Korach 5771

We're All going to Die!:

Late in this week's parsha after the mizvah that non-Leviim must stay away from the ohel moed (17:27-28) the people respond "... Look, we perish, we are lost, we are all lost! Everyone who comes close to the mishkan of Hashem will die. Will we stop perishing?"

Rashi on this pasuk says "We are not able to be cautious in this. We are all allowed to enter the courtyard of the ohel moed, and one who goes in more than his friend and enters into the ohel moed will die."

Let me ask a dumb question. Who says you need to go? If you are afraid of dying then just don't go there! You may be allowed to enter the courtyard but no one is pushing you to the front of the group. If you are so afraid then just stay far away, seems easy enough.

If we look earlier in this week's parsha we see that the complaint was (26:3) "All of the assembly is holy and Hashem is with them..." From here we see that a complaint of the Jews was that they could not get as close as Moshe and Aharon could to Hashem. The entire nation wanted to be as close to Hashem as possible.

All the people want to do is get close to Hashem! The cannot go even one moment with feeling closeness to Hashem. In fact, that one of the reasons given why the nation built the eigel hazahav, since they lost Moshe they needed something else to bring to close to Hashem and they could not wait even one moment.

Every morning the Jews would wake up and run to the courtyard of the ohel moed to hear Torah from Moshe's mouth. It was not good enough to just be in the crowd, they had to be front and center to hear every last word perfectly.

This is why they were so afraid. It is true, they could just stay home and not worry about dying but how could they stay away? They could not possibly keep away their desire for Torah was too strong, and this is their reason for their fear of death.

May we all desire Torah so much that we are willing to do anything for it.

Have a great Shabbat!

Shelach 5771

Lack of Faith:

The pasukim in this week's parsha (14:22-23) "If all the people that saw My honor and My signs that I did in mitzriam and in the midbar, and they tested Me these ten times and did not listen to My voice... if they will see the land...! and all who anger Me will not see it."

Why must the people be introduced as the people who saw the signs and miracles? Why is pasuk 22 necessary? Just say "the people who sinned by the meraglim can't go to the land.

Chazal tell us that even the maidservants who left mitzriam saw the shechina like Yichezkel did. This shows that their level of spirituality was higher than any other generation. Chazal also tell us that the punishment of the tzaddikim will be stricter than other people, because they are expected to be on a higher level than other people.

The reason why the sin of the meraglim was so bad was only because it was on the generation that had seen "My honor and My signs that I did in mitzriam and in the midbar," if not for this then Hashem would not have expected anything better from them. After seeing all of the miracles that He has performed until now how could they have the audacity to say that they had no way of conquering the land? This is why they were punished.

As Rashi says, (13:2) "Moshe went to the Shechina, It said 'I said to them that it will be good... now I should allow them to mess it up by sending meraglim?'" It was the fact that they had heard from Hashem Himself about the greatness of the land that made their request for meraglim so bad.

In any other time it would be expected to send spies to the land, but this time they were already told that it was going to work out, their lack of faith was the issue.

May we be zoche to have enough faith to pass all of our challenges!

Have a great Shabbat!

Behalotcha 5771

When one looks at the parsha of the of Moshe's plea to Hashem (11:11-14) where Moshe asks Hashem "why have done evil to Your servant..." it seems very similar to a different story in Tanach (Shmuel 1 8:4-10) where the Jews ask Shmuel to find them a king. Let us look at each of these stories individually then compare them.

The Jews have spent just about a year at Har Sinai, now just as they leave they come to Moshe complaining that they want meat. Their complaint was the first complaint that they had that was not for something that they needed, rather something extra. Instead of having an honest request they were simply complaining. Moshe told Hashem that he did not how to react to their complaints here. Hashem told him that he needed to make a sanhedrin so that other people could deal with the little problems while Moshe spent time on the more important issues.

By Shmuel the complaining was completely different. The people saw that if they didn't act now and get a new leader it would be very bad if Shmuel's sons took over as Shoftim. But the problem was the way they asked him. They said (11:5) "You're old and your sons, are not going in your ways, now give us a king to judge us, like the other nations." From the last part of the pasuk it seems like the real reason why they complained was their want was to be like the other nations. Hashem's response (8:7) "... for it is not you whom they rejected, but it is Me whom they have rejected from reigning over them."

Both the complaints from the people in the time of Moshe and the time of Shmuel were not the normal complaints that Jews had, these complaints were asking for more than they require. But the differences between Hashem's answers are amazing. By Moshe, Hashem changes Moshe's status from that of the leader of the Jews to the rebbe of the Jews (Rav Soloveitchik). While for Shmuel Hashem told him that he would appoint for them a king, meaning that his position as leader would be diminished. Why does Hashem have the exact opposite solution for what seems to be the same problem.

If one looks closer at the story of Moshe they will see that the complaint is entirely to Hashem, not to Moshe. Therefore, Hashem's solution was to make Moshe's position greater, because their issue wasn't with Moshe it was with Hashem.

But when it comes to the story of Shmuel the people had a problem with Hashem and Shmuel equally. Therefore, even though Hashem felt Shmuel's pain that the people were distancing themselves from him, Hashem knew that the only solution would be to replace him for a king.

We see in these two stories Hashem's ability to see the whole picture and understand what needs to be done in each situation, sometimes making hard decisions, but we must know that everything He does is really for our best interest.

Have a good Shabbat!

Shavuot 5771

Sixth or Seventh?:

There is a machloket in gemara Shabbat (86b) where the tanna kamma argues with Rabbi Yossi as to when the Torah was given. The tanna kamma says it was given on the sixth of Sivan, while Rabbi Yossi says it was given on the seventh of Sivan.

Yet there is another gemara (Rosh Hashana 6b) that says that Shavuot can fall on the 5th 6th or 7th of Sivan, since we base the festival not on the date of matan Torah but rather on the 50 day count starting from Pesach.

Why is it that we base our celebration of the holiday on the count from Pesach as apposed to the actual day when we received the torah?

There is a famous Beit Halevi (Bo, Vihigadita Levincha) that says that the mitzvot in the torah came before the reasons for the mitzvot. Even before the Jews came out of mitzriam with matzah Avraham had already celebrated the holiday by eating matzah. He explains that really we do the mitzvot just because Hashem told us to do them and the reason that we have for them are not the real reasons for them. So the holiday of Pesach has a special mitzvah for that day. In fact, it was because of the mtizvot of the day that we were saved from mitzriam on that day.

From the day the Jews left mitzriam they needed 50 days to reach the level of spirituality required to get the Torah. I heard from Rav Avharam Schorr that according to Rabbi Yossi who says that we got the Torah on the seventh the reason why it was 51 days later was because the war of Amalek pushed off matan torah by a day. For Rabbi Yossi it would not be a problem to celebrate the chag on the 6th because the reason for Shavuot is to connect to the koach of matan torah, which was on the 50th day of the count, not on any specific date on the calendar. So, we are remembering the 50 day process on Shavuot, not the actual day of matan torah.

Nasso 5771

The Holy Nazir:

There is a famous chazal (Sotah 2a, also in the last perek of Brachot) that Rashi (6:1) quotes that asks "why is the parsha of nazir close to the parsha of sotah? To teach you that one who sees a sotah in her degradation removes himself from wine, because it leads to bad things."

When one takes upon the vow to become a nazir the basic time period is one month. After the time is up a nazir must bring a korban to end the vow. In this week's parsha one can notice something very surprising. Before the person vows to be a nazir the torah refers to him/ her as a (6:2) "man or woman," but for the rest of the parsha, even after he/ she has brought his/ her korban and the torah (6:20) says "and after the Nazir drinks wine," meaning even after the process is over he/ she is still called a nazir.

The process is not about the short term change, it is about a lifelong goal. As the pasuk (6:8) says "All the days of his/ her nizro, he is kadosh to Hashem." Meaning as long as he remains in this uplifted level he remains kadosh.

There is a gemara (Nedarim 9b) that says "We learn, (Rabbi) Shimon Hatzadik said 'in my life I never ate from the asham of a nazir tamei except one time. A person came from the south, and I saw that he had pretty eyes and he had curly hair. I said to him "my son, why would you cut your hair which is so beautiful?" He answered me "I am a shepherd for my father in my town. I went to fill water from the spring and I saw my beauty. My yetzer was arrogant and wanted to remove me from the world. I responded to it 'Rasha, why do you get pleasure from this world which is not yours as a person who will one day be worms?' So I decided to cut it off for heaven." [After hearing this Shimon Hatzadik] immediately kissed him on the head and said "There should be more nazrim like you in Israel."'"

Notice in this story, the nazir's reason to become a nazir was not for the things that would change during the time while he was a nazir, rather it was about the changes after the period of a nazir was over. This may have been the difference between this nazir and the other nazirim in Israel.

Many times a person is affected by an event that happens to him. For the next few days or even weeks he is changed by what he saw, but as time goes on most people return to their old ways. This happens a lot around Rosh Hashana time, but most changes don't last past Cheshvan.

The Tosfot in Megillah says that Bamidbar is always read right before Shavuot, which the gemara calls a Rosh Hashana. This means that the parsha of Naso is always read right around this time, either the week before or the week after Shavuot. The placement of parshat Naso, and with it parshat Nazir, at this point during the year, is here to teach us that the main change is not the immediate one, but rather the permanent changes a person makes in his life.

May we all be zoche to make changes for the better, and actually stick to them.

Have a great Shabbat!