Parshat B'shalach - פרשת בשלח

"וַיְהִי בְּשַׁלַּח פַּרְעֹה אֶת-הָעָם, וְלֹא-נָחָם אֱלֹהִים דֶּרֶךְ אֶרֶץ פְּלִשְׁתִּים כִּי קָרוֹב הוּא: כִּי אָמַר אֱלֹהִים, פֶּן-יִנָּחֵם הָעָם בִּרְאֹתָם מִלְחָמָה וְשָׁבוּ מִצְרָיְמָה. וַיַּסֵּב אֱלֹהִים אֶת-הָעָם דֶּרֶךְ הַמִּדְבָּר יַם-סוּף; וַחֲמֻשִׁים עָלוּ בְנֵי-יִשְׂרָאֵל מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם - And it came to pass when Pharaoh had let the people go, that Hashem led them not by the way of the land of the P'lishtim, because it was near; for Hashem said: 'Lest the people reconsider when they see war, and they will return to Egypt.' So Hashem turned the people about by the way of the wilderness by the Red Sea; and the children of Israel went up armed out of the land of Egypt."
(שמות יג:יז-יח)

The verses above, as is fairly clear, are part of those detailing Am Yisrael's exit from Egypt. The famed exodus, we learn here, did not take place in the most straightforward manner possible; namely that the Am Yisrael did not leave Egypt from the Northern tip of its Eastern border, head North-East through the desert along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea (through modern-day Gaza,) and finally reach the closest part of the Holy Land; South-West Israel.

Instead, Hashem guided the Israelites to their destination in a rather roundabout fashion. As it says above, "וַיַּסֵּב אֱלֹהִים אֶת-הָעָם דֶּרֶךְ הַמִּדְבָּר יַם-סוּף - So Hashem turned the people about by the way of the wilderness by the Red Sea." Instead of heading North-East, the Jews are instructed to go first East, cross a sea, and then turn North so that they may finally enter the land of Israel from the West by crossing the Eastern bank of the Jordan river. We may picture their route as roughly two sides of a triangle, with the "hypotenuse," being the shorter, more direct and seemingly more sensible route. Why did their path meander so? Why couldn't the Jews simply take the shortcut?

Rashi and the Ramban, though, give this question fairly short shrift. They point out that there was a need for Hashem to take Am Yisrael on this indirect and drawn-our route precisely because it was indirect and drawn-out. If the Jews had traveled along the Mediterranean coast, they would have passed through a place we call "Philistia" in modern English, the home of the fearsome and belicose P'lishtim. (Otherwise known as the Phillistines.) Hashem knew that the people would lose heart and turn back to Egypt were that to happen, and so He had them enter the Holy Land another way. By forcing them along a tortuously indirect route that took them far from Egypt, He made it hard for them to even consider turning back. As we see, Amalek did attack the Jews, and Hashem' plan was vindicated as nobody pleaded to turn back.

So far, so biblical. There is an axiom in Jewish thought, though, that each and every word mentioned in the Torah is mentioned because it is relevant to every generation. So what may we learn from this? If I may, I'd like to leave the commentaries here, and make my own observations. (And all faults found herein are my own.)

The question that I'd like to pose is why Israel deserved to be taken back to Eretz Yisrael? They exited Egypt on the lowest level possible and committed numerous despicable sins on the way. Had Hashem at any time decided to call it off, His decision would have been entirely justified. Indeed, after the Cheit Ha-Egel, Hashem initially informs Moshe Rabbeinu that He plans to destroy Am Yisrael. However, He signals to Moshe Rabbeinu that this decision is negotiable. Hashem tells Moshe, “וְעַתָּה הַנִּיחָה לִּי, וְיִחַר-אַפִּי בָהֶם וַאֲכַלֵּם; וְאֶעֱשֶׂה אוֹתְךָ, לְגוֹי גָּדוֹל - And now leave Me and I will destroy them and make you a great nation” (Sh'mot 32:10).

Rashi, citing Chazal, notes that although Hashem speaks seemingly unequivocally, He implies that He will not destroy Am Yisrael if Moshe does not “leave Him alone.” To use an Orwellism, why the doublespeak?

The answer could well be that Hashem wants to communicate a complex message*. On the one hand, Hashem wishes to say that this sin is one for which Bnei Yisrael really do deserve to be destroyed. On the other hand, there is room for them to recover from this ugly incident. In the end, Moshe's pleas are heard, Am Yisrael are not destroyed, they continue on the journey to Israel and ultimately end up in the Holy Land with the Beit Hamikdash.

What may we learn from this episode? Although the answer that Hashem guided the Jews to Israel via an indirect route so as to avoid being attacked is a perfectly viable and correct answer, I'd like to suggest another aspect. It was to take us through a rollercoaster ride in which we would be completely exposed. In the desert we fell apart time and again, only for Hashem to forgive us each time and not destroy us. We reached Eretz Israel not because we deserved to on our own merits, but with the help of Hashem, we were permitted to reach the promised land.

I can't remember where I heard it, but I once heard an intriguing question posed; when the redemption finally comes, will the generation that is alive at the time will be considered as more virtuous than previous generations? Will the Moshiach's arrival really be because of their merits? To make an even more pertinent point; if we are taught to expect the arrival of the redemption at any given moment, then are we to say that if the Moshiach arrives in our time, or generation will have deserved it more than all previous ones? Could we really say that all the incredibly wise Rabbis of previous generations "didn't deserve" such a merit while we did?

The answer is a resounding no. When the Moshiach does come, we learn, his arrival will be due in part to all the merits of previous generations. We must regard the coming of this moment as the result of an accumulation of the merits of the generations, not as the result of the events of only one.

While the Bnei Yisrael in the desert scarcely seemed to deserve passage into the Holy Land, merit this incredible prize they did, because their attempts at becoming close with Hashem, coupled with the merits of previous generations was enough. We may look back at the long, winding route taken with a degree of recognition - we all have our moments of doubt, but if we cast a look at Am Yisrael's travails in Egypt, we may remind ourselves of our final destination: Eretz Yisrael and the ultimate redemption. As this blog is called — Destination: Israel!

*I found this online, in a D'var Torah by Rabbi Chaim Jachter, here.

Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom :)

Parshat Bo - פרשת בא

"וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֶל-מֹשֶׁה, בֹּא אֶל-פַּרְעֹה: כִּי-אֲנִי הִכְבַּדְתִּי אֶת-לִבּוֹ, וְאֶת-לֵב עֲבָדָיו, לְמַעַן שִׁתִי אֹתֹתַי אֵלֶּה, בְּקִרְבּוֹ - And Hashem said to Moshe: 'Come to Pharaoh; for I have hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, so that I may place these, My signs, in his midst."
(שמות י:א)

I'd like to share two Divrei Torah with you this week. The first is derived from the opening words of the Parsha, quoted above. The words of this verse don't seem to be particularly difficult to understand, but there is (at least) one thing worthy of noting: Hashem's instruction to Moshe is "בא אל-פּרעה/come to Pharaoh." The word בא, meaning "come," is an interesting term given that the natural expression employed in such a circumstance would most likely be "לך - go," so that the command would be for Moshe to "go to Pharaoh."

Why is the word בא used, then? It is told that, in the time of Rabbi Yisrael Yitzhak Kalish of Warka, a decree was issued by the government that all editions of the Shulchan Aruch, a text that outlines Jewish law. The reasoning was that there was a standard law in place for all subjects and it was intolerable for Polish Jews to have a parallel law system of their own. If the Jews were following their own laws and living their lives according to its laws, then they were traitors to Polish law. As such, all copies of Jewish law-books were to be burned.

One of Rabbi Kalish's followers was known to have connections with well-placed people in the Polish government. As such, the Rabbi invited this man to try to talk the governor into changing his mind. Unfortunately, there was a hitch. Apparently the governor who executed this decree was a well-known and outspoken anti-Semite who went so far as to make clear that anyone who would approach him to talk him out of this decree would not only fail, but would die for his efforts.

The Rabbi's follower made clear that he would do whatever the Rabbi wanted him to do, but asked how he could possibly approach such a man. The Rabbi's response was that there was nothing to fear, and referred his follower to the verse above, pointing out that the opening words are "ויאמר יהוה אל-משה, בא אל-פּרעה - And Hashem said to Moshe, 'Come to Pharaoh.'"

The Rabbi explained to his devotee that Hashem used the word "come" in this verse for a reason. Moshe had been asked by Hashem to go to Pharaoh, but he was concerned by what this notoriously evil ruler might do to him. He too was willing to do whatever was asked of him, but was in a predicament.

Though the words לך and בא, go and come, are similar in meaning, there is a subtle, yet crucial, difference between the two. To be told "Go," is to be instructed, whereas to be told "Come," is to something different. It is warmer and implies a sense of togetherness.

So Hashem said to Moshe that he should "come to Pharaoh." By using the term that has connotations of being together, Hashem indicated that He would accompany Moshe on his visit to Pharaoh and that there would be nothing to fear.

The story of the anti-Semitic governor, as you might imagine, has a happy ending. The Rabbi's follower obeyed and approached the governor, who, against the odds, decided that it would be wise to undo his decree, and a potentially tragic episode was thus averted.


***
The second D'var Torah I'd like to share with you made me smile; I hope you find it funny, too!

"וּלְמַעַן תְּסַפֵּר בְּאָזְנֵי בִנְךָ וּבֶן-בִּנְךָ אֵת אֲשֶׁר הִתְעַלַּלְתִּי בְּמִצְרַיִם וְאֶת-אֹתֹתַי אֲשֶׁר-שַׂמְתִּי בָם וִידַעְתֶּם כִּי-אֲנִי יְהוָה - And so that you may tell in the ears of your son, and of your son's son, that I have amused myself with Egypt, and My signs, which I have placed among them; that you may know that I am the Hashem."
(שמות י:ב)

The verse above appears in this week's Parsha, Parsat Bo, immediately before Moshe and Aharon came to Pharaoh to inform him that the eighth plague, the plague of locusts would strike Egypyt imminently. In Rashi's commentary on this verse, we learn the meaning of the unusual word הִתְעַלַּלְתִּי, translated above as, "amused myself." Rashi explains that this word doesn't refer to "פועל ומעללים," (doing or actions,) but rather is to be understood as a synonym for "שחקתי," which may be translated as "I have made sport of," in English.

The Salanter Rebbe explains this in a number of ways. One reason in which we may understand Hashem's 'toying' with the Egyptians is by looking at the sequence of events leading up to this plague.

Before this plague was the plague of the hailstones. These hailstones were unlike any other in the history of the world. We learn that they were huge in size, and were fiery, despite the fact that hailstones are formed of ice. In any case, the hailstones wrought massive desctruction on the land. The Egyptians had to hide away while the hailstones came crashing down to the ground.

The Salanter Rebbe explains that after this terrifying precipitation had subsided, they went outside to check their fields. To their dismay, much of the produce had been destroyed. This bad feeling was tempered, though, by their discovery that small amounts of food had not be damaged and that there would be at least some food upon which they could subsist.

But Hashem was merely tricking the Egyptians. And they deserved it, too, having deceived Am Yisrael previously when Pharaoh initiated their slavery. At first he offered to pay them for each brick that they built, and then after they had worked feverishly to produce a maximum quantity of bricks (far beyond their regular capacity), he recorded every man's quota and ordered them to build that number of bricks daily - without remuneration.

Here, Hashem takes revenge for Am Yisrael by bringing the plague of hailstones upon Egypt. He almost entirely wipes out their food stores, but the Egyptians have cause to rejoice when they find minute quantities that have made it through the plague unscathed. But Hashem "amuses himself" and gets the last word in, as he ushers in the next plague - that of the locust. They cover the ground entirely and completely clean out Egypt's food stocks.

The word "amused" can be understood another way, too. If we continue reading until we reach the point when the plague ends, we read the verse: "וַיַּהֲפֹךְ יְהוָה רוּחַ-יָם, חָזָק מְאֹד, וַיִּשָּׂא אֶת-הָאַרְבֶּה, וַיִּתְקָעֵהוּ יָמָּה סּוּף: לֹא נִשְׁאַר אַרְבֶּה אֶחָד, בְּכֹל גְּבוּל מִצְרָיִם - And Hashem turned an exceedingly strong west wind, and it took up the locusts, and drove them into the Red Sea; there remained not one locust in all the border of Egypt." (שמות ב:יט)

On this verse, too, Rashi sees something worthy of comment. Although the locusts had been the cause of massive destruction, laying waste to whatever remnants of food have been left untouched from the previous plagues, Rashi points out that the Egyptians had a certain benefit from this plague - they salted some of the locusts so that they could be eaten.

But at the time that this westerly wind blew, it took up the locusts, says Rashi, even the locusts that had been salted, prepared and stored for consumption later on.

Rav Shmuel Hominer writes in his work, 'Eved Hamelech,' that here we see how Hashem amused himself with the Egyptians. In the second plague, that of the frogs, masses of frogs appeared in Egypt, but at the end of the plague they did not disappear. They simply died where they were, causing the Egyptians further problems. The land was covered with dead frogs, a phenomenon that, we may imagine, did not smell particularly aromatic.

The Egyptians, understandably assuming that the locusts would simply die at the end of the plague, tried to make the best of a bad situation by grabbing what they could so that they could at least benefit from the plague in some way. But no! Hashem has the last laugh, and all their hard work in preparing the locusts to be eaten was undone when all the locusts in the land were whisked away at the end of the plague. Rav Hominer writes that this caused no end of amusement to the Jews, who took the opportunity to take a well-deserved dig at the irritated Egyptians by asking them slyly, "How much locust have you had today?"

Wishing you a happy and peaceful Shabbat Shalom!

Cycling in the Holy City

Not that it's a particularly safe way to get around, I choose to cycle from my home in central Jerusalem all the way to the Hebrew University in Har Hatzofim on an almost daily basis. The fact that Jerusalem is built around a number of steep hills evidently deters many people from taking this economically and ecologically viable method of transport, but as far as I'm concerned, the steep inclines are not really that much of a bother, and are actually very fun when going down.

In one area, bikes win hands down — speed. It might sound counter-intuitive, but because central Jerusalem is such a congested city, I find that it's faster for me to get around on two wheels than it is by bus. Sometimes my bike is actually a faster mode of transport than a car, too. In any case, I've worked out that riding in to university, as opposed to taking the bus, saves me approximately 1,400 shekels a year — a sum roughly equivalent to a month's rent. And cycling is healthy and keeps me in good shape, to boot.

While it would seem that a number of my co-students have had the same idea, as during the warmer months at the beginning of the academic year I regularly saw upwards of thirty bikes parked outside campus, the one thing that genuinely concerns me, however, is the pressing lack of space in Jerusalem. The roads are terribly congested as many only have one narrow lane going each way. Consequently, I find that if I travel on the side of the road next to the pavement, as a cyclist should, car drivers feel that they have carte blanche to overtake me at relatively high speeds, despite the fact that they are only centimeters away from me. I know that it's bad practice and might even border on the foolish, but I've started wearing headphones in an attempt to block out that the tremendous "whoosh" noise produced by overtaking vehicles doesn't shock me and make me fall over. Some of the drivers are so inconsiderate that once or twice I've found myself issuing profanities not particularly befitting of this holy city.*

I can't really complain to the city council - it's not as if there's anything that they can do, short of turning a number of roads into cycle-only routes. So I'm left in limbo. I desperately want a safer route to cycle along, but am painfully aware that there's no space that can be given to cyclists without taking away from road users or pedestrians. (And pedestrians also have to put up with pavements much narrower than they should be.)

So imagine my surprise when I saw this on Rehov Yafo, the main artery spanning Jerusalem's city centre.



In case you can't make it out, that's a bicycle image impressed on the freshly-laid paving. This part of the road has been blocked off for ages now while construction of the much-maligned Jerusalem light rail service has been going on. Apparently, once the railway becomes available, there won't be road traffic going in both directions, but downtown Jerusalem will become a network of one-way streets, with a few cycle lanes on the bigger roads. It remains to be seen if this will prove to be a viable solution, or whether this will even be implemented at all, but it looks like Jerusalem's cyclists may have a cause for optimism.


*In mitigation, though, I do sometimes include the word "holy" as a precursor to my expletive-laden yelpings. Okay, fine, I admit I have to work on this. Mea culpa.

Two stories you might want to chew over, Part I:

As a regular visitor to timesonline.co.uk, the website of The Times of London, I read one story on Sunday with particular interest.

The article claims that Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, of a group called Minhaj-ul-Quran, has written a 600-page document which declares that attacks on innocent citizens are "absolutely against the teachings of Islam." Such a statement is clearly a good thing and will be welcomed almost universally outside of Islam. I am greatly encouraged that finally a mainstream Muslim group has taken a stance on the highly divisive and worrying matters of terrorism and extremism.

We are told that Islam is a religion of peace, and this in turn allows people to turn and deliver what they see as a winning blow by declaring such a title to be preposterous given the appararent Muslim predilection for blowing things up and treating women as sub-human. But I don't see things that way. I reserve my judgement until I have learned a significant amount more than I know at the present. Yes, terrible things are done by Muslims, any maybe even disproportinately so compared to the rest of the world's religions, but wasn't Christianity as a whole absolutely vile to the Jews in the Middle Ages? Now that the wild excesses of Christianity have subsided, it has become a relatively placid faith, but it too was a cause for rampant murder and strife centuries ago. We would do well not to judge Islam by it's fundamentalists. Yes, if we look to the Koran we will find numerous 'proofs' that it is, by nature, a violent religion. but so too are the Torah and the New Testament replete with verses that appear extreme. The key is in the interpretation. If Islam can prove itself to be, at its core, a religion of peace, then that is what its Imams and clerics must do at a time when its name is being seemingly besmirched by a violent and noisy minority. We hear so often of the silent majority, but there is no need for this to be a reality. Certainly not in the twenty-first century.

As a religious Jew, I obviously believe my religion to be the one true religion, but that doesn't mean that I see other religions as being totally, utterly evil. Nor does it mean that I perceive other religions' followers to be beyond hope. It is not against Judaic thought in any way to believe that a righteous gentile can be much, much closer to God than a Jew; and there are surely many such cases.

As such, while I think that Muslims have got this religion thing hopelessly wrong, (and no doubt they think much the same of me,) I don't feel the need to let them know that Judaism is the one true path — there's simply no point. Similarly, I don't think there's much point trying to sell Zionism to a nation who feel, rightly or wrongly, that this ideology violates their own rights. That's not to say that if a Muslim wants a reasoned debate with me on Zionism I will refuse, merely that I don't go out of my way to convince others as to the relative merits of my belief systems.

But while I feel that I need not justify Zionism, I applaud Dr. Tahir-ul-Qadri for his actions. He doesn't need to explain Islam to anyone else — it is his belief that being a Muslim is the correct way of life and he is entitled to it. What I applaud him for, however, is that he has decided to take a stance against those extremists who are hijacking his religion. (And I give Islam the benefit of the doubt here, because there is a doubt in my mind as to whether it truly is the vicious religion it is sometimes made out to be.) When I originally read this article, I accessed the Times website from my mobile phone. Beacuse of the limitations of mobile phone techonology, the Times' mobile internet site is stripped down and I didn't see the picture of Dr. Tahir-ul-Qadri that accompanies this article on the website when accessed from a regular computer. I worried that this man wouldn't be an orthodox Muslim, but would turn out to be some kind of reformist.

Having seen the picture now, it would seem that he is an orthodox Muslim, though. My concern was that had he not been a man who represented orthodox Islam, he would have been accused of selling out to the Western world and Western ideology. In much the same way that I regard the conservative and reform Judaism with deep distrust, (for I believe that they are constantly distancing themselves from original Judaism,) I am happy that this man seems to be a part of the orthodox Muslim establishment. If (orthodox) Islam really is a "Religion of Peace," then it needs to be proactive and make sure that all those who act violently in its name are thoroughly denounced. It seems unlikely that honour killings and suicide bombings can be actively prevented by the fundamentalists' fellow Muslims, but an atmosphere in which such heinous activities are branded as utterly unacceptable might help.

To be continued...

Israeli parking

I was walking through Rehavia one night recently when I walked past one of the oddest cases of parking I'd seen in a while.

Israelis are notoriously bad drivers, so it should come as no surpise to see parking like this. I don't know who parked their vehicle first and who parked afterwards, but whoever came second and left their car like this really needs to have their eyes tested. I mean, what with the lights on and all, it's not as if they couldn't fail to notice the other car!

Parshat Va'eira - פרשת וארא

"וַיֹּאמֶר, לְמָחָר; וַיֹּאמֶר, כִּדְבָרְךָ--לְמַעַן תֵּדַע, כִּי-אֵין כַּיהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ - And he said: 'Against tomorrow.' And he said: 'Be it according to your word; that you may know that there is none like the Lord our God."
(Sh'mot 8:6)

After the plague of frogs, Pharaoh calls in Moshe and begs him to get HaShem to remove the frogs. Interestingly, Pharaoh asks that the frogs be removed 'tomorrow.' Why not immediately - if the plague of frogs is so bothersome, why on earth, when asking for the plague to be brought to a premature end, did Pharaoh ask for it to continue one last day?

The Ib'n Ezra explains that Pharaoh thought that the plague was a result of a heavenly constellation of stars, and that perhaps the frogs were going to leave that very day anyway. As such, he asked Moshe to remove the frogs tomorrow, because if the frogs were to leave that same day, Pharaoh would make Moshe look foolish.

Here we see the extent of Pharaoh's stubborness. Pharaoh had already experienced the plague of blood and was now seeing frogs take over his land. Moshe had warned him that these frogs would come and yet Pharoah still wants to cling on to the security of believing that there is no Power above him. So he creates his own reality; one in which 'a star sign created the plague,' despite all indications to the contrary.

When faced with even the most plain evidence that he had no control, Pharaoh refused to believe - maybe Pharaoh's heart was already hard before it was famously "hardened" later on in this week's Parsha.

While we might read this passage and think that Pharaoh's beahaviour was rather stupid, or that his logic was so clearly flawed as to cause us to wonder how on earth he arrived at the conclusion that he could "trick" Moshe and fool him, we must take a step back. All too often, we read events in Torah, and history at large, as events that simply happened. We need to understand that there were logical processes behind everything, and that the characters who play roles in these stories were not idiots. Maybe their knowledge of science, for example, pales in comparison to ours, but their intellects weren't necessarily any less.

With this in mind, we must remind ourselves that Pharaoh genuinely thought that the constellations above controlled the events of this world. His thought process wasn't stupid - he merely fitted the events as they turned out to his conception. From here we may learn a genuinely relevant lesson in our time; that we must not kid ourselves. All too often, we think that we know better than what other people tell us. We only trick ourselves, and eventually end up falling flat on our faces. Pharaoh would have done well to have learned from the notably humble Moshe. Let's hope that we learn from his mistake and accept reality as it is, not as we would like it to be.

Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom!
*Adapated from a D'var Torah by Daniel Fine on shortvort.com*

Google's definition of recursion...

Have a go... geeky brownie points for you if you get it!

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=recursion

Parshat Sh'mot - פרשת שמות

"וְלֹא-יָכְלָה עוֹד, הַצְּפִינוֹ, וַתִּקַּח-לוֹ תֵּבַת גֹּמֶא, וַתַּחְמְרָה בַחֵמָר וּבַזָּפֶת; וַתָּשֶׂם בָּהּ אֶת-הַיֶּלֶד, וַתָּשֶׂם בַּסּוּף עַל-שְׂפַת הַיְאֹר - And when she could no longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch; and she put the child in it, and laid it in the flags by the river's brink."

(שמות ב:ג)


This week's Parsha, Sh'mot, marks the beginning of the second book of the Torah. In the verse above, we read of how Moshe Rabbeinu, who we learn was born 3 months prematurely, came to an age where he was impossible to hide. Because of the severe penalty for hiding a male baby from the Egyptian authorities, it was decided that he would have to be taken out of his home.

When I read this verse earlier in the week, I noted to my chavruta that pitch is used when the Torah relates the story of Noach's ark. There, it uses the phrase, "כָפַרְתָּ אֹתָהּ מִבַּיִת וּמִחוּץ, בַּכֹּפֶר - and you shall pitch it, within and without, with pitch." Although the term is different, there is more than a passing resemblance between the two episodes, for Moshe's little ark was also smeared with a dark, sticky substance.

My chavruta answered me by saying that there is indeed a connection between the two episodes. He explained that Noach lived at a time during which there was the greatest destruction the world has ever known. Why was there such destruction? Not because the people were exceedingly wicked - for they were not. Rather, this generation was actually one of the most knowledgeable generations that ever existed. The problem, however, was that they used their wisdom to their own ends. For example, we learn that the people of the time knew that one who stole less than "shava pruta," (a minute amount) would not be considered cuplable. (I forget the source, but I believe that it comes from a Midrash.) They would therefore feel free to steal from one another in a manner that exploited and abused this loophole in Torah law.

The reason that they were punished so heavily was that they could have become the generation to receive the Torah from God, but because they were so askew, they merited destruction by being drowned in the מבול, the great flood that immersed the entire world. There is a saying in Judaism that אין מים אלא תורה, there's no water other than Torah, and here we see an expression of that: whereas this generation might have been deserving of receiving (and being immeresed in) the Torah, because of the way they acted, they received, and were immeresed under the thing that we equate Torah to - water.

By way of contrast, the generations that came to Egypt were considered worthy of redemption, even though they had sunk to a very low level. But if they had sunk to such a low level, why was it that then that they deserved the miracles of the exodus and receipt of the Torah?

We may answer this question by looking at the opening words of the Parsha: "וְאֵלֶּה, שְׁמוֹת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, הַבָּאִים, מִצְרָיְמָה: אֵת יַעֲקֹב, אִישׁ וּבֵיתוֹ בָּאוּ - Now these are the names of the sons of Yisrael, who coming into Egypt with Ya'akov; every man came with his household."

The phrasing of this verse seems odd - why does it say both הַבָּאִים and בָּאוּ? One word means "coming" in the present tense, and the other means "came," which is in the past tense. What is the explanation for this anomoly. The way to understand this, contends Rabbi Yehoshua of Belz, is that while the Jewish nation undeniably had come, (past tense) to Egypt, they were only present physically. We learn that they did not integrate fully or take on Egyptian names. This generation always saw themselves as being in exile, as temporary residents of Egypt. Due to this clear perception of their impermanent status in a foreign land, they deserved their eventual redemption, the receipt of (and immersal in,) the Torah, and ultimately their return to their ancestral homeland in Israel.

Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom!

Parshat Vayechi - פרשת ויחי

וַיֹּאמֶר יוֹסֵף, אֶל-אָבִיו, בָּנַי הֵם, אֲשֶׁר-נָתַן-לִי אֱלֹהִים בָּזֶה; וַיֹּאמַר, קָחֶם-נָא אֵלַי וַאֲבָרְכֵם - And Yoseph said unto his father: 'They are my sons, whom God has given me here.' And he said: 'Bring them to me, please, and I will bless them.'

Although I have read this passage previously, and heard it discussed during my fifteen-years-plus of education in a Jewish environment, when I read this passage again today, I saw a question that I can't believe I didn't know the answer to.

The event described in the Pasuk above is that of Yaakov, Yoseph's father, blessing Yoseph's sons; Ephraim and Menashe. Intriguingly and famously, Yaakov crosses over his hands so that his right hand falls on Ephraim's head, even though he is the younger son. Noteworthy as this detail is, a lot of "commentary inches" are spent on interpretations as to the meaning behind Yaakov's actions.

That, however, is not what I want to focus on. The most obvious question that may be asked here is why were Ephraim and Menashe blessed before all the other tribes? Indeed, they hardly seem like they should join the rest of the tribes, as they are all brothers, whereas Ephraim and Menashe are only the descendants of one of the brothers. So, we can ask, why are they blessed first, and why do they merit their place as equals amongst their uncles?

Rabbi Shmuel Hominer, in his work, "עבד המלך, Servant of the King," explains exactly why these two young men deserved to join the rest of the tribes. He points out that from all the tribes, only Ephraim and Menashe were born outside of Israel. These two were born in Egypt, as Yaakov notes when he says: "וְעַתָּה שְׁנֵי-בָנֶיךָ הַנּוֹלָדִים לְךָ בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם - And now your two sons, who were born unto you in the land of Egypt."

The significance of the brothers' birthplace cannot be understated. Yaakov realised that the blessing he was to give the thirteen brothers were not just for them as people, but for them as heads of tribes, for them as the heads of a future nation. Yaakov chose Ephraim and Menashe because those two knew what it was like to be in exile; away from the holy land. His blessing for them forms a well-known Jewish song, Hamalach Hagoel. The words at the end are particularly noteworthy: "וְיִדְגּוּ לָרֹב, בְּקֶרֶב הָאָרֶץ - and let them grow into a multitude, in the midst of the earth." Yaakov blesses these two brothers, the brothers of exile, that despite all that surrounds them, they (but read we, as all Am Yisrael,) should only grow into a strong and populous nation.

From Yerushalayim, Shabbat Shalom!