THEN, THE LORD, YOUR GOD, WILL BRING BACK YOUR EXILES, AND HE WILL HAVE MERCY UPON YOU. HE WILL ONCE AGAIN GATHER YOU FROM ALL THE NATIONS, WHERE THE LORD, YOUR GOD, HAD DISPERSED YOU.

(Devarim 30:3)

 

The Lord, your God, will bring back your exiles Hebrew. veshav, literally, The Lord, your God, will (Himself) return (with) your exiles. [That is, the verb shav is in the simple conjugation. Now, since we understand the verse to mean: "The Lord your God will bring back your exiles,"] Scripture should have written, veheishiv hashem et shevut [with the verb veheishiv being in the causative conjugation, meaning "to bring back"]. But [although the meaning of the verse is indeed, "The Lord, your God, will bring back your exiles,"] our Rabbis learned from [the simple conjugation of the verb] here [which alludes to God Himself returning], that the Shekhinah resides among Israel, as it were, in all the misery of their exile, and when the Jews are redeemed [from their exile], God writes [in Scripture an expression of] redemption for Himself [to allude to the fact that He has also been redeemed, as it were,] so that He Himself returns along with Israel’s exiles (Megillah 29a). A further [lesson] may be learned [from the unusual form of the verb which expresses "to bring back the exiles"]: The day on which Israel’s exiles will be gathered is so monumental and [this ingathering] will be such a difficult [procedure, as it were], that it is as though God Himself must literally take each individual Jew with His very hands, [taking him] out of his place [in exile. We see] the same concept [brought up in Scripture,] when the verse says, And you will be gathered up, one by one, O children of Israel (Isaiah 27:12). [That verse refers to the ingathering of Israel’s exiles from Babylon. However,] we find this [idea] also regarding the [ingathering of] exiles from the other nations, as the verse says, And I shall bring back the exiles of Egypt. (Ezek. 29:14).

Vashav - will bring back - This is an expression of quieting and relieving, as in, You shall triumph by stillness [beshuva] and quiet and its meaning is that the exile will then be pacified and will set all of your troubles aside.

from all the nations - This has yet to be fulfilled, because during the Second Temple period there was no ingathering of exiles from all the nations, but rather just a few people, 40,000 men who returned from Judah and Benjamin and those who accompanied them from Babylonia. However, Amon and Moab, and Egypt, and Greece and France, And Spain, and the lands of the west where there were Jews who had been scattered since the destruction of the First Temple, did not return to the Second Temple, but rather only those in Babylonia. That is why there is no doubt that the ingathering from all the nations that is mentioned here is a matter for the future, may it come soon and in our days.

(Rabbi Yitzhak Shmuel Reggio, Italy 19^th century)

 

 

The Revealed within the Hidden

Dalia Marx & Zofia Novak

The Mishnah treats the question of the conditions under which one has fulfilled the obligation of hearing the shofar on Rosh HaShanah (and hearing the reading of the Megillah on Purim):

And so one who passed behind the synagogue or was in his house next to the synagogue and heard the sound of the shofar or of the Meggilah, if he intended [to fulfill the commandment] he fulfilled it, but if not, he did not fulfill it.

Even though they both heard, this one intended [to fulfill the commandment], while the other did not intend. (Rosh HaShanah 3:8)

The Mishnah does not ask about the kavanat halev - intention of the heart (or kivvun halev? - "direction of the heart") of those found within the synagogue; it is assumed that if they are there, they have proper intention. It asks about someone who passes behind the synagogue and who for some reason is not willing or able to enter it. Does the congregation bear any responsibility towards him? Who is this person who passes behind the synagogue? Why doesn't he enter its gates? And why, if he does not join the congregation, does he choose nonetheless to pass behind the synagogue when the shofar is blown? Who is this person whom the Mishnah is thinking of?

Where the Mishnah is reticent, the Tosefta speaks a bit more at length: "A shepherd who has his flock graze behind the synagogue, or an ill person who lies behind the synagogue" (Rosh HaShanah 2:7). Here we have two completely different cases. On the one hand we have the shepherd, who does not cease from his workday routine and who herds his flock behind the synagogue. On the other hand, there is an ill person who lies (!) behind the synagogue - one may assume that out of great piety he rose from his sick-bed and managed to drag himself there. The former comports himself on Rosh HaShanah as if it were an ordinary weekday, the latter makes a supreme effort to fulfill the commandment. And yet it may be asked why the ill person is thrown outside and does not join the rest of the congregation inside the synagogue?

Here too the heart's intention (or direction) establishes whether someone fulfils their obligation or not, as the Tosefta says, "Nothing determines this but the heart's intention" (ibid). But how are we to understand the "heart's direction"? Does this refer to the intention to merely hear the shofar in the acoustical and physiological sense, or is it the intention to fulfill the commandment's obligation? Or perhaps the Tosefta is talking about the heart's intention in the deeper sense of a mental effort and expression of faith.¹ The next Mishnah completes the chapter and deals with proper intention in the deeper and more demanding sense of the word.² Prof. Jonah Fraenkel claims that in doing so it sets up a religious alternative to our earlier Mishnah, which had merely presented the required halakhic minimum.³ In regard to our present concerns it is important that the Mishnah deals with a deed that one undertakes consciously and in relation to the congregation, but also in one's own heart, privately. The tension between the private realm and the public-national realm, between the hidden and the revealed, is found in our parasha as well, which begins with the passage:

You are all standing this day before the Lord, your God the leaders of your tribes, your elders and your officers, every man of Israel, your young children, your women, and your convert who is within your camp both your woodcutters and your water drawers... (Devarim 29:9-10)

The covenant is not made solely with those who are present. The verse, but with those standing here with us today... and [also] with those who are not here with us, this day (verse 10) is usually understood as referring to future generations, but it is also possible to apply it to those who chose not to stand among the assembled community (some families add a fifth son to the Passover Haggadah, i.e., the lost Jewish son, the one who is not with us at the Seder table this year, whom we fervently hope will join us next year). He who is not here with us, this day is perhaps the one who does not want to enter the synagogue but is also unable to abandon it completely. He passes behind it while the shofar is blown - present and absent, able and unable, wanting and refusing.

Next comes the threat against a man, woman, family, or tribe, whose heart strays this day from the Lord, our God (verse 17). Here too the criterion is internal; it relates to affairs of the heart, even if action is a necessary condition. What responsibility does the community have towards those whose hearts have strayed? The community must react to improper deeds - that is an expression of Israelite mutual responsibility. But what of the sins of the heart?

Jewish tradition recognizes that some things are beyond our control. Mountains of interpretations, both old and new, have been piled upon the verse (28) from our parasha: The hidden[things] belong to the Lord, our God, but the revealed [things] apply to us and to our children forever: that we must fulfill all the words of this Torah. Among these we find the following midrash:

Rabbi said: [The verse comes] to praise Israel, for when they all stood by Mount Sinai to receive the Torah their hearts were all joined as one to joyfully receive the Kingdom of Heaven. And not only that - they also became each others' guarantors [literally: to mortgage themselves for each other]. The Holy One blessed be He revealed Himself to form a covenant with them not only for the revealed things, but also for the hidden ones. They told Him: "We are making a covenant with You regarding the revealed things, but not regarding the concealed ones," so that if one of us would sin in secret the community would not be his guarantor. (Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishamel, Yitro, BaHodesh 5)

The Israelites are prepared to "mortgage themselves" and take responsibility for all the public deeds of every individual in the community, but they refuse to take responsibility for the "hidden things," for the affairs of the heart which are not susceptible to public scrutiny or control. It seems that many of the problems of Israeli society are caused by those who think they have been placed in charge of the "hidden" realm and take to judging matters that are between individuals and their Creator.

We shall presently consider one dimension of the relationship between the "hidden" and the "revealed," in particular, a private matter bearing a wider significance.

We have recently heard of troubling events involving the mistreatment of children by their parents, and even of extreme cases in which parents murdered their children. These all confront us with the most terrible horror imaginable - how could people willfully injure their own flesh and blood, how could they harm the child whose health and well being is their responsibility? A tide of shocked responses rose to flood the news-sites and talk-backs. Kindergarten teachers and neighbors insist that it was all unforeseeable; the family appeared to be completely normal. The police project helplessness. Indeed, it is unfortunate but true that it is not always possible to foresee and prevent such horrors. But is there no dimension at all of social responsibility for such odious crimes? Aren't murder and acts of extreme violence just the tip of the iceberg of desperate and miserable families? There are many facets to such societal responsibility; here we shall treat one of them.

In an episode of the popular television series Serugim a darling little boy asks Yifat, the talented young woman who moved on her own to a settlement near Jerusalem: "Whose mother are you?" Flustered, she replies: "I am no one's mother." The child replies with a new question: "Why?" Sometimes it seems that the pressure brought to bear by Israeli society upon people to bring children to the world - the advertisements, the overt but mainly hidden messages of the media and of common discourse (which we do not take notice of until we visit a country where they do not exist) create norms which obligate us to create families and have babies, infants who will enter a world and a society whose sons and daughters are no longer mutually responsible for each other in a hoped-for way.

Yeladim ze simha - "children are a joy." We knew that truth very well even before Yehoshua Sobel penned his song. That is the natural and desired choice for most - but not for all of us. The push to raise families combined with the constant decline in mutual responsibility in our society can drive some weak and forlorn individuals to perpetrate terrible acts of the kind reported in the media, but also to perpetrate "smaller" everyday horrors about which we hear nothing.

Does every woman have to be "somebody's mother" even if she is incapable of performing that role? Does the prophet's call, He did not create it for a waste, He formed it to be inhabited (Isaiah 45:18), as understood by the Sages, speak in general terms or does it obligate each and every man and woman? Does the first commandment of the Torah have to be understood categorically? Does an approach which promotes family life have to include funding for fertility treatments while failing to demonstrate responsibility towards the children born to weaker families? After all, He formed it to be inhabited: observance of the commandment requires more than the sheer ability to reproduce; it also calls for the ability to give the child a secure and meaningful life.

In the confession he composed (a list teetering between seriousness and cynicism), Haim Nahman Bialik writes: "For the sin which [my ancestors] sinned before me, in the revealed within the hidden." The hidden things belong to the Lord, our God, but even the hidden realm includes a dimension that demands the attention of the individual and of society, for example, the crimes committed by lonely and desperate people in the hidden privacy of their homes. A healthy society is a society that allows people to live their private lives - the hidden things - without intervention, but which also demonstrates mutual responsibility. We, on the other hand, tend to avoid intervening in those circumstances which demand it while oafishly butting into places which are the sanctum of the individual (or of the family).

As we approach the New Year, let us learn to include those who choose to pass behind the synagogue and those who do not manage to come and join the congregation. Let us also respect the choices of those who are unable or unwilling to walk the well-beaten paths.

[1] See B. Rosh HaShanah 28b and Tur Orah Hayyim 589.

2 "And could Moses' hands make war or break war? Rather [the verse's intention is] to tell you that when Israel gazed upwards and subjugated their hearts to their Father in Heaven they would prevail, and if not they would fall…" (3:8)

3 J. Fraenkel, Darkhei Ha'Aggada Ve'HaMidrash, Herziliyah: 1991, pp. 484-5; and also his "Ha'aggadah ShebaMishnah" Mehkarei Talmud 3:2, Y. Susman and D. Rosenthal (editors), Jerusalem: 5765, pg. 678.

Dr. Dalia Marx is spending this year as a guest lecturer in Potsdam University and in Berlin's Geiger College.

Zofia (Zosia) Novak is an advanced student (magister) at Potsdam University

 

And the Eternal your God will circumcise your heart - It is this which the Rabbis have said, "If someone comes to purify himself, they assist him' [from on High]. The verse assures you that you will return to Him with all your heart and He will help you. The following subject is very apparent from Scripture: since the time of Creation, ma has had the power to do as he pleased, to be righteous or wicked. This [grant of free will] applies likewise to the entire Torah-period, so that people can gain merit upon choosing the good and punishment for preferring evil. But in the days of the Messiah, the choice of their [genuine] good will be natural; the heart will not desire the improper and it will have no craving whatever for it. This is the "circumcision" mentioned here, for lust and desire are the "foreskin" of the heart, and circumcision of the heart means that it will not covet or desire evil. Man will return at that time to what he was before the sin of Adam, when by his nature he did what should properly be done, and there were no conflicting desires in his will, as I have explained in Seder Bereishit... And so it is declared by Ezekiel: A new heart will I also give you, and a new spirit will I put within you (36:26); and I will cause you to walk in My statutes (36:27). The new heart alludes to man's nature, and the [new] spirit to the desire and will. It is this which our Rabbi have said: "And the years draw nigh, when you shall say: 'I have no pleasure in them' (Kohelet 12:1) - these are the days of the Messiah, as they will offer opportunity neither for merit nor for guilt" (Shabbat 151b). For in the days of the Messiah there will be no [evil] desire in man but he will naturally perform the proper deeds and therefore there will be neither merit nor guilt in them, for merit and guilt are dependent upon desire.

(RaMBaN Devarim 30:6, Chavel translation)

 

...RaMBaN's words imply that he understands the meaning of Scripture as saying that man's redemption consists in that in the future he will be freed of the obligation to choose. It is as if it was said that man will be exempted from that great commandment of and you shall love the Lord your God, etc., because it will be naturally implanted in his soul... However, the problem consists in the fact that the Torah was not given for the days of the Messiah, but rather it was given for the days of our lives in this world, in which we do not know if man is capable of choosing, but together with that we know very well that the Torah commands us to choose.

Our world is saturated with man's struggles with himself, some of which also require struggles between man and his fellow. We all know that when it comes to the great matter of how good and evil are conceived of and understood that different people come to different and even contrary resolutions and decisions. However, as has been stated, it is precisely this world which is the world of the Torah, and not the utopian world of "the days of the Messiah." The Torah receives its religious significance in our world as it is - with all its conflicts - and we have no concept or understanding of the rhetorical expression, "the days of the Messiah."

 

 

 

 

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