Category: Excerpts

Excerpted from Erica Brown’s ‘In the Narrow Places: Daily Inspiration for the Three Weeks’ co-published with Maggid Books

One of the most beautiful expressions in Eikha is “Let us lift up our hearts with our hands to God in the heavens.” (Lam. 3:41). When we visualize this verse, we can imagine pieces of a broken heart held high in our hands, a gift to God of our innermost feelings. “Look, God, see our pain. See these fragments, these emotional shards, pieces of our heart. We show them to You. Have pity and compassion upon us.”

There is a Hasidic reading of this verse that offers us a different image. It aids us in constructing a positive way to handle human hardship. When we are in pain, personally or collectively, we may turn to others for guidance or cry to heaven for divine assistance, but we still have to struggle profoundly with how to manage with the pain and how to feel about it. Rabbi Soloveitchik once made a distinction between pain and suffering: Pain in the physical universe is what we experience when we get hurt. Suffering is an emotional, existential state that can exist long after the physical pain is gone. It can be wrenching, seem intractable. In the face of immense loss, we feel our smallness and vulnerability. Rabbi Naĥman of Bratslav, Hasidic rebbe and master story-teller, used the narrative form to give advice about this difficult human problem.

As a thinker, Rabbi Naĥman rejected despair and believed that humanity needs to cling to faith, joy, melody, and movement, authoring the famous statement of optimism: “Mitzva gedola lihiyot besimĥa tamid – It is a great mitzva to always be happy.” He believed that communication with a tzaddik, a righteous man, is critical for the soul, and that every person yearns for God. With that spirit in mind, we turn to one of his stories.

A Tale of Suffering:

A king once sent his son to distant places to study. When the son returned home, he was well versed in all branches of wisdom. The king then told his son to take a boulder the size of a millstone, and bring it up to the palace attic. The son looked at the huge, heavy boulder and realized that he would not be able to lift it. He felt very bad because he would not be
able to fulfill his father’s request.

The king then explained his true intention to his son: “Did you really think that I wanted you to carry this huge boulder? Even with all your wisdom, you could not do it. My intention is that you take a hammer and break the boulder into small pieces. You will then be able to bring it up into the attic.”

Many Hasidic tales center around a king and his son. The king obviously represents God, the ultimate King, imagined in human form, and the son represents the children of Israel. The king is both the stern, authoritative figure and the sympathetic father, playing on the tension that exists when these two roles are embodied in one person, much like our prayer “Avinu Malkenu, Our Father, Our King,” beseeches God through the prism of two different relationships melded into a difficult whole.

In this story, the king, as is often the case, tasks his son with an assignment that on the surface seems impossible. No one can shoulder such a large rock and carry it up to an attic. The king is, in essence, testing his son’s ingenuity. How will the son interpret the task? Will he have the originality of thought to find a way through, or will he give up in hopelessness because a solution is not immediately apparent? Although the prince has been sent to learn the world’s wisdom, he must pass this test that requires more than book knowledge in order to be worthy of becoming king. Indeed, in most such stories the king tests his children or his charges in order to check their worthiness, and to prepare thenext generation for the tribulations of leadership.

The son in this study does not measure up. He could not see beyond the size of the boulder to find a way through the challenge that his father posed. The stone was too big and heavy. And the father understood at that moment that his son’s wisdom was severely limited.
Academic learning is not the only, or predominant, requisite for sitting on the throne. The prince lacked a creative problem-solving instinct; he saw only one dimension in the father’s request, and that led to paralysis rather than innovation.

This story also has a wider application. Suffering is at the core of the human experience. Religions like Buddhism aim at helping people grow through suffering rather than shrinking in the face of it. Much of Hasidic thought, based as it is on an eternal sense of optimism, also aims at managing suffering by breaking it up into incremental pieces, each of which can be carried up to God – placed in the divine attic, so to speak. The way to manage suffering, the king wanted his son to know, is not to shoulder all of it at once, but rather to chisel away at it bit by bit, and only then lift it. That way it can be borne, and carried to a high place – given meaning and redeemed before God. Rabbi Naĥman implies that God wants us to “lift up our hearts with our hands to God in the heavens.” But our hearts may be like heavy stones, which we cannot possibly lift. What we then must do is take a hammer of words and break our hearts of stone. Then we can lift them up to God.

We have another biblical verse that has been interpreted in a similar way. In Jeremiah we read, “Is not My word like fire? says the Lord; and like a hammer that shatters a rock?” ( Jeremiah 23:29). In one Talmudic interpretation, Jeremiah is saying that just as a hammer can shatter a rock, so too can the words of Torah combat the evil inclination, breaking it apart so that it has little power to rule over us. This is a wonderful approach to managing temptation. Instead of looking at desire as a solid, immovable rock that obstructs our way, we need to view ourselves as the holders of a hammer, who can break the rock into manageable pieces that will then present little challenge.

So often in our lives we stand in front of a mountain of despair or temptation, before an immovable stone. At the bottom of such an incline, our capacity to scale the heights seems questionable. We can’t move mountains. But we can wear down the mountain, piece by piece, day by day, crumbling the rock, lifting it high to God, asking for compassion, realizing that we are far stronger than we’ll ever know.

Kavana for the Day

Recall a situation in the past that seemed beyond your ability to manage: it may be a family problem, an educational challenge or a professional struggle. Or perhaps there’s a mountain in front of you at this very moment, or a stone too heavy to lift. Write down what made or makes it seem so overwhelming and frightening. Now list ten small ways that you can chisel into this rock, and some reasons why you should offer up to God each piece that you’ve broken off. Think how this will make a difference.

Tackle the first on your list. Don’t leave it until tomorrow. You begin healing your suffering now. Believe that the King has faith in your creativity.

Excerpted from the Koren Mesorat HaRav Kinot: Lookstein Edition. Edited by Rabbi Simon Posner, Kinot translated by Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb.

Kina 22

The Rav discusses what we mourn for on Tisha B’Av. It is not only the Hurban Beit HaMikdash in the material sense, but also the Hurban Beit HaMikdash in the spiritual sense, the destruction of centers of Torah and the thousands of towns and villages over the ages where Jews lived a sacred life.

After shifting from kinot for the Hurban Beit HaMikdash to a kina for the Ten Martyrs, there is now a further shift in the subject matter of the kinot. This kina (Hacharishu Mimeni Va’adabera) is the first of several commemorating the massacres in Speyer, Mainz and Worms, and other related tragedies during the Crusades in Germany at the end of the eleventh century. These kinot recount the Hurban Batei Mikdash of the Hakhmei Ashkenaz, the slaughter of the Torah scholars and the destruction of the Jewish communities.

In a sense, however, this kina is a continuation of the kina “ארזי הלבנון.” In both kinot, the deaths that are described represent a double catastrophe. Thousands of Jews were killed during the Crusades. But the tragedy was not just the murder of ten people during the Roman times or the myriads during the Crusades. The tragedy was also the fact that the greatest scholars of the Jewish people were killed. In this kina, the mourning that is expressed is not just for the inhuman act of the massacre. Rather, the principal emphasis is on the destruction of the Torah centers in Germany.

The dates of these massacres are known to us. The Crusaders generally started out on their journey in the spring, and the massacres took place in the months of Iyar and Sivan, around the time of Shavuot. Even though these events did not occur on Tisha B’Av, they are included in the kinot and are commemorated on Tisha B’Av because of the principle, already noted in connection with other kinot, that the death of the righteous is equivalent to the burning of the Beit HaMikdash. If the Beit HaMikdash was sacred, how much more sacred were entire Jewish communities which consisted of thousands of scholars. These communities were also, collectively, a Beit HaMikdash in the spiritual sense. If the kinot speak about the Hurban Beit HaMikdash in the material sense, they also mourn the Hurban Beit HaMikdash in the spiritual sense, the destruction of centers of Torah and the killing of great Torah scholars.
In fact, sometimes the death of the righteous is even a greater catastrophe than the destruction of the physical Beit HaMikdash.

There is an additional reason for including these kinot dealing with the massacres in Germany in the Tisha B’Av service. Hurban Beit HaMikdash is an all-inclusive concept. All disasters, tragedies and sufferings that befell the Jewish people should be mentioned on Tisha B’Av. Rashi says (II Chronicles 35:25, s.v. vayitnum lehok) that when one has to mourn for an event, it should be done on Tisha B’Av. When these kinot relating to the Crusades are recited, one should remember that the tragedies being described happened not only in 1096 but in the 1940s as well. These kinot are not only a eulogy for those murdered in Mainz, Speyer and Worms, but also for those murdered in Warsaw and Vilna and in the hundreds and thousands of towns and villages where Jews lived a sacred and committed life. The kinot are a eulogy not only for the Ten Martyrs and those killed in the Crusades, but for the martyrdom of millions of Jews throughout Jewish history.

Excerpted from Erica Brown’s ‘In the Narrow Places: Daily Inspiration for the Three Weeks’ Click here to buy the book

Ours is an age which has forgotten how to cry.” Rabbi Norman Lamm, chancellor of Yeshiva University, offered this observation in a sermon he gave on Rosh HaShana called “Three Who Cried.” Rosh HaShana is a time when many of us cry over ourselves and our wrongs, and sometimes over the state of the world. Rabbi Lamm speaks of three types of tears: the tears that come when our myths of absolute security and certainty are shattered; the tears of those who resign themselves to hopelessness; and the tears of those who cry over reality, not from frustration or resignation, but from a determination to change and renew that reality. Jewish crying fits the last of these categories: the act of crying, according to Rabbi Lamm, is the beginning of transformation – the tears are those of protest and resolute purpose.

But Rosh HaShana is not the only crying time of the year where we have perhaps forgotten the meaning and the power of tears. Eikha returns to the motif of crying again and again. We can visualize Jeremiah, its attributed author, weeping ceaselessly as he writes. He tells us as much:

My eyes are spent with tears, my heart is in tumult; my being melts away over the ruin of my poor people. (Lam. 2:11)

When I cry and plead, He shuts out my prayer. (Ibid. 3:8)

My eyes shed streams of water over the ruin of my poor people. (Ibid. 3:48)

My eyes shall flow without cease, without respite until the Lord looks down and beholds from heaven. (Ibid. 3:49)

Do not shut your ear to my groan, my cry. (Ibid. 3:56)

We hear a familiar refrain in Jeremiah’s words: God is ignoring our tears. We sense multiple levels of pain in these verses. There is the anguish of destruction which prompts tears and then there is the additional weeping that occurs when God ignores the tears. Perhaps there is no pain greater than ignored pain. Just watch a child fall in a playground. The child in pain looks up to see if a parent is watching. With no parent to watch, he holds back the tears and continues to play. But when he sees that his mother is indeed watching, he bursts into tears, waiting for a nurturing embrace and someone to brush them away. Tears are one of the most powerful, wordless ways we communicate our feelings to others. To know that someone hears those tears and ignores them adds an additional element of suffering: “Do not shut your ear to my groan, my cry.”

But what about God’s tears? Does God ever cry about us? Do we ever ignore His cries? In the opening to Eikha Raba, an ancient rabbinic commentary on the book of Lamentations, there is an interpretation of the verse, “And God, the Lord of Hosts, called the day for crying and eulogizing” (Proem/Petiĥta 24). When our enemies broke into the Mikdash and conquered it, God said, “I no longer have a place in this world and will remove My Presence from it, back to its original resting place.” And at that same time, God cried and said, “What have I done? I placed My Divine Presence in the lower world for the sake of Israel and now that they have sinned, I have returned to My original dwelling.” In the midrash, God then goes with the ministering angels to see the destruction of the Mikdash from up close, and He cries again, “Woe is Me over My House. My children, where are you? My priests, where are you? My loved ones, where are you?”

At this point, God speaks to Jeremiah of what He is experiencing. “Today I am like a man who made his only son a wedding canopy, and he died in the middle of the ceremony.” God then tells Jeremiah to go and call upon his ancestors Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses at their burial places since “they know how to cry.” Jeremiah says that he does not know where Moses is buried (since we are told in Deuteronomy 34:6 that no one knows the location of Moses’ grave). God tells him to go to the edge of the Jordan River and call out “Son of Amram, son of Amram.” Jeremiah does this and asks Moses to petition God on behalf of Israel.

Moses asks Jeremiah why, but Jeremiah does not know (this midrash positions Jeremiah before the destruction. Here, the prophet has been denied the power to see the future). Moses then asks one of the ministering angels whom he knew from the time of Sinai to explain Jeremiah’s request and is told of the upcoming destruction: “The Temple has been destroyed and Israel has been exiled.” At that moment Moses begins to cry and petition so that his tears wake the patriarchs, and the angels rend their garments, put their hands on their heads, and scream and cry so that their tears reach the gates of the Temple. When God sees this spectacle, He declares a day of mourning.

This midrash explains the etiology of Tisha B’Av in an imaginative rendering of how tears prompted God to declare a day of mourning – and also describes how Jeremiah had to learn how to cry. He needed to take lessons from a master, Moses. And Moses needed the angels to cry with him so that the tears would reach the Temple. Finally, looking at all of this emotional unraveling, God Himself was also moved to tears.

Tisha B’Av is Jewish crying-time. It is a day when we look back at persecution and shed tears over the mess. Once a year we have to revisit a painful past where persecutions meld and merge into a continuous timeline of tragedy. We fast. We pray. We think. We cry.

What if we have forgotten how to cry? Though we may feel like crying, we so often hold back tears. Rabbi Lamm reflects on this in relation to Rosh HaShana, but his words are easily transferable to Tisha B’Av:

Once upon a time the Maĥzor [High Holy Day prayer-book] was stained with tears; today it is so white and clean – and cold. Not, unfortunately, that there is nothing to cry about…It is rather that we have embarrassed ourselves into silence…And so the unwept tears and unexpressed emotions and the unarticulated cries well up within us and seek release. What insight the Kotzker Rebbe had when he said that when a man needs to cry, and wants to cry, but cannot cry – that is the most heart-rending cry of all.

For us to feel the impact of the Three Weeks deeply, we have to allow ourselves the full range of sadness: grief, loss, remorse, guilt and confusion. We don’t have to teach ourselves to cry. We just have to give ourselves permission.

Kavana for the Day

Has there ever been a time when you cried over the Jewish people? Think of that moment and what prompted it. What was the trigger that pushed you over the invisible emotional boundary line? Open up the book of Eikha and skim its verses. Identify the one that pains you the most. On Tisha B’Av, go back to that verse and read it several times until you feel that you have taken it in fully.

If you cannot cry over it, but want to learn how to cry, think of someone you could turn to in order to learn how to cry. What prompted that choice of person? What makes some people “good criers” and others less able to express emotion fully? When we give ourselves permission to cry and to experience the full range of pain that Jeremiah expresses, we also learn how to experience the intensity of joy.

Excerpted from Erica Brown’s In the Narrow Places: Daily Inspiration for the Three Weeks, co-published by OU Press and Maggid Books 

Growth through Discomfort

We grow only through discomfort. When we are comfortable, there’s no reason to change. The book of Proverbs helps us appreciate the voices of those who make us feel uncomfortable with ourselves: “He who criticizes a man will in the end find more favor than he who flatters him” (Proverbs 28:23). We all love compliments. They make us feel special and connected to the person who offers them. But Proverbs tells us to be wary of the flatterer, the person who gives us too many compliments. We will do better with the person who offers us solid criticism that can help us grow and change in the future, than with one who offers us the fleeting luxury of a feel-good moment. How well do you take criticism? How well do you give it?

The book of Proverbs contains many descriptions of the wise man and the foolish one, comparing and contrasting them, praising one and criticizing the other. One of the most meaningful differences between the wise person and the fool is how they each take criticism. “Do not criticize the fool for he will hate you. Correct the wise man, and he will love you” (ibid. 9:8).

To understand why wisdom requires criticism, we have to think about the nature of rebuke. To do so, we turn to the very first verses of Deuteronomy, to the parasha of Devarim, the Torah portion that is always read during the Three Weeks. The Hebrew word “devarim” means “words” or “things.” In fact, words are things, giving the translation double weight. Many will shrug off an abuse of language with the simple dismissal, “It’s just words,” but Jewish tradition, from its semantic roots, treats words as having the concreteness of objects. They are our intellectual and emotional currency; they exist in the world. They are not wind or air that circulates lightly among us. They have weight and measure. Selecting the right words, the right context in which to use those words, and the right people to whom to say them is the better part of wisdom, especially when it comes to giving criticism.

When it comes to the things that we have to say, but don’t always want to say, we look to Moses for advice. We open the book of Words/Things and read the following verses: “These are the words that Moses addressed to all Israel on the other side of the Jordan. Through the wilderness, in the Arabah, near Suph, between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth, and Di-Zahab, it is eleven days from Horeb to Kadesh-Barnea by the Mount Seir route. It was in the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, that Moses addressed the Israelites…” (Deuteronomy 1:1–3). Rashi adds layers of nuance to what seems like a typical biblical introduction, merely offering us the place and time of events. Moses, he contends, gathered everyone together so that there was no one absent who could later say that Moses spoke and no one contended with him. In other words, when everyone is present at a speech and hears the same words, there can be argument over interpretation but no refutation. Everyone knows who spoke up in debate. Rashi cites this ancient midrashic reading because the verse says “to all Israel,” an expression which is surprisingly rare in describing Moses’ audience. The actual words, “See, you are all here; he who has anything to say in reply, let him reply,” is a remarkably democratic position. If Moses is going to chastise the Israelites for a difficult past, let all be present to hear it so that anyone can counter, if anyone dares.

All of the complicated place names that may mean little to later readers are locations where the Israelites sinned. Rashi surmises that the audience would have well understood the significance – and implicit shame – in the mention of these specific stops along the way; the text does so subtly, Rashi observes, to protect the honor of the Israelites. While we may not be able to recall the import of these places, we can understand the significance that names embody. Consider how we can immediately conjure images of freedom just by naming a few cities: Gettysburg, Selma, Philadelphia, Boston, Jamestown.

Why does Moses gather everyone together in the last year of this wearying journey? Any number of possibilities come to mind. He could be preparing them for life in the Promised Land, giving over laws that they have not had to keep thus far, but that would be critical as they neared the land – such as laws related to war, to agriculture and to the formation of a government – all matters that are discussed in this last of the five books. He could review history and offer his perspective on the past, which is certainly one way that this farewell speech is understood. He could be preparing final words of inspiration, since he knows that he will not be making the last leg of the journey.

Rashi believes that Moses, following in the footsteps of Jacob, Joshua, Samuel and David, gathered everyone together to rebuke them before he took leave of this world. There is something harsh and grating in this idea, that the last words of a beloved and beleaguered leader to his followers are words of chastisement. The Sifrei, the midrashic compilation on Deuteronomy, presents four reasons why people offer rebuke on their deathbeds: in order to criticize once rather than repeatedly; the shame of the person criticized is mitigated by the fact that this is a final meeting; to prevent the person who is rebuked from harboring a grudge against the rebuker; in order that they may part in peace.

Each of these reasons aims at clearing a path so the relationship can move forward. The last words someone utters are profoundly impactful, and stay embedded in the receiver’s mind, precisely because they are the last ones. If you were to hear criticism again and again it would wash over you without really making a soulful mark. Sincere and thoughtful feedback not only fulfills the biblical command, “You shall not hate your brother in your heart; you shall surely rebuke your friend” (Leviticus 19:7), it also helps clear the barriers that stand in the way of a relationship. Rather than a final parting with the mystery of words unsaid, a last-ditch effort at advice and guidance can be its own meaningful legacy, a gift from the person who is leaving us forever.

Although Maimonides tells us how best to give difficult feedback – softly, in private and for the good of the person and not for our own good (Laws of Character 6:7) – we all still struggle with hearing it well and not putting up our defenses. Rabbeinu Baĥya ben Asher, the thirteenth-century Spanish scholar, writes in his introduction to Deuteronomy that Moses gathered everyone together to leave his ethical last will and testament, even though not all in the group were willing to listen:

It is well known that most rebukes [sic] are directed at the average person, the masses; the masses have different views, are not homogeneous…Seeing that all these people do not have minds of their own, they do not easily accept rebukes [sic] seeing that what one person likes another dislikes. What is pleasing to one person is unacceptable to others.

When in the presence of many people, it is always easy to believe that the rabbi offering up a heated sermon, or an angry boss at a staff meeting, is talking to or about someone else.

Rabbeinu Baĥya quotes two Talmudic passages to validate his reading. One states that younger scholars are preferred over older ones because the younger scholars are less critical. It’s easier to be popular if you make people feel good than if you make people feel challenged. The other reflects the words of Rabbi Tarfon: “I wonder if there exists in this generation anyone who knows how to accept rebuke.”

The way that we give and receive criticism is often shaped by culture, community expectations and societal norms. When we are defensive, we lose a whole avenue to introspection that can help us develop and grow in our sensitivity and thoughtfulness to others. Think of the helpful words of a mentor, a supervisor, or someone who took your last performance review seriously and gave you feedback that might not have been comfortable to hear but helped you become a better professional. Or the friend who you thought insulted you, but actually helped you become a better parent. There’s the word your wife said that offended you, but that made you see that you weren’t treating one of your children with the proper respect. Every day we receive messages about ourselves. Every once in a while, someone cares enough to tell us what they see. Correct the wise person and he will love you…

Kavana for the Day

Part one: Ask someone who is close to you either professionally or personally for feedback about something very specific. Listen carefully and prompt with questions. Think afterwards about what they said, how it made you feel, and what you’re going to do about it.

Part two: Think of a relationship that has suffered because you have not been telling someone what you really think. Find a way to give respectful feedback that shows love and concern. How did you do?

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

Context

Following Bilam’s failed attempts at cursing the nation, the Israelites are seduced by the “daughters of Moab” and fall prey to the licentious idolatry of Ba’al Peor. God responds with a devastating plague that tragically claims twenty-four thousand victims from among the people.

Although no clear connection is immediately drawn in the text between the main story of Parshat Balak and the devastating episode of Ba’al Peor, a brief reference found later in the book of Bamidbar lays blame for this tragic event squarely at the feet of the sorcerer Bilam: “Behold! It was they [the Midianite women] who caused the children of Israel, by the word of Bilam, to commit a betrayal against the Lord regarding the matter of Peor; and the plague occurred in the assembly of the Lord.”

Questions

If the episode of Ba’al Peor can be directly traced to the scheming designs of Bilam, why doesn’t the Torah immediately say so?

Why record this tragic episode as an apparent epilogue to the Balak/Bilam narrative, omit any connection between the two stories, and then subsequently affirm such a connection, in a textual aside, much later in the text?

Approaches

A

A solution to these puzzles can be found if we recognize the tragic episode of Ba’al Peor not only as the textual epilogue to the Balak/Bilam narrative, but as the event that drives the message of that entire story home.

As we have noted before, the Talmud maintains that God’s transformation of Bilam’s curses into blessings ultimately has very limited practical effect. Due to the sins of the Israelites, the majority of these blessings revert back to their original curses. From this rabbinic perspective the Balak/Bilam story conveys a powerful, counterintuitive lesson: Bilam’s words, and other similar phenomena, do not matter at all. Ultimately our fate is determined by our own merit or guilt.

B

Suddenly, the strategically placed episode of Ba’al Peor is invested with new, devastating significance. As the Israelites emerge unscathed from Bilam’s external threat, only to fall prey to their own shortcomings, the flow of events mirrors in practice what the Balak/Bilam narrative preaches in theory: We can blame no one else for our failures; our destiny is in our hands.

The Torah’s immediate omission of Bilam’s pivotal role in the episode of Ba’al Peor now becomes completely understandable. Any mention of the sorcerer’s involvement would have diminished the Torah’s consistent message of personal responsibility. Through its silence, the Torah effectively robs us of the ability to blame anyone else for our people’s descent into idolatry. We are forced to realize the uncomfortable truth: Bilam’s machinations would never have succeeded had he not found the Israelites willing, easy prey.

Any mention of connection between Bilam and his successful plot against the nation will wait for another time and place. For now, the Torah is intent on bringing Parshat Balak to a cohesive close. From start to finish, this parsha is designed to sensitize us to the role that we play in determining our own fate.

Excerpted from the Koren Mesorat HaRav Kinot: Lookstein Edition. Edited by Rabbi Simon Posner, Kinot translated by Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb

Kina 25

This kina, by Rabbi Kalonymos ben Yehuda of Speyer, laments the massacres perpetrated by the Crusaders in 1096, which destroyed the most prominent Jewish communities of the Rhineland. The main motif of this kina (מי יתן ראשי מים, Mi Yiten Roshi Mayim), a motif found in some of the prior kinot, is that the death of the righteous is equivalent to the burning of the Beit HaMikdash.

If we are to mourn for the Beit HaMikdash, we must also mourn the death of the great Torah scholars. Since the tragedy of the destruction of the Torah centers in Germany is equivalent to the Hurban Beit HaMikdash, we are justified in thinking that a special fast day should have been established to mourn for the martyrs of those massacres. However, the kina declares, we are not to add any fast day beyond Tisha B’Av to commemorate any other catastrophe, massacre, or destruction.

The phrase in the kina “אי תורה ותלמוד והלומדה, Where are Torah, Talmud, and students?” has a message. The message of this phrase of the kina is that it is important to mourn not only for the great scholars but for the ordinary Jews as well. One does not have to be a genius or a great teacher of Torah. All one has to do is study, at any level. This itself is part of mesora, the chain of tradition. Our mesora consists not only of brilliant scholars, but also of simple Jews who study even if they do not understand what they study.

The phrase “Where are Torah, Talmud, and students?” was the phrase used by a Holocaust survivor to describe to me his feelings at visiting Vilna on Kol Nidrei night in 1945. Shortly after he was liberated, he returned to Vilna where he had lived before the War, for the High Holidays. It is difficult to describe what Vilna looked like on Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur before the War. In one neighborhood there were eight or nine synagogues, including the Beit Knesset HaGra and a synagogue that dated back to the Middle Ages. This person remembered what the Vilna shulhoif, the neighborhood where the synagogues were located, was like on Kol Nidrei night when tens of thousands of Jews would congregate. On that Kol Nidrei night in 1945, he returned to the synagogue where his mother used to pray, and it was deserted. He used the phrase from this kina to describe his feelings, “Where is the Torah and those who study it? Her place is desolate, with none to dwell therein.”

This survivor continued with a haunting story. His mother was a pious Jewess and of course attended shul on Yom Kippur. When it came time for Maftir Yonah, she used to leave the shul for half an hour and feed her cat at home. The cat would wait for her, and after feeding the cat she would return to shul. This man, who knew the cat, spent Yom Kippur of 1945 at the home where his parents had lived, and at 4:30 in the afternoon, there was a scratching at the door. It was the same cat waiting for him to feed her the way his mother had. This visit had a traumatic effect on him. At that moment, he felt the full magnitude of the Holocaust. Indescribable despair and bleakness overwhelmed him.

This story also illustrates how accurately Lamentations captures the devastation of the Ĥurban. When a place is desolate and devoid of human beings, it is tragic; but when animals prowl there, the pain is almost unbearable. As the verse in Lamentations (5:18) says, “For Mount Zion is desolate.” It is tragic that Mount Zion is desolate and deserted; but, not only are people absent, the verse continues, “foxes prowl over it.” The fox and the cat walk around. All he saw was the ruins of the synagogues and the cat prowling amidst the ruins. The only link between the past and present was the cat.

Excerpted from The Koren Mesorat HaRav Kinot: The Lookstein Edition

“People respond to the story of an individual personal tragedy more readily than to a national tragedy on a large scale.”

The placement of this kina in the sequence of the kinot initially appears odd. The order of “החרישה ממני” following “ארזי הלבנון” is logical and proper. However, one would have expected that the kina following “החרישה ממני,” which commemorates the martyrs of German Jewry, would have been “מי יתן ראשי מים,” the second kina pertaining to the Crusades in which Speyer, Worms and Mainz are mentioned by name and the dates of their destruction are recorded. Instead, the story of the death of Rabbi Yishma’el’s son and daughter is interjected, interrupting the series of kinot about the destruction of the Jewish communities in Germany. To compound the question, one could also ask why it is necessary to interrupt the description in the kinot of major national catastrophes with a story of a young man and woman who suffered as a result of the Hurban of Jerusalem, but whose deaths did not change the course of Jewish history or the routine of daily Jewish life. The narrative flow of the kinot mourns the destruction of the state, the land and the Beit HaMikdash – all of which changed Jewish history – then the martyrdom of the ten greatest scholars of the Talmud, and then the massacre of thousands of people and the destruction of the most important communities in the Middle Ages, both spiritually and numerically. In the midst of this national commemoration of the tragedies that befell the community, the sequence of kinot is interrupted with the story of the death of two individuals.

The answer is that Judaism has a different understanding of and approach to the individual. We mourn for the individual even if he or she was not a significant person. Rabbi Yishma’el, the father of these youngsters was already killed, and they were orphans. In light of the major calamities, who is responsible to remember a story about an individual young man and woman who were taken captive by some slave merchants? The answer is that we are. We have a special kina dedicated just to them, as if one hundred thousand people were involved, not just two individuals. Their life and their death may not have changed Jewish history, but we suffer and remember. We do not forget the faceless, nameless individual even in the midst of national disaster and upheaval, even when telling the story of the greatest of all the disasters in our history, the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash. In this kina we mourn not for the Jews of Worms or Mainz, not for the Hurban Yerushalayim, and not for the Beit HaMikdash. We mourn for a boy and a girl who were not leaders or scholars and who did not play any major public role. They are as important as the greatest leaders. Sometimes we become so engrossed in the national tragedy that we forget the individual, and the sequence of the kinot is interrupted to highlight the worth of the individual.

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

Context

Immediately after outlining the laws of the para aduma, the Torah resumes its historical narrative with the statement “And the children of Israel, the whole assembly, arrived in the Wilderness of Tzin in the first month, and the nation settled in Kadesh; and Miriam died there and was buried there.”

Questions

Something astonishing has occurred in the Torah that could easily escape our notice. Nearly thirty-eight years have passed without comment from the text.

The last historical event recorded in the text, the rebellion of Korach and its aftermath, took place at the beginning of the nation’s forty-year period of wilderness wandering. The death of Miriam, however, occurs at the end of this period, in the fortieth year of wandering. From this point in the text until the end of the book of Devarim and the close of the Torah, the Torah deals solely with the final year in the wilderness and with the commandments transmitted by Moshe during that year.

What happened to the bulk of the forty-year period of wilderness wandering? Clearly these have been important, formative years. An entire generation, the generation of the Exodus, has perished and a new generation has risen, destined to enter the land. According to numerous commentaries that is why the Torah now states, “And the children of Israel, the whole assembly, arrived in the Wilderness of Tzin….” The entirety of the nation that will enter the land is now present and accounted for.

Why, then, do all the wilderness years passed without any comment in the text at all – without, in fact, even a note that they have passed?

Approaches

A

Strangely enough, the Torah’s silence concerning the missing thirty-eight years is matched by a similar silence from the classical commentaries. While some of the scholars, such as the Chizkuni, are clearly aware of the phenomenon of the missing years, they make no attempt to explain why the Torah does not chronicle this period of time more fully.

B

Perhaps the key to this mystery lies in the answer to another, more technical question.
What is the symbolism of the repeated appearance of the number forty at critical moments of the biblical text? Why are there forty years of rain that create the flood, forty days repeatedly spent by Moshe on the summit of Mount Sinai over the course of Revelation, forty days during which the spies tour the land of Canaan, forty years of wandering in the wilderness…?

A possible answer emerges from an unexpected source.

In commenting on the development of a human fetus, the Talmud states that, until the passage of forty days from conception, the embryo is considered to be maya b’alma, mere water. From that point on, the fetus enters a new, more advanced stage of development. Clearly, to the rabbinic mind, the fortieth day marks a critical point in the birthing process.

C

If the number forty represents a critical juncture in the biological birthing of a human being, perhaps the number forty plays a similar role throughout Jewish tradition. Upon consideration, each time a phenomenon appears in units of forty in the Torah text, a new reality is about to be born. The forty days of rain in Noach’s time mark not only the destruction of the old world but the birth of a new one; Moshe’s forty days on the summit of Mount Sinai signal the birth of a new nation forged on the foundation of God’s law; the forty-day tour of the spies through Canaan gives rise to the birth of a new, devastating reality for the generation of the Exodus; and the forty years of wilderness wandering give birth to a new generation of Israelites who will enter the land.

D

The forty-year period of wilderness wandering, therefore, carries no intrinsic independent significance. The significance of these years emerges instead as a period of incubation, a time when, step by step, a new generation is forged through a crucible of experience. The value of the wilderness years will be determined by the nature of the generation born, by the product created during the passing years.

Will this new generation of Israelites avoid the missteps of their fathers? Will this people, surrounded by clouds of God’s protection, sustained on the heaven-sent manna, live in their journeys through God’s manifest will, effectively transitioning from the fear of God to the love of God? Will the forty years have done their job?

These questions can only be answered in retrospect, as the story of this generation unfolds, after the wilderness years have passed. The Torah therefore remains silent concerning the passage of the years themselves, allowing us to draw our conclusions concerning their value after the fact, on the basis of the generation born.

Points to Ponder

Often, we attribute automatic power to time’s passage: Give it time…. Things will get better…. Time heals…. Things get better over time….prohibited at any time after conception unless the life of the mother is threatened. Under all circumstances, appropriate rabbinic authority should be consulted.

And yet, when we consider our own experience and the experience of those around us, we are forced to admit that the passage of time doesn’t always “make things better.” In fact, often the reverse is true. As time passes, unaddressed psychic wounds can fester, perceived slights can grow in intensity and misunderstandings can turn into hostility.

As a rabbi, I have experienced the tragedy of families unwilling to sit together even at the funeral of a loved one. When asked, however, as to the origin of the problem, family members often cannot remember. A small slight, a minor insult lost in the mists of memory turns, over time, into a permanent rift that can no longer be repaired.

The Torah’s silence concerning the Israelites’ forty-year wilderness passage reminds us of a lesson too often forgotten: The passage of time, in and of itself, is immaterial. What matters is what takes place during that time, and how those events impact upon our lives.

If, over the years, problems are ignored and reconciliation avoided, then the passage of time will work against us. If, on the other hand, we use our time wisely and constructively, confronting our shared issues squarely and with sensitivity, then time will surely be our ally.

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

Is This Miracle Really  Necessary?

Context

In the aftermath of Korach’s rebellion, after harsh punishments have been meted out to the perpetrators, God turns to Moshe with one final set of instructions. He directs him to collect a staff from each of the tribes of Israel, to inscribe the name of each tribal leader upon his respective staff – with Aharon’s name etched onto the staff of the tribe of Levi – and to place the staffs overnight in the Sanctuary.

These staffs, God explains, will serve as miraculous indicators of His own divine will: “And it shall be that the man whom I [God] shall choose, his staff will blossom; and I shall cause the complaints of the children of Israel to subside from upon Me.”

Moshe complies with God’s instructions, and twelve staffs, each emblazoned with the name of a tribal leader, are brought to the Sanctuary where they remain overnight. On the morrow, when Moshe enters the Sanctuary, he finds that Aharon’s staff alone has “brought forth a blossom, sprouted buds and mature almonds.” God has, once again, made known His selection of Aharon for the role of Kohen Gadol, High Priest.

After Moshe brings the twelve staffs out for the people to see, God commands him to return Aharon’s staff to the Sanctuary where it will serve as a continual reminder, an impediment to further rebellion against God’s choices for leadership.

Questions

Why is this miracle necessary?

Hasn’t God, in the most decisive ways possible, already declared His clear choice of Moshe and Aharon for leadership? Weren’t the targeted earthquake, the heaven-sent fire and the devastating plague that punished Korach, his followers and the rebellious Israelites powerful enough indications of God’s resolve?

If the Israelites have not been convinced by now of God’s choices, will the quiet additional miracle of Aharon’s flowering staff really make the difference?

Approaches

A

Perhaps the key to understanding the miraculous coda of the Korach narrative lies in focusing not on the final miracle in isolation but, instead, on that miracle’s contextual message. The flowering staff of Aharon could hardly be more different from the preceding phenomena that marked God’s response to Korach’s rebellion. Gone, suddenly, are the terrifying images of earthquakes, fires and plagues. In their place, in stark contrast, now appears the peaceful vision of a budding staff.

As God, over the course of Korach’s rebellion, moves from death and destruction towards this culminating miracle of quiet beauty, He conveys a powerful message to the Israelites:

Although I was forced to respond to the uprising against Moshe and Aharon with overwhelming force and power, I do not want the election of these leaders to remain forever rooted in those tragic, necessarily destructive events. Let, instead, the flowering of Aharon’s staff become the enduring symbol of his priesthood. Let the leadership of “this lover of peace and pursuer of peace” be forever associated in your minds with a quiet final miracle of creation. And, through this miracle, let both leaders and disciples alike learn that there is no more powerful force in God’s arsenal, nor in their own, than the force of creation.

B

The transition towards the quiet miracle of Aharon’s staff may well herald the onset of an even greater global transition in the nation’s development. If we accept that Korach’s rebellion occurs, as recorded in the text, after the chet hameraglim, the Israelites now stand on the threshold of major changes in the nature of their relationship with God.

Over the course of the next forty years in the wilderness, as one generation of Israelites gives way to the next, the nation will move from the relational level of yira, fear and awe, to the level of ahava, love.

The generation of the Exodus and Revelation will inexorably disappear, erstwhile slaves whose ability to relate to God is limited to the primitive plane of fear. Heirs to a legacy of torment under Egyptian rule, this generation innately responds only to overwhelming power. God, therefore, speaks to them in a language they can understand. Through events such as: the ten plagues, the parting of the Reed Sea, the thunder and lightning of Sinai and the earthquake, fire and plague of Korach’s rebellion, God becomes their new master, to be held in awe and to be feared.

The children of these slaves, however, will experience God differently. Raised for nearly four decades in the bosom of God’s continual protection, surrounded by the clouds of glory, nurtured on the heaven-sent manna, this second generation will learn to relate to God through the more mature dimension of love. To this generation, God will emerge as a loving, benevolent parent Who, with kindness and sensitivity, sustains His people on their continuing journey.

The first step in the monumental transition from yira to ahava may well take place in the quiet of the night, in the solitude of the Sanctuary, as Aharon’s staff begins to blossom. With this miracle, God deliberately moves from destruction to creation, heralding a journey that will bring His people close.

Points to Ponder

Our people’s formative national journey from yira to ahava in its relationship with God creates the paradigm for the individual religious passage we each are meant to experience over the course of our lives.

If as children we necessarily begin with yira, perceiving God as a mysterious, distant and fearsome power, impassively controlling our destiny, a mature relationship with God requires that we successfully transition to the dimension of ahava, as well. The sense of awe that underlies our perception of the divine should certainly never be lost. As the years pass, however, a growing, more pervasive sense of love is meant to fill our hearts, as we learn to believe in an approachable, benevolent deity Who desires our welfare and cares deeply for our concerns.

Fearing God is easy. Loving Him can, at times, be difficult. Inevitably, there will be moments in our lives when God seems distant, when His will and intentions remain unclear, when our relationship with Him is strained. Nonetheless, we are challenged to cultivate a deep, abiding trust that He is with us even then – perhaps particularly then – watching over us and caring for us as a parent would a child.

The journey towards God experienced by our nation at its infancy should be experienced by each of us, as well. Only then can our relationship with God be complete.