I PLEADED WITH THE LORD AT THAT TIME, SAYING, "…LET

THAT GOOD HILL COUNTRY, AND THE LEBANON."

(Devarim 3:23, 25)

For the same state is in store

for all (Kohelet 9:2) – Moses

said to God: Master of the Universe, all are equal before you; you destroy the

innocent and the wicked alike. The spies angered you by speaking ill of the

Land, as it is said, thus they spread calumnies about the land (Bamidbar 13:32), while I served your children before

you in the wilderness for forty years, and we share the same fate!?

What is this like? A king wished to marry a certain woman. He

sent messengers to see whether she was beautiful or not. They went and saw her,

and came to the king and said to him: "There is none as ugly and desolate

as her." His best man heard and told him, "Not so, my Lord, there is

no woman more beautiful than her in the world." He went to marry her, and

the girl's father told the king's messengers: "I swear on the king's life

that not one of you shall enter here, because you scorned her in the king's

presence." The best man arrived to enter, and he told him: "You, too,

will not enter." The best man said to him: "I did not see her, yet I

told the king that there is none more beautiful than her in the world. They

said there is none uglier than her. Now let me be, and

I will see which of us spoke truthfully."

So Moses said to God: "My Master, the spies spread calumny

about the Land and said it is a country that devours its inhabitants (Bamidbar 13:32), but I did not see it, yet I praised

it to your sons, and I said, the Lord your God brings you to a goodly land

(Devarim 8:7). Now I shall see it and know whether

my words or theirs were correct, as it is said, Let me, I pray, cross over

and see the good land on the other side of the Jordan (Devarim 3:25). He told him: you shall not go

across (3:27). Moses told Him: "If so, all are the same to you – you

destroy the innocent and the wicked alike."

 (Tanhuma

Va'et'hanan 1)

When You Have

Begotten Children and Children's Children:

The Limits of

Control and Kindness

Ya'ir Furstenberg

Moses' speeches, in which he entreats

the people to uphold the Torah when they enter the Land, are shot through with

an intense concern for the relations between fathers and sons, parent and

children. The complexity of such relationships is reflected in their many

different facets that find expression in the parasha,

all of them born of Moses' ruminations. Here we shall consider one of them.

Moses quotes the Ten Commandments in

the central portion of the parasha. Suddenly, we find

a description of God's providence slipped in between two commandments:

You shall not bow down to them or

serve them. For

love Me and keep My commandments. (Shemot

20:5-6; Devarim 5:9-10)

These words publicly declare the goal

of the observance of the commandments: Walking the straight and narrow is

intended to protect one's children and descendants. One who does not follow the

straight path bears responsibility for the harm caused by God's anger not only

to himself, but also to his descendants. On the other hand, the behavior of one

who loves God guarantees his children's safety. The very simplicity of this

notion certainly helped it become a constitutive element of the religious

mind-set. However, Moses himself is aware that it is insufficient both as a

description of divine providence, and of the relations between parents and

children. As a result, we find Moses offering alternatives to it in different

contexts.

The public declaration made at Mount

Sinai holds both the lover and the hater of God completely responsible for

their children's futures. However, during his intimate encounter with God in

the cleft of the rock, Moses heard more subtle distinctions. Intergenerational

relations are described differently there. The split announced at Mount Sinai

between, visiting the guilt of the parents upon their children… of those

who reject Me as against showing kindness to the thousandth generation

of those who love Me, is replaced in the cleft of the rock with a continuum

wrapped in kindness:

Extending kindness to the thousandth

generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He does not remit

all punishment, but visits the iniquity of parents upon and children's

children, upon the third and fourth generations. (Shemot

34:7)

God maintains kindness even to

transgressors; the sin of the Israelites who worshipped the golden calf was

forgiven, and their punishment reduced. Yohanan Mops,

in his book, Ahava Ve-Simha:

Hok, Lashon va-Dat ba-Mikra u've-Sifrut HaZaL (Love

and Joy: Law, Language, and Religion in Scripture and in Rabbinic Literature),

pg. 14, mentions that according to the biblical view, the deferral of

punishment to future generations is seen as a kindness. Only so can we

understand why, after the sin of the spies, Moses prays to God, reminding Him

of His attribute of visiting the iniquity of parents upon and children's

children. Moses wants to put off the execution of the punishment, and so to

soften it.

What

kindness could there be in punishing a son instead of his father? What

use is such a deferral if the affliction will be the same affliction? Paradoxically,

and despite our difficulty identifying with a stance that endorses the punishment

of innocents, it seems that this position can only make sense in the context of

a fundamentally optimistic world-view. Our children will be stronger than us,

we tell ourselves, and they shall cope with problems that would have beaten us.

This attitude is more clearly exemplified at the national level. The death of

600,000 would have finished off the Jewish People in its youth. After finding

its strength and endurance, such a punishment becomes survivable.

In this way, God also tries to redraw

the relationship of parents to children in His intimate encounter with Moses in

the cleft of the rock. From now one, a parent will not think only of his

children's future when deciding how to act. His actions are no longer

absolutely and directly responsible for the well-being of future generations. A

psychological truth was revealed in the cleft of the rock: that while a parent

does indeed care for his children and wishes the best for them,

he also has faith in his children's own abilities, and is willing to let the

next generation take upon itself the burden of sin.

In our parasha,

when Moses addresses the people, he does not reveal in this way the secret he

learned in the cleft of the rock. Rather, through his various treatments of the

issue, he offers his own alternative picture.

In the end of the parasha, Moses makes

a surprising statement:

Know, therefore, that only the Lord

your God is God, the steadfast God who keeps His covenant faithfully to the

thousandth generation of those who love Him and keep His commandments, but who

instantly requites with destruction those who reject Him – never slow with

those who reject Him, but requiting them instantly. Therefore, observe

faithfully the Instruction – the laws and the rules – with which I charge you

today. (Devarim 7: 9-11)            

With these words, Moses once again

contradicts the announcement made at Sinai, according to which those who hate

God condemn their children after them. Instead of visiting the guilt of the

parents upon their children, Moses says God is never slow with those who

reject Him, but requiting them instantly. According to the latter

statement, coming generations may only be affected by their parent's actions in

a positive way; the parent's righteousness gains mercy for the children. This

deviation from the public pronouncement sheds light upon the existential

condition of the people as a whole. The election of the Jewish People can only

be understood against the background of the righteousness of the Patriarchs;

it was because the Lord favored you and kept the oath He made to your fathers (Devarim 7:8). It is impossible for the sins of

the fathers to be visited upon the sons – that would stand counter to God's

constant love towards the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That is why

Moses says that God keeps the covenant and the kindness (of the Patriarchs) for

a thousand generations, and those He despises among their descendants He

punishes immediately.

Concurrently, the complexity of the

problem is revealed. Along side the notion of each person's place in the causal

chain of history, Moses unravels the deterministic ties between generations and

recognizes their mutual independence. In order to see how he does this, we must

turn again to the way Moses chooses to quote the Ten Commandments.

The way Moses describes the epiphany

at Mount Sinai wavers from the unambiguous view that parents determine their

children's fate found in the Ten Commandments:

The Lord our God made a covenant with

us at Horeb. It was not with our fathers that the

Lord made this covenant, but with us, the living, every one of us who is here

today (Devarim 5: 2-3)

In this passage, Moses emphasizes

that the status of one's parents is not enough to ensure one's place in the

covenant. There is also more than a hint here that a Torah given to parents

alone cannot endure. These words, which recognize the independence of future

generations, reflect Moses' sophisticated view – a view that is not without

pessimism. When he begins his description of the sins that will be later

committed in the Land, he says When you have begotten children and children's

for yourselves a sculptured image in any likeness (4:25). The

process is almost predetermined – the commandment given to the fathers and

mothers will lose its force in the new world of their descendants, and Moses

knows that they will suffer punishment for it. Where, then, is room left for Divine kindness?

Dissatisfaction against the overly

simplistic picture presented at Mount Sinai is also revealed in the style in

which Moses relates his more realistic view. He replaces You

generations (5:8, 9) with a different image, based upon

the same language:

Take care, then, not to forget the

covenant that the Lord your God concluded with you, and not to make for

yourselves a sculptured image in any likeness…For the Lord your God is a

consuming fire, an impassioned God. When you have begotten children and

children's children and are long established in the land, you shall act

wickedly and make for yourselves a sculptured image in any likeness (4:23-5)

According to Moses' formulation, we

should not fear our absolute influence upon our children's futures, fearing

that they will suffer for our sins. Rather, we are constantly burdened with a

different, but no less heavy existential burden: our lack of control over our children's futures – the

recognition of our own powerlessness.

To the awareness of Divine kindness

gained by Moses in the cleft of the rock, where he learned to have faith in the

ability of future generations to bear God's wrath is added here an awareness of

the anxiety which always gnaws at parents who are learning to offer their

children independence. They are two necessary sides of the same coin.

Ya'ir Furstenberg is a Talmud student at

Hebrew University and a father of two children.

Readers Respond: Reactions

to Shira Leibowitz-Schmidt's

article, which appeared in the Balak edition.

a) Shira Leibowitz-Schmidt

wrote that modesty is a condition for our sovereignty over the Land. One may,

of course, believe that our presence in the Land will be guaranteed if we

behave according to the norms of modesty. I am acquainted with other beliefs,

which hold that our presence in the Land will be secure, for example, if we

behave as a proper society, realizing social justice. Those opinions are

founded upon the prophecies of our greatest prophets, such as Isaiah, Amos, and

Micah.

Amos attacks the wealthy hedonists, who remain completely

oblivious to the sufferings of the poor (and who were unmoved by the disaster

which befell the Kingdom of Israel), and foresees their ruin. Consider the

sixth chapter of Amos:

They drink straight from the wine bowls

city and inhabitants alike – declares the Lord, the God of Hosts. (6-8)

Or the third chapter of Micah:

I said: Listen, you rulers of Jacob,

ruins, and the Temple Mount a shrine in the woods. (1-3, 12-13)

(If these prophets were living in our days they would be accused

of being, God forbid, leftists…)

The RaMBaM also claims that redemption

is dependent upon justice. He writes:

The throne of Israel can be

established and the true religion raised up only upon

justice, for it is said, you shall be established in justice (Isaiah

54:14). Israel can only be redeemed through justice, for it is said, Zion

shall be saved by justice, and her repentant ones by righteousness (Isaiah 1:27). (Hilkhot Matanot Aniyyim 10:1)

I also know people who believe that our hold on the Land will be

guaranteed if we treat the minorities who live among us and the neighbors who

live beside us properly and fairly. Even without bringing in the words of the

prophets, we should act as a moral society.

I do not intend to invalidate anyone's beliefs, let each person

live in accordance with his or her beliefs.

b) Shira Leibowitz-Schmidt

brings as a proof-text the verse from Micah (6:8), and walk modestly with

your God. Are these words really directed towards sexual modesty? It may be

demonstrated from many classical Jewish sources that the term modesty (tzniut) bears additional meanings.

Men who are exacting in their observance of the commandments,

but do so in a private and humble fashion are called modest [tzenuim] (Mishnah Demai 5:6), "the modest ones of Beit Hillel" (6:6),

etc. However, women usually merit being called modest when they behave modestly

in the erotic realm, when they diminish their presence in public as much as

possible.

c) I am not advocating, God forbid, permissiveness in the erotic

realm, but I am objecting to the extremism regarding sexual modesty which has

spread in certain circles. In my articles on the modesty of the National-Haredi circle, I did not at all touch upon the question of

the connection between modesty and faith in the success of our settlement of

the Land, nor did I intend to touch upon it. Rather, I analyzed the phenomenon

of the growing importance of the value of modesty in those circles, and I

showed how they introduced a new (!) dimension to the discussion of modesty,

which is rooted in mystical conceptions of Jewish nationalism. This mystical brand

of Jewish nationalism and its ties to modesty are new indeed. If my articles

were critical, it was not because of the novelty of the ideas there discussed, but

rather because of the conclusions deduced from those ideas, which involve the

exclusion of women from the center of social and public activity, and the

reinforcement of differences between Israel and the nations of the world – including

the issue of how we relate to the value of life.

Perhaps we should ask ourselves in one of the editions of Shabbat

Shalom what the prophets Isaiah, Amos, and Micah would have to say if they were

to suddenly appear among us.

Yoske Ahiytuv

Additional responses will appear in the edition for parashat Ekev.

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