Eikev – Strangers in Strange Lands

Both remarkable and timely is a digression by the Sefer HaChinuch on a mitzvah in the parshah. The mitzvah, #431, is ahavas hager, the commandment to love a convert (Devarim 10:19). In addition to the mitzvah to love every fellow Jew, there is an additional one to love someone who was not born into the people but chose to join it.

After providing details of the mitzvah, the Chinuch includes the Talmudic admonition (Bava Metzia 58b) to not remind a convert of his pre-Jewish past. “… in order to not cause him pain in any way.” He adds that anyone who is lax about helping a convert or protecting his property, or is insufficiently respectful of him or her, violates this mitzvas aseh.

And then he writes: “We are to learn from this precious mitzvah to have mercy on any person who finds himself in a foreign place” and “not ignore him when we find him alone and far from those who can help him.

“And with these sentiments, we will merit to be treated with mercy by Hashem… the pasuk hints to this idea when it adds ‘because you were strangers in the land of Egypt,’ reminding us that we were once burned with the deep pain felt by any person finding himself among foreign people in a foreign land… And Hashem in his mercy took us out of there. Our own mercy should likewise be felt for any person in a similar situation.”

The Chinuch’s expansion of the mitzvah’s underlying idea, even though ahavas hager applies only to a convert, is striking and most pertinent today.

A bandwagon from whose sides all too many happily hang is the anti-immigrant one. To be sure, immigration is something that rightly has rules, and borders cannot be totally open to all. But the Jewish attitude toward those foreign-born people who (often having risked their lives) are among us – legally or otherwise – is to be one of mercy and concern.

The pasuk’s reminder of our ancestors’ sojourn in Egypt is pithy here too. Many, if not most, American Jews are no more than a generation or two removed from their own immigrant forebears. Our parents or grandparents found themselves on these shores, far from their birthplaces, strangers in a strange land.  We can imagine their pain and fear. And should recognize the similar pain and fears of others, including newer newcomers to America. 

© 2023 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Just Desserts

Indigenousness is in the eye of the beholder

In an irony as rich as premium full-fat ice cream, Ben & Jerry’s, the frozen confection company that objected last year to its product being sold in indigenously Jewish land, found itself melting under consumer heat for asserting the rights of Indigenous Americans.

On the Fourth of July, the company posted a video on social media to celebrate “National Ice Cream Month.” (Now, that one’s definitely going on my calendar, though I’ll opt for a cholov Yisrael brand.)

But Ben and Jerry’s seized the opportunity, in line with its declared exquisite social conscience, to inform ice cream aficionados that “it’s high time we recognize that the US exists on stolen Indigenous land, and commit to returning it.”

The campaign was elaborated upon on Ben & Jerry’s website, which explained that its “land back” stance was about “ensuring that Indigenous people can again govern the land their communities called home for thousands of years.” It focused mainly on the taking of land, including Mt. Rushmore, from the Lakota tribe in South Dakota.

Oddly, though, Messrs. Cohen and Greenfield – the Ben and Jerry who founded the company in the 1970s – seemed less enamored of indigenous rights last year when they blasted the brand’s parent company Unilever for selling the franchise’s operations in Israel to a local licensee, which allowed the stuff to be sold in Yehudah and Shomron, in the ice cream kings’ view, “occupied territories.” 

Those territories are “occupied,” in their view, by the evil colonizer Israel. But, whatever one’s thoughts about the future political status of those areas, from the standpoint of actual history – which seems important to Ben and Jerry – it is myopic to see them as indigenously Arab. 

On the contrary, the only readily identifiable people today who have true historic claim of descent from the land’s most ancient inhabitants are Jews. 

There are no Cna’anim left today. They were vanquished in Yehoshua’s time. With all due respect (what little is due) to P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas, who told the U.N. Security Council in 2018 that “we are the descendants of the Canaanites that lived in the land 5,000 years ago,” not only is his claim nonsense, but it’s also one that, tellingly, no Palestinian Arab (himself included) ever made over centuries. Mr. Abbas was trying to invent an imaginary indigenousness. Nice try, Mahmoud.

When the Jews who lived in the land since Yehoshua’s time were forced to leave it, something that we Jews have lamented for all the centuries since and focus on in particular these days every Jewish year, those who subsequently took up residence in Eretz Yisrael were the occupiers.

That includes the “Palestinians,” many of whom are in reality descended from successive waves of people who came to the area only at the end of the 18th century from places like Egypt, where famine and persecution fueled emigration; and, in the 19th century, from Algeria, Transjordan and Bosnia. So much for Arab indigenousness in Eretz Yisrael.

In the end, Unilever sold its Ben & Jerry’s division to another company that has rights to sell products in Israel and the territories overseen by the Palestinian Authority. Ben and Jerry were not happy. “We continue to believe it is inconsistent with Ben & Jerry’s values,” they tweeted, “for our ice cream to be sold in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” They got licked.

And aren’t likely very happy now, either. Because many American consumers were apparently less than enthusiastic about the boys’ recent proposal that the nation be transferred to descendants of Native American tribes and go from being the United States of America to the Disunited Tribes of America. Ben and Jerry’s parent company lost nearly $2 billion in market capitalization in the wake of their July 4 message. 

And adding sprinkles to the rich ice cream irony is an inconvenient fact of American history. 

Before the establishment of the Republic, the Abenaki – a confederacy of various Indigenous tribes that united against a rival tribal confederacy – controlled an area that stretched from the northern border of Massachusetts in the south to New Brunswick, Canada, in the north, and from the St. Lawrence River in the west to the East Coast.

Ben & Jerry’s headquarters are located in a business park in southern Burlington, Vermont. Well within the western portion of Abenaki territory.

Delicious.

© 2023 Ami Magazine

Vo’eschanan – Little Sins Fuel Bigger Ones

The Kotzker Rebbe likely meant it as a poignant joke when he reportedly remarked that the reason the Ten Commandments had to be both seen and heard (Chazal describe the revelation at Har Sinai as a synesthetic experience – e.g. Yalkut Shimoni 299) was that the word “lo” in lo signov would clearly be seen written with an aleph, not a vav.

That is to say, the commandment is to be understood as “Do not steal,” not “Steal for Him” – which would imply that, for a holy cause, theft is a virtue.

But the Kotzker certainly intended his quip as a serious lesson: Lofty ends don’t justify forbidden means.

If a Jew should “bend the rules” with regard to business or governmental dealings, he is guilty of gezel akum.  Even if his intention is to benefit a charity or Jewish institution.

Hopefully, we all realize that. But when, on occasion, we have read of some such liberty-taking, it behooves us to consider the fact that even those of us who would never consider doing such a thing ourselves might have reason for introspection.

Because a fundamental concept in Judaism is the idea of arvus, that all Jews are intertwined, that we are all responsible for one another. And so, if a Jewish thief exists, it is the “fault,” in a sense, of us all. That’s why we say “Ashamnu…” – “We have sinned” – in first person plural.

That outright Jewish violator of “Do not steal” may have been empowered by our own, less blatant, thievery. Like gneivas daas, stealing another’s mind (misleading him); or gezel sheina, depriving another of sleep; or what Chazal consider to be “stealing from a poor person,” namely, not returning a greeting (Berachos 6b).

Many are the understandings of nachamu nachamu ami – the repetition of the word for “be comforted” in the haftarah of Vo’eschanan. But, considering that the word nechama can mean both comfort and change of heart (as in Beraishis 6:6), perhaps the repetition reflects, too, the fact that our repentance from small transgressions have an effect on preventing larger ones. 

And some comfort surely lies in that fact.

© 2023 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Spleen Supersedes Sanity

In the wake of Israel’s recent raid on Jenin, various Arab and Islamic countries, playing as they must to their “streets,” registered their condemnation of the operation; the US State Dept. defended Israel’s right to proactively defend herself from terrorism.  And members of Congress either joined that judgment or didn’t comment at all.

With one exception. No less repugnant than it was predictable.

You can read about the lone stand-out here.

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

Anything But Anti-Orthodox

I take a seat second to no one when it comes to alacrity in detecting and pointing out anti-Orthodox bias. Exposing such bias has been a recurrent theme in my writing for many years. A feature article I wrote detailing a long list of anti-Orthodox media slants and fabrications – “How the Press Picks on the Orthodox” was its title — appeared as Moment Magazine’s cover story back in February, 2000. “Stop Otherizing Haredi Jews” was the title of an opinion piece I wrote that was published in The New York Times in February 2022. 

Those were  only two of many callings-to-task of media, advertisements and individuals – before, after and between those two years – for casting negative light on our community. 

But there are times when what might seem, at first wide-eyed glance, as anti-Orthodox is in fact a lesser crime, and a hue and cry is an overreaction. 

Like the recent two-page spread ad that Brandeis University ran in a recent issue of The New York Times Magazine. Its headline read: “BRANDEIS WAS FOUNDED BY JEWS. BUT IT’S ANYTHING BUT ORTHODOX.”

Brandeis was indeed founded by Jews, in the Boston area in 1948, when elite colleges in the northeast like Harvard and Yale had quotas limiting the number of Jewish students they would accept. The school was named after Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish Supreme Court justice, features the word emes in Hebrew on its official seal and, while it was always open to students of all, or no, religious backgrounds, it has always boasted a substantial number of Jewish students.

Negative reaction to the “anything but orthodox” ad was quick to come. 

Leaders of a student group, Brandeis Orthodox Organization, informed its members that they were “hurt and disappointed to see something like this coming from our university” and declared the ad’s insinuation “unacceptable and antithetical to Brandeis’ values.”

Social media, always fertile ground for nurturing ire, bubbled with antagonism for Brandeis over the ad. “Seriously distasteful” and “problematic” were two of the milder comments. A poster on Twitter contended that there was “no other way” to look at the ad and “not be absolutely disgusted.” Addressing the university, a Washington, D.C. area writer wrote: “Proudly announcing you’ve moved away from your Jewish roots – in the New York Times! – is definitely one way to change your campus demographics.”

The ad, however, is part of a branding campaign through which the university attempts to use humor to tout itself as special, with an emphasis on its Jewish origins. Another of the campaign ads’ taglines asks “Why is this university different from all other universities?” (get it?) and another teases, “University quotas were a polite way of telling Jews where they could go,” a reference to the history of the college’s founding. 

The “anything but orthodox” ad went on to describe the origins of Brandeis, and its raison d’etre: “to fight antisemitism, racism, and sexism, and to welcome students of all backgrounds and beliefs.” Its closing line was: “Needless to say, Brandeis is still unorthodox. And rest assured, we have no intention of converting.” Ha.

Responding to criticism of the ad, the university issued a statement defending its decision to include it by explaining that it was intended as “a play on words meant to highlight Brandeis’ unique story and history of innovation” and that the university is “deeply committed to our Orthodox community members.”

A university spokeswoman told a news agency that “We are committed to our Orthodox community members, and the ad was intended not to offend, but to underscore both the diversity of our community and our unusual origin story.”

In fact, the Brandeis campus features an eruv and large kosher catering facilities. Shabbos seudos reportedly draw some 500 participants.

The adjective “orthodox” with a lower-case “o” indeed signals the opposite of innovation (in a negative sense, “stilted”; in a positive one, “faithful to tradition”). And so some oh-so-clever ad writer thought that, hey, since the word with a capital “O” has a Jewish connotation, it would make for a great pun!

Well, it clearly didn’t. But it wasn’t an anti-Orthodox ad. Just an inept attempt at humor.  

And so, Brandeis – or its ad agency – is guilty of a crime, and in my book it’s no minor one: failure to be funny.

(c) 2023 Ami Magazine

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