Parshas Netzavim
For The Love Of G-d
By Rabbi Pinchas Winston
FRIDAY NIGHT:
Perhaps there is among you a man, woman, family, or tribe, whose heart
turns away from Hashem, our G-d today to follow and to serve the gods of
these nations; maybe there is among you a source that would proliferate and
spread evil in your midst, [who] upon hearing the words of this curse
thinks to himself, "I will be fine, even though I do as I please." In order
to add the inadvertent transgressions to the premeditated one, G-d will not
be willing to forgive him. G-d will be angry and His jealousy will rage
against that man, and all the curses of this book will come after him. G-d
will wipe away his name from under heaven. G-d will single him out for evil
from all the tribes of Israel and cause him to experience all the curses of
the covenant recorded in this Book of the Law. (Devarim 29:17-20)
"G-d will single him out for evil ... The gematria (of the Hebrew words) is
equal to 'This is Yeravam.'" (Ba'al HaTurim)
Yeravam ben Nevat, that is. He was the first king of the Kingdom of Israel
after the Ten Tribes seceded from the Kingdom of Yehudah after Shlomo
HaMelech's death in the year 2964/797 BCE. Yeravam was from the tribe of
Ephraim, which came from the tribe of Yosef.
So evil was Yeravam that he closed the roads to the Temple and set up
golden calves to keep his subjects from serving G-d. And when he did:
... A hut was built and this was the Italia of Greece ... (Shabbos 56b)
It would take hundreds of year, but the Talmud is saying that Yeravam
planted the spiritual "roots" that would eventually produce a Rome capable
of destroying the Second Temple.
So chutzpadik was Yeravam that the Talmud records:
After this thing, Yeravam did not return from his evil way. (I Melachim
13:33). After what? Rava said: After The Holy One, Blessed is He, grabbed
Yeravam by his cloak and said to him,
"Return, and I, you, and the son of
Yishai will stroll together in Gan Aiden."
"Who will lead?" he asked.
"Ben Yishai will lead." He [G-d] answered him.
"If so," he ended, "then I don't want it!" (Sanhedrin 102a)
However, so brilliant was Yeravam that:
When Yeravam left Jerusalem he met the prophet Achiah HaShiloni along the
way, who was wearing a new garment ... (I Melachim 11:29) What does this
mean? Rav Nachman said: Just as a new garment has no spots, so too did the
teaching of Yeravam have no error. According to others: They renewed things
that no ear has ever heard. What does, "And the two of them were alone in
the field" mean? All other scholars were like the plants of the field
compared to them. (Sanhedrin 102a)
Furthermore:
When Yeravam was young he was a tzaddik. The Ministering Angels said, "Let
him live, the grandeur of Your Name is because of him ..." G-d told them,
"If you wish it I will allow him to live." (Zohar Chadash, Acharei Mos
40:8)
Yet:
... And then he built the golden calves and caused all Israel to sin.
(Zohar Chadash, Acharei Mos 40:8)
What went wrong? What went wrong is what always goes wrong, as the posuk
above states. Deep inside, perhaps far below the surface where it is barely
perceptible by the conscious mind, a person thinks to himself:
"I will be fine, even though I do as I please."
The Torah is talking about an attitude. It doesn't mean that the person is
rebelling against G-d in any obvious way; it just means that a person feels
content to fulfill his or her desire, without fear of Divine repercussion.
After all, lightening does not come down from the sky every time we sin!
But it is precisely this attitude that is the worse "lightening" of all,
for it leads to an even greater spiritual malaise that has the power to
corrupt even the most righteous over time.
SHABBOS DAY:
The hidden things belong to Hashem, our G-d, but that which is revealed
belongs to us, and to our children forever, to follow all the words of this
law. (Devarim 29:26)
... I will not punish you for that which is hidden from you, for that
belongs to G-d, and for that He will exact punishment from the individual
... but for those things which are revealed and belong to us and to our
children in order that we will do away with evil from our midst. If we do
not execute judgment upon people who publicly transgress, then the whole
community will be punished. There are dots above the letters (in the Sefer
Torah) of the words "lunnu ulvaneinu" ("us, and to our children") to hint
that even for revealed sins He did not punish the community until they had
crossed the Jordan River (into Eretz Yisroel), from the moment they took
upon themselves the oath on Har G'rizim and Har Eival and had become
responsible for one another. (Rashi)
Rashi is referring to the well-known principle of "every Jew is a guarantor
for his brother" (Sanhedrin 27b). The question is, what did Eretz Yisroel
change that transformed the Jewish people from a nation of individuals to
one of a single identity, if not physically, at least spiritually. The
truth is, the Torah itself supplies the answer:
For, the land you are about to possess is not like Egypt from where you
came, and in which if you sowed seeds, you had to bring water to them as
you would for a garden of green herbs. The land you are about to possess
has mountains and deep valleys, and is watered by rain from the sky-a land
which Hashem, your G-d, cares for, Hashem, your G-d pays attention to
continuously the entire year. (Devarim 11:11-12)
Eretz Yisroel, which "was created before the rest of the world" (Ta'anis
10a), and which is considered (spiritually) "higher than all other lands"
(Kiddushin 69b), is land of Hashgochah Pratis-Divine Providence. Hence,
Eretz Yisroel, like the Kodesh Kodashim, has the capability to rise above
nature:
Why is Eretz Yisroel compared to a deer? Just like the skin of a deer does
not contain its flesh, neither does Eretz Yisroel contain its fruit ... so
too is Eretz Yisroel the fastest to ripen its fruits ... (Kesuvos 112a)
... Just like the skin of a deer does not contain its flesh, neither does
Eretz Yisroel contain its flesh when they live on her. (Gittin 57a)
Furthermore, says the Pri Tzaddik, the goal of inheriting a portion of
Eretz Yisroel was to help each Jew find his own portion within Torah
Sh'b'al Peh-Oral Law (Zohar Chadash 2:137b), which translates into a better
ability to relate to Torah. This is why the midrash concludes:
There is no wisdom like the wisdom of Eretz Yisroel (Bereishis Rabbah 16)
and:
The air of Eretz Yisroel makes a person wise. (Bava Basra 158b)
After all:
Ten measures of wisdom fell to the world, nine of which fell on Eretz
Yisroel, and one on the rest of the world. (Kiddushin 49b)
As the Vilna Gaon points out, Da'as, or Heavenly wisdom, is what possesses
the ability to unify disparate parts. It is such knowledge-the knowledge of
the Aitz HaChaim (Tree of Life)-that gives us the ability to transcend our
personal biases and petty interests and unify, as we did at Har Sinai. If
so, then Eretz Yisroel, and only Eretz Yisroel possesses the ability to
unify the Jewish people and Torah with G-d. This is why the Talmud
concludes:
Three wonderful gifts were given by The Holy One, Blessed is He, to the
Jewish people, and all of them were given through hardship. They are Torah,
Eretz Yisroel, and, The World-to-Come. (Brochos 5a)
For, in the end, they are just three different aspects of one idea:
channels for us to receive and enjoy the Supernal Light of G-d.
G-d's purpose in creation was to bestow of His good to another ... Since
G-d desired to bestow good, a partial good would not be sufficient. The
good that He bestows would have to be the ultimate good that His handiwork
could accept. G-d alone, however, is the only true good, and therefore His
beneficent desire would not be satisfied unless it could bestow that very
good, namely the true perfect good that exists in His intrinsic nature ...
His wisdom therefore decreed that the nature of His true benefaction be His
giving created things the opportunity to attach themselves to Him to the
greatest degree possible ... (Derech Hashem 1:2:1)
How one goes about doing this, the posuk says, is through love of G-d.
However, how one goes about loving G-d is the subject of discussion in the
Mishneh Torah:
What is the process for coming to love and fear G-d? When one contemplates
His actions and His wondrous and great creations and sees in them His
wisdom, that it has no limit and no end, immediately he will love and
praise Him, and desire tremendously to know His great Name. (Yad Chazakah,
Yesodei HaTorah, 2:2)
According to one article, this is just a matter of paying better attention
to the givens in life:
"... Once perception is disengaged from the domination of preconception and
personal interest, it is free to experience the world as it is in itself
and to behold its inherent magnificence. Perception of the miraculous
requires no faith or assumptions. It is simply a matter of paying full and
close attention to the givens of life, i.e., to what is so ever-present
that it is usually taken for granted. The true wonder of the world is
available anywhere, in the minutest parts of our bodies, in the vast
expanses of the cosmos, and in the intimate interconnectedness of these and
all things ... We are part of a finely balanced ecosystem in which
interdependency goes hand-in-hand with individuation. We are all
individuals, but we are also parts of a greater whole, united in something
vast and beautiful beyond description. Perception of the miraculous is the
subjective essence of self-realization, the root from which man's highest
features and experiences grow." (Michael Stark and Michael Washburn,
"Beyond the Norm: A Speculative Model of Self-Realization," Journal of
Religion and Health, Vol. 16, No. 1 (1977), pp. 58-59)
In the end, this is the choice every Jew, in fact, every human being has to
make. While we send multi-million dollar space vehicles to the farthest
reaches of the universe looking for answers, the truth is, the answers are
right here, within us, within the world we live in. And for a fraction of a
fraction of the cost too. The choice is to remain sensitive to life, and be
sensitive to the miraculous, or become insensitive to the "givens" in life,
and require journeys into the physical unknown to create and resolve
mystery. For the Jew, the former is the only viable choice to make, for it
is the source of our survival, and eventual, eternal attachment to G-d.
MELAVE MALKAH:
I will rejoice with Hashem; my soul shall exult with my God, for He has
clothed me with garments of salvation, with a robe of righteousness he has
enwrapped me; like a bridegroom, who, priest-like, dons garments of glory,
and like a bride, who adorns herself with jewelry ... (Yeshayahu 61:10)
We are still being consoled since Tisha B'Av, and this prophecy bespeaks of
the time when redemption will finally come for the entire
nation-once-and-for-all. The prophecy actually began:
The spirit of the Lord Hashem was upon me, since Hashem anointed me to
bring tidings to the humble, He sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to
declare freedom for the captives, and for the prisoners to free from
captivity ... to console all mourners ... (V. 1)
Targum Yonason says that the "I" of the posuk (first quoted) is Jerusalem,
and she is talking about the time of the Future Redemption. However, Rabbi
Yosef Kimchi points out that in the verse, two names of God are used, first
the Tetragrammaton which denotes the Attribute of Mercy, and then the name
"Elokai" which alludes to the Attribute of Justice. With respect to the
former, the verb is plural, to allude to both the body and the soul, both
of which rejoice with God's mercy. The latter, however, has a single verb,
and only the soul is mentioned. This, says Rabbi Kimchi, is because the
soul has the capacity to endure more suffering than the body, and
therefore, it can rejoice when it is purified by the Attribute of Justice.
This means that part of our consolation now is in knowing that the time
will come when our bodies also will be able to understand and appreciate
what our souls have always known: that God is just and loving, and that
even the most difficult passages of time will eventually make sense to our
bodies, as they have always made sense to our souls.
Have a great Shabbos,
Kesiva v'Chasima Tova,
Pinchas Winston
