Sight and Insight

Parshas Vaeschanan

Posted on August 14, 2024 (5784) By Rabbi Naftali Reich | Series: Legacy | Level: Beginner

The long-awaited moment is finally drawing near. The forty long years in the desert are coming to an end. The Jewish people are massed on the far side of the Jordan River, preparing to cross into the Promised Land. Exuberant joy sweeps through the Jewish encampment, but it is tempered by an element of poignant tragedy. Moses, their great leader, will not accompany them on this final leg of their journey from slavery to exalted statehood.

 

In this week’s Torah portion, we watch as Moses pleads with Hashem for a reprieve from this difficult decree, but Hashem grants only one small concession. Before his passing, Moses is allowed to climb the summit of Mount Nevo and gaze upon the entire length and breadth of the land – north, south, east and west.

 

A number of questions immediately come to mind. Wouldn’t showing Moses a tantalizing view of the land he could not enter only add to his sense of loss? Furthermore, even from his vantage point on the high mountaintop, how was he able to see the entire expanse of the land all the way to its most distant borders? And if it was miraculous, why did he have to go up to the mountaintop at all? Why didn’t Hashem simply show him the same miraculous vision right at sea level?

 

Let us stop and consider for a moment. What exactly did Moses see when he stood on the mountaintop? What sort of panoramic view could even partially compensate for his failure to enter the Holy Land? The answer lies in the difference between sight and insight. Moses undoubtedly was not concerned with the graceful contours of the land or the pretty flowers that adorned the valleys. He did not climb the mountain to feast his eyes on the superficial beauty of the land. Rather, he wanted to train his penetrating gaze on the sacred land, to probe beneath the surface and connect with its holy spiritual core, to experience its essence through observation, insight and ultimately knowledge.

 

Earlier, when Moses was a fugitive in the land of Midian, the Torah tells us that he saw a bush engulfed in flames and said, “Why isn’t the bush being consumed?” Our Sages tells us that Hashem rewarded Moses for turning to look at the bush. What was so praiseworthy about turning to look at a burning bush that was not being consumed? Wouldn’t it have piqued the curiosity of any passerby?

 

Clearly, Moses was not being rewarded for simply looking at the bush. It was his faculty of looking beyond appearances and probing for the essence that earned him everlasting reward.

 

Whereas an ordinary man might have seen a piece of vegetation in a state of combustion, Moses saw the deeper symbolism, the image of the Jewish people writhing in the flames of Egyptian slavery but divinely protected from destruction.

 

When Moses trained this penetrating gaze on the Holy Land, he saw beyond its body. He saw its heart and its soul. At this level, the land has a symmetrical unity and form, and seeing part of it is like seeing the whole. Just as a person can see an entire tree even without looking at every individual leaf and twig, so did Moses on his mountaintop see the entire length and breadth of the essence of the land.

 

When the insight of his mind connected with the image absorbed by his eyes, he saw the spiritually radiant land blossom into the transcendent Abode of the Divine Presence, and he experienced a spiritual elevation far greater than lesser people would someday experience when standing near the Holy of Holies.

 

In our own times, contemporary culture and the media bombard us with so many eye-catching images that we have become accustomed to the myriad wondrous sights around us. It sometimes seems our sight has become so overloaded that we have lost sight of insight. But we all have it within our power to look with a more penetrating gaze, with more than our retinas and optic nerves. If we seek out the internal beauty in every creature, every tree, every blade of grass, if we recognize the handiwork of Hashem in every speck of the universe, we will discover a far deeper level to existence, a world where sight is rewarded by insight.

 

Our Family Business

Parshas Vaeschanan

Posted on July 26, 2018 (5778) By Rabbi Label Lam | Series: Dvar Torah| Level: Beginner

And you shall teach them (V’shinatam) to your sons and speak of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk on the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up. (Devarim 6:7)

 

And you shall teach them (V’shinatam): – In Hebrew Chidud is an expression of sharpness…They should be sharp in your mouth…That is when somebody asks, you should not hesitate and stammer but rather you should be able to answer immediately. (Rashi)

 

It seems everyone is expected to be an expert and acquire great proficiency in learning Torah. It may already be obvious but what is the purpose of this requirement? Is it to raise the level of scholarship?! How is everyone able to fulfill this standard if people have different learning styles and varying intellectual capacities?

 

The Maharal says that the reason for this Mitzvah is that the Torah should become “his”. The student should make the Torah his very-own. He learns this from the very first chapter of Tehillim. It says, “If the Torah of HASHEM is his desire and in his Torah he meditates day and night, he will be like a tree planted by streams of water which yields fruit in its season and whose leaf does not wither… (Tehillim 1:2-3)

 

Our sages saw a shift in ownership from the first part of the verse to the second. At first it was the Torah of HASHEM that was his desire. Later it is his, the student’s Torah that he meditates in day and night. It became his possession.

 

How is this done? For sure it takes a great deal of work! There are no short cuts, but perhaps we can find here a hint at a motivation that might make this achievement more possible.

 

How many times does it happen to each and every one of us? We have all experienced it! Sometimes, many times in the same week this wondrous phenomenon will be displayed before our eyes and go unnoticed. Now we can begin to recognize what it means.

 

I was in a grocery store this past week. Like a dutiful husband, and like all the other fellows walking around with shopping carts and a handwritten list of specific items that we must come home with or else, there are always those few items that seem impossible to find. They don’t fit neatly into an aisle category like dairy or beverage, or they are just exotic. So we all pass each other wondering aimlessly and calling home multiple times in search of that clue about how it might look or what category it might fit into. Only after the pressure is built up and his patience for this process is diminished will a man park his ego and ask for help. Who do you ask for help in a large grocery store?

 

There, sitting on a milk crate, busily organizing cans on a shelf is a fellow you may not stop to have a casual conversation with in the street, but desperate times call for desperate measures. So you stand near him and clear your throat attempting politely to get his attention, “Excuse me, but where can I find salmon flavored toothpicks?” He looks up in your general direction pausing for a split second.

 

At first you wonder if he understood your question or if he speaks your language but within that nanosecond he scans the store in his mind and miracle of miracles, he says in a broken English, “Aisle 6 on the left side, 2^nd shelf, half-way down.” Then he goes back to putting cans on the shelf oblivious to and unimpressed with his own intellectual feat.

 

I always marvel. How did he do that? He must be a genius! Perhaps he stays up all night studying detailed pictures of the organization of shelves in the grocery store. Perhaps he is going to school at night in pursuit of a doctorate, a PHD in grocery shelf stocking.

 

None of this is true obviously but the question remains. How does he know where everything in the store is without having to study and memorize notes? The answer is, “It’s his job!” We can learn from here that anybody can learn anything when they make it their business and learning Torah is our family business!