Author: devora

Excerpted from Rabbi Norman Lamm’s Derashot Ledorot: A Commentary for the Ages – Exodus, co-published by OU Press, Maggid Books, and YU Press; edited by Stuart W. Halpern

In Yiddish, the word for “man,” mensch, represents more than a biological species, the Homo sapiens. A mensch is also one who has a mature personality, a fully developed character, a sense of finesse and savoir-faire – one who is courteous, well-mannered, and amply endowed with the qualities of patience and self-restraint. One of the greatest compliments we can pay a person is to say of him that “he is a mensch.” Conversely, to say that “he is not a mensch” is an indictment of him.

Interestingly, the Hebrew word for man, “ish,” implies the same shade of meaning. Thus, when David, on his death-bed, gives Solomon his last instructions (— I Kings 2:2), and tells him “vehazakta vehayita le’ish,” be strong and be an “ish,” he does not mean “be a man” in the usual sense, but rather, be a mensch!

Our Rabbis evidently rated menschlichkeit very high on the list of virtues. Thus, they taught in Ethics of the Fathers (2:6) that “ein boor yerei ĥet,” an empty-headed person cannot be sin-fearing; an “am ha’aretz” or ignoramus cannot be a “hasid” or pious man; the shy person cannot become a “lomed” or student; the quick tempered cannot be a “melamed” or teacher. There is here an ascending scale of values: from the “yerei het” or sin-fearing individual, to the “hasid,” the pious one, to the student, to the teacher. The last, and thus the highest of all, is given as: “bemakom she’ein anashim, hishtadel lihiyot ish” – where there are no menschen, you must try to be an “ish” or mensch. Menschlichkeit, therefore, is higher than sin-fearing, piety, studying, or even teaching Torah!

What is a mensch? A single comprehensive definition is too difficult and too elusive. Let us, rather, list some of the ingredients of menschlichkeit and analyze some of the problems that are, in fact, crucial to the philosophy and religious outlook of the modern Jew.

First, a mensch is one who does not shrink from a difficult task which his conscience requires of him. He does not invent little excuses for his moral laziness. When Moses, as today’s sidra reports (Exodus 2:12), saw a terrible injustice committed by an Egyptian against a Hebrew, “vayifen ko vakhoh vayar ki ein ish,” he looked about him and saw that there was no “ish,” no true mensch, one who would rise to the occasion and rescue the oppressed from his persecutor – therefore, he himself smote the Egyptian. In a place where there were no menschen, Moses was the mensch, the “ish.” Maimonides (Guide for the Perplexed, 3:45) incorporated this teaching into his philosophy of prophecy: Before a man can receive the divine inspiration of nevu’a, he must first show the moral heroism that is reflected in great acts of social justice and humanitarianism.

Yet this is not as simple and clear cut as it may seem. Actually, it requires a wealth of common sense and not-so-common intuitive judgment to be able to walk the tightrope between two extremes – impulsiveness on the one hand, and procrastination on the other.

A child, an immature person, will also respond to a sense of duty – but precipitously, thoughtlessly, and prematurely. He will impatiently leap to conclusions without thinking. As a result, he will one day decide one way, the other day he will take off in a different direction. A mensch, however, is more responsible and more consistent. One commentator (HaKetav VeHaKabbala) sees the root of ish as “yesh” or “yeshiut” – the quality of being substantial, consistent, settled, or lasting. A mensch does not vacillate. His impulsiveness is moderated by yeshiut, by constancy and thoughtfulness.

But there is the other extreme that a mensch must equally avoid. That is the tendency to dawdle endlessly and so never rise to the challenges of life. There are people who are so thoughtful that they can never come to a decision – even when life demands it. The American critic Lionel Trilling speaks of people who are so open-minded that their brains fall out! They always contemplate what is right, expect and hope to do it – but never get around to it. When Moses looked about for an “ish” to take up the cudgels on behalf of the oppressed Jews, he never found any. No doubt there were many who knew what had to be done – but they were busy making up their minds if this was the right time. They probably considered the effects on good Egyptian-Jewish relations. Will it make the Egyptians worse? Was the Egyptian possibly justified in his own mind? There were probably those who shook their heads and said “something ought to be done” – but never did anything, until Moses came along. Th is endless procrastination, this paralysis of will in the face of overriding duty, is incompatible with menschlichkeit.

David says, in Psalms (90:9), “kilinu shanenu kemo hegeh,” “we have spent our years like hegeh.” That last word is usually translated as “a tale that is told,” or “a sigh” – from the word “lehegot,” to speak or utter. But the Gaon of Vilna has a far more acute insight: “hegeh” is related to the phrase “higayon bekhinor,” to play on a harp or lyre. Thus, “we have spent our years tuning up” – always preparing, practicing, expecting, waiting – but never accomplishing. What a tragedy – spending a life tuning up, but never quite producing a single clear note or melody. Some of us suffer from that – and it is a defect in our menschlichkeit. We want to study and use our heads, learn some Torah. So we prepare, inquire about classes, set the alarm, look about for babysitters, buy notebooks – we tune up, but never quite get around to the actual learning. We would like to be as charitable in a significant way as we know we should. So we think and question, discuss it with our accountants, partners, wives, children – and then we discover that life is past – “kilinu shanenu” – and we still have done none of those things we deemed so precious and so wanted to do! “Kemo hegeh” – those who only tune up are not yet menschen. No wonder the ancients said that a man is an “olam katan,” a microcosm or small world. For just as a world has to be delicately balanced,so a mensch must be harmonious and balanced between impulsiveness and procrastination. Then he is an “ish.”

The second ingredient of menschlichkeit is meekness – the awareness of one’s own limitations. No man who thinks he knows everything can be a mensch. Of Moses, we are told (Numbers 12:3), “veha’ish Moshe anav me’od,” “the man Moses was exceedingly meek.” Meekness is what made Moses an “ish,” a mensch.

In a cynical comment, the American humorist Ambrose Bierce (The Devil’s Dictionary) defined “Man” as “an animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.” That, of course, is the definition of man as an animal, and is the very opposite of a mensch. Menschlichkeit is the civility that comes to a man when he realizes how great he can become and ought to become, and how little of that greatness he has achieved. This sense of limitation and inadequacy makes us more tolerant of the failings of others, and endows us with forgiveness and forbearance. The best criterion of a true mensch is one who always has a healthy respect for other human beings – even those who aren’t menschen!

Finally, a mensch is one who has a spiritual dimension to his personality. A man becomes a mensch when he recognizes his obligations to God. On that famous statement that Moses looked about him “vayar ki ein ish,” and he saw that there was no “ish,” the usual interpretation is that there was no one else to be an “ish” and smite the Egyptian. But the Rabbis of the Midrash (Exodus Rabba, Shemot 1:29) offer a more novel insight – the “ish” referred to is the Egyptian himself! “Ra’a she’en toĥelet shel tzaddikim omdot heimenu velo mizaro ad sof kol hadorot” – Moses invoked the divine spirit and looked with deep insight into this Egyptian and perceived that there was no hope that either he or any of his descendants to the end of time would ever be tzaddikim, righteous. Therefore, he felt it proper to slay him for his wickedness. In other words, he saw that the Egyptian was not an “ish.” Menschlichkeit implies at least the possibility of tzidkut, of a spiritual dimension.

For the Jew, this spiritual element is Torah Judaism. For our people, menschlichkeit is inseparable from Yiddishkeit. If there is anything that modern Jews have suffered from, it is the cultural schizophrenia that keeps menschlichkeit – the full, participating, blossoming, worldly personality – apart from Yiddishkeit, the specifically religious element. We have made the tragic error of imagining that you can be a true mensch without being a Jew, or a good Jew without being a mensch.

As a matter of fact, this was the philosophy of the Haskala, the movement of Jewish “Enlightenment” which to such a great extent was responsible for our contemporary assimilation. Yehudah Leib Gordon cried out his famous slogan “heyeh Yehudi bevetekha ve’ish betzetekha,” “be a Jew at home and a mensch outside your home.” The result was that without Yiddishkeit, there was no menschlichkeit – neither at home nor abroad! If you do not have a Jewish office and Jewish vacation and Jewish lecture-hall, in the sense of the spirit of Torah, then you cannot have a Jewish home and you cannot be a full, integrated mensch in any real sense. The true answer to the Haskala’s split personality came from Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch who presented his Torah concept of Yisroel-mensch – the integration of one personality of true Yiddishkeit, the finest of Israel with comprehensive menschlichkeit in the cultural and personal sense.

This indeed was the greatness of Moses, the finest example of a Jewish mensch. He fulfilled the first requirement – he responded to the call of conscience, neither too impetuously nor too tardily, by protecting the Hebrew and slaying the Egyptian. Secondly, he was a man of meekness and fully cognizant of his all too human limitations. And, above all else, he was a spiritual person.

One of the great Psalms (ch. 90) begins, “Tefilla leMoshe ish haElohim, Adonai ma’on ata hayita lanu bedor vador,” “a prayer by Moses, the man of God: My Lord, you were a dwelling place for us from generation to generation.” Moses was an “ish haElohim,” “a man of God,” one who combined menschlichkeit and Göttlichkeit, Godliness – marvelously blended into one personality. This kind of person knows that you can be a full mensch – a political leader, a general, a diplomat, a legislator – and yet the fullness of menschlichkeit comes only when you know that the “ma’on” or dwelling place of your menschlichkeit is God Himself, and that the address of your destiny and residence of your heart and soul is God and His Torah.

It is this luminous personality of Moses, the personification of Jewish menschlichkeit, which remains our undying, inspiring example – “bedor vador,” “from generation to generation.”

Excerpted from Rabbi Shmuel Goldin’s “Unlocking the Torah Text – Bereishit,” co-published by OU Press and Gefen Publishers

Rising to Leadership

Context

A hidden struggle courses beneath the surface of the Yosef story as, unknowingly, each of Yaakov’s sons strives for a prize of overwhelming responsibility and inestimable value.

By the time the narrative reaches its conclusion a fundamental question is answered: Who, from among the sons of Yaakov, will rise to leadership within the Jewish nation?

Three possible candidates emerge from a crowded field, each a complex figure with strong positive credentials.

1. Reuven – firstborn to Yaakov; the leadership role is Reuven’s birthright and, thus, his to lose. He, alone among the brothers, attempts to save Yosef and return him to his father’s home.

2. Yosef – a born leader; Yosef rises to the top of any environment into which he is placed (see Vayeishev 1). He becomes a powerful figure who is able to manipulate circumstances and the behavior of others in order to achieve his goals.

3. Yehuda – powerfully persuasive; Yehuda convinces his brothers to sell Yosef into slavery, rather than allow him to perish in the pit. Yehuda rises to protect his youngest brother, Binyamin, when Binyamin is threatened by Yosef with imprisonment.

When Yaakov blesses his sons from his deathbed in Parshat Vayechi, the patriarch clearly indicates God’s verdict. Yehuda is to be the progenitor of leadership within the people of Israel: “The scepter shall not pass from Yehuda nor legislation from among his descendents until Shilo (the Mashiach) arrives and his will be a gathering of nations.”

Questions

By what criteria is Yehuda selected for leadership over his brothers?

Are there any specific characteristics or qualities that disqualify Reuven and Yosef from this leadership role?

Approaches

-A-

At first glance, Reuven seems to merit the leadership role which, by birthright, is naturally his.

When the brothers openly plot to murder Yosef, Reuven alone rises to his younger brother’s defense. He convinces the others to throw Yosef into a pit rather than kill him directly. The Torah clearly testifies that Reuven intended to later return and “rescue him [Yosef] from their hands, to return him to his father.”

Why, then, is Reuven passed over in favor of Yehuda?

A clue emerges from the message that Yaakov, on his deathbed, delivers to Reuven in Parshat Vayechi: “Unstable as water, you shall not lead…”

A careful review of Reuven’s behavior at critical moments reveals that while Yaakov’s firstborn often has the best of intentions, he “rushes like water,” reacting impetuously, without thought for the ramifications of his actions. Three episodes clearly underscore this point.

1. After the death of Rachel, the Torah states that Reuven has relations with Bilha, his father’s concubine (and the mother of two of Yaakov’s children).

The rabbis debate the actual details of this event.

Some suggest that Reuven felt that Bilha was permitted to him because he viewed her only as his father’s concubine.

The Talmud, however, maintains that Reuven did not actually sleep with Bilha at all. Instead, the rabbis say, Reuven acted to protect the honor of his mother, Leah. After Rachel died, Yaakov established his primary residence in the tent of Bilha, who had been Rachel’s maidservant. Reuven interpreted this act as an affront to his mother. Without his father’s knowledge, he took matters in his own hands and moved his father’s bed to his mother, Leah’s, tent. While Reuven’s motives were understandable, his actions were precipitous and impulsive, earning him the reprimand from his father’s deathbed, in which Yaakov rebukes him for this incident: “Unstable as water, you shall not lead, for you mounted your father’s bed…”

2. At the scene of Yosef’s sale into slavery Reuven does attempt to save his brother. His efforts, however, fall painfully short. Instead of openly challenging his brothers’ horrific plan, Yaakov’s oldest son convinces his siblings that their own design can be more easily achieved by throwing Yosef into a pit. Reuven, however, apparently gives no thought to the dangers potentially lurking in the darkness of that pit, which, according to rabbinic tradition, was actually filled with “snakes and scorpions.”

Reuven then mysteriously disappears from the scene, only to return after Yosef’s sale is complete. Whatever the cause for Reuven’s departure (the rabbis offer numerous suggestions as to why he left), nothing should have been more important than remaining and ensuring his brother’s safety.

The text, in brilliant yet indirect fashion, hints at the incompleteness of Reuven’s attempts to save Yosef by openly stating that Reuven acts “in order to save him [Yosef], to return him to his father.”

The Torah does not generally comment on the intentions of characters in the narrative, but rather, allows people’s actions to speak for them. In this case, however, Reuven’s actions are so inconclusive that we would have no way of knowing that he planned to save his brother. The text must, therefore, openly testify as to Reuven’s good intentions.

3. Years later, the brothers return to Canaan after their journey to Egypt to procure food in the face of famine. Yosef, who is by now the Egyptian viceroy, has imprisoned Shimon and declared that the brothers may not return to Egypt unless they bring their youngest brother, Binyamin, with them.

Reuven attempts to convince his reluctant father to allow Binyamin to make the journey to Egypt by offering the following bargain: “You may slay my two sons if I fail to bring him [Binyamin] back to you. Put him in my care and I will return him to you.”

Yaakov, understandably, remains adamant in his refusal. What grandfather, after all, would trust the judgment of a son who, even in an attempt to do what is right, impulsively offers the lives of his own children as collateral for his success or failure?

While a leader certainly must be able to act decisively at a moment’s notice, he cannot afford to be reckless or blind to the consequences of his actions. Reuven, while well-meaning, is simply too impulsive to inherit the critical mantle of leadership.

-B-

Yosef seems to possess all of the traits necessary for successful leadership. Personally attractive, naturally adept, politically savvy, he rises to the top of each and every environment into which he is placed, often against great odds. By the end of the narrative Yosef is viceroy in Egypt, second-in-command only to Pharaoh and the architect of his family’s survival and descent to Egypt.

Yosef also possesses a deep, abiding faith in God and in Divine Providence. (See Vayeishev 1 for a fuller discussion of Yosef’s leadership skills and personal belief system.)

Why then is Yosef not chosen for leadership within the Jewish nation?

The answer lies, perhaps, in a fundamental flaw in the nature of Yosef’s leadership. Yosef always seems to lead from “without.” There is no group to which he fully belongs: he remains throughout his life the ultimate outsider. Yosef never gains the trust of his brothers, who suspect his intentions until the end. In Egypt, he is regarded with suspicion and is considered a foreigner even after his rise to power (See Vayigash 1, Approaches c). Yosef certainly leads but his leadership is that of a puppeteer, who remains at a distance, manipulating events and people to achieve his ends.

The true Jewish leader emerges from “within” the nation and remains connected always to the people he leads.

Moshe’s journey to prominence begins when he “goes out to his brethren to observe their burdens.” David begins life as a common shepherd and remains, even after ascending to the monarchy, a poet whose songs resonate to the chords of universal personal struggle.

In contrast, Yosef, the ultimate outsider, cannot be chosen for permanent leadership of the Jewish nation.

-C-

From the outset, Yehuda seems an unlikely candidate for lasting leadership.

He is fully implicated by the text in the sale of Yosef and is, in fact, the one who suggests the sale. Immediately after that tragic episode, Yehuda fails to fulfill his responsibilities to his daughter-in-law, Tamar, and only corrects his errors when she openly confronts him.

Closer study, however, reveals two powerful currents coursing through Yehuda’s life and development, as he overcomes his own shortcomings and avoids the mistakes of his other brothers.

1. Yehuda remains one with his brothers. Unlike Yosef, Yehuda rises from within. A persuasive leader at the time of Yosef’s sale into slavery, Yehuda separates temporarily from his brothers only to return to their company. His leadership is cemented when he convinces his father to allow Binyamin’s journey to Egypt and when he rises to argue with Yosef on Binyamin’s behalf.

Immediately before Yehuda’s defense of Binyamin, the text subtly foreshadows Yehuda’s rise to prominence from among his brothers by singling him out with the phrase “and Yehuda and his brothers arrived to Joseph’s house.”

Finally, Yaakov, on his deathbed, acknowledges Yehuda’s journey to popular leadership: “Yehuda – you, your brothers shall acknowledge.”

2. Yehuda learns to take full responsibility for his actions. The incident with Tamar marks the beginning of Yehuda’s journey towards personal responsibility. Confronted with Tamar’s claim that he is the father of her unborn child, Yehuda openly states, “She [Tamar] is right; it [the child] is from me.”

Years later, Yehuda’s successful attempt to convince his father to allow Binyamin to travel to Egypt stands in stark contrast to Reuven’s earlier, clumsy effort (see Approaches A, above). Yehuda declares: “Anochi e’ervenu, I will personally guarantee him; of my own hand you can demand him. If I do not bring him back to you and stand him before you, then I would have sinned to you for all time.”

Finally, Yehuda emerges as the prototype for the process of tshuva (personal repentance and change) when he rises to fight for Binyamin’s safe return. The very individual who suggested the sale of Yosef now stands before Yosef arguing on behalf of their youngest brother!

There are no coincidences in Jewish history. Yehuda’s journey has brought him to this point, recorded at the beginning of Parshat Vayigash. Faced with the same circumstances which previously led to failure, Yehuda courageously rises to leadership as he addresses the past and accepts full responsibility for his brother’s fate.

Yaakov’s deathbed blessing to Yehuda, within which he assigns leadership to Yehuda and his descendents, is specific as to the criteria by which God’s choice is made:

“Yehuda – you your brothers shall acknowledge…your father’s sons will bow down to you.” Yehuda, you have risen from within. You serve as a model to your brothers and have earned, through their acclaim, the mantle of leadership.

“A lion cub is Yehuda; from the prey, my son, you have elevated yourself.” You have moved past your earlier tragic failures, elevating yourself through the full acceptance of personal responsibility for your actions and deeds.

“The scepter shall not depart from Yehuda nor legislation from among his descendents until Shiloh (the Mashiach) arrives and his will be a gathering of nations.” Leadership is yours and will continue, across the ages, among your descendants. Your wrenching personal journey has earned you this honor and responsibility.

Points to Ponder

During his journey towards personal responsibility, Yehuda makes powerful use of one of the most picturesque words in the Hebrew language: “Anochi e’ervenu,” he says, as he convinces his father to allow Binyamin to travel to Egypt, “I will personally guarantee him.”

And, again, as he confronts Yosef concerning the safety of Binyamin, Yehuda declares: “Ki avdecha arav et hana’ar, for your servant took responsibility for the youth.”

The root word arev, which lies at the heart of Yehuda’s statements, literally means mixture and enjoys a wide variety of applications throughout Jewish thought:

1. Erev, evening. Evening is a mixture of day and night.
2. Ta’arovet, a physical mixture. This term is often used in the halachic delineation of permitted and prohibited mixtures of food.
3. Eruv, a legal concept with numerous applications. For example: an eruv chatzeirot allows members of a community to carry on Shabbat from a private to a public area and within a public area. Contrary to popular opinion, the term does not refer to the physical enclosure built around the community (technically that enclosure is known as a mechitza) but to a portion of food which is set aside as communally owned. The eruv thus symbolically joins the community together.
4. Arov, the plague of a mixture of wild beasts. This is one of the plagues that afflicted Egypt.
5. Arev, a guarantor. This is the most important meaning, for it encompasses the obligation to be responsible for another. When Yehuda “guarantees” Binyamin’s safety, he declares his connection to his brother. “We are bound together,” he effectively argues, “ with a tie that cannot be broken.”

Similarly, the rabbinic proclamation “Kol Yisrael areivim zeh ba’zeh,”usually translated to mean “All within Israel are responsible one for the other,” actually means much more. On a deeper level, the phrase indicates that we are inextricably bound to one another, connected heart to heart.

Yehuda introduces the concept of areivut into Jewish history. He rises to leadership when he truly grasps the ties that bind the family of Israel, ties which join us to each other to this day.

Excerpted from Rabbi Norman Lamm’s Derashot Ledorot: A Commentary for the Ages — Genesis, co-published by OU Press, Maggid Books, and Yeshiva University Press; Edited by Stuart W. Halpern

 

A strange ceremony is enacted by Jacob in this sidra. After the unhappy incident of the violation of Dina by Shechem, and the destruction of the city by Dina’s brothers, the sons of Jacob, Jacob calls his family together roundabout him. He scolds his sons for their excessive zeal and impetuousness in raiding Shechem, and they defend their actions. Then he turns to them, and commands them to put away all the “strange gods,” the various idols that they had accumulated as spoils and souvenirs in the course of plundering the city. Put them away, he says, and purify yourselves and change your garments. They then give him all the strange gods they had in their hands and all their earrings (which contained figurines of various idols), “and Jacob hid them under the terebinth which was by Shechem” (Genesis 35:4).

What a dramatic scene that must have been! Jacob forces his family to purge itself of every vestige of idolatry. Here they stand around a muddy pit near a terebinth, or oak tree, near Shechem, and each member of the family tosses into the pit another figurine or idol or piece of sculpture, another token of the evil which had befallen them. And then the patriarch covers all these repulsive objects with earth, and they are forgotten, and the family is purified once again – ready to proceed on their great mission as the teachers of God’s word, and to their destiny as the people of the Lord.

Now imagine if we were to do that, if we were to reenact Jacob’s disposal of the tokens of evil under a terebinth now, in 1962. Imagine if we were all standing around a muddy pit, invited to toss into it all the tokens of what is undesirable, evil, and repulsive in our lives. The imagination is staggered by the implications. The possibilities are almost limitless! What a variety of objects, modern idols, would be thrown into that pit! Each one would be a symbol of another source of unhappiness in our lives. No doubt, someone would throw in a television antenna – symbol of that totalitarian machine which monopolizes the attention of our selves and our children to the exclusion of every form of real edification. Another might throw in a neon light – a token of sham, of the kind of bluster that preys on the gullible. Perhaps somebody would cast in a telephone, the one modern instrument which, above all else, has mechanized lashon hara and made of rekhilut a vocation rather than a mere diversion. Another person might toss in a watch, that little instrument which represents the tyranny of rigid schedules over our lives, preventing us from exercising freedom and spontaneity, and which casts its spell even over prayer, so that we engage in clock-watching during the services. There might come falling in a transistor radio, a symbol of all the ubiquitous noise that afflicts our ears and peace, and disturbs the silence so necessary for the creativity of the mind; the nose cone of a missile, which represents the perversion of values of those who concentrate on the conquest of outer space while so many insurmountable problems distress mankind here on earth; a mimeo stencil, the insignia of the public relations man and his artificial “image making”; a pair of theater stubs, tokens of respectable smut; a driver’s license, the threat of the eventual atrophy of human feet. It requires no great stretch of the imagination to be able to add, here and there, a few status symbols of modern man. Bekhol dor vador, in every generation, people ought to take time out for a reenactment of that ancient scene under the terebinth by the city of Shechem. For our generation, no less and perhaps more than for any other, the reading of this sidra is the challenge to a spiritual housecleaning, to a cleansing of the soul from all the dross that life has accumulated over the years.

However, does this imply a rejection of modernity, a total condemnation of all its concepts as evil and its discoveries as infernal? It would seem so. And yet that is hardly the case.

As a matter of fact, Jacob seems to have been indirectly criticized for not engaging in a more vigorous annihilation of the tokens of evil. You will note that Jacob did not completely destroy these earrings and statuettes. He only buried them under the terebinth. The famed commentator, Nachmanides, protests that Jacob was not following the law strictly. Thus he writes, “All idols and auxiliary objects should not be merely interred, but must be ground and cast to the wind or into the sea.”

The halakha demands complete destruction and not merely burial of idolatrous images. Nachmanides’s criticism seems to be confirmed by the Jerusalem Talmud, where we read that Rabbi Ishmael went to Nablus [which is today the name for Shechem], and noticed some non-Jews bowing to the mountain. Rabbi Ishmael told them, you may not realize it, but you are not really worshiping the mountain but the images that lie buried underneath, as it is written, “And Jacob hid them under the terebinth which was by Shechem.” So the Jerusalem Talmud also implies that Jacob was not sufficiently zealous in destroying the idols his family had gathered from Shechem; he should have ground them to dust and not merely buried them, where they might at some later age again become the objects of veneration by foolish pagans.

What was Jacob’s opinion? And why may we feel sure that, indeed, he was right in what he did? Besides a halakhic justification, which the commentators present, what other, larger vindication of Jacob do we find?

What Jacob rejected was not earrings and sculptures, but the attitude that one brings to them. Had he completely annihilated these objects, he would have demonstrated his feeling that these articles are objectively evil. But when Jacob merely buried them, he showed that it is not they themselves that are evil – they are neutral, meaningless – but the human propensity for idolizing an image, the corrupt mentality of a person who venerates them; that is to be condemned. Of course, the sons of Jacob did not worship these things. The fact, however, that the people of Shechem did was sufficient to warrant their interment. Jacob thus taught his sons, and generations after them, that mute objects, the creations of man’s ingenuity, can become things of exquisite beauty or great ugliness, objects of usefulness or abominations – all depending on whether the mind and heart of the one who uses them is pure or impure.

The Torah itself, in this sidra, indicates clearly though indirectly the approach of Jacob to this problem. Notice that before committing the tokens of idolatry to burial, he commands his family, “Put away the strange gods that are in your midst”; the idols that are perfected by man’s hands are far less pernicious than the potent poison that spews from a perverse spirit, a wicked heart, and a twisted mind. The true culprit, the effective cause of idolatry, is: “the strange gods that are betokhekhem, in your midst.”

And as if to emphasize this, the story is interrupted: after his command to remove the strange gods from their midst, and before his act of burying these gods under the terebinth, Jacob announces to his children that they will all arise and go up to Bethel and there build an altar “to God who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me baderekh, in the way which I went.” Jacob is here explaining his action. What is important is “the way which I went.” The way, the approach, the attitude – that is what is decisive. Whether an engraving on a piece of jewelry is an ornament or an idol depends on the “way” which you adopt. If it is the way of God, then your life is pure and the artifacts are functional; if it is not, then these same artifacts are idolatrous and destructive. “And they gave to Jacob all the strange gods that were in their hands and the rings which were in their ears, and Jacob hid them under the terebinth which is by Shechem.” All Jacob could bury physically were the physical objects – the ornaments “in their hands” and “in their ears” – the inner idolatry, the poisoned attitude, the corrupt approach – that each individual must purge by himself, from “betokhekhem,” “your midst.”

So it is with us. What we must protest is not the inventions of science and technology which have caused us, in so many various ways, unhappiness and even grief. Certainly we ought not to object to the insights and methods of science. Rather, we must fear and beware their misuse by dull hearts and narrow minds. Orthodox Jews sometimes rue and bemoan the advances of technology and yearn for “the good old days”; but that is as irrelevant and silly as the overzealous enthusiast of scientism who naïvely proclaims man’s divinity and his imminent arrival at Utopia because of science. Both these attitudes attribute more power – whether good or bad – to the instruments of science than they deserve. The determination of whether science will lead us to a golden age or to a futureless age depends not upon what man’s mind discovers in Nature, but what Nature will discover when it uncovers man’s heart.

There is no doubt that the same objects which may cause us moral distress and psychological tension can be the agents of moral bliss and psychological relief. The same television screen which distracts a child with trite nonsense, and worse, can become the channel for education, a decent respite for a hardworking person, or a blessing for the shut-in. The watch can become the symbol of an ordered and hence efficient life. The same telephone which can be misused for malicious gossip and idle talk can be used for words of significance and exchanges of meaning. All modern inventions can spare people from a life of grind and allow them the leisure for creative personal activity. Above all else, nuclear power which threatens to destroy the world can also, as we read recently, be used as a new source of power to move mountains and make life more livable for man.

There are those who are amazed there exist such strange beings as religious scientists. They are astounded into disbelief when they hear of the existence and thriving activities of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists. Yet there should be no surprise at all. On the words of Deuteronomy (4:6), that this Torah is our “wisdom and understanding before the eyes of the nations of the world,” the Talmud (Shabbat 75a) comments that this “wisdom” refers to the study of astronomy. So important is this, the Talmud adds, that one who has scientific ability and does not use it for scientific purposes is not a worthy individual.

But what does Jewish excellence in the natural sciences have to do with “before the eyes of the nations”? Rabbi Jonathan of Lunel explains that the Talmud urges Jews to study astronomy in order to show the glory and regularity of God’s creation, and thereby refute the superstitious notions of the pagans for whom the constellations are the signs of fate and destiny. When the Jew engages in astronomy, he discovers the truth, and denies thereby the falsehood of astrology.

So must it be in our day. Today, it is not astrology that is the problem, but a superstition far more pernicious because it sounds more sophisticated: the deification of science, the abandonment of God, the assumption that the world is a meaningless accident and history a cruel joke. When Orthodox Jews excel in science and remain not only confirmed but strengthened in their faith, it is the assertion of wisdom and understanding that issues from Torah; a proclamation that the greater man’s knowledge, the greater his reverence for Almighty God; a declaration that all science – wisdom and understanding – is a hymn of glory to God. When the entire Jewish community lives in and with the modern world, when we do not allow modernity to distract us from divinity, and do not allow our countless gadgets to rule over us, but we remain in control, our personalities uncrushed, our aspirations noble, our goals sacred, and our derekh the way of Torah; then we purge the world and ourselves of the “strange gods” in our midst.

The Torah Jew, therefore, cannot and should not abandon the modern world. He seeks, rather, to master it while avoiding being enslaved by it. Just as Jacob taught by burying rather than destroying the ornaments of Shechem that they are mere tools that can be misused or used depending upon the “way” or attitude you bring to them, so must our approach be to the various inventions of modern science and to all of modern life. We must retain our moral freedom and our spiritual eminence, learning to master the implements devised by technology in order to further humane goals, to advance our spiritual purposes, to glorify our Creator from whom we derived the wisdom, in the first place, to conquer Nature.

It is in this sense that every now and then we ought to reenact the scene of Jacob disposing of the tokens of evil under the terebinth by Shechem. Let us purge ourselves of the strange gods which disturb our inner life. Let us, without seeking to escape from modern life and the responsibilities it places upon us, condemn to the pit of oblivion the various symbols of our moral distress that, because of our wrong attitudes, have been the cause of our ethical failings. Let us, then, rededicate ourselves to the God who answers us in the time of our distress and is with us in the “way” which we go, so that our ways will be blessed and we shall learn to live in the world as free men, created in the image of God, not manipulated by brute, mechanized objects.

For only by being truly the servants of God can we become the masters of our own destiny.

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1.  December 15, 1962.

Excerpted from Rabbi Norman Lamm’s Derashot Ledorot: A Commentary for the Ages – Genesis, co-published by OU Press, Maggid Books, & Yeshiva University Press; Edited by Stuart W. Halpern

 

In one chapter of our sidra, the Torah mentions no less than four times the relationship between Esau and Edom (“Esav hu Edom” – “Esau is Edom”) – either describing their mutual identity, or pointing out that Esau is the ancestor of Edom. The commentators seem not to have noticed this repetition.

Is there any special significance to it? I believe there is, and that it lies in the fact that these references follow the chapter in which God affirms that Jacob’s name shall be changed to “Israel.” In this juxtaposition of Esau = Edom to Jacob = Israel, I believe we find a most important Jewish insight. Esau was born precociously mature: “Full of hair” (Genesis 25:25), and, as Rashi points out, the newborn infant was, in his covering of hair, as mature as a young man. Rashbam indicates that this is the significance of the name Esav (Esau): “adam asuy [from the same root as Esav, meaning, “made” or “done”] venigmar.” He was mature, developed, complete. And what does “Edom” mean? According to the Torah, the name was given to Esau when he approached Jacob, who was preparing a meal of red lentils, and said to him, “Haliteini na min ha’adom ha’adom hazeh,” let me have some of this adom, red, food. The food was processed, cooked, done. Edom thus implies the same idea: completion, maturity, finished development. Therefore the equation of Esau and Edom is symbolic of the static, of one who has arrived, who experiences no development or growth, who has no place further to go.

The exact opposite is true of Jacob. He is born as a straggler: “And afterwards his brother came out” (Genesis 25:26). He follows Esau out of the womb and into life. He hangs on to his brother’s coattails, or, to use the original biblical idiom, his hand holds the akeiv, the heel, of Esau: hence his name Yaakov (Jacob). He is hesitant, diffident, backward. His insecurity and weakness plague him all his life. And therefore he must always struggle. And struggle he does! We read of Jacob’s wrestling with the angel, a crucial incident in his life. As a result of this encounter, his name is changed to “Israel,” as we read: “Ki sarita im elohim ve’im anashim vatukhal,” “Because you fought with angels and men and you prevailed” (Genesis 32:29). Notice that the name Yisrael does not incorporate the word “vatukhal,” the concept of triumph and victory, important as it is, but rather “sarita,” the concept of struggle. The identification of Jacob and Israel symbolizes development, growth, progress, the good fight to grow and transcend oneself.

Hence, the proximity of the two portions (i.e. the identification of Esau with Edom and the renaming of Jacob after his fight with the angel) presents the student of Torah with a study in contrasts between the one brother who arrives on the scene already finished, and leaves it in the same manner, experiencing no change or growth; and the other brother, who begins very low indeed and then, by sheer will, resolve, and determination, struggles to superiority and triumph.

I mention this not only as the explanation of a number of biblical verses, but because it incorporates a major insight of Judaism. Judaism is predicated on man’s self-transformation. The concept of teshuva or repentance does not merely mean to experience regret and mend one’s ways, as much as it implies the concept of spiritual movement, of growing, of changing for the better. Scholars have already pointed out that whereas Judaism emphasizes becoming, the Greek philosophers, from Parmenides to Plato and beyond, have idealized the concept of being, the perfect state in which no change occurs.

In the Jewish tradition, angels are referred to as omdim, as those who stand, or are static; whereas man is called a mehalekh, one who goes and progresses. Thus, in the vision of the prophet Zechariah, God promises Joshua the high priest that if he obeys the will of the Lord, “Venatati lekha mahlekhim bein ha’omdim ha’eleh,” I will give you the capacity for going, for moving, walking, progressing among these (angels) who stay in one place (3:7).

There is an interesting if quaint controversy among great Jewish authorities about the relationship between angels and humans. Maimonides and Ibn Ezra maintain that angels are at a higher level than man, because angels are purely spiritual whereas man is subject to all the weaknesses of the flesh. Sa’adia Gaon maintains, on the contrary, that man is superior because he is possessed of freedom of the will. Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin offers a compromise in an attempt to resolve this controversy. Angels, he maintains, are initially on a higher level than man. But man, if he properly exercises his free will, can grow from a much lower station to a much higher one. By virtue of spiritual struggle he can achieve an eminence that is greater than that of the angels.

This capacity for growth, for emerging from “Jacob” to “Israel,” should be the source of great encouragement for parents. As one who often listens to parents unburden themselves of worries concerning their children, I strongly recommend the biblical figure of Jacob to your attention. Parents sometimes are concerned that children show no motivation, that they seem to be limited in their talents and in their will. Certainly we must do whatever we can to help them. But there is often a danger of over-intervention, with the resultant resistance and conflict that it engenders. But, after having done all we can and should, parents also should have a measure of confidence that as human beings, and especially Jewish human beings, it is possible and even probable that our young people will eventually struggle, transform themselves, and grow. They will reenact the adventure of Jacob-Israel.

Of all the things we must give thanks for in this great country, it is that growth has been characteristic of America as well. It is true that in recent years the counterculture has vigorously objected to this country’s lack of sufficiently rapid growth. Of course, in its violence and its extremism, this counterculture often was destructive rather than constructive. But now that the movement seems to have spent itself, and America is getting back on an even keel, it is well to remember that if we stop growing and changing and moving in the right direction, we will be false to our own heritage.

The same principle reminds us of the Jewish community that we must not be satisfied with what we have. Any organization or institution that refuses to look upon itself critically and to experience change, thereby condemns itself to paralysis, and dooms itself to enshrine its faults and failings as a permanent part of its constitution. The survival of the Jewish community can take place only if there is viability, if there is the capability and the will for institutional change.

Of course, all this is not simple, not effortless, and not painless. Spiritual growth is always accompanied by anguish. That is why the Torah in this portion tells us that Jews are not permitted to eat the gid hanasheh, the thigh-vein or sciatic nerve which is situated on the “hollow of the thigh,” because the angel struck Jacob on the hollow of the thigh in the thigh-vein. In other words, because in their struggle Jacob was wounded by the angel and suffered a dislocated hip, therefore we are not permitted to eat the sciatic nerve of animals.

Now, that sounds more redundant than explanatory. So what if the angel struck Jacob? Is it out of sympathy with Jacob as a victim that we refrain from eating the gid hanasheh? Is it out of a sense of celebration of his triumph?

I believe it is neither. Rather, we are commanded this halakha out of admiration for Jacob’s struggle, because we are proud of his growing pains. It is a commitment to embrace such growing pains for ourselves as we attempt to emulate his adventure of growth from Jacob to Israel. Similarly, the Netziv in his commentary tells us that the gid hanasheh is associated with the hip – it is situated at the top of the organ which moves as man walks. What he means to say, I believe, is that the thigh-vein is related to motion, going, progress, growth. It is a symbol of dynamism and the price one must pay for such struggle. Judaism has taught us through Jacob to be a mehalekh, even if it hurts, unlike Esau.

 

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Nov. 25, 1972

Excerpted from “The Concise Code of Jewish Law – Vol. 2: A Guide to the Observance of Shabbat“ by Rabbi Gersion Appel, co-published by OU Press and Maggid Books

 

2. It is a mitzvah to light many candles in the home in honor of Shabbat. Some are accustomed to light ten candles, others seven candles. One of the most common customs is to light one candle for every member of the family. In any case, you should light no less than two candles*, symbolizing shamor and zachor, the words that the Torah uses to introduce the commandment of Shabbat in the two accounts of the Ten Commandments, respectively. (In Sefer Shemot, the verse says, “Remember—zachor—the Shabbat day to keep it holy” (Shemot 20:8) and in Sefer Devarim, the verse says, “Observe—shamor—the Shabbat day to keep it holy” (Devarim 5:12)**. If necessary, though, one candle suffices. The candles should be of sufficient size so that they will burn at least until after the meal. You should try to obtain fine candles that will give a good light.

Rav Huna said, “One who regularly lights Shabbat candles will merit children who are learned in Torah” (Shabbat 23b). This is hinted to in the verse, “For the commandment (mitzvah) is a candle, and Torah is light” (Mishlei 6:23), that is to say, through the mitzvah of lighting the Shabbat candles will come the light of Torah (Rashi to Shabbat 23b, s.v. banim).

You should give some charity before lighting the candles.***

• * A Woman Who Forgot to Light Shabbat Candles: The custom is that if a woman forgets to light the Shabbat candles, she lights an extra candle every week from then on. If she didn’t light, however, because she was prevented from doing so for some compelling reason, she does not need to light an additional candle. If a woman could not light the candles, but someone else lit candles for her, she likewise does not need to light an additional candle. Our traditional minhagim are to be taken seriously and cherished, as they are passed down from generation to generation. A person should never think that a minhag can be treated lightly, as minhagim form the bedrock of our experience as Jews. This minhag is no exception. Since, however, the purpose of Shabbat candles is to introduce tranquility and shalom bayit into the home, it would be both ironic and wrong to impose the penalty of having to light an extra candle on a woman, as in many cases forgetting to light Shabbat candles is part of a more complex dynamic in the home. In the event that the Shabbat candles were not lit, a family would be best advised to seek the counsel of a rabbi who will sensitively direct them towards the proper conduct in the future.
• ** Number of Shabbat Candles: Seven candles are taken to correspond to the seven days of the week and the seven lights of the Menorah in the Sanctuary, while ten candles would correspond to the Ten Commandments. The prevalent custom is to light two candles and an additional candle for each child in the family. However, the extra candles over and above the two that are traditional in every home do not have to be on the table where the meal is eaten. If you are away from home, the custom is to light only the minimum two candles, regardless of your practice at home.
• *** Prayers at Candle Lighting: Candle lighting is traditionally a time of prayer as well. Many women have the custom to pray for their children and families at this holy time (see Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 75:2)

 

6. The duty to light Shabbat candles applies to men as well as to women,* except that women take precedence with respect to this mitzvah, and when a woman is home, she is accorded the privilege of lighting the Shabbat candles.** The husband may assist in performing the mitzvah by preparing the candles, and by lighting the wicks and then snuffing them out, as this will make them easier to kindle. In the case of a woman who has given birth, although the husband lights the candles at home if the wife is still in the hospital, she may light in her room, where she eats, and make the berachah as well. ***

• * Who is Obligated to Light Candles?: There is often a bit of confusion regarding who is obligated to light Shabbat candles. Casual observation might lead a person to conclude that only married women are obligated to light. This is not so. In order to understand who has to light and when, it might be helpful to organize the halachah into the following levels of obligation: The first level is the formal obligation to light candles with a berachah every week. This level is generally kept by married women only (see following note). Married women light candles with a berachah no matter where they are, and even if many other women are lighting. The second level of obligation is for each individual to ensure that he or she is in a place with light, as everyone is obligated to have lights for the Shabbat meal. The difference between this level and the previous one is that not everyone is actually obligated to light the candles and say the berachah. For example, a student who is away from home is obligated in the mitzvah of Shabbat candles, but he or she fulfills that obligation if someone else is lighting. A yeshiva student thus does not have to light candles in the dining room because, generally, one of the faculty or his wife will light there. If no one else lights, one of the students must light for all. Similarly, if a young woman who lives in her own apartment is a guest for Shabbat, she does not need to light candles, as her hosts will provide the lights on her behalf. However, if she is hosting the meal, she would need to light her own candles, as no one else is going to do so. The third level is to avoid being completely in the dark even if it is not during the meal. This would impact someone who would not ordinarily need to light for any of the reasons found above, yet finds himself or herself sleeping in a room that is pitch black. In that case, there is an obligation to light candles with a berachah. However, if there is a light from the outside which helps the person to see in his or her room, no additional light is needed. In truth, this third level is much less common in our day and age
  with street, hall, and house lights as ubiquitous as they are.
• ** The Custom for Girls to Light Shabbat Candles: It is customary in most communities that a woman begins lighting Shabbat candles on the Shabbat following her wedding. A girl who lives at home is not obliged to light Shabbat candles. However, if she wishes, she may light candles without reciting the berachah, but listen to her mother’s blessing and then say Amen. An unmarried woman, as well as a man, who lives independently or away from home, should light candles. Some, such as the Hasidim of Lubavitch, have adopted the custom that girls from three years of age light candles for Shabbat. This is intended to acquaint them with the mitzvah and to inspire them for its observance. Others, however, particularly Sefardim, do not follow this practice.
• *** Lighting Candles After Childbirth: In the view of some poskim, women should not light the candles on the first Shabbat following childbirth. However, the general custom is for women to light them if they are able.

Excerpted from Rabbi Shmuel Goldin’s ‘Unlocking The Torah Text: An In-Depth Journey Into The Weekly Parsha- Bereishit’, co-published by OU Press and Gefen Publishers

Context

As Yitzchak ages and develops blindness, he arranges to bless his older and favored son, Esav. Rivka, upon overhearing her husband’s plans, instructs her favorite, Yaakov, to masquerade as his older brother in order to receive his father’s blessing.

Yaakov complies with his mother’s instructions and is successful in deceiving his father and obtaining the blessing.

When Esav returns and discovers his brother’s actions, he threatens Yaakov’s life. In response, Rivka instructs Yaakov to return to her homeland, both for his own protection and to find a wife. Yaakov leaves for Padan Aram with his father’s agreement and further blessings.

Questions

A number of difficult and fundamental questions can be raised as we take a new look at this familiar, yet strange, biblical narrative. These questions strike to the very core of the tale and to the basic issues that it raises.

First, and foremost, how do we understand the concept of interpersonal berachot (blessings bestowed by man) within Jewish tradition? What, exactly, is the nature of man’s power to bless? What strength do the blessings that we recite on behalf of others, such as prayers for those who are ill, really have?

Are interpersonal blessings so magical that if they are recited in error they are, nonetheless, effective? Specifically, if Yitzchak bestows a blessing upon Yaakov believing that he is really blessing Esav, does Yaakov nonetheless receive the blessing because he is standing there?

How does God fit into the picture? What is Rivka so terribly frightened of? If Esav had been blessed by his father couldn’t God have countermanded that blessing? Doesn’t God ultimately bless the individual who is most deserving?

Why is the entire struggle for the blessing necessary? Couldn’t Yitzchak have blessed each of his children? Esav’s objection upon discovering Yaakov’s deceit, “Have you only one blessing, my father?” seems to make a great deal of sense.

How could Yitzchak have been so unaware as to believe that Esav, and not Yaakov, should be the heir to the spiritual legacy of the family? [Note: One approach to this question has already been offered (see Toldot 1, Approaches f).]

How are we to approach the issue of means and ends as it applies to Yaakov and Rivka in this narrative? What moral lessons are we meant to learn? How could Rivka instruct her son to deceive his father and how could Yaakov agree? Is there any value to a blessing received through deceit? Does the end justify the means? (These questions will be addressed separately in the next study.)

Approaches

A wide variety of answers are suggested by the rabbis in response to the questions raised above. Listed below are some, although far from all, of their approaches. As will soon become clear, the pieces of the puzzle can be mixed and matched as the rabbinic comments are combined to create a cohesive picture.

A

The power of interpersonal blessing is a God-given gift so fundamental that it is included in the very first instructions given to the first Hebrew. As God commands Avraham to leave his homeland and embark upon his career, God states: “And you will be a blessing.”

The rabbis, in the Midrash, interpret this phrase as follows: “Blessings are given to your hand. Until now, they were in My [God’s] hand. I blessed Adam and Noach. From this time on you will bless whom you wish.”

By granting man the power to bless, God withdraws and deliberately limits his own power. As part of the divine partnership agreement with humanity, God will respect the words spoken by man and reckon with them when he makes his decisions. Man, thus, acquires the power of blessing and prayer.

God grants effectiveness to our prayers, both on behalf of ourselves and for the welfare of others.

In addition to the power of interpersonal blessing and prayer, there is strength in every spoken word. Words make a difference, affecting the
people and the world around us for better and for worse. This strength can be seen when we speak kindly towards others and, conversely, when we attack others with our words, even indirectly. Jewish law, therefore, pays great attention to issues concerning appropriate and inappropriate speech. Speech is the domain in which our humanity is most keenly expressed; God created the world with His word, and we were created in His image, with the power to build or destroy with our words.

If God takes into account the words spoken by every individual, he pays particular attention to the words spoken by the righteous. A blessing granted by Yitzchak to Esav, therefore, would have had some effect; God would have been “forced” to reckon with the words of the righteous patriarch. Similarly, a blessing bestowed by Yitzchak, even unintentionally, upon Yaakov has significance.

B

While Yitzchak could well have blessed each of his children with individual blessings, some authorities suggest that the struggle between Yaakov and Esav takes place over a specific blessing.

The Ramban, for example, maintains that at issue was the blessing concerning the inheritance of the land of Israel and the continuing covenant with God. The Abravanel agrees but adds that the bracha included the mission of imbuing mankind with the belief in one Deity.

The sibling struggle is, therefore, understandable, for this blessing would determine the spiritual heir to the patriarchal legacy.

Another explanation as to why Yitzchak seems to have only one blessing may be rooted in the prophetic vision granted to Rivka during her pregnancy.

“Two nations are in your womb…and the might shall be passed from one to the other…”

The rabbis understand this prophecy to mean that Yaakov and Esav and their descendents can never be equal in strength. When one is ascendant the other will be weak.

Although Yitzchak could have blessed each of his children, the one who received the primary blessing would, by definition, have ruled the other. This knowledge gives rise to the struggle between Yaakov and Esav.

C

An alternative approach to the entire narrative is suggested, with minor differences, by a number of scholars. This approach is based upon evidence within the text that, all along, Yitzchak intended to bestow two separate and very different blessings upon his children: one upon Esav, and one upon Yaakov.

The key to this approach lies at the core of the story, in the blessing that serves as the source of contention. The blessing, ultimately bestowed upon Yaakov disguised as Esav, reads as follows:

Behold the scent of my son is as the scent of a field which God has blessed – And may God give to you of the dew of the heavens and the fat of the land, and abundant grain and wine. Nations will serve you and régimes will bow down to you; those who curse you will be cursed and those who bless you will be blessed.

One can’t help but be disappointed upon reading this text. Is this what the fuss is all about? Strikingly absent in this passage is any spiritual component. The blessing is totally physical in nature. Where is the spiritual heritage that is meant to lie at the center of the patriarchal legacy?

You could easily miss it, but a second blessing is found at the end of the narrative. This blessing is bestowed by Yitzchak upon Yaakov as the latter prepares to leave for Padan Aram. This time, however, Yitzchak knows to
whom he is speaking:

May Keyl Shakkai (the Lord) bless you, make you fruitful and numerous, and may you be a congregation of nations. May He grant you the blessing of Avraham, to you and to your children with you, to inherit the land upon which you have dwelt, which God gave to Avraham.

Here, then, is the missing content – the reference to the spiritual legacy of Avraham. This legacy appears only in the blessing given deliberately by Yitzchak to Yaakov and not in the bracha originally intended for Esav.

The critical differences between the two blessings lead some scholars to maintain that the text clearly reflects Yitzchak’s original intention to bless each of his children differently. Contrary to popular assumption, the patriarch never intended to choose one child at the expense of the other. Instead, he planned to maximize the strengths of each. Esav, whose power lay in the physical world, would be blessed with material bounty, while Yaakov, the mild-mannered student, would be encouraged towards success in the spiritual realm. Some commentaries even suggest that Yitzchak intended that there be an unequal partnership between his two sons.

Esav would rule over Yaakov and provide for his physical needs. In this way, Yaakov would be free to pursue his study of Torah.

At face value, it would seem that Yitzchak, far from showing favoritism, is actually applying proper parenting skills. He recognizes the strengths and weaknesses of each of his children and encourages each child to pursue the lifestyle most appropriate for him.

Rivka, however, knows better. She recognizes the painful truth that Yaakov can neither live in partnership with nor be dependent on the likes of his brother, Esav. She also realizes something much deeper. Yaakov and his descendents will survive and thrive only if her younger son receives both blessings. Yaakov must learn to succeed not only in the tent of study but on the battlefield of life. Rivka, therefore, does the one thing she can do. She pushes Yaakov out of the tent and into the arena of struggle for the physical blessing.

Rivka knows that the third patriarch cannot afford to be an innocent student who avoids the challenges of life. She also recognizes in her younger son hidden abilities of which even he is unaware. Her intuition is proven correct as, from this point on, Yaakov faces challenge after challenge, in the house of Lavan and beyond. When the patriarch successfully rises to meet those challenges, he demonstrates life skills essential not only to his own survival but to the perpetuation of his legacy across the ages.

Once again, the actions of a matriarch, in difficult circumstances at the dawn of our history, lay the groundwork for our nation’s survival and success.

Points to Ponder

1. Our final interpretation of the narrative of Yitzchak’s blessings serves as a challenge to current trends within the Orthodox Jewish community. The proliferation of young men who dedicate their lives solely to the study of Torah, while laudable on one level, is placing a tremendous burden upon family after family, and upon the Jewish community in Israel and throughout the world.

The concept of kollel (an institution of all-day high-level Torah study for the married man) has had a long, proud tradition within Jewish history. Kollel, however, was never meant for the masses. This institution was classically reserved for the select few who could dedicate their lives to such study and who would then give back to the community by serving as rabbis, educators and dayanim (judges).

Judaism places great stress upon an individual’s responsibility to be self-sufficient and not dependent upon parental or communal funds. The rabbis of the Talmud were almost all self-supporting, as were Rashi, the Rambam, the Ramban and countless sages across the pages of our history.

In question, as well, is our place on the world stage. The contributions that we, as a people, have made to countless human endeavors have historically benefited world civilization in immeasurable ways. Who knows how many young men, unsuited to full-day Torah study, pushed into that world by peer and communal pressure, could actually sanctify God’s name in greater fashion through accomplishments in other spheres of human activity? All this could, of course, be done while still setting time aside for regular Torah study.

A reassessment of our priorities, without a dilution of our dedication to Torah study and observance, is in order as we look towards the future. Can this system be self-perpetuating? What will be the fate of the next generation, children of “learners” who will not have wealthy parents to support them?

The time has come to re-examine Rivka’s premise: To survive as a people we must be the beneficiaries of both the physical and the spiritual blessings. We must succeed both in the tent of study and on the battlefield of life.

2. An additional layer to the concept of bracha may be hinted at in our tradition’s only formal blessing recited over a mitzva (commandment) of interpersonal blessings. As the Kohanim (priests) ascend the platform in the synagogue to bless the community they recite the following preliminary bracha: “Blessed art Thou, Lord, our God, Who has sanctified us in the sanctity of Aharon (the brother of Moshe and the first High Priest) and commanded us to bless your people of Israel, with love.”

The last two words of this preliminary blessing are unique. No other blessing over a mitzva concludes with the words “with love.” We do not say “to light the Sabbath candles, with love,” nor “to sound the shofar, with
love.”

This phenomenon can be understood if we view man not only as the conveyor of blessing but as the creator of blessing. The true role of the Kohanim is then reflected in both the Priestly Blessing and the preliminary blessing before it.

The Priestly Blessing culminates with the summoning of the greatest gift God can bestow upon man: shalom, “peace.” Peace may be a divine gift, but it is created in this world, as part of the God-man partnership, through our mortal efforts.

When the Kohanim bless the congregation “with love,” therefore, they are not only bestowing God’s blessing but creating it. The harmony inherent in their actions concretizes God’s gift of peace and roots it in our reality. So, too, every time we recite an interpersonal blessing, underscoring the love and connection between ourselves and those around us, we play a role in bringing the blessing of God’s blessings to this world.

Excerpted from Rabbi Shmuel Goldin’s ‘Unlocking The Torah Text: An In-Depth Journey Into The Weekly Parsha- Bereishit‘, co-published by OU Press and Gefen Publishers

Context

As Avraham’s life draws near its end, he turns to his trusted servant (identified by the rabbis as Eliezer) and instructs him to return to his homeland, Aram Naharaim, in order to find a wife for Yitzchak. He specifies that he does not want Yitzchak to marry a woman from the Canaanite nations that surround him. (Aram Naharaim is generally identified as the area bounded by the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Padan Aram, mentioned in the text as the birthplace of Rivka and the home of her extended family, refers to a specific region within Aram Naharaim.)

Questions

Avraham’s decision seems completely counterintuitive. Why does he send Eliezer back to Aram Naharaim to find a match for Yitzchak? After all, isn’t this the very land that Avraham himself was commanded to leave at the dawn of his career? The patriarch’s own journey was launched when God commanded him to separate himself from his homeland, his birthplace and the home of his father. What possible reason could there now be to return to that land?

Complicating matters is the fact that there would seem to be absolutely no moral difference between the inhabitants of Canaan and the inhabitants of Aram Naharaim. Both locations are populated by idol worshipers.It cannot be said that Avraham does not want his son to intermarry; there are no Hebrews in either location.

Approaches

A

Some classical commentaries suggest that Avraham specifically wanted a wife to be chosen for Yitzchak from his own family.The Midrash Hagadol suggests two reasons for this preference. Firstly, Avraham reasoned to himself, “The people I should first convert to Judaism are the members of my own family.” Secondly, Avraham believed that the members of his family were “nearer to repentance.”

One possible problem with this interpretation lies in the fact that Avraham does not directly refer to his family in his instructions to Eliezer. He simply tells his servant to return to his land and his birthplace.

Eliezer, on the other hand, during his negotiations with Lavan and Bethuel (Rivka’s brother and father), does mention that Avraham wanted him to choose a wife from the patriarch’s own family. The commentaries note that this is one of a number of variations between Avraham’s instructions and Eliezer’s repetition of those instructions. These variations demonstrate Eliezer’s diplomatic skill as he endears himself to Rivka’s family (see Chayei Sara 3, Approaches c).

B

A number of commentaries, among them Rabbeinu Nissim Ben Reuven (the Ran) do suggest a fundamental moral contrast between the inhabitants of Canaan and those of Aram Naharaim. While both cultures were idolatrous, Canaanite society was particularly marked by its evil practices.

Over and over again, the Torah speaks of the abominations perpetrated by the nations of Canaan. Rashi states, “The nations [of Canaan] conquered by the Israelites were more corrupt than any other.”

Forced to choose between two idolatrous societies as the source of a potential mate for his son, Avraham avoids the society marked by immoral behavior.

Given the evil nature of Canaanite society, one might ask why God commanded Avraham to relocate specifically to Canaan. Two answers might be proposed:

1. The land itself embodied a special sanctity in spite of the evil nature of its inhabitants.
2. Avraham was safer in a society that was more clearly evil than in his homeland, where the danger was more subtle and the culture potentially more attractive.

C

Perhaps, however, a totally different explanation for Avraham’s decision to send Eliezer back to Aram Naharaim might be proposed. This approach depends upon seeing Parshat Chayei Sara as a cohesive unit with one over-arching theme that marks the culmination of Avraham’s career.

Parshat Chayei Sara can be neatly divided into two major sections: the purchase of the Cave of Machpeila as a burial site for Sara and the selection of Rivka as Yitzchak’s wife. As we have noted, however (see Chayei Sara 1, Approaches e), beneath the surface of the first section lies an even more important narrative: Avraham’s dramatic negotiation for self-definition as a ger v’toshav, a stranger and a citizen.

We have also discussed how Avraham, through this two-word phrase, not only describes himself but also delineates the place his descendents will take in society throughout the ages. To survive and to succeed the Jew must be both a stranger and a citizen in in any country where he lives, participating in the culture that surrounds him while maintaining his own unique identity.

Having arrived at his own self-definition, perhaps Avraham now looks towards the future and begins to fear: “I have been able to strike the balance necessary for my survival because I began in this land as a stranger. I came from a foreign land, and have always been able to maintain my distance from those within Canaan. Yitzchak, however, is different. My son was born here. He is too close to those around him. He is familiar only with this culture, with this population and with this land. How do I know that he will learn to discern the dangers that surround him? How do I know that he will be able to distance himself from elements of this society counterproductive to his spiritual development? How do I know that he will maintain the appropriate balance and truly be a ger v’toshav?”

Avraham then sets about guaranteeing the continuation of his legacy. He determines that at least one member of the next generation must make the same journey that he made, from Aram Naharaim to Canaan. More important than the physical journey, however, will be the philosophical journey. Yitzchak’s wife will, it is to be hoped, be able to see herself as a ger v’toshav. She will begin with a natural distance from the Canaanites surrounding her. Given her foreign background, she will have a head start in maintaining the perspective needed to discern and confront the dangers around them.

In short, Avraham does have a deep ulterior motive for sending Eliezer back to his birthplace to find a wife for Yitzchak. The patriarch hopes that his son’s wife will ensure the survival of the Jewish people by maintaining the delicate balance of self-definition that he himself has achieved.

D

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that as the story of the second patriarchal generation unfolds, Rivka emerges as the more perceptive parent. She alone sees their two children, Yaakov and Esav, for who they really are, and she alone acts with strength to perpetuate Avraham’s legacy through Yaakov.

E

The next parsha, Toldot, opens the story of Yaakov and Esav by reintroducng their mother, Rivka, to us as “the daughter of Bethuel the Aramite from Padan Aram, the sister of Lavan the Aramite…” This description stands in stark contrast to that of her husband, Yitzchak, about whom the Torah says, “The son of Avraham; Avraham gave birth to Yitzchak.”

Why repeat information that we already know?

The Torah is telling us that Rivka’s background, in contrast to Yitzchak’s, specifically enables her to play the instrumental role within her family, to ensure the survival of our tradition.

Avraham’s genius in orchestrating the selection of Rivka as a wife for Yitzchak guarantees the perpetuation of the patriarch’s legacy to the next generation and beyond.

Excerpted from Rabbi Norman Lamm’s “Derashot Ledorot: A Commentary for the Ages – Genesis” co-published by OU Press and Maggid Publishers

Most people have mixed feelings with regard to that uncommon quality called frankness or candor – and that is as it should be. It is something no doubt to be admired, and all too rare in human relations. And yet it can, in the wrong hands, be misused for the wrong purposes and prove dangerous and disruptive. On the one hand, frankness is based on emet, truth, and our tradition teaches that the very seal and insignia of God is truth (Exodus Rabba 4:3). Frankness is a pre-
requisite for clear and uncomplicated human and social relationships. Candor, while it may momentarily be annoying, ultimately proves to be the best guarantee of honorable living. It engenders a greater degree of truthfulness on the part of others as well. “Frankness,” said Emerson, “invites more frankness.” And, on the other hand, it can be a tool of the smug, self-certain, and even the malicious who tyrannize friend and foe alike by their disarming bluntness which goes by the name of frankness.

Perhaps, then, in order to view the quality of frankness from a greater perspective, we ought to recall the ethics of Judaism as taught by Maimonides, in which he gives us a philosophy of character. In general, Maimonides teaches that we should avoid the extremes of character and keep to the “derekh Hashem,” “the way of God,” which he also calls the “shevil hazahav,” “the golden path” (Hilkhot De’ot 1:7). In other words, one should generally follow the path of moderation, although in certain specific instances one may veer more toward one extreme than the other. So it is with the quality of truth-telling or frankness. The two extremes are, one, absolute candor even at the expense of another person’s happiness, sensitivity, and peace of mind, and two, so much kindness and deference to the feelings of people that the truth is never spoken in its fullness, and untruth begins to prevail. Following “the way of God” as explained by Maimonides, we would say that in general one ought to be moderate in his frankness, tempering his manner of expressing the truth with gentleness and sensitive concern for the feelings of others, but that in certain very special cases one must veer toward one of the extremes – in the case of truthfulness to the extreme of greater veracity, more direct frankness, and forthrightness.

One of those special cases where frankness must prevail even at the expense of temporary unhappiness is hinted at in Parashat Ĥayyei Sara, according to the brilliant interpretation of Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin, the revered teacher at the Yeshiva of Volozhin, widely known by his initials, Netziv.A great tragedy marred the lives of Isaac and Rebecca. The next parasha tells of the painful confusion with regard to the blessings Isaac offered to his twin sons, Jacob and Esau. Apparently, Isaac favored Esau, and Rebecca preferred Jacob. In order to reserve Isaac’s blessing for Jacob and prevent its being wasted on Esau, Rebecca schemes with her son Jacob, persuading him to do something which runs against the whole grain of his character: to deceive his aged, blind father. The scheme is successful, but the end result is one of unrelieved anguish for all principals. Esau is left embittered, and more vagrant than ever. Jacob has soiled his soul and must flee from his brother into a long and bitter exile. Rebecca, the doting mother, is to die before she ever again sees her beloved Jacob. Isaac is confused and bewildered in the deep darkness that surrounds him in his blindness.

And yet, when we study and analyze the sidra carefully, we find that the tragedy is compounded by the fact that it was totally unnecessary. Isaac did not really favor Esau over Jacob. He merely wanted to prevent his total moral collapse. He wanted to salvage whatever shred of decency Esau still retained. He knew full well the difference in the characters of his two children. He, no less than his wife Rebecca, appreciated the saintliness of Jacob and suffered because of the wildness and sensuousness of Esau. He had never intended to give the blessing of Abraham to anyone but Jacob.

Why then the cross-purposes at which Isaac and Rebecca worked? If they were indeed in total agreement, why this deep and cutting tragedy that destroyed the happiness of the second Jewish family in all history? Because, the Netziv answers in his Emek haDavar, Rebecca never learned how to be frank with her own husband. She was possessed of an inner inhibition which, despite her love for him, prevented free and easy communication with him. It was a congenital defect in her character. If only Rebecca had been frank with Isaac, if only she could have overcome her inhibitions and shyness and taken him into her confidence, they would have discovered that they do, after all, agree on fundamentals – and how much heartache would have been avoided!

And the Netziv sees this quality of restraint and suspiciousness in the very first act the Torah records of Rebecca when she first meets her prospective husband. When she is told by Eliezer that Isaac is coming toward them, what does she do? She slips off her camel, and she takes her veil and covers herself. This was not, says the Netziv, so much an act of modesty and shyness as much as a symbol of a lack of frankness, an uncommunicativeness that was to hamper her happiness the rest of her life. In all her dealings with her husband, she was metaphorically to veil her personality. That veiling presaged the lack of frankness, the restraint between the two. The veil became, in the course of years, a wall which grew ever larger and kept them apart and prevented them from sharing their deepest secrets, fears, loves, and aspirations.

Indeed, that is why the Torah tells us of certain domestic and seemingly purely private quarrels between Sara and Abraham, and Jacob and Rachel. One might ask, why reveal for all eternity the domestic spats between couples? Sara laughs when she is told that she would have a child despite her advanced age and she denies it to Abraham. He turns to her in anger and says, “You did so laugh” (Genesis 18:15). Rachel wants children, and keeps urging Jacob for help. Jacob turns to her and seems quite irritated: “Why do you annoy me? Do you think I am God that I can give you children?” (ibid., 30:2).

We can now understand why these incidents are recorded: they are there for contrast. They show us how the other patriarchs and matriarchs exercised complete candor in their private lives. If there must be a slight argument, let there be one, but let husband and wife be perfectly honest with each other. Let there be no distance between them, no dissembling – no outer politeness which bespeaks an inner remoteness. How different was Rebecca from Sara and Rachel. There was so little frankness in Rebecca’s relations with Isaac, so little straightforwardness – and therefore, so much agony, so much unnecessary pain and frustration.

Indeed, it would seem as if Eliezer, Abraham’s servant whom he had sent to fetch a wife for his son Isaac, recognized this at the very outset. Charged with this grave and significant mission of looking for a wife for Isaac, a worthy mother of the Jewish people, Eliezer feels himself diffident and concerned. He prays for divine assistance, and twice he singles out one element above all others: ĥesed – love, kindness. “May God show my master Abraham ĥesed, may He grant that his son be blessed with a wife whose greatest virtue would be kindness, love, sensitive understanding, self-sacrifice” (see Genesis 24).

If I can find that kind of wife, Eliezer thinks to himself, who will bring ĥesed to her new home, then I will consider my mission successfully accomplished. And yet, after he has met young Rebecca, after he has satisfied himself that this is the right woman for his master’s son, he offers a prayer of thanksgiving in which he surprisingly adds another quality: “Blessed is the Lord God of my master Abraham who has not forsaken ĥasdo, His ĥesed (mercy), and amito, His emet (truth), from my master.” If we read between the lines we discover that Eliezer is quite satisfied that this young woman will bring ĥesed to her home. She will be a kind, devoted, loving wife. But what suddenly begins to disturb his innermost thoughts, perhaps only unconsciously, is that while there will be enough ĥesed, there will be a lack of emet or truthfulness in the sense of candor. There may not be enough frankness because she would be too kind, too fearful, too gentle to speak openly and lucidly with her own husband. How wise was that old and loyal slave of Abraham! Thank you, God, for the ĥesed; now help us with a little more emet.

Domestic life, then, is one of those areas where we ought to leave the exact path of moderation and incline toward one of the extremes, that of greater openness – greater frankness and honesty even at the expense of comfort and unperturbed peace of mind. Even to this day, before the ĥuppa we perform the badeken, or veiling of the bride, recalling the veiling of Rebecca. Yet, as if to emphasize that we intend thereby only the idea of modesty and not that of inhibition, we read the ketuba, in which we include the promise of the husband that he will act toward his wife in the manner of Jewish husbands, who work for, love, and support their wives, and then the key word: bekushta, in truth. Kushta or emet – truth – should be the dominant mood that prevails in the home. Without it, without full and free frankness, husband and wife cannot act in concert with regard to the great issues in life, especially with regard to the greatest gift entrusted to them: their children.

And yet, while frankness is so very important in domestic relations, and while it is a wonderful and indispensable personal quality in all human relations, there is no question but that frankness can be overdone. Truth has the greatest claims on us; but its claims are not absolute. That is why the Talmud specifically permits the talmid ĥakham or scholar to modify the truth in three instances, where complete candor would result in needless embarrassment. Not to tell a lie is a great virtue, but compulsively to tell all, to reveal all your innermost feelings without regard for others, is itself an unethical quality. When Abraham walked with Isaac to perform the Akeida, Isaac asked his father, “I see the fire and the wood but where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” Imagine if Abraham had exercised absolute frankness, unrestrained candor. He would have said: “Sorry son, but it is you I shall have to slaughter upon the altar.” It would have been inhumanly cruel. That is why Abraham preferred to dodge the question with the reply, “God will take care of that.” Or imagine if a physician who had just discovered that his patient is suffering from a terrible and incurable disease were to turn to him and, without any attempt to cushion the news, inform him bluntly of his imminent death. This kind of frankness is subhuman. It is living on the extreme edge of character, against which Maimonides counseled. That is why the halakha says 3 that if a person does not know his relative has died, and you do know it, and he will not learn of it during the next thirty days if you keep silent, then you must keep the information within and spare him the bad news.

Excessive frankness is, thus, a fault; a vice and not a virtue. When a friend begins a conversation with the words, “I want to be brutally frank with you,” you may be sure that he intends brutality more than frankness. A whimsical poet once wrote, “of all plagues, good Heaven, Thy wrath can send, save, save, O save me from the Candid Friend.”

Emet, then, is a virtue, if tempered with graciousness. Emet is important enough to be the connecting link between the Shema and the Amida. Yet we must remember that this emet is not mentioned alone. Along with it we enumerate a whole list of qualities which tend to make truth more palatable, which moderate frankness and make it human. Emet must also be yatziv venakhon vekayam veyashar, proper and straight; it must be ne’eman ve’ahuv veĥaviv veneĥmad vena’im, loyally and pleasantly and attractively presented; even if it is nora va’adir, an awesome and powerful truth, still it must be metukan umekubal, prepared for and acceptable to human sensitivity, and above all, vetov veyafeh, expressed in a manner that is good and beautiful. Frankness, yes; but mentschlich-keit as well. Emet – but up to and including tov veyafeh.

Only then can we be sure that hadavar hazeh aleinu le’olam va’ed, that this truth will remain with us forever.

That is why the halakha maintained that the law of reproaching the sinner (Leviticus 19:17) must be executed with a great deal of delicacy and attention to individual feelings. There is, in Judaism, an ethic of criticism. A frank reproof may be in itself unavoidably painful, but one should minimize the anguish and the guilt and the feelings of inferiority and worthlessness that may needlessly result from it.

Too much frankness – candor with cruelty – is one of the causes of the lapse from religious faith as well. Sa’adia Gaon, in the introduction to his major work, Emunot veDe’ot, lists eight causes of heresy, of skepticism. One of them is: ha’emet hamara, the bitter truth. Truth is often difficult to face, bitter to taste, and people may prefer to flee the unpleasant truth and satiate themselves with sweet vagaries of falsehood. I believe that in our day an even more frequent cause of the disdain some people feel for Judaism is that the truth, Torah, is presented as something bitter and terrible. When, instead of teaching Torah as an ennobling and uplifting doctrine, we force it down the throats of children as something dreadfully boring and meaninglessly restrictive; if it is advocated to adults as something dogmatic and irrelevant, if it is supported not by explanation but coercion, not by an appeal to conscience but by boycotts and smear-literature and stonings, then the emet becomes so bitter as to alienate large sections of our people from Torah. Torah is “sweeter than honey”; it is a crime to present it as dipped in gall. Frankness should not be confused with foolishness, and candor should not be confounded with crude, cruel coarseness.

Frankness, then, is a great virtue. In all of life, but especially in domestic life, is it an absolutely indispensable ingredient of happiness. Because she lacked it, because her personality and innermost heart was veiled, Rebecca’s life was filled with misery. Yet, frankness must be attended by the grace of consideration, delicacy, and sensitivity.

Every morning, we begin the day with the following statement which sums up what we have been saying: “Le’olam yehei adam yerei shamayim beseter uvegalui,” one should always be God fearing, both publicly and privately; “umodeh al ha’emet,” let him always recognize and acknowledge the truth. But once he has acknowledged the truth, once he has learned it, it is always important not to blurt it out unthinkingly. For, insofar as speaking out the whole truth, let him be vedover emet bilvavo, telling all the truth only in his heart. When it comes to telling all that one considers to be the truth, exactly as one sees it and believes it – in all candor and frankness – one must also be judicious, and consider the secret fears and vanities of his fellows, their sensitivities and idiosyncracies. Complete and uninhibited frankness – only bilvavo, in one’s own heart. Otherwise, candor must be wedded to considerateness, ĥasdo and amito, as Eliezer prayed, or emet and yatziv through tov veyafeh, as is our own devoted prayer every day all year long.

For this indeed is, as Maimonides called it, the derekh Hashem, the way of the Lord. And it is this way which has been bequeathed to us by our patriarch Abraham and which we were commanded to teach our children (Genesis 18:19): “For I have known him, to the end that he may command his children and his household after him, that they may keep derekh Hashem, the way of the Lord” – for in this way will righteousness and justice be achieved.

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1. November 24, 1962.