Read this weeks Torah portion and ask yourself the question “How many people die in this weeks portion?”
You should easily come up with at least 2; the text clearly talks about the deaths of Miriam and Aaron. What’s less clear is that the answer is really in the hundreds of thousands. This portion is the transition from the generation that stood at Sinai to the one that will enter the Land of Israel. Keep that in mind, I’ll get back to it shortly.
The event that I wanted to talk about was the incident with Moses and the rock. The story goes like this. The people complain to Moses and Aaron that they have no water. Moses asks G-d what to do. G-d tells him to assemble the people before a rock, and instruct the rock to give forth water. Moses assembles the people, but when it comes time to speak to the rock, he gets angry at the people and hits the rock instead. Because of this incident, G-d decrees that neither Moses nor Aaron will get to lead the people into Israel.
This raises several obvious questions. Why such a major punishment for such a seemingly minor crime? There are many explanations available for this issue. But even if you accept those explanations, you still have to ask why Aaron got the same punishment; he didn’t seem to do anything.
The explanation I like says that the relationship between hitting the rock and not being allowed into Israel is not once of a punishment for a crime, but one of demonstrating a decision.
It takes a very different kind of leader to bring a group of slaves out of Egypt than it does to take a nation into a holy land. Moses was the right man for the former, but G-d decided he was not the right man for the latter. The incident with the rock didn’t condemn Moses, it proved G-d’s point.
Throughout the desert wanderings, whenever water was needed, Moses would always hit a rock to get it. Picture the scene, the nation is thirsty and demanding water. Moses strikes a rock and water flows out. The scene suggests that it’s through Moses’ power that the water flows. However, that’s not what the people think. The people watching that were the same ones who stood at Mount Sinai; they knew that the water comes from G-d, Moses is just the conduit.
In the incident in this week’s portion, the people observing the scene were not at Mount Sinai. They view Moses’ miracles as coming from his power. They knew about Sinai and G-d, but they sense something different.
G-d was setting up this event at rock to be the Mount Sinai for the next generation, where everyone would see the power of G-d. But after 40 years of acting in a particular way, Moses didn’t seize the opportunity. Through no fault of his own, Moses reinforced the people notion that the miracles come from Moses, not G-d.
This is why Moses (and similarly Aaron) could not go into the Land of Israel; G-d knew that if they did, the people would worship them like gods.
In chapter 4 of Deuteronomy, we get a retrospective of this event. Moses says to the people that he’s not going to enter the Land, but you are. And when you get there don’t make any idols. The relationship between those 2 statements might not be clear, but in the context of the above, the passage should be understood as follows. “If I were to enter the land you would worship me. So I’m not going to enter. But you are, and when you get there don’t worship anything else (other than G-d).”
Moses was the greatest of all leaders in human history, but he wasn’t the right man to lead the people into Israel. There’s an important lesson here, when selecting a leader, be sure to select the right one, not the best one.
Shabbat Shalom
Friday, June 25, 2004
Friday, June 11, 2004
Parashat Shlach L’Cha – The sin of the Spies
This week, we read one of the most tragic portions in the Torah. The Jews are standing at the border of Israel, about to enter and fulfill G-d’s promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but instead of entering, they decide to send in “spies” to scout out the land.
The spies return with a huge bunch of grapes and say, "You all see the size of these grapes? You should see the size of the people who eat them. They are giants! No way we can beat them. We may as well go back to Egypt." The people let out a great cry at their misfortune.
Moses is absolutely horrified and God is very angry. As punishment, G-d decrees that the Jews shall wander the desert for 40 years and all adult males will die off before they will be allowed to enter Israel. G-d tells the Jews that because they cried on this day for no good reason, they will cry on this day throughout history for some very good reasons.
The date that this happened was the 9th of Av, Tisha b’Av. This is a major fast day in the Jewish calendar. Virtually every major disaster in Jewish history is going to be connected to the Ninth of Av. The destruction of the first and second temples, the expulsion from Spain, the start of World War I (which led to the Holocaust) and many other tragic events all happened on that day.
The question is, if G-d knew the result of sending the spies would be so horrendous, why did he tell Moses to do it? The answer is that G-d didn’t tell Moses to send spies. If we read the passage carefully, and the passage in Deuteronomy that recounts this event, along with the commentary, we see that what actually happened is that G-d told Moses to go into the land, the people said to Moses, before we go into the land, we should send scouts, Moses asked G-d if he should do that, and G-d said “If you want to do it, the do it.” G-d knew it would turn out badly, but it’s a matter of free will, if Moses wanted to send scouts, then he should do it.
So the question now becomes, why did Moses want to send spies, didn’t he trust G-d? The answer, again, is that he didn’t send spies. The people he send ended up spying, but that was not Moses’ intention.
The Talmud tells us that a man is not allowed to marry a woman before he meets her. The idea being, you need to meet first to start the process of falling in love, which then seeds the relationship of marriage. This is what Moses wanted, for the scouts (not spies) to bring back stories of the beauty of the land so that the people would start to fall in love.
Moses’ view was that G-d was giving us the land, and we should start to fall in love. The people’s view was that the taking of the land was a military conquest and they needed to send spies to develop a military strategy.
I think there is a lesson to be learned here about marriage. A marriage is ordained by G-d, and if you both go into it with your trust in G-d, then the relationship will bloom like the land of Israel. If you go in looking at it as a conquest, you’re destined to wanted for 40 years.
Shabbat Shalom.
The spies return with a huge bunch of grapes and say, "You all see the size of these grapes? You should see the size of the people who eat them. They are giants! No way we can beat them. We may as well go back to Egypt." The people let out a great cry at their misfortune.
Moses is absolutely horrified and God is very angry. As punishment, G-d decrees that the Jews shall wander the desert for 40 years and all adult males will die off before they will be allowed to enter Israel. G-d tells the Jews that because they cried on this day for no good reason, they will cry on this day throughout history for some very good reasons.
The date that this happened was the 9th of Av, Tisha b’Av. This is a major fast day in the Jewish calendar. Virtually every major disaster in Jewish history is going to be connected to the Ninth of Av. The destruction of the first and second temples, the expulsion from Spain, the start of World War I (which led to the Holocaust) and many other tragic events all happened on that day.
The question is, if G-d knew the result of sending the spies would be so horrendous, why did he tell Moses to do it? The answer is that G-d didn’t tell Moses to send spies. If we read the passage carefully, and the passage in Deuteronomy that recounts this event, along with the commentary, we see that what actually happened is that G-d told Moses to go into the land, the people said to Moses, before we go into the land, we should send scouts, Moses asked G-d if he should do that, and G-d said “If you want to do it, the do it.” G-d knew it would turn out badly, but it’s a matter of free will, if Moses wanted to send scouts, then he should do it.
So the question now becomes, why did Moses want to send spies, didn’t he trust G-d? The answer, again, is that he didn’t send spies. The people he send ended up spying, but that was not Moses’ intention.
The Talmud tells us that a man is not allowed to marry a woman before he meets her. The idea being, you need to meet first to start the process of falling in love, which then seeds the relationship of marriage. This is what Moses wanted, for the scouts (not spies) to bring back stories of the beauty of the land so that the people would start to fall in love.
Moses’ view was that G-d was giving us the land, and we should start to fall in love. The people’s view was that the taking of the land was a military conquest and they needed to send spies to develop a military strategy.
I think there is a lesson to be learned here about marriage. A marriage is ordained by G-d, and if you both go into it with your trust in G-d, then the relationship will bloom like the land of Israel. If you go in looking at it as a conquest, you’re destined to wanted for 40 years.
Shabbat Shalom.
Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Slow posts for the next little while
I’m about to move from a city with a tiny Jewish population (Burlington) to one with one of the highest Jewish Populations in Canada (Richmond Hill).
Because of the move related activities, posting will be minimal over the next few weeks until I get settled in the new place.
Because of the move related activities, posting will be minimal over the next few weeks until I get settled in the new place.
Friday, June 04, 2004
Parashat Be'halot'cha
This week we read about the laws of the Temple Menorah, the Jews celebrate their first Passover since leaving Egypt, we rebel against G-d because of the poor taste of Mannah and the lack of meat in our diets (G-d responds by sending Quail and by killing off those who rebelled) and we finish with an interesting section about Miriam (Moses’ sister).
The text says that Miriam spoke badly about Moses and as punishment is inflicted with tzara'ath (similar to leprosy – I wrote about that a few weeks ago). We know that impure speech (lashon hara) is a sin and the punishment is tzara'ath, so this seems reasonable. However, this passage leads to a separate mitzvah regarding lashon hara; the Rambam writes that in order to remember not to speak lashon hara, we are to remember what Miriam did and how she was punished.
This seems strange to me, we have been given a mitzvah to remember not to speak lashon Hara, and this mitzvah entails an eternal lashon hara against Miriam - remembering and speaking about that which seems to be negative about Miriam. We’re told to speak negatively about Miriam in order to remember not to speak negatively about people. I’m sure you see why this is troubling.
The answer to this problem is that our speaking about Miriam is not lashon hara, since she didn’t intentionally do anything wrong. We are not trying to put Miriam down; we’re trying to learn from her mistakes. And since Miriam didn’t intestinally sin, there is no harm in talking about what she did. Miriam spoke out against her brother out of love for him, it harmed no one.
So if she didn’t intentionally do anything wrong – if there was no sin – then why the punishment? Because when you deal in lashon hara, the effects are devastating.
The story is told of a man who comes home after a hot day of gold and goes to the fridge to pour a glass of coke. He takes the bottle of what he thought was coke, but which his wife had filled with bleach. The wife did not do that intentionally, a bottle of bleach broke, and the only bottle around was from coke, so she saved as much bleach as she could in the coke bottle and left the bottle on the counter. Someone else saw the bottle out on the counter and put it in the fridge. As the bleach touched the man’s lips, he sensed something wasn’t right and didn’t drink it. It wouldn’t have mattered if the wife put the bleach in the bottle intentionally or unintentionally, if you drink bleach it has devastating effects.
The same is true for lashon hara. Unintentionally speaking lashon hara is just as devastating as speaking it intentionally.
A man came to his Rebbi feeling very bad about speaking lashon hara about a friend. He asked the Rebbi ho he could remedy the situation. The Rebbi told him to go get a feather pillow, the man did. The Rebbi then told him to cut it open and release the feathers into the wind, the man did. The Rebbi then told the man to go collect all the feathers, only when he had collected all of them would the lashon hara be remedied.
Our words are like the feathers of that pillow. Once they leave our lips we can try to clean up the mess, but we can never get them back. Just as the feathers can never be fully retrieved, lashon hara can never be fully remedied.
Shabbat Shalom
The text says that Miriam spoke badly about Moses and as punishment is inflicted with tzara'ath (similar to leprosy – I wrote about that a few weeks ago). We know that impure speech (lashon hara) is a sin and the punishment is tzara'ath, so this seems reasonable. However, this passage leads to a separate mitzvah regarding lashon hara; the Rambam writes that in order to remember not to speak lashon hara, we are to remember what Miriam did and how she was punished.
This seems strange to me, we have been given a mitzvah to remember not to speak lashon Hara, and this mitzvah entails an eternal lashon hara against Miriam - remembering and speaking about that which seems to be negative about Miriam. We’re told to speak negatively about Miriam in order to remember not to speak negatively about people. I’m sure you see why this is troubling.
The answer to this problem is that our speaking about Miriam is not lashon hara, since she didn’t intentionally do anything wrong. We are not trying to put Miriam down; we’re trying to learn from her mistakes. And since Miriam didn’t intestinally sin, there is no harm in talking about what she did. Miriam spoke out against her brother out of love for him, it harmed no one.
So if she didn’t intentionally do anything wrong – if there was no sin – then why the punishment? Because when you deal in lashon hara, the effects are devastating.
The story is told of a man who comes home after a hot day of gold and goes to the fridge to pour a glass of coke. He takes the bottle of what he thought was coke, but which his wife had filled with bleach. The wife did not do that intentionally, a bottle of bleach broke, and the only bottle around was from coke, so she saved as much bleach as she could in the coke bottle and left the bottle on the counter. Someone else saw the bottle out on the counter and put it in the fridge. As the bleach touched the man’s lips, he sensed something wasn’t right and didn’t drink it. It wouldn’t have mattered if the wife put the bleach in the bottle intentionally or unintentionally, if you drink bleach it has devastating effects.
The same is true for lashon hara. Unintentionally speaking lashon hara is just as devastating as speaking it intentionally.
A man came to his Rebbi feeling very bad about speaking lashon hara about a friend. He asked the Rebbi ho he could remedy the situation. The Rebbi told him to go get a feather pillow, the man did. The Rebbi then told him to cut it open and release the feathers into the wind, the man did. The Rebbi then told the man to go collect all the feathers, only when he had collected all of them would the lashon hara be remedied.
Our words are like the feathers of that pillow. Once they leave our lips we can try to clean up the mess, but we can never get them back. Just as the feathers can never be fully retrieved, lashon hara can never be fully remedied.
Shabbat Shalom
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