The Sultan's Parsha / The Human Parsha

Parshas Shemos - We Know the End and the Beginning, Not the Middle

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Greenfield) — Sun, 19 Jan 2025 05:41:00 +0000

G-d tells Moshe much of how his mission to Egypt will play out. Including the first plague and the last plague.

But not any of the 8 in between.

Why tell Moshe only the first and last plague, blood and the firstborn? These are the plagues that most directly and graphically address the Egyptian mass murder of Jews and the punishment to come.

But the beginning and the ending of things is also how we live our lives. And it's the Jewish story.

We all know how we begin and will end in the most general sense. And we know, more specifically, the beginning and ending of the story of the Jewish people.

What we do not know is all that comes in between.

Even knowing the ultimate ending, Moshe felt uncertainty and had questions for G-d. As do we.

From our vantage point the most important parts of life are those that happen in the middle. Like right now. But that is also what we are not meant to know because while the beginning and end are in the hands of the Almighty, much of what passes in between is up to us.

In times of uncertainty and doubt, we should remember that the beginning and the end are in His hands.

And we must do the best that we can with the middle.

Parshas Shemos - The End of the Road and the Beginning

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Greenfield) — Sun, 19 Jan 2025 05:32:00 +0000

Midian is the end of Moshe's journey in both his escape from Egypt and his leadership of the Jewish exodus from Egypt.

After fleeing Pharaoh's wrath, Moshe makes his way to Midian where he marries and herds his father-in-law's sheep in the desert by Har Sinai. There he receives the revelation of the burning bush. And there he meets his brother Aharon before the two of them set off together.

Moshe's original journey foreshadows his future journey. At the end of his mission, G-d commands him to lead the war against Midian before he is to die. On neither journey does Moshe enter the land of his fathers.

It would be easy to see this as a failure if we view Moshe's life on a map running forward. And yet by retracing and beginning his religious mission from Sinai, we can understand Moshe's life not in linear fashion, but as a mission centered on the place where the Torah was given to the Jewish people.

All lives run forward ultimately end in death. And from that vantage people, they can seem futile.

But viewed from the centrality of the Torah, Moshe and those who learn and teach it are immortal.

Parshas Bereishis - Why Must G-d Rest

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Greenfield) — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 06:42:00 +0000

The biblical story of creation strikes many people as little odd. Modern science insists that the universe came randomly into existence and that the earth as we know it emerged after a process of billions of years.

The Torah however insists on days. And specifically six days. After six days, then G-d rests.

Why would an omnipotent G-d need six days as opposed to one to create everything. And then why rest?

We often mistake the commandment of keeping the Sabbath as merely taking a day off. But we are commanded to work for six days just as we are commanded to rest on the seventh. We do not merely imitate the Creator by resting on one day of the week, but by working for the remainder of the week.

During six days, G-d not only brought forth life, He resolved contradictions, sometimes through separation and sometimes through bringing forth a new unity. This is essentially what we do throughout our work week. We struggle to resolve contradictory impulses, drives and needs. We try to act ethically in an unethical world and in doing so we try to bring a little bit of heaven down to earth.

Work brings out conflict and competition. It sometimes brings out the worst of us.

On the seventh day we rest from creative work, and the accompanying conflict and friction. On Shabbat, G-d concluded the work of creating new things. After that, man was meant to take over the task of watching and working the world. With the world created, the next set of labors would be on man.

G-d rested from creating not only the world, but a template for man to follow as he labored in the world.

Rest does not imply physical fatigue, especially in the Hebrew 'vayanach'. G-d was no longer troubled by contradictions and conflicts in the universe which had been resolved in six days. But rather than giving G-d rest, man instead quickly began to weary his Creator by introducing rebellion, conflict and strife.

Man disappointed and wearied G-d. And still does every day.

When man rests on Shabbat from the strife and conflict with which he wearies his Creator so much of the week, then G-d is also able to rest. When man persists in conflicts, then G-d cannot rest even on Shabbat.

When man treats Shabbat as he ought to, G-d has menucha, rest, and nachas, from His creations. And so man on Shabbat can bring rest not only to himself and the world, but to G-d.

Parshas Mattos - Bilaam's Blessing was a Curse

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Greenfield) — Sun, 04 Aug 2024 06:44:00 +0000

In Parshas Mattos, Moshe briefly mentions the "matter of Bilaam" when indicting the nation of Midian. But while there are commentaries that discuss when the sorcerer might have advised King Balak of his scheme, we need not look for offstage moments when it was there right before us.

On the surface Bilaam appears to be pious and devout. A man who repeatedly insists that he cannot say anything that G-d does not place in his lips. But what appears to be a profession of integrity is actually a message. It is a message akin to "we are being listened to and I cannot speak freely." Balak, vulgar and arrogant, is slow to understand the message even though Bilaam lays it out for him in the first blessing.

Bilaam understands what Balak does not, that cursing the Jews will not work and tells him what will by cleverly inverting a curse into a blessing.

"How can I curse whom G-d has not cursed, and how can I invoke wrath if the Lord has not been angered?" he asks, conveying that the way forward is to have the Jews anger G-d.

No amount of cursing the Jews will work. The Jews themselves must be seduced into angering G-d.

"It is a nation that will dwell alone, and will not be reckoned among the nations," he goes on, indicating in the inverse that the way to bring down the Jews is to reach out to them and integrate them.

The next reference to seed and offspring hints at the way forward.

The next time around, Bilaam once again warns that "I have received to bless, and He has blessed, and I cannot retract it."

Again the message is that Midian must create that evil and wrongness.

He concludes by telling Balak that he cannot defeat Israeli militarily. Only corrupting them will work.

In the third blessing, Bilaam emphasizes the tents and dwelling places of Jacob and the dispersion of his seed.

Despairing of Balak's stupidity, he warns of the coming destruction in the future.

Bilaam's conspiracy is out there in the open. And while it takes Balak some time to figure it out, seemingly he or some of his people do and launch their campaign of corruption and seduction.

The lesson is that some blessings are really curses. Unable to direct curse the Jews, Bilaam instead made his blessings into curses highlighting weak points and a strategy to exploit them. Moshe understood what Balak did not immediately apprehend, that Bilaam had used his prophecy to maliciously warp G-d's blessings. And why did G-d allow him to do it? The experience served as a test and a warning to the Jews of what they must avoid once inside Israel.

Parshas Mattos - When Not to Keep Your Word

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Greenfield) — Sun, 04 Aug 2024 06:22:00 +0000

Parshas Mattos begins with a survey of the laws of oaths addressed to the tribal leaders.

Why specifically the tribal leaders?

While Mattos may begin with the laws of oaths and vows, it concludes with the leaders of two tribes requesting that they settle the other side of the Jordan and committing to go and fight with the other tribes until they succeed in their wars.

Both times a similar phrasing "kol hayotze mepif taaseh" "that which comes from your mouth you shall do" is used.

But while Avraham bound Eliezer and Yaakov bound Yosef with oaths, Moshe asks no oath of them. He simply tells them that they must keep their word and that there will be consequences if they do not.

Indeed there are two tragic oaths that will later follow, by Yiftah, who vows to sacrifice whatever comes to meet him on his return home, and Shaul, who vows that he will kill anyone who breaks his pledge to eat nothing until the enemy is defeated only to have his son Yonatan unknowingly eat some honeycomb.

Thus Mattos begins by addressing the laws of oaths and pledges, Shuvot and Nedarim, to the tribal leaders. In pagan societies, tribal leaders wielded total power based on their personal prestige and honor, but in a Jewish society, oaths are taken to G-d, and there are times when they may be undone.

Mattos emphasizes the importance of keeping your word but it also lays out leniencies defining when vows and oaths may be set aside. While Mattos addresses more familial religious obligations, Yiftah's vow which potentially put him in the position of engaging in human sacrifice, was obviously illegitimate.

The more important lesson is that tribal elders do not operate purely on honor, but on the word of G-d.

Shavuot, Yitro and Ruth - Those Who Walk Away and Those Who Stay

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Greenfield) — Sun, 23 Jun 2024 05:13:00 +0000

The story of Shavuot intersects with the story of two non-Jewish figures: Yitro, Moshe's father-in-law, and Ruth, whose story is read on Shavuot.

The most compelling moment in the story of Ruth is also the beginning of her story when despite her mother-in-law's pleas, she refuses to go.

There is a contrasting moment in the parsha or section in which the giving of the Ten Commandments is described which is known as Parshas Yitro. Parshas Yitro begins with Yitro visiting Moshe accompanied by Moshe's wife and sons. And yet in the more recent parsha readings in the Shabbosim around Shavuot which described the dedication of the Leviim, there is no mention of Moshe's sons. A genealogy states merely that the descendants of Moshe and Aaron are Aaron's sons.

In Parshas Behalaoscha, there is a brief reference to Moshe marrying a 'Cushite' woman who does not appear to jibe with the previous description of Moshe's wife and there is also an exchange between Moshe and his father-in-law in which Moshe pleads with him to remain with the Jewish people. While his father-in-law seeks to return to his people. While the outcome is not described, in Parshas Yitro, we are told briefly before the giving of the Torah 'vayesalach lo", Moshe sends him or allows him to go.

Similarly Moshe's wife, who initially appeared to be accompanying him to Egypt until a mysterious incident occurs, is described in that parsha as "aharei shiluchecho" or after she was sent away.

While there are ambiguities in what exactly happens with Yisro (some commentaries claim that Yisro accompanied the Jews and there are different versions of the narrative and perhaps of even who it refers to) and Moshe's sons (some claim that they remain with him and he seeks to have them succeed him) there is no further mention of his sons in the Torah. And while some of Yisro's descendants live in Israel, they do not appear to be part of the Jewish people.

In contrast, Ruth not only joins the Jewish people, but becomes the ancestress of King David and of the entire royal dynasty and all that comes with it.

Ruth, unlike Yitro and Moshe's wife, refused to be sent away. Told to go, she responded with the passionate, "Do not entreat me to leave you, to turn from following you, for wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried."

Traditionally, aspiring converts were rejected, not out of cruelty, but as a test of moral commitment. Those who were truly 'in it' for more than social acceptance would not 'take no for an answer'.

Yitro was a man of great wisdom. His advice to Moshe helps form the basis for a system of government. But there is a parable in Pirkei Avot/Sayings of the Fathers about someone whose wisdom is greater than his deeds. That person is compared to a tree whose branches outnumber its roots. It appears glorious but when the wind blows, it topples over. In contrast, someone whose deeds outnumber his wisdom is like a tree with few branches but deep roots.

Ruth offered deeds, Yisro offered wisdom. And while the Torah is given in Parshas Yisro, right before it, we are curtly told that Yisro left. Like so many others who were offered the Torah, he couldn't make the commitment. Ruth showed that it takes more than wisdom , it takes action and commitment.

Parshas Bo - Time is the Answer

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Greenfield) — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 03:34:00 +0000

From the very beginning G-d had warned Moshe that Pharaoh would not listen to him. Why then did Moshe have to trek to the Egyptian tyrant, warn him of the plagues, only to be dismissed, over and over again?

At the beginning of Parshas Bo, G-d finally tells Moshe the reason. "So that you may tell your children and grandchildren..." Throughout this whole process, Moshe and the Jews had been rooted in the present while G-d was speaking of the future. Here, G-d pulls back the curtain and reveals that the struggles of the present will inform and shape the Jews people throughout time.

Often in our struggles, we feel stuck in the moment. The answer in Parshas Bo is to think of the future.

Time is a theme in Parshas Bo.

The plague of the firstborn is visited at midnight. It is I believe the first explicit mention of time in the Torah, not in terms of broad measures like day and night, but a very specific measure of time.

Likewise the first Mitzvah, that of the new moon and the calendar, are introduced.

The Sforno commentary points out that as slaves, the Jews did not have control over their own time. As free men, they now control their own time, and can decide how they will apportion it and what they will do with it.

Parshas Bo contains another example of a commandment preceding the reason for it.

G-d commands the Jews to observe the seder complete with matzos. But what is the reason for matzos? Only after the seder and the plague of the firstborn will the Jews be driven out of Egypt so rapidly that instead of bread, all they will have is matzos. The commandment to have matzos appears inexplicable, only once the redemption has come does everything fall into place and it all makes sense.

Time is the missing element and it is also the answer. Parshas Bo shows us that what G-d does may not make sense in the moment, but can be understood when we take into account the element of time.

G-d transcends time. And when we think of the future, the inexplicable can begin to make sense.

Parshas Vaera - Bo - Were the Jews Affected by the Plagues?

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Greenfield) — Sun, 14 Jan 2024 04:05:00 +0000

Were the Jews affected by the plagues that struck Egypt?

It seems like an absurd question. Weren't the plagues there to force the Egyptians to free the Jews?

And yet only in the plague of the swarm of wild animals does G-d for the first time make a point that the plague will distinguish between the Egyptians and the Jews.

This event is treated as extraordinary and is described as a "sign" implying that this had not happened before.

Going forward, some of the plagues contain this distinction while others make no mention of it.

The swarm of wild animals and the disease that strikes the animals, Orov and Dever, both distinguish between Jews and Egyptians, as does Barad, the wave of burning hail, along with darkness, Hosech, and the death of the first born, but there is no mention of this during, for example, the plague of soot that leaves of blisters.

Why is there a distinction with some plagues but not others?

The pattern seems to be that those plagues that were lethal, like rampaging wild animals, a disease that kills animals, hail that kills anyone in the fields and the deaths of the first born, distinguished between Jews and Egyptians. The plague of darkness does not entirely fit this pattern, but sudden blindness may itself be considered lethal in terms of the potential for deadly accidents, or perhaps was done for the sake of allowing Jews to enter the homes of Egyptians, or for a symbolic purpose.

But why would any of the plagues affect the Jews at all?

The answer may be that G-d needed to not only convince the Egyptians to let the Jews go, but he also needed to convince the Jews to leave.

Hard as it may be to believe, the Jews would propose to return to Egypt several times even after they had been liberated. In their agony they cried to G-d for salvation, but they did not request to be taken out.

And we have seen during exile how Jewish populations became so deeply rooted in exile that they did not wish to leave. It was indeed only a minority of Jews who returned to Israel to rebuild the Second Temple or who came to refound the State of Israel in the last century.

At the beginning of Parshas Vaera, Moshe protests that the Jews aren't listening to him, how then will Pharaoh heed him. And G-d commands him on both the Jews and the Egyptians in order to liberate the Jews.

The plagues made life uncomfortable for both Jews and Egyptians. While some plagues killed Egyptians, other plagues made the Jews more willing to leave Egypt.

Liberation is more than a matter of eliminating the slavemaster. A slave can remain a slave even when his master is dead.

That goes to the question also of why G-d delayed the liberation of the Jews for so long.

It is an unhappy thought that the Jews had become so acclimated to Egypt that G-d did not even propose to liberate them sooner because they would not have gone. And when G-d proposed to liberate them, it was not because they asked to leave, but because of their agony and suffering, that He took pity on them even though they were not ready to leave, and increased the pressure so that the Egyptians would, as it states before the final plague, drive them out.

It was not enough for the Egyptians to cease being an obstacle, they had to drive the Jews out.

The end of exile requires not only the fall of tyrants, but unfortunately also the discomfort of the Jews.

Parshas Vaera - The Order of the Plagues

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Greenfield) — Sun, 14 Jan 2024 03:51:00 +0000

We all know the names of the ten plagues that struck Egypt. And some of us may even remember the order that they took place in. But is there any reason for the particular order?

The plagues do become somewhat more devastating with time, but not entirely.

Take the plague of darkness, which was traumatic, but not truly damaging, as opposed to the invasion of wild beasts.

There is however an order of meaning to the order of plagues.

The plagues don't necessarily move forward in degrees of devastation, but in degrees of altitude.

From the first to the ninth plague, they begin at the very bottom, in the river, below the surface of the earth, and ascend to the sky, while the final plagues leading up to the end, hail, locusts, and darkness, emerge from the heavens.

In between them, the plagues slowly ascend, rising from the Nile, blood and frogs, up to the third plague, vermin, which arise when the dust of the earth is struck. The fourth and fifth plagues involve the animals, either wild animals invading or domestic animals dying, on the surface of the earth.

Then for the sixth plague, furnace ash is tossed "heavenward", and becomes boils.

The seventh plague, hail, falls from he heaven to the earth. The eight plague, locusts, likewise, descend from the heaven to the earth. But the ninth plague, darkness, blots out light across the heavens cutting off light to Egypt.

From the first to the ninth plague, the plagues rise from below the earth, to the earth, and then to the sky, moving upward from man and into the very heavens, demonstrating that G-d rules over the earth and the heavens, that He is the G-d of all creation.

And then, for the tenth plague, the damage is focused on the pinnacle of creation, the beings for whom all the earth and the heavens had been meant for, man, in his religious duty.

We are told that in the tenth plague, G-d visited devastation on the gods of Egypt.

How did He do this by slaying the first-born sons of Egypt? The first-born sons were traditionally the religious leaders of the family. They were the priests. Instead of serving G-d, they had served idols, instead of permitting the Jews to worship G-d, they had enslaved them to serve their idolatrous society.

And so, after demonstrating that the providence of G-d rises from below the earth to the heavens, directing the gaze of Egyptians upward from their provincial affairs, their property, their comfort, their homes, to the heavens, one final plague was unleashed to break their idolatrous society.

Each Egyptian refusal to contemplate the power of G-d, after each increasingly profound plague, was finally punished with the destruction of their gods, who, unlike G-d, were mere objects whose understanding and existence lived only in the priests who worshiped them, the first-born.

The final message of the ten plagues was there was no other G-d, in earth or in heaven.

Parshas Shemos/Vaera - The Birth of a New Religion and the Age of Miracles

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Greenfield) — Sun, 07 Jan 2024 04:45:00 +0000

(You can listen a version of this thought on my new Human Parsha podcast.)

At the beginning of Parshas Vaera, G-d informs Moshe that the revelation of the name 'Hashem' is a unique one that had not been truly revealed to any previous generation including that of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

When Moshe had asked what name of G-d should he tell the Jews sent him, the 'Name' was given for the first time. Without getting too esoteric, what does the revelation of the 'Name' Hashem mean?

The name Hashem until now had been used exclusively by members of Avraham's immediate family. Outsiders however use the name 'Elokim', 'Adon' or other names meaning G-d. Must as in contemporary times a broad range of peoples use a term denoting a single Creator of the universe, but do not necessarily share values or beliefs, so too the people of that time had the concept of a Creator. Indeed, Abraham at one point encounters a 'priest' who serves a High Holy G-d and dedicates a tenth of his possessions to Him.

This general term for the Creator is used almost exclusively by Joseph, rather than by the forefathers, once he descends to Egypt and it gives him some common ground with the Egyptians. Pharaoh decides to appoint Yosef to a top position after asking his advisers whether they can imagine another man in whom the spirt of 'Elokim' is present as it is in the Hebrew slave.

In Shemos, up until the Divine revelation at the thorn bush, the Jews also appear to use Elokim exclusively. This common understanding perhaps induces the midwives to spare the Jewish babies, but prevents none of the other litany of cruelties that Pharaoh and Egypt inflict on them up to and including genocide. A minority of Egyptians may fear G-d, but they remain a minority even once the Ten Plagues arrive.

The widespread adoption of 'Hashem' by the Jews is also a religious division. Rather than following a universal creed, G-d reveals Himself to the Jews as a personal G-d with a specific mission for them. And that mission touches off a newfound hostility that is no longer just ethnic, but also religious.

When Moshe initially approaches Pharaoh, he informs the monarch that Hashem, the G-d of the Jews, sent him. Pharaoh sneers that he knows of no such Hashem and will not release the Jews. Then Moshe describes Him as Elokei HaIvrim, the G-d of the Hebrews, but wins no concessions.

Previously when Sodom and Gomorrah had been facing destruction, Lot had tried to persuade his sons-in-law to leave because Hashem was about to destroy the city, and they viewed him as a jester.

Unlike Elokim, the name Hashem, unknown to most, spurred newfound hostility and disdain.

But the revelation of Hashem marked a number of epochal changes. The march to the Exodus ushers in the age of prophecy and miracles. In the past, most had perceived G-d as a Supreme Being who created the universe and then allowed natural law to predominate. And indeed until now there had been massive catastrophic punishments, but no clear miracles that clearly violated natural law except in a handful of small scale and semi-hidden cases such as Sarah's pregnancy.

Previous angels had appeared in human form, but the thorn bush that Moshe sees has a fiery angel. G-d then gives Moshe a few prearranged miracles to perform that clearly and publicly violate how the world should work, such as turning a staff into a snake, before a series of plagues that shatter the view of the world as a set of predictable events, and then part the sea and later even stop the sun in its tracks.

This was part of the revelation of Hashem. Rather than a supremacy over natural forces, Hashem was revealing Himself as a personal G-d, concerned with man and capable of casually overturning the order that He had created so long ago in order to reveal Himself to the world and to advance His mission.

What began with a burning thorn bush was the birth of a new religion, a separate Jewish religion with its own laws, a separate peoplehood with its own mission and also a new era in which prophecy and miracles would create a direct connection between G-d and man.

Shavuot - Why Don't We Commemorate the Giving of the Torah?

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Greenfield) — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 03:52:00 +0000

The holiday of Shavuot is widely celebrated by Jews, not for its traditional agricultural meaning, but as the day when the Torah was given to the Jews on Mount Sinai.

And yet there is no mention in the Torah of any such thing regarding Shavuot.

Furthermore, the Torah designates no special day or celebration of the giving of the Torah. Mount Sinai does not become a place of any special religious significance and even if Jews were certain where it's located, there is no thought of returning there for a celebration. Likewise, the burial spot of Moshe, we are explicitly told in the Torah, has been hidden away where no one may find it.

Why is there such a seeming avoidance of forming a more direct connection with the place, the time and the man through whom the Torah was given?

Shavuot serves as the other side of a dual holiday, divided by the counting of the Omer with Pesach. The holiday of Passover was enacted to remember the exodus. Jews are commanded to remember the Exodus in great detail at the Pesach seder and also on a daily basis. The Shabbat kiddush, on the evening and the day, offer separate commemorations of G-d's creation of the world and the exodus from Egypt.

It would seem like the most natural thing to include the remembrance of the giving of the Torah alongside the exodus and the creation of the world.

Why do we not do that?

As Jews, we commemorate things that have been completed. G-d created the world and rested. He took the Jews out of Egypt. But the giving of the Torah is incomplete. The giving of the Torah was only the beginning of a journey. The receiving of it, that is the journey itself.

The Torah does not command the Jews to commemorate the giving of the Torah. Only the Jews could commemorate that once they had begun the process of receiving it.

The two Jewish holidays associated with the Torah, Shavuot and Simchat Torah, are the result of innovations by the Jewish people. It would be inappropriate for the Jewish people to add celebrations of the exodus or the creation of the world of their own accord. But, having studied the Torah, it is only proper for the Jews to hold festivals celebrating what was given and what they have received from G-d.

The blessing before food is fairly brief while much longer blessings follow once someone has eaten.

Likewise the true celebration of the Torah can only come when we have become 'satiated' with at least some of it.

The Torah wants us to focus on what we do with it rather than the original moment on Mount Sinai because it is what we do with it, how we bring it into us and let it change us, that matters. It did not take long after the giving of the Torah for the Jews to worship the golden calf. Simply hearing G-d's voice and the commandments, as awesome and incredible as that was, did not make the Jews into who they needed to be. Only the actual laborious process of learning and keeping the Torah could do that.

The giving of the Torah was accompanied by incredible miracles, much like the exodus, but where the exodus from Egypt set us free, the Torah was the beginning of a commitment. And we are not meant to dwell too much on the place or on the man, but on our obligation to keep it.

Pesach is a reminder that G-d redeemed us and runs the world. Shavuot however is our celebration of the work that we have done. In Egypt we were passive, but in learning the Torah we were active. The exodus cannot be repeated, but the receiving of the Torah is an ongoing process. The exodus made us free for all time, even when we are enslaved, but the Torah is perpetually being received and remains incomplete. We strive to work on it, no longer passive, but as partners with the Creator.

Parsha Beha'alotcha - Modesty and the Menorah

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Greenfield) — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 05:40:00 +0000

Parshas Beha'alotcha begins with the command to light the menorah. It ends with us being told that Moshe was the humblest man who ever lived.

What is the connection between the two?

In the Beit Hamikdash, the Holy Temple, the windows were narrow on the inside and widened on the outside because the temple did not need the light of the menorah, the world needed that light.

So too a modest man is narrow on the inside and wide on the outside, making himself small so that his light shines forth. In contrast, an arrogant man is wide on the inside, convinced of his own genius, but narrow on the outside, so that little light from him reaches the rest of the world.

It was Moshe's humility, like the narrow windows of the temple that funnel the light of the Menorah to the world, that made him such an enduring influence. While modern society preaches self-esteem, Moshe's lack of it often caused leadership problems, yet made him shine so brightly that he had to wear a mask to hide his light. The light that shines brightest is not that of charisma or ego, but of faith.

Moshe did not lead because he was a great orator or a charismatic figure, but because of his faith. The same faith that took him from a prince of Egypt to a wanderer, a shepherd and a prophet, required a narrowness of self. Through self-effacement, Moshe brought light to a nation and to the world.

That is also the lesson of the menorah. And of the Jews. Through humility and a seeming diminution of horizons, a fragile lamp and an oppressed people light up the world.

Shabbos HaGadol - The Hearts of the Fathers and the Sons

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Greenfield) — Sun, 02 Apr 2023 05:01:00 +0000

Why is the Sabbath before Pesach known as 'Shabbos HaGadol' or the Great Shabbos?

The simplest answer comes from the reading of the Haftorah, after the Torah reading, which comes from Malachi 3 which concludes with, "Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord." Or, in Hebrew, "HaGadol VeHanora".

What does the reading from Malachi, which involves a reproof of the Jewish people and a promised final redemption have to do with Pesach? But then why does Elijah the Prophet show up at the Seder?

The answer once again is in Malachi.

"I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord, that he may turn the heart of the fathers back through the children, and the heart of the children back through their fathers-lest I come and smite the earth with utter destruction."

There are two times that Elijah is set to appear, the Bris, the circumcision, and the Passover Seder.

What do both of them have in common? They're part of the transmission of the tradition from fathers to sons. The Bris is the physical transmission of the covenant while the Seder is a verbal transmission.

This ties together the role of the Seder, not just as a memorialization of the past, but a call to the future. On Passover, we were again, and on Passover we are destined to be saved again. Elijah's reunification of generations is a prerequisite for a more positive salvation. The Malachi reading begins with a reproof of the Jews who have become cynical, who ask, like the wicked son of the Seder, what is the point of serving G-d?

"It is futile to serve God, and what do we gain from keeping His commandments and for going about in anxious worry because of the Lord of Hosts? And now we praise wicked men. Those who do evil are built up, they challenge G-d, they have, nevertheless, escaped."

This cynicism leads to the other enumerated sins. The people no longer have faith in G-d and do not pay tithes. They practice witchcraft, false oaths and oppress the weak. These are all sins that are closely associated with a disregard and a lack of fear of G-d.

The Jews have lost faith. And they lost that faith because of the generation gap that Elijah is sent to remedy.

The cynicism that leads to a loss of faith comes naturally with life experience. As time passes, disappointments accumulate, idealism no longer seems to pay off and anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that the wicked prosper because they do what they want while everyone else misses out.

When a generation gap emerges, the adults with life experience have become cynical in this fashion while the younger idealistic generation rejects their cynicism and their wisdom and burns down everything that was in pursuit of a new ideal. As that younger generation ages, they in turn become cynical, seeing their peers 'sell out' and the cycle repeats itself.

Malachi is arguably telling us that the chain of transmission, the mesorah, depends on uniting the wisdom of the older generation with the idealism of the younger generation. It is the young who are best able to refresh the inherited ideals with their idealism and the older generation that can feel revived, even in the face of the cynicism of their accumulated life experience, with the idealism of the young.

Working together, the old and the young can restore faith and build a better world, set apart from each other, the old corrupt and the young wreak destruction.

The Seder, when everyone gathers together, is the ideal moment for the revival of faith through a dialogue of generations. It is a time when everyone is meant to listen and to speak, when we can all learn from each other, and the hearts of the fathers and sons can come together again.

Pesach is the ultimate family holiday because redemption requires the unity of Jews as a family.

When the Prophet Elijah comes to see to his cup, late in the seder, it is hoped that this has been accomplished and the pathway to the redemption has been paved by the discussions that have come before leading to a family and a nation unified in its mission by both wisdom and ideals.

Parsha Terumah - The Sacredness of Objects Derive From Our Treatment of their Makers

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Greenfield) — Sun, 26 Feb 2023 04:26:00 +0000

Parshas Terumah begins with a sharp contrast between the building of the Mishkan, the first tabernacle, and the Beit Hamikdash, the Holy Temple. To the Mishkan, donations are solicited from anyone whose heart is moved, while King Solomon relies on draft labor brigades and workers from King Hiram, a foreign monarch, to construct it. And so the First Temple eventually falls and is destroyed.

The Haftorah for the previous parsha, Mishpatim, tells one of the causes. The account in Jeremiah relates how under siege by the Babylonian invaders, the nobles of the kingdom make a covenant to free their Hebrew slaves. Once the siege is lifted however they enslave them once again. The breach of the covenant to free their slaves is one of the causes of the destruction and fall of the kingdom.

Mishpatim begins with the laws of slavery because regulating the rights of even the people at the lowest state, thieves who have been sold into temporary bondage for their crimes, is at the foundation of ethics.

The Mishkan had a special status because its labor was voluntary. The First Temple was built with draft and foreign labor. The Second Temple was built by exiles returning from Babylon, a small number of the passionate 'Zionists' of the era under the leadership of the last of the prophets, built it in shifts, alternating between holding spears and working spades. This period serves as the backdrop for the story of Purim. Then, as now, the Jewish return from exile was contested with the anti-Zionist faction having lobbied Ahasverosh and the Persian Empire to force a halt to the building of the Temple until the triumph of Queen Esther and Mordechai not only saves the Jews from extermination but resumes the rebuilding.

The returning Levites, those old enough to have seen the First Temple as children, weep at how comparatively poor the new temple seems, and yet it becomes the epicenter of a Jewish revival. It is this temple that the Maccabees fight for. The Maccabees however are undermined and destroyed by Antipater, an Arab Roman official, and his son Herod. This foreign Arab dynasty seizes control over Judea.

Herod then insists on reconstructing the Second Temple to make it more grandiose and promote the legitimacy of his dynasty of foreign murderous usurpers. In doing so, he effectively destroys it as well. Before the Romans destroy the Temple using brute force, Herod, an arm of Rome, destroys it by tainting it from within.

The first Mishkan has a special status. It was never destroyed and tradition says that it was instead hidden away. The special purity of it has a number of sources, including the role of Moshe and Aaron, the fact that it was the first house of worship, but also one might say that it was built without force or compulsion, from the joyous free will of the Jews, who for all their flaws, poured their hearts into it.

The sacredness of objects can derive from different sources, but as we see in the case of the Mishkan and the Temples, they derive also from how we treat the people involved in their construction.

The Aron, the Ark of the Covenant, that held the Ten Commandments, which were divided into Bein Adam LaMakom and Bein Adam LaChavero, the commandments between man and G-d, and between man and man, relating to how we treat other people, was meant to be gilded with gold on the outside and the inside. This is seen as a reference to a number of homiletical teachings, including that our exterior personalities should match our internal character, but also perhaps that our internal devotion to G-d should also match our external treatment of other people.

Parsha Bo - The Birth of Judaism

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Greenfield) — Sun, 29 Jan 2023 04:30:00 +0000

Until now, Moshe has mostly served as G-d's messenger to Pharaoh. With Bo, for the first time, Moshe steps into what will become his primary role as G-d's messenger to the Jewish people.

In Parsha Bo, Moshe is given a number of commandments, Rosh Chodesh, the celebration of the new month which makes it possible to celebrate the cycle of holidays, Passover, the commemoration of the coming exodus, the dedication of the first born, in counterpoint to the death of the Egyptian first born, and even a reference to Tefillin.

At the start of Parsha Bo, G-d reveals that everything that has happened was primarily so that, 'Lema'an Tisapher Beoznei Binecho UBen Binecho", so that the Jews would retell the story to their children and their children's children. Pharaoh and the might of Egypt had been mere object lessons for G-d.

The students were the Jews.

In announcing the final plague that will strike down the firstborn, we are told that G-d will execute judgement on all the gods of Egypt.

What does that mean and what does it have to do with the death of the firstborn?

Until now the Jews had operated in a passive role. They sat back and watched G-d do things while nothing was asked of them. Things proceeded as they had throughout human history with G-d intervening to punish the wicked, before everything went back to normal. But the climax of the Exodus was to break that cycle with the birth of Judaism and the Jewish people.

With the passover sacrifice, for the first time the Jews stopped being passive and became active. They brought the sacrifice and they placed the blood on the doorposts. The significance may appear minor when it was actually wholly transformative. By moving from the passive to the active, from helpless victims to men and women risking their lives and upending their normal routines to fulfill G-d's commandments, everything had changed. And thus the gods of Egypt were destroyed.

Much later, the Prophet Elijah will confront the priests and worshipers of Baal in era when idolatry had overtaken the Jewish people. Elijah challenges the priests of Baal to summon fire. And after they exhaust themselves in futile ritual, he calls on G-d and fire consumes the sacrifice, the altar and the water around it. The Jews, who had been uncertain call out, "G-d is the Lord." A cry that we still echo at the climax of the Day of Judgement on Yom Kippur.

The gods of Egypt, like Baal, were mere human inventions. Their existence was limited to the mind of man. G-d can turn rivers to blood or bring down darkness and locusts, but only man can acknowledge G-d, not just temporarily, as Pharaoh occasionally did, but as a lifelong and multi-generational commitment.

Before the Jews actively did anything to worship G-d, the gods of Egypt could not truly be destroyed. When the Jews brought the Korban Pesach, the passover sacrifice, and celebrated G-d, then there was a contest not just between G-d and the Egyptians, but between the Jews and the Egyptians, between Judaism and the pagan idolatry of Egypt. And in that contest, the gods of Egypt fell.

And out of that contest, Judaism was born and G-d became known in the world.

Parsha Vayetze - The Right Time

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Greenfield) — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 04:58:00 +0000

Like Sarah and Rivka, the previous two generations of matriarchs, Rachel also appears unable to have children. While her sister Leah has a brood, Rachel bemoans her fate and demands Yaakov grant her children. Her husband replies harshly that he was not the one at fault or had denied her children.

But was there a reason for Rachel's condition?

If we examine the timeline, a potential answer quickly emerges. One that could have been apparent, but was not at the time.

Yaakov makes an agreement with Lavan, the father of both Rachel and Leah, to work 7 years for Rachel's hand in marriage. Lavan famously cheats Yaakov and substitutes her sister instead. He then offers to let Yaakov also marry Rachel after eight days if he works for another 7 years.

During these 7 years, Leah has seven children. It's an impressive record. During this same period, Rachel is unable to have children.

Finally, when Yosef is born, Yaakov tells Lavan, "And it came to pass, when Rachel had borne Joseph, that Jacob said unto Laban: 'Send me away, that I may go unto mine own place, and to my country."

Is it a coincidence that Yosef is born when those 14 years are up?

When Yaakov married Leah, his 7 years of working for her were free and clear. However Yaakov would only finish working for Rachel in the next 7 years during which she was unable to have children.

Until the very end.

G-d perhaps wanted the children who would form the 12 tribes to be born 'free and clear' without Lavan or anyone else being able to lay a claim to that. The notion may seem absurd to modern sensibilities, but it doesn't take long for Lavan to do just that. And in the final confrontation between the two men, Lavan heatedly declares, 'The daughters are my daughters, and the children are my children, and the flocks are my flocks, and all that thou seest is mine." (Bereishis 31:43)

G-d however had seen to it that none of the children would be born in a way that Lavan could lay any claim to them. Unlike the previous two generations, there would no Yishmael or Esav. All of the children would, despite setbacks, form the Jewish people. None of them would belong to the pagans around them.

This also explains the otherwise confusing and ambiguous process by which Yaakov becomes very wealthy by seemingly seeing to it that Lavan's flocks give birth to those kinds of animals that he chose as his wage. The underlying message is the same. The children and the animals may be born under Lavan's 'roof', on the lands of his family and the authority of his clan, but they will not be his.

G-d had separated out the children of Rachel and Leah, and the animals. Lavan would have no part in it.

When Rivka first set out to marry Yitzchak, the blessings of her family are repeated in the Torah. The Torah never writes out Lavan's blessings. Arami Oved Avi, he had tried and failed to destroy the Jewish people. He would never have his share in them.

Yaakov and Rachel suffered, not knowing why, until the right time had come.

Parsha Toldos - The Answer to a Prayer

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Greenfield) — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 04:42:00 +0000

Parshat Toldos begins with Yitzchak and Rivka, seemingly doomed to replay the tragedy of Avraham and Sarah by being unable to have children. The third pasuk tells us that "Yitzchak entreated G-d for his wife, for she was barren, and G-d accepted his prayer."

While the pasuk makes no mention of Rivka praying, commentaries interpret Le'Nochach, a word in the pasuk, as meaning opposite, suggesting that they were both praying. Rashi comments that G-d accepted Yitzchak's prayer, not Rivka's, because he was the son of a tzaddik and she was the daughter of a wicked man. There are however obvious questions to be raised about this, not least of which is that it would imply that Yitzchak's prayers would be more effective than that of his own father's.

There are a number of other answers as to why G-d might have listened to Yitzchak's prayer, rather than Rivka's. From a halachic perspective, men, not women, are obligated in the biblical command to have children. Alternatively, Yitzchak was praying for his wife, while she was praying for herself, and G-d more readily answers our prayers for others.

But the premise assumes that both Yitzchak and Rivka were praying for the same thing. Were they really?

No sooner does Rivka become pregnant that she experiences the children fighting in the womb and bemoans, "If so, why do I exist?"

As the children grow up, Rivka becomes the one who takes on the task of measuring the children, championing Yaakov, the good son, at the expense of Esav, the bad son. Yitzchak, in contrast, is extremely tolerant, not only of Esav, but also of Yaakov. When his younger son has tricked him into blessing him by pretending to be Esav, Yitzchak might have been expected to curse his son, or at least condemn him, the way that Yaakov would later berate Reuven, Levi and Shimon on his deathbed.

Instead, Yitzchak quickly states, "Let him also be blessed."

Rivka was praying, in what would become the timeless tradition of Jewish women reciting the Vezakeini prayer, for a good son, holy and righteous.

Yitzchak however prayed only for a son.

G-d answered Yitzchak's prayer, not Rivka's.

Rivka initially assumed that G-d had answered her prayer. Faced with the internal discord, she agonized, unable to understand why G-d would have apparently answered her prayer only to deny her what she was truly praying for. And yet G-d, in a crucial way, had answered the prayer. Just not in the way she expected.

Yitzchak's uncritical prayer was answered uncritically. Rivka found that the answer to her more complicated prayer was also more complicated. Both parents had an important role to play. Yitzchak brought children into the world and loved them. Rivka provided the discipline and judgement to choose between good and evil.

Our prayers sometimes can be for basic things. Other times we want things our way.

G-d answers our prayers, or does not, in the way that He knows best.

Pesach - Four Questions and Four Sons

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Greenfield) — Mon, 18 Apr 2022 04:22:00 +0000

Pesach revolves around the number four. From the four expressions of liberation (arba leshonos shel geulah), to the four cups of wine, the four questions and the four sons, we celebrate surrounded by fours.

But is there a connection between the two key educational dialogue elements of the seder: the four sons and the four questions?

The four sons, righteous, wicked, simple, and the one who cannot even ask, serve as a kind of mission statement for the haggadah's approach to a multi-dimensional seder experience that reaches both the ignorant and the wise, who have their own questions.

The four questions or the Ma Nishtana, are the first questions taught to a child, the she'eino yodea lishol or the one who cannot yet ask on his own, to ask about the differences between the night of Pesach and the ordinary night.

It is possible to link the four sons to the four questions and in that way make sense of some of the answers to the four sons which can appear puzzling or abrasive.

Take the wise son who inquires, "What are the testimonials, statutes and laws Hashem our G-d commanded you?" The oddly narrow response involves the ban on eating anything after the Pesach offering, a practice that is commemorated during the post-Temple exile seder with the final eating of the afikoman or the leftover matza.

But let's overlap that with the first question of the Ma Nishtana. "Why is this night of Pesach different from all other nights? On all other nights, we eat chametz or matza, but on this night of pesach, only matza."

Let's get at the essence of the first question which is not at all trivial, but gets at the heart of Judaism.

How can it be that chametz, ordinary bread for example, is permitted and even celebrated the rest of the year, but is the worst possible offense on Pesach?

The answer, on one level, is that nothing may be eaten after the Pesach offering. Time matters in Judaism. So do sequence and context. Judaism is not a series of unrelated commandments or behaviors, but a sequence and an order or seder. Matza may be permitted and commanded before, but not after the Pesach sacrifice, and chametz may be permitted all year round, but not on Pesach.

The essence of the commandment of matza and the ban on chametz is chronological. It forces us into another mode, examining the contrasts between slavery and freedom, and the speed of liberation.

But matza is also a lechem oni, a poor man's bread. It is a reminder that freedom comes with sacrifice, not just the Pesach sacrifice, but personal sacrifice. The exodus forces the Jews to often make do with less, matza instead of bread, limited water, manna instead of the fish and leeks they will later lust for in the desert.

Restricting ourselves to matza, not bread, cakes, or challah, forces us to remember that reality because it is a fundamental part of our religious life. To serve G-d, we have to give up things.

On a deeper level, the first Ma Nishtana question asks, why can't we just enjoy the things we eat, instead of limiting ourselves to matza? Why does life as a Jew sometimes have to be hard?

And the response to the first son is that the sequence matters because we are still working our way to the Pesach sacrifice, the final redemption. And nothing can come after that ultimate triumph. But until then we are limited and we face limits, the work we do and the lives we live can be hard and difficult.

But the conclusion will be glorious.

The second Ma Nishtana question asks why on all nights we eat all sorts of greens, but on Pesach, only marror, the bitter horseradish root. Likewise the wicked son demands, "Mah ha'avdoah hazot lachem" or "What is this service to you." The word avodah can mean service, but also labor and drudgery.

Why, he asks, do you adopt this miserable burden, this harsh life symbolized by eating marror. A life that he implicitly rejects.

The response, "You should blunt his teeth by saying to him: "'It is for the sake of this that Hashem did for me when I left Egypt. For me and not for him. If he was there he would not have been redeemed'" appears abrasive, but also lays out a certain basic communal truth.

Jewish communal suffering led to the redemption. Those Jews who opt out of the community and its challenges also opt out of the redemption.

The wicked son wants an easy life, but it means that he will not share in the triumphs of his former people.

The work of serving G-d that we do is really liberation. While the wicked son's escape appears liberating, but is actually an enslavement. The Jews can become free while being slaves, while the wicked sons think that they are free when they are actually slaves.

Liberation of the spirit consists of that understanding. As Rabbi Moshe Feinstein said to Russian Jews in the Soviet Union, the government does not have the power to exile our souls. Exile is an internal state.

Finally the latter two questions and the latter two sons, simple and ignorant, emphasize the importance of accessibility.

The third Ma Nishtana question inquires about the two dippings. Repetition is the best way to reach the simple child who learns by hearing the same thing time and again.

But it also addresses, in the larger geulah-listic sense, the implicit question of why one exile is followed by another, why there is a repetition of exiles, enslavements, and sufferings.

The answer is that G-d took us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Repetition is force, but also our redemption was not a natural result of our virtue, but Divine intervention. The Jews are not yet where we need to be and repetition is a required consequence of that reality. More growth is needed both for the simple son and for the Jewish people.

Finally, the son who does not know how to ask is paired with the question of why we recline at the seder.

Reclining is seen as an act of royalty, but it is also a leveling impulse. On Pesach, we 'level' ourselves and we are all obligated to ask the Ma Nishtana, to delve into the meaning of Pesach, as the Haggadah states, "even if we were all wise and knowing, and knew all the Torah, it remains a Mitzvah to retell the story of Pesach."

And thus we recline to the lower level of even the least knowledgeable of the sons.

"And you should tell your son on that day, saying 'It is for the sake of this that Hashem did for me when I left Egypt," the final Ma Nishtana answer states.

It is for the sake of the Jewish willingness to educate our children, to patiently teach them and raise them to love and obey G-d that the redemption really happened. It was not a redemption of just individuals, the majority of whom never even made it out of the wanderings in the desert, but of the Jewish people. "Not just our fathers G-d redeemed, but also us," is the message of the Haggadah.

The willingness to begin, to teach the child who does not yet know, is the purpose of the Ma Nishtana and the answer to the final one of the four sons who, like all children born, does not yet know.

But will.

Parsha Bo - How Pharaoh Tried to Stop Pesach

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Greenfield) — Sun, 09 Jan 2022 03:27:00 +0000

As the final plague, the death of the first-born, approaches, Moshe warns Pharaoh that the final plague will kill all the human first-born and "all the first-born of cattle". (Shemos/Exodus 11:5)

The devastating death of the "all the first-born in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first-born of Pharaoh that sit upon his throne, even unto the first-born of the maid-servant that is behind the mill" is obvious.

What exactly does the death of all the first-born of cattle add to this, especially since previous plagues, particularly Dever, a plague that killed the Egyptian cattle, already inflicted serious losses on the animals?

When G-d first warns about the death of the first-born, He does so long before in Shemos 4:22-23 even before Moshe has arrived in Egypt.

"And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh: 'Thus saith the LORD: Israel is My son, My first-born. And I have said unto thee: Let My son go, that he may serve Me; and thou hast refused to let him go. Behold, I will slay thy son, thy first-born.'"

There's no mention of animals. Why then do the first-born of animals suddenly make an appearance?

As the final plagues approach, Pharaoh continues his bargaining strategy. At the beginning of Parshas Bo, when threatened with a plague of locusts, he offers to let the Jewish men, but not the children, go to worship G-d. (Shemos 10).

After the plague of darkness, Pharaoh agrees to let all the Jews go. "Go, serve the LORD; only let your flocks and your herds remain; let your little ones also go with you", only for Moshe to retort, "You too will also give us hand sacrifices and burnt-offerings, that we may sacrifice unto the LORD our God. Our cattle also shall go with us; there shall not a hoof be left behind; for from it we must we take to serve the LORD our God; and we know not with what we must serve the LORD, until we come there."

It's this attempt to hold on to the animals that triggers the final plague, the death of the first-born of both humans and animals.

The final plague, the death of the first-born, encompasses the final two bargaining elements that Pharaoh had sought to impose, the children and the animals.

These two elements, the children and the sacrificial animals, are also the essence of both how the Jews were oppressed in Egypt... and of Pesach/Passover.

The Jews arrive in Egypt to act as Pharaoh's herdsmen. When a future Pharaoh decides to wipe them out he begins killing their children.

Parsha Bo begins with the birth of Judaism as G-d tells Moshe, "Go to Pharaoh; for I have hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I might show these My signs in the midst of them; so that you tell in the ears of thy son, and of thy son's son, what I have wrought upon Egypt, and My signs which I have done among them; that ye may know that I am the LORD.'"

G-d is no longer simply intervening in the matter of the enslaved Jews because he has a covenant with their ancestors or out of a matter of justice, but to build a deeper ongoing relationship with the Jews.

The events transpiring in Egypt are meant to build a larger legacy and to be recalled by their children as an annual event giving rise to the first Jewish holiday, Passover, and the first commandments of Judaism.

The transmission of a relationship with G-d through the children is the essence of Judaism. It is certainly the essence of Passover which to this day recreates the story of Egypt through the recital of the story in the Haggadah at the Seder.

The other core element of Passover, not practiced today due to the lack of the Holy Temple, is the Passover sacrifice.

What's the significance of animal sacrifice, an act that strikes many as barbaric today? Animal husbandry, the core of economic life in the ancient world, represented human labor. The act of animal sacrifice goes back to Kayin and Hevel, the first sons of man, of Adam and Chava,

Hevel or Abel brings "of the firstlings of his flock" to G-d. (Bereishis/Genesis 4:4) as an acknowledgement that the best, the first, of his labor belongs to G-d who enables man to succeed.

Likewise, the birth of a son, Kayin, leads Chava/Eve to proclaim, "I have acquired a man with the help of the LORD."

Children and our economic achievements are the result of a partnership with G-d. By raising children in the way of G-d and by bringing sacrifices, Jews acknowledged that everything we have comes from G-d.

Until the very end, Pharaoh does everything he can to obstruct this basis for religion, fighting against the Jewish determination to educate our children in the way of G-d, as many tyrants would go on to do throughout history, and then to obstruct the animal sacrifices that acknowledge that what we have comes from G-d.

Pharaoh did everything he could to stop Pesach from happening. The holiday is a testament to his failure and the inevitable failure of those tyrants like him who will ultimately fall to the will of G-d.

Parshas Vayishlach - Jacob Wrestles an Angel for his Name

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Greenfield) — Sun, 21 Nov 2021 02:55:00 +0000

One of the most mystifying, perhaps the most mystifying incident, in the Torah comes at the start of Parshas Vayislach.

Yaakov, preparing for a potentially fatal confrontation with his brother and rival Esav, issues a heartfelt plea for salvation to G-d. And, seemingly in response, an angel shows up to fight not Esav, but Yaakov.

The prolonged wrestling match ends with Yaakov (Jacob) limping and the angel beaten to a stalemate.

Yaakov demands a blessing from the angel in exchange for releasing him, and the angel blesses or foretells his new name, not Yaakov but Yisrael (Israel), and yet the new name is hardly used.

What in the world is going on here?

Let's start by considering what a name, especially in the biblical sense, is. It's a description of someone's fundamental quality. Yaakov's name, literally heel, is uniquely derogatory and emerges from his birth clutching at Esav's heel. The new name, Yisrael, is a triumphant warrior name, For You Have Contended With Powers and Men and Triumphed, that is as far away from Yaakov as you could possibly get.

But what does it actually take to change a name?

It does no good to change a name by going to court and filling out some paperwork. Changing your name doesn't change who you are. To change your name, you have to first change yourself.

For Yaakov to earn a name, he had to undergo a particular trial.

Yaakov starts out as Ish Tam Yoishev Oholim, a mild-mannered man who dwells in tents, in contrast to his rough and tumble older brother Esav. He receives multiple blessings, but all of them through subterfuge. He convinces Esav to sell his birthright and then his mother convinces him to impersonate Esav to receive his blessing from his father Yitzchak (Isaac). The second time Yitzchak blesses him, it's under the pretext of going to find a wife with his uncle Lavan, rather than the truth that he's escaping Esav's wrath.

And now, for the first time, when wrestling an angel, Yaakov doesn't trick his way to a blessing, but demands it straightforwardly of the angel. He doesn't pretend to be someone he's not or pretend to be doing something he's not doing, instead he demands it after earning it in a night of combat.

And the blessing he receives is a new name. And a new identity. That of a warrior. A man who can actually have the strength to carry the dominant blessing that had been meant for Esav.

But Yaakov has not truly changed overnight. It's why despite the declaration that his name will no longer be Yaakov, but Yisrael, both names are used and most often he remains Yaakov.

It is some of his sons who will embody the strength and become Bnei Yisrael: the children of Israel.

Instead of responding with imminent miracles to Yaakov's plea, G-d instead dispatches an angel to subject him to a physical trial of combat to show him the hidden potential he has suppressed.

So too the Jewish people in exile, often forced into inferior roles, into living as minorities and practicing subterfuge to survive, as children of Jacob often forget that they are also the children of Israel. And then, as with the rebirth of the State of Israel, they remember that they are capable of being mighty warriors.

The trials that sometimes force them to fight may seem horrible, and the despair at seemingly not having G-d answer a prayer can be dispiriting, but sometimes, like the angel that wrestles with Jacob, the answer is that sometimes the trials are sent by G-d to test us and to force us to remember what it is to be warriors and to fight.

People are fond of quoting Yeshayah 2:4, "and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more", and they are less likely to quote Yoel 4:10 "Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning-hooks into spears; let the weak say: 'I am a mighty warrior.'"

There is a place for both, a time for war and for peace.

This is a lesson that Yaakov struggles to learn with difficulty. The battle with the angel shows his potential, but he still bows to Esav. And in the next crisis, the rape of Dinah, it's his older sons who turn to violence while he remains mute. Their resort to violence becomes endemic and leads to the crisis of Yosef.

The decision, when to choose violence and when to choose negotiation and even appeasement, is a difficult one, and there are no easy answers. No one answer fits every scenario. That too is the lesson.

But it is important to remember that the one blessing that Yaakov earns straightforwardly, that he demands and through which he receives the name Yisrael, comes when he is given no choice but to fight, and the most reluctant of warriors, the original "quiet man", triumphs and earns his name.

We all wrestle our inner demons. For some they're evil inclinations, but for Jews in particular, the test of violence is an incomprehensible moral crisis. Out of this crisis emerges, Israel.

Parsha Miketz - Don't Follow Your Dreams

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Greenfield) — Sun, 20 Dec 2020 03:52:00 +0000

Parshas Miketz begins with a dream. Previously, Vayetze had begun with a dream and Vayeshev had begun and ended with dreams. But there's a substantive difference between the earlier dreams, those of Yaakov, and the later dreams involving Yosef. In Yaakov's dreams, G-d or an angel had explained their meaning or purpose to the patriarch, whereas Yosef' had to explain his own dreams and those of others.

As the embryonic Jewish people moved closer to the point of exile, the connection with G-d appeared to grow tenuous. Until Moshe, Yaakov would be the last Jew whom the Torah describes G-d speaking to. In the Egyptian exile, the Jews were no longer able to hear G-d. Yosef's dreams, filled with abstract symbols, but without words, were the beginning of that exile in more ways than one. The dreams would help bring on a physical exile, but they were also the symbols of a spiritual exile from the close connection of direct conversations and clear messages that Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov had enjoyed with G-d.

When Yosef encounters Pharaoh's two stewards, themselves exiled, in prison, he responds to their dreams by saying, "Are not interpretations for G-d? Relate them to me."

It's a strange declaration, at once humble and yet full of a grand assertion. If G-d knows the meaning of dreams, how does it follow that Yosef can be so privileged as to know their meanings as well?

The brothers had mocked Yosef as the Baal HaHalomot or the Master of Dreams. His destiny and exile had seemingly begun with his own two dreams, in which he sees stalks of wheat and stars bowing. Yet there is a significant difference between these two dreams and the later dreams of Pharaoh and his stewards which may help explain both his title and why he is able to assert his ability to interpret them.

Yosef interprets Pharaoh's dreams and those of the stewards, but despite their obvious meaning, he never interprets his own dreams. It's the brothers and his father who see in them dreams of ambition and glory.

"Are not interpretations for G-d?" Instead of interpreting his own dreams, Yosef left them to G-d.

In the modern culture, we are often told to follow our dreams. When the brothers taunted Yosef as the Master of Dreams, they meant that his mastery was as vaporous as dreams and perhaps that he had been mastered by dreams that had no reality to them. But Yosef never allowed the dreams to master him. He did not interpret his own dreams or allow himself to be ruled by these visions of power and glory.

Yosef truly was the Master of Dreams because he did not follow his dreams. They followed him.

In prison, vastly distant from these visions of power and glory, Yosef did not follow his dreams, he followed his faith. He could interpret the dreams of others because he was not ruled by his own dreams.

When we interact with others, we are often driven by our own agendas. We want things from other people and our time with them is defined by what we want. Yosef never made requests or suggestions that would serve his own agendas until he had interpreted the dreams, of Pharaoh and his stewards.

"Are not interpretations for G-d?" Yosef interpreted the dreams as he believed G-d had intended. He did not allow his dreams to dominate the dreams of others. Instead of following his own dreams, he helped others understand their dreams. And that is what made him so powerful.

Sold into slavery, Yosef climbed the ladder in a society with no social mobility by helping others and refusing to take advantage of them even when, as with Potiphar's wife, he put himself at risk. He went from a lowly slave to the manager to an estate to the viceroy of Egypt by helping those around him. And he did so for the same reason that he interpreted their dreams, because that is what G-d would want.

That is what makes Yosef one of the most selfless figures in the Torah.

We think of the Baal HaHalomot as someone who is driven by dreams, but it is actually the man or woman who masters their dreams and lives a life of meaning and purpose. Yosef could not have survived as a slave if he had spent all his time pursuing fantasies. He saw dreams as forms of meaning, not from his subconscious, but from G-d, and followed a destiny laid out by G-d, by helping others.

Yosef's interpretation of dreams, like his waking labors, were based on paying close attention to other people and to the world around him, and creating a bridge between it and G-d. Cast off into exile, he brought light to wherever he was by seeing that everything around him was illuminated by G-d.

The Chanukah of Chanukah - Why We Only Celebrate the Dedication of a Defiled Temple

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Greenfield) — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 03:53:00 +0000

What is Chanukah specifically?

Many discussions about Chanukah begin with the artificial distinction between the military victory and the miracle of the oil that burned for 8 days. This distinction is wholly artificial because the war had been fought by a priestly family over the desecration of the sacred service and concluded with the purification of the Temple. The military campaign and the reclamation of the Temple are the means and the end.

The miracle of the oil was the achievement of the goal for which the battle had been fought. To separate the two as if they belonged to two different world is like separating the blowing of the shofar at the Western Wall from the Six Day War. Both were miracles, but one was the moral climax of the miracle.

The miracle of the menorah was, in the old military slogan, "why we fight".

And yet Chanukah, the name of the holiday, references neither the battle nor, explicitly, the menorah. Chanukah simply means dedication. The first dedication occurred with the Mishkan, the portable tabernacle, in the desert, with the First Temple, built by Solomon, and the Second Temple, assembled by the returning exiles from Babylon under the leadership of the last of the prophets.

And yet, of all of these, as thrilling and meaningful as they were, the only chanukah, the only dedication that we celebrate for thousands of years, is the one that took place in the defiled, but liberated Temple.

It's puzzling, but not that much.

People who don't know much about Judaism sometimes reduce Jewish holidays to, "They killed us, we won, let's eat". In reality, only 3 holidays, Passover, Purim, and Chanukah, fit this description.

The traditional Jewish division of holidays has been into the biblical holidays, Passover, Sukkot, and Shavuot, which endow the agricultural cycle of planting and harvesting that governed the lives of an agricultural society with symbolic and historical religious meaning by recalling key events in the redemption and the nationalization of the Jewish people, by visiting the Temple on these 'moadim' and, similarly to Shabbat, refraining from physical labor and secular activities.

And then there were the post-biblical commemorations, Purim and Chanukah, which commemorated specific miracles that occurred around the time of the Second Temple, which did not require any trips to the Temple or cessation of physical labor, but an appreciation of the presence of G-d in our lives.

These holidays were not just about the defeat of a genocidal enemy through military prowess, although the Jews fought and won physical battles in both Chanukah and Purim. These were national religious revivals.

Purim begins with a feast of evil, moves to a fast of repentance, and then concludes with a proper feast.

Chanukah also begins with a Jewish people who have become comfortable with a secular society, losing their values, before suddenly coming to a terrible choice between being Jewish and imminent death.

In both Purim and Chanukah, two men, Mordechai and Mattisyahu, stood up with grand gestures of defiance that woke a slumbering nation and forced them to confront the forces that would destroy them.

And to do that, the Jews first had to dedicate, or rather rededicate themselves, to G-d and the Torah.

That is why we celebrate only one chanukah. Every other dedication of temples and tabernacles had begun with a perfect new structure. Chanukah's dedication alone begins with a soiled and defiled Temple, turned over to idolatry, deliberately tainted in every ugly and indecent way.

The Temple that the Maccabees liberate is a reflection of the state of the Jewish people.

The chanukah of Chanukah is the only one we celebrate because it is the only one that remains relevant to us in all these thousands of years. We are not worthy of the other dedications. The sacred buildings that were built are lost to us. But Chanukah reminds us that we can rise from the depths, and with dedication repair our inner selves, our society, and with it, the Temple where we most closely encounter G-d.

The final post-biblical holidays are appropriately enough the holidays of the baalei teshuva, the penitent ones, they are not the stories of the open might of G-d smashing down waves or bringing the commandments of the Torah in fire, but of a lost people who are still protected, unseen by G-d, and who return, no matter how much they have fallen, when they are willing to dedicate themselves to Him.

Chanukah and Purim are holidays of Teshuvah, not, like many of the fast days, through physical penitence, but through the commemorations of a national revival and a shining moment of rejuvenation.

They are not, "They tried to kill us, we won, let's eat." Rather they are, "They tried to kill us, we found G-d and won, let's celebrate."

Let us consider the Al Hanissim prayer: our only formal addition to the daily prayers for Chanukah. After briefly describing the rebellion and the battle, fought by G-d, it turns to the return of the Temple.

"And then Your children came to Your Holy of Holies of Your house, cleansed Your sanctuary, purified Your temple, and lit lights in Your holy courts. And they designated these 8 days of Chanukah to give thanks and to praise Your name."

The reference is to the lights plural. In other descriptions of the Second Temple, we've seen that a multitude of lights lit there would have shone down across Jerusalem filling the city with light.

The emphasis in the prayer is not on the miracle of the oil, which a small number of warrior priests witnessed, but on the celebration of the dedication afterward that the entire city rejoiced in. The conclusion is the plurality of lights lit by all the returning priestly and levitical families in the Temple. A light show that lit up a nation similar to the way that each family spreads the light of their menorah today.

Why indeed does each family light the menorah? We're not high priests. And few of us are even priests. There is no other temple ritual that we so explicitly recreate, almost blasphemously, in our own homes.

And yet each of us lights to rededicate our homes, our families, and our flawed selves, to G-d.

In the moment of the lighting, each of us is a priest, striding through the rubble of a defiled temple, searching out that one pure jug of olive oil, a gift from G-d to a fallen man or woman, and hoping that in this lighting it will burn far beyond its normal capacity within our souls even when Chanukah ends.

In lighting the menorah, we ask G-d for a gift of purity, of purpose and conviction, not to make us over anew, but to empower us to reclaim and purify what has been soiled, and to rededicate ourselves again.

Chanukah, unlike Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashana, does not tell us that we can leave the past behind, and yet it allows us to celebrate, not a new beginning, but the bright start of cleaning up the mess.

It is the holiday of the Baal Teshuvah, of the broken responding to that self-knowledge of brokenness, not with despair, but with dedication and even joy at the Divine inspiration that has kindled their flame.

It is that dedication, that chanukah, the addition of light after light, sweeping back the darkness without and within, that we celebrate. It is a miracle. It is many miracles. But most of all it is the miracle that G-d kindles a light of inspiration and hope even within the defiled temple in Jerusalem or in a Jew.

Parshas Chayei Sarah - The Two Tests of Rivka

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Greenfield) — Sun, 15 Nov 2020 03:16:00 +0000

After the death of Sarah, much of her namesake parsha is concerned with finding a successor matriarch.

The journey of Eliezer, Avraham's servant, to find a wife for Yitzchak (Isaac) is chronicled in detail, and at its center is Eliezer asking G-d for a sign. The sign is that the woman who would be right for Yitzchak and for the next generation of the dynasty begun by Avraham is one who would show kindness by bringing water to a stranger and his camels. And he finds that woman in the form of Rivka or Rebecca.

Kindness and hospitality were certainly key characteristics for Avraham, yet his ultimate crisis and test was having to sacrifice his own son. Rivka's own climactic test was a similar one. After years of being unable to have children, she suddenly had twins, only to be told that one of them was evil.

Like Avraham, his daughter-in-law would have to sacrifice a child.

And while Eliezer might not know what was to come, G-d certainly did. How would a test of kindness prepare her for the great crisis of her life?

There are two types of kind people.

Some are kind by inclination. They are nice people, but lack any real sense of mission. When their values are challenged, they either keep going through the same motions or they fall apart. Kind people who have a sense of mission are not simply nice by nature, but out of conviction. When a challenge arises, they can make the difficult decisions and painful sacrifices that have to be made.

Rivka actually experiences two tests in this parsha.

One is obvious. It's the central moment of the parsha. But the other passes by so quickly that we hardly notice it.

G-d selects Avraham for kindness. But He begins the selection by telling Avraham that he must leave his family and his people to begin a new life. Rivka is asked by Eliezer and her family to make the same choice.

"Will you go with this man?" they ask her.

And she replies that she will.

This is the second test and it's the same one that Avraham passed. Like her future father-in-law, Rivka leaves behind her family and her people to begin a new life. This is also what prepares her for the painful choice that she will have to make between Esav and Yaakov.

Avraham's sense of mission drove him to follow G-d's command to head into a new land. That same sense of mission which allowed him to leave behind his family also, when it came time, enabled him to make the painful choice to banish Ishmael and to sacrifice Yitzchak. That's the sense of mission that allowed Rivka to leave her family, to keep Esav from his father's blessing, and have Yaakov go into exile so that she would never see him again.

Yitzchak, having been sacrificed himself, could not make the hard choice. It fell to Rivka to do it.

As Jews, kindness and hospitality is part of our mission, but so is doing what we need to do to protect our values. These two missions are not contradictory. They are the same mission. The G-d who told us to welcome strangers, also told us to serve Him. That is why we are not meant to fall into the unthinking heresy of Tikkun Olam in which we have no mission other than to be nice to other people.

If Rivka had been merely nice, she would have made a pleasant addition to the household before falling apart at the first real crisis.

As Jews, we must not only be nice, but to be able to make the hard choices that separate a pleasant life from a meaningful one.

Rivka passed both tests and that is what made her fit to become the second matriarch of Israel.

Parshas Noach - The Duality of the Second Father of Mankind

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Greenfield) — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 04:16:00 +0000

Noach, as a figure, comes burdened with ambiguity from the very beginning. Instead of taking the Torah's declaration of his righteousness at face value, they dig into the qualifier of the verse.

"Noach ish tzaddik tamim haya bedorotav", "Noach was a perfectly righteous man in his time" becomes the basis of an argument over whether he was really a righteous man, or only righteous by the standards of his age. Would he have been a better or a worse man in a nobler time, they inquire.

If this seems unfair, Noach is the second father of mankind, and the man who plants a vineyard and gets drunk in front of his sons and grandson. He's a righteous man, but unlike Avraham, seems to have little impact on those around him. And even his grandson turns out to be wicked and ends up cursed by him.

The duality and ambiguity of Noach is there at the beginning. His name, Noach, means rest. His father gave him the name hoping that with his birth, mankind would have rest from the curse of the earth.

And indeed there is rest, but because a flood covers the earth and wipes out all the rest of mankind.

Only after Noach leaves the ark and brings sacrifices, does the meaning of his name emerge when G-d pledges not to curse the earth again because of mankind. It is not because man has proven himself holy, but because, "the inclination of man's heart is evil from his youth".

The first letters of Noach also those of Nechama which can mean consolation or regret. Before the flood, Vayenachem, G-d regrets having created man. Afterward, Noach appears to seek consolation in wine.

Noach's own name, literally rest, can be used to mean respite from foes who are killed. That's the way it is used from time to time, from the prophets to Purim.

All this duality makes Noach a curious and fitting second father to mankind. A man who is both righteous and flawed with the familiar human weaknesses. Noach is not ideal, perhaps, and yet he's able to rise above his flaws through faith.

An ideal man might have been saved from the flood and yet would not have met with G-d's tolerant response that the earth would no longer be cursed because "the inclination of man's heart is evil from his youth".

Noach was not perfect, yet saved mankind despite his imperfections. Despite whatever flaws there might have been in his character, his faith in G-d persisted. He was a perfectly righteous man in an era where people did not aspire to heights, but sank to the lowest depths, not because he never sinned, but because he never stopped resisting the same forces that had dragged down a generation and that, in the aftermath of the apocalypse, threatened his own moral standing.

Gifted with a prophetic name, Noach did indeed win G-d's forbearance by struggling despite his flaws. And so mankind could win some respite and rest, that Noach himself, ironically, could not. Whether he labored to build the ark, to maintain it during the flood, or to rebuild mankind afterward, Noach may have been one of the hardest working men in the bible. And when he did rest, he fell into a scandal.

It was this quality, bringing sacrifices of the very animals he had worked so hard to preserve, the act of faith it implied, that won mankind rest from the curses of the earth. Man might be flawed in character, as Noach shows when, on planting the vineyard he is referred to as Ish HaAdama, a man of the earth, but his struggle and toil need not be external, if it is internal, as it was for the second father of mankind.

Parshas Vaeschan - The Unanswered Prayer and the Unexpected Legacy

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Greenfield) — Tue, 04 Aug 2020 04:13:00 +0000

Prayers rarely go unanswered by G-d.

The five books of the Torah contain two examples of impassioned prayers that G-d does not grant.

The first comes early on when Avraham prays on behalf of Sodom and the second comes near the end when Moshe prays to G-d to be allowed to enter Israel, and is told by that it will not happen.

Both of the prayers of these two great men were not trivial personal requests, rather urgent cries from the heart for what they considered to be their fundamental mission in life. Avraham thought that his mission was reaching the world with the message of G-d, and Moshe thought that his mission was bringing the Jewish people into Israel. Both prayers were not granted because these were not their true missions.

Avraham's true mission, despite his greatest efforts, was not to reach the world, but to bring a nation into the world. He could not save Sodom, but he could teach his son, Yitzchak, to follow in his footsteps.

Moshe's mission was not to bring the Jews into Israel. His mission was instead revealed at the very end of his life. Yet the message of his real mission appears in Vaeschanan, the very same parsha that begins with the rejection of Moshe's unfulfilled prayer, reaches its high point with the repetition of the Ten Commandments. Moshe's mission was not to bring the Jews into Israel, but into the presence of G-d.

Vaeschanan is part of Sefer Devarim, the fifth book of the Torah. And Devarim only exists because of that unfulfilled prayer.

If Moshe had gone into Israel, Devarim would not exist. It was only Moshe's recognition that he would not only die in a short time, but that he would die without being able to bring the Jews into Israel that summons up the mixture of admonishment and blessings, poetry and history that is Devarim.

Moshe is the first prophet who serves the familiar prophetic function of being sent to guide and admonish the Jewish people. Devarim creates the model that is repeated by prophets in Israel.

Even after the Jews are exiled, the prophetic legacy of Moshe endures.

Moshe's mission was not to bring the Jews into Israel, but to bring Devarim, with its prophetic model, and all of the Torah to the Jews. Had G-d granted Moshe's prayer, Devarim would not exist.

And Devarim only comes into existence at the very end when the Torah is unveiled for the first time.

Moshe prepares to face death, and as his farewell to the Jews, the Torah he had been writing is fully revealed. As Devarim is all but complete, Moshe's legacy is complete. While other leaders, princes and prophets, will lead the Jews into Israel, and then into exile, and then back to Israel, Moshe continues to lead the Jews throughout history.

We may not always know what our mission is and what our legacy may be. Sometimes what we think our mission is, turns out not to be our actual mission. And our legacy may turn out to be something else entirely.

Man does his best to define his own mission and legacy, but his perspective is limited. Even the greatest man can pour all his energy and effort into a mission, only for G-d to reveal what his true mission was.

On the brink of death and disappointment, Moshe pours out his heart to his people. And believing that he has failed at his greatest task, he brings it into being. The Torah that is unrolled on the final day of his life, completed by his final effort, his summoning of all his energies to inspire his people, is his legacy.

And on the final day of his life, Moshe realizes that he had not failed at his life's task, he has succeeded at something far greater.