Tag: love

There is a fascinating מדרש in this weeks פרשה. We have a few פסוקים with the commandments to send anyone that is a מצורע, זב, or טמא מת out of the camp. Rashi explains that this פרשה was said on the inaugural day of the משכן, and the מדרש רבה ז’ א’ gives an explanation as to why it was said on that specific day. Here is what the מדרש says:

When the Jews left Egypt, “כל רובן”, all of most of them were blemished and maimed. And the מדרש goes on to explain how those doing physical labor in Egypt would get bruised. So, Hashem says, is this the way to honor the Torah? For it to be given to a generation of maimed people? And Hashem sent מלאכים to heal the people, and this is proven from the פסוקים that are brought by Rashi. It says they stood at the mountain, which means they could all stand. They said נעשה ונשמע, which means that they were able to speak, they could hear, and they were confident in their hands being able to do. They saw the sounds, which they were not blind. But when they sinned with the עגל, they all reverted back to their maimed state (my understanding of this is that their status quo was maimed, but their connection to the Source of Life healed them, as soon as that connection was gone, they defaulted back to their original state), and they also became זבים and מצורעים. Aside from physical blemishes they also had spiritual damage now. The פסוק says that Moshe saw them, and they were פרוע, and by a מצורע the פסוק says ראשו יהיה פרוע, so it means that Moshe saw them with צרעת. And once the משכן was built Hashem tells Moshe, before I built the משכן, I would only come to you with words privately, but now that you have made a משכן and my שכינה will dwell there consistently, you need to send out those that are זבים, מצורעים, and טמא מת. In order to fulfill the פסוק of ולא יטמאו את מחניהם אשר אני שכן בתוכם, do not contaminate their camps that I will dwell within it.

Most of these concepts are ones that we are taught and are vaguely familiar with, but if you imagine the scene it paints a different picture than what we would have thought. You imagine the day of the inauguration of the משכן with all the Jews dressed in beautiful clothing ready to welcome the שכינה and serve Hashem. But in reality “most of all of them” were exiled that day. I don’t know exactly what that phrase “most of all of them” means but it is at the very least the majority of people. This means that more than 300,000 men were bruised, maimed, and hideous, both physically and spiritually and needed to be exiled that day. Kind of gloomy.

I think there is a deeper message here which is both more encouraging and is applicable for people today.

The מדרש תנחומא on this weeks פרשה which relates two פסוקים. The פסוק in our פרשה which says ויהי ביום כלות משה להקים את המשכן, on the day Moshe finished building the משכן, and the פסוק in שיר השירים, באתי לגני אחותי כלה, Hashem calls us His sister, His bride, and He comes to His garden. But it doesn’t say the garden, it says My garden. Which means that when Hashem came down into the משכן, He was coming back to the place He had once been previously. Since the שכינה had originally been on this world with Adam, and then when Adam ate from the tree, the שכינה left the earth and went up to heaven. Moshe’s construction of the משכן fixed this and brought the שכינה back to its original place on earth where Hashem wanted to have a relationship with us humans. But before this could be complete there was another journey that needed to be undone. Adam had been exiled from גן עדן and there were כרובים with fiery swords guarding the path to the tree of life. Here too, Hashem had come back to His place, but man needed to come back to the original place as well. A majority of the nation needed to be sent away, but not for the purpose of sending them away, the true purpose was their return, the sending away was only to create a platform for them to return.

The language points to this parallel as well. In the commandment to send out the פסוק says, מזכר עד נקבה תשלחום, and by Adam it says זכר ונקבה ברא אותם. By Adam the פסוק says וישלחהו יהוה אלהים the same way that here it says וישלחו אותם. Both subjects are sent out of their “camps”. And is it a coincidence that Adam has כרובים guarding his path to his עץ החיים, and in the newly completed משכן there were also כרובים “guarding” the Torah, about which the פסוק says עץ חיים היא.

But here is where it gets interesting: Adam was sent out to “serve the ground which he had been taken from” and the language in our פרשה says “do not contaminate their camps, which I dwell within”, אשר אני שוכן בתוכם. Guess how many times the word שוכן and בתוכם are used in the same פסוק in the entire 24 books of תנ”ך? You guessed it, only twice! Here, and in the פסוק we all know and love, ועשו לי מקדש ושכנתי בתוכם. We all know that פסוק is referring to each of us individually, since it says, and I will dwell inside “them”. It teaches us that we are each meant to create a משכן, a house, a carved out holy space for Hashem to live within us. In our bodies, in our minds, in our time, in our homes, in our daily monotony, and in every single area of our influence and existence we are commanded to build some sort of structure or system that will allow God to come in.

I think that the mission of those זבים and מצורעים that were sent away that day was to see themselves as pure and loved despite their blemishes. To know that Hashem has no interest in them being outside the camp. Their purpose was to journey back and work through the blemishes, fix them, heal them, embrace them. They, just like Adam before them, were sent out to “work the land from which they were taken” and to build a home for Hashem using their blemishes and imperfections as the bricks and mortar.

So many people nowadays feel imperfect and blemished. But there’s good news. We’re in the same boat as the majority of כלל ישראל was on that ראש חודש ניסן when the משכן was completed 3,329 years ago. And I am positive that Hashem has no interest in us feeling outside of the camp. He wants us to make the journey back, to work the land that we have which we may think is imperfect, and to use our failings, imperfections, struggles, and the hideous parts of ourselves to carve out a glowing and beautiful משכן so that He can come move in with us. If we do this then we will be able to access that path that Adam had in front of him so long ago, and we will be able to bypass the כרובים to grab hold of our עץ החיים.

יה-וה יה-וה א-ל רחום וחנון ארך אפים ורב חסד ואמת נצר חסד לאלפים נשא עון ופשע וחטאה ונקה

Every year my mother asks me the same question this time of year. Why do we say the י”ג מידות so many times? Yes, they are special and important but why so much repetition? From when we start saying סליחות until the end of יום כיפור we will say those 18 words literally hundreds of times over and over again. And I would always say it’s because Hashem gave these to Moshe as the way for us to daven when we need to be forgiven. But I am not so happy with that answer, because if in fact when we say these י”ג מידות we will never go unanswered, then wouldn’t it make more sense to say them once with a huge amount of kavana? Make them like the ברוך שם כבוד מלכותו of maariv at night, or like יקוק הוא האלקים and שמע ישראל at the end of neilah. Make them special. Can you imagine the strength of the cries if we only had one shot as neilah is ending to shout these 13 midos to Hashem?

There is a גמרא in מסכת ראש השנה that I think holds an answer to this question. The גמרא there is bothered by why the Torah says יה-וה יה-וה twice. These are supposed to be 13 different characteristics of Hashem so why would we repeat one of them? And the answer there is that the first יה-וה is before a person sins and the second יה-וה is after a person sins and is on the way to do teshuva. A seemingly simple answer but one that I think if we delve into will show us a truth that we have a hard time accepting.

Let’s take a step back and set the stage on which the Jewish people learnt these 13 midos. We arrived at הר סיני, got “married” to Hashem so to speak, the fledgling nation and the Divine Creator of the universe were locked in a loving relationship. Then, tragically 40 days later we built a calf, a demi-god to lead us on our way in place of Moshe the man whom we did not what had happened to him. Hashem tells Moshe “go down the mountain for your people have corrupted themselves”. Moshe sees what they have done and he shatters the לוחות that he has just received. There is a plague and Moshe and the Kohanim kill 3,000 people who were involved, and now what? What will be with the relationship that had just been formed? Betrayal of the highest degree a mere 40 days after the wedding, will Hashem take us back? Moshe says to the people אולי אכפרה בעד חטאתכם. We know that the ending was all fine and well but can you imagine what it was like to hear those words from Moshe’s mouth? No one knew if we would be the same ever again. Perhaps the relationship was severed and damaged beyond repair.

On top of the mountain Moshe deftly manages to coerce Hashem to forgive us, and then he seizes the opportunity and says, this very well may happen again, what can I do to avoid having this nation get destroyed, to which Hashem answers, have the Jews say these 13 midos and they will never go unanswered.

Let’s come back now to the depth behind the double Hashem. Hashem was telling Moshe, My Existence is everything, time, space, physics, humans, animals, psychology, biology, amoeba, and everything else in the entire universe are My creations. I “house” the entire world, and because of that, there is nowhere that I can’t be found. There is no scenario or circumstance, no mindset or spiritual/emotional/mental level that I am not there. Therefore, whether before a Jew sins, or after a Jew sins, as long as he is looking to return I am the same Hashem and will always love them all.

As the Sforno so beautifully writes about the double יה-וה: Hashem sustains everything that exists, and there is nothing that exists that does not depend on the constant flow of His Existence.

This seems simple to understand but at the same time we have something built deep into our psyche that makes us think that in our darkest places we are alone, when we do those עבירות Hashem is not there.

Let me share a story that happened to me. I was 9 years old and I had just gotten a new ball, and like a good 9-year-old I was bouncing the ball in my room. My father saw and said, “don’t bounce the ball inside you’re going to break something”. Like a 9-year-old… I kept bouncing the ball inside, and the ball ended up cracking the globe on the light fixture in my room. As the shards fell to the ground I started bawling. My father had told me not to bounce the ball inside and I didn’t listen. And now I broke the light, I was finished, our relationship would be over as soon as he saw. My 9-year-old brain couldn’t understand what we all know now. No parent-child relationship will get broken over a light fixture, but more importantly, it won’t get broken over the fact that the child disobeyed the parent. Sure, had my father come back upstairs and seen me laughing about the fact that I broke the light he would have been upset but when he saw how sorry I was for not listening he right away comforted me and said don’t worry. The love is there from the parents side, all that is needed is commitment and regret for what was done wrong.

I don’t know why but deep down we don’t have the confidence in our relationships with Hashem that we should, and I think this is the message of the 13 midos. יה-וה יה-וה, He is the same before and the same after any and every sin. The unbelievable love that He has for us can’t be touched by any sin that we do. The Pasuk says at the darkest moment of the תוכחה, ובקשתם משם את יה-וה אלקיך. No matter where you are you can find Hashem, there is no עבירה that will completely sever the natural and organic relationship that we have the Creator of the universe. And I think we need to drill this deep down into the very fibers of our being, and so Chazal set up a system where we say these words hundreds and hundreds of times over a two-week span, to help us get the message that is so important for יום כיפור.

May we all be zoche to find Hashem in every single aspect of our lives, go running back to Him, and shake off the dust of our עבירות and rise up to the new year and make our way back to Eretz Yisrael and the בית המקדש.

There are two nearly identical Pesukim that seem to be mirror images of each other in שיר השירים.

2:16 דודי לי ואני לו, הרועה בשושנים

6:3 אני לדודי ודודי לי, הרועה בשושנים

One is much more famous than the other since this new month of אלול is an acronym for the beginning of that Pasuk. אני לדודי ודודי לי. אלול. Examining these two Pesukim, the main difference is who comes first, who initiates the commitment to the relationship. In the Pasuk representative of אלול we the Jewish people begin by committing ourselves to Hashem, and He then reciprocates. The other Pasuk, Hashem begins by “committing” Himself to us so to speak and we then reciprocate. (In both I believe that shepherding in a rose field is indicative of cultivating and caring for the relationship in a beautiful environment, but I am not entirely sure). It would seem from here like the month of אלול is about taking the first step, by us starting to reach out to Hashem in preparation for the coming ימים נוראים. This sounds like a nice idea but let’s see if we can give it some depth and perspective.

A few weeks ago, when reading the פרשה I noticed that there are two unassuming characters that reminded me of this famous Pasuk. Let’s give a little background: במדבר פרק יא, Moshe has had enough and he tells Hashem, “I can’t do this anymore, I can’t carry these people by myself. Did I carry them in pregnancy or give birth to them that You should ask me to carry them as a mother carries her child? If this is what you have in store for me, kill me”. Moshe throws in the towel, he is ready to resign. Hashem then gives him chilling instructions. Gather 70 elders from the people, bring them to the אהל מועד and I will take from the spirit that you have within you and I will place it upon them. The unspoken message here is that “Moshe, you have no idea what you are capable of, you do have it within you the power to carry and support this entire nation if you want to”. But Moshe does not, and the 70 elders are created to aide him in his role of leadership.

Then we hear about אלדד and מידד. There is a מחלוקת whether they were included in the count of the 70 elders or not, but they stayed inside מחנה ישראל and they were prophesizing. The גמרא in סנהדרין יז: tells us that they were saying, Moshe is going to die and יהושע will lead the people into the land of Israel. יהושע says to Moshe, lock them up in jail! And Moshe answers, why are you so jealous for me? Everyone would be able to prophesize if Hashem would put His spirit upon them?

אלדד and מידד, translate their names. אל דד, מ(י) דד, to my beloved, from my beloved. אני לדודי, ודודי לי I am “to my beloved” and my beloved is to me, i.e. I receive “from my beloved”. Their names sound an awful lot like a reference to the Pasuk we all associate with this new month… what could this possibly mean? What do 70 elders and two people who stayed behind have to do with teshuva and the month if אלול as we know it?

Moshe will die and יהושע will bring the people into the Land. We have spoken before about two prototypical relationships with Hashem. The “incubator” relationship, that of the מדבר under Moshe’s leadership, where their every need was met and cared for. Hashem is easily seen, and can’t be taken for granted. In contrast, we have the “farmers” relationship, that of entering the land under the leadership of יהושע, where they needed to till the land, and wait patiently while our Loving Father cared for them from behind the mask of nature. Hashem is hidden and needs to be sought after, researched and found.

According to this, what אלדד and מידד were saying was that the incubator days are numbered. The dynamic of your relationship with Hashem is going to change. This is a scary thought but also an empowering one, we are about to learn to walk on our own two feet as a nation which is difficult and requires a lot of falling and getting back up, but at the same time it opens the possibility for us to truly achieve our own sense of accomplishment.

These two individuals who represent the month of אלול start prophesizing right after Moshe says, “I can’t do it anymore”. The message obviously being “yes you can”, and if you don’t think you can, then יהושע will lead the new generation to conquer the land and to stand on their own two feet on the holy ground of the Land of Israel.

And I think that Moshe’s answer to יהושע shows that he got the message. The Torah tells us that the 70-elder’s received spirit from Moshe, and therefore they were limited to be 70. But Moshe tells יהושע, if Hashem’s spirit were to rest on all and any of the Jewish people they would all be prophets. And the way to have Hashem’s spirit rest on you is to have the outlook of the נבואה of אלדד and מידד, that I am going to take the first step into the Land and Hashem will help me. אני לדודי ודודי לי. I commit myself, and when I do I extend myself to make room for Hashem’s spirit to rest upon us.

I think the message for אלול can be that of אלדד and מידד. We all have different forces within us. Forces of Moshe and forces of יהושע. Days where we feel great and connected and it is as though Hashem is guiding us by hand through the day, those are “Moshe” days. But then there are “יהושע” days. Days where the summer just ended and vacation is still fresh on our minds. The weather is still gorgeous and we try to push off the seriousness of the fact that ראש השנה is a mere 30 days away. It’s on days like that where we need the נבואה of אלדד and מידד. You want to make it into the land? Know that “יהושע” is the one who leads you there.

In light of today’s eclipse (sorry I had to), I’d like to add an eerie thought. In no way am I purporting to know the message behind such an awesome event but, the גמרא tells us that the face of Moshe was like the face of the sun and the face of יהושע is likened to the face of the moon. It is chilling and intriguing that earlier today on ערב ראש חודש אלול, almost as if as a preparation for the work required of us in this month we saw “the face of יהושע” cover the “face of Moshe” …

Please let me know what you think I’d love to hear. Have a happy ראש חודש and a successful month of אלול.

If you compare the 10 מכות with regard to who carried out the action which brought on the plague, you find something interesting. Aharon raised the staff over the water to bring blood and frogs, and over the earth to bring lice. We all know that this was due to Moshe’s sensitivity to the water and earth since the water protected him when he was in the boat that his mother made for him as a baby, and the earth protected him when he buried the Egyptian that he had killed in the sand. We typically think that Moshe set the rest of the מכות into effect. However, if you look closely he was not involved in 3 other מכות, ערב, דבר and מכת בכורות.

By ערב Hashem tells Moshe to warn פרעה about the מכה and then it says למחר יהיה האות הזה, and the next Pasuk says ויעש יקוק כן ויבא ערב כבד. Moshe does no action, this is purely Hashem. Then, by דבר, again Moshe warns פרעה, and almost an exact mirror of the language by ערב it says, וישם יקוק מועד לאמר מחר יעשה יקוק הדבר הזה: ויעש יקוק את הדבר הזה ממחרת וימת כל מקנה מצרים. In both cases there was a warning, which ended by Hashem saying that the מכה would happen מחר, and then Hashem Himself performs the מכה without any involvement of Moshe. And finally, by מכת בכורות we hear כה אמר יקוק כחצת הלילה אני יוצא בתוך מצרים: ומת כל בכור בארץ מצרים. And after brief break from our sponsors discussing קרבן פסח we get back into the מכה and it says ויהי בחצי הלילה ויקוק הכה כל בכור בארץ מצרים. For the third time in these 3 examples פרעה is being warned that the מכה will take place in one day’s time from now, and in this case as well, Hashem strikes with no prior action from humans.

I think what this means is as follows: When the Rambam describes what Avraham revolutionized the world with, he does not say that Avraham was the father of monotheism, because he wasn’t. שם and עבר had a school which taught all about Hashem, and many other nations as well knew that Hashem existed and simply believed that He had created the world and then taken a back seat and given power over the many forces of nature and made them gods. What Avraham taught was that Hashem lives with us and wants more than anything to have a relationship with us. In the words of the מדרש, He is the builder of the palace that we call planet Earth. And He lives in that palace with us. Avraham taught that when you tie your shoes, Hashem cares and tells you how to do that. Hashem loves to watch you eat the many different foods that He made, and he wants each one to have a specific ברכה. It matters how you get dressed, which direction you face when you sleep, and so many other myriads of details that most would say are trivial. But the message that Avraham spread was a message of love, because if the Creator of the entire cosmos; the One who made sure that we are exactly as far as we need to be from the sun to not get burnt or frozen, the One who measured exactly how big a beetles exoskeleton should be, if He cares about every detail that I have in my life, that makes me cosmically important. It means that you are essential to the existence and movement of the world. This is the theology that our nation was founded with, and it is this message that Hashem showed us by performing specifically these 3 מכות by Himself. Allow me to explain.

מכת בכורות is obvious, that was the pinnacle of the year-long saga that was the destruction of Egypt. The plan all along had been to show that Hashem is in this world, and this was that plan coming to fruition, of course Hashem needed to do that מכה all alone. But what about ערב and דבר?

If you follow the progression of the מכות, you see that they move fluidly from down to up. דם starts in the water and stays in the water. צפרדע starts in the water but the frogs move onto land. כנים starts in the land and moves onto people and animals. ערב happens not in the land, but on the land, it takes place in the space that we humans inhabit and control. דבר as well happens in the space that is occupied by our feet to our heads, in our “world” so to speak. שחין starts with Moshe throwing something from our airspace upwards to the sky, but the boils affect the humans. ברד comes from the sky down to the land. ארבה starts with a wind carrying bugs in the sky. חשך only happens in the sky. And מכת בכורות comes from another realm entirely, when the Infinite enters the finite world. You see a beautiful progression that demonstrates Hashem’s perfect command over everything that exists in our physical world.

By handling ערב and דבר by Himself, which are the only two מכות that are contained in humankind’s natural habitat, He was giving over the message of Avraham to his children as they are about to make the transition from being a tribe to a nation. Don’t think I only exist in the heavens and only visit to deliver the mighty climactic blow of wiping out all firstborns of your enemy nation. I exist and enter your world specifically to affect your habitat. When it comes to mixing fire and ice, or turning water into blood, that I can do through a messenger. But when we deal with human habitat, and cattle which was the entire basis for economy in the ancient world, that is where I get involved personally. I want to be involved in your world, in your business transactions, and in your day to day living. I want that relationship with you and I want to be in your lives, I love you.

I’d like to take you to ספר יהושע this week. In פרק כד, after he has led the people and they have conquered and divided the land, he gives a final speech before he passes on in which he recaps Jewish history up to that point. I will paraphrase in Hebrew. He starts off בעבר הנהר ישבו אבותיכם…. תרח אבי אברהם ואבי נחור…. ואקח את אביכם את אברהם מעבר הנהר…. ואתן לו את יצחק ואתן ליצחק את יעקב ואת עשו…… you may recognize the beginning of this from the הגדה )it seems strange that on the night we are talking about Mitzrayim, the Hagaddah stops right before Yehoshua gives the story of what happened in Mitrayim. Something to think about and I’d love to hear what you think). Then, when he is discussing the מדבר he says 4 words ותשבו במדבר ימים רבים Almost as though all the happening were severely insignificant in the course of the nation’s history. No מתן תורה, no מן, nothing about עמלק or the באר, and no mention of the מרגלים. Just that we were there for quite some time. He does choose 2 events to highlight, which makes the problem worse since they are as follows: ויקם בלק בן צפור מלך מואב וילחם בישראל וישלח ויקרא לבלעם בן בעור לקלל אתכם: ולא אביתי לשמע לבלעם ויברך ברוך אתכם ואציל אתכם מידו

1- I gave you the land that belonged to סחון, which we really only used as a resting point on our way into Eretz Yisrael and 2- that בלק hireבלעם  to curse us and Hashem foiled his plans (I don’t have a source for this but it is very possible that the Jews had no idea what happened with  בלק and  בלעםin the desert and that this is the first time they are finding out, which is funny to think about).

So, what was so unique about the story with בלעם that יהושע feels that when he is laying out 554 years of Jewish history in 15 פסוקים that this episode gets 2 פסוקים all to itself?

I think the most apparent uniqueness about the בלעם story is the fact that Hashem is watching over us in ways that we aren’t even aware of. The Jewish people had no idea that there were a bunch of רשעים bringing קרבנות to Hashem to try and sway Him to see our faults. And in each second of our lives Hashem is protecting us from forces that we aren’t even aware of. However, this is a very heavy concept to wrap one’s head around, and I think there is a less intimidating yet equally beautiful point about our relationship with Hashem that we can see in the story of בלעם.

There is a contradiction here, since theme in this פרשה is Hashem telling בלעם how blessed we are. He can’t curse us since Hashem already blessed our ancestors, and no less than four times בלעם is unsuccessful in cursing us. בלעם wasn’t a foolish magician, he knew what he was doing and he knew how to curse. The fact that he couldn’t curse us meant that our relationship with Hashem was ironclad, he wasn’t able to find a crack to sneak in. Yet, in a few hours we are all going to say/sing ארבעים שנה אקוט בדור ואומר עם תעי לבב הם… so which is it? לא הביט און ביעקב ולא ראה עמל בישראל or עם טעי לבב?

I heard quoted (I forget if it’s a גמרא or if it was from Josephus) that when the Romans destroyed the 2^nd בית המקדש they took the כפרת off the ארון and were dragging it through the streets. The כרובים were locked in an embrace, and all the Romans were making fun that this is the sculpture we have in our holiest place. But we know that the כרובים would face each other when our relationship with Hashem was good and they would face away when it was bad. If the בית המקדש was the house we shared with Hashem then the חרבן was a divorce from Hashem, so how would the כרובים be embracing one another? I think both questions have the same answer.

ישראל אף על פי שחטא ישראל הוא and when that status and relationship is viewed from an outsider like בלעם or the Romans they can’t fathom the intimacy and love in that relationship, because the fact is that even as we are being brutally ripped away from Hashem and the בית המקדש is being destroyed we are locked in an embrace at the same time. There is an intrinsic love and attachment that can’t be lost no matter what. בלעם sees the same thing. He tries to use 3 different avenues and vantage points to attack us with zero success, because it’s impossible for an outsider to glimpse into our relationship with Hashem and affect that relationship. But at the same time, we paradoxically are called עם טעי לבב. Internally Hashem is lovingly telling us that we can be better all the time, but we need to see that message as coming from a place of pure love, a place of embracement no matter what. Hashem will never betray us externally, and even internally all rebuke and consequences come from the warmth of a hug.