Monthly Archives: April 2019

This week’s alumni Dvar Torah is by Judah Kerbel

Why was it vital for G-d to ‘personally’ carry out the killing of the firstborns?

In Shemot 12:12, G-d foreshadows the 10th plague with a drumbeat of first-person verbs.

שמות פרק יב פסוק יב

וְעָבַרְתִּי בְאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם בַּלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה

וְהִכֵּיתִי כָל בְּכוֹר בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם מֵאָדָם וְעַד בְּהֵמָה

וּבְכָל אֱלֹהֵי מִצְרַיִם אֶעֱשֶׂה שְׁפָטִים

אֲנִי יְקֹוָק:

I will go through the land of Egypt on this night

I will strike down every first-born in the land of Egypt, whether man or beast;

I will mete out punishments to all the gods of Egypt,

I the LORD (Exodus 12:12).

The midrash that we read at the seder understands G-d as emphasizing not just that He acted personally, but that He acted alone.

ועברתי בארץ מצרים בלילה הזה – אני ולא מלאך.

והכיתי כל בכור בארץ מצרים – אני ולא שרף.

וכל אלהי מצרים אעשה שפטים – אני ולא ?ה?שליח.

“I will go through the Land of Egypt on this night” – I and not an angel.

“I will strike down every first-born in the land of Egypt” – I and not a seraph.

“I will mete out punishments to all the gods of Egypt” – I and not ?the? emissary.

But why would an angel or emissary not be able to perform this task, or even to accompany G-d while He performed it?

The Zohar answers that Egypt was so saturated with impurity that angels would be defiled by entering, even while on a Divine mission. G-d saw His ministers damaged when they entered Sodom to destroy it, and did not will to repeat the experience. So He Himself came, alone, to perform the plague.

I would like to suggest a different answer. To introduce that answer, I need first to raise another question:  Why does the Torah associate so many commandments explicitly with the Exodus?

Rashi sometimes comments on such connections “on this condition you were redeemed,” which suggests that freedom does not come for free. The deal is that freedom from Pharaoh is in exchange for servitude to God. But this does not explain what makes these mitzvot special.  Isn’t this true of all mitzvot?

Still, in other instances, Rashi quotes Bava Metzia 61b, citing the appropriate piece in the location of each pasuk:

אמר רבא:

למה לי דכתב רחמנא יציאת מצרים ברבית, יציאת מצרים גבי ציצית, יציאת מצרים במשקלות?

אמר הקדוש ברוך הוא:

אני הוא שהבחנתי במצרים בין טפה של בכור לטפה שאינה של בכור –

אני הוא שעתיד ליפרע ממי שתולה מעותיו בנכרי ומלוה אותם לישראל ברבית, וממי שטומן משקלותיו במלח, וממי שתולה קלא אילן בבגדו ואומר תכלת הוא.

Said Rava:

Why is it necessary for the Torah to mention  the exodus from Egypt in the context of the the prohibition against interest (see Leviticus 25:37–38), and in the context the mitzvah to wear ritual fringes (see Numbers 15:39–41), and in the context of the prohibition concerning weights (see Leviticus 19:35–36)?

The Holy One, Blessed be He, is telling us:

I, am He Who distinguished in Egypt between the drop of seed that became a firstborn and the drop of seed that did not become a firstborn;

I, the very same, am He Who is destined to exact punishment from one who attributes ownership of his money to a gentile and thereby lends it to a Jew with interest, and  Who is destined to exact punishment from one who buries his weights in salt (invisibly changing their weight). and Who is destined to exact punishment from one who hangs ritual fringes dyed with vegetable indigo [kala ilan] dye on his garment and says they are dyed with  (the halakhically required) sea-creature indigo.

What discrepancy would there be in determining the first born that requires fine discernment “between drops of seed?” Rashi explains that human beings can know a woman’s firstborn, but if she bore children for multiple men, only G-d can know which were firstborn of their fathers. Similarly, human beings have a limited capacity to see beyond that which meets the eye; we may often trust that which we see and hear, making us susceptible to being cheated. However, G-d reminds us that He, who has the powerful ability to discern, holds us accountable especially when we deceive others. These mitzvot are thus singled out because they are most subject to deception. Maharal of Prague makes a sharper claim: the correlation between these mitzvot and the exodus goes beyond the deterrent, admonishing us that by engaging in such deceit, one denies G-d’s ability to perceive fine distinctions, thereby denying G-d’s essential role in taking us out of Egypt and His ability to do the supernatural. One who recognizes the miraculousness of the exodus, however, will understand that G-d knows when we lie. Furthermore, B’nei Yisrael, in being redeemed supernaturally, merited a higher spiritual level. To engage in deceit, and denying G-d’s ability to account for that, is antithetical to the spiritual level that was intended for B’nei Yisrael in leaving Egypt.

Pesach at its core is about the distinction between right and wrong, justice and oppression, truth and deceit. The Mishnah says that we must begin telling the story of our liberation by making mention of our disgrace, genut, and only then finishing with praise, shevach. We need to make the distinction between genut and shevach because we can only truly appreciate our freedom by understanding the alternative. But we also need to connect this distinction to the fundamental distinction between tov and ra, between right and wrong. Our experience of oppression should teach us  that oppressing others is wrong. That is why the Torah says dozens of time that we should not oppress the other because we were once the “other.”

The Yerushalmi (Berakhot 5:2) declares, “if there is no wisdom, how do we make distinctions?” From whom do we learn to make distinctions? Where does our wisdom come from? G-d, Who distinguished between the firstborn and others, Who is able to see the fine line between truth and deception, grants us the wisdom to make these distinctions as well. That is why G-d, and not an angel, executed the last plague. His miraculous distinguishing of the firstborns teaches us to trust His distinctions between right and wrong, justice and oppression, truth and deceit, and He therefore calls upon us to use our freedom to follow mitzvot with integrity and treat others in accordance with these principles.

Judah Kerbel (SBM 2015) is a Beit Midrash Fellow at SAR High School. He holds a master’s degree from the Bernard Revel Graduate School in medieval Jewish history and is scheduled toreceive semikha from RIETS this spring.

This week’s alumni Dvar Torah is by Rabbi Avraham Bronstein

When you come to the land of Canaan, which I give to you as a possession, and I put the plague of tzara’at upon a house in the land of your possession… (Vayikra 14:34)

In the first three and a half years after the modern State of Israel was born, it absorbed over 685,000 Jewish refugees from around the world, effectively doubling its population. Over 100,000 Jews were placed in homes and villages previously inhabited by Palestinian Arabs prior to the War of Independence, whose original owners, in many cases families going back many generations, were displaced or fled during the war. These Jewish refugees who had traumatically lost homes and communities now found themselves resettled into their homeland, but actually living in houses with someone else’s pictures on the wall, food in the pantry, and clothing in the closet.

The Midrash records Rabbi Hiyya wondering why, in contrast to the depictions of tzara’at appearing on one’s person or clothing, the opening verse of the Torah’s description of tzara’at appearing on a house almost makes it sound like a good thing, or at least a natural result of the process of taking control of the land.

The Midrash’s answer, in fact, is that God did not place the tzara’at on those homes to punish the Israelites, but to reward them.

Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai taught: When the Canaanites heard that Israel were coming to their country, they arose and hid their wealth inside their walls… The Holy One said: I did not promise their forefathers that I would bring their descendants into a land laid waste, but rather to a land full of all kinds of goodness…What, then, did the Holy One do? He caused sores to appear on a person’s house, and when they took it apart, they would find the treasure. (Vayikra Rabba, 17:6)

In his “My Promised Land,” Israeli journalist Ari Shavit recalls growing up in 1950s Tel Aviv. (The book, a combination of personal history and political commentary was problematic for, among other things, the marginalization of female and Palestinian voices in the narrative it constructed. As it turned out, this flaw was reflective of what later came to light about Shavit himself and his attitudes and actions towards women who came within in his orbit. I cite Shavit’s description here because his lack of broader perspective actually informs my own point.)

As Shavit remembers it, the overwhelming element that characterized that era was silence. It was understood that nobody would speak about the terrible things they had experienced, and what they had done to survive them. He describes the air being thick with the tension of what was not expressed openly, but nonetheless palpable.

Shavit’s Tel Aviv was growing at a frenetic pace. He suspects, through, that behind the relentless push for progress was, at least in part, a fear of what lay beneath the surface; by constantly moving forward, people would not have the space to think about what had happened – what they had done – before.

Inevitably, though, there were cracks in the armor. He recalls hearing cries at night as traumatized survivors suffered nightmares, and observed those around him suffering the sudden mood swings and depression that we now understand as PTSD. Every home had stories that would not be shared, but remained buried within its walls. And that must have been doubly true for the homes that literally were someone else’s only a short time before.

Another Midrashic interpretation, though, does see tzara’at on a home as a punishment – for the sin of miserliness.

A person says to his neighbor, “Lend me a kav of wheat.”

The neighbor replies: “I have none.”

“Then a kav of barley?”

“I have none.”

A woman says to her neighbor: “Lend me a sifter.”

She replies, “I have none.”

“Lend me a sieve?”

She replies, “I have none.”

What does the Holy One do? He brings a plague on the house, and when one is forced to take out all of their belongings, everyone sees and they say, “Didn’t they say that they had nothing? Look how much wheat he has! How much barley! How many dates there are here!” (Vayikra Rabba, 17:2)

The Kli Yakar reads this interpretation back into the Biblical verse, particularly the words, “which I give to you as a possession,” explaining that the root of miserliness is forgetting that one’s home and possessions are not truly their own, but rather entrusted to them by the grace of God.

In a brilliant twist, Rabbanit Sharon Rimon demonstrates how both interpretations share a common root. The starkest reminder to an ancient Israelite that their house was only theirs by God’s grace would have been finding within its walls the treasures left behind by its previous owners, and then seeing them swept into the street together with their own possessions.

An Israelite living in such a home may not have known, but, perhaps, might have sensed an older presence, with its own history and story. Sometimes it may have just been a disquieting feeling, but sometimes it manifested as tzara’at, literally bursting through the walls and out into the street, refusing to be silenced and shut away. My sense is that it must have been very similar to what Shavit described of his youth.

With all this in mind, we may better appreciate the seder night as a time when past, present, and future come together around the table. By the conclusion of the seder, through the process of re-experiencing both oppression and redemption, by asking probing questions and providing full, narrative answers, we come to more fully understand who we are and how we got here; nothing is stifled, nor hidden behind the walls. Perhaps that is the necessary stance to look confidently towards the future and the ultimate redemption of our story.

Rabbi Avraham Bronstein (SBM 2002) is the Rabbi at The Hampton Synagogue.

This week’s alumni Dvar Torah is by Rabbi Rafi Eis

Hearing my wife Atara recite Birkat HaGomel after giving birth to our children is among the most spiritual experiences of my life. The break in her voice communicates the intensity of labor and childbirth. Hearing her muster all her energy to give thanks to God for the gift of a new child, and for surviving the ordeal, evokes the recognition that all the blessings of life come from God.

The opening paragraph of Parshat Tazria requires the new mother to bring a young lamb as an Olah offering and a pigeon or dove as a Sin offering. Why these offerings, rather than a Thanksgiving? Exploring that question will give us a window onto the profound nature of creating life and its relationship to the Divine.

Niddah (31b) famously asks why the new mother needs to bring a Sin offering. Rabbi Simeon Bar Yochai answers that women in the throes of labor pains swear off marital intimacy to avoid future pregnancy. The Sin offering atones for uttering that oath, which she will violate. But the Talmud rejects this answer in two ways. First, the oath can be undone through asking a sage, preempting the need to violate the oath. Second, this circumstance and offering do not comport with the regular rules of Sin offerings for oath violations. Nonetheless, the Talmud does not provide an alternative explanation for the Sin offering.

I suggest that instead of viewing the Sin and Olah offerings as discrete sacrifices, we should view them as a package. This fits the structure of The Book of Leviticus, whose first seven chapters detail the circumstances and procedures for individuals to bring discrete sacrifices. The sanctification of the Tabernacle and the priests, which follows, entails a package of sacrifices. The new mother is introduced here because she is an individual who brings a package of sacrifices.

This package of an Olah and Sin offering [1] is found in several other Biblical contexts. [2]

1. Leviticus 9:2-3- sanctification of the Tabernacle and the priests, brought by Aharon.
2. Numbers 8:12- the appointment of the Levites
3. Leviticus 16: 3, 5- the Yom Kippur sacrificial order. Both Aharon and the people of Israel bring this package of sacrifices.
4. Leviticus 5:7- a pauper can replace a cattle Sin offering for accidentally violating an oath by bringing two birds; one as an Olah and one as a Sin sacrifice.
5. Leviticus 15:15- the purification of the Zav
6. Leviticus 15:30- the purification of the Zavah
7. Numbers 6:11- if a nazir becomes impure and violates his nazirite status.

The common denominator of these cases is that in some way the human being enters God’s domain. In the sanctification of the Tabernacle and priests, people and objects become sanctified, while the Levites in occurrence two are rebirthed with a new status. Example three has a human being entering holy space. The pauper in the fourth case cannot just replace the obligated cattle Sin sacrifice with a bird Sin sacrifice. Rather, the pauper needs to acknowledge the change in the divinely ordained sacrificial rite.

Furthermore, God’s realm is not just in the holy, but also in matters of life and death. The Zav and Zavah, previously excluded halakhically and perhaps biologically from fertility, offer sacrifices at being able to be fruitful again. So too, the new mother of our parsha enters into G-d’s domain by creates life, just as God does in Genesis.

The human ability to enter realms beyond this material world can cause confusion as to the proper boundary between the human and divine. The uncommanded actions of Nadav and Avihu illustrate this confusion. Performing a temple service must be done according to divine prescription. We can only enter God’s domain as part of our partnership with Him.

The postpartum woman feels a complete whirlwind of emotions. Her body is bursting with adrenaline, and she looks in amazement at the tiny being whom she just birthed. At the same time her body aches, and many also suffer from postpartum depression. The range of emotions can run the gamut. Halacha steps into the breach to set the right balance. To combat the pain and emotional lows, the Bible insists that the woman recognize that she successfully crossed into God’s realm and created life, but did so as God’s partner. The new mother must therefore offer Olah and Sin offerings. The new mother has not sinned in any way. Rather this combination declares the partnership between God and humanity in creation in general and in generating this particular new life. The completely consumed Olah represents God and our complete dedication to God, while the Sin offering represents the fragile and imperfect state of humanity. Brought together, the package symbolizes the partnership.

This message of human partnership with God is reflected in a few other laws in this section. First, the new mother automatically has dedicated days of impurity and purity. Regardless of any symptomatic bodily secretions, the woman must have a few days of impurity followed by more days of purity. This is unique in the laws of purity and impurity. Second, the command to circumcise male children and bring them into Abraham’s covenant is listed here. Third, the new mother is the Bible’s first individual to be prohibited from entering the temple (Leviticus 12:4) and this is even while she is pure. We learn that these this exclusion applies to other impurities in Numbers 5:2-3 as a general prohibition on some people from entering the temple and its surrounding domains, but only with the new mother is this law stated in the context of the actual impurity and purity. This woman, who just created life like God, is excluded from God’s domain. She then re-enters the temple once she brings her Olah and Sin offering package, which is her declaration of her human partnership with God.

Humans are granted the great privilege and opportunity to live in the “image of God.” This potential enables us to pursue the creative, sublime and holy. To take full advantage requires that on the one hand we acknowledge even the divinity of frequent occurrences. On the other hand, we get this opportunity because of our partnership with God. With this balance, we can truly achieve, as the Bible’s new mother does, the proper covenantal relationship with God.

Notes:

[1] This list does not distinguish between the ordering of the sacrifices. See Zevachim 90a and the comments of Rav Hirsch 12:6 s.v. o’ben for further discussion.

[2] This list excludes cases like the purified Metzora who brings an Olah, Sin, and Asham offerings; the Nazir who successfully completes his term, who offers Olah, Sin, and Shelamim sacrifices; and Israel’s Miluim sacrifice . The Sin sacrifice listed as part of the mussaf offerings in Numbers 28-29 is presented separately from the rest of the package.

Rabbi Rafi Eis directs a semicha program at Yeshivat Har Etzion and is the Executive Director of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem. He learned in the SBM of ’01 and served as a Shoel U’Meishiv in ‘06.