Tuesday, September 08, 2015

A Thought on Parshas Nitzavim

"...v'hiv'dilo HaShem l'raah..." "...and HaShem will set him aside for the bad ..." (29:20) The Torah introduces the apostate to us. He erupts in the Jewish community and expresses his defiance and discontent. He pursues the practices of pagan cults and adopts their lifestyle. He turns his back on Judaism and on his people, and throws it all away. It is about this person, male or female, that the Torah declares that there is no forgiveness, and that he will be "set aside" for bad things. The verse is sobering and disturbing. Especially at this time of year when we want to seek positive change and solicit forgiveness, the concept of HaShem singling out a person for "evil tidings" arouses confusion and uneasiness in the Jewish soul. The Gan addresses this, and offers a simplification of this theological challenge. He writes that the Torah is talking about a person who willfully and systematically rejects all of our teachings and all of our rules. In essence, he rejects the Way of HaShem. There is a consequence, not a retribution or punitive retaliation. Rather, the fact that one rejects the Way of HaShem means that he cannot feel entitled to the Ways of HaShem. By separating out of the Jewish people, he no longer has the protective shelter of being one of the Banim la'HaShem. By resigning from the fold, he resigns himself to the same risks, the same fate, the same sense of meaningless randomness that any other heretic, apostate or faithless renegade learns to expect from existenece. He might be a nice person at heart, but he is not associated with the Torah nation. He cannot expect any of the Divine favor, kindness or compassion which are the ways or attributes of HaShem. So, he has set himself apart from Good, and becomes set apart for its opposite. Wishing you a Good Shabbos, a Year of Sweetness and Healthy Abundance, and may HaShem reveal His Ways of Rachamim as we work at abiding by His Way of Torah. D Fox

Thursday, September 03, 2015

A Thought on Parshas Ki Tavo

"...es HaShem he'emarta...v'HaShem he'emircha..." (27:17-18) "...you have e'emeered HaShem...HaShem has e'emeered you..." I know full well that my failure to translate these two related puzzling words seems odd. The only precedent I can find for this is in some of the contemporary English translations of the Torah which use the Hebrew when they are not sure of the correct English equivalent. My decision, however, has nothing to do with what those other publications do. My use of the Hebrew words, in transliteration, is to make a point, namely, that the commentaries disagree about what the root "emir" means. Some link it with the word for speech, others for the word for distinguish, others say that it means to elevate, and so on. Whatever each source decides, it means that we have done something relative to HaShem, and He has reciprocated or even preceded us in doing the same type of thing, kavayachol. So the two verses can be understood as meaning "we elevated HaShem, and He elevates us" or "we distinguish Him and He distinguishes us" and so on. There are a number of possibilities. The Gan is among a very small group of commentaries who find a different angle here. He notes that another conjugation of this "emir" shows up in Tehillim (94:4) where the verse says "yis'amru kol poalei aven." Apparently, the wicked also do this "emeer" thing. So, we Jews do it, HaShem does it, and the wicked people also do it. What could it be? The Gan suggests that the word is related to the word "temura". We know this term from the Talmud, where it is the name of a tractate which discusses an exchange which is made when a person needs to substitute an offering for one that had become invalid or blemished. To make a temura is to make an exchange, removing something inferior and replacing it with something better, for example. We also know this word-concept from the song "Yigdal" which we (should) say each morning and we (might) sing in shul after davening on special days. We chant that HaShem will never be machalif (change) or alter His doctrines - v'lo yameer Dato. (That use of the word actually shows up in the Torah too.) So, wicked people are prone to exchanging what they say they are going to do, and they will end up doing something else. They cannot be trusted to keep to their word. They "emeer" in a negative way. In contrast, our verses proclaim that we Jews exchanged all of the world's other "religions" and belief systems, and took on instead the One religion, that of adhering to HaShem's Torah. In turn, HaShem, Who created every individual and every nation, exchanged all of those people for His one nation, when He chose to give only us the Torah. Good Shabbos. D Fox

A Thought on Parshas Ki Taetzae

"...lo yavo Amoni u'Moavi...lo kidmu eschem...sachar alecha Bilaam..." "...an Amonite and a Moabite may not enter the nation... they did not greet you... they hired Bilaam to curse you..." (23:4-5) Among the restrictions involving marriage are the bans on marrying those who convert to Judaism from the nations of Amon and Moab. The Torah gives here some "rationale" for not integrating those who come to Judaism from these two peoples. The Torah writes that on our exodus from Egypt, they were inhospitable, refusing to greet our ragtag group of former slaves with bread and water. Moreover, they sought to destroy us, hiring Bilaam in the hope that he would succeed at cursing us and arousing Divine wrath against us. Now, we know from later history that a descendant of Moab was in fact welcomed into our nation. Ruth the Moabite woman became the progenitor of King David himself, and this spawned the Davidic dynasty which produced our kings and will lead us to the Moshiach ben David! The dispensation for this comes from the fact that the "rationale" for excluding the Moabites is "they did not greet us with bread and water". Our sages observe that it is not seemly for women to go out to the border and offer food to travelers; it was the type of gesture that men would do, alert to the possibility of attack by the wayfarers. Therefore, since a woman could not be expected to serve traveling strangers in that way, there would be no ban on accepting female Moabite converts into the fold. However, our sages add that this nuance was a source of dispute for centuries. Although the inference as to its veracity can be read into the verse, as I explained above, there were those who contested that inference, even questioning whether Kind David himself was entitled to be included in the fold, in that he came from a female Moabite ancestor. I have often tried to make sense of that halachic dispute. When we make a drasha (Moavi no; Moavit yes) - when the Torah offers us such a derivation - we seldom find debate as to its validity. How is it that great learned scholars contested the derived halacha for ages? The Gan introduces a thought this week which has helped me shed light on the matter. Notice how the verse above seems to indict the Amonites and the Moabites on two counts - failing to greet us, and hiring an adversary against us? Now - the Gan writes that there seems to be a problem from the Torah itself here. Earlier in Devarim (2:29), the Torah relates that when we sought passage through the Wilderness of Kedaimos en route to Israel, we petitioned the locals to sell us food "as the Moabites did for us." Now, unless we find some way to take that phrase out of context, it says clearly that the Moabites did greet us with food and water. How could our own verse indict the Moabites for not greeting us, when that earlier verse asserts that they did in fact take care of our needs in the desert?