The other day I was having a conversation with a Jewish intellectual and the question came up, as it often does, as to the nature of Jewish identity. What are we? What makes us Jewish? This has been one of the persisting debates about Jewish life ever since the nineteenth century. Until then, people by and large knew who and what Jews were. They were the heirs of an ancient nation who, in the Sinai desert long ago, made a covenant with God and, with greater or lesser success, tried to live by it ever since. They were God’s people.
Needless to say, this upset others. The Greeks thought they were the superior race. They called non-Greeks “barbarians,” a word intended to resemble the sound made by sheep. The Romans likewise thought themselves better than others, Christians and Muslims both held, in their different ways, that they, not the Jews, were the true chosen of God. The result was many centuries of persecution. So when Jews were given the chance to become citizens of the newly secular nation states of Europe, they seized it with open arms. In many cases they abandoned their faith and religious practice. But they were still regarded as Jews.
What, though, did this mean? It could not mean that they were a people dedicated to God, since many of them no longer believed in God or acted as if they did. So it came to mean a race. Benjamin Disraeli, converted to Christianity by his father as a young child, thought of his identity in those terms. He once wrote, “All is race -- there is no other truth,”[1] and said about himself, in response to a taunt by the Irish politician Daniel O’Connell, “Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.”
The trouble was that hostility to Jews did not cease despite all that Europe claimed by way of enlightenment, reason, the pursuit of science and emancipation. It could now, though, no longer be defined by religion, since neither Jews nor Europeans used that as the basis of identity. So Jews became hated for their race, and in the 1870s a new word was coined to express this: antisemitism. This was dangerous. So long as Jews were defined by religion, Christians could work to convert them. You can change your religion. But you cannot change your race. Anti-Semites could only work, therefore, for the expulsion or extermination of the Jews.
Ever since the Holocaust it has become taboo to use the word “race” in polite society in the West. Yet secular Jewish identity persists, and there seems no other way of referring to it. So a new term has come to be used instead: ethnicity, which means roughly what “race” meant in the nineteenth century. The Wikipedia definition of ethnicity is “a category of people who identify with each other based on common ancestral, social, cultural, or national experiences.”
The trouble is that ethnicity is where we came from, not where we are going to. It involves culture and cuisine, a set of memories meaningful to parents but ever less so to their children. In any case, there is no one Jewish ethnicity: there are ethnicities in the plural. That is what makes Sefardi Jews different from their Ashkenazi cousins, and Sefardi Jews from North Africa and the Middle East different from those whose families originally came from Spain and Portugal.
Besides which, what is often thought of as Jewish ethnicity is often not even Jewish in origin. It is a lingering trace of what Jews absorbed from a local non-Jewish culture: Polish dress, Russian music, North African food, and the German-Jewish dialect known as Yiddish along with its Spanish-Jewish counterpart, Ladino. Ethnicity is often a set of borrowings thought of as Jewish because their origins have been forgotten.
Judaism is not an ethnicity and Jews are not an ethnic group. Go to the Western Wall in Jerusalem and you will see Jews of every colour and culture under the sun, the Beta Israel from Ethiopia, the Bene Israel from India, Bukharan Jews from central Asia, Iraqi, Berber, Egyptian, Kurdish and Libyan Jews, the Temanim from Yemen, alongside American Jews from Russia, South African Jews from Lithuania, and British Jews from German-speaking Poland. Their food, music, dress, customs and conventions are all different. Jewishness is not an ethnicity but a bricolage of multiple ethnicities.
Besides which, ethnicity does not last. If Jews are merely an ethnic group, they will experience the fate of all such groups, which is that they disappear over time. Like the grandchildren of Irish, Polish, German and Norwegian immigrants to America, they merge into the melting pot. Ethnicity lasts for three generations, for as long as children can remember immigrant grandparents and their distinctive ways. Then it begins to fade, for there is no reason for it not to. If Jews had been no more than an ethnicity, they would have died out long ago, along with the Canaanites, Perizzites and Jebusites, known only to students of antiquity and having left no mark on the civilisation of the West.
So when, in 2000, a British Jewish research institute proposed that Jews in Britain be defined as an ethnic group and not a religious community, it took a non-Jewish journalist, Andrew Marr, to state the obvious: 'All this is shallow water,' he wrote, 'and the further in you wade, the shallower it gets.' He continued:
The Jews have always had stories for the rest of us. They have had their Bible, one of the great imaginative works of the human spirit. They have been victim of the worst modernity can do, a mirror for Western madness. Above all they have had the story of their cultural and genetic survival from the Roman Empire to the 2000s, weaving and thriving amid uncomprehending, hostile European tribes.
This story, their post-Bible, their epic of bodies, not words, involved an intense competitive hardening of generations which threw up, in the end, a blaze of individual geniuses in Europe and America. Outside painting, Morris dancing and rap music, it's hard to think of many areas of Western endeavour where Jews haven't been disproportionately successful. For non-Jews, who don't believe in a people being chosen by God, the lesson is that generations of people living on their wits and hard work, outside the more comfortable mainstream certainties, will seed Einsteins and Wittgensteins, Trotskys and Seiffs. Culture matters . . . The Jews really have been different; they have enriched the world and challenged it.[2]
Marr himself is neither Jewish nor a religious believer, but his insight points us in the direction of this week’s parsha, which contains one of the most important sentences in Judaism: “Speak to the whole assembly of Israel and say to them: Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.” Jews were and remain the people summoned to holiness.
What does this mean? Rashi reads it in context. The previous chapter was about forbidden sexual relationships. So is the next chapter. So he understands it as meaning, be careful not to put yourself in the way of temptation to forbidden sex. Ramban reads it more broadly. The Torah forbids certain activities and permits others. When it says “Be holy” it means, according to Ramban, practice self-restraint even in the domain of the permitted. Don’t be a glutton, even if what you are eating is kosher. Don’t be an alcoholic even if what you are drinking is kosher wine. Don’t be, in his famous phrase, a naval bireshut ha-Torah, “a scoundrel with Torah license.”
These are localised interpretations. They are what the verse means in its immediate context. But it clearly means something larger as well, and the chapter itself tells us what this is. To be holy is to love your neighbour and to love the stranger. It means not stealing, lying, or deceiving others. It means not standing idly by when someone else’s life is in danger. It means not cursing the deaf or putting a stumbling block before the blind, that is, insulting or taking advantage of others even when they are completely unaware of it – because God is not unaware of it.
It means not planting your field with different kinds of seed, not crossbreeding your livestock or wearing clothes made of a forbidden mixture of wool and linen–or as we would put it nowadays, respecting the integrity of the environment. It means not conforming with whatever happens to be the idolatry of the time – and every age has its idols. It means being honest in business, doing justice, treating your employees well, and sharing your blessings (in those days, parts of the harvest) with others.
It means not hating people, not bearing a grudge or taking revenge. If someone has done you wrong, don’t hate them. Remonstrate with them. Let them know what they have done and how it has hurt you, give them a chance to apologise and make amends, and then forgive them.
Above all, “Be holy” means, “Have the courage to be different.” That is the root meaning of kadosh in Hebrew. It means something distinctive and set apart. “Be holy for I the Lord your God am holy” is one of the most counter-intuitive sentences in the whole of religious literature. How can we be like God? He is infinite, we are finite. He is eternal, we are mortal. He is vaster than the universe, we are a mere speck on its surface. Yet, says the Torah, in one respect we can be.
God is in but not of the world. So we are called on to be in but not of the world. We don’t worship nature. We don’t follow fashion. We don’t behave like everyone else just because everyone else does. We don’t conform. We dance to a different music. We don’t live in the present. We remember our people’s past and help build our people’s future. Not by accident does the word kadosh also have the meaning of marriage, kiddushin, because to marry means to be faithful to one another, as God pledges himself to be faithful to us and we to him, even in the hard times.
To be holy means to bear witness to the presence of God in our, and our people’s, lives. Israel – the Jewish people – is the people who in themselves give testimony to One beyond ourselves. To be Jewish means to live in the conscious presence of the God we can’t see but can sense as the force within ourselves urging us to be more courageous, just and generous than ourselves. That’s what Judaism’s rituals are about: reminding us of the presence of the Divine.
Every individual on earth has an ethnicity. But only one people was ever asked collectively to be holy. That, to me, is what it is to be a Jew. SHABBAT SHALOM
Some years ago I was visited by the then American ambassador to the Court of St James, Philip Lader. He told me of a fascinating project he and his wife had initiated in 1981. They had come to realise that many of their contemporaries would find themselves in positions of influence and power in the not-too-distant future. He thought it would be useful and creative if they were to come together for a study retreat every so often to share ideas, listen to experts and form friendships, thinking through collectively the challenges they would face in the coming years. So they created what they called Renaissance Weekends. They still happen.
The most interesting thing he told me was that they discovered that the participants, all exceptionally gifted people, found one thing particularly difficult, namely, admitting that they made mistakes. The Laders understood that this was something important they had to learn. Leaders, above all, should be capable of acknowledging when and how they had erred, and how to put it right. They came up with a brilliant idea. They set aside a session at each Weekend for a talk given by a recognised star in some field, on the subject of “My biggest blooper.” Being English, not American, I had to ask for a translation. I discovered that a blooper is an embarrassing mistake. A gaffe. A faux pas. A bungle. A boo-boo. A fashla. A balagan. Something you shouldn’t have done and are ashamed to admit you did.
This, in essence, is what Yom Kippur is in Judaism. In Tabernacle and Temple times, it was the day when the holiest man in Israel, the High Priest, made atonement, first for his own sins, then for the sins of his “house,” then for the sins of all Israel. From the day the Temple was destroyed, we have had no High Priest nor the rites he performed, but we still have the day, and the ability to confess and pray for forgiveness. It is so much easier to admit your sins, failings and mistakes when other people are doing likewise. If a High Priest, or the other members of our congregation, can admit to sins, so can we.
I have argued elsewhere (in the Introduction to the Koren Yom Kippur Machzor) that the move from the first Yom Kippur to the second was one of the great transitions in Jewish spirituality. The first Yom Kippur was the culmination of Moses’ efforts to secure forgiveness for the people after the sin of the Golden Calf (Ex. 32-34). The process, which began on 17th Tammuz, ended on the 10th of Tishri – the day that later became Yom Kippur. That was the day when Moses descended the mountain with the second set of tablets, the visible sign that God had reaffirmed his covenant with the people. The second Yom Kippur, one year later, initiated the series of rites set out in this week’s parsha (Lev. 16), conducted in the Mishkan by Aaron in his role as High priest.
The differences between the two were immense. Moses acted as a prophet. Aaron functioned as a priest. Moses was following his heart and mind, improvising in response to God’s response to his words. Aaron was following a precisely choreographed ritual, every detail of which was set out in advance. Moses’ encounter was ad hoc, a unique, unrepeatable drama between heaven and earth. Aaron’s was the opposite. The rules he was following never changed throughout the generations, so long as the Temple stood.
Moses’ prayers on behalf of the people were full of audacity, what the sages called chutzpah kelapei shemaya, “audacity toward heaven,” reaching a climax in the astonishing words, “Now, please forgive their sin – but if not, then blot me out of the book You have written.” (Ex. 32: 32). Aaron’s behavior by contrast was marked by obedience, humility, and confession. There were purification rituals, sin offerings and atonements, for his own sins and those of his “house” as well as those of the people.
The move from Yom Kippur 1 to Yom Kippur 2 was a classic instance of what Max Weber called the “routinization of charisma,” that is, taking a unique moment and translating it into ritual, turning a “peak experience” into a regular part of life. Few moments in the Torah rival in intensity the dialogue between Moses and God after the Golden Calf. But the question thereafter was: how could we achieve forgiveness – we who no longer have a Moses, or prophets, or direct access to God? Great moments change history. But what changes us is the unspectacular habit of doing certain acts again and again until they reconfigure the brain and change our habits of the heart. We are shaped by the rituals we repeatedly perform.
Besides which, Moses’ intercession with God did not, in and of itself, induce a penitential mood among the people. Yes, he performed a series of dramatic acts to demonstrate to the people their guilt. But we have no evidence that they internalized it. Aaron’s acts were different. They involved confession, atonement and a search for spiritual purification. They involved a candid acknowledgment of the sins and failures of the people, and they began with the High Priest himself.
The effect of Yom Kippur – extended into the prayers of much of the rest of the year by way of tachanun (supplicatory prayers), vidui (confession), and selichot (prayers for forgiveness) – was to create a culture in which people are not ashamed or embarrassed to say, “I got it wrong, I sinned, I made mistakes.” That is what we do in the litany of wrongs we enumerate on Yom Kippur in two alphabetical lists, one beginning Ashamnu, bagadnu, the other beginning Al cheit shechatanu.
As Philip Lader discovered, the capacity to admit mistakes is anything but widespread. We rationalize. We justify. We deny. We blame others. There have been several powerful books on the subject in recent years, among them Matthew Syed, Black Box Thinking: The Surprising Truth About Success (and Why Some People Never Learn from Their Mistakes)[1]; Kathryn Schulz, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margins of Error,[2] and Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me.[3]
Politicians find it hard to admit mistakes. So do doctors: preventable medical error causes more than 400,000 deaths every year in the United States. So do bankers and economists. The financial crash of 2008 was predicted by Warren Buffett as early as 2002. It happened despite the warnings of several experts that the level of mortgage lending and the leveraging of debt was unsustainable. Tavris and Aronson tell a similar story about the police. Once they have identified a suspect, they are reluctant to admit evidence of his or her innocence. And so it goes.
The avoidance strategies are almost endless. People say, It wasn’t a mistake. Or, given the circumstances, it was the best that could have been done. Or it was a small mistake. Or it was unavoidable given what we knew at the time. Or someone else was to blame. We were given the wrong facts. We were faultily advised. So people bluff it out, or engage in denial, or see themselves as victims.
We have an almost infinite capacity for interpreting the facts to vindicate ourselves. As the sages said in the context of the laws of purity, “No one can see his own blemishes, his own impurities.”[4] We are our own best advocates in the court of self-esteem. Rare is the individual with the courage to say, as the High Priest did, or as King David did after the prophet Nathan confronted him with his guilt in relation to Uriah and Batsheva, chatati, “I have sinned.”[5]
Judaism helps us admit our mistakes in three ways. First is the knowledge that God forgives. He does not ask us never to sin. He knew in advance that His gift of freedom would sometimes be misused. All he asks of us is that we acknowledge our mistakes, learn from them, confess and resolve not to do them again.
Second is Judaism’s clear separation between the sinner and the sin. We can condemn an act without losing faith in the agent.
Third is the aura Yom Kippur spreads over the rest of the year. It helps create a culture of honesty in which we are not ashamed to acknowledge the wrongs we have done. And despite the fact that, technically, Yom Kippur is focused on sins between us and God, a simple reading of the confessions in Ashamnu and Al Chet shows us that, actually, most of the sins we confess are about our dealings with other people.
What Philip Lader discovered about his high-flying contemporaries, Judaism internalized long ago. Seeing the best admit that they too make mistakes is deeply empowering for the rest of us. The first Jew to admit he made a mistake was Judah, who had wrongly accused Tamar of sexual misconduct, and then, realizing he had been wrong, said, “She is more righteous than I” (Gen. 38: 26).
It is surely more than mere coincidence that the name Judah comes from the same root as Vidui, “confession.” In other words, the very fact that we are called Jews – Yehudim – means that we are the people who have the courage to admit our wrongs.
Honest self-criticism is one of the unmistakable marks of spiritual greatness.
Our parsha begins with childbirth and, in the case of a male child, “On the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised” (Lev. 12:3). This became known not just as milah, “circumcision”, but something altogether more theological, brit milah, “the covenant of circumcision”. That is because even before Sinai, almost at the dawn of Jewish history, circumcision became the sign of God’s covenant with Abraham (Gen. 17:1-14).
Why circumcision? Why was this from the outset not just a mitzvah, one command among others, but the very sign of our covenant with God and His with us? And why on the eighth day? Last week’s parsha was called Shemini, “the eighth [day]” (Lev. 9:1) because it dealt with the inauguration of the Mishkan, the Sanctuary, which also took place on the eighth day. Is there a connection between these two quite different events?
The place to begin is a strange midrash recording an encounter between the Roman governor Tyranus Rufus 1 and Rabbi Akiva. Rufus began the conversation by asking, “Whose works are better, those of God or of man?” Surprisingly, the Rabbi replied, “Those of man.” Rufus responded, “But look at the heavens and the earth. Can a human being make anything like that?” Rabbi Akiva replied that the comparison was unfair. “Creating heaven and earth is clearly beyond human capacity. Give me an example drawn from matters that are within human scope.” Rufus then said, “Why do you practise circumcision?” To this, Rabbi Akiva replied, “I knew you would ask that question. That is why I said in advance that the works of man are better than those of God.”
The rabbi then set before the governor ears of corn and cakes. The unprocessed corn is the work of God. The cake is the work of man. Is it not more pleasant to eat cake than raw ears of corn? Rufus then said, “If God really wants us to practise circumcision, why did He not arrange for babies to be born circumcised?” Rabbi Akiva replied, “God gave the commands to Israel to refine our character.”2 This is a very odd conversation, but, as we will see, a deeply significant one. To understand it, we have to go back to the beginning of time.
The Torah tells us that for six days God created the universe and on the seventh he rested, declaring it holy. His last creation, on the sixth day, was humanity: the first man and the first woman. According to the sages, Adam and Eve sinned by eating the forbidden fruit already on that day and were sentenced to exile from the Garden of Eden. However, God delayed the execution of sentence for a day to allow them to spend Shabbat in the garden. As the day came to a close, the humans were about to be sent out into the world in the darkness of night. God took pity on them and showed them how to make light. That is why we light a special candle at Havdalah, not just to mark the end of Shabbat but also to show that we begin the workday week with the light God taught us to make.
The Havdalah candle therefore represents the light of the eighth day – which marks the beginning of human creativity. Just as God began the first day of creation with the words, “Let there be light”, so at the start of the eighth day He showed humans how they too could make light. Human creativity is thus conceived in Judaism as parallel to Divine creativity,3 and its symbol is the eighth day.
That is why the Mishkan was inaugurated on the eighth day. As Nechama Leibowitz and others have noted, there is an unmistakable parallelism between the language the Torah uses to describe God’s creation of the universe and the Israelites’ creation of the Sanctuary. The Mishkan was a microcosm – a cosmos in miniature. Thus Genesis begins and Exodus ends with stories of creation, the first by God, the second by the Israelites. The eighth day is when we celebrate the human contribution to creation.
That is also why circumcision takes place on the eighth day. All life, we believe, comes from God. Every human being bears His image and likeness. We see each child as God’s gift: “Children are the provision of the Lord; the fruit of the womb, His reward” (Ps, 127:3). Yet it takes a human act – circumcision – to signal that a male Jewish child has entered the covenant. That is why it takes place on the eighth day, to emphasise that the act that symbolises entry into the covenant is a human one – just as it was when the Israelites at the foot of Mount Sinai said, “All that the Lord has said, we will do and obey” (Ex. 24:7).
Mutuality and reciprocity mark the special nature of the specific covenant God made, first with Abraham, then with Moses and the Israelites. It is this that differentiates it from the universal covenant God made with Noah and through him with all humanity. That covenant, set out in Genesis 9, involved no human response. Its content was the seven Noahide commands. Its sign was the rainbow. But God asked nothing of Noah, not even his consent. Judaism embodies a unique duality of the universal and the particular. We are all in covenant with God by the mere fact of our humanity. We are bound, all of us, by the basic laws of morality. This is part of what it means to be human.
But to be Jewish is also to be part of a particular covenant of reciprocity with God. God calls. We respond. God begins the work and calls on us to complete it. That is what the act of circumcision represents. God did not cause male children to be born circumcised, said Rabbi Akiva, because He deliberately left this act, this sign of the covenant, to us.
Now we begin to understand the full depth of the conversation between Rabbi Akiva and the Roman governor Tineius Rufus. For the Romans, the Greeks and the ancient world generally, the gods were to be found in nature: the sun, the sea, the sky, the earth and its seasons, the fields and their fertility. In Judaism, God is beyond nature, and his covenant with us takes us beyond nature also. So for us, not everything natural is good. War is natural. Conflict is natural. The violent competition to be the alpha male is natural. Jews – and others inspired by the God of Abraham – believe, as Kathryn Hepburn said to Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, that “Nature, Mr Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.”
The Romans found circumcision strange because it was unnatural. Why not celebrate the human body as God made it? God, said Rabbi Akiva to the Roman governor, values culture, not just nature, the work of humans not just the work of God. It was this cluster of ideas – that God left creation unfinished so that we could become partners in its completion; that by responding to God’s commands we become refined; that God delights in our creativity and helped us along the way by teaching the first humans how to make light – that made Judaism unique in its faith in God’s faith in humankind. All of this is implicit in the idea of the eighth day as the day on which God sent humans out into the world to become His partners in the work of creation.
Why is this symbolised in the act of circumcision? Because if Darwin was right, then the most primal of all human instincts is to seek to pass on one’s genes to the next generation. That is the strongest force of nature within us. Circumcision symbolises the idea that there is something higher than nature. Passing on our genes to the next generation should not simply be a blind instinct, a Darwinian drive. The Abrahamic covenant was based on sexual fidelity, the sanctity of marriage, and the consecration of the love that brings new life into the world.4 It is a rejection of the ethic of the alpha male.
God created physical nature: the nature charted by science. But He asks us to be co-creators, with Him, of human nature. As R. Abraham Mordecai Alter of Ger said. “When God said, ‘Let us make man in our image’, to whom was He speaking? To man himself. God said to man, Let us – you and I – make man together.”5 The symbol of that co-creation is the eighth day, the day He helps us begin to create a world of light and love.
If a person is always apprehensive, he's afraid (Yiras Hashem) like was described before: when out in the street he should feel like he was arrested by a Roman sergeant. Wouldn't that be a contradiction to enjoying life? Wouldn't that detract from the happiness of life?
ANSWER:
The happiness of life is never appreciated when people live in monotony. When you enjoy life without thinking, you don't have the happiness of life. It's only when you have a criteria, you're aware of what happened to others but it didn't happen to you, that's when a man begins learning to suck the honey out of life. There are people who never broke a bone in their bodies all their lives; it never occurred to them to be full of joy because of that. Full of joy because I didn't break a bone in my body? But when it happens challila, it's such a discomfort, you can't even lie in bed; it's excruciating. It's such a difficult experience, it has repercussions on all other functions of the body.
And this man all his life, he passed his days in utter peace; now he doesn't appreciate that. If he utilizes his head and he studies what happened to others, that man certainly is going to enjoy life. That's a prescription to be happy in life, to see what happens to other people.
Now, if that's the case, when a man learns Yiras Hashem he's not apprehensive, he's really not afraid of things that might happen to him, he's afraid of Hashem. This man, besides gaining the appreciation of the fact that what happened to others didn't happen to him, in addition he's gaining the satisfaction of the perfection of Yiras Hashem.
Nobody is going to have less happiness in life because of the fear of Hashem. On the contrary, he becomes more and more aware that Hakadosh Baruch Hu is protecting him; he's more and more sensitive to the things that others don't enjoy. Therefore Yiras Hashem actually gives happiness to people in addition to giving them longer lives.
Good Shabbos To All
This email is transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures.
To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
The world gives the impression as if it operates by itself. Although a nonbiased individual should be able to discern the Grand Puppeteer behind the stage, it seems that most people are simply oblivious to the Creator. A fascinating explanation of a mitzvah in this week's parsha offered by the Sefer HaChinuch, illustrates to just what degree Hashem's presence in this world is hidden.
The Torah commands us, "A permanent fire shall be lit upon the mizbeiach, it shall not be extinguished" (Vayikra 6:6). The Chinuch writes that it is well known that even awesome miracles performed by Hashem are somewhat concealed. They appear as if they are simply an element of nature. Prior to the splitting of the sea, arguably the most astounding miracle in all of history, "Hashem moved the sea with a strong east wind all night" thereby giving the impression that the whole incident was the result of a natural disaster. The force of a powerful tornado caused the waters to split thereby allowing the Jews to pass through the parted waters. In a similar vein, despite the fact that a fire descended from Heaven onto the mizbeiach, we are commanded to light our own fire upon it to veil the otherwise overt miracle. Indeed, even when Hashem's reveals Himself, He makes sure to hide behind the veil of nature.
When the Navi exhorts us, "Walk with tzenius with Hashem" (Michah 6:8), he is not merely instructing those who look for publicity to conceal their good deeds. He is informing us that when one conceals his actions he is actually following in Hashem's ways, since He also hides what He does.
Rav Wolbe writes (Alei Shur vol. II p. 594) that many people define tzenius very superficially. The virtue of tzenius being discussed here refers not to an external dress code; rather, it refers to one's internal spiritual composition. The pasuk states, "Tzenius goes together with wisdom" (Proverbs 11:2). Rabbeinu Yonah explains that tzenius is a virtue which is attributed to the wise, "for they hear and listen and they do not desire to reveal what lies in their hearts." They do not feel compelled to reveal everything they have seen and heard. This quality allows them to live a life of penimiyus, since they have created for themselves a world that is not dependent on the opinions and desires of others. They are able to focus on their spiritual state without being affected by outside influences.
It takes one to know one. Only a person who lives with tzenius and conceals his actions has the ability to discern Hashem's concealed hand conducting the world. Had Mordechai and Esther not written the Megillah in a manner which highlights the various milestones that occurred over a twelve year period, most people would have perceived these occurrences as happenstance. Vashti happened to disobey Achashveirosh, Esther happened to be chosen as queen and Mordechai happened to overhear the plot of Bigson and Seresh. It takes a wise man to connect the dots in a way that produces a "picture" of Hashem's involvement.
We live in the internet generation where anything and everything is public. Anything anybody says, publishes or captures on camera is recorded and posted for the world to perceive. People have a hard time keeping anything inside themselves. Creating a relationship with Hashem means one is cognizant of His presence in his life - something inaccessible to a person who perceives the world superficially. Imbibing wine on Purim allows one to discover who he really is. Dig a little under the surface of your skin. Not only will you begin creating a world of penimiyus, but you will also succeed in scraping the veneer off this world thereby revealing the Creator in all His glory!
A Freilichen Purim! Reprinted from Bais Hamussar Newsletter
When Adar comes in we are told to increase our joy. Why is that?
ANSWER:Because it's a season that requires a certain frame of mind. Purim requires joy, Pesach requires joy. In order, however, to be prepared, you must start at the beginning of Adar. You can't be glum and sad, and suddenly when Purim comes, you jump up and down and you celebrate. No! You're doing it with a heavy heart.
When Adar comes in you begin looking for ways and means of generating happiness, and you look at the world. The world is full of happiness. The sunshine causes happiness. The fact that you're able to see. One of the greatest pleasures in the world is the ability to see. It's fun to see. You have two movie cameras taking pictures constantly wherever you look, color pictures. Isn't it fun to see? Oh, close your eyes, a dark sad world. Open your eyes. Oh!! Moving pictures! And they function in synchronization, together. And the pictures are recorded in your mind. You know the pictures that you are taking right now will never be forgotten? I could prove to you that the pictures are recorded forever in your mind. Forty years later somebody will say, “You remember sitting in Rabbi Miller's shul years ago? He was talking about the wonders of creation.”
“Oh yes I remember now,” and the pictures suddenly flashes out from the filing cabinets of your mind and you see everything once more.
Where was the picture for forty years? It was there, because the pictures you are taking are never erased from your mind. You might forget, because it goes back in the depths of the cabinets, but the pictures are there. Someday you might take them out and see them again, and reminisce about your youth. You remember even the voices; that's because you have a sound recording in your head.
So you start in the beginning of Adar, piling up Simcha. It's fun to see, (Rabbi Miller takes a big breath) it's fun to breathe. Rabosai, let's all practice the Simcha of filling our lungs with this wonderful air in this little place here. (And everyone takes a deep breath) AHH, that's joy. It's fun to be alive! Baruch Hashem, it's fun to live. It's fun as the heart causes the blood to course through your vessels; it's fun. Everything in life is fun. How silly people are! You know when they realize life is fun? When they are on the verge of dying. Oh, oh, oh, it's all over. Now is the time, enjoy life right now.
It's fun everywhere. When you sit down tomorrow morning at breakfast, it's fun to use those teeth to chew food, teeth are fun. False teeth are also fun. Life is fun, life is happiness, and we thank Hakdosh Baruch Hu for it.
This email is transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures.
To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
Sitting is the new smoking. So goes the new health mantra. Spend too much time at a desk or in front of a screen and you are at risk of significant danger to your health. The World Health Organisation has identified physical inactivity as the fourth greatest health hazard today, ahead of obesity. In the words of Dr James Levine, one of the world’s leading experts on the subject and the man credited with coining the mantra, says, “We are sitting ourselves to death.”
The reason is that we were not made to sit still. Our bodies were made for movement, standing, walking and running. If we fail to give the body regular exercise, it can easily malfunction and put us at risk of serious illness. The question is: does the same apply to the soul, the spirit, the mind?
It is fascinating to look at the sequence of verbs in the very first verse of the book of Psalms: “Happy is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of the scornful” (Ps. 1:1). That is a picture of the bad life, lived in pursuit of the wrong values. Note how the bad man begins by walking, then stands, then sits. A bad life immobilises. That is the point of the famous verses in Hallel:
Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have mouths, but do not speak, eyes but do not see, ears but do not hear, noses but do not smell. They have hands but cannot feel, feet but cannot walk, nor can they make a sound with their throats. Those who make them will be like them; so will all who trust in them. (Ps. 115:4-8)
If you live for lifeless things – as in the bumper sticker, “He who dies with the most toys, wins” – you will become lifeless.
Except in the House of the Lord, Jews do not sit. Jewish life began with two momentous journeys, Abraham from Mesopotamia, Moses and the Israelites from Egypt. “Walk on ahead of Me and be blameless” said God to Abraham (Gen. 17:1). At the age of ninety-nine, having just been circumcised, Abraham saw three strangers passing by and “ran to meet them.” On the verse, “Jacob dwelled [vayeshev, the verb that also means “to sit”] in the land where his father had stayed” Rashi, citing the sages, commented: “Jacob sought to live in tranquility, but immediately there broke in on him the troubles of Joseph.” The righteous do not sit still. They do not have a quiet life.
Rarely is the point made with more subtlety than at the end of this week’s parsha and the book of Exodus as a whole. The Tabernacle had been made and assembled. The closing verses tell us about the relationship between it and the “cloud of glory” that filled the Tent of Meeting. The Tabernacle was made to be portable.1 It could be dismantled and its parts carried as the Israelites travelled on the next stage of their journey. When the time came for them to move on, the cloud moved from the Tent of Meeting to a position outside the camp, signalling the direction the Israelites were to take. This is how the Torah describes it:
When the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle, the Israelites went onward in all their journeys, but if the cloud did not lift, they did not set out until the day it lifted. So the cloud of the Lord was over the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel in all their journeys. (Ex.40: 36-38)
There is a significant difference between the two occurrences of the phrase “in all their journeys”. In the first, the words are meant literally. When the cloud lifted, the Israelites knew they were about to begin a new stage of their journey. However in the second instance, they cannot be meant literally. The cloud was not “over the Tabernacle” in all their journeys. To the contrary, it was there only when they stopped journeying and instead pitched camp. During the journeys the cloud went on ahead.
Rashi notes this and makes the following comment:
A place where they encamped is also called massa, “a journey” . . . because from the place of encampment they always set out again on a new journey, therefore they are all called “journeys”.
The point is linguistic, but the message is remarkable. In a few brief words, Rashi has summarised an existential truth about Jewish identity. To be a Jew is to travel. Judaism is a journey, not a destination. Even a place of rest, an encampment, is still called a journey. The patriarchs lived, not in houses but in tents.2 The first time we are told that a patriarch built a house, proves the point:
Jacob traveled to Sukkot. There he built himself a house and made shelters [sukkot] for his livestock. That is why he called the place Sukkot. Gen. 33:17).
The verse is astonishing. Jacob has just become the first member of the covenantal family to build a house, yet he does not call the place “House” (as in Bet-El or Bet-lechem). He calls it “cattle-sheds.” It is as if Jacob, consciously or unconsciously, already knew that to live the life of the covenant means to be ready to move on, to travel, to journey, to grow.
One might have thought that all this applied only to the time before the Israelites crossed the Jordan and entered the Promised Land. Yet the Torah tells us otherwise:
The land shall not be sold in perpetuity because the land is Mine: you are strangers and temporary residents as far as I am concerned. (Lev. 25:23)
If we live as if the land is permanently ours, our stay there will be temporary. If we live as if it is only temporarily so, we will live there permanently. In this world of time and change, growth and decay, only God and His word are permanent. One of the most poignant lines in the book of Psalms – a verse cherished by the French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas – says, “I am a stranger on earth. Do not hide your commands from me” (Ps. 119:19). To be a Jew is to stay light on your feet, ready to begin the next stage of the journey, literally or metaphorically. An Englishman’s home is his castle, they used to say. But a Jew’s home is a tent, a tabernacle, a sukkah. We know that life on earth is a temporary dwelling. That is why we value each moment and its newness.
Recently a distinguished British Jew, (Lord) George Weidenfeld, died at the age of 96. He was a successful publisher, a friend and confidant of European leaders, an inveterate fighter for peace and a passionate Zionist. In 1949-50, he was political adviser and Chief of Cabinet to Chaim Weizmann, first President of Israel. One of his last acts was to help rescue 20,000 Christian refugees fleeing from ISIS in Syria. He was alert and active, even hyperactive, to the very end of a long and distinguished life.
In an interview with The Times on his ninety-second birthday he was asked the following question: “Most people in their nineties slow down. You seem to be speeding up. Why is that?” He replied, “When you get to ninety-two, you begin to see the door about to close. I have so much to do before the door closes that the older I get, the harder I have to work.” That is a good formula for staying young.
Like our bodies, our souls were not made for sitting still. We were made for moving, walking, traveling, learning, searching, striving, growing, knowing that it is not for us to complete the work but neither may we stand aside from it. In Judaism, as the book of Exodus reminds us in its closing words, even an encampment is called a journey. In matters spiritual, not just physical, sitting is the new smoking.
Isn't it unhealthy to keep things inside when a person keeps quiet?
ANSWER:
Now you have to know, there's a lot of garbage that is being taught by psychologists. They say, talk yourself out. Which means as follows: open your big mouth and make as much trouble as you can, and then you're going to come to us at a hundred dollars a visit. I once spoke to a man who went to a psychologist, I asked how long have you been going? Twenty five years. Did he help you? No, he didn't help me but they made me understand my problems better, and he made them understand that he has a lot of money to spend for nothing.
If a person wants to unload himself, he should do it to another person who is an understanding and wise person; go to a chochom. Yeilech etzel chochom, and tell him the problem and the chochom will tell you, it's not so terrible, it'll pass by, don't speak about it to your husband or to your wife, tomorrow it'll be different. He goes home or she goes home, tomorrow it's all forgotten. If they open up their big mouths and talk it out to his wife or to her husband, they start a fire, the fire gets bigger and bigger, word for a word, who knows what's going to happen.
Therefore, daaga b'leiv ish yesichenu l'acheirim. If you have a worry in your heart, speak to somebody if you wish; don't tell your husband your rancor against him, don't tell your wife your resentment against her, don't say that, no, it makes trouble. Don't say it to your in-laws, don't say it to anyone.
If you can't find a person who is responsible and capable, don't say anything. If you have a Rebbe, go to your Rebbe, he'll hear you out, he'll give you a glett (loving touch), he'll say "Chaim'll don't worry about it, it's nothing, my wife does the same thing to me, too."
And so if you keep quiet then you'll lead your grandchildren to the chupa together.
Good Shabbos To All
This is transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures. To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
At the beginning of Vayakhel Moses performs a tikkun, a mending of the past, namely the sin of the Golden Calf. The Torah signals this by using essentially the same word at the beginning of both episodes. It eventually became a key word in Jewish spirituality: k-h-l, “to gather, assemble, congregate.” From it we get the words kahal and kehillah, meaning “community”. Far from being merely an ancient concern, it remains at the heart of our humanity. As we will see, recent scientific research confirms the extraordinary power of communities and social networks to shape our lives.
First, the biblical story. The episode of the Golden Calf began with these words: “When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered themselves [vayikahel] around Aaron …” (Ex. 32:1). At the beginning of this week’s parsha, having won God’s forgiveness and brought down a second set of tablets, Moses began the work of rededicating the people: “Moses assembled [vayakhel] the entire Israelite congregation …” (Ex. 35:1). They had sinned as a community. Now they were about to be reconstituted as a community. Jewish spirituality is first and foremost a communal spirituality.
Note too exactly what Moses does in this week’s parsha. He directs their attention to the two great centres of community in Judaism, one in space, the other in time. The one in time is Shabbat. The one in space was the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, that led eventually to the Temple and later to the synagogue. These are where kehillah lives most powerfully: on Shabbat when we lay aside our private devices and desires and come together as a community, and the synagogue, where community has its home.
Judaism attaches immense significance to the individual. Every life is like a universe. Each one of us, though we are all in God’s image, is different, therefore unique and irreplaceable. Yet the first time the words “not good” appear in the Torah are in the verse, “It is not good for man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18). Much of Judaism is about the shape and structure of our togetherness. It values the individual but does not endorse individualism.
Ours is a religion of community. Our holiest prayers can only be said in the presence of a minyan, the minimum definition of a community. When we pray, we do so as a community. Martin Buber spoke of I-and-Thou, but Judaism is really a matter of We-and-Thou. Hence, to atone for the sin the Israelites committed as a community, Moses sought to consecrate community in time and place.
This has become one of the fundamental differences between tradition and the contemporary culture of the West. We can trace this in the titles of three landmark books about American society. In 1950, David Riesman, Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denney published an insightful book about the changing character of Americans, called The Lonely Crowd. In 2000 Robert Putnam of Harvard published Bowling Alone, an account of how more Americans than ever were going ten-pin bowling but fewer were joining bowling clubs and leagues. In 2011, Sherry Turkle of MIT published a book on the impact of smartphones and social networking software called Alone Together.
Listen to those titles. They are each about the advancing tide of loneliness, successive stages in the long, extended breakdown of community in modern life. Robert Bellah put it eloquently when he wrote that “social ecology is damaged not only by war, genocide and political repression. It is also damaged by the destruction of the subtle ties that bind human beings to one another, leaving them frightened and alone.1
That is why the two themes of Vayakhel – Shabbat and the Mishkan, today the synagogue – remain powerfully contemporary. They are antidotes to the attenuation of community. They help restore “the subtle ties that bind human beings to one another.” They reconnect us to community.
Consider Shabbat. Michael Walzer, the Princeton political philosopher, draws attention to the difference between holidays and holy days (or as he puts it, between vacations and Shabbat).2 The idea of a vacation as a private holiday is relatively recent. Walzer dates it to the 1870s. Its essence is its individualist (or familial) character. “Everyone plans his own vacation, goes where he wants to go, does what he wants to do.” Shabbat, by contrast, is essentially collective: “you, your son and daughter, your male and female servant, your ox, your donkey, your other animals, and the stranger in your gates.” It is public, shared, the property of us all. A vacation is a commodity. We buy it. Shabbat is not something we buy. It is available to each on the same terms: “enjoined for everyone, enjoyed by everyone.” We take vacations as individuals or families. We celebrate Shabbat as a community.
Something similar is true about the synagogue – the Jewish institution, unique in its day, that was eventually adopted by Christianity and Islam in the form of the church and mosque. We noted above Robert Putnam’s argument in Bowling Alone, that Americans were becoming more individualistic. There was a loss, he said, of “social capital,” that is, the ties that bind us together in shared responsibility for the common good.
A decade later, Putnam revised his thesis.3 Social capital, he said, still exists, and you can find it in churches and synagogues. Regular attendees at a place of worship were – so his research showed – more likely than others to give money to charity, engage in voluntary work, donate blood, spend time with someone who is depressed, offer a seat to a stranger, help find someone a job, and many other measures of civic, moral and philanthropic activism. They are, quite simply, more public spirited than others. Regular attendance at a house of worship is the most accurate predictor of altruism, more so than any other factor, including gender, education, income, race, region, marital status, ideology and age.
Most fascinating of his findings is that the key factor is being part of a religious community. What turned out not to be relevant is what you believe. The research findings suggest that an atheist who goes regularly to a house of worship (perhaps to accompany a spouse or a child) is more likely to volunteer in a soup kitchen than a fervent believer who prays alone. The key factor again is community.
This may well be one of the most important functions of religion in a secular age, namely, keeping community alive. Most of us need community. We are social animals. Evolutionary biologists have suggested recently that the huge increase in brain size represented by Homo sapiens was specifically to allow us to form more extended social networks. It is the human capacity to co-operate in large teams – rather than the power of reason – that marks us off from other animals. As the Torah says, it is not good to be alone.
Recent research has shown something else as well. Who you associate with has a powerful impact on what you do and become. In 2009 Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler did statistical analysis of a group of 5,124 subjects and their 53,228 ties to friends family and work colleagues. They found that if a friend takes up smoking, it makes it significantly more likely (by 36 per cent) that you will. The same applies to drinking, slenderness, obesity, and many other behavioural patterns.4 We become like the people we are close to.
A study of students at Dartmouth College in the year 2000 found that if you share a room with someone with good study habits, it will probably raise your own performance. A 2006 Princeton study showed that if your sibling has a child, it makes it 15 per cent more likely that you will within the next two years. There is such a thing as “social contagion”. We are profoundly influenced by our friends – as indeed Maimonides states in his law code, the Mishneh Torah (Laws of Character Traits, 6:1).
Which brings us back to Moses and Vayakhel. By placing community at the heart of the religious life and by giving it a home in space and time – the synagogue and Shabbat – Moses was showing the power of community for good, as the episode of the Golden Calf had shown its power for bad. Jewish spirituality is for the most part profoundly communal. Hence my definition of Jewish faith: the redemption of our solitude.
The more I study the Torah, the more conscious I become of the immense mystery of Exodus 33. This is the chapter set in the middle of the Golden Calf narrative, between chapter 32 describing the sin and its consequences, and chapter 34, God’s revelation to Moses of the “Thirteen attributes of Mercy”, the second set of tablets and the renewal of the covenant. It is, I believe, this mystery that frames the shape of Jewish spirituality.
What makes chapter 33 perplexing is, first, that it is not clear what it is about. What was Moses doing? In the previous chapter he had already prayed twice for the people to be forgiven. In chapter 34 he prays for forgiveness again. What then was he trying to achieve in chapter 33?
Second, Moses’ requests are strange. He says, “Show me now Your ways” and “Show me now Your glory” (33:13, 33:18). These seem more requests for metaphysical understanding or mystical experience than for forgiveness. They have to do with Moses as an individual, not with the people on whose behalf he was praying. This was a moment of national crisis. God was angry. The people were traumatised. The whole nation was in disarray. This was not the time for Moses to ask for a seminar in theology.
Third, more than once the narrative seems to be going backward in time. In verse 4, for example, it says “No man put on his ornaments”, then in the next verse God says, “Now, then, remove your ornaments.” In verse 14, God says, “My presence will go with you.” In verse 15, Moses says, “If Your presence does not go with us, do not make us leave this place.” In both cases, time seems to be reversed: the second sentence is responded to by the one before. The Torah is clearly drawing our attention to something, but what?
Add to this the mystery of the calf itself – was it or was it not an idol? The text states that the people said, “This, Israel, is your God who brought you out of Egypt” (32:4). But it also says that they sought the calf because they did not know what had happened to Moses. Were they seeking a replacement for him or God? What was their sin?
Surrounding it all is the larger mystery of the precise sequence of events involved in the long passages about the Mishkan, before and after the Golden Calf. What was the relationship between the Sanctuary and the Calf?
At the heart of the mystery is the odd and troubling detail of verses 7-11. This tells us that Moses took his tent and pitched it outside the camp. What has this to do with the subject at hand, namely the relationship between God and the people after the Golden Calf? In any case, it was surely the worst possible thing for Moses to do at that time under those circumstances. God had just announced that “I will not go in your midst” (33:3). At this, the people were deeply distressed. They “went into mourning” (33:4). For Moses, then, to leave the camp must have been doubly demoralising. At times of collective distress, a leader has to be close to the people, not distant.
There are many ways of reading this cryptic text, but it seems to me the most powerful and simple interpretation is this. Moses was making his most audacious prayer, so audacious that the Torah does not state it directly and explicitly. We have to reconstruct it from anomalies and clues within the text itself.
The previous chapter implied that the people panicked because of the absence of Moses, their leader. God himself implied as much when he said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt” (32:7). The suggestion is that Moses’ absence or distance was the cause of the sin. He should have stayed closer to the people. Moses took the point. He did go down. He did punish the guilty. He did pray for God to forgive the people. That was the theme of chapter 32. But in chapter 33, having restored order to the people, Moses now began on an entirely new line of approach. He was, in effect, saying to God: what the people need is not for me to be close to them. I am just a human, here today, gone tomorrow. But You are eternal. You are their God. They need You to be close to them.
It was as if Moses was saying, “Until now, they have experienced You as a terrifying, elemental force, delivering plague after plague to the Egyptians, bringing the world’s greatest empire to its knees, dividing the sea, overturning the very order of nature itself. At Mount Sinai, merely hearing Your voice, they were so overwhelmed that they said, if we continue to hear the voice, ‘we will die’ (Ex. 20:16).” The people needed, said Moses, to experience not the greatness of God but the closeness of God, not God heard in thunder and lightning at the top of the mountain but as a perpetual Presence in the valley below.
That is why Moses removed his tent and pitched it outside the camp, as if to say to God: it is not my presence the people need in their midst, but Yours. That is why Moses sought to understand the very nature of God Himself. Is it possible for God to be close to where people are? Can transcendence become immanence? Can the God who is vaster than the universe live within the universe in a predictable, comprehensible way, not just in the form of miraculous intervention?
To this, God replied in a highly structured way. First, He said, you cannot understand My ways. “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy” (33:19). There is an element of divine justice that must always elude human comprehension. We cannot fully enter into the mind of another human being, how much less so the mind of the Creator himself.
Second, “You cannot see My face, for no one can see Me and live” (33:20). Humans can at best “See My back.” Even when God intervenes in history, we can see this only in retrospect, looking back. Steven Hawking was wrong.1 Even if we decode every scientific mystery, we still will not know the mind of God.
However, third, you can see My “glory”. That is what Moses asked for once he realised that he could never know God’s “ways” or see His “face”. That is what God
caused to pass by as Moses stood “in a cleft of the rock” (v. 22). We do not know at this stage, exactly what is meant by God’s glory, but we discover this at the very end of the book of Exodus. Chapters 35-40 describe how the Israelites built the Mishkan. When it is finished and assembled we read this:
Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the Mishkan. Moses could not enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the Mishkan. (Ex. 40:34-35)
We now understand the entire drama set in motion by the making of the Golden Calf. Moses pleaded with God to come closer to the people, so that they would encounter Him not only at unrepeatable moments in the form of miracles but regularly, on a daily basis, and not only as a force that threatens to obliterate all it touches but as a Presence that can be sensed in the heart of the camp.
That is why God commanded Moses to instruct the people to build the Mishkan. It is what He meant when He said: “Let them make Me a sanctuary and I will dwell (ve-shakhanti) among them” (Ex. 25:8). It is from this verb that we get the word Mishkan, “Tabernacle” and the post-biblical word Shekhinah, meaning the Divine presence. A shakhen is a neighbour, one who lives next door. Applied to God it means “the Presence that is close.” If this is so – it is, for example, the way Judah Halevi understood the text 2 – then the entire institution of the Mishkan was a Divine response to the sin of the Golden Calf, and an acceptance by God of Moses’ plea that He come close to the people. We cannot see God’s face; we cannot understand God’s ways; but we can encounter God’s glory whenever we build a home, on earth, for His presence.
That is the ongoing miracle of Jewish spirituality. No one before the birth of Judaism ever envisaged God in such abstract and awe-inspiring ways: God is more distant than the furthest star and more eternal than time itself. Yet no religion has ever felt God to be closer. In Tanakh the prophets argue with God. In the book of Psalms King David speaks to Him in terms of utmost intimacy. In the Talmud God listens to the debates between the sages and accepts their rulings even when they go against a heavenly voice. God’s relationship with Israel, said the prophets, is like that between a parent and a child, or between a husband and a wife. In The Song of Songs it is like that between two infatuated lovers. The Zohar, key text of Jewish mysticism, uses the most daring language of passion, as does Yedid nefesh, the poem attributed to the sixteenth century Tzefat kabbalist R. Elazar Azikri.
That is one of the striking differences between the synagogues and the cathedrals of the Middle Ages. In a cathedral you sense the vastness of God and the smallness of humankind. But in the Altneushul in Prague or the synagogues of the Ari and R. Joseph Karo in Tzefat, you sense the closeness of God and the potential greatness of humankind. Many nations worship God, but Jews are the only people to count themselves His close relatives (“My child, my firstborn, Israel” Ex. 4:22).
Between the lines of Exodus 33, if we listen attentively enough, we sense the emergence of one of the most distinctive and paradoxical features of Jewish spirituality. No religion has ever held God higher, but none has ever felt Him closer. That is what Moses sought and achieved in Exodus 33 in his most daring conversation with God. SHABB
What should we do to acquire more simcha in life, more happiness in life?
ANSWER:
The only trouble is, I'd like to have five hours to talk on the subject. There are two very important ingredients to acquire simcha. One is to take care of your health. You have to go to sleep on time, eat on time, take care of your teeth, don't live a sedentary life. You have be active, walk, you must be active in order to keep up your blood and lymph circulation, you need many things to take care of your health.
The second and more important element is, you have to study the opportunities for happiness which are available in life. There is happiness galore everywhere waiting for us, only we are not capable of appreciating it when we never learned to think about it. If you'll take out time to develop your mind, you're going to gain one form of happiness after the other. I'll tell you a little incident that happened to me. I walked out of a side street onto Kings Highway, at that moment I heard a woman say to her friend that she just recovered from an eye operation. Now that woman didn't realize what she did for me; it's a long time since then, but almost every day I think about that. An eye operation is no fun at all, and if you never had an eye operation, you have a cause to be happy. Happy? Yes! Enjoy the fact you don't have trouble with your eyes, more than a pair of glasses at most.
Now it may appear silly, but it pays to be silly in the pursuit of happiness. Learn how to enjoy the fact that you have good eyes, you never had an operation on your eyes. Also learn how to be happy in the fact that you have two kidneys; very many people don't even have one. Next time when you come out of the bathroom, thank Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Anytime a person is able to go to the bathroom and function properly, he should feel a great happiness, a person that has no kidneys can never urinate. Now this I understand cannot be explained in a few words, - if you want to learn how to be happy, it's a science. You have to practice, you have to study, you have to think, and little by little it grows upon you and life becomes full of joy and you become a wealthy man. Eizehu oshir, who is a wealthy man? Ha'someiach bechelko, one who learns to enjoy what he has, and we have very much.
Good Shabbos To All
This is transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures.
To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
It was the first Israelite house of worship, the first home Jews made for God. But the very idea is fraught with paradox, even contradiction. How can you build a house for God? He is bigger than anything we can imagine, let alone build.
King Solomon made this point when he inaugurated another house of God, the First Temple: “But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain You. How much less this house I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27). So did Isaiah in the name of God himself: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What house can you build for me? Where will my resting place be? (Is. 66:1).
Not only does it seem impossible to build a home for God. It should be unnecessary. The God of everywhere can be accessed anywhere, as readily in the deepest pit as on the highest mountain, in a city slum as in a palace lined with marble and gold.
The answer, and it is fundamental, is that God does not live in buildings. He lives in builders. He lives not in structures of stone but in the human heart. What the Jewish sages and mystics pointed was that in our parsha God says, “Let them build me a sanctuary that I may dwell in them” (Ex. 25:8), not “that I may dwell in it.”
Why then did God command the people to make a sanctuary at all? The answer given by most commentators, and hinted at by the Torah itself, is that God gave the command specifically after the sin of the golden calf.
The people made the calf after Moses had been on the mountain for forty days to receive the Torah. So long as Moses was in their midst, the people knew that he communicated with God, and God with him, and therefore God was accessible, close. But when he was absent for nearly six weeks, they panicked. Who else could bridge the gap between the people and God? How could they hear God’s instructions? Through what intermediary could they make contact with the divine presence?
That is why God said to Moses, “Let them build me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.” The key word here is the verb sh-kh-n, to dwell. Never before had it been used in connection with God. It eventually became a keyword of Judaism itself. From it came the word Mishkan meaning a sanctuary, and Shekhinah, the divine presence.
Central to its meaning is the idea of closeness. Shakhen in Hebrew means a neighbour, the person who lives next door. What the Israelites needed and what God gave them was a way of feeling as close to God as to our next-door neighbour.
That is what the patriarchs and matriarchs had. God spoke to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah intimately, like a friend. He told Abraham and Sarah that they would have a child. He explained to Rebecca why she was suffering such acute pain in pregnancy. He appeared to Jacob at key moments in his life telling him not to be afraid.
That is not what the Israelites had experienced until now. They had seen God bringing plagues on the Egyptians. They had seen Him divide the sea. They had seen Him send manna from heaven and water from a rock. They had heard His commanding voice at Mount Sinai and found it almost unbearable. They said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.” God had appeared to them as an overwhelming presence, an irresistible force, a light so bright that to look at it makes you blind, a voice so strong it makes you go deaf.
So for God to be accessible, not just to the pioneers of faith – the patriarchs and matriarchs – but to every member of a large nation, was a challenge, as it were, for God Himself. He had to do what the Jewish mystics called tzimtzum, “contract” Himself, screen His light, soften His voice, hide His glory within a thick cloud, and allow the infinite to take on the dimensions of the finite.
But that, as it were, was the easy part. The difficult part had nothing to do with God and everything to do with us. How do we come to sense the presence of God? It isn’t difficult to do so standing at the foot of Mount Everest or seeing the Grand Canyon. You do not have to be very religious or even religious at all, to feel awe in the presence of the sublime. The psychologist Abraham Maslow, whom we encountered a few weeks ago in these pages, spoke about “peak experiences”, and saw them as the essence of the spiritual encounter.
But how do you feel the presence of God in the midst of everyday life? Not from the top of Mount Sinai but from the plain beneath? Not when it is surrounded by thunder and lightning as it was at the great revelation, but when it is just a day among days?
That is the life-transforming secret of the name of the parsha, Terumah. It means “a contribution”. God said to Moses: “Tell the Israelites to take for me a contribution. You are to receive the contribution for me from everyone whose heart prompts them to give” (25:2). The best way of encountering God is to give.
The very act of giving flows from, or leads to, the understanding that what we give is part of what we were given. It is a way of giving thanks, an act of gratitude. That is the difference in the human mind between the presence of God and the absence of God.
If God is present, it means that what we have is His. He created the universe. He made us. He gave us life. He breathed into us the very air we breathe. All around us is the majesty, the plenitude, of God’s generosity: the light of the sun, the gold of the stone, the green of the leaves, the song of the birds. This is what we feel reading the great creation psalms we read every day in the morning service. The world is God’s art gallery and His masterpieces are everywhere.
When life is a given, you acknowledge this by giving back.
But if life is not a given because there is no Giver, if the universe came into existence only because of a random fluctuation in the quantum field, if there is nothing in the universe that knows we exist, if there is nothing to the human body but a string of letters in the genetic code and to the human mind but electrical impulses in the brain, if our moral convictions are self-serving means of self-preservation and our spiritual aspirations mere delusions, then it is difficult to feel gratitude for the gift of life. There is no gift if there is no giver. There is only a series of meaningless accidents, and it is difficult to feel gratitude for an accident.
The Torah therefore tells us something simple and practical. Give, and you will come to see life as a gift. You don’t need to be able to prove God exists. All you need is to be thankful that you exist – and the rest will follow. -
That is how God came to be close to the Israelites through the building of the sanctuary. It wasn’t the quality of the wood and metals and drapes. It wasn’t the glitter of jewels on the breastplate of the High Priest. It wasn’t the beauty of the architecture or the smell of the sacrifices. It was the fact that it was built out of the gifts of “everyone whose heart prompts them to give” (Ex. 25:2). Where people give voluntarily to one another and to holy causes, that is where the divine presence rests.
Hence the special word that gives its name to this week’s parsha: Terumah. I’ve translated it as “a contribution” but it actually has a subtly different meaning for which there is no simple English equivalent. It means “something you lift up” by dedicating it to a sacred cause. You lift it up, then it lifts you up. The best way of scaling the spiritual heights is simply to give in gratitude for the fact that you have been given.
God doesn’t live in a house of stone. He lives in the hearts of those who give.
What is the purpose of the light hanging over the ark?
ANSWER:
It's to symbolize the light that burned always in the sanctuary in front of the Holy of Holies. When they kindled the lamps every evening, (there were seven lamps) in the morning naturally they burned out. But always in the days of Shimon Hatzadik, it always happened that one of the seven lamps continued to burn. Every morning when the Kohanim entered the sanctuary, they found that one lamp continued to burn. And that's a symbol that the lamp of the Torah, the presence of Hashem in our nation, will burn forever. Which means that the Jewish nation is going to be a light forever.
After Shimon Hatzadik passed away, this miracle did not continue, it happened sometimes. That's the symbolism of that lamp, that there is a lamp that burns forever, it's called the Eternal Lamp. Now the Jewish people symbolize that lamp, and forever they're going to be a light to this world even though people are puffing with might and mane trying to put out the lamp, it won't go out.
It'll keep on burning forever.
Good Shabbos To All
This is transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures. To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
Parshas Mishpatim 5776
This was transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures. To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
QUESTION:
On the first date, when a bachur and a young lady are discussing and negotiating their future, what is the second statement one should make?
ANSWER:
The first statement you should also discuss. Whatever the statements are, however one thing I want to tell you that is good advice - don't talk about yourself, and don't be open hearted. It's a fatal error to make admissions, you or she should try to be good salesmen, and you have to sell yourself. That's the purpose of meeting; not to lose a customer. So of course she has to go to the hairdresser before he comes, to make the biggest hit she can, and he has to make the best impression too, but their words are very important.
I want to tell you something, it's not important only to make an effect at this meeting, the first words are remembered for ever and ever. Sixty years later the old lady will remind him what he said then, or he'll remember what she said then. If the first impression is enchanting and entrancing, then that's how it's going to remain. Very important to make the first impression, the best. Now what to say, that needs a whole manual, I won't have time for it now, but what not to say I can surely tell you. Don't say anything wrong about yourself, or about your family, any faults. Try to sell yourself but in a way that will be successful, not a way that it'll make somebody feel that you're boasting.
Now, in the conversation between the prospective choson and kallah, it is very important however to hear the other parties statements. What does that person talk about? It's very important. If the boy talks about his yeshiva, his rebbi, about the shiurim, about his learning, it may be boring to her, but she should listen. It's a sign that his heart is in the Torah, he's interested in learning. If a boy talks about, he attended a wedding in Baltimore, or they have good meals in the yeshiva, other things like that, she should listen too. He should listen to her, what she's interested in. If travel, good times, expensive good times, he should listen. If she's interested in home, in domestic arts, no question it's a very great recommendation. If she's interested in idealism too, he should listen, and let her talk, because that's how he's going to find out if that's the one that he wants.
One of the most famous phrases in the Torah makes its appearance in this week’s parsha. It has often been used to characterise Jewish faith as a whole. It consists of two words: na’aseh venishma, literally, “we will do and we will hear” (Ex. 24:7). What does this mean and why does it matter?
There are two famous interpretations, one ancient, the other modern. The first appears in the Babylonian Talmud,[1] where it is taken to describe the enthusiasm and whole-heartedness with which the Israelites accepted the covenant with God at Mount Sinai. When they said to Moses, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do and we will hear”, they were saying, in effect: Whatever God asks of us, we will do – saying this before they had heard any of the commandments. The words “We will hear”, imply that they had not yet heard – not the Ten Commandments, or the detailed laws that followed as set out in our parsha. So keen were they to signal their assent to God that they agreed to His demands before knowing what they were.[2]
This reading, adopted also by Rashi in his commentary to the Torah, is difficult because it depends on reading the narrative out of chronological sequence (using the principle that “there is no before and after in the Torah”). The events of chapter 24, on this interpretation, happened before chapter 20, the account of the revelation at Mount Sinai and the Ten Commandments. Ibn Ezra, Rashbam and Ramban all disagree and read the chapters in chronological sequence. For them, the words na’aseh venishma mean not, “we will do and we will hear”, but simply, “we will do and we will obey.”
The second interpretation – not the plain sense of the text but important nonetheless – has been given often in modern Jewish thought. On this view na’aseh venishma means, “We will do and we will understand.”[3] From this they derive the conclusion that we can only understand Judaism by doing it, by performing the commands and living a Jewish life. In the beginning is the deed.[4] Only then comes the grasp, the insight, the comprehension.
This is a signal and substantive point. The modern Western mind tends to put things in the opposite order. We seek to understand what we are committing ourselves to before making the commitment. That is fine when what is at stake is signing a contract, buying a new mobile phone, or purchasing a subscription, but not when making a deep existential commitment. The only way to understand leadership is to lead. The only way to understand marriage is to get married. The only way to understand whether a certain career path is right for you is to actually try it for an extended period. Those who hover on the edge of a commitment, reluctant to make a decision until all the facts are in, will eventually find that life has passed them by.[5] The only way to understand a way of life is to take the risk of living it.[6] So: na’aseh venishma, “We will do and eventually, through extended practice and long exposure, we will understand.”
In my Introduction to this year’s Covenant and Conversation, I suggested a quite different third interpretation, based on the fact that the Israelites are described by the Torah as ratifying the covenant three times: once before they heard the commandments and twice afterward. There is a fascinating difference between the way the Torah describes the first two of these responses and the third:
The people all responded together, “We will do [na’aseh] everything the Lord has said.” (Ex. 19:8)
When Moses went and told the people all the Lord’s words and laws, they responded with one voice, “Everything the Lord has said we will do [na’aseh].” (Ex. 24:3)
Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it to the people. They responded, “We will do and hear [na’aseh ve-nishma] everything the Lord has said.” (Ex. 24:7)
The first two responses, which refer only to action (na’aseh), are given unanimously. They people respond “together”. They do so “with one voice”. The third, which refers not only to doing but also to hearing (nishma), involves no unanimity. “Hearing” here means many things: listening, paying attention, understanding, absorbing, internalising, responding and obeying. It refers, in other words, to the spiritual, inward dimension of Judaism.
From this, an important consequence follows. Judaism is a community of doing rather than of “hearing”. There is an authoritative code of Jewish law. When it comes to halakhah, the way of Jewish doing, we seek consensus.
By contrast, though there are undoubtedly principles of Jewish faith, when it comes to spirituality there is no single normative Jewish approach. Judaism has had its priests and prophets, its rationalists and mystics, its philosophers and poets. Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, speaks in a multiplicity of voices. Isaiah was not Ezekiel. The book of Proverbs comes from a different mindset than the books of Amos and Hosea. The Torah contains law and narrative, history and mystic vision, ritual and prayer. There are norms about how to act as Jews. But there are few about how to think and feel as Jews.
We experience God in different ways. Some find him in nature, in what Wordsworth called “a sense sublime / Of something far more deeply interfused, / Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, / And the round ocean and the living air.” Others find him in interpersonal emotion, in the experience of loving and being loved – what Rabbi Akiva meant when he said that in a true marriage, “the Divine presence is between” husband and wife.
Some find God in the prophetic call: “Let justice roll down like a river, and righteousness like a never-failing stream” (Amos 5:24). Others find Him in study, “rejoicing in the words of Your Torah … for they are our life
and the length of our days; on them we will meditate day and night.” Yet others find Him in prayer, discovering that God is close to all who call on him in truth.
There are those who find God in joy, dancing and singing as did King David when he brought the Holy Ark into Jerusalem. Others – or the same people at different points in their life – find Him in the depths, in tears and remorse and a broken heart. Einstein found God in the “fearful symmetry” and ordered complexity of the universe. Rav Kook found Him in the harmony of diversity. Rav Soloveitchik found Him in the loneliness of being as it reaches out to the soul of Being itself.
There is a normative way of doing the holy deed, but there are many ways of hearing the holy voice, encountering the sacred presence, feeling at one and the same time how small we are yet how great the universe we inhabit, how insignificant we must seem when set against the vastness of space and the myriads of stars, yet how momentously significant we are, knowing that God has set His image and likeness upon us and placed us here, in this place, at this time, with these gifts, in these circumstances, with a task to perform if we are able to discern it. We can find God on the heights and in the depths, in loneliness and togetherness, in love and fear, in gratitude and need, in dazzling light and in the midst of deep darkness. We can find God by seeking Him, but sometimes He finds us when we least expect it.
That is the difference between na’aseh and nishma. We do the Godly deed “together”. We respond to His commands “with one voice”. But we hear God’s presence in many ways, for though God is One, we are all different, and we encounter Him each in our own way.
The Ten Commandments are the most famous religious-and-moral code in history. Until recently they adorned American courtrooms. They still adorn most synagogue arks. Rembrandt gave them their classic artistic expression in his portrait of Moses, about to break the tablets on seeing the golden calf. John Rogers Herbert’s massive painting of Moses bringing down the tablets of law dominates the main committee room of the House of Lords. The twin tablets with their ten commands are the enduring symbol of eternal law under the sovereignty of God.
It is worth remembering, of course, that the “ten commandments” are not Ten Commandments. The torah calls them aseret hadevarim (Ex. 34:28), and tradition terms them aseret hadibrot, meaning the "ten words" or "ten utterances”. We can understand this better in the light of documentary discoveries in the twentieth century, especially Hittite covenants or “suzerainty treaties” dating back to 1400-1200 BCE, that is, around the time of Moses and the exodus. These treaties often contained a twofold statement of the laws laid down in the treaty, first in general outline, then in specific detail. That is precisely the relationship between the “ten utterances” and the detailed commands of parshat Mishpatim (Ex. 22-23). The former are the general outline, the basic principles of the law.
Usually they are portrayed, graphically and substantively, as two sets of five, the first dealing with relationships between us and God (including honouring our parents since they like God brought us into being), the second with the relations between us and our fellow humans.
However, it also makes sense to see them as three groups of three. The first three (one God, no other God, do not take God’s name in vain) are about God, the Author and Authority of the laws. The second set (keep Shabbat, honour parents, do not murder) are about createdness. Shabbat reminds us of the birth of the universe. Our parents brought us into being. Murder is forbidden because we are all created in God’s image (Gen. 9:6). The third three (don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t bear false witness) are about the basic institutions of society: the sanctity of marriage, the integrity of private property, and the administration of justice. Lose any of these and freedom begins to crumble.
This structure serves to emphasise what a strange command the tenth is: “Do not be envious of your neighbour's house. Do not be envious of your neighbour's wife, his slave, his maid, his ox, his donkey, or anything else that is your neighbour's.” At least on the surface this is different from all the other rules, which involve speech or action.[1] Envy, covetousness, desiring what someone else has, is an emotion, not a thought, a word or a deed. And surely we can’t help our emotions. They used to be called the “passions”, precisely because we are passive in relation to them. So how can envy be forbidden at all? Surely it only makes sense to command or forbid matters that are within our control. In any case, why should the occasional spasm of envy matter if it does not lead to anything harmful to other people?
Here, it seems to me, the Torah is conveying a series of fundamental truths we forget at our peril. First, as we have been reminded by cognitive behavioural therapy, what we believe affects what we feel.[2] Narcissists, for instance, are quick to take offence because they think other people are talking about or “dissing” (disrespecting) them, whereas often other people aren’t interested in us at all. Their belief is false, but that does not stop them feeling angry and resentful.
Second, envy is one of the prime drivers of violence in society. It is what led Iago to mislead Othello with tragic consequences. Closer to home it is what led Cain to murder Abel. It is what led Abraham and then Isaac to fear for their lives when famine forced them temporarily to leave home. They believe that, married as they are to attractive women, the local ruler will kill them so that they can take their wives into their harem.
Most poignantly, envy lay at the heart of the hatred of the brothers for Joseph. They resented his special treatment at the hands of their father, the richly embroidered cloak he wore, and his dreams of becoming the ruler of them all. That is what led them to contemplate killing him and eventually to sell him as a slave.
Rene Girard, in his classic Violence and the Sacred, says that the most basic cause of violence is mimetic desire, that is, the desire to have what someone else has, which is ultimately the desire to be what someone else is. Envy can lead to breaking many of the other commands: it can move people to adultery, theft, false testimony and even murder.[3]
Jews have especial reason to fear envy. It surely played a part in the existence of anti-semitism throughout the centuries. Non-Jews envied Jews their ability to prosper in adversity – the strange phenomenon we noted in parshat Shemot that “the more they afflicted them the more they grew and the more they spread.” They also and especially envied them their sense of chosenness (despite the fact that virtually every other nation in history has seen itself as chosen[4]). It is absolutely essential that we, as Jews, should conduct ourselves with an extra measure of humility and modesty.
So the prohibition of envy is not odd at all. It is the most basic force undermining the social harmony and order that are the aim of the Ten Commandments as a whole. Not only though do they forbid it; they also help us rise above it. It is precisely the first three commands, reminding us of God’s presence in history and our lives, and the second three, reminding us of our createdness, that help us rise above envy.
We are here because God wanted us to be. We have what God wanted us to have. Why then should we seek what others have? If what matters most in our lives is how we appear in the eyes of God, why should we want anything else merely because someone else has it? It is when we stop defining ourselves in relation to God and start defining ourselves in relation to other people that competition, strife, covetousness and envy enter our minds, and they lead only to unhappiness.
If your new car makes me envious, I may be motivated to buy a more expensive model that I never needed in the first place, which will give me satisfaction for a few days until I discover another neighbour who has an even more costly vehicle, and so it goes. Should I succeed in satisfying my own envy, I will do so only at the cost of provoking yours, in a cycle of conspicuous consumption that has no natural end. Hence the bumper sticker: “He who has the most toys when he dies, wins.” The operative word here is “toys”, for this is the ethic of the kindergarten, and it should have no place in a mature life.
The antidote to envy is gratitude. “Who is rich?” asked Ben Zoma, and replied, “One who rejoices in what he has.” There is a beautiful Jewish practice that, done daily, is life-transforming. The first words we say on waking are Modeh ani lefanekha, “I thank you, living and eternal King.” We thank before we think.
Judaism is gratitude with attitude. Cured of letting other people’s happiness diminish our own, we release a wave of positive energy allowing us to celebrate what we have instead of thinking about what other people have, and to be what we are instead of wanting to be what we are not. SHABBAT SHALOM
Jacob was on his death-bed. He summoned his children. He wanted to bless them before he died. But the text begins with a strange semi-repetition:
“Gather around so I can tell you what will happen to you in days to come.
Assemble and listen, sons of Jacob; listen to your father Israel.” (Gen. 49:1-2)
This seems to be saying the same thing twice, with one difference. In the first sentence, there is a reference to “what will happen to you in the days to come” (literally, “at the end of days”). This is missing from the second sentence.
Rashi, following the Talmud,[1] says that “Jacob wished to reveal what would happen in the future, but the Divine presence was removed from him.” He tried to foresee the future but found he could not.
This is no minor detail. It is a fundamental feature of Jewish spirituality. We believe that we cannot predict the future when it comes to human beings. We make the future by our choices. The script has not yet been written. The future is radically open.
This was a major difference between ancient Israel and ancient Greece. The Greeks believed in fate, moira, even blind fate, ananke. When the Delphic oracle told Laius that he would have a son who would kill him, he took every precaution to make sure it did not happen. When the child was born, Laius nailed him by his feet to a rock and left him to die. A passing shepherd found and saved him, and he was eventually raised by the king and queen of Corinth. Because his feet were permanently misshapen, he came to be known as Oedipus (the “swollen-footed”).
The rest of the story is well known. Everything the oracle foresaw happened, and every act designed to avoid it actually helped bring it about. Once the oracle has been spoken and fate has been sealed, all attempts to avoid it are in vain. This cluster of ideas lies at the heart of one of the great Greek contributions to civilization: tragedy.
Astonishingly, given the many centuries of Jewish suffering, biblical Hebrew has no word for tragedy. The word ason means “a mishap, a disaster, a calamity” but not tragedy in the classic sense. A tragedy is a drama with a sad outcome involving a hero destined to experience downfall or destruction through a character-flaw or a conflict with an overpowering force, such as fate. Judaism has no word for this, because we do not believe in fate as something blind, inevitable and inexorable. We are free. We can choose. As Isaac Bashevis Singer wittily said: “We must be free: we have no choice!”
Rarely is this more powerfully asserted than in the Unetaneh tokef prayer we say on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Even after we have said that “On Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed … who will live and who will die”, we still go on to say, “But teshuvah, prayer and charity avert the evil of the decree.” There is no sentence against which we cannot appeal, no verdict we cannot mitigate by showing that we have repented and changed.
There is a classic example of this in Tanakh.
“In those days Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said, ‘This is what the Lord says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover.’ Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, ‘Remember, Lord, how I have walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in your eyes.’ And Hezekiah wept bitterly. Before Isaiah had left the middle court, the word of the Lord came to him: ‘Go back and tell Hezekiah, the ruler of my people: This is what the Lord, God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal you.’” (2 Kings 20:1-5; Isaiah 38:1-5)
The prophet Isaiah had told King Hezekiah he would not recover, but he did. He lived for another fifteen years. God heard his prayer and granted him stay of execution. From this the Talmud infers, “Even if a sharp sword rests upon your neck, you should not desist from prayer.”[2] We pray for a good fate but we do not reconcile ourselves to fatalism.
Hence there is a fundamental difference between a prophecy and a prediction. If a prediction comes true, it has succeeded. If a prophecy comes true, it has failed. A prophet delivers not a prediction but a warning. He or she does not simply say, “This will happen”, but rather, “This will happen unless you change.” The prophet speaks to human freedom, not to the inevitability of fate.
I was once present at a gathering where Bernard Lewis, the great scholar of Islam, was asked to predict the outcome of a certain American foreign policy intervention. He gave a magnificent reply. “I am a historian, so I only make predictions about the past. What is more, I am a retired historian, so even my past is passé.” This was a profoundly Jewish answer.
In the twenty-first century we know much at a macro- and micro-level. We look up and see a universe of a hundred billion galaxies each of a hundred billion stars. We look down and see a human body containing a hundred trillion cells, each with a double copy of the human genome, 3.1 billion letters long, enough if transcribed to fill a library of 5,000 books. But there remains one thing we do not know and will never know: What tomorrow will bring. The past, said L. P. Hartley, is a foreign country. But the future is an undiscovered one. That is why predictions so often fail.
That is the essential difference between nature and human nature. The ancient Mesopotamians could make accurate predictions about the movement of planets, yet even today, despite brain-scans and neuroscience, we are still not able to predict what people will do. Often, they take us by surprise.
The reason is that we are free. We choose, we make mistakes, we learn, we change, we grow. The failure at school becomes the winner of a Nobel Prize. The leader who disappointed, suddenly shows courage and wisdom in a crisis. The driven businessman has an intimation of mortality and decides to devote the rest of his life to helping the poor. Some of the most successful people I ever met were written off by their teachers at school and told they would never amount to anything. We constantly defy predictions. This is something science has not yet explained and perhaps never will. Some believe freedom is an illusion. But it isn’t. It’s what makes us human.
We are free because we are not merely objects. We are subjects. We respond not just to physical events but to the way we perceive those events. We have minds, not just brains. We have thoughts, not just sensations. We react but we can also choose not to react. There is something about us that is irreducible to material, physical causes and effects.
The way our ancestors spoke about this remains true and profound. We are free because God is free and He made us in His image. That is what is meant by the three words God told Moses at the burning bush when he asked God for His name. God replied, Ehyeh asher Ehyeh. This is often translated as “I am what I am,” but what it really means is, “I will be who and how I choose to be.” I am the God of freedom. I cannot be predicted. Note that God says this at the start of Moses’ mission to lead a people from slavery to freedom. He wanted the Israelites to become living testimony to the power of freedom.
Do not believe that the future is written. It isn’t. There is no fate we cannot change, no prediction we cannot defy. We are not predestined to fail; neither are we pre-ordained to succeed. We do not predict the future, because we make the future: by our choices, our willpower, our persistence and our determination to survive.
The proof is the Jewish people itself. The first reference to Israel outside the Bible is engraved on the Merneptah stele, inscribed around 1225 BCE by Pharaoh Merneptah IV, Ramses II’s successor. It reads: “Israel is laid waste, her seed is no more.” It was, in short, an obituary. The Jewish people have been written off many times by their enemies, but they remains, after almost four millennia, still young and strong.
That is why, when Jacob wanted to tell his children what would happen to them in the future, the Divine spirit was taken away from him. Our children continue to surprise us, as we continue to surprise others. Made in the image of God, we are free. Sustained by the blessings of God, we can become greater than anyone, even ourselves, could foresee.—
After Yosef revealed his identity to his brothers, he gave them some parting words of advice for their journey back home to Yaakov. אל תרגזו בדרך al tirgazu badarech - do not be quarrelsome on the way. Rashi explains that with the long journey home, there would be ample time to reflect on how everything came to be. Naturally, they would discuss how it was that Yosef came down to Mitzrayim in the first place, and Yosef was worried that the blaming games may begin, with the brothers pointing fingers at each other, so he warns them against it.
The gemara in Mesichta Taanis (10b) offers another interpretation of this possuk, in the name of Rebbe Elazar: אל תתעסקו בדבר הלכה שמא תרגזו אליכם הדרך- do not involve yourselves with a dvar halacha on the road, perhaps it will cause you to lose your way. Most news stations play the news highlights, traffic, weather and financial news etc. over and over again at specific intervals. On a longer route, how many times can one listen to the same news updates? A person that is careful with his time will make sure to utilize any time spent commuting wisely and productively. Many will use the time spent commuting to listen to a shiur or some other form of engaging in Torah learning. Furthermore, the gemara (ibid) tells us that a harsh punishment is befitting for two people that travel together without sharing words of Torah. Yosef knew that obviously, his brothers would travel and discuss Torah at the same time. As a word of advice, he told them not to lose sight of the roads. The gemara explains that what he meant was “not to become to arayngetun in the sugya”- i.e. keep the discussion light.
The Gemara offers yet another explanation:
אל תפסיעו פסיעה גסה- don’t take large steps. Presumably, they were rushing to get home to Yaakov Avinu to bring him the good tidings. Yosef knew that they would want to go as fast as possible. Therefore, Yosef told them not to take such large steps, because large steps cause a loss of 1/500th of one’s eyesight (gemara ibid).
The above explanations can all be explained in one light. Yosef was giving them mussar. Before they sold him down to slavery, they gathered together as an ad-hoc beis din to decide his fate. Yosef noted that the din torah was held, baderech, on the road. “You were busy with a dvar halacha about me, on the road, and a serious matter may cause one to lose his way, meaning, you may come to the wrong conclusion!” When we are on the road, we tend to lack yishuv hadaas/peace of mind. Should this not have been brought back to the beis medrash to be discussed at length, perhaps with Yaakov?
Furthermore, Yosef tells them that “they took large steps, meaning, they were hasty to judge him. Don’t Chazal warn us that, hevai mesunim badin- be patient when passing judgment? What happens when things are done too quickly? Hastiness can result in a lack of clarity.
Accordingly, when the Gemara says that large steps cause a loss of vision, this means that making quick decisions causes blurriness; a loss of the ability to see things clearly.
In truth, we all act as a judge when we see things happening. At times, when people act in certain ways, we may be quick to render a judgement, and at times, when questionable things happen to us, we may chas v’shalom, be quick to pass judgment on HaShem. But if only we would wait patiently, we would see a different picture! Hevai mesunim badin!
Interestingly, the gemara in Mesichta Brachos (43b) tells us that the remedy for this loss of vision is the wine of Kiddush on Friday night. Rashi understands this to refer to the drinking of the Kiddush wine, but some commentaries explain that this refers to the gazing into the wine. In fact, some have a minhag to look into the wine and see ones reflection. Perhaps, the reasoning behind this remedy is that Shaabos is a time when “large steps” are forbidden. For most of us, Shaabos is the first time in the week that one has a chance to actually stop for a moment, look at himself (his reflection in the wine) and contemplate the different happenings and occurrences. Suddenly, after the menucha of Shaabos hits him, coupled with a look in the “mirror”, he starts to see a much clearer picture, and he understands things differently than the way he perceived them during the week.
We live in a very judgemental society. Hevai mesunim badin! In truth, there is usually never a reason to judge others, but let’s face it, we are all human. If we are already passing a judgement, then at the least, let us be patient when coming to our conclusion. Do we have all the facts? Are we perhaps biased and therefore jumping to an unfair conclusion? If we are patient in our judgement of others and towards HaShem, surely we will be treated that way as well.
Parshas Vayigash 5776
This is transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures.
To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
QUESTION:
Da'as Torah, what does that mean?
ANSWER:
Da'as Torah means: It states that the person who walks in the ways of the Torah, thinks in Torah, after a while na'aseh ki'mayan hamisgaber, he becomes like a fountain that produces its own water. Now pay attention!
Some people are like a bor sid, like a cemented pit. When it rains into the pit, the pit becomes full of good fresh rainwater. But the rainwater is only what's in the pit, when you use it up, nothing is left. Some people know only what they learn, but when you learn and you practice, and you become a different personality, then not only are you a pit, you become a spring, a well, and water comes out of the earth of its own, a mayan hamisgaber.
So when a person becomes a mayan hamisgaber, then everything that he says is Torah, even though it's not written in the Torah. Shimon b'no omer, kol yomei godalti bein ha'chachomim v'lo matzasi la'guf tov ela shtika (Avos 1:17). I never found anything better for the body than keeping quiet. It's good advice by the way, best advice to keep quiet, it's good for your health. Now where is it written, he said lo matzasi, I didn't find it. Why didn't he quote a posuk? You don't need a posuk, lomo li kroh, sevoroh hu, you don't need a posuk, it's a sevoroh. Once you gain da'as Torah, your mind is worked out properly then whatever you think is called Torah.
That's why we have to listen to our chachomim. If a chochom toroni, a great man who is full of Torah says something, it's not merely what he learned. Don't tell him, "Where does it say, show me the siman and se'if in Shulchan Aruch?" Never mind, it's not in Shulchan Aruch, it's in this Shulchan Aruch he says. Da'as Torah is something you have to listen to, because a man's mind becomes a fountain and Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants us to listen to that.
Parshas Mikeitz 5776
This is transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures. To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
QUESTION:
When Rebbi told a wealthy man, "Who said I'm a wealthy man, and he wanted more respect, so Rebbi said, "Why don't you dress better?" Please explain.
ANSWER:
A person who has wealth has a certain importance, and Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants him to utilize that importance. The Gemoro says in Masches Succah (29a), why are nichsei ba'alei batim nimsorin l'malchus, why do they lose their property? Sometimes the government comes and appropriates their property, why should they be punished and lose their property? The Gemoro says because they were not moiche the ovrei aveirah. Which means, if you're a wealthy man, you're expected to utilize your importance to influence people towards avodas Hashem.
Here is a glorious example. Moses Montefiore a frum Sefardi Jew; he became Lord Mayor of London and he was always a frum Jew, always, everywhere, a Kiddush Hashem. He utilized his wealth and his power to uphold the Torah. England never really had Reform Judaism up till recently, that's because of the influence of people like Reb Moshe Montefiore, zichrono l'brocho.
Now, when a wealthy man doesn't demonstrate who he is, and you think he's a nobody, he's an anav, and he doesn't obligate himself to defend the Torah, then he's failing in his function. So Rebbi said, "If you're an important person, dress like an important person, and then you'll have influence."
By coming here it will be a kiddush Hashem. People see that millionaires also come to Rebbis Yeshiva, however if you come like a plain schlepper, you're not making a kiddush Hashem. Therefore it's important for a wealthy person to dress like an affluent person and utilize his personality and influence to uphold the Torah. He becomes a member of the Board of Directors of the Yeshiva, he comes to the bais haknesses to shiurim. A millionaire sits at the shiurim, that's a kiddush Hashem.
Therefore certainly a person of affluence has to demonstrate to a certain extent who he is, in order to utilize his influence.
Important Numbers
