Parshat Va’etchanan

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Walking Forward from the Center

This week, the parsha feels so in tune with where we are standing.  It’s like that deep breath we can sometimes take that returns us to center and reminds us of who we are. This is the parsha of the Aseret Hadibbrot and the Shema. One week after Tisha B’av we are shaking off the mourning of the three weeks and turning toward a new year. The parsha opens with Moshe at the edge of Eretz Yisrael, unable to enter but nevertheless moving forward by preparing the nation to go in. He is speaking to a generation that were children at the time of Har Sinai if they were born at all. And Moshe reminds them (and us) of the essence of who we are as a nation.

In his comments this week, Rav Schorr brings this home by learning anew a midrash many of us learned in childhood. The Sifri on Devarim (243) tells us that before Hashem gave the Torah to us, He offered it to all the nations of the world. He went first to the children of Eisav, who rejected it because of the prohibition on murder. They said, “the entire essence of our father is murder.” Next, the children of Ammon and Moav grappled with the command not to commit adultery, and they too replied that they could not accept the Torah because “ervah (illicit relations) is our entire essence.” Finally, the children of Yishmael are given a chance. They too reject the Torah because the command not to steal is not in line with who they perceive themselves to be.

Rav Schorr points out an astonishing thing. Each of these three commands were already in place for the nations of the world before the giving of the Torah. The seven Noachide laws include prohibitions on murder, adultery and stealing. Why would the nations reject the Torah over laws they were already obligated to keep, and would have to keep even after they reject the Torah? What is this Midrash trying to teach us?

The midrash is pointing out that the experience at Har Sinai was not one of receiving something external, which binds us and forces us onto a path we do not wish to follow. The process of Har Sinai was a process of revelation that revealed to us the true nature of the world and the true nature of ourselves. Moshe tells us (Devarim 4:35) “You have been shown, in order to know that Hashem is God; there is none else besides Him.” Rashi explains that this pasuk is describing how at Har Sinai Hashem split the seven heavens and the lower region. He peeled back the entire nature of this world and the next.

Why? The pasuk tells us, “in order to know that Hashem is God; there is none else besides Him.” We are not disconnected from Hashem. We are intrinsically part of Hashem and Hashem’s world. We do not just learn the Torah.  We internalize the Torah. We unify with the Torah. We absorb it as a natural part of ourselves. The point of the aseret hadibbrot was not to give us an external set of laws to live by. The point of the aseret hadibbrot was to reveal the essence of who we are.

We embodied our truest selves at Har Sinai. With each dibbur, we lived the reality of that dibbur. If the dibbur was a negative command, we embodied the positive state which made us unable to transgress.  For example, when Hashem commanded us not to kill, that statement created a reality inside ourselves in which we were filled with love for one another. Killing each other was simply not possible. Rabbi Akiva says that our response to even the negative commandments which we received at Matan Torah was “Yes!” Hashem said, “Do not kill.” We answered, “Yes, this is truth, of course we can not kill.” We recognized the truth of the Torah from within the truth of ourselves.

This was not something the nations of the world were able to accept. They perceived their essence as antithetical to Hashem’s will. They may not murder in fact, but they would still view themselves as murderers. We accepted the Torah from a completely different perspective. What we realized at Har Sinai is “ein od milvado, there is nothing besides Hashem.” We were created by Hashem, we are connected to Hashem, we are meant to do His Will. This is the essence of who we are. This is our deepest self.

Yaacov was the av that exemplified this idea. In Hebrew, the name Yaacov begins with a yud, which has the numerical value of 10, like the 10 commandments. The name continues with the letters ayin, kuf, vet, which have the numerical value of 172, the number of words in the first set of commandments. Yaccov stands for the embodiment of the commandments in general as well as in all their particulars.

The yud at the beginning of Yaacov’s name is also the letter of wisdom. And in Yaacov’s case, that wisdom illuminated his entire body, straight through to the end, the heel, eikev (the last three letters of his name). This is in direct contrast to Eisav, who possessed quite a bit of wisdom. But that wisdom did not affect the way he acted. In the end, his head, repository of his wisdom, was buried in Ma’arat Hamachpelah, together with his parents. But the rest of him, which was not ruled by his wisdom, never made it in.

After the repetition of the Aseret Hadibbrot, the parsha includes the Shema, which we say twice a day. When we say the Shema, we can elongate the last word, echad, and think about how the letters reflect the unity of Hashem in the world. The aleph (1) represents one G-d. The Chet (8) represents the ground and the seven heavens. And the dalet (4) is the four corners of the earth.  R’ Yisrael Salanter, and perhaps also the Kotzker Rav, used to say that there are those who crown G-d in all his glory during the shema: above and below, and in all four corner of the earth. But they don’t accept that kingship on themselves.   

The revelation at Har Sinai and the words of the Shema are a return to center, a recognition of who we are, an acknowledgment of Hashem’s kindship over us. This is how we move forward from Tisha B’av into Teshuva, by recognizing the truth of who we are. We are Hashem’s children, living in Hashem’s world. At our core, we are naturally drawn into a relationship with our Creator. The Torah and all the mitzvot are in sync with who we really are.  

Parshat Devarim (Tisha B’av)

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Stepping into Tisha B’av

This week we walk directly from the closeness of Shabbat into the distance of Tisha B’av. We also begin Sefer Devarim, which consists of Moshe’s words to the generation that will enter Eretz Yisrael. On the one hand, it is ironic. Devarim opens the path for the nation into Eretz Yisrael just as we are grappling with our forced exit from the land. But Devarim is also the book that teaches us about transition, and we begin it this Shabbat as we prepare to transition into Tisha B’av, and hopefully from there into geulah.

How does Moshe, addressing the nation on the eve of entering the land, begin preparing the nation for the transition? A large part of the first chapter of Devarim consists of a retelling of the sin of the spies. The message seems to be that our ability to move forward depends on our ability to confront the past in an effective and meaningful way.

Rav Schorr explains that the sin of the spies contains within it the roots of our current exile. We are currently in our second national exile. The first began when the first Beit HaMikdash was destroyed, and the second when the second Beit HaMikdash was destroyed. Just as each Beit HaMikdash had a unique spiritual composition, each galut has its own spiritual process.

Our first galut was a reckoning with our desire for physical pleasure, our ta’avah. It was ta’avah that drove us to commit the sins that destroyed the first Beit HaMikdash. As King Menashe explained to Rav Ashi in a dream (Sanhedrin 102b) no one who was not living at the time could comprehend the compulsion to sin they experienced. This was not an intellectual sin, this was a physical compulsion. Spiritually, its roots lie in the sin of the Golden Calf, when the nation, even as they were surrounded by the clouds of glory, proceeded to worship an idol.

Galut puts us in a position where we are forced to face our failings externally, so that we can correct them. The first galut put us in the land of Persia, in the land of unrestrained pleasure, and allowed us to look at the results of that up close. It was not pretty. We got the message relatively quickly. Pleasure is physical, and therefore limited. When we indulge, our body becomes satiated. After that, pleasure is no longer pleasant. There is, therefore, a natural end to our physical desires, and so there was a natural end to the first galut. After 70 years we returned to our land.

The Second Beit HaMikdash, and the second galut, had an entirely different nature. In the second Beit HaMikdash, Hashem was much more hidden than the first. The aron hakodesh, the kruvim and the shechina that rested on the kruvim, were missing (Yoma 21b). Our avodah was to serve Hashem even when He was not completely revealed. This is the world of the Oral Torah, where the kedusha lies within ourselves. Because we carry  this kedusha within ourselves, our baseless hatred of each other removed this kedusha from our world.

The roots of the destruction of the Second Beit HaMikdash were planted with the sin of the spies. Rav Schorr explains that Bnei Yisrael, traveling in the desert with Moshe, should have recognized that they were living in a supernatural space. They should have known that Hashem would fight their battles for them. Instead of relying on Hashem, they decided to send spies and to live in natural order. This stemmed from a desire to take matters into their own hands. Essentially, this was a sin of Ga’avah, of ego. We separated from Hashem, distanced ourselves from Him, to make more room for ourselves. Later, in the time of the Second Temple we would focus on ourselves to the exclusion of the people around us. We pushed Hashem out of our world by expanding our ego to fill up all the space.

Ego has a very different nature than the desire for physical pleasure. There is no natural end to a person’s ego. Rav Dessler explains that this is why there is no clear end to this second exile we are living through. We are stuck in a world of ever-expanding ego. How can we possibly move forward? The only way to shake someone out of ga’avah, out of a place of expanding ego, is to remove his stability and shake him up. This is what has happened to us in the course of modern history. Hashem is slowly but surely destabilizing all the things we use to give us security and the illusion that we are in charge.

There was a time, not that long ago, when people believed in things like kings, and elected leaders, and the infallibility of science and technology. Now, we question all sources of information. We assume most leaders and politicians are corrupt.  And a tiny virus has brought our entire modern world to a screeching halt. The process of geulah, of redemption, is the process of confronting our ego, and recognizing that we are living in Hashem’s world.

Rav Schorr adds an additional level of understanding by looking at the description the Torah gives us of the thoughts of Am Yisrael as they digested the report of the spies. “Because of Hashem’s hatred for us did He take us out of the land of Egypt, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorite to destroy us. (Devarim 1:27)” These are astonishing words coming from a nation that was living in the embrace of Hashem’s clouds of glory. Seforno, unable to understand these words at face value, explains that the nation was really thinking, “Hashem is upset with us because we worshipped avodah zarah in Mitzrayim. So even though he could destroy the Emori, he won’t because he’s punishing us.”

There are many of us who could relate to these thoughts. Staring out at a scary and uncomfortable transition, the way forward is to take the leap side by side with Hashem. But Rav Dessler explains that the Yetzer Hara preys on us, specifically on our ga’avah, our ego, the side that says that we can and should do it alone. And so, we make up excuses as to why Hashem will not be by our side and clothe those excuses in words of teshuva.

This year we get to walk into Tisha B’av directly from the closeness of Shabbat. We are lucky.  Shabbat gives us the strength to hold that closeness near to us through the sadness of Tisha B’av, and might even give us the strength to move the day from a day of mourning to a day of the birth of geulah.

May we be zoche to see the world change before our eyes, and Tisha B’av be transformed  into the chag it is supposed to be.

Parshat Mattot Masei

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Wandering in the Desert of the Nations

Every year we finish the book of Bamidbar, the book of the desert, during the period of the Three Weeks. More specifically, it’s the third book of Bamidbar that we finish. As we spoke about in Parshat Beha’alotcha, Bamidbar is a broken book. It is split by pesukim 10:35-36. The first book of Bamidbar is the story of how we traveled from Har Sinai, intending to enter Eretz Yisrael immediately. The two pesukim that discuss the Aron traveling are their own book. And the end of Bamidbar is the story of the path we ended up taking. It’s the story of wandering in the desert for forty years before we were able to get to our destination in Eretz Yisrael. It is this last book, the book of our mistakes, that we are finishing up this week.

The three weeks are a time of deep sadness. However, Rav Schorr points out that there is a duality to this time which creates opportunity for us when we are open to it. We call these three weeks the period of Bein HaMeitzrim, based on Eicha, 1:3: “All her pursuers (rodfeha) overtook her when she was in a constrained place (bein hameitzarim).” There is another way to read ‘rodfeha,’ her pursuers. We can read it as rodef – yud-hey, as those who pursue Hashem. In this way, this famous verse of mourning and entrapment can be turned around to read: All those who pursue an understanding of Hashem will grasp it during this period of constraint.

The underlying idea is that periods of sadness, periods where we feel most constrained, can often also be the periods of our greatest growth. From a place of constraint, we can find expansion. The mashal that Rav Schorr uses to explain this is of a king in a castle. When all is running as normal, when the king is guarded in his inner chambers with all the bureaucratic trappings of his palace, what hope does a simple person have of seeing him? But when the king is traveling, then there is opportunity for people to get closer. We lose the grandeur of the palace, but the overturning of the usual order brings with it opportunity. When we are in galut, Hashem is in galut with us. He travels with us. And though it might seem paradoxical, if we open ourselves up, we can find ourselves closer to him. The purpose of galut is to help us grow.

The connection between the end of Bamidbar and the period of the Three Weeks is a reflection of a deeper connection between the concept of desert and the concept of galut. The two are connected by the nevi’im. Speaking about galut, Hashem informs us, “I will bring you to the wilderness of the nations (Yechezkel 20:35).” And the first Shabbat after Tisha B’av we read the famous pasuk, “A voice calls out in the wilderness, ‘clear the way of Hashem; make a straight path in the desert, a road for our G-d.’ (Yishayahu, 40:3)” The exile that we are currently wandering in is the desert of the nations.

Very often in Hebrew, words that are opposites are connected with the same root. A word, a davar, is a thing that governs and shapes the world. A midbar, a desert, is a place that is unshaped, and therefore ungovernable. It is the opposite of speech. With our words we impose order, form and meaning on the world around us. The desert is the place where there is no existing form and structure. Hashem brought us to the desert, to the place that was ungovernable, because in giving us the Torah He was giving us a new system of governing the world. When we are in a place where there is already structure, it’s very easy to slip into the existing structure, and not create our own. When we are in a place with no path, we are free to create something new.

The desert was the place we were sent to in order to refine and fix our ability to speak. Bamidbar, therefore, is a book that focuses on speech. The sins of Miriam, the meraglim, Korach and Moshe by the rock, were all sins of speech. When the meraglim sinned, the punishment was to return to the desert. We sinned with speech, and we needed to be returned to the empty space where we could recreate proper speech. We go into the desert when we need to learn to speak again.

At the end of the journey in the desert the last generational mitzvah we are given is the laws of vows. A vow or an oath is a way that we use our words to shape our reality. Yaacov was the first to make an oath in the Torah, and he made it when he was in a difficult situation (See Bereisheit 28:20). He set the precedent for us. There is an idea in halacha that a person can make a vow in a time of trouble, and it will help him. The simple understanding is that we vow to do something good, and the good deed is what saves us and helps us. But the deeper meaning is that it is the vow itself that lifts us up.

We are in the period of Bein HaMeitzrim. The Hebrew words, meitzar, straits, tzar, narrow, and tzurah, form, are all from the same root. All forms are constraining. Before something takes a form it is boundless, limitless, but once it assumes a form it is limited. We feel the limitation, the oppression, when the form does not fit us. Oppression comes from living in a reality that doesn’t fit us spiritually. The way out of oppression is learning to speak correctly. This is the deeper meaning behind the words in Mishlei 21:23 “He who guards his mouth and tongue guards his soul from oppression.”

The three weeks, if we include the fast days on both sides, consist of twenty-two days. Rav Shapiro tells us they correspond to the twenty-two letters of the Aleph Bet. These days are days that we are trapped in a narrow space because we are living in a world that we did not form correctly with our words. On Tisha B’av we read Eicha, which is written in alphabetical order. We mourn with the intention to learn to speak and see the world in a way that is not spiritually oppressive. We use our words to re-create our world.

May we all be blessed with words of comfort, and the ability to use this time to grow.

Parshat Pinchas

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The System and the Shtuss

Last week we read about Bilam and Balak’s plans to destroy us. Hashem protects us from their curses and their prophecies of doom, but it’s three chapters of glory that lead up to ten verses of disaster. The parsha ends when Bilam figures out our weakness for beautiful women and avodah zarah. We settle in Shittim, in the area whose name is connected to shtuss, foolishness (Sanhedrin 105b – 106a). And the result is that twenty-four thousand of us were killed in a plague of our own making.

It was Pinchas, of course who saved the day. Where Moshe was paralyzed, Pinchas was able to step into the gap and to act. Rav Schorr explains that this was part of the transition from the generation of the desert, which was the generation that received and lived the Written Torah, to the generation that entered Israel, which received and lived the Oral Torah.

 Pinchas acts as an individual.  He reacts to his specific circumstances. “Pinchas, son of Elazar, son of Aaron the Kohen saw (Bamidbar 25:7).” The meraglim looked at Eretz Yisrael, the land of good that Hashem gave us, and saw only a circumstance they could not work with. Pinchas looked at a situation of chaos and despair and found the opportunity to act. He was in tune with his own soul, his own feelings. He was a zealot, and he understood where the place was within halacha, and within his unique circumstances, for his own personal contribution.

Rav Schorr points out that Pinchas the man is the perfect introduction to the census that takes up most of parshat Pinchas. This is the second census in Sefer Bamidbar, and it was a census specifically for the generation that was going into Eretz Yisrael. At the beginning of Parshat Bamidbar, Rav Schorr explains that a census is not just a counting, it is a spiritual accounting. It is called “pikud” by the chachamim, which is connected to the idea of being appointed over something. We are lifted up and reconnected to our source. We are told to recognize the unique space we are given in the world, and to be accountable for it.

This census, and everything that came before it, happened in Shittim. We sinned in Shittim, we were saved from that sin in Shittim, and we were counted in Shittim. It is an interestingly named place because it shares its name with the wood that was used to build the mishkan. Of course, this is not a coincidence. The two shittim are connected, but it is a connection of opposites. We see this often in the Hebrew language. For example, shoresh is a root and leshareish means to uproot. So while Shittim is connected to shtuss, which is foolishness and straying from the right path, it is also connected to the word shitah, which is a system or a path for thought, specifically the path we are supposed to be on.

The Midrash Tanchuma (Teruma 9) tells us that we had the wood of the shittim tree with us in the desert because of Yaacov.  Faced with the long exile of Egypt, Yaacov responded by planting the trees of our geulah. He was in Egypt just to “stay awhile” (Bereisheit 47:4), as the Haggadah tells us, not to stay permanently. He was a wanderer, in a land where he knew he could not build anything physical that would last. But any amount of time is long enough to plant something spiritual.

The acacia trees that he planted were the system of the Mishkan. Unlike the first and second temples, the Mishkan was never destroyed. The Gemara (Sotah 9a) tells us that its beams and bars were only hidden. The difference between the Mikdash and the Mishkan is that the Mikdash was a kedusha of space. That space can therefore be ruined or destroyed. But the Mishkan was a kedusha that moved. It was the kedusha of Hashem dwelling within us. It goes wherever we go. It cannot be destroyed.

We read this parsha during the three weeks, and the message of Pinchas echoes through the generations. We are in mourning for the Beit HaMikdash. But we haven’t lost the spiritual reality of the Mishkan. Hashem remains with us wherever we go. We each have our own unique place in this world. And we can always connect to Hashem from that place, wherever that may be.

Parshat Chukat

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Earth and Ashes

In this parsha we begin with the mitzvah that is at one and the same time the most incomprehensible and also the one which gives us a path toward facing our worst fears. I am talking, of course, about the mitzvah of parah adumah, which deals head on with the spiritual and emotional results of coming into close contact with death.

The tumah of death is the gravest sort of tumah. In the face of death, our emotional and spiritual reaction is almost always despair. It is so final. We retain hope to the last second as long as someone is drawing breath. Even at the very edge of death, we will storm the heavens in prayer. But at the moment of death, we stand with no hope. We pray no more. We stand cut off.

Rav Schorr explains that tumah a blockage of our life force. The Hebrew word tumah is connected to the word atum, meaning impeded. The laws of tumah reflect this. That which is alive, like a plant connected to the earth, cannot become tamei. However, a plant which is picked from the ground becomes tamei with ease.

We were originally created completely tahor. Tahor is connected to the word tzohar, which means a translucent object that lets the light through. Something which is tahor is something which is connected to and expresses its life-force. This was our state in Gan Eden. Our bodies drew their life force perfectly from our souls. Every aspect of our bodies, up to and including the most external aspect, our skin, radiated that light. It was only after we sinned that we created a blockage between our life force and ourselves, between our bodies and our souls. After we sinned our skin became the covering it is now, which does not allow us to see our neshama radiating through.

We returned to a state of complete connection at the time of matan torah. Then, we were connected to the highest aspect of the Torah, the part that is beyond this world and connects us to eternal life. The Torah point out to us that words of the Torah were engraved on the luchot. Our Sages point out that this was an expression of the way our souls were connected to our bodies. Words which are engraved, unlike words which are written on paper, are words which are completely connected to the medium that holds them. At Matan Torah we were completely and inseparably connected to our souls. The result was a complete state of taharah. In the words of our Sages (Avot 6:2), “don’t read engraved, read freedom.” The complete connection to our souls freed us from death.

That was true until we sinned again and the luchot were broken. Mostly, we have lost our ability to be connected to the Torah at the level we were on at Har Sinai. However, we retain one impression of the level of the first luchot. That impression is parshat parah. The mitzvah of parah adumah begins with the words, “this is chukat hatorah.” Ramban connects this language to the word mechukak, which means carved out, or hollowed out. Parah adumah is a mitzvah which is carved out from the very essence of the Torah. It is a vessel for the life force of the Torah.

Parah adumah remains incomprehensible to us because it remains on the level of Har Sinai. It did not descend to our level, as the other mitzvot did. For this reason only Moshe Rabbeinu, who had no part in the chet haegel, was able to fully understand this mitzvah. Parah adumah remains connected always to Moshe and to his level. In every parah adumah there was always a bit of the ashes from the one that Moshe made.

Even though we can’t understand it, however, this mitzvah still it speaks to us. Specifically, it speaks to us through its ashes. What is ash? Ash is the burnt-out end from which nothing more can grow. In order to purify someone with the parah adumah we burn the heifer and sprinkle its ashes. However, when the Torah describes this process of sprinkling in Bamidbar 19:17, the word the Torah uses is not ashes, but soil. Which is a little odd, because soil is the opposite of ash. The Gemara specifically defines soil as the medium that cultivates new growth (Chullin 88b).

By using the word soil the Torah is sending us a message about the way we experience death in this world. We experience it as ash, as an end, as a state of being completely cut off. But that is not the truth. Life is eternal. Our soul is eternal. We cannot comprehend it, but we can experience it and know it. In every situation, there is a place for growth and moving forward. As Rav Shapiro explains, “The fearsomely novel insight of the subject of the Red Heifer is that even those parts that were worn out in the struggle, even those parts that seem to have transformed into ash—they too will bring about growth (Refections and Introspections on the Torah, Volume 5, p, 30).”

The chachamim tell us (Chullin 89a) that we received the mitzvah of parah adumah in the merit of Avraham, who said “I am but earth and ashes.” Parah adumah is a response to a world that is both earth and ashes. There are times that we feel cut off, and times that we feel connected. But our ability to give ourselves over to Hashem’s plan is the ability to reconnect to the eternal part of ourselves, and to move forward from any place, regardless of how hopeless or cut off it may seem.