A. As Moshe begins his farewell address to Israel, which takes up most
of this last book of the written Torah, he first sets the stage with a brief
recounting of the route Israel had taken to reach the site of the address, as בעבר הירדן
בארץ מואב הואיל משה באר את התורה הזאת (“on
the bank of the Jordan in the land of Mo’av, Moshe began [ho’il]
explaining this Torah”; I,5).
The Ba‘al ha-Turim comments on our verse: הואיל ג' במסורה הכא ואידך "כי הואיל ד' לעשות אתכם לו
לעם" ואידך "הואיל הלך אחרי צו" היינו דאמרינן בין כך ובין כך
קרוים בניו של מקום בין עושין רצונו של מקום שמקיימין אץ התורה דהיינו "הואיל
משה" ובין עובדי עכו"ם דהיינו "הואיל הלך אחרי צו",
"הואיל ד' לעשות אתכם לו לעם" (“Ho’il occurs three times in the Biblical corpus, here
and ‘for Ha-Shem began [ho’il] to make you into His people’ [I Samuel
XII,21], and ‘he began [ho’il] going after an imperative’ [Hoshéa‘
V,11], as we say [in the Talmud], one way or the other [Israel] are called
G-d’s sons, whether they are doing G-d’s will in that they are upholding the
Torah, i.e., Ho’il Moshe, or they are serving idols, i.e. ho’il going
after an imperative’ [nonetheless] ‘ho’il Ha-Shem to make you into His
people’”).
What does the Talmud, and the Ba‘al ha-Turim, mean
by this?
B. If we examine the quotation from Hoshéa‘, it
becomes clear that it is the last clause of the verse, which reads in full: עשוק אפרים רצוץ משפט כי הואיל הלך אחרי צו (“Oppressed is Efrayim, broken by judgment, for he began going
after an imperative”). Rashi, comment-ing on a different Talmudic
passage in which this verse is quoted, explains that this dire prophecy
concerning the northern kingdom of Israel was מפני שנתרצה
ללכת אחרי צווי נביאי הבעל
(“because [the kingdom] began to follow the imperative of the idolatrous
prophets”; סנהדרין נ"ו: דה"מ כי הואיל הלך אחרי
צו ).
The gëmara which the Ba‘al ha-Turim quotes
is part of a much longer passage delineat-ing a famous discussion between Rabbi
Yëhuda and Rabbi Mé’ir concerning the meaning of Deuteronomy XIV,1: בנים אתם לד' אלקיכם
(“You are sons of Ha-Shem your G-d”). Rabbi Yëhuda asserts: בזמן שאתם נוהגים מנהג בנים אתם קרוים בנים אין אתם נוהגים מנהג בנים אין
אתם קרוים בנים (“At
a time when you are following the conduct of sons, you are called sons; [if]
you are not following the conduct of sons, you are not called sons”). Rabbi
Mé’ir counters with the statement quoted by the Ba‘al ha-Turim, which he
bolsters with four scriptural quotations: בנים סכלים המה (“[Israel] are foolish sons”; Jeremiah
IV,22); בנים לא אמון בם (“sons in whom there is no faith”; ibid., XXXII,20); זרע מרעים בנים משחיתים (“seed of evil-doers, destructive sons”; Isaiah I,4); and והיי' במקום יאמר להם לא עמי אתם יאמר להם בני א-ל חי (“And it will be, instead of being said to
them, You are not My people, it will be said to them, Sons of the living G-d”;
Hoshéa‘ II,1).
The gëmara goes on to ask why Rabbi Mé’ir
felt the need of so much scriptural reën-forcement, and answers כי תימא סכלי הוא דמקרי
בני כי לית בהו הימנותייהו לא מקרו בני אומר בנים לא אמון בם וכי תימא כי לית בהו
הימנותייהו הוא דמקרו בני כי פלחי לעבודת כוכבים ת"ש ואומר זרע מרעים בנים
משחיתים בנים משחיתים הוא דמקרו בני מעליא לא מקרו ת"ש ואומר "והי'
במקום אשר יאמר להם לא עמי אתם יאמר להם בני א-ל חי" (“Should you say that a
fool is called a son, but one who lacks faith is not called a son, it says,
‘sons in whom there is no faith’; and if you say, Those in whom there is no
faith are called sons, concerning idolators, come and hear, ‘Seed of
evil-doers, destructive sons’ [Rashi explains the term mashhithim
(“destroying, destructive”): דהיינו עבודה זרה כדכתיב
"פן תשחיתון ועשיתם פסל" וגו' [“I.e., idolatry, as it is written ‘Lest
you cause destruction [tashhithun] and make a statue (Deuteronomy
IV, 16)’”] and yet it says, ‘Instead of being said to them, You are not My
people, it will be said to them, Sons of the living G-d”; קדושין ל"ו.).
Even so, the passage concludes, nothing is said
about Israel’s being בני מעליא, “exalted sons”, under those various debased conditions; yet
still, they are not disowned. As Hazal declare elsewhere: ישראל אע"פ שחטא ישראל הוא, “A member of Israel, even though he sins, is a member of Israel”
(סנהדרין מ"ד.). In the end, Israel will still be “sons of the living G-d.”
C. But why should it be so? In a world run with a
sense of perfect justice, one would expect something rather more like the
dispensation of Rabbi Yëhuda: So long as bënei Yisra’él strive to live
up to their heritage, remain involved in Torah and mitzvoth, then of
course they are “sons of the living G-d”; but when they abandon that heritage
and chase after some alien imperative, seduced by the various destructive ideologies
(as the great Rabbi Elhanan Bunim Wasserman הי"ד so eloquently warns
us in his ‘Iqvëtha di-Mshiha, first published on the eve of the
Holocaust), abandoning G-d for false gods, or no god at all, why should they
not be similarly abandoned? Why should Israel be spared the fate of the
nations, and not share the dustbin of history with, for instance, the
Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Romans, and the rest, all of whom were at one
time contemporaries and adversaries of Israel?
Because, Hazal tell us elsewhere,
citing the initial clause in the verse from I Samuel quoted above, "כי לא יטוש ד'
את עמו בעבור שמו הגדול" בין חייבין וביו זכאין כך אי אפשר להניחם לפי שאי
אפשר לעולם בלי ישראל (“‘For
Ha-Shem will not abandon His people because of His great name’, whether guilty
or innocent, it is impossible to leave them, since the world is impossible
without Israel”; אסתר רבה פ"ז).
“The world is impossible without Israel....” As has
been noted many times in these pages, the universe was created according to and
specifically for the observance of Torah; קודשא בריך הוא
אסתכל באורייתא וברא עלמא (“The
Holy One, Blessed is He, looked into the Torah and created the world”; זוה"ק ח"ב קס"א:), and that world requires the Torah-nation to dwell within it
and use it: מלמד שהתנה הקב"ה עם מעשה בראשית
וא"ל אם ישראל מקבלים התורה אתם מתקיימין ואם לאו אני מחזיר אתכם לתהו ובהו (“Teaching that the Holy One, Blessed is
He, made a condition with Creation: If Israel accept the Torah, you continue in
existence; and if not, I return you to primordial chaos” שבת
פ"ח.), for then the
universe would have no purpose.
But what does it mean that Ha-Shem will not abandon
His people because of His great name? The Talmud elsewhere corroborates our midrash:
שיתף הקדוש ברוך הוא שמו הגדול בישראל, למלך שהי' לו
מפתח של פלמנטריא קטנה אמר המלך אם אני מניח' כמות שהיא אבידה היא אלא הריני עושה
לה שלשלת שאם אבדה השלשלת מוכחת עלי' כך אמר הקדוש ברוך הוא אם מניח אני את ישראל
כמות שהם נבלעין הן בין העכו"ם אלא הרי אני משתף שמי הגדול בהם והם חיים (“The Holy One, Blessed is He, associated
His great name with Israel, like a king who has a key to a small treasure-box;
says the king, If I leave it as it is, it will get lost; but I am making a
chain for it, so that if it goes missing, the chain will show where it is.
Thus, the Holy One, Blessed is He said, If I leave Israel as they are, they
will be swallowed up amongst the idolators; but I am associating My great name
with them, and so they live”; ירושלמי תענית פ"ב
ה"ו, עיי' קרבן העדה ופני משה שם).
What is this “great name”? It is the theophoric
element in the last syllable of Yisra’él.
G-d’s “condition” with Creation involved a 26-generation selective
breeding programme, designed to produce a nation with a stiff-necked
stubbornness in its genetic make-up, such that at least some of its members
would be capable, in every subsequent generation, of resisting the
blandishments, the “imperatives” of the nations’ prophets and ideologues, and
clinging to Torah and mitzvoth. In the twenty-second generation of that
pilot project, G-d saw that it was far
enough along that Ya‘aqov could be called Yisra’él, his descend-ants
collectively to take their place as G-d’s people on earth, as the similarly
named mal-’achim – Micha’él, Gavri’él, Rëfa’él and the like – are His
representatives from the supernal realm to this world. It was with the
assignment and award of our nation’s name – unique in the world – that the
dispensation came into being that, despite the occurrence of individual
spiritual, moral, and, yes, physical casualties over time, Yisra’él, having
accepted the Torah as the national constitution, would continue in existence,
and guaran-tee the universe’s continued existence.
D. Ho’il Moshe bé’ér eth ha-Torah ha-zoth reads
our verse. Was this indeed the begin-ning of Moshe’s exposition of the Torah?
What had he been doing during all of the years of Israel’s desert sojourn?
Rashi answers the question by telling us that he began
expounding the Torah in the seventy different root languages of mankind. But
why was that necessary? Surely in that day all Israel were conversant with the
Holy Language.
The Hiddushei ha-Rim tells us that
Moshe’s action was in preparation for all subsequent Jewish history, with its
far-ranging, world-wide exiles. Moshe’s exposition was intended to guarantee
that every language in the world would have built in the potential in its voca-bulary
with the relevant etymological and grammatical subtleties such that Torah could
be taught, expounded, and explained in it (וע"ע
קדושת לוי שם המסביר על כך כמה מלים לועזיות המופיעות כנראה בלשון התורה הקדושה כדדרשי
חז"ל).
Thus Moshe’s “beginning”, in setting the stage for
all of Israel’s future history, was the continuation of G-d’s “beginning” to
bring the Torah-nation into existence in the first place, a subsequent history
which would stem from Israel’s “beginning” to follow alien imperatives. G-d’s
commitment to Israel’s survival, expressed and memorialised by the uniquely
Divine name conferred on our nation, would be the guarantee that we would not
be lost amidst the flotsam of history, even when we have followed alien
imperatives, acting foolishly, faithlessly, and destructively as a nation, both
of ourselves and of others. At every time and in every circumstance, during the
bleakest moments of Crusade, Inqui-sition, Communisation, and Holocaust (to
name only some of the more obvious low points in that history), there yet
survived a remnant, faithful Israel, striving to be worthy of G-d’s great name,
engaged in bé’ér ha-Torah ha-zoth appropriate to their place and time, a
spark capable of re-igniting the fire as soon as the opportunity would p5resent
itself, such that it will never be said that Israel is not His people, but
rather are the sons of the living G-d.
A comforting thought, as we prepare to mourn the
loss of the béyth ha-Miqdash, whilst awaiting with patient anticipation
its restoration, שתהא במהרה בימינו.
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