Our Father Who is

in heaven, Rock of Israel and its Redeemer, King to Whom peace belongs,

Bless Your

children, lovers of their people and land,

Some of whom say

it is a time for planting

Some of whom say

it is a time for uprooting,

Some of whom say

it is a time to build,

Some of whom say

it is a time to tear down

And they increase

disagreement for the sake of Heaven.

God of the spirits

of all flesh,

Please, direct

their hearts to love one another and to listen to each other lovingly,

So that they might

learn to understand that "God speaks one word, and we hear two"

And so that they

should not harm each other, God forbid,

Nor harm those

serving the people in the security forces,

Not bodily harm

nor damage to property, nor harm to spirit.

Place the virtues

servants,

Let no ill result

from their acts.

May it be Your

redemption.

It is a time of

crying out for us, save us from our woes,

Quickly send a

messenger to bring near those who are far and to remove hatred from our hearts,

So that we can

live with you securely in his land.

Place upon us

Lord will be one and His Name one may be fulfilled, soon and in our days.

And let us say, "Amen."

We were sent the above prayer,

which was written on the 17^th of Tammuz by Mordechai

Gilah, a member of Kibbutz Lavi.

Since it expresses our wish to

conduct the deep disagreements taking place amongst us with mutual respect,

with careful observance of the law and with rejection of any form of violence

or harm, we saw fit to publish it this Shabbat.

I pleaded with the Lord

Oshrat Shoham

R. Yohanan

said: Ten expressions refer to prayer, and they are: Shi'ah,

tze'aka, na'aka, rinah, pegiya, bitzur, kriya, niful, and piyul. Instead

of these, Moses chose to use the term tahanunim

Only two figures in Scripture used

the term tahanunim; Moses, in our parasha, and Joseph, as described by his brothers:

They said to each other, "Alas,

we are being punished on account of our brother, because we looked on at his

anguish, yet paid no heed as he pleaded with us. That is why this

distress has come upon us… (Bereishit 42:21)

It is interesting that neither

use of tahanunim – neither Joseph's nor Moses'

– is expressed in "real time." They cover for Scripture's thundering

silence. So it is in Moses' case. Scripture remains silent in its description

of God's announcement to Moses in parashat Hukat that he will not enter the Land:

But the Lord said to Moses and

Aaron, "Because you did not trust Me enough to affirm My sanctity in the

sight of the children of Israel, therefore you shall not lead this congregation

into the land that I have given them… Moses sent messengers… (Bamidbar 20: 12, 14)

Regarding Joseph, we read in parashat Va'yeishev:

When Joseph came up to his

him to the Ishmaelites… (Bereishit 37:23-25, 28)

These post factum descriptions of pleading, both of Moses'

pleading to God and of Joseph's pleading to his brothers, come to fill in a

thundering silence, a most difficult silence, which remains unexplained. After

all, it is clear that Joseph surely entered into some kind of discussion with

his brothers, and it is clear that that conversation concerned their actions

and Joseph's attempts to convince them to desist. It is similarly clear that

Moses, who did not hold back from arguing with God about many matters, did not

simply accept God's decree keeping him from entering the land.

It seems that the use of this

peculiar expression, tahanunim, in connection

with Moses and Joseph, is not accidental. By being sold to the Ishmaelites, Joseph in effect begins the exile to Egypt,

while Moses, standing by Jordan River on the frontier of the Land of Israel,

closes the door on the period of the Egyptian exile. But besides that

connection, Moses and Joseph also bear many similar and interesting

characteristics.

Both Moses and Joseph were born

in their own homes, but spent their important years of maturation in a strange

home, in the house of the king of Egypt, far from their families and people. Their

personalities were formed around a feeling of being strangers, not belonging,

and alienation. Both Moses and Joseph fit well into Egyptian society and into

the Egyptian aristocracy. At one stage or another, each of them became

alienated from their people and origin; Joseph fell out with his brothers, and

did not look for his family even years after he rose to greatness, while Moses

grew up in Pharaoh's house, in exploitive Egypt, which worked his brothers

harshly. Although, as an adult, he did respond to injustice by killing the

Egyptian, he then fled to distant Midian, far away

from his brothers' troubles.

Both Joseph and Moses eventually

found themselves serving in crucial positions that bore immense personal

responsibility for their people's fate.

It is interesting that the only

additional biblical character described as having pleaded is Esther, who

pleaded with Ahasuerus. While the circumstances were

different, I think that the use of this expression in connection with Esther is

not accidental – she also spent her formative years in the house of a foreign

king, years spent feeling like a stranger, accused of alienation from her

people and homeland. At the end of the day, she too bore significant personal

responsibility for the fate of her people.

It seems that the feelings of

great loneliness, the alienation, perhaps the feelings of betrayal and

foreignness suffered by these figures in their formative years are those that

bring a person to plead, to use penetrating personal discourse as a prayer. It is

an intimate dialogue between an individual and a listener, full of emotion and

force, a plea for mercy, perhaps even a demand for mercy, a penetrating

intimate discourse whose inner message is, "Do not alienate yourself from

me" "I cannot bear any further alienation."

Perhaps this is also the reason

why these pleas are not described as occurring in the narrative present. The

force of pleading, the power of the emotions involved in pleading cannot be

immediately described as an inherent part of the event itself – they can only

be described post-factum.

Of the three instances cited

above, only in Moses' case is the plea addressed to Heaven, with full force of

emotion. Even if his plea was not answered, one should hope that heart-felt

prayers and pleas will be answered.

Let the cry for clemency come

before You, let Your ears be attentive to pleading… (From the Selihot for Sunday)

Oshrat Shoham is a member of Kehillat Pelekh in Jersualem and a

criminal attorney in the Jerusalem district attorney's office.

You Are To Do What Is Right And

What Is Good

The Book of Bereishit

is called by the prophets "Sefer HaYashar – The Book of the Upright".

R. Yohanan explains: This is the book of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov who

were called upright,

as is written Let my soul die the death of the upright. Jews of

the Second Temple period were tzaddikim,

righteous, devoted to Torah study, but they were not yesharim

– upright in worldly affairs. Because of groundless hatred, they suspected

whoever feared God in a fashion different from their own of being a Sadducee

and a heretic, and this led to bloodshed and all the evils of the world, until

the Temple was destroyed, for

The Holy One, Blessed Be He, is upright and he cannot tolerate this kind of tzaddikim. [He

prefers] only those who walk in the straight path also in worldly matters, and

not crookedly, even

though [the crooked behavior] is for the sake of Heaven, for

this leads to the destruction of creation and the devastation of civilization.

 (From the NeTziV

of Volozhin's commentary "Ha'Amek

Davar", preface to the Book of Bereishit).

After mentioning that one should

observe these three categories of mitzvot (Mishpatim/regulations, eidot/testimonies,

hukkim/laws) and not test the Holy One,

Blessed Be He, with regard to any of them, He decreed (according to the midrash) in favor of compromise on matters on which the

Torah did not rule, saying – You are to do what is right and

what is good. And

because it [compromise] will lead to peace, He called it What is right and

what is good in the eyes of God.

(Rabeinu

Bahayey, Devarim 6:17)

It would seem that the admonition which the Torah adds to

all of its laws, You are to do what is right

and what is good in the eyes of the Lord, is superfluous. All of the laws

are directed towards that goal, in order to show man the straight path. However,

there are some things which are legally permissible but which were prohibited

solely on the basis of You are to do what is right… Judaism does not

stop at limiting deeds of actual evil – it also tries to root out potential

evil from the human soul. That is why there are special admonitions that

address that which is in our hearts.

(The "Admor He'Halutz"

– R. Yeshayahu Shapira z"l, as quoted by Nehama Leibowitz)

The Danger of "Idolatry"

is Greater for Torah Scholars

…he especially warns Torah scholars who deal with laws and

statutes, only be on your guard and guard yourself well. This makes it

clear that the Torah scholar is more likely than other people to fall into the

corruption of idolatry. So it was in reality: As Perek

Helek tells us, Yoravam, Ahav and Menashe were great Torah

scholars, and they were the first to bring idolatrous offerings and made all

Israel sin. The author of Lamentations says, Lord, see my destitution, for

the enemy has grown great (28:59),

and we later explained (28:59)

in the name of the midrash that the evil inclination

has increased hold over Torah scholars, since the Torah scholar can apply his

intelligence to find ways to permit things, twisting the words of the living

God to conform with his own view, confusing people into thinking that it is a

commandment.

(The NeTziV's Ha'Amek Davar on Devarim 4:14)

The 15^th

of Av – a Day of Equality, Reconciliation and Restoration

Rabban Shimon ben

Gamliel said: There were no better days for Israel

than the 15^th of Av and Yom Kippur, for in them the daughters of

Jerusalem would go out in borrowed white clothing in order to avoid

embarrassing those who did not own any.

(Mishnah Ta'anit 4:8)

Rabban Shimon ben

Gamliel said: There were no better days for Israel

than the 15^th of Av and Yom Kippur, for in them the daughters of

Jerusalem would go out in borrowed white clothing in order to avoid

embarrassing those who did not own any.

Yom Kippur makes sense – it grants forgiveness and pardon,

it is the day when the latter tablets were given. But what is the 15^th

of Av? R. Yehudah said that Shemuel

said: It was the day when the tribes were allowed to intermarry…Rav Yosef said that Rav Nahman said: It was the day

that the tribe of Binyamin was allowed to re-enter the community.

(Ta'anit 30b)

Readers Respond

A response to Dr. Ronen Ahituv's "On the

Holiness of Zealotry" – issue 404.

In his article, Dr. Ahituv makes

mention of "actual cases of zealotry, such as the dastardly acts of

Barukh Goldstein and Yigal Amir." I think we should differentiate between

zealousness and vengefulness. Goldstein's deed was not one of zealousness, but

rather vengefulness; or despair; or personal rage and anger serving no higher

purpose. As for Amir, what was his true motive? Did

he think of himself as an instrument of Heaven who was required to stop the

Oslo process that could have endangered the State of Israel? Even if that were

true, was the murder of then Prime Minister Rabin really the necessary and

proper act to achieve that goal?

In contrast to the

above cases, Pinhas certainly knew that God had told

Moses, Take all of the leaders of the people and impale them for God in the

face of the sun. The Torah emphasizes: and Pinhas

saw… and rose up. That is to say, Pinhas did not

just happen to stand, and he did not wreak vengeance. Rather, he saw the

situation clearly; he saw the plague, and the danger that could befall Israel,

and the judges' unresponsiveness to Moses' command, Let each man kill those

of his men who have attached themselves to Ba'al Pe'or (25:5). So

too, Yehudah Ha'Makabee saw

the situation and the great danger, and acted accordingly. The conclusion is

that emotional excitement and/or partial comprehension do not in themselves

support true acts of zealousness of the kind acceptable to God.

Asher Adar

Dr. Ronen Ahituv

replies:

It seems that Dr. Adar

and I agree in our evaluations of the acts of various people, creating a basis

for discussion.

My article did not

treat the question of how we should go about retrospectively judging some act

or another as jealous or vengeful. Rather it asks how we should judge our own

motivations. The delegitimatization of people who do

not act in accordance with our own world view is not much of an accomplishment,

and sometimes it is even repugnant. The question is whether we can honestly

define objective criteria that can categorize acts of zealousness as a

priori "bad" or justified. I claimed that no such criteria exist.

Can someone know ahead of time whether his view of a situation is the complete

picture rather than a narrow and partial one? Is it not true that, "I knew

only to speak of myself!"

Let us consider how the

masses reacted to the Hasmonean Revolt. No doubt,

many of them accused the Hasmoneans of being

narrow-minded, impatient and of taking unnecessary risks. Despite all of that,

even to our days we still celebrate Hannukah and sing

songs of praise to God for having performed miracles for our ancestors. The

evaluation of the Hasmonean deeds as justified comes from

a later historical perspective. In their own days, things were far from clear.

As I wrote in my

article, I have no clear-cut conclusion. I am sorry to have disappointed all

those who seek safe and well-light paths of action. We must know that every

deed involves both dangers and chances for success. Usually, we have no way to

know ahead of time if they shall succeed or bring calamity.

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