Category: Excerpts

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

Parashat Va’etchanan

by Jack Prince, Ph.D.

You will forever associate this portion of the Torah with your bar mitzvah.

This parashah, which is always read on the Shabbat after Tishah be-Av, Shabbat Nachamu, contains material which speaks directly to the foundations of our faith. We find here the review of the Ten Commandments, originally
recorded in Parashat Yitro, as well as the first of the three paragraphs of the
Keri’at Shema, which we are commanded to recite twice daily, once in the
morning and again in the evening.

Within the Shema we find two references to the mitzvah of tefillin which you, as a new bar mitzvah, are now required to observe. In both the first portion of the Shema, which was read today, and the second portion, which we will read next week, Hashem commands Bnei Yisrael to “bind them as a sign upon your arm, and let them be ‘totafot’ between your eyes.” That Hashem saw fit to mention this mitzvah twice in the Shema suggests that this mitzvah carries with it a special message, a message which bears upon all the other mitzvoth that you are now required to observe.

Rashi may be guiding us to an understanding of this point when he comments on the phrase introducing the mitzvah of tefillin: “…that I command you today.” He explains, “The mitzvoth should not be in your eyes like an old statute which has ceased to have meaning and relevance. Rather, they should be like a new law which everyone is eager to learn and perform.”

The word “today” is not to be taken literally. It is unlikely that it refers to the day this parashah was given, since the giving of the Torah was an ongoing process for the 40 years our ancestors traveled through the desert. “Today” refers to any day that we approach the performance of a mitzvah. We should show the same interest and enthusiasm that we would display if, in fact, the mitzvah were first given to us on that day.

Anyone who has watched a young man put on his tefillin for the first time recognizes the care and enthusiasm with which he approaches the mitzvah. How he carefully removes the shel yad from the carrying case, reverently unwraps the strap, slips the shel yad on his arm, locating the correct spot on his muscle and, just before tightening it on his arm, recites the blessing with love and fervor. He then repeats the process while donning the shel rosh— carefully finding the right position above the forehead, making the berachah, tightening the straps around his head, and perhaps even checking the position with a mirror.

That level of care, devotion and love is the way we should approach the performance of every mitzvah, every day—just as we certainly would do if the Revelation at Sinai were repeated for us by Hashem every day. This is one of the lessons we can learn from the inclusion of the commandment to wear tefillin in the first two sections of Keri’at Shema.

There is, however, a second mitzvah that is repeated in these first two sections: the command to place a mezuzah on the right side of the doorway leading into one’s house and courtyard. The mezuzah contains the two sections of the Shema written on a piece of parchment. The combination of the mitzvoth of tefillin and mezuzah has a special message for you, and for all new bnei mitzvah.

How does a young man learn to fulfill the themes of the Shema—to love Hashem and accept His absolute sovereignty (the first paragraph), and to accept the obligation to perform all the other commandments (the second paragraph)?

The mitzvoth of tefillin and mezuzah suggest a two-part plan.

The mezuzah, which is affixed to the doorpost of your house, represents your environment: the influence of your family, your school, your friends. Your parents and grandparents provide the nurturing and the examples of how an observant ben Torah conducts himself. Your parents have raised you to understand and appreciate the responsibility that you must now accept and begin to fulfill.

But those lessons are just the beginning. You now include the influence of the tefillin, which represent your personal contribution to your own growth. The tefillin, which you bind to your arm near your heart, and which you place on your head, atop your brain, reflect your commitment of heart and mind to avodat Hashem.

We are confident that you will use the years of education that you have had and those that lie ahead to develop your talents and become a ben Torah, to maintain your link in the everlasting chain that connects us to our past and to our future, and to be a source of nachat to your family, friends and all of Israel.

Dr. Prince is a retired professor of physics (BCC, CUNY) residing in Boca Raton, Florida.

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

Day Twelve: 28 Tammuz

Teaching God to Cry

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

This kina (25), 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 OU MANUAL for Checking Fruits & Vegetables, Click here to buy the book

Halachic Introduction

After delineating the various forbidden שרצים—vermin, the Torah makes clear that adherence to this stringency preserves the קדשוה of the Jewish people. Our spiritual¬ity and our nobility seem to be predicated upon refraining from their consumption. ‘‘For I am Hashem who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God, and you shall be holy as I am Holy’’ (ויקרא י”א ,מ”ה) . Rashi cites תורת כהנים where the term ‘‘who brought you up from the land of Egypt’’ is analyzed. So often in the Torah Hashem speaks of having brought us out of Egypt. Why with regard to forbidden שרצים does the Torah deviate from its usual phraseology? Based upon this inference, the school of Rabbi Yishmael taught the following lesson: ‘‘Says Hashem, ‘Had I brought the Jewish people up from Egypt for no other reason than that they should not defile themselves by eating שרצים as the other nations do, that would have been reason enough.’ ’’ In other words, by virtue of this mitzva the Jewish people have been raised to a unique status. Therefore the terminology, ‘‘Hashem, who brought you up’’ is used.

It is well known that the consumption of a single שרץ can be a violation of as many as six לאוין . As noted above, the consumption of a שרץ can also have a detrimental effect on a person, diminishing his or her spirituality.

What is a שרץ?

A terrestrial שרץ is defined as any living creature that is visible to the naked eye yet so small that its legs cannot be seen moving when it runs. When a mouse runs across the floor, one typically cannot make out its features well enough to recognize mov¬ing appendages, as would be the case with a dog or cat. Rather, it slithers—שורץ; the entire creature seems to move in unison. Though mammalian שרצים do not pose a threat to the salad-eating public, תולעים—insects and worms—do and often cling to the vegetables we eat.

In this guide, we will point out the most frequently used vegetables that require special preparation.

Method for checking Lettuce, Open Leaf:

1. Cut off the lettuce base and separate the leaves from one another.

2. Soak leaves in a solution of cold water and vegetable wash. The proper amount of vegetable wash has been added when some bubbles are observed in the water. (In the absence of vegetable wash, several drops of concentrated non-scented liquid detergent may be used. However, for health reasons, care must be taken to thoroughly rinse off the soapy solution.)

3. Agitate lettuce leaves in the soapy solution.

4. Spread each leaf, taking care to expose all its curls and crevices. Using a powerful stream of water or a power hose, remove all foreign matter and soap from both sides of each leaf. Alternatively, a vegetable brush may be used on both sides of the leaf.

5. Leaves should be checked over a light box or under strong overhead lighting to verify that the washing procedure has been effective. Pay careful attention to the folds and crevices in the leaf where insects have been known to hold tightly through several washings. Check both sides of each leaf.

6. In a commercial setting, a vegetable spinner is recommended. (The advantages of spin-drying are: (1) you will not risk an electrical shock when placing the leaves on the light box; and (2) the leaves will stay fresh and moist for a longer period of time.)

7. Three heads or handfuls of leaves from different areas of the bin should be checked over a light box or under direct light. Our experience has shown that if the leaves are washed properly, no insects will be found.

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

An excerpt from the Rav’s commentary on Kina 10, Eikha Yashva Havatzelet HaSharon. Why is it that the stringency of our observance of mourning decreases in the afternoon of Tisha B’Av, at precisely the time that the flames of destruction began to engulf the Beit HaMikdash?

כי כליה חיבתי כדור המבול For we deserved extinction no less than the generation of the Flood. This passage sounds the recurring theme found in the kinot that the Beit HaMikdash served as a substitute, as collateral, for the Jewish people, and the physical structure of the Beit HaMikdash suffered the destruction that rightfully should have been visited upon the entire nation. The kina says that the Jewish people are responsible and are deserving of punishment; we are guilty, and we should have been destroyed as was the generation of the Flood. God, however, in His mercy and grace, subjected His throne, the Beit HaMikdash, rather than the Jewish people, to disgrace, abuse and destruction. It is for this reason that Tisha B’Av contains an element of mo’ed, a festival – God rendered His decision on Tisha B’Av that Knesset Yisrael is an eternal people and will continue to exist. The Beit HaMikdash was humiliated, profaned and destroyed in order to save the people.

This concept is expressed halakhically in the character of Tisha B’Av afternoon. The second half of the day has a contradictory nature in halakha. On the one hand, the avelut, the mourning, is intensified because the actual burning of the Beit HaMikdash commenced in the late afternoon of the ninth day of Av, and the flames continued throughout the tenth (Ta’anit 29a). On the other hand, Nahem, the prayer of consolation, is recited in the Amida for Minha in the afternoon, and not in Shaharit of Tisha B’Av morning or Ma’ariv of the preceding evening (Shulhan Arukh, Orah Hayyim, Rama 557:1). Similarly, tefillin are put on in the afternoon, not the morning (Shulhan Arukh, Orah Hayyim 555:1), and sitting on chairs rather than on the ground is permitted in the afternoon, not the morning (Shulhan Arukh, Orah Hayyim 559:3).

In Minha, one re-inserts in Kaddish the phrase תתקבל צלותהון ובעותהון”, accept our prayers and entreaties” (see Beit Yosef, Tur Orah Hayyim 559 s.v. ve’omer kaddish belo titkabal, with respect to the recitation of Titkabal in Shaharit). This phrase is removed from Kaddish earlier on Tisha B’Av because the assertion that “satam tefillati, my prayer is rejected” (Lamentations 3:8), which prevails on Tisha B’Av, comes to an end at midday. Paradoxically, the moment the Beit HaMikdash was set ablaze was a moment of relief. At that moment, it became clear that God decided to take the collateral, the Beit HaMikdash, instead of pursuing the real debtor, the Jewish people. Paradoxically, once He took away the Beit HaMikdash in the afternoon of Tisha B’Av, the nehama, the consolation, could begin. Tisha B’Av is a day of limitless despair and boundless hope and faith.

Excerpted from In the Narrow Places: Daily Inspiration for the Three Weeks, by Erica Brown

Day One: 17 Tammuz
FAST OF SHIVA ASAR B’TAMMUZ
Seeking God

Do we achieve holiness, kedusha, through seeking God or through finding God? To answer this question, we turn to one of our sacred texts. The haftara for Minha, the afternoon service, on a fast day is an excerpt from Isaiah 55. It begins mid-chapter, at verse six and closes in the next chapter, verse eight.  It contains some of the most religiously inspiring language in all of prophetic literature.

“Seek God where He can be found. Call to Him while He is near” (Isaiah 55:6). Isaiah offers wise, spiritual advice that is no less applicable to God than it is to all of our relationships. Reach out to God in a place where holiness can be found, when God feels near. Use the fast day as a mechanism for the contraction of the material and physical to create a greater space for the Shekhina, the Divine Presence. The tone of the day invites greater awareness of God. But Isaiah did not utter these words for a fast day; its incorporation into the service was a later adaptation of a text to enhance the day’s emotional demands.

What did the prophet mean when he pronounced these words? Perhaps Isaiah spoke from his awareness that God’s presence was not always apparent during the average working day of an Israelite. Busy with harvesting fields, winnowing on the threshing floor or finding a fertile place to graze sheep, our ancestors could have spent their days preoccupied with the demands of family and making a living, not making a place for God. If this was a challenge for those who worked outside in nature every day, imagine how much greater an obstacle today’s work environment presents to those of us who sit in offices all day. Without creating a clearing for God, a time and place for thinking above and beyond life’s prosaic cares, how can we expect to find Him? If we are not searching, then that which we do not look for can hardly be expected to make itself known. It is like playing hide-and-seek and then not looking. The Kotzker Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Morgensztern (1787–1859) once poignantly remarked, “God is where you let Him in.”

Kavana for the Day:

Seeking is about discovery. Isaiah tells us to seek God where God is to be found. Think about where you might find God. People have a custom to pray and study in a “makom kavua,” a fixed location or place, every day. The idea is that we create spaces that are receptive to spiritual activities, where we have all that we need: the right light, the right balance of privacy and companionship, the right amount of noise or silence to induce spiritual behaviors. Think hard. Where does God seem most apparent in your life? What times and places seem more open and receptive to spiritual seeking and finding? Recreate those times and spaces and make your own makom kavua.

To read the full chapter, see pages 27 through 31 in ‘The Narrow Places’.

Excerpted from The Koren Mesorat HaRav Kinot: The Lookstein Edition, co-published by OU Press and Koren Publishers Jerusalem

Commentary on Kina 23

“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 Dr. Mandell Ganchow Coming of Age: An Anthology of Divrei Torah for Bar and Bat Mitzvah Click here to buy the book

Parashat Chukat

by Rabbi Asher Schechter

At the end of Parashat Chukat, the Torah tells us once again of the rebellious behavior of Klal Yisrael during their travels through the midbar. The pasuk relates, “And the people spoke against Hashem and against Moshe” (Bemidbar 21:5), complaining that they were tired of the manna and of the lack of water in the desert. The Torah tells us that Hashem got angry and sent as punishment a horde of poisonous snakes—“ha-nechashim ha-serafim”— to bite the complainers. Many Jews died. The survivors came to beg Moshe Rabbenu for forgiveness and beseeched him to pray to Hashem to get rid of the snakes. Moshe did so, and Hashem told him to make an image of a “saraf,” a serpent, and to place it on top of a high pole. Any Jew who got bitten was to look at the image of the serpent on top of the pole and would survive. The Torah tells us that Moshe then fashioned a “nechash nechoshet,” a copper snake, and placed it atop a pole, and the rest of the Jews were saved.

The distinction between the word nachash, snake, and the word seraf, serpent, is worth a second look. When Hashem punished Klal Yisrael, He unleashed “ha-nechashim ha-serafim.” The Torah uses both terms—Hashem unleashed snakes that behaved like serpents. Then, when Hashem told Moshe how to stem the plague, He commanded him to create a saraf, but Moshe created a nachash instead. Why? What is the difference between these two terms? And why does the Torah use both in this story? Furthermore, why did Moshe make the nachash out of copper when Hashem did not instruct him to do so, and why is that detail important enough for the Torah to mention?

In the English language the word serpent is a synonym for snake. In lashon ha-kodesh also, the words nachash and saraf are more or less synonymous. Nonetheless, being different words they still convey somewhat different meanings. The word nachash has at its root nichush, as in the command “lo tinachashu” (Vayikra 19:26), the prohibition of magic acts and fortune telling, seemingly supernatural pursuits. Likewise, a snake can kill a large human or even a tremendous beast with a tiny dose of poison, a seemingly supernatural faculty. This is an important connection. Those who believe they have supernatural powers no longer feel compelled to rely on Hashem for their needs. This is why the Torah considers magic and fortune telling to be forms of idolatry.

The term nachash represents the challenge of maintaining faith in Hashem, the challenge of adherence to His commandments. It is not a coincidence that the very first individual to challenge Hashem’s commandments was the nachash ha-kadmoni in Gan Eden. His behavior was classic nachash.

The word saraf, on the other hand, emphasizes the method through which the serpent kills. Serefah means burning in lashon ha-kodesh. The saraf injects a tiny dose of venom which burns its way throughout the body of the victim, eventually killing him. The venom is like a small spark that can spread to become a large conflagration. The word saraf is used by Chazal (Pirkei Avot 2:10) to refer to the punishment of one who rejects the commandments and direction of the Chachamim (“lechishatan lechishat saraf”). This hints to the insidiousness of transgressing the Chachamim. Once one lights a spark by violating one rabbinic principle, one is liable to create an entire conflagration by continuing to violate other rabbinic rules and guidelines. Once someone loses respect for the Chachamim, the poison can spread throughout his body. Hence Chazal refer to the retribution against such an individual in terms of the saraf.

With this background, we can understand what was happening in this parashah. When Klal Yisrael rebelled, they committed two sins—one against Hashem and one against Moshe Rabbenu, who represents the Chachamim. Thus, Hashem sent ha-nechashim ha-serafim to kill them, demonstrating that they deserved two punishments—the nachash, for rebelling against Hashem, and the saraf, for rebelling against the Chachamim, i.e., Moshe.

When Klal Yisrael came to Moshe Rabbenu to repent and beg forgiveness, Hashem agreed to forgive Klal Yisrael for the violation of His own honor, but insisted that Moshe Rabbenu’s honor be upheld by a public display of the image of the saraf. Moshe Rabbenu, on the other hand, was quick to forgive the violation of his honor, but was very concerned about the honor of Hashem. Therefore, he created a nachash rather than a saraf, to focus Klal Yisrael on that violation.

As mentioned above, however, nachash and saraf are hard to distinguish one from the other. A typical passerby would look at the image and would not know whether he was seeing a nachash or a saraf. Therefore Moshe Rabbenu decided to make it out of copper. This gave it the memorable name, “nechash ha-nechoshet” that everyone used. This would help Klal Yisrael focus on the honor of Hashem which had been violated, and bring about a proper teshuvah.

This idea dovetails with the famous saying of our Sages that Hashem wears tefillin just like we do. However, the text in His tefillin is different from the text in our tefillin. Our tefillin focus on Hashem’s greatness, beginning with “Shema Yisrael.” God’s tefillin, as it were, focus on our greatness, containing the passage “mi ke-amecha Yisrael—who is like your nation, Israel…”

There are very important lessons we learn from this. First and foremost, we appreciate the importance of respecting Hashem and His Torah, as well as the Chachamim. Second, in life we are surrounded by many nechashim—such as the idea that the “magic” of modern science obviates belief in Hashem. We are also besieged by seraphim, such as the constant degradation of and modern day Chachamim through the mouths and blogs of cynics who try to entice us to deviate from the path of Torah and mitzvot.

We must be diligent in our faith to overcome these temptations and be true ovdei Hashem. In addition, the love between Hashem and Moshe, where each one focused on the other one’s honor, is truly a lesson in musar of how we should treat our family and friends.

Rabbi Schechter is rav of Congregation Ohr Moshe of Hillcrest, New York.

Excerpted from Rabbi Shmuel Goldin’s ‘Unlocking The Torah Text: An In-Depth Journey Into The Weekly Parsha- Vayikra’ Click here to buy the book

Questions

By using the term keri so prominently at both ends of the Tochacha’s equation, in both the description of the nation’s possible transgression and in the description of God’s possible response, the Torah apparently emphasizes a critical idea, central to the very nature of sin and punishment. If we could only understand this concept, the text seems to say, we could finally recognize where we go wrong. We could strike to the core of our failures and their consequences, finding a way to break the recurring, tragic cycle that plagues our relationship with the Divine.

And yet, the text remains frustratingly unclear.

Why, at this point, does the Torah suddenly introduce, for the first and only time, the word keri?

Once introduced, why is this term repeated so often in such a short span of text?

Above all, within the context of the Tochacha, in the realm of both sin and punishment, what does the word keri actually mean?

Approaches

A

Confronted with this puzzling term and its use in the Tochacha, numerous commentaries propose a wide variety of interpretations.

Both Rashi and his grandson, the Rashbam, for example, introduce a basic translation upon which most commentaries build. These scholars translate the word keri to mean “casual” or “inconsistent” (derived, as stated above, from the root kara, to happen). If the nation sins by worshiping God in an erratic, inconsistent manner, Rashi and the Rashbam explain, God will respond in kind and will relate to the nation haphazardly and unpredictably, as well. (Rashi, Vayikra 26:21)

A number of other commentaries, including Rabbeinu Bachya and the Ohr Hachaim, choose a related but different path. The term keri, these scholars maintain, describes a flawed world outlook that can lead to immeasurable sin. An individual who sees the world in a fashion of keri perceives no pattern to the events unfolding around him. In place of Divine Providence, this individual observes only random coincidence; and in place of punishment for sin, accidental misfortune. For such an individual, tshuva (return to the proper path) becomes increasingly unattainable. In a haphazard world governed by arbitrary forces, after all, there exists little incentive for change. (Rabbeinu Bachya, ibid.; Ohr Hachaim, ibid.)

Going a step further, the Ohr Hachaim perceives in God’s reaction – “And then I [God], too, will walk with you with keri…” (Vayikra 26:24.) – a carefully calibrated “measure for measure” response to the nation’s failing. If the people refuse to see a divinely ordained pattern in the world around them, God will withdraw, making it even more difficult for them to perceive His presence.

The punishments to follow will seem even more random, bearing no obvious connection to the nation’s sins. The people’s failure to recognize God’s imminence will thus prove frighteningly prophetic, for God will respond with “distance.” (Ohr Hachaim, ibid.)

For his part, Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch interprets the sin associated with the word keri as “indifference” to God’s will. Those guilty of this transgression find considerations other than God’s will central to their lives and their sporadic obedience to Torah law is thus purely coincidental. God responds to this sin in kind, says Hirsch, by removing His Divine protection from the nation and allowing the natural course of world history to determine their fate. The welfare of the Jewish people will be advanced only coincidentally, when that welfare happens to correspond to the interests and needs of the powerful nations around them. (Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch, Vayikra 26:21, 23–24)

Finally a group of other scholars, Onkelos chiefly among them, diverge from the above explanations entirely and explain the term keri to mean “stubbornness” or “harshness.” If the nation stubbornly refuses to obey based upon God’s law, God’s response will be harsh and unforgiving. (Targum Onkelos, Vayikra 26: 21, 23)

B

A clearer understanding of the puzzling term keri and its repeated use in the Tochacha can be gained if we consider the basic approach of Rashi and the Rashbam (who interpret the term to mean a casual approach to God’s will) in light of the “rules” that govern our own life experiences. )

Many years ago, I asked the participants in one of my synagogue classes to name the one most important component in any successful interpersonal relationship. Expecting a plethora of suggestions, I was surprised when they unanimously responded with the one word which I had earlier defined for myself as my own answer: trust.

Our associations with each other, from partnerships to friendships to marriages, can endure many blows and setbacks. One wound, however, invariably proves fatal: the total loss of trust. When mutual trust is gone and cannot be regained; when the relationship no longer feels safe and secure; when each participant no longer believes that the other consistently has his partner’s best interests at heart, the relationship is doomed.

God thus turns to the Israelites and proclaims: “And if you will walk with me keri…”
If I find that you are deliberately inconsistent in your commitment to Me; if I find that you are only at My door when you choose to be; if I find that I cannot trust you to seek My presence and relate to Me continually; then I will respond in kind…

“And then I [God], too, will walk with you with keri”

You will no longer be able to count on My continuing presence in your lives. I will distance Myself and not be there when you expect Me to be. Our relationship will become casual and inconsistent; all trust will be lost…

God will forgive many failings and sins, but when we lose His trust, the punishments of the Tochacha are the result.

Points to Ponder

The text’s prominent use of the puzzling word keri in the Tochacha brings our study of Vayikra full circle…

This complex central book of the Torah, with its disparate laws ranging from minute, mysterious rituals to towering ethical edicts, makes one real demand upon the reader.

We are challenged to earn God’s trust.

Judaism is not a smorgasbord. The Torah emphasizes that we cannot pick and choose the elements of observance that suit our fancy. Each law, from a seemingly minor sacrificial detail to a powerful edict such as “Love your fellow as yourself,” has its place and its purpose. Each halachic element is an essential component in the tapestry of trust meant to be woven between God and his people.

In structure and content, the book of Vayikra reminds us that when we earn God’s trust through faithful adherence to His multifaceted law, we will be able to trust in God’s continued presence within our lives.