Shaarei Tzedek – Orthodox Judaism in Downtown Toronto

We Can Only Gain When We No Longer Fear to Lose

Parshat Bamidbar, 5767 (by Rabbi David Lapin)
Anyone unwilling to make himself into an ownerless
desert, cannot master wisdom and Torah

- Bamidbar Rabbah 1:7

Heroic Courage

This week I was training leaders in one of the largest police Agencies in the United States. I found myself in the presence of an impressive group of medal-bearing courageous men and women who many times in their careers had placed their lives at risk to protect the communities they serve. Courage was not a challenge to them. It was a precondition of their work. Yet time and again during our conversations, these men and women asserted their reluctance to take a stand on a variety of troubling ethical issues within their agencies, for fear of career-limiting and possibly career-terminating, consequences. Courage means overcoming fear in the face of potential pain or loss. I realized working with these Commanding Officers, that we often display more courage in the face of physical pain, loss, and even death, than we do in the face of emotional pain, disapproval, rejection or loss of status. Strong, courageous, macho men will sometimes hesitate to call a girl for a date, for fear of rejection!

Moral Courage

It is harder to have the courage of your convictions than it is to risk your life in an heroic act. The courage of your convictions requires that you be willing to adopt a viewpoint that perhaps no one else does. To stand for a principle that no one else will stand for. To defend an individual or group of people who are the victims of popular, vicious attack. In doing so you may lose your friends, lose your status, even your job. In a society that values popularity as much as America does, having the courage of your convictions could entail enormous loss and much pain. Unlike one who risks their life to save a person, there is no heroism attached to one who displays moral courage to defend a principle or to oppose injustice. The Prophets of the Tanach were often maligned for their moral courage, and things have not changed much today.

How do you build moral courage? You build courage by detaching from the things you are afraid to lose. You can only act courageously in a life-threatening situation if you are at that time, not afraid to die. Attachment to life undermines courage and causes us to retreat in the face of danger. Of course, the drive for survival is any organism’s most basic instinct. But as in the case of all instincts, humankind, unlike animals, can choose to overrule its instincts in given situations and act from a position of values rather than of instinct. No matter how hungry we are, we can choose to hold ourselves back from eating food that is not ours or that is not kosher. In that same way we can choose to act courageously, temporarily severing our attachment to life as we risk life to do that which we believe is right.

Letting Go in Order to Hold on

Similarly, for moral courage we need to detach ourselves from status, from the need for social structure and popularity, from the desire for public approval and promotion within the system. Counter-intuitively, those willing to lose their jobs rather than compromise the essence of who they are, are more likely to rise to the top. Those willing to risk their popularity to stand for that in which they believe, are likely to be the more popular and respected individuals in the longer term.

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By Simon Jacobson

In the third month following the children of Israel’s exodus from the land of Egypt; that same day they came into the wilderness of Sinai… And there Israel camped opposite the mountain (Exodus 19:1-2)

At all their other encampments, the verse says vayachanu (“and they camped,” in the plural); here it says vayichan (“and he camped,” in the singular). For all other encampments were in argument and dissent, whereas here they camped as one human, with one heart (Mechilta, Rashi)

Many thinkers argue that our understanding of the universe has evolved from a pluralistic view to a singular view. Earlier in history, our so-called primitive perspective measured the universe with the naked senses, resulting in a perception that the world was made up of many different parts, ruled by diverse forces.

Today, however, we have developed a far more sophisticated appreciation of the universe as one unified whole. The multitude of systems and organisms are all part of a single entity and the countless personalities of nature all fall under several unifying laws that govern all of existence. And the search for the one “unified field theory,” which will explain all phenomena, remains the defining and ultimate scientific achievement.

When exactly did this perception change? When did humankind begin to see – experience – the universe as one unified entity, instead of a composite of myriad pieces?

According to the Torah it happened 3319 years ago today, when the nation of Israel camped opposite Mt. Sinai.

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Who Owns Judaism by Yosef Y. Jacobson

The Desert

This week’s Torah portion, named “Bamidbar,” which means “in the desert,” is always read on the Sabbath preceding the holiday of Shavuos, when we celebrate the giving of the Torah at Sinai, more than 3,300 years ago, in the year 1313 BCE (1).

One reason for this is because the Torah was given “bamidbar,” in a desert. But that only carries the question over: Of all places, why indeed was Torah given in a desert? Our sages describe Sinai as the marriage between G-d and His people (2). Whoever heard of getting married in a barren desert? The Torah should have been given in the Hilton or the Waldorf-Astoria, not in a barren desert?

And why was it really necessary for the Jewish people to wander 40 years in this desert before entering the Promised Land? Was 210 years in Egypt, including more than 80 years of hard labor, not enough? Why liberate them from Egypt only to put them through another 40 years in the wilderness (3)?

There are three primary explanations for the unique relationship between Torah and the desert.

Absolute Sublimity

1) Had the Torah been given in a civilized city or community, people might have defined it as a product of a particular culture, milieu and environment. Sophisticated academics would explain to us the particular “genre” of Torah, as if it were an outdated, modern or post-modern piece of literature, an epic or lyric, a work of history, law, tragedy or philosophy. They would enlighten us as to whether Torah belonged to the time of the Athenians, the Hellenistic age, the Greco-Roman period, the Byzantine age or another period of civilization. Torah would be labeled, classified and qualified. It would be “put into perspective.”

But Torah cannot be put into a particular cultural or artistic perspective. Torah is not culture, literature, art, history, law or fiction. Torah embodies the eternal truths about existence, life and destiny that speak in every language, in every culture, in every age, to every soul. The Torah cannot be reduced to a particular time frame or reference point. It benefits all the arts but never competes with them. Professor Abraham Joshua Heschel put it thus (4):

“Why does the Bible surpass everything created by man? Why is there no work worthy of comparison with it? Why is there no substitute for the Bible, no parallel to the history it has engendered? Why must all who seek the living G-d turn to its pages?

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Parshat Behar-Bechukotai, 5767

© Rabbi David Lapin, 2007

We shall do and we shall hear!

Mishpattim are generally known as those Mitzvot that have clear rational explanations. Chukim are considered mitzvot without clear rationale. Examples of Mishpattim are Mitzvot like the laws of damages, charity, business transaction etc. Chukim would include laws such as Sha’atneiz, Kashrut and Tum’ah.

What about the Mitzvah to study the Torah: is that a Mishpat or is it a Chok? Since there is rationale in studying the Torah, in order to know the Laws, it would appear to be a Mishpat. And yet the first Rashi on Bechukotai makes it clear that when the Torah describes the positive outcomes that would flow from “your walking in My Chukim”, it refers specifically to Ameilus Batorah (toiling in Torah: applying oneself intensely to Torah study). The study of torah is a chok, therefore, not a mishpat.

There are two mitzvot with respect to learning. One is to know the Torah. But there is a second Mitzvah, to toil in the Torah even if you know it perfectly. Clearly then the intended outcome of the Mitzvah of Torah study, is not knowledge. It is something different.

We see the same idea with the glorious statement of Na’aseh veNishmah (we shall do and we shall hear) uttered by the Jewish Nation at Kabbalat Hatorah. Clearly to do, you need to have heard! So what did they mean by the “we shall hear” after the “we shall do”? Before doing they studied in order to know what to do. After doing, their studying was for some higher purpose other than the acquisition of knowledge.

The Rambam paskens at the end of Hilchot Chagigah that even people who do not understand Hebrew, even Chachamim who know the entire Torah already, and even people who cannot hear[1], still have to go to the Beit HaMikdash on Motzei first night Sucot in the year after Shemitta, to hear the King reading from the Torah (Mitzvat Hakheil). What is the purpose of their presence their if they either do not understand, cannot hear or know the whole Torah already?! Again we see, the Mitzvah of studying the Torah goes beyond the acquisition of knowledge and information.

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© Rabbi David Lapin, 2007

One day of Shavuot or seven?

We have three festive holydays a year: Pesach, Shavuot, and Sucot. Pesach and Sucot are each seven days long. Shavuot is one day only..or is it? It is interesting that the only holyday that is not a week long, is called Shavuot “Weeks”! This is not only because of the weeks of the Omer. The Gemarra associates the name “weeks” specifically with the festival itself[1].

Two patterns overlay the Shavuot theme: a pattern of days and a pattern of weeks. Shavuot is both a single-day festival after 49 days of Omer counting, and also it is the week after seven weeks of Omer counting. From the aspect of Issur Melachah (work prohibition) and Korban Musaf Shavuot is in fact only one day (or two, outside of Israel). But from the aspect of the Korban Chagiga (the festive offering for Yomtov) it is seven days (i.e., if the Korban Chagiga was not brought on Shavuot itself, it could be brought any day up to six days after Shavuot.)[2] Each of the days of the whole week (starting with the first day of Shavuot) has some of the flavor of Shavuot and some of its law.

The Omer itself reflects these same two patterns: we count days and we count weeks. In the time of the Beit Hamikdash these were two separate mitzvot and were counted separately. Today we merge them into one counting[3], saying each day how many days we are counting, and how many weeks. The source for needing to count both days and weeks is in our Parsha, Vayikra 23:15-16

The weekly seven-pack

There is a difference between the time unit of the week and all other units. Days, moths and years (at least solar years) are demarcated by fixed natural phenomena. Days are marked by the revolution of the earth, months by the phases of the moon and years by the revolution of the earth around the sun. But a week is a pack of seven days. You could contemplate a month without days or a solar year without months. But you couldn’t contemplate a week without days. The day and the week are inextricably bound together.

We see this bond between days and a week, in the way Shabbat is presented to us: “Six days shall you work, and on the seventh there will be a Shabbat”. Shabbat is not just a day on the calendar. It requires a build-up. The majestic serenity of Shabbat contrasts starkly with the bustling activity of the six days of work. The Torah does not package festivals with the time that precedes them in the way that it packages Shabbat with the six days of work.

The tension that creates rapture

Festivals are about joy. Shabbat is about rapture. Rapture requires anticipation, build-up and tension. The six days leading to Shabbat are not just about contrast, nor are they a passive time of waiting. The six days are instruments of anticipation designed to enhance the rapture of Shabbat. The Gemarra tells us how Hillel and Shamai and others would anticipate Shabbat each day of the week. Each day of the week they would find a delicacy and put it away for Shabbat, building up the anticipatory tension to add to the delight of the day itself.

If festivals are about joy and Shabbat is about rapture, then Shavuot is about ecstasy – the ecstasy of the merging of G-d and His beloved People. Shavuot more resembles Shabbat than any other festival. Experiencing the ecstasy of Shavuot also needs anticipation, build-up and tension. Just as Shabbat is not determined by a date but by the six weekdays that precede it, so too we are not given a calendar date for Shavuot. Shavuot occurs after we have counted 49 days after Pesach. After seven packs of seven days each, we celebrate Shavuot. Shavuot is the very celebration of the packaging of days into weeks.

The Or HaChayim[4] compares the period of anticipation before Shavuot to the Sheva Neki’im, the seven days of purity that a woman waits after her menstrual cycle to be ready for her husband. That too is a case of a week, a seven day pack, used as a time to build anticipation, and tension to enhance the ecstatic coming together of man and wife.

Often we complain of the monotony of life or at least of some of its phases. We remember the rapture we once experienced: falling in love, our first visit to Israel, or listening to a magnificent concert. Those moments of rapture are available to us whenever we are willing to make them happen. Whenever we are willing to feel the pulse of life, to count up to magical moments and prepare for them with anticipation, we can experience that rapture. We can experience it each Shabbat – if we have done the work during the week. A couple can experience it each month, if they have done the work during the preceding week. And as a nation we can experience it every Shavuot, if we count the Omer not as a chore but as an act of excited anticipation feeling the tension of a humble People about to be betrothed by its beloved King.

Notes:

[1] Chagiga 17b

[2] Chagigah 9a and 17a-b. This equates to Pesach and Sucot whose Korban Chagiga also ought to be brought on the first day of Yomtov, but may be brought on any of the seven days of the Chag

[3] Rabeinu Yerucham

[4] Vayikra 23:15