Re'ei 5771

Hashem's Children
The pasuk says (14:1) "You are children to Hashem your God, do not fear."

The Ibn Ezra says on the this pasuk "After you know that you are a child of Hashem and He loves you more than a father, therefore you don't need to fear from anything that happens because everything that happens is for the good. And if we do not understand Him, like a small child who doesn't understand the actions of his father yet he just trusts him, so too we must just trust, because we are a holy nation and we are not like the other nations, and therefore we cannot act like them. And the reason why this parsha is close to the parsha of not eating anything that s disgusting is because we are a holy nation in heart and mouth, and we must be different from them and it must be clear to them, because we don't rip out our hair for the dead, and we don't eat every type of animal. And if you are a holy nation, it is not good that you eat tumah and make yourself tamei."

I read a mashal today in a book called "Ma'ase Shelo Haya" (The story that didn't happen) from the Maggid Midavna. The story goes that a poor person is invited to his friend who is a rich man. The rich man tells the poor man to sit at the head of the table. After the poor sits down he looks around for food but the only things he recongnizes is the potatoes all the way at the other end of the table. He begins to reach for the potatoes knocking over the other plates and making a big mess. After he finishes eating he decides he wants another on. As he begins to reach the rich man tells him that he should switch his seat to the other end of the table. The poor man sees this an insult because that means he is losing his seat at the head of the table. The rich man tells him that it is not that he is not taking away his honor, rather he is helping get closer the the potatoes to make things easier for him.

In the mashal we are the poor person and Hashem is the rich man. While we consider a lose of the head seat to be something bad, Hashem sees it as something good for us.

Sometimes, when we are in the moment it is hard to tell how something can be for the best, but we must have confidence in Hashem that it will all work out.

It is the fact that we are the children of Hashem that make us special. This quality is why Hashem shows us favor over the other nations.

The Ibn Ezra raises a second point, he says "and we must be different from them and it must be clear to them." In recent history many Jews have tried to assimilate to be more like the non-Jews. According to this Ibn Ezra, it seems that their attempt to be more like the non-Jews actually makes them lose their status as the children of Hashem. Therefore, as hard as it may be to be different in comparison to the rest of the world, it is actually this quality that has allowed us to survive throughout history.

Have a good Shabbat!

Eikev 5771

This shabbat will bH be my last shabbat as a ben chutz laaretz. In a few more days I will be leaving to eretz yisrael. I would just like to thank you all so much for joining my divrei torah list, whether you read them weekly or once in a blue moon, it means a lot to me. It has almost been two full years since I started writing these weekly (at it was more like daily...) and I hope to continue in eretz yisrael, if it is possible. I will miss you all.

On the theme of eretz yisrael, I couldn't really resist...

This week's parsha (11:12) Moshe tells the Jews that eretz yisrael is "the land that Hashem your God looks after it,constantly the eyes of Hashem your God are on it, from the beginning of the year until the end."

The midrash asks (Sifri 40) "But doesn't [Hashem] looks after all of the lands?... Rather it is as if it is the only land that is watched over and by watching over it, this watching covers the other lands with it.

The Ramban explains here that everything comes from this land and all other lands get their sustenance from eretz yisrael.

At this point the Jews were afraid of leaving the midbar, where they got so used to constantly being with Hashem. First, Moshe told the Jews that this land is much greater than the land of mitrziam that they left behind. Then, he mentioned that eretz yisrael is constantly under the watchful eye of Hashem, and that the land is constantly dependent on Hashem for water.

All lands, excluding eretz yisrael, are controlled by angels, but eretz yisrael is controlled completely by Hashem.

Later in this week's parsha (11:18) the Ramban explains that the main place to do mitzvot is in eretz yisrael as it says (11:21) "So that your days and the days of your children will be many on the land..." (The last pasuk of the second paragraph of Shema)

May we all be zoche to meet in eretz yisrael!

Next week in Yerushaliam, Have a good Shabbat!

Ve'Etchanan 5771

Moshe tells the Jews that after they stray from Hashem they will eventually return to Him, Moshe tells them that the reason why they will find Hashem is because (4:29) "you will search with all your heart and with all your soul." Right before this pasuk Moshe was telling the Jews that they would eventually sin with avodah zara, but they would eventually return to Hashem.

Later in this week's parsha the same term "with all your heart and with all your soul" comes up again, in the parsha of Shema (6:5) "and you will love Hashem... with all your heart..."

The pasuk before this is the pasuk of Shema where we say (6:4) "Hashem is One." Meaning that Hashem is the only true God, and there are not others.

From these two pasukim we see that the most fundamental thing is that we must completely believe that Hashem controls the world. If we establish this within ourselves then we would be foolish to sin. But there is no such thing as half-believing, either you totally believe or you don't.

For a Jew to repent he must first recognize that Hashem is the master of the world, then the person will be more than willing to use all of his heart and soul searching for Hashem. Once someone has completely established this fact then it will be impossible to not find Hashem, because He controls everything. Also, once we have this established it will lead to our love for Hashem. For one to love Hashem he first must believe that Hashem is the ultimate controller of everything, that He is one, then this person will put in all of his resources to find and attach himself to Hashem. But if someone doesn't first believe that Hashem is one, then it will be impossible to find or love Him.

May we all be zoche to completely understand that Hashem Echad, which will lead us to return to Him, and He will be waiting for us with "open arms."

Have a good Shabbat!

Devarim 5771

As things happen to us we never see understand why they happen the way they do, in fact many times even looking back at a situation it is hard to fully comprehend it. But, even if we can't understand why it happened to us, we must strive to learn from every situation that we were in to see what how we must work on ourselves.

In this week's parsha Moshe reminds the Jews of their travelling in the midbar, all the places they went right and all the places they went wrong. The purpose of going through each event was to teach the people to learn from their mistakes and to fix what they have done wrong.

This coming week, just like every year the week after parshat Devarim, is tisha b'av. The mishna in taanit tells us many of the things that went wrong on that day over the years, but tisha b'av has become the date on the Jewish calendar to remember all of the bad things that have happened to the Jewish people over the years, from the sin of the meraglim to the Holocaust and everything in between.

The gemara in gitten tells us the famous story of kamtza and bar kamtza, and the gemara says that this story is the reason for the destruction of the beit hamikdash, meaning that we must learn from this story what they did wrong so that we can know what we need to fix. Chazal tell us straight out that the reason for the destruction was baseless hatred for our fellow Jews, and that story is the epitome of baseless hatred. The reason why chazal tell us this story is to show us how bad it really was. In the last few weeks Hashem has reminded us of how bad things are. Notice how many of these tragic stories were Jews hurting other Jews!

We have quoted the Ramban in Bo many times before, where he says that everything that happens to the Jews happens because of something we have done wrong, and Hashem always punishes us middah k'neged middah.

Looking at the stories of the past few weeks we see that the main cause of these disasters was our lack of achdut. Hashem is clearly showing us that we are no better than the generation of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza! Chazal tell us "Any generation in which the Beit Hamikdash is not rebuilt, it is as if that generation destroyed it."

Until we fix our achdut we are not moving in the right direction. We have two ways for our achdut to get better. One, to work on it ourselves, or for Hashem to cause sometime horrible enough that it will cause us to join together, and that is exactly what He has done.

May we all be zoche to celebrate this tisha b'av as a moed, joined together hand in hand by the beit hamikdash!

Have a good shabbat!

Masei 5771

After Hashem tells the Jews that they must kill all of the people living in the land He warns them saying (33:55-56) "But if you don't drive them out of the land, the ones that stay shall be pins in your eyes and a barrier of thorns in your sides, and they will harass you upon the land in which you live. And it will be that what I planned to do to them I will do to you."

The Ramban explains this to mean that the ones that stay in the land will eventually cause you to stray from Hashem and do avodah zara. Then because the Jews will do avodah zara it will eventually lead to the galut.

If we look at events later we will see that this is exactly what happened. The fact that the Jews did not rid the land completely of the people that lived there before caused their eventual exile. If we truly want to cling to Hashem and embrace the kedusha of the land of eretz yisrael, we must first rid it, and ourselves, of the avodah zara, otherwise no matter how much we try it will eventually lead to it taking us over.

You can compare it to an virus. When a person gets an virus he can feel it. So he goes to the doctor and gets medicine to take for a few days. After the first couple of the days the person begins to feel better, even though he is still supposed to take the medicine for 2 or 3 more days after that. If one stops taking the medicine at that point, since the virus was not completely gone, it is very likely that the virus will come back. It is only after finishing off the prescription that one can be sure that the virus is completely gone.

This is exactly what Hashem was telling the Jews here. Even if you think leaving just a couple of people over won't effect you, you should be careful because just a few people can lead to your exile.

Have a good shabbat!

Matot 5771

In this week's parsha perek 32 shevet Gad and Reuven request the land east of the Jordan from Moshe. Moshe's response was that their father's had also said they did not want to enter the land and that is what caused the last 38 or so years of the Jews traveling in the midbar. If these two tribes were to now say that after all of this time they do not want to go to eretz yisrael Hashem would get so angry He would make the Jews wander the midbar forever. I have some questions: 1) Why would the decision of these two shevatim cause all of the Jews to travel the midbar forever? 2) Why is this question compared to the statement of their father's? 3) Why is Gad and Reuven's willingness to help the rest of the shevatim fight enough to allow them to live east of the Jordan, because this does not help the problem of wanting to live in eretz yisrael.

The Ramban (32:2) reveals that there is actually more going on behind the scenes here. Shevet Gad was one of the strongest shevatim. This is the reason why they were the ones to come up with the idea to live there in the first place, unafraid of the surrounding nations. But if the other shevatim were to see Gad no go into the land they would think that the reason is because Gad believes that the war against Canaan was one they could not win. Then the other Jews would say that if Gad isn't strong enough surely they have no chance of winning.

Now if this would have happened than the Jews would be back in the same place they were in the time of the meraglim. As we said back in parshat Shlach, when the meraglim came back and said that had no chance of beating the nations in the land it caused all the Jews to loss their emunah that Hashem would win the war for them. So too here, if Gad would not go into eretz yisrael all of the Jews would lose hope in any possibility of winning the wars there. Now, if back in the time of meraglim that caused the Jews, who had left mitzriam, to wander through the midbar for 40 years, surely that same reaction would be worse in the generation that had already spent all of their lives in the midbar.

Now, when Gad and Reuven agreed to come with the rest of the nation and help fight the war this was enough for Moshe to allow them to take the land east of the Jordan, because none of the other tribes would think they are taking it because they find conquering eretz yisrael to be impossible and they would all go in with faith that Hashem would win the war for them.

This is all great, but how does Gad's willingness to help fight lead to the Jews having more emunah? It seems that now the Jews have faith in the abilities of shevet Gad to win a war, not Hashem's abilities!

Well, the Ramban explained that Reuven would never have come up with the idea to live alone east of the Jordan without Gad, because it was too dangerous to live alone. But Gad did not fear, because they were powerful. But if Gad was now agreeing to spend the next however many years helping the rest of the Jews conquer eretz yisrael, leaving their wives, children, and animals undefended, surely the Jews would see the faith of Gad in Hashem that if they went to help the rest of the nation that their children would be protected. This was enough for the Jews to keep their emunah and this is why it was enough for Moshe to allow them to have the land east of the Jordan.

Have a good shabbat!

Pinchas 5771

The Ramban has an interesting explaintion the first few pasukim in this week's parsha. The Torah says (25:13-14) "And it will be for him and his offspring after him, a Brit Kehunat Olam since he took revenge for his God... and the name of the Jew that he killed wit the Midianite was Zimri the son of Salu the prince of the father's house of Shimon..."

The Ramban explains like this. He explains that since Pinchas took vengeance for Hashem and for doing tzedaka for the Jews by atoning for their sins he deserved this brit with shalom attached to it. Then, the Ramban asks why the Torah goes out of it's way to say Zimri's name and position. He says that it is to show that Pinchas deserved this big reward of Brit Kehunat Olam for killing a prince of Yisrael without fear, because all he worried about was the vengeance of Hashem.

How is the reward of kehuna equal to the acts of complete emunah and that it would work out and the ability to atone the Jews?

Much like his grandfather, Aharon who was willing to get spit in the eye for shalom bayit, Pinchas was willing to sacrifice himself to honor Hashem.

On Yom Kippur the kohen gadol gives several korbanot. One of these korbanot is the korban that asks for forgiveness for all of the Jews. This is one of the main jobs of the kohen gadol. The fact that Pinchas had the ability to atone the Jews for their sins shows one quality of a kohen.

These two qualities together in this one act of killing Zimri was what showed Hashem that Pinchas deserved to be a kohen, and that even though he was born after Aharon and his sons had become kohanim he still showed the qualites required to be a kohen, and just as these qualities were passed down from Aharon to Pinchas so too Pinchas would pass it down to his offspring forever.

Have a Good Shabbat!