Barren Land: A Hope of a Better Tomorrow

Parshas Emor

Posted on May 7, 2015 (5775) By Rabbi Berel Wein | Series: Rabbi Wein | Level: Beginner

The emphasis that the Torah places on the location – Mount Sinai – where Moshe received the Torah and its commandments, and the particular commandment regarding the observance of a sabbatical year, has been an issue of much interest to the commentators on the Torah over the ages. Rashi, quoting the famous rabbinic dictum, states that the words “Mount Sinai” indicate to us that just as this particular commandment of the sabbatical year was taught to Moshe on Mount Sinai so too are we to understand that all of the commandments of Judaism emanate from the revelation at Mount Sinai.

But perhaps there is another nuanced lesson here in the mentioning of Mount Sinai, as being the location where this commandment regarding the sabbatical year was first uttered and delivered. The Sinai desert is one of the most barren and inhospitable geographic areas on our globe. The Torah itself describes it as a great, awesome and frightening place, parched of water and short of sustenance, a place of snakes and scorpions.

To speak of a sabbatical year in this context, where and when fields and crops are not to be tended to, seems at first glance to be incongruous, to say the least. We could understand the statement of such a commandment when the Jewish people stood on the brink of entering the Land of Israel or, even more so, when they actually entered the land.

Hearing the command of letting one’s fields lie fallow for a year while living in a trackless and arid desert certainly seems to be strange. But the Torah, which is eternal and not bound by time or place, comes to teach us an important lesson regarding life generally and Jewish life particularly.

I had a friend and congregant of mine during my years as a rabbi in Miami Beach fifty years ago. He was a Holocaust survivor, a man of material wealth and clever intellect. He once told me that he was a very wealthy man in Hungary before World War II. In the very late 1930s he visited the Land of Israel and on a whim purchased an apartment here in Jerusalem.

In late summer 1944, together with hundreds of thousands of other Hungarian Jews, he and his family were deported to Auschwitz His family could not survive the ordeal, though somehow he did remain alive, and eventually he rebuilt his life and once again created a family and material success in America.

He told me that every night in the barracks of the labor camp, to which he was assigned, lying on the wooden pallet that served as his bed, in his mind he furnished the apartment that he purchased in Jerusalem. In his mind, he bought the finest furniture and wall coverings and arranged them so that the apartment shone in splendor, good taste and elegance.

He said it was this imaginary scene of the better tomorrow that kept him alive and gave him the spiritual and mental fortitude not to give up completely and just pass away, as unfortunately so many others did. To survive the desert of Sinai the Jewish people had to imagine the lush fields of the Land of Israel and a sabbatical year that would bring blessing and prosperity upon those fields and their owners.

The Torah emphasizes to us that the sabbatical year was commanded to Israel in a forbidding and dark place because of the fact that it would give hope, optimism and vision for the great blessings of the Land of Israel that they would yet live to experience.

Shabbat shalom Rabbi Berel Wein

 

Teaching By Example

Parshas Emor

Posted on April 29, 2010 (5770) By Rabbi Yochanan Zweig | Series: Rabbi Zweig on the Parsha | Level: Beginner

 “…Say to the Kohanim, the sons of Aharon, and tell them: Each of you shall not contaminate himself to a (dead) person among his people” (21:1)

The parsha begins with Hashem commanding Moshe to instruct the Kohanim as to their particular responsibilities in maintaining higher standards of holy behavior and purity. There appears to be a redundancy in these instructions, for Moshe is told twice “say to the Kohanim” – “emor” and “ve’amarta”. The Ramban maintains that this double expression is similar to those occasions when the Torah records “daber el Bnei Yisroel ve’amarta” – “speak to Bnei Yisroel and say”. According to the Ramban, the Torah uses a double expression in order to stress the importance of the commandment, or if it involves an activity which runs counter to an accepted norm.[1] Rashi, however, cites the Talmud, which derives from this redundancy that the Kohanim are being instructed twice, once in regards to themselves and once in regards to their children: “Lehazir gedolim al haketanim” – “to caution adults regarding their children”.2 What is implicit within the words “emor ve’amarta” which specifically alludes to the instruction of children, while no such conclusions are drawn from the words “daber ve’amarta”?

The difference between “amira” and “dibur” is as follows: “amira” is the relaying of information without any imposition by the person conveying it, while “dibur” imposes the will of the speaker upon the listener. A parent pressuring his child to behave in a manner different than his peers will invariably fail, unless the parent is able to convey the message that such behavior is in the child’s best interest. The only way that this can be successfully accomplished is if the parent himself willingly performs that which he is requesting of his child. The problem with “Do what I say, not what I do” is that if the child perceives that the parent is reluctant to willingly perform that which he requires of the child, the child will feel that such behavior is not in his best interest.

“Lehazir gedolim al haketanim” does not mean that adults should caution their children, rather that the adults themselves are being cautioned to perform the commandments without any sense of imposition. By so doing, the children will perceive that following their parents’ example is in their best interest. The Torah specifically uses the expression “emor ve’amarta” and not “daber ve’amarta”, for “daber” implies imposition. Especially when requiring of the Kohanim to behave in a more restrictive manner than their peers, it is essential that the message they convey to their children is “This is in our best interest, and not an imposition.”

1.21:1 2.Ibid, Yevamos 114a