Shaarei Tzedek - Orthodox Judaism in Downtown Toronto

by Rabbi DovBer Weisman.
This Shabbat is one of the few throughout the year that is given a special name.

The day we read Parshat Beshalach is called Shabbat Shira (the Shabbat of Song), commemorating the glorious and awe-inspiring event when, after the miraculous deliverance from the Egyptians at the Red Sea, the Children of Israel simultaneously burst forth into a song of praise to Hashem. However, beyond giving praise to Hashem for miraculously saving us, the concept of shira (song) has a far deeper significance in correlation to our mission and goal in life.

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Yosef Y. Jacobson

Liberation From Tolerance

The English translations of the Bible rarely capture the multi-dimensional underpinnings behind many words in the Hebrew tongue.

One example in this week’s portion (Vaeira) is telling. “Therefore,” G-d speaks to Moses, “Say to the Children of Israel: I am G-d, and I shall take you out from under the burdens of Egypt; I shall rescue you from their slavery; I shall redeem you (1).”

The Hebrew word for “burdens” — sivlos — can also be translated as “tolerance.” The two themes are connected, since tolerance is a form of burden carrying, of accepting a challenging reality. So G-d might be telling Moses in this passage, “Say to the Children of Israel: I am G-d, and I shall take you out from (under the burden of) tolerating Egypt.” I shall, in other words, liberate you from the condition of tolerating the Egyptian bondage (2).

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© Rabbi David Lapin, 2007

Trust and trustworthiness

Trust depends on more than the trustworthiness of the other. Trust also depends on our own openness to trusting. For, although being trustworthy is a virtue; trusting is an art.

Benei Ysrael trusted Moshe and Aharon in last week’s Parsha: Va’ya’amein ha’am (”And the people believed..” [1]). Yet this week in 6:9, there is a turn of events in which they appear no longer to believe him.

In Shemot 6:9 according to the Targum and others, (”.and they would not accept Moshe’s words.”), Benei Ysrael showed no trust in Moshe. Their inability to trust Moshe was not because Moshe was an untrustworthy man. Rather it was because they had lost the art of trusting. How did they lose it and why?

Hearing does not always mean accepting

First let’s explore the meaning of that verse and how the Targum ands others see it as a loss of trust:

English and Hebrew are two of civilization’s richest languages but for opposite reasons. English, with a vocabulary of over 177,000 words, is rich in synonym. Many different English words may at times be used to describe a single idea, each word offering a subtly different shade of meaning. Hebrew on the other hand, has a very small vocabulary and a single word will often convey many disparate ideas and meanings. Hebrew, more than English, must be understood contextually. English is rich in its breadth. Hebrew is rich in its density and depth.

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By Rabbi Simon Jacobson

Who is the individual identified by the following clues?

• A man known by a name not given to him by his parents.
• Indeed, till this very day this man’s birth name remains unclear.
• Though he led a great nation, his people saw him as a stranger.
• A man of no words, yet his words become immortalized and are remembered forever like no other mans’ words.
• He spent his most formative years away from home – on the water, in a foreign palace and then in a distant land. But he came to build the most powerful home in existence.
• History’s greatest leader and humblest man.
• He is the most famous man in history, yet no one knows where he is buried till this very day.
• Who is this mysterious man, riddled with contradictions?

None other than Moses.

The mystery of Moses lies in his name: Though he was named by his parents (1), he is known by his name Moses – Moshe – given to him by Pharaoh’s daughter. Moses’ mother, to save him from Pharaoh’s decree that all newborn Jewish males be drowned in the Nile, placed her three-month-old infant in a basket and concealed it in the rushes that grew along the Nile riverbank. Pharaoh’s daughter discovered the weeping child when she went to bathe in the river. She therefore named the child Moshe (“the drawn one”), “because I have drawn him from the water” (Exodus 2:10).

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UNIVERSAL TORAH: SHEMOS

By Rabbi Avraham Greenbaum

Torah Reading: SHEMOS Exodus 1:1-6:1; Haftara: Isaiah 27:6-28:13, 29:22-23 (Sephardi ritual: Jeremiah 1:1-2:3).

“AND THESE ARE THE NAMES OF THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL”:
ISRAEL ON THE WORLD STAGE

With the beginning of the book of SHEMOS, “Exodus”, Israel enters the world stage as a people. Pharaoh himself, their oppressor, recognizes them as “the PEOPLE of the Children of Israel, many and mighty.” (Ex. 1:9). Their servitude in Egypt is in fulfillment of the promise given to their founding father, Abraham: “Surely KNOW that your seed will be strangers in a land that is not theirs and they will serve them and they will oppress them. And also the people that they will serve I will judge, and afterwards they will go forth with great wealth” (Gen. 15:13-14).

The Exodus of the People of Israel from Egypt is the pivotal event in the history of mankind, paradigm of all true freedom and liberation, the eternal proof that G-d is not only the Creator of the natural world but also directs and controls all aspects of human affairs with HASHGACHAH PRATIS - “providence in every detail” - for good.

For the sake of G-d’s self-revelation to the world, it is not sufficient that He should be known privately to a select few. The climax of G-d’s revelation is when “the earth will be full of the KNOWLEDGE of G-d like the waters cover the seas” (Isaiah 11:9). Even those who are turned away from G-d, even those who resist knowing Him, must be forced to admit — even against their will — that G-d is King of the whole world.

Thus when Moses first calls on Pharaoh in the name of G-d to release His People, “…and Pharaoh said, ‘Who is HaShem that I should listen to His voice. I do not KNOW HaShem.” (Ex. 5:2). But in the end Pharaoh himself was forced to send them away: “Go, serve HaShem as YOU said” (12:31); “And Egypt said, let me flee from Israel, for HaShem is fighting for them against Egypt” (14:25).

In Egypt the Children of Israel, G-d’s emissaries, were in an upside-down world. “There is an evil that I have seen beneath the sun like a mistake that went forth from before the Ruler: folly is put in many high places while the wealthy [=Israel, Rashi] sit in the low place. I have seen slaves on horses while princes walk like slaves on the ground” (Koheles 10:5-7). Noah cursed the nations of Ham to be “a servant of servants to his brothers” (Gen. 10:25). But now Ham’s second-born, MITZRAIM (Gen. 10:6) — Egypt — were lording it over the choicest of the line of Shem. It looked as though Pharaoh was the “first-born”. G-d’s revelation to the world depended upon showing that “My son, My first-born is Israel” (Ex. 4:22). Even the Egyptians saw this when G-d smote all their first-born while saving all the Israelite first-born.

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© Rabbi David Lapin, 2006

Fear is an intuition; it is a feeling, an emotion. Fear is not the product of data or intellectual process. So, when someone feels afraid, it is not helpful to tell them not to worry, that there is nothing to fear. The way to counter fear is with Faith. Faith is also an intuition, it is also an emotion [1]: faith in yourself, faith in your G-d. Like Fear, you will not experience Faith through the mastery of data or of intellectual process. You access faith through intuitive feeling, not through rational proof.

The feeling of fear in the pits of our stomachs (or wherever else we feel it) is a warning-light. It indicates one of two things: it is either a) a warning that there is real danger in what we are thinking of doing; b) the “danger” is in our own heads and results from inadequate faith in ourselves and in G-d.

When we experience a feeling of fear in any particular area of our lives we need to do a check. Is there any data that suggests real danger in what we are planning? If there is, then we should act to alleviate that danger or abandon or modify the plan. If we can find no signs of real danger, then we should look inward rather than outward. We should question our Faith in ourselves and our Faith in Hashem.

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by Yosef Y. Jacobson

Death of a Tyrant

The small, often helpless nation, whose obituary many an empire and tyrant craved to write for millennia, has instead emerged as the exclusive obituary writer of history. From the dawn of civilization till today, the Jewish people have observed firsthand the rise and fall of countless brutal empires and evil dictators who held the world in a grip of terror and then vanished.

Last Saturday morning, December 30, 2006, Saddam Hussein was executed. Our tiny nation takes up its pen once more to write the obituary of a man who inflicted untold measures of suffering on millions of innocents, a person who chopped off the ears and noses of dissidents, tortured children in front of their parents, gassed thousands to death and craved the extermination of the Land of Israel.

If there was any doubt as to Saddam Hussein’s diehard hatred of Israel, it was dispelled by his declaration on the gallows: “Long live Iraq, Palestine is Arab!” For decades he had sown terror among Israelis — whether through his Scud missile salvoes of the 1991 Gulf War or by bankrolling Palestinian suicide bombers.

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