THEN MOSHE SET

APART THREE TOWNS

IN THE COUNTRY

ACROSS THE JORDAN,

 TOWARD THE RISING OF THE SUN,

FOR FLEEING TO

BY THE ACCIDENTAL MURDERER

WHO MURDERS HIS

NEIGHBOR WITH NO FORETHOUGHT,

WHERE HE DID

NOT BEAR HATRED TOWARD HIM

FROM YESTERDAY

AND THE DAY BEFORE,

AND SO CAN FLEE

TO ONE OF THESE TOWNS

AND STAY ALIVE.

(Devarim 4:41-42)

Even

One Accused Of Murder Is Entitled To A Decent Attitude And A Just Trial

"Then

Moshe set apart three towns… towards the rising of the sun" – what is the meaning of "the

rising of the sun?"

Said R' Yossi, son of R'

Chanina – said The Holy One, Blessed Be He, to Moshe: Cause the sun to shine

for the murderer and provide him with refuge for exile, so that he not be

doomed because of the sin of murder, just as the sun lights up the world.

An alternate explication: "For

fleeing to by the accidental murderer" – Our Rabbis said: To

what may this be compared? To an artisan who made an image of the king; as he

was making it, it broke in his hands. Said the king: Had he broken it

intentionally, he would have to be executed; now that he broke it

unintentionally, he is sentenced to exile and travel, so did The Holy One,

Blessed Be He, decree, "Whoever now sheds human blood, for that human

shall his blood be shed", but one who kills without intent is

exiled from his home, as is written, "He shall flee to one of these

cities and will live" – said The Holy One, Blessed Be He: In

this world, where the Evil Inclination is prevalent, people kill each other and

they die, but in the future to come, I will uproot the Evil Inclination from

you and there will be no death in the world, (Isaiah

25), "He will

destroy death forever."

 (Devarim Rabba Parasha 2)

THE SUPPLICATIONS OF

MOSHE

AND THE CONSOLATIONS OF

ISAIAH

Pinchas Leiser

Moshe's fervent yearning to bring the great

project of the exodus from Egypt to its conclusion, and to see the Children of

Israel entering Eretz Yisrael, can be compared to the desire of parents to

enjoy a little "nachat" from those children who are

sometimes difficult – both in their youth and as they mature. It was also

sometimes difficult for Moshe to carry the burden of this "stiff-necked"

people, most of whom evinced no gratitude towards Moshe. Moshe's feelings

find expression in the Torah itself and in many midrashim.

Moshe's yearning for Eretz Yisrael, his desire to

enter – dead or alive – has become an inspiration for Hebrew literature

throughout the generations, beginning with the writings of Chazal through the

poetess Rachel, who turned "Man and his Nevo" (from the poem "From

Afar") into a universal metaphor for dreams and nearly-realized longings,

as with – "from afar you shall see the Land, but you shall not enter."

One of the most powerful expressions of the gap

between Moshe's desire to enter the Land at any price and the absolute and cruel finality of the decree

may be found in the Midrash Halacha,

the Sifri (Parashat Haazinu, Piska 341):

For from afar you shall see the land, but

there you shall not enter" – here it says "but there you shall not enter"

and further on it says "But there you shall not cross" (Devarim

34:4). It cannot say "There

you shall not cross" because it already said "There you shall

not enter" and it cannot say "There you shall not enter"

for it says "There you shall not cross"! What then are we to

learn from "There you shall not enter" and "There you

shall not cross"? Said Moshe before The Holy One, Blessed Be

He: If I do not enter as king, let me enter as commoner, and if I do not enter alive,

let me enter dead.

Said to him The Holy

One, Blessed Be He: "There you shall not enter" "There

you shall not cross" – neither as king nor as

commoner, not alive and not dead.

This

moving drama, with its emotional power, finds its expression in our parasha in

the six laconic opening verses, the words expressing the gap between yearning

and disappointment being: "Now I pleaded" as against "And

He would not hearken to me".

Can

one imagine a greater slap in the face that this? Moshe our teacher, the

greatest of all prophets, unparalleled throughout the generations, prays, pleads,

and receives a negative

response from The Holy One, Blessed Be He! And this, when our sources are

replete with stories about prophets and other righteous persons whose prayers

are answered in various situations?!

Different

explanations – both in the Torah and in Chazal literature – have been offered

to explain why Moshe was prevented from entering Eretz Yisrael. When Moshe

recounts the story before the Children of Israel (3:26), he says: "But God was

cross with me on

your account," alluding, perhaps, to the incident of Mei

Meriva, in which Moshe reacted in anger and struck the rock; Moshe

continues to be angry with the people for causing the ban on his crossing the

Jordan. (There is an interesting linguistic connection between 'cross' – 'vayit'aber'

– and 'conception' – 'Did I myself conceive this

entire people?") Moshe does not understand the nature of the terrible and awful

sin which was to be punished with such a severe penalty. This is also beyond

our comprehension, and the various reasons offered by the commentators only

thicken the fog surrounding the subject. One thing is clear: Moshe pleads, but

The Holy One, Blessed Be He, does not grant his appeal.

Perhaps

it was so decreed in God's design. Perhaps the matter can be understood through

the historio-sophical perspective provided in the Yalkut Shimoni (Bemidbar 20, 764):

Said The Holy One, Blessed Be He, to Moshe: In

what role to you wish to enter the land? This may be compared to a shepherd who

takes the king's sheep to pasture, and the sheep are plundered. The shepherd

wants to enter the hall of the king. Says the king: Why? If you enter, the

people will say that you plundered the sheep. So said The Holy One, Blessed Be He,

to Moshe: Will your praise be that you took out 600,000 people from Egypt and

buried them in the wilderness and you are bringing in a new generation? No,

they will say that the Generation of the Wilderness has no portion in the world

to come! No, lie alongside

them, and enter with them, as is written, : "Gathered the

heads of the people", therefore it is written, "You

shall not bring this assembly", which

left with you.

The leader of a generation which is not ready for

entry into the land, cannot abandon his followers. Moshe's fate is bound up

with the fate of the Generation of the Wilderness, and he cannot cut himself

off from it.

Since that time, the nation has undergone many

trials and tribulations. It saw Eretz Yisrael in its grandeur and in its devastation,

the temple destroyed and rebuilt, exile and return. Many generations shared

Moshe's experience, seeing the land from afar, but not meriting entry. Others

did not merit even that, but made do with prayer and yearning, despite the

harsh exile in which they lived. The nation's narrative and the Jew's personal

experience are marked by recurrent cycles of feelings of despair and feelings

of hope.

In the first verse of this week's Haftara, the

prophet calls for consolation: "Comfort, comfort you My people, says

your God."

Our early commentators interpreted this as

applying to the future:

In my opinion, all this refers to our exile, but

in the book the references are to the Babylonian exile, to remind us that

Koresh freed the exiles, but the end of the book speaks about the future, when

possible. (Ibn Ezra, Isaiah

40:1)

And know that "Comfort, comfort you"

– all these consolations are for the days of the Mashiach. (Radak, Isaiah 40:1)

Comfort, comfort" – refers to his future prophecies; because from

here until the end of the book are words of consolation; this chapters

separates them from the words of misfortune. Comfort, you my prophets, comfort

my people. (Rashi, ibid.)

Chazal, in the midrash, describe a

situation in which the nation finds it difficult to be comforted, because of

the many misfortunes and the feeling of guilt-related despair. The midrash

(presented here in abridged form) relates various attempts by prophets to

comfort Israel, and the refusal of the people to be consoled:

Comfort, oh comfort My people" said

The Holy One, Blessed Be He, to the prophets: Go and comfort Yerushalayim. When

they came to her, she said to them: Are not my ears full of admonitions with

which you admonished me, and now you come to comfort me? "Oh that my

the slain of my poor people" (Yirmiyahu 8:23), and, in the holy spirit, Yirmiyahu laments "Weep,

yes weep in the night" – who wept? Israel wept. Some say

Yirmiyahu wept. The prophets returned to The Holy One, Blessed Be He, and said:

Master of the Universe, she refuses to accept our consolations. Replied The

Holy One, Blessed Be He: I

and you will go to comfort her, as is written "Comfort, oh comfort My

people" – we will comfort my people, we will comfort the celestial

beings, we will comfort mortals, we will comfort the first generations, we will

comfort the last generations. (Midrash

Zuta, Eicha, version 2, parasha 1).

The cyclic process which began with yearning, with

aspiration, and sometimes with longing for a reality of geula – of

redemption, of a better world which we do not merit to see, even though this

reality seems to us "right across from us" – only some small

something separates between us and it; the cycle concludes with a perspective

of generations and with looking back with some kind of acceptance – despite

the difficulty – of the missed opportunities for Geula, and with the

shattering of illusions, accompanied with tireless hopes for a better world,

which we may never see in a perfect way. Perhaps this is the necessary process of the nation's

ripening, and perhaps that of every man. It begins with Moshe's

unanswered "pleadings", and it ends with Isaiah's "consolations"

which open a door to hope in an unredeemed world.

Pinchas Leiser, editor of

Shabbat Shalom", is psychologist.

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".

Explains R' Yochanan: 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 Netzsiv of Volozhin's commentary "Haamek Davar", preface to the

Book of Bereishit).

After

mentioning that one should observe these three categories of mitzvoth (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)

"Comfort,

comfort you my people";

A

Conditional Promise or A Spiritual Challenge?

… The chapter of the Haftara (of Shabbat Nachamu)

is cut off at verse 26, and the four concluding verses are not recited, lest

they – Heaven forbid – adversely affect the pleasant feeling radiated by the

preceding verses of consolation and mission, verses coveted by the human soul, ideas

with which the soul amuses itself.

From

the words of the prophets we derive that consolation and the mission of geula

are not a given reality or an event due to occur in the future. They are

talking about a direction and a goal towards which one must strive, and this

is, in effect, the meaning of all prophecies which contain promises.

Careful

study, without prejudgments regarding the geula and the return to Zion, which

are actually the content and the main subjects of the "Seven Prophecies of

Comfort," will reveal – to our surprise- their true meaning: they are

always interwoven with presentations of demands; were this not so, they would

be devoid of any religious significance, and it would have been able to relate

to them as pronouncements of the Oracle, fortune tellers, and diviners of

idolaters, which existed from days of yore until this very day.

In

contrast to one Chazalic opinion which claims that there are only prophecies of

misfortune and that they do not materialize because of penitence which is

capable of nullifying the decree, there is no denying the fact (which we tend

to ignore) that there are to be found many prophecies of consolation which were

never realized. On this subject, too, Talmudic literature, midrashim, and

aggadot make forceful statements, such as those great consolations which

Yirmiyahu predicts for Efrayim and the ten tribes, and for our mother Rachel

who announces the future return of her sons. But we all know that the sons did

not return, and the Kingdom of Israel has long passed from the world, despite

all these prophecies.

Similarly,

Amos prophesied that Israel will be exiled from its land, and in that same

generation there arose in Israel Yoravam son of Yoash, the powerful leader and

conqueror ' "who restored the territory of Israel from Levo-hamaath to

the sea of the Arabah" (II Kings 14:25), and achieved victories and conquests hitherto

unparalleled, but one generation later, the Kingdom of Efrayim ceased to exist.

 (Y. Leibowitz, Discussions About The

Festivals Of Israel And Its Appointed Times, pp.146-147)

Editorial

Board: Pinchas Leiser (Editor), Miriam Fine (Coordinator), Itzhak

Frankenthal and Dr. Menachem Klein

Translation:

Kadish Goldberg

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