Category: Excerpts

Excerpted from Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm’s Torah Beloved: Reflections on the Love of Torah and the Celebration of the Holiday of Matan Torah, co-published by OU Press and Ktav Publishers 

The Little Things*

In the Book of Vayikra, in the passage where the Torah first mentions the major festivals of the year, we find the intrusion of a seemingly irrelevant verse, one which seems out of context in this list of great holidays. Our Rabbis already wondered at the fact that after the mention of Pesach and Shavuot, and before the mention of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot, the Torah introduces an extraneous verse, one which seems to have nothing whatever to do with the moadim, or holidays. “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not remove completely the corners of your field as you reap, and you shall not gather the gleanings of your harvest; for the poor and the proselyte shall you leave them; I am Hashem, your God” (Leviticus 23:22).

When reaping the harvest, you may not reap the whole field, but must leave a “pe’a,” a corner of the field unreaped; and the “leket,” the gleanings of the harvest, the ears of corn which fell to the ground were to be left there. This leket and pe’a, the gleanings and the corner, were to be left for the poor man and the stranger, for the needy and the alien who have not their own fields.

Our Sages (Rashi on Leviticus 23:22 quotes Torat Kohanim 23:175), contemplating the mention of pe’a and leket in the context of the holidays, ask: Why did the Torah see fit to mention leket and pe’a in the middle of the portion of the moadim, with Pesach and Shavuot on one side, and Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur on the other?

Many answers have been offered to this question posed by the Rabbis. All of them are worthy of deep study. This morning, however, I invite you to consider what I believe is the intention of the Torah in this juxtaposition of the mitzvot of tzedaka (for leket and pe’a are really forms of tzedaka or charity-giving) and the festivals.

We live in an age which has an unusual flare for the dramatic and the spectacular. Our interests are directed almost solely to headlines and lead articles. The big things in life, the flashy glamors, they attract us, while the prosaic, everyday matters are regarded as too dull to merit our consideration. In an age of space travel, only that which goes farthest fastest is deemed worth discussing, and yesterday’s missile is passé. As one wit in the Pentagon is supposed to have informed his subordinates concerning rockets, “If it works, it’s obsolete!”

In this kind of world, only a daring rescue becomes a virtue, while a kind helping hand is worthless. Only a dramatic act of courage is worth emulating, not an unspectacular deed of generosity. And at the same time, only the violent acts of murder or pillage must be avoided, not the small sins which attract no public comment. In this kind of culture, we read the best sellers, but neglect the classic literature which does not strike us as sensational. We devour every new report about the mysterious Dead Sea Scrolls, even though some of us have yet to read through the far older and more important Bible for the first time. We have, in other words, decided to live on the peaks of life, and have neglected the fertile plains below.

And nowhere is this attitude more pernicious and more dangerous than when it comes to religion and religious observance. For here too are we inclined to bring our worship of the big and dramatic and spectacular. Here too we may emphasize the great acts and cavalierly dismiss the trivial, to stress the glorious breakthroughs of the spirit and demean the constant, slow struggle of the human heart and mind and soul to rise upwards. Thus do we American Jews tend to concentrate on the so-called High Holidays and overlook the less dramatic Shavuot – we call it a “minor” holiday – and certainly Shabbat. We hear of adult courses on “Customs and Ceremonies” which deal with the great turning points of life of birth and marriage and death, and which leave all in between forgotten and neglected. We begin to think that Judaism consists of bris and ḥuppa and shiva, but that we may ignore such details as tefilin and talmud Torah and taharat hamishpaḥa, which are marked by quiet dignity and unobtrusive modesty. And it is to forewarn us against this concentration upon the big issues to the exclusion of the seemingly trivial that the Torah inserts the mention of leket and pe’a in between the great festivals of Judaism. Remember, the Torah tells us, that no matter how important the big holidays are, they are meaningless unless the Jew pays attention to the daily requirements as well, the simple things as leket and pe’a. Yes, the themes of the moadim are world-shaking – revelation on Shavuot, redemption on Passover, judgment on Rosh Hashana, repentance on Yom Kippur. Yet all of these lofty themes are for naught if the poor man remains outside, cold and hungry and forlorn, because you choose to neglect the prosaic and plain and paltry and petty mitzva of leket and pe’a. The great things are great indeed, the Torah means to tell us, but a man stands and falls on the small things. What determines the success or failure of the spiritual life of the Jew are not his grasp of the great theological concepts or even his participation in the synagogue
festival service on High Holidays, but his everyday leket and pe’a, his daily Jewishness; not his rare splurge of kindliness as much as his constancy in tzedaka; not by his conduct in great public events, as much as by his tefilin and tefila, even in the privacy of his parlor, by his consideration for wife and children and neighbors, by his kashrut and his study of the Torah. In a word, the Torah counsels us to beware of the spectacular only and to concentrate as well on the substantial.

And oh, how history has proven the importance of the little things, the leket and pe’a amidst the moadim. The generation of Noah was destroyed by the flood because, tradition teaches, of gezel paḥot mishaveh peruta, petty pilfering! The whole Egyptian exile began because of a mere two sela’im worth of silk which Jacob gave his favorite Joseph more of than his brothers, thus incurring their jealousy. The founder of Christianity began with a tiny sin – rejecting netilat yadayim. Reform started its career of truncating our tefila by eliminating only the Yekum Purkan.

Today we read from the Torah the aseret hadibrot, the Ten Commandments. There was a time, when the Temple was on Zion’s heights, that they were recited daily as part of the service.Why do we not recite them thus today during our regular daily services? The Talmud answers that the Sages revoked this requirement, and actually forbade it because of tar’omet haminim, because of the heretics. They, the heretics, probably the early Christians, said they were going to observe only the big things, only the Ten Commandments, but that the rest was unimportant. Have you not heard that in our own day? “I’m religious enough; I observe the Ten Commandments.” Aside from the fact that Shabbat is one of the Ten Commandments, and usually not observed by people who are satisfied with only ten of the 613 commandments, this is a typically Christian attitude. It plays up the big and dismisses the trivial. Murder, adultery, stealing are acknowledged as evils. But what of the minor sins; what of this willful ignorance of Judaism? What of this unJewish diet and vocabulary and whole pattern of unJewish living? So what our Rabbis told us about the Ten Commandments that we read on Shavuot – that better not to read them at all if that is going to be all of our religion, that better no Ten Commandments if we are going to neglect less dramatic mitzvot, that’s just what the Torah meant when after Shavuot in the list of moadim it mentioned in the unglorious but extremely vital mitzvot of leket and pe’a. The Yiddish writer Peretz put it in his own way: no man ever stubs his toe against a mountain. It’s the little things that bring a man down. So it is with us, friends. None of us will ever commit murder. But someone may casually wound the pride of a friend by a word of lashon hara. No one here will ever bow to an idol. But someone may deny a smile to a neighbor who is starved for friendship. No one here is going to rob a bank. But someone may neglect to provide the leket and pe’a for a needy family. And it is these unspectacular little things, rather than the giant themes of the moadim or Ten Commandments, which ultimately decide our fate. That is why such seeming trifles are of such concern to the halakha – for trifles make perfection – and perfection is no trifle.

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*May 25, 1958

Excerpted from With Liberty and Justice: The Fifty-Day Journey from Egypt to Sinai by Senator Joe Lieberman with Rabbi Ari D. Kahn, co-published by OU Press and Maggid Books

Day 31: Law and Morality

In the Bible, immediately after the Ten Commandments are handed down, God teaches Moses laws about building the sacrificial altar, and  then tells him to place ordinances before the Israelites.

Over the centuries, the commentators have explored the significance of this sequence – from the big principles of the Ten Commandments, to the architectural specifications of building the altar, to the details of civil and criminal law. The rabbis draw this primary lesson: God does not want there to be a separation between religion and everyday life, or between ritual obligations and ethical behavior. The profound moral norms of the Ten Commandments and the spirituality of the altar must inform every aspect of how we conduct our lives. In other words, God’s Law is meant to be pervasive and to infuse all elements of our existence with holiness. The prophets make clear that God places greater value on ethical social behavior than on strict ritual observance that ignores the needs of others. Isaiah makes this point beautifully:

When you spread your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you – because your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves, purify yourselves, remove the evil of your doings from before My eyes…. Learn to do good, seek justice, strengthen the victim, do justice for the orphan, take up the cause of the widow. (Is. 1:15–17)

In general, Scripture repeatedly reminds us what our priorities should be in making this kind of personal judgment, as in I Samuel 15:22: “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in hearkening to the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than to sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.”

One striking example, taught by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, concerns Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.11In Temple times, the most important person on this day was the High Priest, who performed the rituals of repentance in the innermost sanctum of the Temple. In preparation for this awesome responsibility, the High Priest
was removed from his regular tasks for days; he was even separated from his wife for a full week. However, if the High Priest happened upon a corpse on the eve of Yom Kippur (of a person who, for various reasons, no one else will bury), notwithstanding the prohibition against priests touching a dead body, he would be obligated to defile himself and see to it that the deceased received a dignified burial. In this dramatic example, human dignity triumphs over ritual, even though the beneficiary would never know about the kindness that had been extended to him. In sum, the Law itself allows for exceptions, in circumstances where strict observance would clash with ethical behavior.

 

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

An Upright Torah*

The focus of significance in any synagogue is the ark containing the Torah. That this is so we learn, according to Maimonides, from a verse in this morning’s sidra. When the building of the Tabernacle was concluded, Moses performed a final act: “vayikaĥ vayiten et ha’eidut el ha’aron,” “and he took and he put the testimony into the Ark” (Exodus 40:20). The word “eidut,” “testimony,” refers to the two stone tablets, the luĥot, upon which were inscribed the revelation of God. And, Maimonides teaches us at the end of his Laws of Sefer Torah (10:10), just as the tablets were placed in the Ark in the Tabernacle, so are we commanded to place the scroll of the Law in the ark in the synagogue:

It is a commandment to designate a special place for a sefer Torah, and to honor it and embellish it even more than one thinks adequate. The words on the Tablets of the Covenant are the same words which we have on our scrolls.

However, this tracing of the institution of the sefer Torah in the aron in the synagogue to the luĥot in the aron in the Tabernacle presents certain difficulties. One of the commentaries on Maimonides’ famous Code, the author of Hagahot Maimoniyot, records a question asked of his teacher: If indeed the scrolls in the ark in the synagogue are of the same nature as the tablets in the Ark in the Tabernacle, then why is it that the luĥot in the Tabernacle were placed in the aron in a prone position, lying down, whereas the sefer Torah that we place in the ark in the synagogue stands upright? If the source is the tablets in the Tabernacle, then why do we not store the scrolls in a synagogue too lying down?

There is compelling logic to this question. In fact, the author of this commentary records a responsum by the famous Rabbi Jacob Tam who said that had he realized this point earlier, when they were building his synagogue, he would have ordered a much broader and wider ark in order that he might have the scrolls lying down rather than standing upright.

Nevertheless, the force of Jewish law and the weight of Jewish custom is against this decision to have the scrolls lying down. In all of our synagogues the sefer Torah is stored upright; indeed, in some Sephardic synagogues the scroll is read while standing on the table. Why, then, do we keep the sefer Torah standing up, unlike the tablets?

A famous Talmudic scholar, Rabbi David Ibn Zimra, known as the Radbaz, wrote a responsum on the subject in which he offered three alternative answers. All three are meaningful. They contain or imply insights into the nature of Torah and Judaism that are significant for all times, including our very own.

His first answer is that there is a fundamental difference between the luĥot and a sefer Torah. The tablets were meant as eidut, as a testimony, as symbols; they were not intended for reading. Their very presence was important, but people did not come especially to open the Ark and read the tablets in order to inform themselves of the Law. In contrast, the sefer Torah was meant specifically for reading and for instructing. Hence, the sefer Torah is kept in an upright position, always ready for immediate use.

What we are taught, therefore, is that the Torah must be for us more than a symbol, more than mere eidut. It must be a guide, a code for conduct. The very word “Torah” comes from the Hebrew “hora’a” which means guidance, pointing out, instruction.

A symbol is reverenced; a guide is used and experienced. Because of its very sacredness, a symbol often lies prone. It is remote and is less likely to be involved in the turmoil and bustle of life. It is treated with antiseptic respect. A guide, a “Torah,” is of course sacred; but its sanctity is enhanced by its involvement in life with all its complexities and paradoxes, its anxieties and excitements. A Torah, in order to fulfill its holy function, must stand ready – literally, stand! – to be read and applied.

It is this lack of involvement in everyday life that has caused one contemporary Jewish thinker to bemoan what he has felicitously called our American-Jewish “theology of respect.” We American Jews are a very respectful people; we do not reject Judaism outright. Instead, we are more delicate. We “respect” it. We have respect for the synagogue – therefore, we keep miles away from it. We respect the rabbi – hence we never consult him as to the judgment of Judaism on significant problems. We respect Almighty God and therefore would never think of troubling Him about the things that really bother us. We respect Judaism and Torah so much that we never think of taking them seriously in the rigors and hardships of our daily existence. But respect alone is something that is offered to a symbol, to the tablets which are merely eidut, and which therefore lie prone. They are a symbol – and that is all. It is only when we have transformed the symbol into the scroll, the theology of respect in Torat Ĥayyim, a Torah of life, that our Torah stands upright and ready for use.

This is important for Jewish scholarship in our days as well. Great opportunities are open for scholarship today, the formulation of the attitude of Torah to the great ethical questions of our day. There is a businessman who wants to know the decision of Torah on price collusion, a young man who is interested not only in the morality but also in the ethics of courtship, and a government employee who wants to know how far he may go in accepting unofficial gifts. Halakha can yield such guidance. If we do not know all the answers of Halakha it is because we need scholars to search more diligently and in greater scope and depth than has been done heretofore.

But nevertheless, the greatest majority of the problems that occur to us can, without new halakhic research, be dealt with decisively and lucidly by Torah. Our Torah is an upright one when we make the decision to consult it in these practical problems. This, indeed, is the difference between an ideal and a principle: An ideal is an abstraction to which we offer our gesture of respect. A principle is that which governs our very real conduct. The luĥot are symbols or ideals; the sefer Torah is a principle or guide. We have no dearth of ideals; we are sorely lacking in committing our lives to relevant principles. If our Torah is to be a Torah, it must be upright, ready to use.

The second solution offered by Radbaz is to make the following distinction between the tablets and the scrolls of the Law. According to tradition (Shabbat 104a), the engraving on the stone tablets went through the tablets from side to side. Nevertheless, a miracle occurred and these tablets could be read equally well from either side. In other words, despite the fact that the engraving went through and through, you were able to read the message on the stone tablets according to the normal Hebrew system, from right to left, no matter which side you approached them from.
Whereas the sefer Torah was written only on one side, on the parchment. Therefore, the tablets could be placed lying down, for no matter how you laid them down, you could read them from the side you approached them. But the sefer Torah had to stand with its face, upon which was written the text of the Torah, facing the congregation, so that it might always be ready for immediate reading and consultation and study.

There was a time in Jewish life when Judaism was such that it could be approached from any point of view. In a total Jewish environment, even a semi-literate could be a good Jew. Where one’s milieu was fully saturated with Jewish feeling and Jewish life, study and scholarship were not quite crucial. One could be unlearned and still sense the presence of God, the Shekhina. At the very least, one could benefit from the shekhuna, from the very Jewishness of one’s neighborhood and surroundings. However, in a society depleted of Jewishness, in a milieu emptied of Jewish feeling and life, Jewishness can be acquired only by study and by scholarship.

We do not live in a total Jewish environment. Our surroundings are secularized and often antagonistic to the goals of Judaism. Therefore, for us, Jewish scholarship, Jewish education, Jewish study, are not only paramount, but indeed the only way to acquire Judaism in the full sense of the word. It is our only guarantee of survival. It is interesting that when, two or three generations ago, very wealthy and philanthropic Jews founded our great philanthropic organizations, they acted according to the noblest precepts of Judaism. It goes without saying that charity, tzedaka,
is an all-important mitzva in our faith. Yet these people, who gave and worked so much for charity, who love their people so, completely neglected the study of Torah. And, tragically enough, today these founders of our Federation do not have one single Jewish survivor left! For indeed, Judaism without tzedaka is unthinkable, but Judaism without the study of Torah is impossible.

It is only recently that the day-school movement has won the approbation of larger sections of American Jewry. And not only Jewish studies for children, but also adult Jewish education has begun to show improvement. Only this week statistics were gathered that indicate that American Jews spend annually in the vicinity of $3 million on adult education. Of course, there is a question as to the results, the extent of its work, the methods employed. But, nonetheless, it is encouraging news that we have finally come to understand the importance of a sefer Torah which stands ready to be read and studied and researched. For that is why our scrolls are placed in a standing position: to teach us the need for immediate reference and education.

The third answer provided by Radbaz is a rather daring idea. The synagogue, unlike the Tabernacle, was meant to be primarily a House of Prayer, not one of revelation and sacrifice. Therefore, since the worshippers come to the synagogue and stand facing the ark, the sefer Torah must stand when it faces the worshippers.

In a sense, this summarizes the other two reasons advanced by Radbaz. The sefer Torah stands because the worshippers stand. What a beautiful idea! There is a mutual and reciprocal honor exchanged by the Torah and its admirers. The Torah itself rises before the mitpallelim who take her seriously, who involve her in their daily life, and who study her assiduously.

We are told in the first book of Samuel that God says, “For I will honor those who honor Me, and those who neglect Me shall be disgraced” (2:30). God honors those who honor Him! The Torah stands out of respect before the worshipper!

One of the great and seminal thinkers of Hasidism, the renowned Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, has expressed this idea in yet another way. The Torah as the revelation of God, and indeed even as an aspect of God Himself, is filled with holiness and divine light. It contains sublime, heavenly illumination. When the student of Torah studies it sincerely and selflessly, without any thought of personal gain, what he accomplishes is the broadening of the absorptive capacity of Torah for this divine light. He adds to Torah’s luster and brilliance. Whereas, if he studies it for selfish and unworthy reasons, the lights of Torah are dimmed and its brilliance diminished.

What a bold idea! The fate of Torah depends upon us. The sanctity of Torah is not a constant – its kedusha varies with the sincerity and application of the Jew who studies Torah. If we honor Torah, it honors us by being more sacred. And, Heaven forbid, if we neglect Torah, it contains less illumination and sanctity with which to bless our own lives.

That the destiny of Torah depends upon us we often see in unpleasant ways. Too often we discover that Judaism is reviled because of the personal conduct of individual Jews who are apparently committed to Torah, but who act in a manner that is unbecoming, unattractive, and unethical. A thousand years ago, the great Gaon, Saadia, at the end of his introduction to his Book of Beliefs and Opinions, offers eight reasons, all of them psychologically potent, as to why people reject God and Torah. One of them applies to our case: a man notices the obnoxious behavior of a Jew who believes in God, and he therefore rejects not only this inconsistent Jew, but also all that he professes, i.e. God and His Torah. It happens so often in our own experience. Let an Orthodox Jew misbehave, and people blame Orthodoxy rather than the individual. It is unfortunate, it is illogical, it ignores the weaknesses of all human beings no matter what their ultimate commitments, but – it is a fact. And, it places upon us a heavy, yet marvelous, responsibility. This very fact, whether we like it or not, reminds us that each of us possesses great risks and tremendous opportunities. We can, each of us, by our actions, influence the destiny of Judaism. We can, by our attitude and approach, either diminish or enhance the luster of the light contained within Torah. If we are omdim, if we stand, then the sefer Torah too is omeid. If we stand upright, then Torah stands upright. Heaven forbid, if we lie down on our God-given duties, then Torah falls because of us.

This then is the significance of the position of the Torah in the ark. It is upright because it must be ready for use as a guiding principle in our lives. It is upright because it must be studied and its message plumbed. It is upright because it stands in respect and honor of those who so use it and thereby enhance its own holiness and illumination.

Torah must never lie in state. It must stand in readiness. The Jew must never sink low; he must soar even higher – and thereby contribute to the sublimity of Torah. For as Maimonides put it in the passage we quoted in the very beginning, it is a mitzva to honor and glorify and embellish the Torah even more than we can. For if we will not strive to be more than merely respectful Jews, we will become less than respectful Jews. If we do not aspire to become more than human, we are in danger of becoming less than human.

The times we live in, the circumstances that surround us, and our ancient and hoary tradition all call out to us to stand up and live as upright Jews, and so keep our Torah in the ark upright as well.

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*March 6, 1965

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

Why Break the Tablets?

Context

God informs Moshe, on the summit of Mount Sinai, of the sin of the golden calf and commands him to descend the mountain and confront the nation. After beseeching God to forgive the people, Moshe complies, carrying with him the divinely created Tablets of Testimony upon which God has inscribed the Ten Declarations.

When Moshe nears the Israelite encampment, however, and sees the nation dancing before the golden calf, he becomes enraged and “casts the tablets out of his hands and smashes them beneath the mountain.”

In the book of Devarim, nearly forty years later, when Moshe recalls this event before the nation, he emphatically declares, “I grasped the two tablets and threw them from my two hands, and I smashed them before your eyes.”

In the wake of the destruction of these tablets, God commands Moshe to carve a second set upon which: “I [God] will inscribe the words that were on the first tablets asher shibarta (which you
shattered).” The Talmudic sages perceive in the two words asher shibarta divine approbation of Moshe’s actions: Yiyasher kochacha sheshibarta, “You are to be congratulated for shattering [the first set of tablets].” The rabbis thus identify the breaking of the tablets as one of three actions which Moshe performed of his own accord, to which God retroactively gives His stamp of approval.

So powerfully does Rashi identify with this rabbinic observation that he cites it in his final commentary on the Torah.

The Torah ends with the statement “Never again has arisen a prophet like Moshe, who knew God face-to-face; as evidenced by all the signs…and by the strong hand and great power that Moshe performed before the eyes of all Israel.” Rashi maintains that the very last words of the Torah, “…before the eyes of all Israel,” allude to the breaking of the tablets, an event which Moshe describes as having occurred “before the eyes of the people.”

Questions

The classic, familiar image of Moshe breaking the Tablets of Testimony at the foot of Mount Sinai demands a second look.

Simply put, why does Moshe shatter the tablets? Why does he take out his seemingly misdirected anger upon an object of such overwhelming sanctity? The destruction of any sanctified object is a grievous sin; how much more so the shattering of the God-created Tablets of Testimony.

Compounding the problem is the apparent positive judgment of the rabbis concerning Moshe’s actions. Why do the rabbis believe that God congratulates Moshe for breaking the tablets? Why, in addition, would Rashi see this action as so commendable and significant that he would cite it as his final comment on Moshe’s life and close his monumental work on the Torah specifically by recalling this event?

Approaches

So serious are the issues raised by Moshe’s breaking the first set of Tablets of Testimony, that a wide range of often diametrically opposed views concerning this event are proposed by the commentaries.

A
Strangely enough, it is the Rashbam, pashtan par excellence, who veers sharply away from the straightforward explanation of the Torah text. Maintaining that Moshe did not shatter the tablets at all of his own accord, the Rashbam states: “When Moshe saw the calf, his strength ebbed and he only had enough power to thrust the tablets far enough away that they would not damage his feet as they fell from his hands.”

As the Rashbam himself indicates, he builds his position on earlier statements found in the Midrash which postulate a sudden inability on Moshe’s part to carry the tablets. A source in Pirkei D’Rabi Eliezer explains, for example, that the divine inscription on the tablets miraculously enables the stone to “carry itself and Moshe with it.” When, however, the golden calf and the rejoicing Israelites come into view, the inscription “flies” from the tablets. With God’s words gone, Moshe can no longer carry the heavy stone and the tablets fall from his hands. Similar explanations are found elsewhere in Midrashic literature.

While the Rashbam does translate these Midrashic traditions into less miraculous terms, he nonetheless seems to contradict the clear intent of the biblical text, both here and in the book of Devarim. The Torah indicates that Moshe does not drop the tablets but actively thrusts them from his hands, destroying them at the foot of the mountain. The Rashbam must have struggled deeply with the concept of Moshe consciously shattering the divinely created tablets, to have adopted a Midrashic position so clearly at odds with the straightforward meaning of the text.

B
The Ramban believes, like the Rashbam, that the breaking of the tablets simply could not have been a conscious, premeditated action on Moshe’s part. Attempting to remain more clearly within the boundaries of the text, however, the Ramban maintains that Moshe is overcome not by physical but by spiritual and emotional weakness when he comes into sight of the celebrating Israelites: “Moshe did not hesitate to shatter the tablets, for he was so angered when he saw this evil deed, he could not control himself. ”

C
Numerous other authorities, however, are unwilling to accept the breaking of the tablets as an involuntary action on Moshe’s part. Strange as it might seem, they claim, Moshe consciously destroys the Tablets of Testimony in response to the sin of the golden calf. For this deliberate act, they continue, Moshe receives the divine approbation recorded in the Talmud (see above).

While the sources agree, however, on the deliberate nature of Moshe’s act, his motivations remain the subject of ongoing debate.

Some Midrashic authorities maintain that Moshe is motivated by a desire to protect the nation from the full effect of their sin. He reasons: If I give the law to the people, they will be held fully culpable for their actions under that law. Far better that they should be judged as inadvertent rather than as deliberate sinners.

Moshe, therefore, smashes the tablets to avoid presenting them to the Israelites.

Another Midrash suggests that Moshe goes even further in a self-sacrificing attempt to save the nation. He deliberately sins by breaking the tablets so that his fate will be bound up with the fate of the Israelites.

True, Moshe says to God, the people have sinned – but so have I. If You will forgive them, then forgive me as well. If You will not forgive them, then do not forgive me. Instead, “erase me from the book that You have written.”

At the opposite end of the interpretive spectrum, Rashi sees Moshe’s motivation as condemnatory of the Israelites actions. Moshe deliberates: If the Torah states with regard to the Pesach sacrifice, which is only one mitzva, “no apostate may eat of it,” now, when the entire Torah is involved and all of Israel are apostates, shall I give the Torah to them?

Yet other commentaries interpret Moshe’s actions as consciously educative in intent. Moshe wants, through the smashing of the tablets, to shock the Israelites back to their senses. The Netziv goes so far as to claim that Moshe deliberately refrains from breaking the tablets at the summit of Mount Sinai, when God first informs him of the chet ha’egel. He instead bides his time and waits until his actions will have the greatest impact upon the people at the foot of the mountain. When the nation witnesses his destruction of these overwhelmingly sanctified objects, Moshe reasons, they will be so shocked and aggrieved that they will, without objection, accept the punitive measures necessary in response to their sin.

D
The broadest and boldest classical suggestion concerning Moshe’s motivation in breaking the Tablets of Testimony is offered by the nineteenth– twentieth-century scholar, Rabbi Meir Simcha HaCohen of Dvinsk, in his insightful work the Meshech Chochma. Rabbi Meir Simcha maintains that Moshe wants to convey to the people one simple truth: there is only one source of holiness in existence: God, Himself.

Moshe recognizes that at the core of the sin of the golden calf lies the nation’s erroneous belief in sources of sanctity outside of God. The Israelites perceive Moshe as inherently holy and essential to their relationship with the Divine. When Moshe apparently disappears they feel compelled to create another source of supposed holiness in an attempt to reach God – hence, the creation of the golden calf.

Realizing that he must try to cure the nation of its misconceptions, Moshe turns to them and effectively says: I am not holy. I am a man just as you. The Torah is not dependent upon me. Even had I not returned, the Torah would have continued in my absence.

The Sanctuary and its utensils are not intrinsically holy. Their sanctity derives from God’s presence in our midst. If you sin, these objects lose their holiness.

Even these Tablets of Testimony – the word of God – are not holy, in and of themselves. Their sanctity derives from your relationship with God and your willingness to observe His law. Now that you have sinned, these tablets are mere stone, devoid of any sanctity. As proof of my point, I shatter them before you!

Moshe, Rabbi Meir Simcha continues, is deeply afraid that the Tablets of Testimony will be misused by the nation in its present state. He is concerned that the people will deify the tablets themselves. By shattering the tablets, therefore, Moshe directly addresses a root cause of the chet ha’egel as he teaches the Israelites that God, alone, is the source of holiness.

E
One final approach to Moshe’s actions can be suggested if we consider the fundamental differences between the two sets of tablets received by Moshe on Sinai: the first set, destroyed as a result of the chet ha’egel, and the second set, mandated by God to take their place.

The most obvious distinction is that the first set of tablets were both carved and inscribed by God while the second set were carved by Moshe at God’s command and then divinely inscribed on the summit of Mount Sinai.

A second, more subtle, yet fascinating distinction between the two sets emerges as part of Moshe’s recollections in the book of Devarim. Recalling the flow of events at Sinai for the people, Moshe states that accompanying the commandments to carve the second set of tablets and to ascend the mountain with them was an added divine directive: “And make for yourself a wooden Ark [in which to place these tablets].” So important is this Ark (which, strangely, is not mentioned at all when the events occur in the book of Shmot) in Moshe’s mind, that he cites it no fewer than four times within the span of five sentences.

Perhaps the message of the second tablets and the Ark into which they are placed is the message of context. The Torah is valueless in a vacuum. Its words are only significant when they find a ready home in the heart of man – only when those words are allowed to shape the actions of those who receive them.

Moshe, descending the mountain and witnessing the celebrating Israelites, recognizes that the tablets and the law they represent have no context within which to exist. The nation is simply unready to accept God’s word. Were that word to be given to them in their present state, the Torah itself would become an aberration, misunderstood and even misused. Moshe, therefore, publicly destroys the Tablets of Testimony, and then, at God’s command, begins the process of reeducating the people.

Central to that process of reeducation will be the symbolism of the second set of Tablets of Testimony, themselves. God will inscribe upon them His decrees but, this time, only on stone carved by Moshe. The tablets themselves will thus represent the word of God, finding a home in the actions of man.

These new tablets must also immediately be placed into a symbolic home, a simple Ark of wood. Only if the contents of those tablets find their home, as well, in the humble hearts of men – only if the Torah finds its context – will that Torah be worthy of existence.

Points to Ponder

One of the first personal mottos I developed for myself in the early years of my rabbinate was: You can’t judge Judaism by the Jews.

This motto has, unfortunately, come in handy more times than I can count during the years since.

We cringe when we are confronted with individuals who claim to be observant Jews but whose actions belie their faith. “How,” we are asked, or ask ourselves, “can a religious person act this way? If this is what Judaism produces…”

The appropriate responses to these challenges are, of course, clear. If an individual behaves in a way that contradicts the values that Judaism represents, then that individual is not an observant Jew and, even more importantly, what he practices is not Judaism. The problem is not with the law but with the context. Judaism cannot exist in a vacuum. For Jewish law to take concrete root in this world it must rest in the hearts and shape the actions of those whose very lives reflect its goals.

The partnership with which God challenges us is full and our relationship is, on some level, symbiotic. We are the vehicles divinely chosen to bring God’s presence into this world. Just as the law must give meaning to our lives, our lives must give meaning to the law.

Excerpted from Torah Beloved: Reflections on the Love of Torah and the Celebration of the Holiday of Matan Torah, co-published by OU Press and KTAV; edited by Dr. Daniel Gober

Strange Medicine*

The biblical account of the revelation at Sinai begins by informing us that it took place during the third month after the Exodus from Egypt: “baḥodesh hashelishi letzet Bnei Yisrael” (Exodus 19:1). The Children of Israel left Egypt in the middle of Nisan, and the Torah was revealed to them at the beginning of Sivan.

The rabbis of Midrash Tanḥuma (Parashat Yitro 10) wondered why God waited all this time before giving the Torah and did not present Israel with the Five Books of Moses immediately upon their leaving the land of their servitude. The touching answer Rabbi Yehuda Bar Shalom gives is couched in warmth and charm. It can be compared, they tell us, to the son of the King who had been very ill. When he recovered from his illness, his father said, in royal indulgence: “I shall wait for three months to give my son the opportunity to recuperate, and only afterwards olikhenu lebeit harav lilmod Torah, will I lead him to his teacher in order to have him study Torah.” In the same way, when Israel left Egypt, there were amongst them many baalei mumin, people who were deformed and crippled because of the oppressive work of Egypt, and therefore the Almighty said: “I will wait until they are completely recovered, and only afterwards will I give them the Torah.”

The great Kotzker Rebbe, whose challenging insights are always relevant to every age, asked the following question (Sneh Bo’er BeKotzk). In a previous passage, the same Midrash Tanḥuma (Parashat Yitro 8) quoted approvingly the words of King Solomon in his Proverbs and applied them specifically to Torah: “they shall be healing for your body, and marrow for your bones” (Proverbs 3:8). Now if Torah is considered by the Rabbis as a medicine, as a health-giving substance, then why was it necessary to wait these three months? On the contrary, just because Torah is considered a medicine it should have been given immediately, to assist in the spiritual recovery of the Children of Israel. The answer that the Kotzker Rebbe gives is of extreme importance to all of us today. Torah is a medicine, he agrees, but a strange medicine: it works only if the patient knows that he is sick. It is effective only if the patient agrees that something is wrong with him which needs correction. And the situation of the Children of Israel was especially calamitous because they did not even recognize that they were baalei mumin, that they had absorbed terrible impurities from the abysmal spiritual climate of Egypt and its slavery. Hence, they had to wait for the third month, for during this time they learned that there was something wrong with them, and only then might Torah be effective as the medicine which would heal them.

So Torah is a strange medicine. Like certain kinds of psychological therapy which are effective only when the patient has attained insight, Torah is effective only if the patient knows that he needs it, that he cannot live without it.

It may have occurred to many of us often to wonder: here we are, having worked so hard and labored so diligently for Torah in this country. Yet, while Orthodoxy has achieved much, we are so very far from our goal! How often we seem at the point of utter frustration.

May I suggest the reason for the lack of proper returns on all our investments of time and energy, of money and worry that the patient – American Jewry – did not know that he was sick! And if the patient thinks that all is well with him, Torah cannot help much. It is a rule in the business world as well: you may have the best product in the world, but if the public feels no demand for it, you cannot sell and stay in business.

May I also suggest that in recent months, or even weeks, something dramatic has occurred which, frightening as it is, gives us new hope that American Jewry now knows its true condition, and hence Torah may yet become the medicine which will save American Jewish life.

No doubt most of us have either heard of or read that sensational and much discussed article in Look magazine entitled, “The Vanishing American Jew.” The burden of this article was that, considering the progressive assimilation of American Jews into the general environment, particularly as a result of intermarriage, the entire American Jewish community is threatened with gradual extinction. Now, Look has been roundly criticized by a number of Jewish leaders and spokesmen for national Jewish organizations. It is true that the gloomy forecast by the magazine may have been exaggerated for the purpose of selling more copies. Also, there is no doubt that the article, appearing in a popular weekly periodical, was not annotated in scholarly fashion and supported by long columns of statistics. Nevertheless, it cannot and ought not be denied that the major contention of the article is unfortunately valid!

Only a few months ago, in a much more profound and well documented article, a major researcher writing in the American Jewish Yearbook for 1963 warned that the alarmingly high rate of
intermarriage combined with the depressingly low birth rate of American Jews threatened our entire future in this country. Public relations problems aside, I fear that we are confronting the truth in this warning about our future.

Yet I believe that we ought to welcome these reports; not because, according to the article, Orthodoxy is least affected by the plague of intermarriage – that is little consolation for us. Rather, we ought to welcome this news because of its shock value. Perhaps this will wake up some of our sleeping brethren who slumber in their own little cocoons of official optimism.

We ought to welcome what has now been told to the entire world, because this confirms sadly what we who stand uncompromisingly in the Jewish tradition have been warning our fellow Jews not for three months and not for three years, but for over thirty years – that without Jewish education, without Shabbat, and without mitzvot, the community will surely assimilate and ultimately disappear.

For too long now, ours has been a lonely voice in the wilderness crying out: you will not be able to keep the Jewish people alive and surviving merely on an ethnic basis; a young man or woman with academic training will, if not thoroughly grounded in the total religious experience of Judaism, refuse to accept that it is necessary to continue to be a Jew merely because of nationalistic or racial reasons.

Above all, we welcome this revelation because with this new realistic awareness of our own condition, maybe something will be done. Now that American Jews begin to realize how sick our community is, perhaps we will be ready for the beneficial therapy of that strange medicine called Torah. Perhaps now efforts at teaching Torah to our generations of American Jews will become more effective. Maybe with the growing realization that our community is filled with baalei mumin, with those who are sick and deformed for having ignored Judaism, for having decimated its principles and halakha and for having forsaken the heritage of parents and grandparents, maybe with this realization the medicine of Torah will work.

By a remarkable coincidence, this past week has seen another report that is very important. And perhaps those who are weary of statistics will have more faith in the insights of a distinguished American sociologist. Professor Robert MacIver, with whose purposes we totally disagree but whose analysis we accept as valid, addressed the American Council for Judaism on a theme which seemed to bother both him and his hosts: the “continuing alienation” of Jews from the rest of American society. Put in other words, this means that both the good professor and the American Council for Judaism are disturbed at the slow rate of assimilation! Whose “fault” is it that we have not assimilated completely at this late stage of American Jewish history? Professor MacIver blames the “distinctiveness of Jewish culture” as expressed in such phenomena as Shabbat, “food taboos” (for which read: kashrut), and the Jewish strictures on intermarriage. He blames, in addition, the idea of separate Jewish schools, i.e. the Jewish day school system, and the tendency to form special Jewish organizations for matters of general interest (probably referring to organizations such as the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists).

Is the professor right? Yes, he is! Would that our non-Orthodox Jewish friends listened closely to what he says. He notes well what it is that has saved us to this day. And they are not the solutions that have been offered by our deviationist fellow Jews, whether the half-Reform or quarter-Reform or completely Reform, whether Yiddishists or Hebraists, whether secular Zionists or any others with pet solutions for our problems. No mere “adaptations” can heal the sick heart of American Jewry. Not even fighting an ever-diminishing anti-Semitism with an ever-growing budget, which seems to be the peculiar blessing of our “defense organizations,” will accomplish much towards saving American Jewry. Israel is important, Yiddish is important, Hebrew is important, but these alone have not helped and cannot help. At best they are tranquilizers, at worst merely placebos. You cannot treat a serious medical problem with a couple of aspirins!

This we must all recognize – especially those who want to juggle the Jewish destiny, being not completely Jewish, yet not completely non-Jewish; not traditional Jews, yet not assimilated Jews. In the long run, this is an impossible task, doomed to failure. Now we must recognize not only that we are sick, but that there are certain forces that have kept us alive and well, and that we must do all that we can to reinforce those healthy elements: Shabbat, kashrut, the ban against intermarriage and inter-dating, and above all education, and more education! Perhaps, to take up the hints of Professor MacIver, there should be Sabbath-observing young Jewish professionals who will form organizations for social workers and lawyers, for architects and behavioral scientists, equivalent to that of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists. Above all else, it is time that we recognized our spiritual illness and our need for Torah. Then, and only then, will Torah become, as Solomon put it, “healing for our body and marrow for our bones.” If these revelations will shock American Jewry to an awareness of its own impoverished spiritual condition, then our timeless message will become more effective than it ever was before. Then all of us will begin to build more day schools. Then we shall begin to emphasize more Hebrew day schools on the high school level. And let us take a leaf from the book of our Catholic friends who now realize that high school and college education is religiously far more significant than elementary school education. Then we shall begin, as a community, to pay more attention to Yeshiva University.

Then, above all, we will begin to devote more attention as well to Jewish youth on campuses throughout this country. There are in our country, at present, some three hundred thousand Jewish college students, representing about 75% of the college age youth of the Jewish community. In a short time, this is expected to rise to 90%. Now there is an organization by the name of Hillel which is devoted to the welfare of the Jewish student. But the solution we have in mind is more than what most Hillel groups do or can offer. What we mean is Torah and the study of Torah above all else. It is therefore an indication of the new opportunities opened to us to learn that a group like Yavneh, which started out only about five years ago with a handful of students at Columbia University, has now spread to about seventeen campuses throughout the country and in the short space of five years now numbers some twelve-hundred students who, in order to belong to this organization, must undertake a regular program of Jewish study for which no college credit is offered! Imagine if Yavneh were given the proper support by the adult community, they might today number not eleven hundred but perhaps eleven thousand members!

In summary, then, this new realization of how far we have gone downhill may make us ready to return and climb once again to the summit of Sinai. We have achieved, to use the words of the Midrash, the ad shetashuv nafsho min haḥoli (Midrash Tanḥuma, Parashat Yitro 10). We have recuperated enough to appreciate how sick we were. Now is the time to take the next step: olikhenu lebeit harav lilmod Torah, the return to the house of the teacher to study Torah!

Now is the time when we can achieve greatness, when every effort can produce unprecedented results. It is in dedication to this kind of commitment that we turn our thoughts to the past, entertaining memories of devoted parents and teachers, and promise to consecrate ourselves to a greater, brighter, and holier future for us, our children, and all Israel.

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*May 18, 1964

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

On Having a Heart*

In the Bible’s description of the seventh of the ten plagues which God brought upon Pharaoh and his Egyptians, the Torah employs a style that is somewhat different from the usual and which, therefore, seems to require some special attention.

The seventh plague, you will recall, was the barad, the plague of hailstones which fell upon the Egyptians, their servants, and their cattle, and killed all life that was unprotected. Now, before Moses stretched forth his rod and caused the hail to fall, he warned the Egyptians of what he was going to do. He warned them to withdraw indoors in order to save their lives. The reaction of the pagan Egyptians was to laugh at Moses, and though six times previously he had predicted the act of the Lord, they ridiculed him, and most of them – excepting the very few who did believe in God – exposed themselves to the plague.

Now here is how the Bible (Exodus 9:20-21) describes the actions of these two classes of Egyptians, those who took Moses seriously and those who did not: “hayarei et devar Hashem,” those of Pharaoh’s servants who feared the word of God, gathered their slaves and cattle indoors and saved them. “Va’asher lo sam libo el devar Hashem,” “and he who did
not put his heart to the word of God” (i.e. he who did not pay attention to God), left his cattle and slaves outdoors to be slain by the hailstones. Notice that the two classes of Egyptians are not described in the same kind of terms. If the first Egyptians are “hayarei et devar Hashem” (Godfearing), the second should be described as “lo yarei et Hashem” (not fearing God), or “sonei Hashem” (God-hating), or “eino ma’amin” (nonbeliever), or “ĥotei” (sinner) or something similar. Instead, the Torah describes this second, evil, anti-God class as “lo sam libo,” the kind that
“doesn’t put his heart” to God. Why this stylistic awkwardness?

The answer is that it is by no means awkward. It is people who are awkward who are being criticized by the Torah. What the Bible means to tell us by this choice of words is that indifference, not “putting your heart to it (or into) it,” is the cardinal sin of mankind. Centuries later, George Bernard Shaw repeated the same idea in his play “The Devil’s Disciple” (1901), when he wrote that the greatest sin of mankind is not hate but indifference.

Certainly, and despite the apparent signs of a return to religion in some general way, our generation’s greatest religious defect is an abysmal indifference and horrendous apathy to religion, to morals, to ethics, to Torah…in short, to God. It is purely a matter of “lo sam libo” – we do not pay attention to God’s word, we do not put our hearts into His service. Not anger at God, not rebellion against Torah, not resentment at religion – these are not the sins of our generation. Ours is a greater, subtler, and deeper sin – religious neutrality.

We do not absent ourselves from the synagogue because we are actively atheistic. It is just apathy. We do not desecrate the Sabbath because we dislike it. We are just religiously phlegmatic. We do not deprive our children of a solid Jewish education because we are in principle opposed to it. It is just that we never get around to it because of a spiritual supineness, a lackadaisical, lazy unconcern with anything that does not directly concern our immediate physical well-being. We are, thus, more than “eino yarei et devar Hashem,” “ĥotim,” “sonim” to God – we are “lo sam libo,” people who are so inured to God that they do not even consider Him in the first place. An atheist, an agnostic, a communist, has at least given God the courtesy of thinking about Him. The indifferent Jew doesn’t even do that.

And what is the practical result of this spiritual indifference? It results in inhumanity and wastefulness, in social and economic indifference. What happened to the Egyptian who was “lo sam libo,” who did not take God seriously? “Vaya’azov et avadav ve’et mikneihu basadeh,” he left his slaves and his cattle to die in the fields. A slave is as much a human being as a master, and cattle are food for hungry children. But a person who is indifferent to God is indifferent to them, for they are only the creatures of God. Our fellow men and our respect for private property are the casualties of our indifference to God.

In the translation-interpretation of the Torah know as the Targum Yerushalmi, the translator adds some interesting notes to this matter of the reaction of Egypt to Moses’ warning about the hailstones. For the first class, the “yarei et devar Hashem,” the God-fearing Egyptians, the Targum gives, as an example, Job. And as an example for “lo sam libo,” the indifferent one, the illustration is Balaam.

How beautifully the Aramaic translator was able to detect this moral from the Torah’s literary style, and then transmit it through an apt and cryptic illustration! Job, remember, was the man who complained against God. He ranted and he raved, he complained and he resented, he objected and he protested. At times his outbursts against God’s supposed injustice were so strong that one of our Rabbis was moved to exclaim (Yalkut Shimoni, Job 900), “afra befume deIyov,” “Job deserved to have his mouth filed with dust!” Balaam, on the other hand, never said anything untoward, anything offensive or protesting to God. When called upon to prophesize, he prophesized. He saw Israel as the chosen of God and so, even though himself a pagan, he praised Israel as the special people of God.

Yet here was the great difference: Job objected – but he took God seriously, he thought about Him, he sought Him, he demanded of Him, he offered to Him, he questioned Him. Job put his heart into Godliness. Balaam, on the other hand, “lo sam libo,” never really took God in earnest. Balak, the king of Israel’s enemies, said (Numbers 22:6), “Go curse Israel for me” – Balaam wondered not whether the God of Israel would be happy about such an arrangement. He just didn’t care. And so he went to curse. He was a religious Hessian, a spiritual mercenary. When the beast he was riding on halted, he beat it mercilessly. He didn’t wonder why it halted, for being indifferent to God, he was indifferent to all of life: “Vayaazov et avadav ve’et mikneihu basadeh.” He just didn’t care. That is why he is known as Bilam harasha, Balaam the Wicked – because he didn’t care, because he never considered the wishes of God.

Medical doctors know that indifference can allow a small growth to develop into the kind of thing that kills. Marriage counselors know that more marriages are broken by indifference than by differences. The indifference of the great powers to the plight of European Jewry resulted in the loss of one third of our people in the Holocaust. The terrible indifference of religious Jewry to Palestine, in years gone by, cost us years and years of attempting to give Israel the kind of spirit and leadership it needs. And religious teachers are therefore similarly alarmed when they approach parents or children – especially teenagers just blossoming into maturity, in an attempt to engage their attention and interest – and the response they get is, “I don’t know. I guess I just don’t care.” What future can they have when they are possessed of the evil demon of ennui, boredom, of “lo sam libo.” With listlessness of this kind you can do absolutely nothing. Hatred can be converted into love. But apathy cannot be moved or converted into anything.

This thought is summed up in a superbly powerful and beautiful capsule of wisdom in the Midrash (Song of Songs Rabba 2:13). It is a remark so sage, and concerns a word so familiar, that I hope all of us will remember it. Offering an allegorical interpretation of Song of Songs 2:4, in which Israel sings of God “diglo alai ahava,” “His banner on me is love,” Rabbi Aĥa indulges in a typical midrashic play on words and says “dilugo alai ahava” – God announces, “his mistake is beloved by Me.” What does this mean? Rabbi Aĥa explains: If an am ha’aretz, an ignoramus, was reciting the Shema and came to the words “ve’ahavta et Hashem Elohekha,” “thou shalt love the Lord thy God,” and mispronounced “ve’ahavta” to read “ve’ayavta,” “thou shalt hate” – that error too
is acceptable to God! “Dilugo alai ahava” – God loves such mistakes!

What a powerful and incisive comment! God is willing to accept even “ve’ayavta” instead of “ve’ahavta,” even hatred and rebellion in place of love and loyalty, but never “lo sam libo,” never that deadly indifference that chokes the soul and poisons the spirit. Better to complain against God and be angry with Him and protest against Him, than to shut your eyes and ears and heart to Him. Better to shake your fists at the heavens, than to shrug your shoulders and turn up your palms and say, “Don’t bother me – I’m not interested.” Better a bitter exchange with the Creator
than no dialogue at all. For ultimately, “ve’ayavta” is based upon am ha’aratzut, upon ignorance, and with the study of Torah and the acquisition of wisdom and learning there will come instead “ve’ahavta” – true love and devotion and loyalty to God. But apathy, “lo sam libo,” has no future whatsoever. Indifference marks the end of any dialogue between God and man. It condemns a man to eternal suspension in a heavy cosmic nothingness, where he is enveloped in a thunderous silence which keeps him at an infinite distance from God – a distance which he cannot and God will not ever bridge.

This, then, is the message implied in the stylistic eccentricity of our sidra. The antonym of yirat Hashem, Reverence, is “lo sam libo” – not putting your heart into Synagogue, Torah, Judaism. In order to achieve that glorious reverence before God, we must learn sympathy and empathy and not apathy, yearning and not neutrality, passion and not indifference.

In short, the Torah presses each of us this day with its demand and its challenge: “Have a heart.”

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*January 22, 1955

Excerpted from The Hidden Light: Biblical Paradigms of Leadership by Dr. Jerry Hochbaum, co-published by OU Press and KTAV

Galut and Geulah: Intertwined Processes

Parashat Shemot deals with galut Mitzrayim, our exile in Egypt, and at the same time begins to relate the first steps toward our geulah, our liberation. A closer look into the parsha illuminates for us that galut and geulah are not separate, discrete events. Both are processes that occur over long periods of time, and are linked together and overlap in multiple, significant ways.

The parashah opens with the genesis of the oppression of the Jews in Egypt. A new Pharaoh now occupies the throne in Egypt, and he immediately develops a deadly paranoia regarding the Jews. He bemoans not only their rapid demographic growth, but also their growing success in Mitzrayim: “vayirbu vaya’atzmu bime’od me’od, vatimalei ha-aretz otam.” The Klausenberger Rebbe interprets the latter part of that verse to mean that the Jews had successfully penetrated every sector of Egyptian society.

Pharaoh’s response is immediate and comprehensive: the enslavement of the Jewish people through harsh and backbreaking labor. This introduction to the long episode of enslavement – the galut Mitzrayim – is condensed into only six verses at the beginning of the parashah. Only several verses separate that account from the Torah’s description of the birth of Moshe, his discovery in the Nile by Pharaoh’s daughter, and his upbringing in Pharaoh’s palace. Then, just a few verses later, we read, “Vayigdal Moshe, vayetzei el eḥav, vayar b’sivlotam,” Moshe matures and seeks out his brothers. He sees and empathizes with their suffering.

Moshe demonstrates his connection with his enslaved brethren by killing an Egyptian who was beating a Jew; as a result, he is forced to flee Egypt. In Moshe’s exile in Midian, God appears to him in a burning bush and persuades him – overcoming Moshe’s great humility – to undertake the mission to liberate the Jews from Egypt.

This is the first demonstration that galut and geulah are not separate and distinct events, but a process in which they are interlinked. Geulah is not confined solely to the termination of galut. The process of geulah is initiated by God through the identification of the Jewish people’s future leader, stimulating in him a psychological disposition for his mission, and finally recruiting him and providing him with the tools and motivation to undertake that mission. The initiation and first steps of the geulah process occur almost simultaneously with the onset of the darkness that descends upon the Jewish people in Mitzrayim.

The second half of the parashah provides an even better example of this principle. Following God’s instruction, Moshe, with his brother at his side, visits with the zekenim, the leaders of the Jewish people in Egypt, and convinces them and the people that the liberation from Egypt is forthcoming. “Vaya’amen ha’am,” the people declare their faith in Moshe and his mission.

Recruited by God and now encouraged by the response of the elders and the people, Moshe, accompanied by his brother Aharon, appears before Pharaoh’s court. “Ko amar Hashem . . . shalaḥ et ami,” Thus has God spoken, let My people go. Pharaoh’s response is defiant: Who is this God that I must follow His orders? Indeed, Pharaoh responds by increasing the labor the Jews must accomplish. The Egyptian overseers instruct their Jewish counterparts to increase the quota and speed of production of the Jewish slaves. The Jewish overseers angrily confront Moshe and Aharon after their meeting with Pharaoh. They complain that instead of relieving them as promised, they have caused their situation to become even more desperate than before.

The Torah here relates two remarkable responses to this dire turn of events. Moshe returns to God and asks, “Why have you sent me on this alleged mission of liberation?” “Ume’az bati el Pharaoh . . . hera la’am hazeh, vehatzel lo hitzalta et amekha,” since my mission, You have not only not liberated the Jews; You have, in fact, worsened their situation.

God responds, “Ata tir’eh asher e’eseh l’Pharaoh ki v’yad ḥazakah yishalḥem,” Pharaoh will ultimately liberate the Jews, and you yourself will witness it. As I indicated earlier, galut and geulah are intertwined processes. God indeed instructed Moshe to visit Pharaoh and demand of him the liberation of the Jewish people. But liberation, explains Rav Uzi Kalchaim, is not a linear process, not always ascending. It is instead a curvilinear process, with ups and downs, some steps forward, followed by retreats – some steps backward.

Liberation can be compared to childbirth. There is never a set time for a child’s birth. Much depends on the condition of the mother and the child. If the child is not fully ready for birth, he or she remains in the womb for a longer period of time. What God is advising Moshe is that the time is not yet fully ripe for geulah. The Jews are not ready, not fully prepared for their redemption. Some further actions are required on their part. Those changes will surely come. “Ata tir’eh,” you yourself will lead that liberation – when the conditions that we will together foster and create will fully warrant their liberation.

Geulah, as I have suggested, is not a distinct event set in time, but a process – intimately linked with both the circumstances of our galut and our creating the appropriate conditions to prepare for our own liberation.

As it was in Egypt then, so too in our exile today.

 

Excerpted from The Hidden Light: Biblical Paradigms of Leadership by Dr. Jerry Hochbaum, co-published by OU Press and KTAV

The Leader and His Progeny: Never One Size in Education

Parashat Toldot deals essentially with the genesis of the profound enmity between Ya’akov and Eisav, one that pervades Jewish history until this day. How can we explain the root cause of this most troublesome phenomenon, considering that Eisav is also the son of Yitzḥak and Rivkah, our second patriarch and matriarch?

There is much discussion among the commentaries regarding the twin brothers’ childhood. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch poses an unusual and radical solution that deserves our attention because it may have relevance for our time as well.

The Torah tells us, “vayigdelu hane’arim,” Ya’akov and Eisav matured. “Vayehi Eisav ish yode’a tzayid, ish sadeh,” Eisav becomes a hunter, a man of the field, one comfortable in the wider society whose values differ substantially from the moral climate of Yitzḥak and Rivkah’s household. A hunter is not a desired Jewish profession, then or now. Ya’akov, on the other hand, is described as “ish tam, yoshev ohalim,” a tent dweller, a pious, insular scholar engaged in Torah studies.

According to Rabbi Hirsch, this divergence in character between the two brothers surfaces only after they mature. That is explicit in the preceding verse. Until that time, according to Rabbi Hirsch and others, they were raised in the same home, exposed to the same socialization by their parents, attended the same schools, and were enveloped in the same moral and spiritual ambience that their parents represented. So what was responsible for the very radically divergent paths of their lives?

The Torah, Rabbi Hirsch points out, characteristically does not cover up the blemishes of our ancestors. We must learn from their noble achievements, but from their errors as well. What occurred here was a failure of adhering to the principle, “ḥanokh lana’ar al pi darko.” Parents are responsible for educating their children by taking into account their special needs and predispositions.

Eisav, like Ya’akov, has his own set of predilections and strengths  on which his upbringing should have been based. There is no one formula or recipe for educating all children, even the offspring of Yitzḥak and Rivkah. That he was not schooled and socialized in a more individualized way might have contributed to Eisav’s unacceptable behavior and activities.

This knowledge and insight did indeed have an important impact on Ya’akov himself. At the end of his life he gathers together his sons, the twelve tribes of Israel, for his final message and blessing to them. The Torah describes his blessing in the following words: “Ish asher k’virkhato berakh otam.” Ya’akov blesses all of them “in accordance with their blessing.” In other words, he recognizes that each of them has unique aptitudes and talents. One general blessing for all would not suffice. Ya’akov is able to identify the special potential of each son, and shape his blessings to address and fully express that individual trait or characteristic.

His blessings range far and wide – from success in business and agriculture to moral, political, and spiritual leadership. By highlighting and praying for each son’s individual success in the area of his greatest talents and aptitudes, he ensures that the Jewish people would also be blessed as a collective.

The gap that Rabbi Hirsch wisely identifies regarding Eisav’s education has certainly affected our history, as the Toldot narrative reveals. The leadership of the Jewish community, and especially parents raising the next generation of Jews, needs to be continually conscious of the critical omission identified by Rabbi Hirsch.

There is ample evidence that some Jewish leaders, parents, and educators are still not devising and tailoring their children’s education to the special needs, interests, and character of their children and students. Rabbi Hirsch’s stunning insight thus has equal relevance in our age.

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

Three Who Cried*

Ours is an age which has forgotten how to cry. Whether at Rosh Hashanah services or Tish‘ah be-Av kinot, whether at a funeral or a theater, tears are conspicuous by their absence. Once upon a time, the mahzor was stained with tears; today, it is so white and clean—and cold. Not, unfortunately, that there is nothing to cry about. A generation which saw the finest of its sons and daughters destroyed in the most terrible massacre in recorded history; a generation which, the more it probes the heavens, the more it ignores the heart—a generation of this sort has much to cry about. How many people here today do not have their private woes, their secret sorrows?

It is rather that we have embarrassed ourselves into silence. It has become a style of the times to restrain our tears on the theory that maybe that way the pain will go away, that by refusing to display genuine emotion, the agonizing facts of our lives will be altered. But we are, nevertheless, human beings. And so the unwept tears and unexpressed emotions and 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.

Granted that crying is an experience we ought not to deny ourselves. But is there not a difference in how and why people cry? Is there not a vast difference between the various types of weeping and what motivates them?

I believe there is. And Rosh Hashanah suggests three separate causes for tears, two that are vain and unfortunate, and a third that is heroic and constructive.

The three types are symbolized by three biblical characters, all women, whose tears are recalled on this holiday. They are the mother of Sisera, Hagar, and Rachel.

Sisera was a Canaanite general, leader of an army that was, so to speak, highly mechanized compared to the peasant people of Israel which it attacked. This arrogant pagan warlord was defeated by the Israelites, who were led by Deborah. In Deborah’s song of triumph, she paints the picture of Sisera’s mother, usually overconfident, this time anxiously awaiting the return of her son (Judg. 5:28): Be-ad ha-halon nishkafah—she peers intently out the window, a nagging question burning within her; maddua boshesh rikhbo lavo—why is his chariot so late in coming, why do the wheels of his chariot tarry? She answers, soothing herself: My son and his soldiers are busy dividing the spoils of their great victory; they are splitting up the dyed cloths, the embroidered garments, the damsels of conquered Israel. But the delusion cannot last forever. The truth must emerge. Her son is dead. Va-teyabbev—the mother of Sisera breaks out into uncontrolled sobbing. There were one hundred sobs, tradition declares (Tosafot Rosh ha-Shanah 33b, citing the Arukh), and for this reason, we Jews on Rosh Hashanah sound a total of one hundred notes on the shofar.

A beautiful, compassionate story. A shining example of historical generosity and forgiveness—we relive the pain and anguish of the mother of our enemy. But were there no Jewish mothers who were bereaved of their sons in the same war? Was no Jewish blood spilt in our long history, no Jewish tears shed by grieving mothers?

What the Rabbis intended, I believe, was a moral of great significance: The mother of Sisera lived in a dream world. She refused to face reality and contemplate its bitter side. And when you live in a dream world, you must expect nightmares. She had imagined that her exalted position as mother of a successful conqueror inured her to pain and tragedy—that was reserved only for the contemptible enemy, Israel. She was guilty of an immoral optimism, the kind of outlook that characterizes the unthinking and arrogant of all ages. Hers was a strutting and pompous dream which collapsed under the weight of its own illusions. And this indeed is what the shofar and Rosh Hashanah remind us of: there is a Yom ha-Din, a day of judgment and accounting. Al titya’esh min hapur‘ anut (Avot 1:7)—do not go through life, says one interpretation, blithely ignoring consequences which you dread. He who sits on top of the world has no assurance that his world will not collapse under him. Absolute security is a myth. Life is not as certain, as guaranteed, as the haughty, unreflective mentality of the mother of Sisera lead her to believe. Beware of such vain and dangerous illusions.

Do we not know in our own lives the kind of mentality that discovers its smugness and self-confidence punctured only when it is too late? We see it in international affairs, as when our government naively assumed that Communism could never gain a foothold on this continent, so we neglected the masses of Cuba, we supported tyranny, we ignored the oppressed population—and now we have Castro and his Russian allies ninety miles off our coast. Va-teyabbev. . .

The couple who neglect to seek advice for their serious problems, the man who ignores medical symptoms he inwardly fears, the mother who notices her children going off on the wrong path and says and does nothing—all of them lull themselves with false balm, assuring themselves that all is really well and nothing will be wrong. Va-teyabbev—how pitiful the tears that are so futilely shed when, later, there is divorce, and incurable illness, and a child gone astray. Broken homes, broken bodies, broken hearts—all in the inglorious tradition of Sisera’s mother. Rosh Hashanah reminds us of this, tells us that nothing in life is guaranteed, that by ignoring danger, you invite it, and that better face reality now than cry vainly later.

Hagar was the second of the three who cried. We read about her in today’s Torah portion. You recall that she was the servant of Sarah whom Abraham, at Sarah’s behest, banished from his home. She took her child, Ishmael, into the desert, and when the water in her jug gave out, she cast the child away, pathetically saying she did not want to see him die. And va-tissa et kolah va-tevk (Gen. 21:16), “she raised her voice and cried.” No attempt to save the child, no looking for an oasis—which factually was there, before her eyes—no real effort at changing her dangerous situation. She merely raises her voice and cries; it is the cry of desperation, a morbid, fatalistic pessimism. Hers is a “realism” that leads to resignation. Unlike Sisera’s mother, she sees the “facts” only too clearly. Hagar beholds the great desert of life—and submits to it.

Rosh Hashanah reminds us of this weeping too. Just as it discourages us from harboring the dangerous illusion of total security, so it warns us off from the equally dangerous fatalism of a Hagar, the hopelessness that paralyzes all will and initiative. By recalling these tears, we learn to avoid living so that we too will be forced to shed them.

And how important that advice is. Take the matter of the danger to the future of humanity from nuclear war. Most of us are under the impression that the majority of people are indifferent to its ghastly possibility, that they never consider such horrors as real.

I believe, however, that the reverse is true. Contemporary man’s attitude to the H-bomb is not that of the em Sisera but of Hagar. If they do not discuss it, it is because inwardly, psychologically, they have already given up and accepted it. They have surrendered and have the feeling that they are living in the end of time.

The results, morally speaking, are disastrous. If there is no future, then the present loses all value. If there is nothing to build for, there is nothing to live for. If death is certain and universal, then, like Esau, let us sell our birthright to fill our stomachs. If, as the cynics quoted by Isaiah said, mahar namut, “tomorrow we die” (Is. 22:13), then indeed, “let us eat and drink and be merry”—and forgo any serious purpose in life.

This, then, is the result of the Hagar mentality in its fatalism, its absolute hopelessness in the face of adversity. It is the type of mind which, seeing before it the midbar, is so overwhelmed by it that it stretches out and prepares to die with a whimper. And in that interval between despair and death, is it worth being temperate or sober or chaste or law-abiding or pure? The tears of Hagar and her whole frame of mind suggest a despair of which is born delinquency.

Both these approaches are dangerously wrong. A society, like an individual, which alternates between the moods of exhilaration and depression, em Sisera and Hagar, shows symptoms of moral mania and spiritual psychosis. Neither the one weeping nor the other is for us. Rather, it is the tears of a Jewish mother which inspire us this day.

The third woman who cried is Rachel. We read of her in tomorrow’s haftarah, in what is one of the most moving passages and most stirring images in all literature. Jeremiah describes Mother Rachel crying from her grave over her children who are banished from their homes into exile: “Thus saith the Lord, kol be-Ramah nishma, nehi, bekhi tamrurim, a voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping; Rachel mevakkah al banehah, it is Rachel weeping for her children; me‘anah le-hinnahem, she refuses to be comforted” (Jer. 31:14).  Here is a woman whose tears have moved history. Unlike Sisera’s mother, they do not come from living an easy life and deluding herself into imagining that a day of reckoning will never come. Rachel lived a hard life and a brief one; she knew trouble and anguish. She sees her children going into exile and recognizes the bitterness of reality. But unlike Hagar, she refuses to bow to these realities. Me‘anah le-hinnahem, she refuses to submit, she refuses to adjust, she refuses to accept exile and destruction as the last word. Her cry, her tears, and her protest to God are the characteristic of the Jew throughout all time. The Jewish soul beholds reality in all its ugliness but sets out to transform it. The tears of Rachel are the tears of a gallant soul who will not yield to the world but makes the world, though it take centuries, yield to it. They are not the tears of vain sentiment and self-pity, but of powerful protest; they are a sign not of weakness, but of strength; not of resignation or frustration, but of determination. The tears of an em Sisera or a Hagar are the end of their story; for Rachel, it is a beginning. To Rachel’s cry there comes an answer: Koh amar Hashem, “thus saith the Lord,” min‘i kolekh mi-bekhi ve-einayikh mi-dim‘ah, “refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears, for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord, and thy children shall come back from the land of the enemy; and there is hope for thy future, saith the Lord, and ve-shavu banim li-gevulam, thy children shall return home” (Jer. 31:15–16). The Jewish attitude, symbolized by Rachel’s crying, is one which steers clear of the extremes of ignoring facts and of surrendering to them. Judaism teaches, in the language of the Kabbalah, that the it‘aruta di-le-Eila, the impulse from Above, or divine assistance, can only come in response to the it‘aruta di-le-tatta, or human initiative. For God helps those who help themselves—and God help those who don’t.

Has not this Rachel mentality distinguished the authentic Jew throughout the ages? Are not her heroic tears our saving grace even today? We did not rely on Britain or the United States or the League of Nations or the U.N. to take care of us, assuming with naive and idolatrous optimism that all would be well with us. We knew the harsh realities of creating an old people anew on a renewed land—with ancient enemies waiting to devour us. But Jews fought. They went into battle inspired by the tears of a Rachel who me’anah le-hinnahem, refusing to accept defeat, refusing to acknowledge surrender, refusing to submit to overwhelming odds. That is why ve-shavu banim li-gevulam; that is why there is an Israel today.

Fourteen or fifteen years ago, the great question was Palestine or the State of Israel. Today, two other central questions present themselves to us Jews, questions equally as significant as that of Israel.

The first is Russian Jewry. There is, at present, not too much we can do about it. We must recognize the brutal facts, the wily and cunning enemy we are dealing with, and the incalculably tragic results of a generation of Russian Jews denied any and all Jewish education. But we must vow never to give up hope. Me‘anah le-hinnahem. We must apply pressure. We must talk of them and inquire about them. We must never despair, but rather prepare for their eventual release and return to the House of Israel.

But the second is one we can do much about—and that is the most momentous issue in the Jewish life of this generation—the future of American Jewry. Here the attitude we take can determine whether we shall survive and thrive or, Heaven forbid, eventually vanish without a trace.

If we adopt the genuinely Jewish approach of a Rachel, then there is hope for us. We dare not consider the complacent ideas of those who foolishly tell us that all is well and there is no cause for worry—those who, imbued with the same opiate that dulled the mind of Sisera’s mother, are blind to the densely negative features of American-Jewish life: intermarriage, vast ignorance of the most elementary aspects of Judaism, a desire to mimic the non-Jews, and a growing vacuum in the lives of our children.

Yet, at the same time, we dare not take a Hagar-like attitude and assume that things are so far gone that nothing will avail. The pessimists are blind to the resurgence and growing independence of Orthodoxy; the spreading Jewish Day School movement; the growing and developing Yeshiva University; the flourishing Hebrew book industry. Either attitude—ignoring the problems and ignoring the promises, thoughtless optimism and hopeless pessimism— paralyzes all initiative and must result in national mourning.

Ours must be the tears of Rachel. Knowing reality, let us proceed to transform it to a better reality. Let everyone here decide to come to shul at least once a week instead of making a perfunctory three-day-a-year visit. Let every parent send his or her children to a yeshivah or day school or at least Hebrew school. Let every thinking adult leave this synagogue today determined to learn more about Judaism, about the Jewish people—about yourselves. Tears of determination, of me‘anah le-hinnahem—the tears of Rachel—these shall save us.

Ha-zore‘im be-dim‘ah be-rinnah yiktzoru (Ps. 126:5). Those to whom tears are not the distillation of vain illusions or morbid resignation, but the dewdrops of creative moral heroism, they shall sow the seeds of hope with these tears—and reap a harvest of joy, of happiness, of nahas and unending blessing.

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*5723 (1962)

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

Making Hay Out of Religion*

One of the great paradoxes of human nature is the meeting of opposites, the fact that two conditions which are contrary to each other in the extreme can produce the same effects. How frequently are we amused to find the Vatican and the Kremlin toeing, with characteristic dogmatism, the same line; occasionally we are astonished at the coincidence of view of The Wall Street Journal and the Daily Worker. Both extreme Right and extreme Left are alike in condemning the liberal center, and in demanding blind obedience of their followers. Both were equally hostile, for instance, to the Marshall Plan.

In the same vein, we find that affluence and plenty often produce the same results as do adversity and poverty. It is no secret that indigence breeds immorality and corruption. In the Middle Ages, the Black Plague and universal poverty combined to cause the greatest crime wave in the recorded history of Europe. Murder, violence, and theft were the immediate results of pestilence and destitution. In our own day, starvation and privation are bound to unleash the tidal waves of immorality and degeneracy whether in Nablus of Arab Palestine or in Harlem of enlightened New York. Sociologists usually blame low standards of morality on low standards of living.

But the astounding fact is that there are people who would behave  immorally and irreligiously and unethically when they earn $200 a week, whereas they did not do so when they barely eked out a living at $25 a week. Somehow, prosperity will sometimes produce worse effects than will poverty. The recent basketball scandals have shown that boys from wealthy homes are not necessarily immune to the temptation of the fixer. Today, when America is enjoying comparatively high prosperity, the record for narcotics, sports scandals, and government bribery is as black as ever. It is a well-established phenomenon that the nouveau riche, the man who has suddenly become wealthy, leaves his house of worship and forgets his religion. Even political immorality is practiced by the extremely wealthy. There are some millionaires who are known sympathizers of American Communism, an “ism” which usually preys only on the poor and dejected.

This principle or paradox was already formulated in the Torah and explained by our Sages. In today’s sidra we read, “And you shall eat and be satisfied…take heed and beware lest your heart be deceived and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them” (Deuteronomy 8:10-11). And the Rabbis of the Midrash (Sifri, 43:17) infer from the sequence of the texts that there is a refinite relationship between satiety, eating until you’re full, and idolatry – namely, that it is only out of satisfaction and satiety that one takes to idolatry. Was not the Tower of Babel, the symbol of rebellion against God, built during a period of affluence? Did not the wickedness of Sodom flourish among a wealthy people? And, in our own time, was not Berlin, the city which admitted only wealthy “schutz-juden,” the center of assimilation? Only when people are satisfied and content with themselves do they go hunting for other gods, whether the money god or the entertainment god or the god whose first commandment is “Thou shalt keep up with the Joneses.”

Well, we can understand that satiety and contentment would result in laxity of morals and religion. After a heavy gluttonous meal, one’s metabolism rate drops, one’s pulse and respiration go down and energy is sparse. One feels lazy, and if he forgets his Grace after Meals, or skips a mitzva or two, or commits a sin or two, it is a result of negligence and indolence rather than rebellion against God. Why then do the Rabbis insist that eating to satisfaction is the precursor of the worst of all sins, idolatry?

Idolatry, no matter what kind – ancient or modern – is easier than true religion. And because it is easier to practice, success is more readily attainable in idolatry than in monotheism. First of all, it requires less mental exertion. True religion is more abstract, more difficult conceptually than belief in a tangible idol. The invisible is harder on the intellect than the visible. Thus, idolatry is less emotionally taxing than Judaism. It is easier to offer your overt devotions to or embrace a slab of concrete or a totem pole or a Rembrandt or a moneybag or a rabbit’s foot than it is to fall in love with an unknown God whom your senses cannot even detect. And idolatry places fewer restrictions upon your behavior than does our religion. The creed of Moloch or Baal never demanded strict Sabbath observance. The religion of the moneybag certainly places no restrictions on corrupt business practices. And the faith in the sacred cow of science requires ethical conduct of no one. All sources indicate that idolatry has frequently sanctioned murder, immorality, and downright degeneracy.

Why do normal people fall prey to the curse of idolatry? Why do they succumb to this opiate of easy living? Let us read the verse preceding the one we have previously quoted: “And I will give grass in your fields for your animals and you shall eat and be satisfied,” and then, “beware of worshipping other gods.” Certainly! If a person is satisfied with eating the grass reserved for his cattle, if that individual is satisfied to thrive on straw and hay, then certainly his goals are so low that he will be satisfied with the easily attainable idolatry. If this person’s noblest goals are not as high as the stars in heaven, but as low as hay in the field, and if he is satisfied with this grass, then this individual’s loftiest aims and ambitions in his entire religious life will be not the dedication to one God in heaven but the worship of a dozen cheap clay and wooden statues. “I will give grass in your fields for your animals and you shall eat and be satisfied.” The danger of idolatry rears its ugly head when people’s aims are level with the ground, when they strive for straw and are content with their success in obtaining it.

The great American ideal is “success.” But “success” can apply as well to a well-executed murder as to the amassing of a fortune. I have two friends who intended to accelerate their reading this summer. One decided to read ten important novels published during the past year. The other friend was less ambitious and selected three best-sellers for his summer reading list. By today, I hear, the second fellow has well completed his list of three books. He is by all American standards a success. The first fellow finished only eight of the ten books he had set out to read. Again by American standards, he is a dismal failure. Yet who has accomplished more? Is success really a measure of achievement? Is it really necessary for a meaningful life? In this same vein, idolatry is easier to succeed in than Judaism. It all depends on what your original goal is. “I will give grass in your fields for your animals and you shall eat and be satisfied.” People who are satisfied with straw are ripe for idol worship.

Look around you in your places of business and in the streets, and you will meet the typical American Jew of 1951. How high are his goals? Doesn’t he seem to think that an insignificant check to a charity is the summum bonum of Jewish life? Isn’t this person satisfied with a Sunday school education for his children? Isn’t this person’s highest religious ideal to visit the synagogue on the High Holy Days? Isn’t this person’s standard for kashrut two sets of dishes in the home and one set all over the rest of the world? In short, our typical American Jew is often satisfied with straw. A bellyful of hay is sufficient to pacify this person’s spiritual hunger, and a thimbleful of ersatz-religion satisfies his cultural requirements. “I will give grass in your fields for your animals and you shall eat and be satisfied.” He is unfortunately satisfied with the grass for his cattle, and that means that he is prepared to bow and kneel to the next idol. What the American Jew needs is not a face-lift but a lifting of his level of vision. He must learn to aim higher.

One of the reasons that the Talmud (Bava Metzia 30b) gives for the destruction of the Temple is that the people did not act lifnim mishurat hadin, they only did what was legally expected of them, and no more. They followed the letter of the law, but failed to rise to the spirit of the law. This view of the Talmud was given a modern slant in plain English when Senator Fulbright, commenting on the sad state of American political morals, said that it was “setting a low level” for our national development if “our only goal for official conduct is that it be legal instead of illegal.” Indeed, he was expressing the popular fear that our country, the sanctuary of democracy, is endangered because its sights are as high as the din, the strict Constitutional law, and not lifnim mishurat hadin, the spirit of the law, the unwritten moral code. A diet of hay and straw is bad for the spiritual health of our nation. We must raise our sights.

Y. L. Peretz, the famous Yiddish and Hebrew writer, has immortalized the type of Jew whose goals were no higher than “grass in your fields for your animals,” the animal’s straw, in his story “Bontche Schweig.” When Bontche died, he was tried by the divine tribunal, and the heavenly court decided that he merited any reward he would choose. Bontche could not believe it. “Takeh? Really?” he asked in wonder. He was reassured. When Bontche announced his decision, the court and angels looked down, a little ashamed, and the prosecutor laughed. For Bontche had answered, “Well, if it is so, I would like to have every day, for breakfast, a hot roll and fresh butter.”

In the same way, a leader who prods his people on to higher goals and loftier ambition is a leader who loves his people. And, conversely, the leader who lulls his people into complacency and self-satisfaction is a traitor. Some of the most laudatory and flattering of epithets were bestowed upon Israel by Balaam, the gentile prophet. Oh, how he praised us! Just compare what he told the Jews to the sermons that Isaiah preached at them. Balaam told them that God saw no sin or evil in them; Isaiah said that they were repulsive to God and rebellious sons. Balaam told them that glory would be theirs without a struggle; Isaiah warned of impending doom if they would not mend their ways. But who would you say loved Israel more? Certainly, the strict and critical Isaiah! For he set higher and finer goals for his people – goals more difficult to achieve, if success was at all humanly possible. He demanded of them exertion and initiative, while Balaam told them that they could rest on their laurels, that they were successful and nothing else of great import was worth striving for. Balaam was not a friend – he was a bitter enemy. The leader who loves his people will give them not a pat on the back, but a shot in the arm. He will teach them that if they can digest and be satisfied with hay and straw, then they are bound to wind up prostrating themselves before pagan idols.

Our good friend, ex-Ambassador James G. McDonald, warns us in his recent book that “the spiritual future of Israel is not without danger.” We can keep our aims low and become another banana republic on the shore of the blue Mediterranean, or we can press forward towards the mark, the prize of our high calling. Success is assured to us if we will be content with hay; but the rewards will be greater if our ideals will be loftier.

Today we welcome the month of Elul. During this month, reserved for penitence and introspection, we will reevaluate and possibly reset our present standards and ideals. We can make them as low as the grass upon the fields for the cattle, or as high as the stars in the infinite heavens above.

Which shall it be?

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*August 25, 1951