

In his Daas Torah, Rav Yeruchom writes that Yosef was telling his brothers that they really had nothing to do with his life’s trajectory, that they had essentially been mere tools that were used in order to bring him to who he had become, the viceroy of Mitzrayim.

And so, Rav Levovitz continues, every person who feels wronged by another should not automatically be angry at his oppressor, since he is where Hashem wants him to be. Would anyone, the mashgiach asks, think to rail against a stone that fell on him? The oppressor is but a stone, the means by which Hashem’s plan for the injured person is furthered.

It’s an attitude vital for living a Torah-informed life.

“Take this rule,” says Rav Yeruchom, “firmly in hand.”

The Latest Academic Absurdity

What do you think represents an “egregious threat to bedrock principles of academic freedom”?

The kidnapping and gagging of a professor? An administrator’s cancellation of the professor’s class? . A warning that he’d be fired unless he taught a certain point of view? Three strikes, you’re out.

To see the answer, click here.

Vayigash – Man and Beast

Shepherds were abhorrent to ancient Egyptians, Yosef tells his brothers, as he relates what they should tell Par’oh in order to reserve the area of Goshen for his immigrating family (Beraishis 46:34). We find this in Mikeitz as well (43:32; see Rashi and Onkelos there)

Some commentaries understand that as indicating that the Egyptians protected livestock and shunned the consumption of meat. Ibn Ezra writes that the Egyptians were “like the people of India today, who don’t consume anything that comes from a sensile animal.”

Pardes Yosef (Rabbi Yosef Patzanovski) references the Ibn Ezra and explains that the ancient Egyptians considered the slaughter of an animal to be equivalent to the murder of a human being.

Although far distant in both time and place from ancient Egypt and India, some people in the Western Hemisphere today have come to embrace the notion that the sentience of animals renders them essentially no different from humans.

To be sure, seeking to prevent needless pain to non-human creatures is entirely in keeping with the Jewish mesorah, the source of enlightened society’s moral code. But those activists’ convictions go far beyond protecting animals from pain; they seek to muddle the fundamental distinction between the animal world and the human. A distinction that is all too important in our day, for instance, when it comes to issues pertinent to the beginning or end of life, or moral behavior.

A book that focuses on “the exploitation and slaughter of animals” compares animal farming to Nazi concentration camps. Its obscene title: “Eternal Treblinka.” Similarly obscene was the lament by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals founder Ingrid Newkirk that “Six million Jews died in concentration camps, but six billion broiler chickens will die this year in slaughterhouses.”

But even average citizens today can slip onto the human-animal equivalency slope. American households with pets spend more than $60 billion on their care each year. People give dogs birthday presents and have their portraits taken. Such things might seem benign but, according to one study, many Americans grow more concerned when they see a dog in pain than when they see an adult human suffering.

We who have been gifted with the Torah, as well as all people who are the product of societies influenced by Torah truths, consider the difference between animals and human beings to be sacrosanct.

It is incumbent on us to try to keep larger society from blurring that distinction.

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Reflections on Jews, Judaism, Media and Life