Category: Excerpts

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

 

There is an old proverb, in the finest and juiciest vernacular, which expresses a great and unfortunate truth – “As the Gentile goes, so goes the Jew.” This pointed and biting comment on the Jew in exile is amply attested to by our history. The Canaanites worshipped idols – and later the Israelites did. In the middle ages, the Christians developed ascetic sects – and then some Jews propounded a form of asceticism which smacked of Christianity. The Poles and Cossacks wore a certain type of clothing, and then the Jews adopted and sanctified it and continued to wear it – even long after it had passed out of style. Whether culturally or sociologically or religiously, the Jew has often fallen prey to this form of mimicry which calls for adopting and adapting the least attractive forms and features of other peoples.

Our Sages, in the beautiful homilies they usually employ, underscore this point. In this week’s biblical portion we read of the twelve meraglim (spies) who were sent to the Promised Land by Moses. Their mission was clear and to the point. They were to spy out the land and report their findings to Moses and the people. Two of these special investigators, Kaleb and Joshua, were profoundly impressed by the beauty of the land, its great possibilities and the tremendous potentials of the Israelites in developing and thriving in that country. The other ten spies, however, did not take such a sanguine approach. They were cowed by some giants they had encountered. They brought back reports which sound like a biblical version of Jack and the Beanstalk. Disconcerted, discouraged, and disheartened, they submitted a gloomy and pessimistic report. Now pessimism is a highly contagious disease, and soon they infected most of their fellow Jews. The results were tragic and the wrath of God was incurred. But what caused this state of affairs? The meraglim must have undergone some special experience which contributed to this campaign of fear and hysteria which they engendered. The Rabbis (as cited by the Ba’al HaTurim on Numbers 13:33) supply the “missing link” in the biblical narrative. One giant, they relate, ate a pomegranate and then threw away the shell. And then the meraglim climbed into that shell to seek shelter in it.

What our Sages want to indicate with this story is that the meraglim were people who had no self-respect. They were “golus Jews” or “shtadlanim” even before the Jews settled in Israel. Some Jews, they mean to tell us, will accept even a hollow shell, as long as it was once used by a non-Jew. They are willing to accept it even after it has been emptied of its life-giving pulp and after it has been discarded. Indeed, “as the Gentile goes, so goes the Jew.” Twelve staunch princes of their people seeking shelter in a second-hand pomegranate shell! What a shame and disgrace; what a notorious self-debasement! And the Bible itself does not fail to predict the results of an attitude of this sort. By their own testimony, the meraglim indict themselves when they say, “And we were in our own eyes as grasshoppers, and so we were in their eyes” (Numbers 13:33). Certainly! For if a man thinks of himself as no more than an insignificant insect, it is the inviolable law of nature that his fellows think of him as being no more than a mere grasshopper. If a man is willing to cringe in the pomegranate shells thrown to him, then thrown to him they will indeed be.

That lesson of self-respect, of not accepting the shells of strange ideologies, of not dancing to someone else’s tune, is something which must be impressed upon us with all firmness. A glaring example of that lack of self-respect we Jews display on occasion happened some short while ago when a Jewish mayor of a Jewish city in the Jewish state visited this city. The bus driver of that mayor’s city demanded of him, legitimately, that they be granted their one day off on Shabbat. The mayor of Haifa agreed that they deserve a one-day-a-week respite – but not on Shabbat! Any day, but not Shabbat! Here is a man who has done his utmost to keep the streets of his city clean and the avenues of his soul muddy. And leaving aside the fact that the voices raised in protest were few and far between, the committee selected to lay out the welcoming mat to this mayor, saw fit to do him honor with a non-kosher reception. Again the protests were feeble when a storm should have been raised and when every pulpit in the country should have thundered against this unmitigated chutzpah and brazen effrontery and presumptuousness.

Why was there no open and clear repudiation of this sort of arrogant audacity? Because, I firmly believe, we had buried our heads in the empty shell of nationalism thrown to us by others. Nationalism can be Jewish too. But only when it is vested with the holiness and sanc­tity and spirit which is typical of our people. Nationalism without these elements – secular nationalism – is only a hollow shell of an idea which was already out of vogue and being discarded by others when we picked it up. The real lovers of Zion were those who did protest this travesty. The others were, and are, not. How can we expect the respect of others for our people and our religion, if we do not manifest any respect for them?

One can cite example after example of Jews, especially American Jews, indulging in sycophantic mimicry and imitation of everything which tastes of non-Jewish sophistication. This month of June is par­ticularly appropriate for mention of some of the more flagrant examples of Jews adopting Christological ceremonies and features and integrating them in the marriage ceremony. The notorious “double-ring” cer­emony, for one, is a Gentile ritual which seems to have some fascination for some Jews. Or take some modern authors – and here I have in mind one of the finest books on Judaism expounded in modern terms ever to appear – who mar otherwise excellent remarks by constant and consistent reference to a “Judeo-Christian” tradition. Here too one detects an attempt, however unconscious, to cringe and beg acceptance from the non-Jew by hiding in the discarded shells of their pomegranates.

One wonders what happened to our Jewish pride and self-respect. We appeal not for vanity, but for self-respect; not for the negation of others, but for the affirmation of ourselves – for the free expression of our desire to pick our own fruit and not grovel in the waste baskets of others for mere shells long discarded. When that day comes, Israel will be ours indeed in the fuller, more meaningful sense. Then we will have gained more than a land – we will have won back ourselves.

Excerpted from Rabbi Norman Lamm’s Derashot Ledorot: A Commentary for the Ages — Numbers 

Our sidra this morning introduces us, rather casually and incidentally, to one of the most important and highly celebrated virtues in the arsenal of religion – that of anivut. We read in today’s portion, “And the man Moses was the most humble (anav me’od), above all the men that were upon the face of the earth” (Numbers 12:3). Whatever may be the particular translation of the Hebrew word anav, the idea that is usually imparted is that anivut is humility, a feeling by the individual that he lacks inner worth, an appreciation that he amounts to very little. Indeed, the author of Mesilat Yesharim, one of the most renowned works on Jewish ethics in all our literature, identifies the quality of anivut with shiflut – the feeling of inner lowliness and inferiority. According to this definition, then, the Torah wants to teach each of us to see ourselves in a broader perspective, to recognize that all achievements are very trivial, attainments mere boastfulness, prestige a silly exaggeration. If Moses was an anav, if he was humble and able to deprecate himself, how much more so we lesser mortals should be humble.

However, can this be the real definition of this widely heralded quality of anivut?

We know of Moses as the adon hanevi’im, the chief of all the prophets of all times, the man who spoke with God “face to face” (Exodus 33:11). Do the words, “And the man Moses was the most humble” mean that Moses himself did not realize this? Does the anivut of Moses imply that he had a blind spot, that he failed to recognize what any school child knows? Does a Caruso2 have to consider himself nothing more than a choir boy, and an Einstein merely an advanced bookkeeper, in order to qualify for anivut? In order to be an anav, must one be either untruthful or genuinely inferior?

To a very great extent, modern psychology is concerned with the problem of inferiority. Deep down, people usually have a most unflattering appraisal of themselves. Many are the problems which bring them to psychologists and psychiatrists; yet all so often the underlying issue is the lack of self-worth. Are we, therefore, to accept the Jewish ethical prescription of anivut as an invitation to acquire an inferiority complex?

In addition, the definition of anivut as self-deprecation and humility does not fit into the context of today’s sidra. The identification by the Torah of Moses as an anav is given to us as part of the story in which we learn of Aaron and Miriam, the brother and sister of Moses, speaking ill of Moses behind his back. They criticize him harshly because of some domestic conduct in his personal life. They are wrong, and they are punished by the Almighty. But what has all this to do with the humility of Moses? The substance of their criticism, namely, the domestic relations of Moses, is as unrelated to Moses’ humility as it is to his artistic talents or his leadership ability.

Furthermore, the Talmud relates an exchange that is all but meaningless if we assume that anivut means humility. The Talmud (Sota 49a) tells us that when Rabbi Judah the Prince died the quality of anivut disappeared with him. When this was stated, the famous Rabbi Joseph disagreed. He said, “How can you say that when Rabbi Judah died anivut vanished? Do you not know that I am still here?” In other words – I am an anav!

Now, if anivut really means humility, does this make sense? Can one boast of his humility and still remain humble? Is it not of the essence of humility that one should consider that he possesses this virtue in himself?

It is for these reasons, and several more, that the famous head of the Yeshiva of Volozhin, popularly known as the Netziv, offers us another definition of anivut (in his HaAmek Davar) which, I believe, is the correct one. I would say that the definition the Netziv offers means, in English, not humility, but meekness. It refers not to self-deprecation but self-restraint. It involves not an untruthful lack of appreciation of one’s self and one’s attainments, but rather a lack of arrogance and a lack of insistence upon kavod, honor. To be an anav means to recognize your true worth, but not to impose the consequences upon your friends and neighbors. It means to appreciate your own talents, neither over-emphasizing nor under-selling them, but at the same time refraining from making others aware of your splendid virtues at all times. Anivut means not to demand that people bow and scrape before you because of your talents, abilities, and achievements. Anivut means to recognize your gifts as just that – gifts granted to you by a merciful God, and which possibly you did not deserve. Anivut means not to assume that because you have more competence or greater endowments than others that you thereby become more precious an individual and human being. Anivut means a soft answer to a harsh challenge, silence in the face of abuse, graciousness when receiving honor, dignity in response to humiliation, restraint in the presence of provocation, forbearance and a quiet calm when confronted with calumny and carping criticism.

With this new definition by the Netziv, the statement of Rabbi Joseph becomes comprehensible. When he was told that with the death of Rabbi Judah the Prince there was no more meekness left in the world, he replied with remarkable candor and truthfulness: You must be mistaken, because I, too, am meek. There is no boastfulness here – simply a fact of life. Some people are meek, some are not. If a man says, “I am humble,” then obviously he is not humble; but if a man says, “I am meek,” he may very well be just that. In fact, the Talmud tells us that Rabbi Joseph was at least the equal in scholarship of his colleague, Rabba, but that when the question arose who would head the great Academy in Babylon, Rabbi Joseph deferred to Rabba. And furthermore, all the years that Rabba was chief of the Academy, Rabbi Joseph conducted himself in utter simplicity, to the point where he did all his household duties himself and did not invite any artisan or laborer, physician or barber, to come to his house. He refused to allow himself the least convenience which might make it appear as if he were usurping the dignity of the office and the station occupied by his colleague Rabba. This is, indeed, the quality of meekness – of anivut.

And this meekness was the outstanding characteristic of Moses as revealed in the context of the story related in today’s sidra. Here were Aaron and Miriam, both by all means lesser individuals than Moses, who derived so much of their own greatness from their brother, and yet they were ungrateful and captious and meddled in Moses’ personal life. A normal human being, even a very ethical one, would have responded sharply and quickly. He would have confronted them with their libelous statement, or snapped some sharp rejoinder to them, or at the very least cast upon them a glance of annoyance and irritation. But, “The man Moses was the most meek, more so than any man on the face of the earth.” Although aware of his spiritual achievements, of his role as leader of his people, even of his historical significance for all generations, Moses entertained no feelings of hurt or sensitivity, of injured kavod. There was in his character no admixture of pride, of arrogance, of harshness, of hyper-sensitivity. He had an utter lack of gall and contentiousness. He was, indeed, an anav, more so than any other individual on the face of the earth. And he was able to write those very words without self-consciousness! Hence he did not react at all to the remarks of his brother and sister. Therefore, God said that if Moses is such an anav that he does not defend himself against this offense, I will act for him!

The quality of anivut, as it has been defined by the Netziv, is thus one of the loveliest characteristics to which we can aspire. One need not nourish feelings of inferiority in order to be an anav. Indeed, the greater one is and knows one’s self to be, the greater his capacity for anivut, for meekness. It is the person who pouts arrogantly and reacts sharply and pointedly when his ego is touched who usually reveals thereby feelings of inferiority and worthlessness, of deep shiflut. The individual who feels secure and who recognizes his achievements as real can afford to be meek, to be an anav.

For it is this combination of qualities – inner greatness and outer meekness – that we learn from none other than God Himself. The Talmud (Megilla 31a) put it this way: “Wherever your find mentioned the gedula, the greatness, of God, there also you will find mentioned His anivut.” Thus, for instance, where we are told that God is mighty and awesome, immortal and transcendent, there too we learn that God is close to the widow and the orphan, the stranger and the sick, all those in distress, those overlooked, ignored and alienated from the society of the complacent. God’s anivut certainly does not mean His humility or self-deprecation! It does mean His softness, gentleness, kindliness – His meekness.

Here, then, is a teaching of Judaism which we can ill afford to do without. When we deal with husband or wife, with neighbor or friend, with children or students, with subordinates or employees – we must remember that the harsh word reveals our lack of security, and the impatient rejoinder shows up our lack of self-appreciation and self-respect. It is only when we will have achieved real gedula, true inner worth and greatness, that we shall learn that remarkable, sterling quality of anivut.

Let us leave the synagogue this morning aware of that mutual, reciprocal relationship between greatness and meekness. If we have gedula let us proceed to prove it by developing anivut. And if we doubt whether we really possess gedula then let us begin to acquire it by emu­lating the greatest of all mortals, Moses, and the immortal Almighty Himself, and practice anivut in all our human relations. If this anivut does not succeed at once in making us truly great, it at least will offer us the dividends of a better character, a happier life, more relaxed social relations, and the first step on the ladder of Jewish nobility of character.

 

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

A Jewish Definition of Power*

Our haftara this morning tells of the birth of one of the most colorful personalities in biblical history, Samson. He is the only biblical figure known in Jewish literature as a gibor, a hero or strongman. His power was proverbial.

This would not be remarkable if Samson were only a rare specimen of brute force who could slay a lion with his bare hands, throw fear into the hearts of his enemies, smite them with the jawbone of an ass, and cause a great building to collapse by pulling down the pillars. But Samson is also known to us as one of the shoftim, the “judges.” He experienced hashra’at haShekhina, divine inspiration and prophecy. And he was, from before his birth, consecrated as a Nazirite, one who for reasons of saintliness abstains from wine and the cutting of his hair. Does this not indicate something unusual about him? Indeed, are we not here offered a new insight into the whole concept of gibor and gevura, a new Jewish definition of power?

Our question is: What is that definition? What, in the context of the Jewish tradition, is gevura, strength or heroism? It obviously is not mere brawn. What then?

For an answer to our question, let us turn to the Kabbala, that infinitely rich mystical mine of Jewish ideas and ideals. The Kabbala understood creation not as a single event, but as a two-step process. The first step was hitpashtut, an overflowing or emanation of God, a flood of divine creativity released at the moment He determined to create the world. However, this alone is not enough. For when an infinite God creates, the creation too tends to be infinite – there is too much, it proceeds without limit, and hence a real world cannot exist. Therefore there must be a second step to counteract this ever-spreading emanation from God, and that is tzimtzum, divine restraint, God’s self-limitation. Thus, God calls a halt to His own creative endeavors. He limits, as it were, his own impulse to keep on producing world upon world.

The first step, the divine effusion, His overflowing and emanation, the Kabbalists referred to the attribute of chessed, loving-kindness, and because true love knows no bounds, it always seeks to increase, grow, and intensify. However, while we call it chessed, the same idea of expansion can refer to any drive or will or passion.

The second element, that of restraint and self-limitation, is referred to by the Kabbalists as the quality of gevura, strength. Gevura thus means the ability to limit oneself, for it certainly takes moral strength to know when to stop.

This, then, is essentially the definition of power or heroism: self-restraint, self-contraction. And as with God, so with man: gevura means not brawn, not grasping for more and more, but on the contrary – self-limitation, self-control. True strength is not the passion for power, but knowing when, and when not, to use it; not the quest for bigness, but recognizing when big becomes too big; not in growth, but in retrenchment; not in dominating others, but in dominating oneself. Gevura consists of knowing when to call a halt to man’s outgoing and outreaching drives.

This is, of course, true in every aspect of life. Growth is good, but not too much or too fast. The body’s cells which proliferate without end are the cause of cancer. An economy which rises too quickly and without inner controls is liable to collapse in the long run. A child who grows but grows without limits is actually sick. A teacher who tries to impart all his knowledge to his charges without modifying his information to fit the child will be a failure.

Even the desire of knowledge, meritorious as it is, must be controlled by man’s moral principles. The chessed of increased knowledge of the world, as it is expressed in modern science and technology, can no doubt be a good thing. We are all beneficiaries of the constantly ongoing programs for unlocking the secrets of nature. But if we moderns also are threatened with sudden and calamitous extinction it is because we have not merged gevura with chessed; because we have not exercised moral restraint in directing the goals and purposes of our scientific research. If more nations were to learn how to make atomic bombs, as they surely will, and each of them were to conduct atmospheric tests, there is no doubt that the function of chessed would be achieved – more scientific knowledge would be accumulated. But because of the lack of moral heroism in self-control and denying one’s self this increased scientific information, the whole world may destroy itself or, at the very least, irrevocably cripple all future generations. Chessed without gevura, in science as well as in the formation of the world, leads to destruction and not to creation.

Consider another example, a more personal one, of the moral courage called gevura. Love is a wonderful thing. But it sometimes can be so overdone that it destroys the object of affection – reminding us of the bitter observation of Oscar Wilde that, “Every man kills the thing he loves.” I refer to too much love expressed by parents for children, love given in such excess that it becomes possessive and interferes in the life of a child. This kind of unrestrained chessed has rightly been called “smother love.” All parents know this instinctively. More sophisticated ones are aware of it consciously. Yet it bears repetition and reminder. Too much paternal and maternal affection can lead to making too many decisions for the child so that he never learns to think for himself, choose for himself, or decide for himself. An overdose of chessed can make a child’s personality permanently immature. A parent whose heart overflows with tender affection for a child needs the divine quality of gevura, of moral courage to discipline, control, and guide his parental love – or at least the expression of it – for the good of the child. Unless a parent controls his outgoing love for a child, unless he limits it intelligently and at the right times, the child will never learn that life has its harsh aspects, that without discipline one cannot live in a civilized society, that one must be prepared to deal with people who will view him critically and objectively and not always with unthinking admiration and affection.

The problems of Jewish education are also affected by the combination of chessed and gevura. As a rabbi, I have heard every good and legitimate reason for a loving parent not to subject a child to the regimen of the study of Torah: there is too little time for fresh air, there is too great a competition for getting into better high schools and colleges, there are so many other things that one must learn in order to achieve a “rounded personality.” And so parents often love their children so much that they deny them the opportunity to learn the meaning of life, the roots of their people, the history and destiny of their own spirit.

Perhaps it is for this reason that in Yiddish, a wealthy man of decent instincts is often called a gevir, a word which is derived from gevura, meaning heroism and strength. True wealth, in the Jewish sense, is the exercise of gevura as we have defined it: moral restraint, refraining from ostentation, self-indulgence, or domination of others; ethical control in acquiring riches and character control in spending them; a quality of graciousness and generosity. This is true heroism, true gevura. This kind of man is never nouveau riche; he is a true gevir.

In today’s sidra we read the commandment of God that the priests should bless the Children of Israel with the three-fold blessing. The first one is: “The Lord bless you and keep you.” Blessing, or berakha, has always been understood in our tradition to mean: hosafa, increase, growth, expansion. It is a quality of chessed. “Keeping,” shemira, always refers to moral control and ethical limitation, as in “hishamer lekha pen…” (see, for instance, Genesis 24:6). Thus, the priests extend to us the blessing of God: May you have a great deal, more than you have now. But may your berakha be graced with shemira. May you learn how to keep your naturalness and humility intact, regarding your money and your wealth as a trust; may you learn how to retain your dignity and suppress arrogance and haughtiness so that you will achieve true blessing.

Indeed, the quality of gevura is a fundamental prerequisite for the religious life of the Jew. What distinguishes the Jewish religion is not the holidays – for other people have them too; not a synagogue – other people have their churches or mosques; but rather, the Halakha, the Jewish regimen which extends into every aspect of a person’s existence. A life of Jewish law, of mitzvot, is an expression of the moral courage we have called gevura – for it means that the Jew must learn to restrain himself and his appetites in every phase of life. His desire to eat indiscriminately must be curbed by the inner strength that comes from observing the rules of kashrut. His desire to exploit nature, by means of industry or farming or doing business, must be curbed by the inner discipline that causes him to rest on Shabbat in the manner decreed by Jewish law. His lust and his passion, what the Torah in one place has called chessed and Freud has called the libido, must be restrained by the gevura of the Torah’s code of sexual morality. The discipline life of the Jew is his greatest strength. “Ein giborim ela giborei Torah,” “There are none as heroic as the heroes of Torah” (Avot DeRabbi Natan 1:23). Physical strength is transitory; military power is ephemeral; political influence is impermanent. Only the moral strength of Torah is abiding and everlasting.

Now, I believe, we may understand why one of the most cherished of biblical characters is called Samson the gibor, the man of strength, the hero. If Samson had only possessed ko’ach, brute physical power, he would have been no better than any Philistine. But he was charged to keep his great physical strength secondary and subordinate to his gevura, his spiritual power and moral courage. His greatness lay in that he was consecrated to exercise greater power over himself than over others.

Unfortunately, Samson was not consistently successful. At a crucial moment in his life when he failed, when he forfeited his moral gevura and became a spiritual weakling – allowing himself to be tempted by Delilah – his physical power proved to be useless and insignificant too. The strength of Samson lay not in his muscles, but in his morals; not in his biceps but in his spirit. When the spirit and the morals failed, all else was valueless.

No wonder that Samson was commanded to be a Nazirite, to abstain from wine, as were his parents from the moment that – as recorded in today’s haftara – they were informed by the angel that they would have a child. For wine releases inhibitions, it weakens one’s self-control; it makes a man effusive and gives him a feeling of limitlessness and omnipotence. He becomes all chessed, no gevura. The abstention from wine was therefore both a symbol and charge to Samson to exercise the moral self-limitation which is the gevura of a religious man.

Perhaps all this can be summed up in the words of the Rabbis in Avot (4:1): “Eizehu gibor, hakovesh et yitzro,” “Who is strong? He who suppresses his [evil] inclination.” The word for inclination, yetzer, derives from the Hebrew yetzira, creation. The passions and inclinations of man are directed towards self-aggrandizement, reaching out for more power, more conquest, more insight, more affection, more influ­ence. The first impulse of creativity, with man as with God, is yetzira or yetzer – the centrifugal movement, the outward expansion of force, character, desire, and interest. But a world cannot exist with this alone. It needs the quality of gevura, of limitation. And therefore: Who is the gibor, the true hero or strong man? He who can suppress his yetzer, his chessed, his desire to go and grow farther and faster.

We conclude with the words of David (I Chronicles 29:11): “Lekha Hashem hagedula vehagevura vehatiferet” – “To you O God, is the greatness and the strength and the beauty.” The Kabbala has taught that when both tendencies, that of expansion, called chessed or gedula, and that of contraction, called gevura, are united in the proper proportions, the result is tiferet – beauty, harmony, majesty. From God’s example we human beings may learn the great secret of combining chessed and gevura to produce tiferet. May we and all the world be blessed with the quality of tiferet – beauty of life, majesty of ideals, and nobility of destiny.

---

• June 16, 1962

Excerpted from Dr. Erica Brown’s ‘Seder Talk: A Conversational Haggada,’ co-published by OU Press and Maggid Books

One Little Goat

Had Gadya is a fanciful whimsy of a song, likely of medieval German origin. This type of folksong that introduces characters who each have a destructive relationship with the previous character creates an image of a creature who ultimately swallows all. While it is a song performed with a lot of enthusiasm, props, and sound effects, it hides a certain dark message. Are we – on this night of the Paschal lamb (which could be a goat, according to Exodus 12:5 – “you may take it from sheep or from goats”) – suggesting that so many of our enemies have come to swallow us and obliterate us? We get the last laugh. We still survive to sing about our vulnerability. We are the one little goat who outdid the typical domestic enemies: the cat, the dog, the stick, the fire. And we even beat the larger, more threatening, harder, but looming enemies: the ox, the butcher, the Angel of Death, before finally God appears. Some name each animal as representing a different nation bound on our destruction, from the Assyrians to the Babylonians to the Crusaders and then more modern-day enemies. What starts the entire song moving is the two zuzim used to purchase the goat, referring to the two tablets given to us at Sinai. Because we were claimed and “purchased” for this covenant, God ultimately intervenes to make sure that we are protected and redeemed, and that is the message of Passover generally as we close the Seder. The song asks us not to fear the repetition of our hardest hours in history because God breaks the cycle of violence, and we endure. It also communicates a more personal message when we see ourselves as a vulnerable little goat facing difficult demons and walls ahead. It is the little goat or lamb – the small, innocent symbol of all that is precious and fragile in this world – that will live on, that will become the Paschal lamb and symbolize our freedom for eternity. We never ask to turn into the ox or the butcher to combat our enemies. We ask to stay small and humble and for our humility to be the hallmark of our identity, along with the two zuzim, the laws, that keep us holy.

 

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

Living Up to Your Image

We read in this morning’s sidra of the instructions given to Moses to build the Tabernacle. Among other things, he is commanded to build the Ark, containing the Tablets of the Law. This aron, Moses is told, should be made of wood overlaid with “zahav tahor,” “pure gold,” both on the inside and the outside of the Ark: “mibayit umiĥutz tetzapenu”(Exodus 25:11).

Our Rabbis (Yoma 72b) found in this apparently mundane law a principle of great moral significance. Rava said: From this we learn that “kol talmid ĥakham she’en tokho kevaro eno talmid ĥakham,” “a scholar whose inner life does not correspond to his outer appearances is not an authentic scholar.” The Ark, or aron, as the repository of the Tablets of the Law, is a symbol of a talmid ĥakham, a student of the Law. The “zahav tahor,” “pure gold,” represents purity of character. And the requirement that this gold be placed “mibayit umiĥutz,” both within and without the Ark, indicates the principle that a true scholar must live in such a manner that he always be tokho kevaro, alike inwardly and outwardly.

Thus, our Rabbis saw in our verse a plea for integrity of character, a warning against a cleavage between theory and practice, against a discontinuity between inwardness and outwardness, against a clash between inner reality and outer appearance. A real Jew must always be tokho kevaro.

Now that sounds like a truism, but it is nothing of the sort. As a matter of fact, at a critical juncture of Jewish history this requirement was the occasion for a famous controversy. The Talmud (Berakhot 27b) refers to the time when the Patriarch of Israel, Rabban Gamliel, the aristo cratic descendant of Hillel, was deposed from his office as the head of the Sanhedrin, and Rabbi Elazar ben Azaria was elected in his place. Rabban Gamliel had always been strict about the requirement of tokho kevaro: he declared that any students who could not say unhesitatingly that they possessed the quality of tokho kevaro were not permitted to enter the academy. When Rabbi Elazar ben Azaria ascended to this office, he cancelled the requirement that every student should have attained this balance between inner life and outer life. As a result, many more students were attracted to the academy, and from four to seven hundred new benches had to be placed in the study hall. In other words, the question was: Does a failure to achieve tokho kevaro disqualify someone? Rabban Gamliel answered “yes.” Rabbi Eliezer said “no.” The latter maintained that the absence of tokho kevaro invalidates his credentials as a talmid ĥakham, a scholar, but not as an average ethical personality. Even if one has not yet attained this ideal of character, let him study Torah and eventually he will learn how to achieve tokho kevaro.

At any rate, both these Sages agree that tokho kevaro is a great and worthy Jewish ideal.

But if so, we are confronted by a problem in Jewish ethics. There are times when Jewish law does distinguish between private and public conduct. There is, for instance, the famous halakhic concept of marit ayin, that is, that we must avoid even the semblance of wrong-doing. Thus, for instance, the Talmud tells of a man who walks in the fields on the Sabbath and falls into water or is caught in a downpour and is drenched. When he removes his clothing, the Talmud tells us (Shabbat 146b) he should not place them in the sunlight to dry, for fear that his neighbors, not knowing of his accident, will assume that he had laundered his clothing on Saturday and thus violated the Sabbath. Or, as another example, the Shulĥan Arukh (Yoreh De’a 87:3) prohibits drinking coconut milk at a meat meal lest an onlooker assume that the law against eating meat and milk together is being violated. Therefore, a coconut shell should be placed on the table to eliminate any chance for such misinterpretation. Similarly, in the context of our own lives, even completely non-dairy margarine should not be used during a meat meal, unless the carton is on the table, thus avoiding the possibility of imputing to us the transgression of the law against eating milk with meat.

Now is not this law of marit ayin in violation of the concept of tokho kevaro? If in his heart a man knows that he is doing no wrong, should he not act the same way outwardly, ignoring others and their suspiciousness?

In addition to marit ayin, there are other instances where the Halakha distinguishes between inner and outer life. Thus, ĥillul Shabbat, the violation of the Sabbath, is at all times a most serious infraction of the Halakha. Yet ĥillul Shabbat befarhesya, violating the Sabbath in public, is considered far worse than doing so in the privacy of one’s own home. Or, to take another example, ĥillul Hashem, the profanation of the divine Name, is considered a dreadful sin; to disgrace God is always disgraceful. But to perform ĥillul Hashem berabbim, to desecrate God’s Name in public, is not only disgraceful but totally unforgiveable.

Do not these instances also reveal that the Jewish tradition does not always maintain the principle of tokho kevaro? Does it not lend religious support to this deep gulf between the two aspects of every human life, the inner reality and the image in the eyes of others?

In order to understand what our tradition meant, it is important to read carefully the specific idiom that the Talmud uses. It recommendsthat we always strive for tokho kevaro, that our “inside” be similar to our “outside,” but it does not ask us to develop baro ketokho, an outer appearance that conforms to an inner reality. There is no demand that our external image be reduced to the dimensions of what we really are like within ourselves; there is, instead, a demand that we keep up the appearances of decency and Jewishness and honor, and then strive for tokho kevaro, for remaking our inner life to conform to the image that we project.

It often happens that the tokh, the inner life of man, is cruel and filthy and corrupt, whereas the bar, the outer image he projects in his circle and in his society, is clean and compassionate. Inwards, he is ruthless and crude; outwards, he is polite and delicate and considerate. Modern man has learned well the lesson that Freud taught: even infants, apparently so innocent, are seized by inner drives that are destructive and grasping. Of course, our grandparents, less modern and less sophisticated than we, knew the same principle from a more ancient and more reliable source than Freud. The Bible had already taught at the very beginning that “yetzer lev ha’adam ra mineurav,” “the inclination of the heart of man is evil from his very earliest youth” (Genesis 8:21).

Hence the Rabbis, contemplating this inner perversity and outer glitter, demand consistency – but in one direction only – tokho kevaro! Do not destroy your outer image; in fact, preserve it through the observance of marit ayin. Enhance it – and then live up to it! Develop a great outer life, and thereafter transform your inner life in order to equalize your whole existence. Those who reverse the procedure, and act with crudeness and vulgarity because they think that this is being consistent with their real thoughts, because it shows that they are “sincere,” are ignorant – and worse. There is a certain tyranny in such sincerity which is used as the rationalization for being a bully.

It is therefore naïve and dangerous for a man to act the way he is; he should try to be as decent as the way he acts. It is not so important that I say what I mean; it is more important that I mean what I say.

Thus we may understand the significance of the concept of marit ayin. It protects my public image and the social model that I project, and I then have something to live up to as I strive for the realization of tokho kevaro. Even as the Ark containing the tablets must be placed with pure gold “mibayit umiĥutz,” “inside and outside,” so too man must live up to the highest ideals both in his inner life and his outer appearance.

Unfortunately, some otherwise good Jews act lightly with regard to the principle of marit ayin and dismiss it offhand. Worse yet, some flippantly regard it as a kind of hypocrisy. But this attitude only shows their confusion and insensitivity. Hypocrisy is a conscious misleading of people, an acting out of a role I didn’t believe in. In Hebrew, hypocrisy is “tzeviut,” which literally means “painting”; for I purposely and consciously project an image which I do not want to be my reality. I pretend to be what I don’t even care to be. A man who comes to synagogue services regularly because it is good for his business, but who does not really care about religion at all, is a genuine hypocrite. But if one comes to shul despite his non-observance at home or in the office because he desires to learn, or wishes to be instructed, or hopes to be inspired, or if he is confused and he is looking for a way out of his dilemma – then his approach is not only intelligent but honorable. The next step, one which qualifies an ordinary human being as a scholar, is – tokho kevaro! It is important, therefore, to build up your image and then live up to it.

To reject the principle of marit ayin is to commit three fundamental mistakes. First, it is a reduction of the kavod hatzibur, the honor of the community, for by giving the appearance of wrong-doing, I lower the level of public observance of the laws of decency and the Torah in general. Second, it is a diminution of the kevod haShekhina, the honor due to God, for by giving the impression that I do not care about His laws, I have committed ĥillul Hashem, the desecration of the divine Name. Finally, a flippant attitude towards marit ayin represents a self denigration, a lapse of kevod atzmo, of the honor due to one’s self – for I have given myself a petty image, and therefore I must remain with a trivial inner self.

But let us take that argument one step further. Not only must I observe the principle of marit ayin, which is negative, in the sense of not harming my image, but in a positive sense that I must undertake a conscious creation of a greater image even if it is only in my own eyes, and then proceed to tokho kevaro.

Thus, to take one example: In the technopolitan culture in which we live, with its busyness and its glitter and its gadgetry, we often fail to experience the emotional dimension of religion. One of the greatest commandments in the Torah is ahavat Hashem, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God” (Deuteronomy 6:5). But how many of us can experience such love? What does one do if he feels that his inner resources have dried up, that he is incapable of any deep experience or feeling? Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, founder of the Habad movement of Hasidism, recommends a solution (Tanya, Likutei Ma’amarim 15): Act as if you are possessed of ahavat Hashem, not in the eyes of others but in the eyes of your own self. Live as if you were possessed of a passionate love of God – and sooner or later, the outer appearance will evoke an inner love, the image will create the reality, and by the process of tokho kevaro you will indeed arrive at a level of genuine love. Otherwise, we are left only with despair and never can make any progress.

The same is true of one’s social relations. Just as we are commanded to love God, so do we have a commandment of ahavat rei’im, the love of neighbor or fellow. Yet this commandment is much easier to advocate than to practice, for what if one has unlovable neighbors? What if one has not the ability to love his fellow men as he thinks he ought to? An insight to the solution is provided by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, who points to the peculiar grammatical construction of this commandment. The Torah says (Leviticus 19:8): “ve’ahavta lere’akha kamokha,” “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Actually, the normal Hebrew should be “Thou shalt love et re’akha,” rather than “lere’akha.” The way it is written, the verse should be literally translated as “Thou shalt love to thy neighbor as thyself.” What does this mean? Rabbi Hirsch answers: Genuine love of one’s neighbor must come later; first one must love to him, i.e. one must act in a loving manner to him, one must play the role of the loving fellow man – and then ultimately he will indeed come to love him. First we must build up the image, and then, by the process of tokho kevaro, we come to achieve a new inner transformation.

As a final example, let us take the matter of joy or happiness. This week we welcomed the Hebrew month of Adar, about which our tradition teaches: “mi shenikhnas Adar marbim besimĥa,” when the month of Adar comes one must increase his happiness or joy. A beautiful idea; however, what if I am miserable? How can one command a person to be happy? I often talk to people who are deep in the doldrums, and the answer I usually receive – and a very genuine one – is: How can you encourage me when my luck is bad, my situation forlorn, my existence boring, my life dull, and pain ever present? But the answer of the Jewish tradition, accumulated in the course of three thousand years, is that happiness or joy is a state of mind which can be inspired from without as well as aroused from within. If one acts happy, one eventually emerges from under the burden of sadness. Hasidism made a great principle of this idea. They drank a “leĥayyim,” sang in the synagogue, and even danced, declared that sadness is a sin, and tried to inspire happiness, even artificially – and they succeeded. In a continent and in an age when European Jewry was seized with despair because of false messiahs, because of massacres and political persecutions, because of economic and cultural deprivation, Hasidism was able to inspire the idea of acting happy, and then being happy – by a process of tokho kevaro! Create a greater image than your reality is, and then change over your reality to conform to the image.

To summarize, then, what we have said: To demand, as some deluded people sometimes do, that we become baro ketokho, that we remake our outer life to conform to our inner life, is to condemn men to the lowest station of humanity and to deny them hope. However, to urge them towards tokho kevaro is to hold forth a realizable ideal in the finest tradition of Jewish ethical optimism. Through concern for marit ayin, we preserve that image. Through the other means we have mentioned, we enhance that image.

And then, we must live up to it: “mibayit umiĥutz titzapenu.”

Excerpted from Rabbi Norman Lamm’s Festivals of Faith: Reflections on the Jewish Holidays

In its discussion of the proper placement of the Hanukkah menorah, the Talmud (Shabbat 22a) decides in favor of R. Shmuel mi-Difti: one must place the menorah at the left of the doorpost as one enters, with the mezuzah on the right. Maimonides codifies this halakhah almost verbatim (Hilkhot Hanukkah 4:7).

But what drove the Talmud and the Rambam to focus on the petah habayit, the entrance to the house? What makes the doorpost or threshold so important in the Halakhah? If indeed the point is that one must feel surrounded by mitzvot, why not declare that one must kindle the menorah while wearing a tallit, or use some other method to feel enveloped in the sanctity of the mitzvot? This is not dissimilar to the question posed by the Penei Yehoshua, namely, why does the gemara posit that the mitzvah of Hanukkah refers specifically to the home, the bayit, treating this particular mitzvah differently from every other mitzvah we must perform with our bodies and which refer to us as individuals, not to our homes?

I suggest that the threshold, the petah ha-bayit, is a symbol of instability and doubt, of confusion and diffidence. On the threshold, a person stands between inside and outside, undecided as to whether he is to go in or out. The threshold as such a symbol is found often in the Tanakh. In the Joseph story (Gen. 43:18), the brothers are frightened as they are ushered into the palace of Joseph. They approach the official in charge as they speak to him from the petah ha-bayit. They are hesitant, wavering between protesting and keeping silent. When Lot goes out to face the angry mob (Gen. 19:6), he speaks to them from the threshold of his house, unsure of how to treat this unholy gathering of Sodomites, uncertain as to whether or not he will survive the encounter. Earlier yet, when Cain is irate at the divine reaction to his offering, he is told that if he will not improve his ways, sin will crouch at his petah—again the symbol of uncertainty. Man is always vacillating between yielding to the blandishments of the yetzer ha-ra and heroically overcoming his lust.

So does Hanukkah contain this symbol of the irresolute. The Rambam, in his Iggeret ha-Shemad, writes of the harsh evil decrees promulgated by the Greek authorities, “one of which was that one should not shut the door of his petah ha-bayit lest he exploit the privacy of his home to perform mitzvot.” This left the Jews of that era in deep and frightening doubt: to yield to the Greeks and avoid death, or to defy them and keep the faith? Hence the connection between Hanukkah and the threshold.

To return to our original theme: the threshold now has two supports, as it were—the mezuzah to the right and the Hanukkah menorah to the left. The mezuzah represents the inside of the house, guarding all that has been taken within. Thus, it is affixed to the right upon entering, not upon exiting. The Halakhah also insists that the entrance must contain a door in order to fulfill properly the mitzvah of mezuzah. The mezuzah, as it were, pleads for a closed door so that it may guard the interior of the home and all that has been stored in it and keep it safe from the imprecations of a pagan world. The Hanukkah lights, on the other hand, argue for an open-door policy, for their function is pirsumei nissa, to illuminate the “street” or outside with the sanctity that issues from within. This collision on the threshold—whether to shut the doors and guard what we already have within, or to open the doors wide to allow us to share the blessings of Torah with the outside world—this clash of opposing tendencies is what creates within us that tension. It is only when we have the two mitzvot around us that we can properly weigh and measure and know when to open the doors to the outside world, to absorb from it what is good and true and beautiful, and when to shut the doors tight against the falsehood and profanation of an ungodly world and its nefarious influences.

Excerpted from Rabbi Norman Lamm’s Festivals of Faith: Reflections on the Jewish Holidays

 

The Halakhah is generally rich in the use of illusions, and especially in its treatment of the laws of Sukkot. There is, for instance, the law of lavud. This means that even if there exist empty spaces in the sekhakh, or the covering of the sukkah, if these spaces are less than three tefahim (about nine inches), then we consider the empty space as if it did not exist but was covered by branches or other sekhakh. Lavud means that we accept the illusion that any distance less than three tefahim does not exist; it is as if it were attached.

Another example is the law of dofen akumah. This means that if four cubits or less of an invalid type of covering, or sekhakh, was placed on the roof of the sukkah contiguous to the wall, we do not regard it as invalid, thereby disqualifying the entire sekhakh, but rather imagine that it is as if the wall were bent over and inclined for that distance, thus causing us to regard the sukkah as kosher.

A third example would be that of tzurat ha-petah. This means that if a Jew does not have sufficient material to build the requisite number of walls, then it is sufficient to place two poles on either end and a beam across them. We consider this a tzurat ha-petah, the figure of a doorway, and imagine that the doorway constitutes both an entrance and a wall. We accept the illusion that this empty space is really a complete wall.

One of the greatest and most distinguished scholars and preachers of modern Israel, Rabbi Moshe Avigdor Amiel z”l of Tel Aviv (in his famous Derashot el Ami), discovered a hint of this propensity for the use of illusion in sukkot in the Talmud’s statement concerning the nature of our dwelling in sukkot. The Torah teaches us ba-sukkot teshevu shiv‘at yamim, “you shall dwell in the sukkot for seven days” (Lev. 23:36). And the Talmud adds, teshevu ke-ein taduru—you shall “dwell” as if you truly “resided” in the sukkah (Sukkah 26a). We do not really change our address from home to sukkah; nevertheless, in our minds, in our practice, in our will, in our intentions, we dwell in the sukkah as if we really lived there. All of Sukkot is a tribute to the power of a noble illusion.

Thus, the Halakhah, as a Torat Hayyim, a Torah of Life, tells us something about the importance of illusion in daily life. Normally, we use the word “illusion” in a pejorative sense, as a term of derision, as something which is contrary to fact, to reality, to common sense. But my thesis this morning is that that is all wrong. In many of the most significant branches of human endeavor, we make use of illusion and could not get along without it. Thus, for instance, in law we use legal fictions—as, for example, when we consider a corporation not as a collection of many people, but as an individual, collective personality. In science, we abstract “ideal systems” from reality—and that is creating an illusion. The mathematician deals with such concepts as infinity and imaginary numbers. Philosophers speak of the philosophy of Als Ob, the philosophy of “as if.” Men of literature describe and criticize life and society by means of creative illusions.

Indeed, we live our regular lives by certain illusions—not only in the intellectual disciplines, such as law and science, but in the deepest recesses of our individual and ethnic consciousness. Without the proper illusions, life can become meaningless and a drudgery. The future is bleak, the past a confused jumble, and the present depressingly dull without the necessary illusions.

What we must know is this: that illusions are not opposed to fact. Illusions are what the facts add up to in the long run, what give us the ability to understand and interpret facts. Illusions are frequently more consonant with reality than narrow and isolated facts. Illusions are the framework of facts, that which gives them sense and meaning.

…What are some of the noble illusions that Judaism teaches? What are some of the outstanding examples of the principle of Sukkot that teshevu ke-ein taduru? One of them is the illusion that man is basically good, that, in the words of David, Va-tehasserehu me‘at me-elohim (Ps. 8:6), “he was created but little lower than the angels”; in other words, that man has a neshamah, a soul. The man who has a nose only for hard facts will not see a soul in the human personality; for this you must have an eye for larger illusions and a heart for great ideals. How silly was that Russian astronaut who, when he returned from orbit, reported that he had looked through the heavens and found no God. It is as childish as the sophomoric comment of the surgeon who announced that he had conducted a thorough search of the anatomy and discovered no soul. The best answer was provided by the wise man who replied that he had taken apart a violin and found no music! Of course, man has a neshamah; without it, his life is meaningless and makes no sense.

Or take the halakhic principle that every Jew has a hezkat kashrut—a presumption of being decent and honest. A narrow view of the facts will tell you that most people are unworthy and irresponsible. But without the illusion of man’s kashrut, there can be no trust, no loyalty, no faith. And therefore, there can be no transactions, no marriage, and no happiness. Teshevu ke-ein taduru— without the proper illusions, life is unlivable.

A narrow view of the facts will tell you that Jews do not constitute one people. The Yemenite and the American Jew, the Russian Jew and the Bene Israel of India, the German Jew and the Jew from China, are completely different types. What matters is that they share a common history or aspiration or faith. These things cannot be measured and established as hard facts. Yet Judaism accepts that all Jews are one people, that they constitute Keneset Yisra’el. As in the sukkah, we accept the principle of lavud: even if there are gaps, and discrepancies, and big holes, and lacunae of all kinds, we assume that they are solid, attached, covered up. The Jewish people is one people. It is by virtue of such illusions that history was turned and redirected, and the State of Israel created!

Finally, there is another law of Sukkot that beautifully expresses the noble idealism that informs the Jewish mentality in its use of illusion. The Halakhah states that if a man builds his sukkah and makes the walls from atzei asherah, from the wood of a tree which was used as an idol by idol-worshipers, then the sukkah is invalid. The reason given is, kattutei mikhatat shi‘ureih (see Sukkah 35a); since an idol must be destroyed, then we consider this wood as if it had been totally demolished, and therefore there is no shiur, and the wall is not big enough, since it does not even exist! Here is a heavy, solid wall before me—and the Halakhah says: it is nonexistent! What a marvelous expression of the great Jewish illusion that evil does not really exist, that all that is wicked and cruel and unseemly and anti-human can be considered unreal because, ultimately, it will be destroyed in the great triumph of the good over the evil and the holy over the profane and the pure over the defiled! The halakhic principle which accepts the illusion that idolatry is already nonexistent is the basis and expression for the great Jewish optimism that has kept us alive throughout the centuries. Teshevu ke-ein taduru!

The kabbalists of centuries ago devised a special recitation to be read before performing any mitzvah, such as sukkah or lulav. It reads: Yehi ratzon shetehei hashuvah mitzvah zo ke-illu kiyyamtihah be-khol perateha ve-dikdukeha, “May it be Thy will that this mitzvah which I am about to perform shall be considered in Your eyes as if I had observed it in all its details and particulars.” Indeed so! If we harbor the right illusions about life, if we live life according to the noblest ideals and observe them faithfully, then God will return the compliment, and accept the illusion ke-ilu kiyyamtiha, as if our noblest thoughts had been put into practice, as if our most cherished aspirations were realities, as if our errors and sins did not exist, as if our lives were lived on the highest level of humanity and Jewishness.

Teshevu ke-ein taduru—what a wonderful holiday is Sukkot, which teaches us this noble and beautiful and precious exchange of illusions! No wonder it is called zeman simhatenu, “the time of our happiness.” May it indeed continue to be so for us, for all Israel, and for all humanity.

 

The full excerpt can be found in Rabbi Norman Lamm’s Festivals of Faith: Reflections on the Jewish Holidays

Excerpted from Dr. Mandell Ganchow’s Coming of Age: An Anthology of Divrei Torah for Bar and Bat Mitzvah

 

Parashat Ki Tetzei

By: Rabbi Moshe Krupka

 

Ahavat Hashem is a foundation of Yiddishkeit and especially meaningful for boys reaching the pivotal age of bar mitzvah, when a young man becomes responsible for everything he does.

Parashat Ki Tetzei begins, “When you go out to war against your enemies….”

The Midrash describes how Moshe Rabbenu drafted the most righteous Jewish citizens into the Jewish army as they prepared to do battle with Midyan.

“Twelve thousand went to war with Midyan, none of whom placed their tefillin shel rosh before their tefillin shel yad” (Shir Ha-Shirim Rabbah 4:3).

This explanation seems perplexing. Could tefillin be the litmus test utilized in choosing the most appropriate warriors? Why is knowing that the shel yad is put on prior to the shel rosh significant? Why would this determine whether or not a soldier was fit to serve in the Jewish army?

To answer this question, we must understand the deeper meanings of tefillin shel yad and tefillin shel rosh. The tefillin shel rosh sit on a person’s head. They represent the brain, the human mind, the power to think and understand intellectually. Tefillin shel yad, on the other hand, sit on the forearm, facing the heart. They represent human emotion, the ability to feel and love. The tefillin shel yad are symbolic of the love and closeness we should feel for Hashem.

Thinking, learning, and understanding are all very important. But even more essential is the heart. Even more essential is Ahavat Hashem. Loving, fearing, and feeling close to Hashem are what lead a person to righteousness.

Similarly, consider the yom tov of Sukkot. There is the mitzvah of sitting in the sukkah. However, what is the central theme of Sukkot? The Torah states, “ve-samachta be-chagecha—You shall rejoice on your festival.” Sukkot is not just about physically sitting in the sukkah. It is about how we feel when we fulfill the mitzvah. Are we simultaneously fulfilling “ve-samachta bechagecha”? Do we enjoy serving Hashem?

This is what the tefillin shel yad represent year-round. It is one thing to simply do the mitzvot. But there is another, significant level: feeling affection and devotion to Hashem.

As a bar mitzvah boy who has just begun to put on tefillin, this is a very valuable lesson for you. While it is vitally important for you to learn Hashem’s Torah and to develop your mind to its fullest potential, it is even more important that you remember the lesson of the midrash in Shir Ha-Shirim, the message of the tefillin shel yad. In order to genuinely serve Hashem, it is insufficient to only learn about His laws and commandments. You must also develop a love for Hashem, a love for His Torah, a love for His mitzvot. This is the key to righteousness.

If you want to enlist in the army of Hashem and be an honorable Jew who is fit for God’s Legion, you should always study Hashem’s Torah and observe His mitzvot. But in order to truly excel and grow, to serve Hashem in a meaningful way, you need Ahavat Hashem, feeling love and spiritual closeness to Ha-Kadosh Baruch Hu.

Excerpted from Derashot Ledorot: A Commentary for the Ages – Deuteronomy, by Rabbi Norman Lamm, co-published by OU Press and Maggid Books

This week, after a good two-month vacation, our children will return to their classrooms and again continue the development of their minds and spirits. It will be a momentous occasion, no doubt, for the children themselves. These past few days they have probably been busy purchasing school supplies, arranging programs, discussing new teachers, and bubbling over with enthusiasm in anticipation of the new school year. I am sure that we all remember how we felt when we started our new terms back in elementary school. We felt as if we were setting out on a new path, full of hidden dangers and pleasant surprises, and we acted as if we expected a succession of mysteries and miracles at every step. Today’s children feel the same way about it. It is a challenge and an adventure.

But while our children are going to be busy being enthusiastic about a hundred and one things, let the parents not forget to take a long look at themselves and their progeny. On the first day of the term, ask yourself what progress your child’s teacher will report on the last day.

Will your boy or girl forge ahead, or remain just a dull average? Will he or she swim, or just float, carried by the educational tide? How many parents wonder why their child does no more than float in school, passive in his or her studies, going through school without school going through him or her. They are prone to blame it on their child’s IQ , and then discover that the child’s IQ hits 130. They blame the school or yeshiva, and then discover that their neighbor’s little boy attends the same school, nay – the same class – and is performing miracles in his work. And they are stumped. Why, after an extensive Jewish education, such parents might ask themselves, should my child remain apathetic to anything with Jewish content? What is it that the child lacks? And if the parents are intelligent people, they will ask not, “What does the child lack?” but, “What do we lack?” They lament that, “We have bought our children all the books they need, a Jewish encyclopedia and a Britannica, we send our children to the best schools in the city, give our children the best nourishment, and yet our children do not live up to our expectations.” But these intelligent parents, who paid so much attention to nourishment, have forgotten something of tremendous importance.

They have forgotten to breathe into their offspring’s lungs the life-sustaining air of courage; they have forgotten to inspire their children with the feeling that the Torah that they are learning is of terrific importance; they failed to impress upon the young minds that what they do and accomplish is of exceptional significance to both parents and everyone else as well. They have shipped the children off to school, shoved them out of their minds. In short, they failed to encourage their children.

How remarkably profound was the Bible’s understanding of the need for encouragement. In today’s sidra, we learn that if a corpse was found between two towns under mysterious circumstances, and the murderer is not known, then the courts would measure the distance to both villages. And the elders or representatives of that town or village nearest the place where the corpse was found had to perform a very strange, if not humiliating, ritual. They would take a calf upon whom a yoke had never been placed, bring it down to a brook near ground which had never been worked, and there they would decapitate the calf and wash their hands upon his carcass. And they would say, “Our hands did not spill this blood and our eyes did not see” (Deuteronomy 21:7). What strange words! What does “seeing” have to do with the guilt or innocence of a community and its leaders in a murder case? And if indeed these hands did not spill this blood, then why require the elders to undergo this strange, frightening, and suspicious ritual? Our Rabbis (Mishna Sota 9:6), anticipating that question, commented on the phrase in the verse “and our eyes did not see,” that “We accept moral responsibility because we failed to accompany him out of town.” How wise were our Sages! With their insight into human nature, they realized that this man had not successfully resisted his attacker because he left that town demoralized. The elders of the town failed to walk that man out onto the highway, they failed to encourage him on his way, they failed to make him realize that his presence in their community was important to them, and that his leaving saddened them. They simply did not take any notice of him. And it is courage, the knowledge of a man that he is backed by his fellows, that is necessary for a man to put up a fight against killers in the night who fall upon him with murder in their hearts. Without this encouragement, this knowledge that he means something to someone, a man’s resistance to his attacker is nil, whether he has eaten well or not, and he falls by the wayside, dead. And when a community has thus sinned against the lonely stranger in its midst, it must accept full moral guilt for his murder. And the elders must announce in shame, “These hands did not spill this blood and our eyes did not see.” Do you know how the Rabbis would translate that? “No, we did not murder him with our very hands, but nevertheless we admit that our hands are stained with his blood, because our eyes did not see – we were blind to his existence, indifferent to him, we overlooked him, we failed to encourage him and inspire him with the dignity of being a man among men. Our hands are stained because our eyes were clouded!”

To those parents who will cry out against fate at the end of this school year that their children who have IQs above 130 and attend the best schools in New York are nevertheless dead in their spirit, that their souls are corpses, the Bible gives a high warning: Keep your eyes open and clear, not clouded. Inspire your children with the courage to take on a double program because it means so much, make them feel important and wanted. Take a long look at your children; don’t overlook them. Extend to them the courtesy of accompaniment; let them feel that you want their company because they want yours. Go with them to school some day and ask them what they expect to accomplish that day. Friday nights and Shabbat afternoons when you have an opportunity to eat your meal without hurry and rush, discuss with them the problems they discussed in school; respect their arguments instead of dismissing them or, contrariwise, acting as if all the world knew that. Keep your eyes open and clear, and your hands won’t be stained.

During the war, I received a letter from a soldier friend of mine who hit the Normandy beaches on D-Day, fought through France and went through the horrors of the Battle of the Bulge. That boy saw more of horror than a man double his age. Yet, he wrote to me, he did not falter for one moment; despite the cold and impersonal grinding of the war machine, he did not feel lonesome or dejected. For the one thing that had helped him most during those long months of fighting was the remembrance of his father who, seeing him off from New York and unable to speak because of emotion, put his hand on his son’s shoulder and held him strongly. His father’s hand on his shoulder is what kept his spirit and body alive in that hell called Europe. It was this accompaniment that assured his son’s survival. His hand on his son’s shoulder was a life-sustaining encouragement. That father’s hand was not stained with his son’s blood. There was no necessity for him to perform the humiliating ritual of raising his hands and exclaiming, “These hands did not spill this blood and our eyes did not see.”

My friends, the closets of the American Jewish community are full of corpses, skeletons of what once were or could have been good Jews. The words of the poet Bialik ring true: “The people are indeed a corpse, a corpse dead-heavy without end.” It was the great failure of the last generation to inspire their children with the courage of a Jewish education that is responsible for the ghosts of Jews who clamor in the ball parks on Saturday afternoons and the corpses of Jews who will eat just anyplace, from Times Square to Chinatown, corpses whose uniquely Jewishly blood has been drained from them right down to the last drop. It is for these derelicts of the spirit, Jews whose Jewishness died a premature death because they were not properly encouraged and inspired, that the Jewish community at large must answer. Right outside this synagogue there are young Jews and middle aged Jews and old Jews walking past without the least recognition that today is Shabbat. Who is it who will raise his hands and disclaim responsibility for this situation and say, “Our hands did not spill it?” Look again at those very same hands. They certainly are stained red with the blood of their Jewishness, because “our eyes did not see” – our eyes were clouded. We were blind to them when they were young and impressionable, we bought school supplies for them and filled their lunch baskets, but we failed to inspire them with our sincere interest in them; we gave them a sugar-daddy when what they wanted was a father. And then when they left their elementary schools we failed them again – we did not accompany them onto the great highway of life, we left them to fend for themselves as we overlooked their existence. We simply were not interested in anything beyond the immediate welfare of their bodies. George Bernard Shaw writes in his The Devil’s Disciple that “the worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that is the essence of inhumanity.” Well, we are guilty of that inhumanity – we accept moral responsibility because we failed to accompany them out of town.

Before Jacob died, he blessed his son Judah saying, “May your teeth be whiter than milk” (Genesis 49:12). What a strange blessing! Surely our father Jacob did not mean to anticipate Colgate and Pepsodent! The Rabbis of the Talmud (Ketuvot 111b) explain, as they interpret this bizarre text, that he who makes his friend show the white of his teeth, that is – he who makes him smile, does him a greater good than he who provides him with milk. This was Judah’s blessing – that his smile encouraged his brothers and friends to smile, and that was worth more to them than all the milk on Borden’s farm. The Rabbis place greater emphasis on encouragement than on nourishment.

Your son and daughter will begin their school term this week. You will have provided them with all the physical necessities. But don’t forget to smile, to make them feel proud, to encourage them, to bolster their spirits. Keep your eyes open – and your hands clean.