The Lord did not make this covenant

living. (Deut. 5:3)

Not with our fathers – alone did He make the convenant, but with

us – as in "and your name shall no longer be called Jacob alone,

but also Israel

with it." As it states in Midrash Tehilim about "From the mouths of babes and nursing

infants you established strength," that even embryos in the wombs of their

mother received the Torah and guaranteed that their fathers would accept the

Torah, the bellies of their pregnant mothers shone like the stars, and they

were seen, and they saw the face of the Shekhina, and

when the Holy One said, "I am the Lord, they answered Him, "Yes."

"There will none other for you," and they answered, "No." And for every "yes," "yes," and for every "no,"

"no."

(Hizquni, on that verse)

Not with our fathers did He make a covenant. Rashi

added the word "alone," as if it said, "not with our fathers alone

did He make a covenant. And there was no need for that, because the

blessed Lord did not give the Torah to that signified generation that received

it, because He knew that they would not enter the Land, and thus they would not

keep the commandments, but He made the covenant, for the coming generations,

when they entered the land, they would observe and perform, so he said, "

with us, those who are here today, all of us who are living," meaning that

the Torah was intended for everyone who would be living in every single

generation and not only for those who received it, and this has been compared

to someone who makes a mill on a canal, that there is no doubt that he intended

to build it not only for that particular water, but for all the water that

would flow while the building stood, and he would direct the water to where it

always flows, and that is why it says, "The Lord did not make this

covenant with our fathers," because they are already dead, and Torah and

the commandments are canceled for them, for the dead are called free. And

our Rabbis said: When a man dies, he is free of the commandments, because of "with

us, those who are here today, all of us who are living," and therefore it

is for all those who will live after us until the end of generations, and

therefore that divine status remains intact and valid and powerful through all

time, all that always passes, like the mill building over the canal."

(Hakotev vehakabala

on that verse)

Console Us?

Pinchas Leiser

My teacher, Rabbi Daniel

Epstein, occasionally quotes the words of Franz Rosenzweig,

saying that the weekly parasha is like a personal

letter sent to us every week, meeting us in the place where we are at that

time.

Five years ago, in the leaflet

on Parashat Vaethanen,

which was published during the second Lebanese War, I referred to the concept

of consolation. Contemplating various appearances of the word in the Bible, it

became clear to me that at least two nineteenth century Bible commentators,

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch in Germany and Rabbi Isaac Samuel Reggio in

northern Italy referred to the dual meaning of the word in their commentaries,

and also to the apparently contradictory meanings of the root N. H. M.

At that time I mentioned two

nearly adjacent uses of the term in Parashat Bereshit:

And GOD saw that

the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the

thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD

that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the

LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth;

both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it

repenteth me that I have made them. (Gen. 6:5-7)

In contrast to:

This same shall comfort us

concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD

hath cursed. (Gen.

5:29)

The Holy one, as it

were, regrets having created Adam and Lemech, Noah's

father, but he is consoled by the birth of Noah, of whom it is said that "he

found favor in the eyes of God." Nevertheless, in modern

Hebrew, we use the root N. H. M. only in the meaning of consolation, and

not in that of regret. When we speak of consoling the mourning, the ordinary

formulae are: "May the Place console [yenahem]

you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem," or "May

you be consoled [tenuhamu]

from heaven."

Rabbi Samson

Raphael Hirsch on Gen. 29:5 points out the dual meaning of the word and the

common denominator between the meanings:

This root as an

extraordinary meaning: in the active sense it means to console, but it can also

mean to repent of a decision regarding the future.

There is a third

meaning, to regret what has been done, as in Jeremiah, "No man repented

him of his wickedness" (8:6), and later, "After I returned and repented"

(31:18).

The basic meaning

is to change one's mind, and from this we get regret and a change in a

decision. Consolation also changes the feeling of the heart regarding an event

that has taken place. Nahem [console]

is similar to Noah [the name Noah]. The regretful one changes his

mind and turns in a new direction, that is to say, he changes the direction of

his motion, and thus we have nahem

meaning regret: a person who has experienced a loss will walk and move to fill

in the void; someone who has received consolation is someone who is at rest;

consolation will put his mind at ease, will fill the void, will silence the

murmur of his heart."

To sum up, even

when we refer to the different, Utopian outlook of Rabbi Akiva,

when, in contrast to other Tannaim who went with him

and wept seeing a fox leave the Holy of Holies in the destroyed Temple, he

laughed, in faith that the prophecy of the renewal of the destroyed and

abandoned city would be fulfilled ("Old men and women will yet dwell in

the streets of Jerusalem.") Then we wrote:

Rabbi Akiva's strange response and his ability to console

his fellow Tannaim could be connected to his ability

to console himself, that is, to contemplate reality in a different way,

to take into account not only static reality, but also the possibility that

reality might change. Rabbi Akiva's ability to see

reality in a dynamic way derives from his attitude toward historical reality as

a developing and changing text. On this matter one can ask another question:

of being consoled? We remember the Patriarch Jacob's response when Joseph's

brothers showed him Joseph's cloak, stained with blood:

And Jacob rent his

clothes, and put sackcloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days. And

all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be

comforted; and he said, For I will go down into the

grave unto my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him. (Gen.

37:34-35)

Rashi interprets Jacob's

refusal to be consoled with a Midrash found in Bereshit Raba: "And he refused to be comforted"

– B. R. A person does not accept consolation for someone living and he was

certain he was dead, for of the dead it is decreed that they are forgotten from

one's heart, but not the living.

The Midrash apparently assumes that there is a heavenly decree,

meaning a mechanism that doesn't depend on oneself, by very nature, that

permits one to be reconciled with death, and that mechanism does not work when

the person one is mourning for is not actually dead.

It is as if

finality (conscious or unconscious) helps us to be reconciled with difficult

events and circumstances. The insight that Rashi

adopted from the Midrash is interesting and

paradoxical, because if we adopt it and try to read it, following Rosenzweig, as a letter addressed to us today, on the

personal and also collective level, six years after the withdrawal from the

Gaza Strip and five years after the Second Lebanon War, or even when in these

days Israeli society is coping with political problems not only in the regional

and international arena, but also with serious crises in the social and ethical

area, and it is enough to read the headlines of the newspapers to be aware of

it, each of us as an individual or members of a community has the possibility

of choosing between two positions:

1.     

To view the situation as irreversible and to

accept it as a decree from heaven, meaning, "we shall eat the sword

forever" – the conflict between us and the Palestinians and the Arab world

cannot be resolved; social gaps are inevitable, and we have to be reconciled to

them; there is no money in the public treasury to assure decent

housing at a reasonable, or a public health system, etc. Does such an

acceptance offer consolation? Can accepting a worrisome situation be

consolation?

2.     

It was Rabbi Akiva who

did not accept the existing situation and did not regard it as an irreversible

decree, who was the consoler, who was able to see the dead as living. Indeed,

not accepting the situation is what enables him to be consoled and to help the

others to see not only the present situation, but also the possibility for

change, and this was by virtue of his hope and faith.

Rashi, following Midrash Rabba, interprets the

words of Judah, "let us live and not die" (Gen.

43:8),

after which Jacob agrees to send Benjamin with his brothers, as being connected

to the holy spirit, and here are his words:

And we shall live – the holy spirit flashed within him. By means of this going, your

spirit will live, as it is said, "And the spirit of Jacob their father

lived.

And on the words, "and

the spirit of Jacob their father lived (Gen. 48:37), Rashi wrote: "And the spirit of Jacob lived – the

Shekhina came to him, though it had gone away."

That is to say, the

holy spirit had left Jacob when he thought that Joseph

had been devoured by a wild animal. Rabbi Akiva was

graced with the holy spirit when he was able to see

through gloomy and discouraging reality.

Since we have no

prophets, and we have no information "from behind the screen", we are

in a situation of constant uncertainty, and therefore, in order to be consoled,

paradoxically, we must not, following the example of the Patriarch Jacob,

relate to the living as dead, which would not enable us to be consoled, but

rather we must adopt the approach of Rabbi Akiva, who

enables us to relate even to what seems to be dead and hopeless as something

living, and in order to do so, we need a different way of looking, a holy

spirit. As Maimonides said (Guide of the Perplexed, 2:45), this is the first

stage in the ladder of prophecy, that to which any person can attain under

certain circumstances:

The first level of

prophecy is that which lends a person divine help and motivates him and

induces him to do a great and valuable good deed, such as saving a group of

excellent people from a group of evil people, or to save a great and excellent

person, or to benefit many people. And in his soul he will feel an impulse and

drive to act. This is called the spirit of God.

The spirit of God

is meant to inspire us with hope and faith for a better future, but it also

permits us to act for such a future, and perhaps it also demands that of us.

Pinchas Leiser, the Editor of Shabbat Shalom, is a psychologist.

Moses Prefers the Repentance of the Israelites and

their Redemption to Entry in the Land

And the Lord did not give you a heart to know. Rav Shmuel bar Nahmani said: Moses said that for himself. How is that? The

Holy one decreed two things, one for Moses and one for the Israelites. The one

for the Israelites was when they did that deed. How do we know? As it is

written (Deut. 9): "Let me be and I will destroy

them," and afterward upon Moses when he asked to enter the Land of Israel,

the Holy One said, "You will not cross this Jordan." Moses asked the Holy

One to cancel both decrees, and he said to Him: "master of the Universe,

forgive the sin of this nation as the greatness of Your

mercy," and that of the Holy One was canceled but that of Moses was

fulfilled. How do we know? For it was said (Num. 14): "I have

forgiven as you said," When he came to enter the Land of Israel,

he started to say (Deut. 3): "Let me cross over and see the good land."

The Holy One said to him: "Moses, you have already canceled mine and I

have kept yours; I said, "I will destroy them," and you said, "forgive,

please," and yours was upheld, and now, too, I want to uphold mine and

cancel yours." The Holy One said to him: "Moses, don't you know what

to do? You want to hold both ends of the rope?" He said, "If you want

me to uphold, 'may I cross,' I will cancel 'please forgive,' and

if you want me to uphold 'please forgive," I will cancel 'may I

cross,' Rabbi Yehoshua ben

Levi said: "Once Moses heard that, he said to Him: "Master of the

Universe, may Moses and a hundred like him die, but not a fingernail of theirs

be harmed.

The close connection between love of god, love of

one's fellows, and love of the stranger

"You shall love the Lord your God" – Act

out of love. Scripture differentiated between observance out of love and

observance out of fear. Observance out of love is doubly rewarded, as is

written: "The Lord your God you are to hold in awe, Him you are to

serve, to Him you are to cling" (Devarim

10:20). There

are those who, fearful of one who troubles them, leave him and depart. But you

act out of love, for love and fear can co-exist only as an attribute of God.

An alternate explanation: "You shall love the

Lord your God" – His love for all His creatures is like that of your

father Avraham, as is written "And the persons

whom they had made their own in Harran" (Bereishit 12:5). Were all inhabitants of the world to gather

to create a single mosquito and give it a soul, they could not do so; how then

are we to understand "And the persons whom they had made their own in Harran"?! But this comes to teach us that our father

Avraham converted them and gathered them beneath the

wings of the Shekhina.

(Sifri, Vaetchanan,

32)

(The mitzva) to love the

stranger who comes to dwell beneath the wings of the Shekhina

is composed of two active mitzvot. First of all, the

stranger is included in 'fellows', and the second, because he is a

stranger, and the Torah said: "You shall love the stranger." He

commanded us to love the stranger just as He commanded us to love Him

Himself, as is written "You shall love the Lord your God". God

Himself loves strangers, as is written "And loves the strange."

(Rambam, Mishneh

Torah, Hilchot Deot 6:4)

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 thatShemuel 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)

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