Parshat Lech Lecha, “Top Five”: Bringing People to God, and to Prayer

I started this year thinking I would find the five best comments I had shared in our time studying parsha together. Not going to happen—as I look back, way more than five bear revisiting. I’ll pick five that appeal to me in this moment, for whatever reason. This week, it’s because they focused on related issues.

Religion as a Relationship with God

When Avram and Sarai leave Charan for they know not where, 12;5, they take the souls asher asu, that they made, in Charan. Rashi offers two ideas, first, it means the people they had “brought under the wings of the Divine Presence,” similar to what Onkelos has [I’m cheating, not counting this as citing Onkelos, because I’m only doing five], although Onkelos phrased it that they brought them to subservience to Torah.

The imagery of Hashem with spread wings reminds us proper faith helps us shelter from the storms of life. We can get caught up in religion as a system, practices, or culture, for good reasons and bad. Avram and Sarai focused on the fundamental goal of religious activity—taking ourselves back to the protective Presence of our waiting Creator, the only true source of safety, and of guidance as to how to live our best lives.

Separating Men and Women

It’s a rich Rashi; the second idea in this first reading says Avram would convert the men, Sarai the women. He doesn’t feel the need to explain why they taught by gender, but it seems to me to be because of the complications of cross-gender mentoring. Especially in something as sensitive as remaking a worldview, letting other factors, like gender relations, into the picture would be a problem.

Best to take sexuality out of the equation.

Many take this as code for keeping women inferior, but Rashi doesn’t say Avram converted the important people and Sarai the women. If the Queen of England wanted to convert, Rashi thinks Sarai would have guided it. On the other hand, Avram handled any man’s conversion, even the most socially insignificant one.

Avram and Sarai’s model reminds us how easily sexuality can intrude (as does their encounter with the Egyptians in this parsha), and the necessity of doing that which we can to avoid or minimize it. In some situations, that means separating by gender.

Building a World

Although Onkelos gave the reading of bringing them to Torah, Rashi insists the simple meaning is the servants they had acquired. In a slave society, people acquire people, the more literal reading of the verse, they took with them all the slaves they had purchased.

Even here, though Rashi does not say it, it certainly seems like Avram brought Eliezer closer to God, for example. Acquiring souls, Avram and Sarai built relationships of mutual trust, surrounded themselves with people rather than objects, fostered human connection rather than material pleasure.

Calling Out in Gd’s Name

About a chapter later, 13;4, Avram returns to Beit El from Egypt, to the altar he had built, va-yikra sham be-shem Hashem, called out there in the Name of Gd. Rambam, Hilkhot Avodah Zarah 1;3, says he called out to other people in the Name of God, continued his “kiruv” efforts, his search to bring people to recognize Hashem.

Onkelos instead translates va-yikra as ve-tzalei, he prayed. In his view, Avraham makes it back from Egypt, returns to where he had been, to the altar he had built, and prays to Gd. We’ll see more prayer, so it was an Onkelos worth noting.

Hagar Prayed to God, Not Named Him

After a pregnant Hagar flees the treatment of Sarah, chapter sixteen, an angel tells her to go back, bear her sufferings, and she will have a son. When the encounter ends, verse thirteen, we are told Hagar called the Name of the God Who had spoken to her E-l Roi [AlHaTorah.org has Ibn Ezra’s translation, “the God of Seeing”].

Sforno rereads the verse almost completely. He thinks “calling the Name of God” always means prayer, which starts with praise, followed by requests, an order taught in Berachot 32a. It helps the supplicant focus attention, Sforno says, after which s/he will be ready to lodge his/her hopes.

Here, Hagar speaks of E-l Ro’I for exactly that kind of praise, You are the God Who sees all, not just in Avraham’s household. Her awareness of God’s attention to her, as it were, reminds Sforno of Bava Metzi’a 59a, all gates are shut other than for those who cry out because of mistreatment.

For Sforno, I think, the angel’s promise did not assuage her fears, it stimulated her to prayer [a weakness of his reading is that the verse does not tell us anything she requested. I suggest Sforno thought it was clear she asked for good health for the baby, or something along those lines.]

Stick with Problems or Let Them Go

In 13:14, the Torah times Hashem’s speaking with Avram to after Lot separated. Meshech Hochmah notes two views in Bereshit Rabbah 41;8. The first, R. Nehemiah, says what Rashi did, Avram’s association with the wicked Lot hindered Gd’s willingness to speak to him. Gd disliked (was angry about) Avram’s association with Lot, returned to speaking with him after Lot left.

The other view, R. Yuda, said the opposite, Gd was angry Avram let Lot leave. He built relationships with a panoply of people, brought them closer to Gd, yet could not with his own cousin/nephew?!

Meshech Chochmah linked these views and the next Midrash, where two other amoraim tussle over the meaning of acharei, after. One held it meant right after, matching the earlier idea that Gd disapproved of the relationship, appeared as soon as that barrier was cleared away.

The other said acharei meant long after (muflag, distant), possibly because Gd thought Avram failed to keep Lot close, and therefore refrained from speaking with him for some time, a sort of rebuke.

It draws our attention to a lasting disagreement in Jewish thought about how to handle people who have chosen bad paths, especially relatives. In his reading, one view thinks Avram should have kept Lot close even after he insisted on grazing his flocks where they did not belong, should have worked the same magic with Lot he did with pagans.

The other side seems to think Avram was correct to cut his losses, and Gd was waiting for him to realize it.

Likely, the answer lies in each case, making the Midrash a dispute about the course of action more correct for Avram and Lot. For the rest of us, it might be both: sometimes we are to keep wrongdoers close, in the hopes to help them grow to be better, other times we have to separate.

Not an easy calculation or choice, and according to some of these rabbis, a place where Avram himself might have mis-stepped.

Rewarding Good Thoughts

Hashem phrases the promise of protection to Avraham, early in our parsha, “va-avarecha mevarechecha, u-mekallelcha a’or. I will bless those who bless you, those who curse you, I will curse.” Kli Yakar points out the switch of order, Hashem promises to bless those who bless Avram, putting God’s act first, second in the cursing.

His first, longer, explanation, assumes meverachecha means those who think to bless you, where mekallelcha are those who already cursed. An example of the principle that God rewards thoughts of good as if already performed, punishes only wrongs committed.

He then seemingly digresses to a discussion of prayer, except it shows a fuller meaning of his comment. He starts with why God requires us to verbalize prayers, if God knows our thoughts.

Turning to Prayer

For an answer, he points to Yevamot 64a, God made the Matriarchs infertile out of “desire” for the prayers of the righteous. Kli Yakar sees a parental element, a father enjoys hearing from his child, wants the child to ask for what the father would give anyway, to extend the conversation, Hashem “wants” to hear from us.

In contrast to powerful people he knows, who interrupt petitioners as soon as they understand the request. God gives us as much time as we want, prefers longer prayers, because they require advance thought, and Hashem promises to reward the thought, too.

[He seems to be talking to his time rather than the verse. Grant his first claim, Hashem was telling Avram those who think to bless him would be blessed, its relevance to prayer is tenuous at best. It seems to me he wanted to encourage his listener/readers to pray better and longer, and saw a way to connect it.]

That’s five. See you next week.

The other comments we saw over the years:
R. David Zvi Hoffmann, Bereshit, Introduction to Lech Lecha
Ramban, Bereshit 12;1
Meshech Hochmah, Bereshit 12;4, Va-yelech ito Lot,
Onkelos, Bershit 12;5
Ramban, Bereshit, 12;6
Vilna Ga’on, Bereshit 12;8
Rashi, Bereshit 12;10, Ra’av ba-aretz
Ramban, Bereshit, 12;11
Onkelos, Bereshit 13;9, Im ha-semol
Rashi, Bereshit 13;10, whole verse
Rashi, Bereshit 13;13, whole verse
Chatam Sofer, Bereshit 13;17, Kum hithalech
Ha’amek Davar, Bereshit 14;7-13
Rashi, Bereshit 14;13, Va-Yavo ha-palit
Malbim, Bereshit 14;14, Va-Yishma Avram
Meshech Chochmah, Bereshit 15;1, Al tira
R. Samson Raphael Hirsch,Bereshit15;2, Hashem Elokim
Onkelos, Bereshit 15;4, Asher yetzei
Onkelos, Bereshit 15;13-4, Va-avadum
Or HaChayim, Bereshit 15;14, Ve-gam et ha-goy
Rashi, Bereshit 15;15, whole verse
Meshech Hochmah, Bereshit 15;16, Ve-dor revi’i
Rashi, Bereshit 16;3, Miketze ser shanim
Onkelos, Bereshit 16;5, Be-cheikecha
Onkelos, Bereshit 16;12, Yado ba-kol
HaKetav Ve-Ha-Kabbalah, Bereshit 16;14, Be-er Lachai Ro’i
Ibn Ezra, Bereshit, 17; 14, Ve-arel zachar

Meyuchas Le-Rashi: Only Two Questions!

When we come to the famous Four Questions, only two aspects stir Meyuchas Le-Rashi’s interest. First, he wonders why we imply we do not eat other vegetables this night (we say we eat them on other nights), when we do.

His frames his answer with Mishlei 15;17, a minimal meal eaten in a loving context is better than one with the best foods surrounded by hatred. Pesach night, commemorating the bitter servitude of Egypt makes all the vegetables bitter [it’s all maror, regardless of what it actually is]. The rest of the year, even the maror we eat is not as bitter, freed from the context of Egypt.

[His idea explains two old problems. First, my father, a”h, was adamant we not say kulo maror, all maror, since we eat other vegetables, too. For Meyuchas Le-Rashi, it all tastes like maror. It also allows Romaine lettuce, despite our eating it throughout the year; on this night, it is bitter maror.]

He then rejects a textual version that had chayyavin le-tavel, we are obligated to dip (twice), because he read Pesachim 116a to tell us children do not pay attention to what’s obligatory or not.

One main question, one minor, all vegetables on Pesach night are bitter, and children aren’t legalists who investigate obligations.

Rashbatz—Explicating Five Questions

R. Shim’on b. Tzemach Duran deals withfivequestions, although he acknowledges the fourth, about roasted meat, applies only in the time of the Temple, and is not in most Haggadot today. He does point out that the question—on all other nights, we eat meat prepared in a variety of ways, this night only roasted– follows the view of Ben Tema, the chagigah sacrifice of Pesach night also had to be roasted.

He thinks the first question was two-sided, on no other night do we have bread related obligations, on this night we do. Conversely, no other night of the year has a problem with our eating leaven. A karet problem this night.

Second question, we must eat maror, regardless of how many other vegetables we eat, in contrast to the rest of the year, where we can set our diet as we wish.

Third (he calls each question a shinui, a change the child notices), on no other night do we have a specific practice to dip food into a liquid, where tonight we do it twice (we actually do it three times, he adds, in the korech as well as the maror; since the two are one right after the other, we count it as one).

Fifth (fourth was the roasted meat question), we wonder at the insistence on leaning, where the rest of the year we eat as we want (even walking, says Rashbatz).

Rashbatz points out the child asks about the dipping even though we haven’t dipped, because s/he sees the chazeret on the table; the charoset wouldn’t have stimulated a question, because people use dips throughout the year (and drink lots of wine, the reason not to ask about four cups). And, too, if there are no children, these questions will be asked by whoever, who might be wiser than the average child.

For Rashbatz, four to five questions, points to be made about each.

Aruch HaShulchan: The Four Cups

Aruch HaShulchan spends all his time for Mah Nishtanah on why the four cups aren’t mentioned. His first answer is simple, all people celebrate redemption with drinking, our drinking raises no questions.

His second answer seeks to combine perspectives from Yerushalmi Pesachim, that of R. Yochanan who attributed the four cups to the four words of redemption Hashem uses in the beginning of Shemot, Resh Lakish relating it to the four cups in Par’oh’s dreams.

Since the second seems unconnected to Pesach, Aruch HaShulchan digresses further, to our grudge against Amalek. It’s the baseless hatred, he says, starting with the attack in the desert to their having destroyed the Temple even once we were conquered (where most conquerors preserve a country, once vanquished).

Of all the tribes, only Yosef was fit to react to baseless hatred, since only he (and Binyamin, who wasn’t a factor in Egypt because he was too young, I think) had not had such hatred for Yosef. It’s why the Purim miracle happened through Mordechai and Esther, they were from the tribe of Binyamin.

Aruch HaShulchan turns to Pharaoh’s butler and baker, who are in jail, under threat of death, for what seem to him relatively minor crimes. Letting a fly into the wine, wood into the bread, these might be cause for dismissal, but prison? And death?

He argues the two were caught sabotaging each other, the butler put the wood in the bread, the baker the fly in the wine. It was the undermining, at the king’s cost, that got them in this trouble.

Whether the cups are for the four words of redemption or reflect Pharaoh’s dream, it’s all addressing baseless hatred, for Aruch HaShulchan, led by descendants of Rachel, the only ones who didn’t have any.

Who Earned the Redemption

His last piece wonders about a debate over whether there were four or five leshonot ge’ulah, whether we try to reflect the word ve-heveiti, and I will bring, in our cups of wine. I am skipping some of his proof, but he relates it to another debate, whether the Jews were redeemed in their own merits, or those of their forefathers.

In the end, he thinks everyone agrees basic redemption depended on the Patriarchs’ merits, our merits earned us having it happen directly from God, not an angel. We did not have enough to get to ve-heveiti, though, so that was through an angel.

For Aruch HaShulchan, the interesting part of Mah Nishtanah was what wasn’t there, sparking a meditation on redemption, who can lead it, and why.

How To Stimulate a Child

R. Kook, too, focuses on a side issue of the Questions, their order. Were they in the order wedothem, the question about leaning should come first (he also wondered why we don’t ask about the four Cups, but his answer to the first issue explains this one).

In his view, all these questions are for the child who does not know how to ask, seek to bring him/her to question on his/her own. The wise child doesn’t need our questions (nor the evil or tam, I think he means).

With the non-asking child, our goal isn’t the question or answer, it’s lighting the fire of his/her questions. For that reason, we start with the least surprising issues, hoping s/he will leap to the more surprising (and more obviously questionable) ones. Everyone had bread, sometimes matzah, sometimes leavened, so sticking to matzah isn’t so shocking.

For maror, he is sure people did not eat it during the rest of the year. The dipping, in his view, focused on the first one, since people didn’t generally dip before a meal.

Four Questions, an adventure in producing questions, for R. Kook.

The Mah Nishtanah, in our earlier commentators, were to consider and explain. For our later commentators, there were other fish to fry, redemption for Aruch HaShulchan, education for R. Kook.

Parshat Noach, Top Five

The Internally Expansive Ark

When Hashem tells Noach to take two of all the living species in the ark, 6;19, Ramban is aware of how impossible it would have been to fit all of them into even this very large structure. Chullin 63b tells us, for example, there are 120 subspecies of ayah, a nonkosher bird, in the east, let alone all the other types of birds. There are also huge animals, like elephants, and numerous varieties of vermin. Ten arks, even of that size, wouldn’t be enough, Ramban is sure.

It was a miracle, he says, the ark expanded (internally; he implies it was a sort of science fiction kind of space, where it looked a certain size from the outside, but had much more room inside).

If so, why not let Noach build a smaller ark? Two reasons: first, the point was to draw attention, with the hope people would be stimulated to repent as they watched this very long process. It also reduced the level of miracle in the events (since it was huge), and that’s how miracles work—people do as much as they can, Hashem takes the rest.

That’s neither rationalist, which seeks natural explanations to the extent possible, nor supernaturalist, which emphasizes the miraculous (Ramban does think everything is a miracle, in the sense that Hashem always infuses the world with His support and energy, as it were, is always “running” the world; with that said, there’s an ordinary pattern to the world, and what violates it we call miraculous). It’s our world, to do our best; when our best doesn’t get us where Hashem wants, miracles happen.

The Educational Flood

When the inhabitants exit the Ark, 8;19 says the romeis, the crawling bugs, left le-mishpehoteihem, in their families. R. Yohanan, Sanhedrin 108b, says “and not them.” To explain, Meshech Chochmah starts with the idea Gd could have flooded existence in much less than twelve months. The experience was unnatural anyway, including inside the Ark, where Gd kept Noah and the animals alive, despite air usually becoming unbreathable after so long, he says. Freed of the need to work within ordinary nature, Gd could have done it instantly.

Hashem instead took twelve months, to retrain the people and animals on the Ark. Before the Flood, animals as well as people had become accustomed to chamas and sexual perversion; to change their outlook took a year, where they learned to be satisfied with their lot, rather than grab from others. The animals relearned their need to submit to humans, who run the world, and people reabsorbed the prohibition of arayot, sexual improprieties (as Bereshit Rabbah Va-Yishlach 80;6 says).

To ingrain the momentary, convert it to second nature takes time (Meshech Chochmah writes teva sheni, literally second nature, a phrase that comes from secundum naturam, which actually means “according to nature.” Who knew?). Le-mishpehoteihem, their families, signals how they had changed, means they now knew to mate only with their own kind, were no longer their original selves.

He closes with an important idea, living creatures are defined by their nature and character. Having changed their ways, they were no longer themselves.

The Flood punished, destroyed, and also educated, according to Meshech Chochmah. People and animals, turned them into other than they were when they entered, more ready for success.

Our Saving Weakness

After the Flood, Noach builds an altar and offers sacrifices, from each of the kinds of kosher animals on the Ark. Hashem smells the sweet aroma, we learn in 8;21, decides to no longer curse the earth or punish all life because of humans.

The justification catches Or HaChayim’s attention. Hashem says man’s inclinations are evil from his childhood, reminding Or Hachayim of Bava Kamma 39a, an ox trained to attack a human in the arena is not liable if it gores a person elsewhere (it’s not the ox’s fault, he was taught to do that). Here, too, people are born with the urge to run amok before they learn to choose right and reject evil. The urges they must conquer thus have a prior place in their training, and therefore they cannot be fully blamed for their misdeeds, like the stadium ox.

He hastens to add that Hashem only removed the threat of global destruction, Hashem will still punish disobedience, an aspect not found in the ox. Humans have the ability to choose well; our childhood proclivities mitigate the evil we commit, not excuse it.

An elegant presentation of the challenge of being human: we are born ready to do wrong, have to learn how to do right, and therefore gravitate towards what feels more natural. We are equipped to overcome ourselves in the name of right, especially when God commanded us, an awareness that should help tip the scales to observance.

When we fail, Hashem puts it into the entire proper context, the headstart our evil inclination got over our leaning to good.

Justice, Not Vigilantism

After the Flood, Hashem makes rules for the emerging humans as they recreate society. A prominent one prescribes capital punishment for murder, verse 9;6 saying anyone who spills a human’s blood, ba-adam damo yishafech, his blood shall be spilled by humans. Onkelos adds (I think because the verse says ba-adam, by people, although it doesn’t obviously mean what he is about to say) be-sahadin al memar dayanaya, with witnesses, according to the word of judges.

He seems to have worried readers would take it to allow vigilante justice. In correcting the possible error, he does not clarify whether courts are necessary to be sure the culprit did it or because only courts represent society in punishing murderers. I suspect the latter. If the Torah tells us we can kill murderers, we would know on our own we have to be sure they were actually murderers. To me, Onkelos is saying Hashem granted only courts, with proper procedure, the right to represent society and punish murderers.

Abraham Leaving His Father, Alive or Not

Bereshit 11;32 tells us Terach died in Charan. Rashi points out this doesn’t belong where it is said, since Avraham (then known as Avram) had left sixty years before. Without reviewing his proof of the chronology, the question is why Scripture moved Terach’s death forward. He says it is to blur this sequence of events, to avoid people saying Avram did not honor his father, abandoned the old man. Nor was it a lie, Rashi says, the verse could accurately say he was dead, given the Talmudic idea that evildoers are called dead during their lifetimes, while the righteous are called alive even after death.

[Note how Rashi wants to find a way this isn’t a lie written here, even though he is also comfortable, in other places, saying the Torah writes out of order.]

In his view, Scripture sometimes hides truths people will not accept. Justifying Avraham’s apparently neglectful treatment of his father was too complicated or likely to fail; instead the Torah misled readers about the timing of Terach’s death.

Second, he throws in the idea that being “alive” doesn’t always refer to a physical state. We focus on breath and a heartbeat, but life encompasses more than the physical.

Five comments about the Flood and what came after, the world it created. Through an ark that managed to contain more than it physically could, where the year of the Flood reset the natures of all living creatures, with a continued understanding of human weakness, weakness that might need a court response. With an outlier Rashi on a different topic, how the Torah doesn’t want cynics to be able to claim Avraham left his aged father to his own devices.

The rest of what we have seen:

Onkelos, Bereshit, 6;9

Ramban, Bereshit 6;9

Meshech Chochmah Bereshit 6;9

Kli Yakar Bereshit 6;9-12

Rashi, Bereshit, 6;11

Onkelos, Bereshit, 6;12 and 13

Chatam Sofer, Bereshit 6;20

Ramban, Bereshit 7;7

Rashi, Bereshit, 7;12

Ha’amek Davar 8;7

Ramban, Bereshit 8;11

Onkelos, Bereshit, 8;20 and 21
R. David Zvi Hoffmann, Bereshit, 8;20
by R. Gidon Rothstein

Parshat Noach, Top Five

The Internally Expansive Ark

When Hashem tells Noach to take two of all the living species in the ark, 6;19, Ramban is aware of how impossible it would have been to fit all of them into even this very large structure. Chullin 63b tells us, for example, there are 120 subspecies of ayah, a nonkosher bird, in the east, let alone all the other types of birds. There are also huge animals, like elephants, and numerous varieties of vermin. Ten arks, even of that size, wouldn’t be enough, Ramban is sure.

It was a miracle, he says, the ark expanded (internally; he implies it was a sort of science fiction kind of space, where it looked a certain size from the outside, but had much more room inside).

If so, why not let Noach build a smaller ark? Two reasons: first, the point was to draw attention, with the hope people would be stimulated to repent as they watched this very long process. It also reduced the level of miracle in the events (since it was huge), and that’s how miracles work—people do as much as they can, Hashem takes the rest.

That’s neither rationalist, which seeks natural explanations to the extent possible, nor supernaturalist, which emphasizes the miraculous (Ramban does think everything is a miracle, in the sense that Hashem always infuses the world with His support and energy, as it were, is always “running” the world; with that said, there’s an ordinary pattern to the world, and what violates it we call miraculous). It’s our world, to do our best; when our best doesn’t get us where Hashem wants, miracles happen.

The Educational Flood

When the inhabitants exit the Ark, 8;19 says the romeis, the crawling bugs, left le-mishpehoteihem, in their families. R. Yohanan, Sanhedrin 108b, says “and not them.” To explain, Meshech Chochmah starts with the idea Gd could have flooded existence in much less than twelve months. The experience was unnatural anyway, including inside the Ark, where Gd kept Noah and the animals alive, despite air usually becoming unbreathable after so long, he says. Freed of the need to work within ordinary nature, Gd could have done it instantly.

Hashem instead took twelve months, to retrain the people and animals on the Ark. Before the Flood, animals as well as people had become accustomed to chamas and sexual perversion; to change their outlook took a year, where they learned to be satisfied with their lot, rather than grab from others. The animals relearned their need to submit to humans, who run the world, and people reabsorbed the prohibition of arayot, sexual improprieties (as Bereshit Rabbah Va-Yishlach 80;6 says).

To ingrain the momentary, convert it to second nature takes time (Meshech Chochmah writes teva sheni, literally second nature, a phrase that comes from secundum naturam, which actually means “according to nature.” Who knew?). Le-mishpehoteihem, their families, signals how they had changed, means they now knew to mate only with their own kind, were no longer their original selves.

He closes with an important idea, living creatures are defined by their nature and character. Having changed their ways, they were no longer themselves.

The Flood punished, destroyed, and also educated, according to Meshech Chochmah. People and animals, turned them into other than they were when they entered, more ready for success.

Our Saving Weakness

After the Flood, Noach builds an altar and offers sacrifices, from each of the kinds of kosher animals on the Ark. Hashem smells the sweet aroma, we learn in 8;21, decides to no longer curse the earth or punish all life because of humans.

The justification catches Or HaChayim’s attention. Hashem says man’s inclinations are evil from his childhood, reminding Or Hachayim of Bava Kamma 39a, an ox trained to attack a human in the arena is not liable if it gores a person elsewhere (it’s not the ox’s fault, he was taught to do that). Here, too, people are born with the urge to run amok before they learn to choose right and reject evil. The urges they must conquer thus have a prior place in their training, and therefore they cannot be fully blamed for their misdeeds, like the stadium ox.

He hastens to add that Hashem only removed the threat of global destruction, Hashem will still punish disobedience, an aspect not found in the ox. Humans have the ability to choose well; our childhood proclivities mitigate the evil we commit, not excuse it.

An elegant presentation of the challenge of being human: we are born ready to do wrong, have to learn how to do right, and therefore gravitate towards what feels more natural. We are equipped to overcome ourselves in the name of right, especially when God commanded us, an awareness that should help tip the scales to observance.

When we fail, Hashem puts it into the entire proper context, the headstart our evil inclination got over our leaning to good.

Justice, Not Vigilantism

After the Flood, Hashem makes rules for the emerging humans as they recreate society. A prominent one prescribes capital punishment for murder, verse 9;6 saying anyone who spills a human’s blood, ba-adam damo yishafech, his blood shall be spilled by humans. Onkelos adds (I think because the verse says ba-adam, by people, although it doesn’t obviously mean what he is about to say) be-sahadin al memar dayanaya, with witnesses, according to the word of judges.

He seems to have worried readers would take it to allow vigilante justice. In correcting the possible error, he does not clarify whether courts are necessary to be sure the culprit did it or because only courts represent society in punishing murderers. I suspect the latter. If the Torah tells us we can kill murderers, we would know on our own we have to be sure they were actually murderers. To me, Onkelos is saying Hashem granted only courts, with proper procedure, the right to represent society and punish murderers.

Abraham Leaving His Father, Alive or Not

Bereshit 11;32 tells us Terach died in Charan. Rashi points out this doesn’t belong where it is said, since Avraham (then known as Avram) had left sixty years before. Without reviewing his proof of the chronology, the question is why Scripture moved Terach’s death forward. He says it is to blur this sequence of events, to avoid people saying Avram did not honor his father, abandoned the old man. Nor was it a lie, Rashi says, the verse could accurately say he was dead, given the Talmudic idea that evildoers are called dead during their lifetimes, while the righteous are called alive even after death.

[Note how Rashi wants to find a way this isn’t a lie written here, even though he is also comfortable, in other places, saying the Torah writes out of order.]

In his view, Scripture sometimes hides truths people will not accept. Justifying Avraham’s apparently neglectful treatment of his father was too complicated or likely to fail; instead the Torah misled readers about the timing of Terach’s death.

Second, he throws in the idea that being “alive” doesn’t always refer to a physical state. We focus on breath and a heartbeat, but life encompasses more than the physical.

Five comments about the Flood and what came after, the world it created. Through an ark that managed to contain more than it physically could, where the year of the Flood reset the natures of all living creatures, with a continued understanding of human weakness, weakness that might need a court response. With an outlier Rashi on a different topic, how the Torah doesn’t want cynics to be able to claim Avraham left his aged father to his own devices.

The rest of what we have seen:
Onkelos, Bereshit, 6;9
Ramban, Bereshit 6;9
Meshech Chochmah Bereshit 6;9
Kli Yakar Bereshit 6;9-12
Rashi, Bereshit, 6;11
Onkelos, Bereshit, 6;12 and 13
Chatam Sofer, Bereshit 6;20
Ramban, Bereshit 7;7
Rashi, Bereshit, 7;12
Ha’amek Davar 8;7
Ramban, Bereshit 8;11
Onkelos, Bereshit, 8;20 and 21
R. David Zvi Hoffmann, Bereshit, 8;20
Sforno, Bereshit 9;5
Malbim, Bereshit 9;5
Meshech Chochmah, Bereshit 9;6
Onkelos, Bereshit, 9;13, 16, and 17
R. Hirsch, Bereshit 10;5Ramban Bereshit 10;9
Rashi, Bereshit 11;1
Ibn Ezra, Bereshit, 11;1.
Ha-Ketav ve-Ha-Kabbalah Bereshit 11;4
Rashi, Bereshit 11;5
Onkelos, Bereshit 11;5, 11;8
Sforno, Bereshit 9;5
Malbim, Bereshit 9;5
Meshech Chochmah, Bereshit 9;6
Onkelos, Bereshit, 9;13, 16, and 17
R. Hirsch, Bereshit 10;5Ramban Bereshit 10;9
Rashi, Bereshit 11;1
Ibn Ezra, Bereshit, 11;1.
Ha-Ketav ve-Ha-Kabbalah Bereshit 11;4
Rashi, Bereshit 11;5
Onkelos, Bereshit 11;5, 11;8

For the past two years, in this slot, we studied Aruch HaShulchan, a single, although very important, halachic authority. I drift more towards taking multiple perspectives of a text, and seeing where that leads. In halachah, it’s done very commonly, it’s how we lead to pesak, decisions.

I want to do it for something else. I’ve been doing it with the parashah of the week for a few years now, am up to review for what it yields in overall lessons, so let’s start on the path for another text, one that almost all Jews know well: the Haggadah. A section a week (Twenty-four weeks until Pesach! Mind where you place chametz!), I want to see what four commentators said about the Haggadah.

[Modesty moment: I had wild ideas of doing more, one for each century from Rashi on, then dropped to six, including R. Shlomo Kluger, a voluminous but very interesting commentary. As I wrote this essay, it became clear four is going to easily fill our time.]

By “said,” I mean their actual comment, and then how their interests were the same or different. I’ll summarize and put them in conversation with each other.

For commentators, I have chosen a commentary called Meyuchas Le-Rashi (from the Haggadah Im Perushei Rishonim of Mossad HaRav Kook), because it’s fairly early, and mostly combines material from Siddur Rashi (a student of Rashi’s) and a Perush Kadmon, from the early to mid-1100s. He sort of gives me two for the price of one.

Then, R. Shimon b. Tzemach Duran, a late 14^th, early 15^th century Spanish rabbi, whose commentary on Avot I once studied, and thought could use another look. From there, I jump to the nineteenth century, Aruch HaShulchan, and R. Kook in the twentieth.

Part of why they got the nod is that their comments are brief enough to allow for four. Perhaps in future years, if we enjoy this, we’ll do only three, or maybe only one (like Maharal, Abarbanel, or R. Shlomo Kluger, all of whom had a great deal to say!). Meanwhile, let’s see how Ha Lachma Anya looks to our four.

The Paragraph Itself

Brief, hopefully neutral, summary: we open the Seder pointing out the lechem oni, either the poor man’s bread, or the bread of affliction, our forefathers ate in Egypt. We then invite—still in Aramaic, the only part of the Haggadah in that language—all who are hungry to come eat, all in need to feast, and note our current residence “here,” pray to be in Israel next year, our current servitude, pray to be free next year.

Meyuchas le-Rashi

The Meyuchas le-Rashi focuses on why the matzah is called lechem oni, gives neither of the options I suggested. He notes the matzah was an amount equal to the man that fell in the desert, a tenth of an ephah, also the amount of a minchat ani, the flour offering a poor person brings if s/he cannot afford certain sacrifices.

For the invitations, he thinks we invite the hungry to remind us to be hungry at the Seder, to eat the matzah with appetite, referencing the Talmudic tale of Rava drinking wine Erev Pesach to stimulate his hunger.

We also invite others to join us for a Pesach sacrifice to make clear we don’t think we can do it on our own, that we don’t feel so rich or disconnected from society not to want to join with others. We want a communal experience, not an individual one.

For the contrast between being “here” and in Israel next year, Meyuchas le-Rashi sees an expression of hope for a different future. Now, we are where we are, we hope next year for the fulfillment of Moshe’s words to the Jewish people, who would explain to their children the zevach Pesach, the Pesach sacrifice (only in the Temple in Jerusalem.)

Meyuchas Le-Rashi, I say after seeing the others, has no central theme. The name lechem oni reminds us of daily man and of flour in a poor man’s offering. We invite the hungry to ensure we eat the matzah hungry, and invite others to remember the value of communal involvement.

With hope for a fuller experience next year.

1. Shim’on b. Tzemach Duran

Rashbatz concentrates more on the Seder. He thinks the paragraph was put here to pre-empt some of the questions the removal of the matzah from the table is about to arouse. We already start off awareness that we’re doing this to recall the Exodus (we’ll have to see how he explains Avadim hayyinu, which seems the same answer).

It’s in Aramaic, because that was the language of children, who did know the phrase Next Year in Jerusalem, so we can say that in Hebrew.

For lechem oni, he knows the idea of a minchat ani we saw, but leans toward it being a matter of the Torah’s telling us to eat lechem oni for seven days, to commemorate having left Egypt in haste. It explains why some introduce the paragraph with the Aramaic words for “in haste we left Egypt.” For the child at the Seder, we also say it was the bread our forefathers ate in Egypt, to bring the history alive, I think.

He sees contradictory reasons to speak of the hungry. It, first, hearkens back to Egypt, where our forefathers were hungry (he says), lets us see how fortunate we are to be not. Then switches to the idea we saw, we are supposed to be hungry, anxiously awaiting the matzah we will eat.

For the Pesach issue, he suggests we are gathering lists of people who would join our Pesach if we were having one, in the hopes we will soon return to an actual Pesach, where pre-registration is required. In the manner of clever beggars, we ramp up our requests from easier to harder, from getting to Israel, still slaves, to being freed.

Placing the paragraph more firmly in the Seder.

Aruch HaShulchan

First, AH has an alternate beginning of our paragraph, Ke-ha lachma anya, like this poor man’s bread. To frame his comment, he points us to Yeshayahu 51;1-3, who called on us to remember Avraham and Sarah, referring to them as a rock and a well (for reasons we will see), and moves into speaking of Hashem’s having decided to comfort Tziyyon.

For AH, Yeshayahu was speaking to the despair of those who saw no natural way for salvation to arrive, and encourages them with the reminder our first ancestors were infertile, Avraham like a rock from which no water would come, Sarah like an empty well. Hashem intervened miraculously then, Hashem will do so with the redemption.

The same idea underlies Shemot 12;42’s description of the night of the Exodus as a leil shimurim, a night Hashem had guarded, kept in mind, for a long time. AH thinks it was the expectation of redemption, which was always going to be supernatural.

Bringing it back to our paragraph, Aruch HaShulchan—a community rabbi, mostly in Navardok—says it means to comfort the poor, for whom the expenses of Pesach are often overwhelming, forcing them to accept charity, or more than usual. Our forefathers, too, the paragraph says to them, ate such bread in Egypt, in the sense of being unable to take care of themselves, needing supernatural intervention.

Even if the poor person must be a guest in someone’s house (the reason the paragraph invites the hungry), or take charity, s/he shouldn’t worry or feel bad, because this year we are here, next in Israel, this year slaves, next free, but only by virtue of the kind of help they are getting. Rock bottom, for our full needs, we are all poor in this sense, can only get by with Hashem’s direct intervention.

Ke-ha lachma anya, in AH’s reading, encouragement to all of us for supernatural redemption, and the poor, for whom Pesach might be a particularly troubling time.

1. Kook

Rav Kook has multiple comments on our paragraph. First, although the Haggadah has ha lachma, and the commentary points out that R. Tzvi Yehudah Kook, Rav Kook’s son, noted that was the version in Seder R. Amram Ga’on, in Machzor Vitry, Rambam, Tur, and more, R. Kook’s first comment assumes it is ke-ha, as Aruch HaShulchan also had it.

He wonders why we have this paragraph before the Four Questions, especially since one of those questions is about why we eat matzah. In his first answer, this paragraph comes to encourage those distressed by the lack of a Pesach sacrifice, by Jews’ current servitude [he seems to be writing in Europe; R. Tzvi Yehudah Kook’s introduction says the bulk of the commentary was written as part of R. Kook’s siddur, Olat Re’iyah, other parts gathered from his various writings]. For them, we remember our forefathers in Egypt, who also were in servitude, who also saw no way out, and were redeemed.

More, they were redeemed at the last possible second [before they would have completely assimilated], and their redemption grounds our upcoming one. Remembering what happened to them will buck up our spirits, he says.

His second idea notes two paths to flourishing: one is freedom and room to grow, the other, a bit paradoxically, is pressure and restriction, building the urge to burst out, also a path to growth. For an example, the restrictions and withdrawals of winter foster growth in spring.

For the Jewish people, the time in Egypt, under the thumb of a king who denied God, was the pressure that builds and fortifies, the first step to freedom and redemption. And for Torah; had we had knowledge before, we would not have had the openness to receive the Torah. Our intellectual poverty, in his view, allowed us to accept this great gift.

Rediscovering Our Innate Generosity

The twin invitations at the end of the paragraph exemplify how the removal of pressure permits us to flourish. We are a people whose forefather Avraham was characterized by the desire to give and help, a trait we inherited. In the non-Jewish world, life is self-centered, even religiosity and/or altruism, he says, where we Jews want to help others.

Oppression stops us from feeling this way, others stand over us, make our lives hard, rob us of our selves, leaving us willing to help only grudgingly and only with purely physical necessities. Pesach night, we rediscover our freedom, invite others, freely and openly, to eat and to yifsach, a word R. Kook takes to refer to all needs, for the person be able to express him/herself in all the areas of life, physical and spiritual.

Yeitei ve-yechol, come and eat, means basic needs, physical and spiritual, such as the basics of belief in God, with the Pesach sacrifice—ve-yifsach—is about broader values, what we get from eating the Pesach, after we are full, providing something additional.

Ditto for going to Israel and being freed, because one who lives in exile, the Gemara says, is as if s/he has no God, and the rule of others stops us from our full personae. So we predict and pray (he says, both) we will soon be freed of troubles. We speak of next year (rather than the far future) because these freedoms need no preparation, they’re part of who we are, they just need actualization, and that can be immediate.

For R. Kook, then, a paragraph about redemption of the past and redemption of the future, the paths to it and the character of it.

For now, I notice how the later authors seemed to place the paragraph in a framework more external to the Seder topic of the Exodus, focused more on a future of flourishing and/or redemption. We’ll have to see how this plays out going forward.

Moment of truth. After two years taking Aruch HaShulchan ten simanim apart, what do we get? In truth, ten simanim was likely too small a gap, because we had more than a few repeat topics. Still, I think our discussions showed two main areas of concern for halachah: how we relate to God and how we relate to man.

There was overlap even there, because, for example, part of our concern in building marriages was how to conduct them with the tzeni’ut, discretion, appropriate to those who live aware of God’s constant Presence. Or, in reverse, part of how people related to each other (when frustrated, it seemed) was to forbid their possessions with a neder, making the items similar to those that “belong” to God, outside the pale of human use.

Relating to God

Even with the blurry areas, the God-focused parts of Aruch HaShulchan had certain themes, different from the Man-focused ones (with shared ones, too, we’ll get there). Interestingly, to me, the God focus popped up in Orach Chayyim, also, not just Aruch HaShulchan He-Atid, where we spoke about the Temple and its service.

The passages laid out how physical beings interact with or relate to God, a question whose answer involved defining the materials of building the Temple, its dimensions and surrounding areas, the people who served in various roles there.

Outside the Temple environs, we saw rules about the proper state for our physical bodies while praying to God, both in cleanliness and in avoiding bodily events that run counter to the awe-inducing experience (think burps or yawns), and which mitzvot we restrict because of our concern we will not be able to maintain the desired refinement (I’m looking at you, tefillin).

Besides our own bodies, we had to consider the area in which we prayed, what objects of nudity or filth needed to be covered or removed for prayer to proceed. Similarly, we had to think about how to treat mitzvah objects, which can be brought into a bathroom, what we do with them when they wear out.

Finally, we were told to bring God into our mundane lives, through Torah study, directing our business involvements to support mitzvah activities, develop relationships with Torah scholars, all in the name of maintaining the God-focus of our lives.

Last piece of this side of it, we saw examples of an instinct to do more than required, a search for confidence we were doing all we could for our best relationship with God. It’s why someone would volunteer to be a nazir , make any kind of neder, give money based on someone’s erech, and so on.

Relating to People

Turning to human interactions, money impacted families, partnerships, loans, and more. The goal always was to protect as many people’s rights as possible, especially those more defenseless than others. Repaying debts was a major focus, heirs to an estate doing it for the deceased, loan documents written with particular care to be sure the lender is repaid without affecting those who bought property from the borrower before the loan occurred.

Along with shetarot, documents, we had chazakah, the fact of residence for a certain time proving ownership (another example of where lack of clarity creeps into life).

While the good side of nedarim was about improving ourselves, it was also a weapon in human relationships, used to urge/coerce someone to be better, or express annoyance with oneself or the other.

The other people/relationship issue was marriage, almost wholly in Even HaEzer. It did remind us of how central marriage is to Jewish thought and experience, our concern with the couple relating to each other in a sanctified way, bearing and raising successful children, the problems when there are problems.

What’s True of Both

Power of Speech

In both realms, the impact of human speech made itself known. For the God-focused part, there was nazir, with other vows affecting both realms, as well as prayer and blessings, how we use our words to properly praise/supplicate God. When people contributed to the Temple, we saw them do it with a particular type of verbal commitment, arachin.

Many God-directed mitzvot are verbal, such as the recitation of Shema, study of Torah, telling of the Exodus story on Seder night, and the Grace After Meals.

In all these, what to say and when was the focus.

The Value of Certainty

Also in both realms, we learned the challenges of uncertainty. For the God area of life, we had to figure out the obligations of a nazir whose statements of commitment made unclear what s/he had agreed to do and was required to do. Ditto for financial donations where the defined target is unclear (such as an erech for someone of uncertain gender).

While the Sanhedrin strove to produce clarity, the possibility of a rebellious elder, a zaken mamrei, showed how it could go awry.

To Know What to Do, Know Who You Are

Status matters everywhere as well. The word often connotes social status, such as with wealth, but we saw it in the different ways and levels of service in the Temple, the rights and privileges granted by a life invested in Torah study, the importance of addressing the needs/concerns of the poor.

[I notice this, often, because people today often resist admitting some people deserve more respect, or more help, than others. And, of course, some want more respect or help than they deserve. Getting status right is important and challenging. But that’s not our current issue.]

A Wildly Unfounded Theory of Halachah

One time this year, I complained about AIs being too quick to draw broad theories. I certainly have not studied enough halachah, in this context or in general, to do it, either, but I’m moving to another topic next year, so let me make the same mistake as the AI:

AH seems to me to show us how Judaism guides the experience of living in a physical world, with a social human society, aimed at relating to God. Key pieces are how we approach it (what we say and think, hence the power of nedarim and related ideas), how we structure our society to foster that connection, and how we care for our physical surroundings, build our financial and social systems, to bring its full expression ever closer to completion.

The challenge is in the details, of course, as we have seen, and will continue to see wherever we look. My teacher, R. Aharon Lichtenstein, zt”l, was known to question the source, nature, and extent of various halachot. For me, based on our study together, the questions could be reframed as who is doing what, when, where, and why. In answering those, we find our ways to a world closer to its purpose, to perfect the world in (under) the Kingdom of God.

Parshat Bereshit

For the past seven years (time flies!), we have been studying parsha together. Each year, I selected one or a few commentators to study, to see views of the weekly portion. As I start review and collation, to see what lessons the project as a whole teaches, this year, I’m going to select five comments that seem the cream of an often very good crop.

[I can’t resist: my teacher, R. Aharon Lichtenstein, z”l, more than once quoted Matthew Arnold’s essay “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time,” in which, in my memory, he argued that some ages are not so much creative as taking the creativity of a previous generation and distilling it, drilling down with it, to learn its lessons more fully. Let’s say we’re up to doing that here.]

I will select the five, present them much as I did originally, and check for commonalities. At the end of each week, I’ll also list the other comments we have studied in past years.

Nature’s Freewill

In Bereshit 1;11, Rashi says God commanded the Earth to grow trees whose bark tasted the same as the fruit. The Earth did not do so, says Rashi, evidenced by verse twelve’s speaking of its bringing forth “trees that made fruit,” not the tree itself being the fruit. Therefore, says Rashi, when Man was cursed for his sin, the Earth was also judged for its sin.

The first surprising idea is that the earth could contravene Hashem’s commands, or fulfill them badly. It implies some freewill, because otherwise how did it go awry? In addition, of course, punishment addresses those who could have done differently. Rashi does not elaborate, so we cannot know how far he would have taken this, but it gives a sense of the cosmos we moderns overconfidently reject.

The Right Time to Eat Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge

The Torah introduces the Tree of Knowledge in 2;9, and Chatam Sofer in Torat Moshe knows a Midrash (I didn’t find it) that assumes Adam and Chavah would have been allowed to eat from the Tree that first Shabbat. They were punished for eating it one day early, not for the fact of eating it.

Part of his logic is his certainty God would not create a Tree we are permanently not allowed to enjoy. To explain why Shabbat would have been the time, he accepts Ramban’s idea that the tree infused people with freewill as well as desire. Before, humans served God as a matter of instinct, desired only God’s service.

[This seems extreme, because the nachash convinced Chavah to eat; unless we say the nachash got her to believe that God wanted her to eat, that it was the proper service of Hashem. To me, it seems more likely there was always some freewill.]

Without desire or evil inclination, Chatam Sofer echoes what we just said, there is no place for reward or punishment. Freewill serves some people poorly, whose character tends to the physical and animalistic, increasing the likelihood of poor choices. On Shabbat, he says, the neshamah yeterah, the “extra” part to people’s souls gives them a greater ability to resist temptation [he assumes the non-Jewish Adam and Chavah would have a neshamah yeterah on Shabbat; I think he thinks that before the Fall, people were people, Shabbat was Shabbat, so everyone got one].

Had they first eaten of the Tree on Shabbat, the extra soul would have added a push to do well, shaping their freewill to always lean to the good. The nachash tricked them into partaking early, the Midrash said, teaching Chatam Sofer our troubles started with a premature exposure to desire and freewill. With us bearing the consequences forever.

Human Sexual Ethics Affects the Natural World

When God commands Adam to eat all the fruit of the Garden other than the Tree, 2;16-17, Meshech Hochmah reminds us of Sanhedrin 56b, where the Talmud finds a source or hint to all seven Noahide laws. Among those inferences, the Gemara reads the word lemor—Gd commanded lemor, a word we translate as “saying”—to indicate arayot, wrongful sexuality, including adultery.

To justify the connection, it cites Yirmiyahu 3;1, which starts with lemor and complains about the Jewish people’s marital infidelity (in the metaphor of the Jewish people as wife to Gd), verse two saying they had defiled the Land. Meshech Hochmah calls our attention to Sifra Kedoshim 3;7;3-4, which says their sins depressed the yield of the fruits, an idea R. Yehudah finds in Yirmiyahu itself.

To Meshech Hochmah, the lemor in Bereshit warned Adam to be careful about arayot so that he would be able to eat the fruit of the Garden (he also cites a Yerushalmi and Midrashim about how the crops went bad during the generation of the Flood). He singles out adultery (as did Yirmiyahu) because it is the form of sexual impropriety mentioned explicitly in this chapter in Bereshit, verse 24.

I think for Meshech Hochmah, the idea fits with his next comment, that Gd’s words achol tochel, you shall surely eat, commanded Adam to enjoy the natural world where permitted. Meshech Hochmah seems to view the original presentation of sexual ethics as much as information as a command: this is how the world works, I (God) want and expect you humans to enjoy the world, so stay away from arayot, especially adultery.

Meshech Hochmah inserts a metaphysical claim into a non-mystical context: how we behave in marriage (as societies, Sifra in Kedoshim said, not each individual) impacts crop yields.

Man’s Instinct to Recognize and Thank God

The Kayin and Hevel story starts with Kayin’s decision to offer a sacrifice to God, 4;3. Malbim thinks this shows an innate human tendency to know of, to want to thank God. To explain the flaws in his offering, reasons for God to reject it, Malbim spots four differences from Hevel’s that show broader issues with Kayin’s sense of God.

First, he made the offering miketz yamim, at the end of a period of time (the growing season, Malbim thinks), an indication he thought God was one of many factors helping nature along, only “needed” to be thanked once the harvest was done.

[Malbim knows the Torah established harvest gifts at the end of the growing season, too. I think he infers from the word miketz, at the end of, that Kayin deliberately waited for an end point, to show other factors had helped first, in contrast to his brother, as we are about to see. He reminds us of the Torah’s adamant opposition to worshipping God among other powers.]

Hevel brought mi-bechorot, from the first of his animals, a way to signify his belief God is the First Cause of everything, the reason later Jewish history also had people give firsts, of people, animals, and produce.

Three More Problems with Kayin’s Offering

Kayin also gave inferior produce, “of the fruits of the earth,” nothing special, where Hevel’s offering was mechelveihen, according to Onkelos mishamnehon, from the fattest of them. Malbim reads the verse to tell us Kayin thought God needed the offering in some sense, the reason he brought it la-Shem, to God, where Hevel knew better. Finally, the verse says Hevel hevi gam hu, brought he also, a phrasing Malbim thinks shows Hevel understood the essence of the sacrifice lies in the intention and experience of the one offering it.

Hevel offered himself and his submission, where Kayin brought only the physical produce, without any internal reaction or development to accompany the sacrifice.

His textual inferences show how Hevel’s sacrifice was better than Kayin’s, his knowing God is the First Cause of everything, knowing to give the best of what he had, for no need of God’s, to express his knowledge of and submission to God.

Regret Is Actually Giving Another Chance

In Bereshit 6;6, the Torah describes God as va-yinachem, usually thought of as regret. HaKetav VeHaKabbalah takes us in another direction, starting with Hoshe’a 11;8, the phrase yachad nichmeru nechumai, My rachamim, which I translate as willingness to give another chance, was aroused. When Yonah 3;8 says the people of Nineveh hoped God might be nicham, Targum Yonatan again has yitrachem, will be willing to give them another chance.

[I know this isn’t the common translation of rachamim, usually rendered compassion or mercy, but R. Mecklenburg means it the way I’ve put it here, as we’re about to see.]

He therefore argues this verse must be read in the context of the one three earlier, where Hashem had said He would give people a hundred and twenty years to mend their ways, despite already deserving destruction. The verse there says vayinachem…ki asah, which we usually read to mean God was nicham that He had created man, where R. Mecklenburg suggests we ought to use ki in another of its meanings, for He had created them.

Creators want their creations to succeed; God’s having created Man was why He gave them more time. God was nicham, gave time to improve, because He had created them.

People Fail To Take the Opportunity

The end of this verse, which seems to say Hashem was sad at heart, and the next, where God does decide to destroy humanity, ki nichamti ki asitim, pose problems for R. Mecklenburg’s reading. With almost the same words, this verse more clearly means something like “for I regret that I made them.” To solve his problem, he fastens on the indeterminacy of libo, his heart, not God’s, the people, how they reacted to the extra time. Instead of improving, they let their evil spread to their hearts. Va-yit’atzev doesn’t mean became sad, he is saying, it means let the sadness/evil affect their innermost beings.

It left no recourse but destruction, Hashem says in the next verse. To cope with the pesky ki nichamti ki asitim, R. Mecklenburg argues this ki uses yet another meaning of the word, despite. Despite having given them time, for I created them, they leave Me no choice.

Sharply different than we are used to, built with alternate readings of nichum, based on Targum Yonatan in two places, and three meanings of the word ki, depending on context. Grammatical insights that showed HaKetav VeHaKabbalah a way to turn regret into length to punish, an example of God’s sense of connection with humanity, His creation.

Themes of the Five

These were not the only interesting comments we saw over the years (I had three good candidates from Rashi, because Rashi is just the best!), but they are five good ones. And, as it happens, they all deal with freewill and what we do with it.

Nature might have had freewill, used it poorly, and gotten punished. People got freewill before they were ready for it, part of the reason its harder for us to conquer ourselves than it was supposed to be. Once we had it, Hashem wants us to know that our sexual ethics affect the earth’s plenty, and that we can and should use this freewill to recognize the correct way to serve God, with the truest appreciation of God’s nature and how to relate to Him. When it all went wrong, God gave us another chance, a hundred and twenty years we wasted, “forcing” Hashem to bring the Flood.

Still, we have freewill, and can do wonders with it, if we use it right.

Here are the other comments I did not again review, but will include in next year’s search for overarching themes:
Ramban, Introduction
Rashi, Bereshit 1;1
Onkelos Bereshit 1;1 on Elokim
Kli Yakar, Bereshit 1;1
Meshech Hochmah Bereshit 1;5
Vilna Gaon, Bereshit, 1;14
Rashi, Bereshit 2;7
Onkelos Bereshit 2;7
Or HaChayyim Bereshit, 3;1
Rashi, Bereshit 3;5
R. David Zvi Hoffmann, Bereshit 3;6
Rashi, Bereshit, 3;22
Rashi, Bereshit 4;2
Meshech Hochmah Bereshit 4; 3-5
Sforno Bereshit 4;6
Ha’amek Davar, Bereshit 4;7
R. Samson Raphael Hirsch, 5;1
Onkelos 5:3
Ibn Ezra, Bereshit, 5;24
Rashi, Bereshit, 5;24

Parshat Ve-Zot Ha-Berachah

An Ibn Ezra I’d Have Preferred to Avoid

I several times this year pointed out where Ibn Ezra was more traditional than I’d have thought, more accepting of Chazal’s readings. One reason I had prejudged him were comments of his pointed out to me over forty years ago, that put him decidedly outside of what we today consider the camp of the faithful.

At the beginning of chapter thirty-four, the Torah says Moshe climbed Mount Nevo, where he then passed away and was buried. Bava Batra suggested that Yehoshu’a wrote the last eight verse in the Torah, from where the verse tells us Moshe passed away; Ibn Ezra argues it had to have started from here, since Moshe never came back down.

Later, in verse six, he suggests Yehoshu’a wrote the Torah’s comment that no one knows Moshe’s burial place ad ha-yom ha-zeh, until this day, at the end of his life, I think because the phrase seems to assume a lengthy time in which no one had come to know the burial place.

Both those comments today raise hackles, since we live when many challenge the divinity of the Torah. Any claim anyone other than Moshe wrote parts of the Torah eases those people’s sense of its divinity, helps them feel comfortable denying the Mosaic origins of the Torah, the unique type and level of prophecy Moshe reached in recording Hashem’s words exactly. If we can say Yehoshu’a wrote some, their logic goes, we can say other parts were by others, and so on.

It’s sad for Ibn Ezra, whose other comments stress fealty to God and (as we have seen) rabbinic tradition. Even in these verses, when the Torah describes Moshe as eved Hashem, a servant of God, Ibn Ezra interprets it to mean he always did as God commanded, even in the manner of his death.

Context Counts

For his comfort questioning Moshe’s authorship of these verses (and, perhaps, scattered phrases elsewhere in the Torah, a list I feel no need to spread), I am reminded of the words of a teacher of mine long ago (I do not know if he would want to be quoted on this, so I leave out his name). We were discussing the Torah commentary of R. Yehudah He-Chasid, the trigger of a brouhaha when it was published in the late twentieth century, because it, too, casually accepted the possibility some verses were inserted later.

This teacher pointed out the different implications of the same idea, depending on the intellectual context. Where everyone, Jew and non-Jew, agrees Moshe wrote the Torah from God’s dictation (Christian and Muslim countries), to say a phrase here or there was not by Moshe makes a point far removed from what it means when those basic beliefs are no longer accepted.

In our verse, for example, Ibn Ezra pushed back a rabbinic tradition four verses. The Gemara itself tolerated the possibility that Yehoshu’a wrote the last eight; Ibn Ezra likely would have said he was taking the logic where it went, to where Moshe’s involvements with this world ended, even if he did not yet pass away.

We have problems with such views today, because of where they lead. But Ibn Ezra said it, in a parsha where I did not find other comments of any particular interest. So I decided not to dodge it.

The Wondrous Levi’im

In Moshe’s blessing of the tribe of Levi, 33;9, he notes their willingness to set aside family to uphold Hashem’s law, not caring about who their fathers were. At the Golden Calf, says Sforno. For their sons’ lives, he points to their insistence on circumcising them in the desert, despite Yevamot 71b-72a saying the healing north wind did not blow all those years.

Sforno writes many Levite babies died because of this, a claim I find troubling, especially since halachah stresses the importance of not performing circumcision where we have reason to believe it would endanger the baby [I just recently attended a brit where the baby also had a pidyon ha-ben, it being his thirtieth day, because he wasn’t big enough until then!].

He seems to portray the Levi’im as rabidly devoted, even where halachah itself would not want it. It doesn’t seem what Moshe would praise. I suggest, although his phrasing doesn’t really agree, that Sforno meant many more babies died than necessary. If ordinary infant mortality was one in 100,000, and Levite devotion t meant one in ten thousand died, that’s many more, ten times as many, although in absolute numbers, it might not have been enough to raise halachic concerns sufficient to justify foregoing circumcision.

The rest of the people gave up milah all those years out of real but overblown concerns, where the Levi’im continued observing the mitzvah despite the real occasional consequences.

Interestingly, when the verse then says they assiduously kept Hashem’s berit, a word we instinctively connect to milah, Sforno reminds us of Yoma 66b’s tradition that the tribe of Levi never worshipped any power other than God.

Devotion expressed in willingness to put fealty to God over fealty to seriously sinning family, over fealty to excessive concern with their babies’ health, and certainly over any involvement with powers other than God.

The People’s King

In 33;5, Moshe describes the arrival of a king in the Jewish people as being when the heads of the nation gather, a phrase Or HaChayyim takes two ways, both emphasizing the people’s role in the monarchy. First, he cites Tosefta Sanhedrin 3, appointment of a king requires ratification by the Sanhedrin of 71, who represent the nation, and must be merutzeh, happy with, the king.

[Or HaChayim lived in Morocco and Italy while he wrote and published this commentary, neither of them republics, but other places in Italy were. Random comments here and there lead me to believe our antimonarchic democratic world overstates the tyranny of kings, even ones we today call despots.

Thought experiment: what percentage of Chinese are happy with Xi Jingping running their country, of Russians are happy with Putin? I think an uncomfortably high percentage, for we who value democracy. When Or HaChayim speaks of people happily choosing their king, I take him at his word.

Especially because of his next comment.]

For the other way the king is the people’s, he reminds us Jewish monarchy started with when the nation requested a king (in the time of Sha’ul), upsetting Shmuel the prophet, who preferred they stay satisfied under the direct rule of God.

He suggests it explains the use of the word va-yehi, a word tradition generally takes to signal trouble. Here, he reads the verse to mean if the heads of the nation gather, and insist on a king, there will be a king in the Jewish people.

Not a ringing endorsement of absolute monarchy from Or HaChayim, who thinks the people must initiate the move to a king, then be happy with the one chosen.

A Torah For Each of Us

We say 33;4 often, Moshe commanded us a Torah, a heritage for kehillat Ya’akov; the last two words bother R. Ya’akov Kaminetzky. Why Ya’akov instead of Yisra’el, why a kehillah as opposed to zera, the offspring, or benei, sons of?

He sees it reflect an essential gulf between Jews’ experience of Torah and non-Jews’ of their religions. Their religions are the domain of leaders, priests, and wise people, the only ones who understand the theology, the rest of the people relying on them for what to do and how.

Yisra’el would indicate those elites, because we got the name ki sarita, “for you have contended with,” for Emet Le-Ya’akov a reference to sarei ha-am, the leaders. Ya’akov, with its idea of heel, indicates the whole nation, highest to lowest (however we calculate that). Those other religions, R. Kaminetzky thinks, express worship in special acts (he does not give examples; I can think of a Muslim praying on his rug, a Christian going to church), but does not address the rest of life.

Torah weighs in on everything we do, morning to night, cradle to grave. It is why a non-Jew may only bring an olah, a burnt offering, in the Beit HaMikdash, because his/her religion has the person give everything to God, in certain narrow situations. Where a Jew can also offer a shelamim, the altar gets some, the priests some, and the Jews themselves have some. Sacrifice, and religion, weave into their lives.

Torah is all of ours, not just great scholars or priests who run rituals.

A nice place to end, so I won’t even summarize the four comments for this week. Nor do I have time to review the year, because Bereshit is upon us! Because Sukkot ends Wednesday night in the US, close to Shabbat, I hope to send out Bereshit before Sukkot. It starts a two-year process of review, as I will describe next time.

Meanwhile, chag sameach to all, may this year contribute to restoring our sense of the last day(s) of Sukkot as a time of great joy and revelry, pleased to have finished one year of Torah study, and start another.

Parshat Ha’azinu

Who’s Atoning for Whom?

The last phrase of the Song of Ha’azinu reads “His Land will atone His people,” making unclear the subject and object. Ibn Ezra knows some who think Hashem will do the atoning, or accept the atonement, for both, Land and people. They assume the Torah sometimes omits vavs, meaning our verse should have said ve-amo, and His people.

Others thought the Land will atone for the people (Ibn Ezra calls it a derash, although it is also the reason we bury people directly in the ground, in Israel and some communities even outside). Ibn Ezra ratifies the idea, just doesn’t think it fits the verse, especially because Land is feminine, where the verse uses the masculine form of atone.

He therefore thinks it’s the other way around, the people will atone for the Land, by taking vengeance on enemies, cleansing the Land of all the blood those enemies will have spilled in it. In Bamidbar 35;33, the Torah had said the Land can only be cleansed/atoned—with the same verb as here—by the blood (death) of the killer.

When Jews are killed in Israel, Ibn Ezra is saying, the Land itself demands redress, accomplished by killing those killers. [In our current war, when our brave soldiers were finding and killing those who committed the atrocities of October 7, they were fulfilling Ibn Ezra’s view of this verse.]

Unnatural Losses and Divine Providence

A wise Jewish people would spot when God causes their troubles, because of their sins, we read in verses 29-31. For Sforno, the wisdom lies in being able to see the unnatural element in their losses. When a smaller army defeats them handily, it can only be because their own God fights against them, suppressing or removing their strength and military prowess (God forbid).

Other nations lose at war sometimes, too, but verse thirty-one distinguishes based on “our” God versus theirs. Those other nations have a sar, an angel, whose status in Heaven guides their fortunes. While that sar is ascendant in Heaven, they will win; when they lose, it is because the sar has lost.

Non-Jewish nations’ losses are never against the pattern of nature, since those sarim reflect the ordinary natural world. Nations rise, flourish, and fall, all within ordinary patterns. Jews are in the paradoxical position of being guided directly by God, and when they lose, it is unnatural, because God has decided to punish them (Sforno writes “turns against them.”)

Should we notice it, we can use it to improve. If we are wise.

Wrong Impressions Make Our Lives Harder

Verse twenty-seven isn’t easy to translate, so I’ll just give Or HaChayim’s reading. The verse refers to God’s anger with other nations, saying it is agur, for Or HaChayim a sign their misdeeds suffice to deserve destruction.

Should they see the Jews rolling along in Israel, no repercussions for their idolatry, they will deny God, God forbid, because He seems not to follow through on His threats to punish idolatry, as it were. God’s compassion on Jews would perversely lead these non-Jews to sin comfortably, especially to feel their faith is equally valid to the Jews’. When Jews do well, those nations will attribute it to the other powers they were worshipping, will say God doesn’t do or make all this happen.

Needing to disabuse the world of the false notions our idolatry and success would send, Hashem will be “forced” to punish us.

Yehoshu’a Stays Himself

At the end of the parsha (I had few options with Emet Le-Ya’akov, and the other substantive one argued a political position I had trouble conveying), Moshe recites/announces the Shirah of Ha’azinu to the people, he and Hoshe’a bin Nun (we call him Yehoshu’a).

R. Ya’akov Kaminetzky is bothered by why he is there at all, and why we call him Hoshe’a here, when Moshe himself changed his name to Yehoshu’a, back in the story of the spies, thirty-eight years earlier. Rashi said Moshe brought him along to have him address the people with a meturgeman, a person who functions like a megaphone, a display of leadership status, to forestall challenges after Moshe passes.

The birth name, according to Rashi, shows Yehoshu’a’s continuing humility, his not having gotten full of himself, his self-image still the same as early in his life (when his name was Hoshe’a). R. Kaminetzky refers us to Rashbam in Shelach, who thought Moshe’s renaming him Yehoshu’a was a custom of the times, a new name for an elevated position.

In that framing, Hoshe’a here shows he remembered his origins, had not let his success warp him, was still the boy from Ephraim… not Yehoshu’a, the leader of the Jewish people.

[He doesn’t mean Yehoshu’a would be timid, he was not. R. Kaminetzky is highlighting the two sides of proper Jewish leadership, the leader being strong, decisive, even imperial, while at the same time being humble and aware he, as a person, is no different or better than anyone else.

A tough task.]

Ha’azinu, a parsha where people take the Land of Israel’s vengeance for the people murdered in its borders, can have leaders who remember not to confuse their positions with their persons, if we do well. Or can incur God’s wrath, God’s making us lose to much weaker enemies, and “force” God to do this, so enemies not learn the wrong lessons from our not being punished.

The choice is ours. 

Last year, my summary of what we saw in Even Ha-Ezer revolved around marriage, divorce, and proper sexuality. We spoke about the obligation to procreate, preferably within marriage, how marriage required consent, celebrated for a week after. At the other end, we discussed affairs, with what evidence, forced the end of a marriage; there, we did see some technical issues of how to write names in a get. But mostly, we saw broad issues of the law.

The same was true for arayot, we saw the basic idea with a bit about yichud, the ideal for men and women never to create the possibility of compromising positions.

Some Technicalities of Divorce and Other Reactions to the End of a Marriage

This year’s seven discussions of Even Ha-Ezer covered similar ground, except in more specific detail. We discussed ways of delivering a bill of divorcea the get, what counts as the woman having acquired it for the divorce to take effect. We also looked into what kinds of reunions between a divorced couple alert us to the possibility they have reunited, or to think a divorcing couple may have changed their minds, suspending the get process.

The question comes up for unmarried or engaged couples, too, with differences between where witnesses saw a full act of copulation, saw activity that strongly indicates copulation, or saw them secluded together.

A step away from divorce, we studied the process of chalitzah, where a widow will not be marrying the brother of her deceased, childless husband. We had to figure out who could serve on the court for the ceremony, where it would happen, and the parts of it, which indispensable, which not.

A further step closer to marriage, we discussed how to handle a widow who remarried without waiting for chalitzah. Ordinarily, we want her to divorce and never return to the new husband (to punish their excessive haste), then undergo a chalitzah with a brother-in-law from the first marriage. There are times we cannot do that, such as if she already had children with the new husband, making us leery to give others reason to call this marriage into question, to suspect the children are mamzerim, the product of a significantly illicit relationship.

The calculus also changes if the woman had reason to think she was allowed to remarry, such as if she received news the brother-in-law had died, had known he existed, or he had already left Judaism at the time of her marriage.

Where she had not remarried, but did behave promiscuously, we thought yibum could proceed, and also analyzed how her connection with her brothers-in-law affects their rights to marry (relatives of hers) before she has had chalitzah.

Prohibited Marriages

Besides ending marriages, we discussed who is allowed to create them. The Torah banned relatives of various sorts from coupling up, and Chazal added to those, often extending a rule up or down an ancestral line. The sanctity of marriage that characterizes Judaism (an idea we saw in the blessings of erusin) is not created between those with certain pre-existing connections.

While AH didn’t make the connection explicit, it parallels the Torah’s arayot rules, which couples may not have physically intimate relationships, according to Rambam because they would foster excessive sexuality [these were the women a man would encounter most often], The proscriptions were to channel people’s urges away from the easy and present, to finding a new relationship, part of building the next generation.

The Marriage of Kedushah

The first step of marriage was erusin, what separates Jewish marriage from others. Before the ceremony, Chazal instituted a berachah, whose surprising wording showed it to be a birchat ha-shevach, of praise rather than of mitzvah, and possibly used the occasion of marriage to refer us back to our national “marriage” with God.

Once married, we encounter the question of the nature of the couple’s intimate life, the activities they should or should not engage, to produce a relationship of tzeni’ut, of modesty and sanctity, with considerations of when and how often.

The two years of chapters seem to me to revolve around a narrower and more focused set of ideas than, perhaps, in other sections of Aruch HaShulchan. Even Ha-Ezer comes away looking devoted to human sexuality, its proper and improper channels (marriage and everything else), how to create and act within the proper marriage, how to end marriages that have broken irreparably and move to the next one.

For all of those, status–of people, of objects or documents, of ceremonies– were the biggest issue, how we do or do not effectuate the statuses we seek, to produce the relationships central to the kedushah of the Jewish family, starting with the husband and wife who anchor that family.

Next time, let’s see if it all hangs together in some way.

The concern I raised last time applies even more to Yoreh De’ah, which we saw only seven times this year. Worse (for my project, not in terms of the quality of the Torah), three were about issues within nedarim, vows, where there is a great deal of overlap with nazir, a topic in last week’s review of Halachot Shonot. Some tentative thoughts, nonetheless.

The Power of Words: More of the Same

Nedarim obviously continue the theme of the power Hashem gave our words, our ability to create halachic realities with our commitments. Within that, again a repeat, we were confronted with the importance of clarity, the difficulty of ascertaining what an unclear neder meant, such as whether it included absolutely all benefit or not (could a son provide minimal benefits to a parent who had forsworn them, such as bringing groceries from the store, or vice verse, the father for the son?). Clarity and intent perhap also underlay the vows a Jew would not have to fulfill, made as part of a business negotiation, or under certain kinds of duress.

Writing a Torah scroll gave us new examples. The scribe had to read the words aloud from an existing scroll and only then write, the letters had to be written clearly, distinguishable from other, similar letters.

Still, mostly ground we’ve trodden before. Let’s look at some new ideas.

Money Always Matters

Not a new idea, but our Yoreh De’ah chapters did provide more cases of halachah’s concern with money, and rules about it. The nedarim were often about banning use or benefit of some or all a person’s possessions. For many reasons, including to push someone to study Torah more single-mindedly. Money can help and money can hurt.

A sub-topic here was whether a father can ban an inheritance from a son, and how the existence of a grandchild might mitigate the issue.

Moving away from vows, who gets charity had clear financial elements (although not exclusively so, given the cases where wealthy people qualify as temporarily poor), as did the exemption of the Torah scholar from paying certain taxes.

We phrase life in money terms, sometimes or often.

What Kind of Person/Object Are You?

It seems to me much of what we spent the Yoreh De’ah part of our year on had to do with defining what something is. For vows, we distinguished tangible from intangible, noted that a vow to prohibit an action could only take effect if it addressed the physical object that would produce the action (“My eyes should be prohibited in sleep if…”).

Vows aside, the right of a Torah scholar not to pay certain taxes extended from his status as a Torah scholar, independent of financial need or concerns. We had to establish who qualified, what level of exclusivity of involvement with Torah he needed (how much time, for example, could the scholar spend securing a livelihood).

For charity, we had to know who was poor, with different scales depending on the type of support the community was going to provide. Even wealthy people could qualify, depending on the circumstances exerting financial pressure.

Similarly, a baby who was ill might be able to be circumcised as soon as he recovered, or might have to wait seven days, a function of how we define the issue now cleared up.

Standing Up to Wrongdoing

We had a few examples of Jews’ reacting to others’ misdeeds, material to include if we ever have enough to articulate a principle. Some vows expressed ordinary annoyance with another (not a model to adopt), others focused on a value, such as the target’s Torah study or good deed involvement, the vow a way to encourage or push to better behavior.

Torah scholars had to know to stand up to those who mistreat them (in a chapter about their right to have their merchandise sold first, as well as their various exemptions). A Torah scholar who failed to respond forcefully was to be admonished to do better.

The people who disburse funds to the poor had to refuse to give undeserving poor (an issue that arises today, when many people say, a shekel here or there doesn’t matter. AH was clear that we should be giving only those legitimately needy). On the flip side, we are supposed to manufacture ways to give or lend to the resistant needy.

It’s not enough to do what’s right, we can be put in a position to react to others who are doing right or wrong.

Compared to Last Year

To compare to what we took away from last year’s Yoreh De’ah again shows how this section of SA has (so far) defeated my attempt to find running themes linking disparate areas of halachah (that would say something new and unexpected; it’s easy to speak so generally it covers everything).

Last year, we discussed how to prepare meat properly for eating, how to determine when a woman was a niddah, and a bit about nedarim. There were some status questions—what animals are considered terefot, are wounded in a way preventing kosher slaughter, what knives are fit to kill in a kosher way, when a woman becomes a niddah.

Within those, we had examples of how difficult it can be to find clarity, how to evaluate knives, wounds, and instances of a woman’s bleeding/menstruation. Beyond that, not much overlap.

Those, overly general or not, seem to be what we have out of Yoreh De’ah so far, the need and challenges of establishing status of people and objects for various purposes, the value of clarity, where we can find it, and how to handle ambiguity, when we meet it. With money, and relationships, and promoting a world of right and wrong, as we can.

For me, Yoreh De’ah, a puzzle not yet solved.