A Separate Peace

Parshas Bechukosai

Posted on May 29, 2019 (5779) By Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky | Series: Drasha | Level: Beginner

 

“If you will walk in my statutes, and heed my commandments …” (Leviticus 33:3).

This week the Torah bestows its promise of blessing and peace to those who follow in the path of Torah. Rashi is bothered by the seeming redundancy of walking in statutes, and heeding commands. He explains that “walk in my statutes” refers to arduous Torah study, and “heed my commandments” refers to keeping the mitzvos.

 

And then there is peace. Hashem promises that if we adhere to the directives, “I will bring peace to the land” (ibid v. 6) In the same verse, the Torah also tells us that “a sword will not pass through your land.” If there is peace, then obviously a sword will not pass through. What is the meaning of the redundancy? Once again, Rashi explains that the “sword passing through” is referring to a sword that is not directed against our people; rather it is a sword that is passing through on the way to another country. Thus the two types of peace.

 

But maybe there is a different type of peace; one that does not refer to guns and ammunition, but rather to a peace that is on another level.

 

Rav Yitzchak Zilberstein of B’nei Berak tells the story of Rav Eliezer Shach, the Ponovezer Rosh Yeshiva, of blessed memory.

 

Rav Shach once entered a shul and sat down in a seat towards the back, and, while waiting for the minyan to begin, Rav Shach began to study Torah. Suddenly a man approached him, hands on his hips, and began shouting at him.

 

“Don’t you know that you are sitting in my seat?” the irate man yelled.

“Who are you to come here and just sit down, without asking anyone permission?”

 

Rav Shach quickly stood up and embraced the man. He hugged him lovingly as he begged the man for forgiveness. He agreed to the irate man’s every point.

 

“I am so sorry for taking your seat even if it was for a few moments,” he pleaded. Please forgive me. I must have absent-mindedly sat down there. Please forgive me.

The man was taken aback at the Rosh Yeshiva’s humility, and immediately apologized for his rude behavior.

 

“After the davening, students of Rav Shach approached him and asked why he so readily accepted blame and begged forgiveness for what surely was not a misdeed. After all, why should he not be able to sit down in the seat. Rav Shach explained, “If Torah is all that one aspires to have, then everything else in this world, all the items one would normally squabble about has no significance. When one is immersed in Torah, a seat is meaningless, a place is meaningless. Surely a material object is not worth getting upset over, surely no less tare they worth fighting over. Why shouldn’t I apologize?”

 

The Torah tells us a secret to peace in our community. If we toil in Torah, there will be peace in the land. The Torah is telling us that if we immerse ourselves in Torah then all the temporal objects that are the fulcrum of most fights are meaningless.

 

We think of peace as a concept that occurs between nations. However, we often forget that what we need is peace within our own community and lives…. A separate peace.

 

Good Shabbos

                                                              

Dedicated in memory of Rabbi Dr. Menashe Refael (Manfred) Lehmann of blessed memory.

Repercussions and Resilience

Parshas Bechukosai

Posted on May 29, 2019 (5779) By Rabbi Berel Wein | Series: Rabbi Wein | Level: Beginner

 

The final portion of this third book of the Torah contains an ominous tone. This is because of the vivid description of evil events that will befall the Jewish people when they desert their G-dly mission and sink to the level of the societies that surround and outnumber them. The Torah promises us that such behavior and attitudes will surely lead to disaster, exile and persecution from the very societies that the Jews try to emulate.

 

All Jewish history bears testimony to the accuracy of the words that exist in this week’s portion of the Torah. And the way the Torah presents these events, which will occur in the future, is not in the necessary framework of punishment but rather in the inevitable picture of events that inexorably lead to consequences. It is not G-d Himself, so to speak, that is punishing the Jewish people but rather it is the Jewish people itself that is doing the punishing. This is a logical and even an evitable result of past behavior and misguided attitudes and beliefs. This is a very important lesson for Jews to understand.

 

Behavior, speech, attitudes and beliefs always have consequences in the real world in which we live. They are not to be taken lightly and not to be shrugged off as just being examples of the fallible nature of human beings. We are not allowed to dig a hole under our seat in the boat.

 

The words of the prophet Jeremiah ring true today as they did thousands of years ago: “the fathers ate sour grapes and therefore the children of later generations will have their teeth set on edge.” One has to be blind to history or even to current events not to realize the lessons involved and described in this week’s Torah portion.

 

The Torah will expand upon this much later towards the end of the fifth book of the Torah. We will be presented with a full and graphic picture of the cruelty of humanity towards the Jewish people over the centuries until our day. Rabbi Moshe Ben Nachman in his commentary to Torah explains that this week’s portion and its predictions referred to the destruction of the first Temple and the relatively short exile of the Jewish people after that in Babylonia.

 

The later section, towards the end of the Torah, refers to the destruction of the second Temple and the long and seemingly endless exile that follows upon its demise. The latter exile, which was, and to a certain extent still is, a long and difficult one to endure, one that has cost countless generations of Jews their lives and their futures and others their spiritual heritage and legacy, seems to have little if any redeeming features.

 

And yet the remarkable fact of Jewish history is the vitality and productivity of the Jewish people in exile, suffering persecution and living under adverse circumstances. This resilience is also reflected in the prophecies of the Torah regarding the eternity of the Jewish people and its eventual return to both its physical national heritage and spiritual greatness.

 

Shabbat shalom
Rabbi Berel Wein

 

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