Parashath ‘Éqev (Deuteronomy VII,12-XI,25) 8/20/11

A.

In this week’s parasha Moshe reminds Israel: וזכרת את כל הדרך אשר הוליכך ד' אלקיך זה ארבעים שנה במדבר למען ענתך לנסתך לדעת את אשר בלבבך התשמר מצותו אם לא: ויענך וירעבך ויאכלך את המן אשר לא ידעת ולא ידעון אבתיך למען הודיעך כי לא על הלחם לבדו יחי' האדם כי על כל מוצא פי ד' יחי' האדם: (“And you will remember the whole way which Ha-Shem your G-d has made you go now forty years in the desert, in order to torment you to test you to know what is in your heart, will you keep His mitzvoth or not. And He tormented you and made you hungry and fed you the man which you had not known, nor had your fathers known, in order to inform you that it is not upon bread [lehem] alone that a person lives, that it is upon everything which comes out of Ha-Shem’s mouth [kol motza’ pi Ha-Shem] that a person lives”; VIII, 2-3).

Our attention is drawn especially by the last verse; of course one needs food, here symbolized by the generic term lehem; what does the Torah wish to impart to us by contrasting lehem with kol motza’ pi Ha-Shem?

B.

The Maharal mi-Prag offers the following insight: There are, he says, three different categories of parnasa, “livelihood”: האחת כדי לפרנס ולהחיות נפשו כמו שנתן לאדם הלחם, כי הלחם הוא חיי האדם בודאי וכדכתיב "כי לא על הלחם לבדו יחי' האדם." (“The first is in order to support and give life to his nefesh, for which He gave human beings lehem, for lehem is certainly [necessary for] human life, as it is written: ‘For not upon lehem alone does a person live’”).

השני הוא הפרנסה שנתן לו אף כי אין צריך לו רק להנאתו ולטובתו ואין חיות האדם תלוי בו כמו השמן והיין, ואין צריך אלו דברים רק לתוספות הנאה ולא לצורך חיותו. (“The second is parnasa which He has given one, even though it is not essential to him, [but] merely for his enjoyment and benefit; human vitality is not dependent upon it, for instance, oil and wine; one does not need these things, they are only for additional enjoyment, and not essential to his life”).

והשלישי הוא שנותן לו הש"י אף שאינו נהנה ממנו רק שעל ידו יתוקן הדבר, כי כל דבר שברא הש"י צריך תיקון, כמו החטים לבשל, וכן הבשר וגו' (“And the third is what Ha-Shem gives one, even though he does not [immediately] benefit from it, just that by means of it a thing is improved, for everything which Ha-Shem created requires improvement/adjustment [tiqqun], for instance wheat for cooking, and similarly meat....”; נצח ישראל פ"ה וע"ע נתיבות עולם ח"א נתיב גמילות חסדים פ"א).

From the Maharal’s words, it seems logical to conclude that the first category, encompassing the absolute minimum essentials of life, is what our passage means by lehem, whilst the other two categories, food items which are beneficial but not utterly essential and the knowledge and capability to improve them (e.g., through cooking and baking), are presumably covered by the phrase kol motza’ pi Ha-Shem.

The idea that the intellectual knowledge and capability necessary for, e.g., cooking and baking is “what comes out of Ha-Shem’s mouth” seems to make sense, but such products as wine (especially if we understand by it simple grape juice, as indeed it is halachically) and olive oil are no less natural products than the ground grains implied by the word lehem; indeed, the knowledge and capability necessary to make even the simplest bread, matza, not to speak of making wine or olive oil, would seem to belong more to the third category than the first.

What, then, does kol motza’ pi Ha-Shem really mean?

C.

The Haqal Yitzhaq offers an insight, courtesy of the Shpitivker Rav, in his séfer Vikkuha Rabba.

The Rav begins by calling our attention to a peculiar argument recorded in the Talmud: מלכא ומלכתא הוו יתבי מלכא אמר גדיא יאי ומלכתא אמרה אימרא יאי אמרו מאן מוכח כהן גדול דקא מסיק קרבנות כל יומא אתא איהו אחוי בידי' אי גדיא יאי יסק לתמידא (“The king and queen were sitting; the king said, 'A kid [gadya] is better'; and the queen said, 'A lamb [imra] is better.' They said, 'Who can decide?' The kohén gadol, who offers sacrifices every day. [The kohén gadol] came over, and signed with his hand: If a gadya is better, let it be offered for the daily sacrifice [tamida]”; פסחים נ"ז.).

That this odd dispute involves something rather deeper than an idle discussion of whether a kid or lamb tastes better is suggested by the fact this passage also occurs elsewhere (כריתות כ"ח:) with minor changes, one of which enables us to identify the royal personages involved as Alexander Yannai, the first of the Hashmona’im to insist on calling himself a king, an avid follower of the heterodox Tzëduqim (“Sadducees”), and thus a fierce opponent of the hachamim, whom he persecuted, and his pious queen, Shëlomtziyyon Alexandra, sister of Rabbi Shim‘on ben Shatah, whom she contrived to hide from her husband the length of his reign in the very palace, as well as by the rather gruesome fate of the kohén gadol in the story (עיי"ש). The Vikkuha Rabba allows us to penetrate to the depths of the debate.

The Rav begins by noting the obvious truism that, in every time and every place, there are people who are relatively rich, and those who are poor. The king, he tells us, was arguing that the status of any of these people was purely a matter of mazzal (seeing the word gadya as a pun on the Hebrew word gad, roughly, “good fortune”). Mazzal, formed on the root nun-zayin-lamed which connotes “flow,” is a source of metaphysical energy which “flows” to a person. (The meaning of the root underlying gad, by the way, is to “draw down” such energy). One’s relative wealth or poverty, he wanted to argue, is purely a matter of the flow of beneficent energy one gets from a fixed source, whether it be a flood or a mere trickle.

Not so, argued the sagacious queen; one’s status is ever a matter of Divine decree (imra being viewed as a pun on amar, “say”). If the king’s view reflects reality, then whether one is rich or poor should be a fixed condition, immutable, based on the mazzal established for one at birth. Yet, one can see that the rich can become poor, and vice versa. Hence, one’s status is a matter of continual review in the Divine tribunal; what G-d decrees will be the case.

They decided to put the matter to the kohén gadol, who was expert in the sacrifices offered daily in the Béyth ha-Miqdash whose purpose is to ensure the well-being of Israel, both as individuals and as a nation, as well as that of the nations of the world. The kohén gadol’s answer shows that he sided with the queen. If prosperity or poverty were purely a matter of gadya/gad, then the condition is tamida, “constant, continual” (which is the literal meaning of the name of sacrifice offered twice daily in the Béyth ha-Miqdash).

After citing the Vikkuha Rabba’s explanation of this gëmara, the Haqal Yitzhaq quotes another, in apparent support: אין מזל לישראל (“Israel has no mazzal”; שבת קנ"ו. ונדרים ל"ב.), i.e. Israel’s prosperity does not involve a fixed source of metaphysical energy, unlike that of the other nations, but is wholly dependent upon Ha-Shem’s decree. However, Tosafoth ad loc. cite another, seemingly contradictory gëmara: בני חיי ומזוני לאו בזכותא תליא אלא במזלא (“Life, children, and sustenance are not dependent on merit but on mazzal”; מועד קטן כ"ח.), on which they conclude מכל מקום על ידי זכות גדול משתנה אבל פעמים שאין המזל משתנה (“Nonetheless through a great merit it may change, but sometimes the mazzal does not change”), i.e. mazzal has some measure of influence on an individual human being’s cir-cumstances. The Rebbe notes that the gimatriya, the numerical value, of the Aramaic mazzala (used in the above-cited gëmara), 78, is the same as that of lehem, וזהו "כי לא על הלחם לבדו" על המזלא "יחי' האדם כי על כל מוצא פי ד'" דהיינו אומרא במאמר הקב"ה "יחי' האדם" ודייקא על הלחם לבדו דהיינו שאינו תלוי במזל לבד אבל המזל מסייעו שיבוא בנקל לקבל ישועת השי"ת במהרה (“and this is ‘that not upon lehem alone’ -- on mazzal -- ‘does a person live, that on kol motza’ pi Ha-Shem’ – i.e., the utterance, by the pronouncement of the Holy One, Blessed is He – ‘does a person live’; and specifically on lehem alone, that is, that he is not dependent upon mazzal alone, but mazzal helps him, that he should come more easily to receive Ha-Shem’s salvation quickly”).

D.

So it is, in fact, just as the Maharal said, that lehem signifies the bare, animal facts of human existence as provided in nature – life, children, sustenance – but the ability to add to it, or to make anything of it, comes by Divine decree. The first is a matter of mazzal (itself a Divine decree, of course, but one made at a distance, by G-d the First Cause and Prime Mover, as opposed to G-d viewed as Israel’s Heavenly Father).

But it is interesting that the Haqal Yitzhaq writes of “dependence” only in connection with this state of nature, this mazzal, the implication being that living ‘al kol motza’ pi Ha-Shem is somehow independence. To see why, I believe, it is necessary to look at the preceding verses in our passage, for life is a test, one whose purpose is to prove, not to Ha-Shem the Omniscient, but to ourselves התשמר את מצותו אם לא, “will we keep His mitzvoth or not.” It is in our power to influence the Divine decree, to bring about the זכות גדול or “great merit” mentioned by Tosafoth, by deliberately choosing a life of Torah and mitzvoth.

A salient thought, as we move toward the month of Elul, whose letters, comprising the initials of אני לדודי ודודי לי, “I am my Beloved’s and my Beloved is mine”; Song of Songs VI, 3), proclaim the opportunity for tëshuva through G-d’s closeness, in preparation for the New Year and Yom Kippur.

Parshath ‘Éqev (Deuteronomy VI,12-XI,25) 7/30/10

A.

והי' עקב תשמעון את המשפטים האלה ושמרתם ועשיתם אתם ושמר ד' אלקיך לך את הברית ואת החסד אשר נשבע לאבתיך: ואהבך וברכך והרבך וברך פרי בטנך ופרי אדמתך כו' ברוך תהי' מכל העמים וגו' (“And it will be, because [‘éqev] you will hear these judgments and you will keep and do them, Ha-Shem will keep the convenant and the kindness which He swore to your fathers. And He loves you, and will bless you and will increase you, and He will bless the fruit of your belly and the fruit of your land.... Blessed will you be by all the peoples....”). Thus opens our parasha.

The number of occurrences of one or another grammatical permutation of the root בר"ך, “bless,” in the above passage is striking. The usage of the word is interesting: If Israel keep their side of the deal which was struck at Sinai, G-d will “bless” them; the nations will bless them (translating the last verse according to the Talmudic reading [עיי' ירושלמי ברכות פ"ח ה"ח]; it can also be read “more blessed than all the peoples”); and yet, whenever we recite bërachoth they begin with a standard formula ברוך אתה ד' אלקינו מלך העולם (“Blessed are You, Ha-Shem our G-d, King of the universe....”) which appears to suggest that G-d can be blessed.

What exactly is a bëracha, a “blessing?” What does the term really mean? What is Israel here being promised?

B.

In addition to conveying the sense of blessing, the root also underlies the apparently, at first glance, unrelated words berech, knee, and bërécha, a pond or pool. The letters’ gimatriya, 222, is mathematically interesting, since its three letters consist of the number two in escalating orders of magnitude, units, tens, and hundreds. The sëfarim ha-qëdoshim assert that the number “two” (i.e., the letter béyth) signifies increase, since the halachic minimum of any plural term in the Torah is two (note that the second verse in our passage supra follows u-vérachëcha, “and He will bless you” with the parallel vë-hirbecha, “and He will increase you.” Contrast this with the root of the generic term for curse, אר"ר, which begins with an alef whose numerical value, one, is indicative of stasis, of a lack of increase, as we see from that word’s first occurrence in Genesis II, 17: ארורה האדמה בעבורך בעצבון תאכלנה כל ימי חייך (“Cursed is the ground because of you, in travail will you consume it all the days of your life”). Compare this not only with our passage, but also with, e.g., Exodus XXIII, 25: ועבדתם את ד' אלקיכם וברך את לחמכם ואת מימיכם וגו' (“And you will serve Ha-Shem your G-d, and He will bless your bread and your water”), i.e., increase them.

This provides a clue, and a path to understanding the etymology of at least one of the other words. Colloquially, we tend not to use the verb bérach so much as the noun bëracha, and in general we speak of “making bërachoth.” This, in fact, is precisely what the verb itself, in the factitive pi‘él conjugation, signifies: To bring a bëracha into being.

The words bëracha and bërécha are, in fact, spelt identically, only vocalised slightly differently. As a bërécha is a pool or reservoir of water, so is a bëracha a reservoir of metaphysical energy, infused into our world by our action in affirmatively recognising that G-d runs His world and is in fact the Author of everything in it. Thus, the declaration of Baruch Atta Ha-Shem with which we begin each bëracha recited over food, over some pleasure or amazing sight, before performing a mitzva, or on hearing good news, is not our “blessing” G-d, but rather our recognition that the Source of all blessings in the world is the Creator of all.

It is this recognition which leads the Talmud to declare: חייב אדם לברך על הרעה כשם שמברך על הטובה (“A person is obligated to make a bëracha over something bad, just as he is obligated to make a bëracha over something good”; ברכות נ"ד. במשנה), that is, we must accept the judgments and challenges of life in the same spirit as the recognizably, demonstrably good things, and understand that they, too, are for our good.

In this respect, then, we can understand the second odd word, berech. The ability to infuse energy into the cosmos is granted to those who submit, who bend their knees. As we say thrice daily in the ‘Aleinu: ואנחנו כורעים ומשתחוים ומודים לפני מלך מלכי המלכים הקדוש ברוך הוא (“And we bow and prostrate ourselves and acknowledge before the Kings of kings of kings, the Holy One, Blessed is He”).

C.

But the fact is that everything in the universe came into being at the beginning, in the form of an utterance of G-d. The essential structure underlying every object and phenomenon in the universe is “encoded”, as it were, in the letters of the Holy Language which express them, and in the way in which they are configured. לעולם ד' דברך נצב בשמים (“For the world, Ha-Shem, Your word is established in the heavens”; Psalms CXIX, 89), which can also be read to mean, “Forever (i.e., as long as the universe lasts) Your word is established....” This is reflected in the physical world by he by now well-known equivalency between matter and energy (E =mc²), and by the law of conservation of energy, i.e. that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Hence, the total amount of mass-energy in the system is constant; what changes is the ratio of mass to energy.

If so, what does it mean to infuse additional metaphysical energy into this world from outside the system? The fact is, that whilst the metaphysical letters themselves are immutable once established, their configurations, or tzirufim, can be changed, and our parasha provides an excellent example of how this process works.

A bit later on, we read: ולא תביא תועבה אל ביתך והיית חרם כמהו שקץ תשקצנו ותעב תתעבנו כי חרם הוא (“And you will not bring an abomination into your house, and you will be banned [hérem] like it; reviling you will revile it and abominating you will abominate it, for it is hérem’; VII, 26).

The Ba‘al ha-Turim notes the double occurrence of the word hérem in our verse, and points out that סמיך לי' "כל המצוה" לאמר שהעובר על החרם כעובר על כל המצות (“next to it [in the verse immediately following] is ‘every mitzva’, to say that one who violates the hérem is as if he violates all the mitzvoth”), a point which he backs up by noting that the gimatriya of hérem is 248, the same as the number of évarim (loosely translated “limbs”) counted by Hazal in the human body.

The consequence, in short, of having anything to do with idolatry is a negative effect on every part of one’s body. However, he goes on, sincere tëshuva, repentance for having anything to do with it, can effect a change, and erase the sin. The change is effected by changing the configuration of the letters, so that חרם, hérem, becomes רחם, rahém, “mercy,” a point which he buttresses by reference to the prophet, ברוגז רחם תזכר, “in anger, You remember mercy” (Habakkuk III, 2). Spelt the same, though vocalised differently, is rehem, a womb, the portal through which the sacred animating soul enters this world. The energy which we can bring into the world, allows us to affect the fundamental configurations underpinning our world.

D.

And this brings us to the relevance of our parasha to Israel in every time and place.

Later on still, the Holy Land is called an ארץ אשר ד' אלקיך דרש אתה תמיד עיני ד' אלקיך בה מרשית השנה ועד אחרית השנה (“Land which Ha-Shem your G-d seeks out; always are the eyes of Ha-Shem your G-d upon it, from the year’s beginning until year’s end”; XI, 12).

The word mé-réshith, roughly, “from [the] beginning,” in our verse is spelt anomalously, lacking an alef between the réysh and the shin. Hazal take note of the anomaly, and explain it to mean: כל שנה שרשה בתחלתה מתעשרת בסופה (“Any year which is poor [rasha] at its beginning becomes rich at its end”; ראש השנה ט"ז:). Rashi explains this concept of a year being “poor” at its beginning, שישראל עושין עצמן רשין בר"ה לדבר תחנונים ותפלה כענין שנאמר "תחנונים ידבר רש" (“that Israel make themselves poor [rashin] on Rosh ha-Shana for the sake of supplications and prayer, as the matter is said, ‘a poor man [rash] speaks supplications’ [Proverbs XVIII, 23]”).

I have heard in the name of Rabbi Hayyim Friedländer זצ"ל, late mashgiah of Yëshivath Ponevesh, an elaboration of this idea. He explains it as meaning that one must come honestly to, and internalize, the realisation that in fact one’s entire fate over the next year, one’s safety, health, family and financial situations, one’s life itself, is entirely determined Rosh ha-Shana. One must truly understand that, as of the first of the year, he has nothing to his name, and must earn it all from scratch, as it were, through his bërachoth, tëfilloth, vë-thahanunim.
This brings us to a consideration of the primal root, רו"ך, from which בר"ך is derived by prefixation.

The meaning of this primal root can be discerned from, e.g., II Kings XXIII, 19-20, in which the young King Yoshiyahu is told by G-d through a prophet: יען רך לבבך ותכנע מפני ד' בשמעך אשר דברתי על המקום הזה ועל ישביו להיות לשמה ולקללה ותקרע את בגדיך ויבכה לפני וגם אנכי שמעתי נאם ד': לכן הנני אספך על אבתיך וגו' (“Since your heart is contrite [rach] and you have submitted before Ha-Shem when you heard what I said about this place and its inhabitants [that they would] be for desolation and a curse, and you tore your garments and wept before Me, I, too, have heard. Therefore, behold I shall increase you over your fathers....”).

The heart of the ability to make efficacious bërachoth, it seems, is contrition and submission, רו"ך, to which the letter béyth, signifying “increase” is prefixed. If we can follow Rabbi Friedländer’s advice, and recognize and accept that we have nothing and are wholly dependent on the Master of the Universe, our bërachoth should be efficacious, and all good things increased, this coming Rosh ha-Shana.

Parshath ‘Eqev (Deuteronomy VII,12-XI,25) 8/7/09

A.

Continuing his farewell address to Israel, Moshe declares: וזכרת את כל הדרך אשר הוליכך ד' אלוקיך וכו' ויענך וירעבך ויאכלך את המן אשר לא ידעת ולא ידעון אבותיך למען הוגיעך כי לו על הלחם לבדו יחי' האשדם כי על כל מוצא פי ד' יחי' האשם: (“And you shall remember the whole way along which Ha-Shem your G-d has brought you.... And he tormented you and starved you and fed you the man which you did not know and which your fathers did not know, in order to make known to you that it is not on bread alone that a person lives, for on everything which comes out of Ha-Shem’s mouth does a person live”; VIII,2-3).

The clear meaning of the above passage seems to be an historical reference; during their sojourn in the desert, Israel were tormented by hunger pangs, until G-d fed them the miraculous man which fell from the sky each day, and served their nutritional needs. If we turn to the midrash, however, we find v. 3 above cited followed by the comment: מכאל שמדליקין נרות בשבת (“From here [we learn] that one lights candles on shabbath”; מובא ע"י הרב חיד"א בשם המדרש כדאיתא בספר אור האורות, אור ההלכה סי' ג').

What in the world has the man to do with hadlaqath néroth bë-shabbath?

B.

We begin our journey by turning to the Talmud.

In the course of a discussion of the meaning of ‘innuy nefesh, “self-affliction” on Yom Kippur, the Talmud cites our verse, and goes on to comment אינו דומה מי שרואה ואוכל למי שאימו רואה ואוכל. אמר רב יוסף מכאן רמז לסומין שאוכלין ואין סבעין. אמר אביי הלכך מאן דאית לי' סעודתא לא ליכלה אלא ביממא (“One who sees and eats is not comparable to one who does not see and eats. Said Rav Yosef, 'From here [we find] an allusion to the blind, that they eat and are not satisfied.' Said Abbayei, 'Therefore one who has a meal should only eat it by day'”; יומא ע"ד: ע"ע ילקוט שמעוני רמז תת"נ ).

The miraculous man was eerie and unnatural in a number of ways. Not only did it descend daily from the Heavens (save on shabbath and yom tov, when a double portion fell the day before), but the man resembled in flavor whatever food the recipient desired, though visually it never changed, and was always the same undifferentiated stuff. Once consumed, it was completely absorbed into the body; there were no waste products to be excreted. No wonder that the longer they subsisted on this stuff, the more unsettled and uneasy the bënei Yisra’él grew (cf., e.g., Numbers XXI, 5, Rashi ad loc.).

And so Rashi explains that Rav Yoséf’s statement was based on אכילת המן, טועם טעם כל המינים ואינו רואה אלא מן (“eating the man; one tasted the flavors of all types [of food], but did not see anything but man”). Rav Yoséf made the ready connection to the experience of a blind man, since he himself was blind.

The unnerving spectacle of the ever shifting kaleidoscope of flavors associated with the same generalized substance apparently rendered it unsatisfying to the appetite, even though it took care of every nutritional need. This also serves to explain some of the otherwise inexplicable complaints about food which the Torah records that the bënei Yisra’él voiced in the desert (cf., e.g., Numbers XI, 1-8). Eventually, it came to be called lechem ha-qëloqél; note the emphatic reduplication of the word qal, “light, insubstantial” – “very light bread” (Numbers XXI, 5).

It is with this in mind that the Chida reads our passage. The initial verb in the verse, va-yë‘annë-cha, is active – “and He afflicted you”; it was G-d Himself Who had done the tormenting by means of the weird man, which they ate only because va-yar‘ivecha, “He starved you.”

Why? To drive home the lesson that there is only one, true, sustaining power in the cosmos, and that it does not matter whether one eats bread or meat or fruit or fish, ultimately it is all man, and all provided miraculously; על פי כל מוצא ד' יחי' האדם, according to what comes from the mouth of G-d does a person live.

The Maharsha comments on our Talmudic passage ואפי' בלילה לאור הנר (“and [one may eat] even at night by the light of a candle”), i.e. the shabbath and yom tov lights alleviate the discomfort and unease caused by being unable to discern what one is eating. Thus, the Maharsha serves to support the Chida’s conclusion concerning the midrash cited supra. There are three reasons for the custom of lighting candles on shabbath and yom tov: כבוד שבת ויו"ט, the honor of the sabbath and holidays; שלום בית, peace and harmony in the household; and עונג שבת ושמחת יו"ט, “the delight of the shabbath and joy of the holiday.” To eat a disquieting meal in pitch darkness would hardly contribute to either of the latter category, and might also affect the second category; hence, it is because of the sort of unease first experienced with the man that we light candles, as the midrash says.

D.

As we now find ourselves in the second of the weeks of consolation which follow on the wrenching emotions of the Three Weeks from 17 Tammuz, when the walls of the Holy City were breached, to 9 Av, when the siege was over and the Temple set afire, it seems fitting to mention another Talmudic context in which our passage occurs: תניא ר' אליעזר אומר כתיב הכא "ויענך וירעיבך ויאכילך" וכתיב התם "שמחנו כימות עניתנו שנות ראינו רעה", מכאן לימות המשיח שהם ארבעים שנה (“It is taught, R’ Eli‘ezer says, It is written here, ‘And He tormented you and starved you and fed you’, and it is written there, ‘We shall rejoice completely according to the says You tormented us, the years we saw evil’ [Psalms XC, 16]; whence [we learn] concerning the days of Mashiach that they are forty years”; סנהדרין צ"ט.).

The Torah Tëmima explains Rabbi Eli‘ezer’s reference in light of what Chazal tell us about the Anointed King, as summarized by Rambam, that we shall recognize him in a lineal, paternal descendant of King David who will restore the royal dynasty in Jerusalem, build the Bayith Shëlishi, gather in the dispersed of Israel from all parts of the earth, re-establish the Sanhedrin and the rule of halacha in all spheres of our national life, and reinaugurate the sacrificial service.

This, says Rabbi Eli‘ezer, will be accomplished during a period spanning forty years, commensurate with the שנות ראינו רעה, the years of privation and hardship in the desert, and thereafter we shall see the final gë’ula, the final redemption of which the prophets of Israel speak.

Our haftara this week assures us that all the travail of this long and bitter exile will prove to have been worth it, that however small the remnant of faithful Israel at its end, we shall yet all see that redemption. It concludes: שמעו אלי רדפי צדק מבקשי ד' הביטו אל צור חצבתם ואל מכבת בור נקרתם: הביטו אל אברהם אביכם ואל שרה תחוללכם כי אחד קראתיו ואסרכהו וארבהו: כי נחם ד' ציון נחם כל חרבותי' וישם מדברה כעדן וערבתה כגן ד' ששון ושמחה ימצא בה תודה וקול זמרה: (“Listen to Me, pursuers of justice and seekers of Ha-Shem, look to the rock whence you were carved, the quarry whence you were cut. Look to Avraham your father and to Sara who bore you, for [he was] one [when] I called him, and I blessed him and made him many. For Ha-Shem will comfort Tziyyon completely, He will comfort all her ruins and make her desert like ‘Eden and her wasteland like the garden of Ha-Shem; rejoicing and joy will be found in it, thanksgiving and the sound of music”; Isaiah LI, 1-3).

Parshath ‘Eqev (Deuteronomy VII,12-XI,25)

A.

Moshe recounts some of the miraculous events which accompanied Israel’s forty-year sojourn in the desert, amongst them: ואשר עשה לדתן ולאבירם בני אליאב בן ראובן אשר פצתה הארץ את פי' ותבלעם ואת בתיהם ואת אהליהם ואת כל היקום אשר ברגליהם בקרב כל ישראל (“And what [G-d] did to Dathan and Aviram, sons of Eli’av son of Re’uven, when the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them, and their households, and their tents, and all the substance which was at their feet amidst all Israel;” XI, 6). The reference, of course, is to the decisive end which G-d put to their part in Qorach’s revolt (cf. Numbers XVI, 28-35).

Rashi comments on the above: כל מקום שהי' אחד מהם בורח הארץ נבקעת מתחתיו ובולעתו, אלו דברי רבי יהודה. א"ל רבי נחמי' והלא כבר נאמר "ותפצח הארץ את פי'" ולא "פיותי'". א"ל ומה אני מקיים "בקרב כל ישראל"? א"ל שנעשית הארץ מדרון כמשפך וכל מקום שהי' אחד מהם, הי' מגלגל ובא עד מקום הבקיעה (“Every place that one of them would flee, the earth would split beneath him and swallow him; these are Rabbi Yehuda’s words. Rabbi Nechemya told him, And does it not already say, ‘And the earth opened its mouth’ [Numbers XVI, 32], and not ‘its mouths?’ [Rabbi Yehuda] told him, And what am I to do with ‘Amidst all Israel?’ [Rabbi Nechemya] told him that the earth was made to slope like a funnel, and every place one of them was, he would roll to the site of the rupture [in the earth]”).

Rashi does not reveal his source for the above exchange (and I have been unable to find it in the Talmud or any of the standard collections of midrashim), but the issue underlying the dispute seems clear enough: Rabbi Yehuda appears willing to accept that piha ("its mouth") can be used in a generic, collective sense to refer to “mouths” in general, and therefore imply more than one, whilst Rabbi Nechemya wishes to read the verse literally, as referring only to one, specific mouth; had the Torah meant more than one mouth, the verse would have read piyotheha (“its mouths”).

B.

Fair enough, but if we look in the midrash, we encounter Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Nechemya again. The occasion is Ya‘aqov’s instructions to his emissaries, to tell his brother ‘Esav: ויהי לי שור וחמור צאן ועבד ושפחה וגו' (“And I have had ox and donkey, ovicaprid and manservant and maidservant...’ Genesis XXXII, 6).ר"י אומר משור אחד יצאו שוורים הרבה ומחמור אחד יצאו חמורים הרבה. ר"נ אמר לשנהון דברייתא היא, חמורתא, גמלתא (“Rabbi Yehuda says, 'From one ox came forth many oxen; and from one donkey came forth many donkeys.' Rabbi Nechemya says, 'It is the [common] usage of people [to say] donkey, camel'”).

Rashi appears to agree with Rabbi Nechemya in his comment on this verse: דרך ארץ לומר על שוורים הרבה שור. אדם אומר לחבירו, בלילה קרא התרנגול ואינו אומר קראו התרנגולות (“[It is] the way of the world to say about many oxen, ox. A person says to his comrade, 'the cock crows at night,' and does not say, 'the cocks crow'”; ע"ע אבן עזרא ובעל הטורים שם בבראשית ).

A little consideration reveals that the positions of Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Nechemya in our midrash appear diametrically opposed to those cited by Rashi on our verse supra: There, it is Rabbi Yehuda who wishes to understand the singular noun piha in a generic or collective sense, and Rabbi Nechemya who is the literalist, insisting that a singular noun be singular in meaning; here, Rabbi Yehuda wishes to understand shor as referring to a specific, singular ox, and Rabbi Nechemya recognises the generic or collective use of the singular.

Can their positions be reconciled so that Rabbi Yehuda becomes consistent with Rabbi Yehuda, and Rabbi Nechemya with Rabbi Nechemya?

C.

Rabbi David Pardo, in his supercommentary on Rashi, Maskil l’David, takes note of the fact that Rashi has appended his comment to the final clause of our verse above. In the Hebrew language, the accusative case is indicated by placing the preposition eth (את) before the direct object of a transitive verb. In our verse, this preposition occurs four times, the last one at the head of the last clause, where it is pointed slightly differently than the rest, and hence read éth. Vowelled in this way, it can also be understood to mean “with.” It is a principle of Torah exegesis that such forms may be interpreted l’rabboth, i.e., in an expansive or inclusive manner.

This is how Rabbi Pardo believes that Rabbi Yehuda reads it in our verse: v’éth kol ha-yequm, together with the phrase b’qerev kol Yisra’él, suggests to him that wherever Dathan or Aviram attempted to flee within the camp of Israel, subsidiary “mouths” would open to receive them. ור"נ אולי לא דריש אתין לרבות; Rabbi Nechemya, he suggests, did not apply this principle, and so saw no reason to interpret the term “mouth” as meaning anything other than the singular.

This seems reasonable, but it does not take into account the example of our midrash, for the fact is that the word eth is totally lacking from the verse in Genesis, and yet Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Nechemya still differ concerning the collective usage, or not, of the nouns in the verse.

So, our questions remains.

It seems to me that the key to understanding the stances of Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Nechemya concerning this point of usage lies elsewhere. In our midrash, Rabbi Nechemya refers to the use of the singular in a collective sense as לשנהון דברייתא, i.e. a colloquial expression, a references echoed in Rashi’s use of the phrase דרך ארץ, “the way of the world.” But note that the text under consideration is a literal quotation of Ya‘aqov’s words to his messengers, whereas in our parasha (as, indeed, throughout the book of Deuteronomy), Moshe is speaking in prophetic mode, delivering himself of the “burden” (massa’) of prophecy. as numerous prophets refer to it (cf., e.g., Nachum I, 1; Habakkuk I, 1; Zechariah IX, 1 and XII, 1; Mal’achi I, 1). He was, that is, not using his own words, not speaking as one human being to another, but rather acting as the conduit for G-d’s words.

This suggests that the real grammatical rule is as Rabbi Nechemya suggests in Rashi’s passage, that as a rule the singular is singular in meaning and the plural, plural when G-d speaks; it is only when people are speaking, lishn’hon di-vriyatha, as Rabbi Nechemya says, that the sort of imprecision implicit in Ya‘aqov’s instructions to his messengers can be accepted or countenanced. Hence, in our passage, the term piha must be understood as a singular; in the passage from Genesis, shor va-chamor, etc., can be understood collectively. That Rabbi Nechemya’s opinion is decisive, at least concerning the pshat, is suggested by his being the second tanna quoted concerning the pshat, both by Rashi and in our midrash.

D.

We see in this another indication of the great precision and accuracy of the Torah’s massora, that we can safely recognise that when the Torah quotes a Biblical figure. it is not “putting words in his mouth,” but quoting his words precisely, in all their grammatical imprecision, as he or she spoke them.

Parshath Êqev (Deuteronomy VII,12-XI,25) 8/3/07

A.

פסילי אלהיהם תשרפו באש לא תחמד כסף וזהב עליהם ולקחת לך פן תוקש בו כי תועבת ד' אלקיך הוא (“The idols of their gods you shall burn with fire; you shall not covet and take for yourself what silver and gold is upon them, lest you be ensnared by it, for it is an abomination of Ha-Shem your G-d;” VII, 25).

The Talmud goes on to detail what is permitted and what forbidden: הנכרים העובדים את ההרים ואת הגבעות, הן מותרין ומה שעליהן אסורין כו' ר' יוסי הגלילי אומר אלהיהם על ההרים ולא ההרים אלהיהם, אלהיהם על הגבעות ולא הגבעות אלהיהם. ומפני מה אשירה אסורה? מפני שיש בה תפיסת ידי אדם וכל שיש בה תפיסת ידי אדם אסור (“The foreigners who worship the mountains and the hills, [the mountains and hills] are permitted and what is upon them is forbidden.... Rabbi Yossi ha-Galili says, Their gods are on the mountains, the mountains are not their gods; their gods are on the hills, the hills are not their gods. And why is an asheira forbidden? Because it has tfisath yad [i.e., it has been handled by human beings], and whatever has tfisath yad is forbidden;” עבודה זרה מ"ה., ע"ע רמב"ם הל' עבודה זרה פ"ח ה"א-ג ושו"ע יו"ד סי' קמ"ה סע' א').

An asheira, it will be remembered, is a tree dedicated to idolatrous purposes in the Canaanite cult. Trees can be handled by human beings; the seeds must be planted, the young trees tended, and so on. As a rule, this is not the case with mountains or hills, and so they cannot have been created for such purposes, and hence ought not be prohibited.

But is that really so?

Elsewhere, the Talmud discusses the war between Israel and Og, king of the Bashan. Og, it will be remembered, was a prodigious giant; during the struggle, the Talmud tells us, אמר מחנה ישראל כמה הוי, תלתא פרסי? איזיל ואיעקר טורא בר תלתא פרסי ואשדי עלייהו ואקטלינהו. אזל עקר טורא בר תלתא פרסי ואייתי על רישי' וגו' (“Og said, The camp of Israel is how large? Three [square] parsei; I shall go and uproot a mountain of three [square] parsei and throw it upon them and kill them. He went and uprooted a mountain of three [square] parsei and raised it over his head....” ברכות נ"ד:).

A parsa is a unit of linear measure equivalent to about 3.8 km (we said that Og was a formidable giant). The Talmud’s insistence that Og in fact lifted this uprooted mountain over his head demonstrates that his intent was neither idle boast nor wishful thinking; at the same time, it also demonstrates that for him, at least, the mountains of the Bashan had tfisath yad, and were capable of human manipulation. If so, and if the principle is indeed enshrined in halacha that whatever has tfisath yad can be rendered forbidden by being used for idolatrous purposes, why, indeed, were the mountains not forbidden?

B.

If we go a bit further in our Talmudic research, we discover that the Canaanites ought not have had the ability to render anything in the Holy Land unusable through their base rites, מכדי ירושה היא להם מאבותיהם, ואין אדם אוסר דבר שאינו שלו (“since it is an inheritance to [Israel] from their forefathers, and no one can render forbidden an article which is not his;” עבודה זרה נ"ג:). As Rashi clarifies the matter: הארץ וכל המחובר לה ירושה לישראל היא מאבותיהם שהרי לאברהם נאמר "כי לך אתננה" וגויים שבאו אחרי כן לא יכלו לאסרן בהשתחואה (“the land and everything connected to it is an inheritance to Israel from their forefathers, for it was said to Avraham, ‘to you I shall give it’, and the nations who came afterward were unable to prohibit [even the trees in it] by bowing to them”).

If this is the case, it would appear that the Canaanites’ handling of asheiroth and dedicating them to cultic purposes should not have denied their use to Israel, since the asheiroth, or anything else growing out of the sacred soil, were never really their property.

So what went wrong? אלא מדפלחו ישראל לעגל גלו אדעתייהו דניחא להו בעבודת כוכבים וכי אתו עובדי כוכבים שליחותא דידהו עבדו (“But since Israel had worshipped the [golden] calf, they revealed that in their opinion they were comfortable with idolatry, and so when the [non-Jewish] idolators arrived, they were acting on [Israel’s] behalf”), the gmara concludes. In other words (continues Rashi), הלכך הויא עבודת כוכבים של ישראל ואינה בטילה עולמית (“Therefore, the idols were Israel’s, and could never be nullified”) save by destruction, as the Torah commands.

So it would seem that our question returns: If the asheiroth belong to Israel because of the tell-tale revelation at the incident of the calf, and because tfisath yad applies to them, why are the mountains of the Bashan not prohibited, since Og had tfisath yad in them, and they were likewise used for idolatrous purposes?

C.

We turn to yet another Talmudic source, where we learn: מתים שהחי' יחזקאל עלו לארץ ישראל ונשאו נשים והולידו בנים ובנות כו' ומאן נינהו מתים שהחי' יחזקאל? אמר רב אלו בני אפרים שמנו לקץ וטעו כו' והרגום אנשי גת (“The dead men whom Yechezqel revived [cf. Ezekiel XXXVII, 1-12] came to Eretz Yisra’él and married women and sired sons and daughters... And who were the dead men whom Yechezqel revived? Said Rav, 'They were bnei Efrayim who calculated the end [of the Egyptian exile] and erred... and were killed by the men of Gath;” סנהדרין צ"ב:, רש"י שם).

The bnei Efrayim, smarting and impatient under the Egyptian yoke, endeavoured to figure out how much longer their suffering would last. Based upon the calculation, some of them made a break for it, and succeeded in escaping from Egypt. But they were tragically, grievously wrong in their estimate, and were slaughtered by the warlike Plishtim of Gath. Indeed, their bones still littered the eastern approach of the coastal route to the Holy Land at the time the Exodus actually took place (cf. Exodus XIII, 17, Emeth l’Ya’âqov, ad loc.).

A little thought reveals the tremendous implications of this historical fact. A significant group of bnei Yisra’él who had died before the Exodus, and therefore were not in any way implicated in the incident of the calf, were subsequently resuscitated by Yechezqel ha-navi, and rejoined Israel. These men, at least, had not lost their original status as staunch monotheists and opponents of idolatry in all its forms.

Concerning the Bashan, the Torah tells us: וכל הבשן ממלכת עוג נתתי לחצי שבט המנשה (“And all of the Bashan, the kingdom of Og, I gave to the half-tribe of M’nashe;” Deuteronomy III, 13). If we then turn to Joshua XVI, 1-4, we read: ויצא הגורל לבני יוסף כו' וינחלו בני יוסף מנשה ואפרים וגו' (“And the lot of the sons of Yosef came out... And the sons of Yosef, M’nashe and Efrayim, inherited.....”).

Even though M’nashe and Efrayim were classed as tribes in their own right, they retained an organic link as sons of Yosef, and their territorial holdings in the Holy Land were assigned jointly, to both together.

In other words, a significant number of bnei Yoséf had had nothing at all to do with the calf, and so their title to the land was unsullied by it. It is for that reason, it seems to me, that the mountains of the Bashan were not forbidden them, despite the tfisath yad exhibited by Og.

D.

A little more thought reveals that our story appears to take place within a rather large time-frame. The bnei Efrayim attempted their abortive get-away at some point before the Exodus. From the Exodus (and the golden calf) to the invasion of Eretz Yisra’él was a span of 40 years. The period of the Judges (including the conquest of the land) lasted some four centuries. The combined reigns of Kings Sha’ul and David total some 43 years, after which Shlomo ascended the throne and built the First Temple, which stood for 410 years. It is not clear precisely when Yechezqel revived the dry bones, but he himself tells us that his prophetic career began in the thirtieth year of the Babylonian Exile.

Add it up, and it approaches a millennium from the golden calf to the likely time the bnei Efrayim rejoined Israel; yet, for all that time, the mountains of the Bashan were permitted to their inhabitants on account of the bnei Efrayim. This comes to tell us something of the true nature of our environment.

The ôlam, our universe, is a closed, self-contained continuum dimensioned along four axes: Height, Length, Width, and Time, a box of contoured space-time, if you will. Its self-containedness means that we are constrained to physical perceptions along those four axes. But our universal “box” is itself contained, located within a metaphysical realm of non-space/non-time. Chazal explain one of the most puzzling appellations of the Divine, ha-Maqom (literally, “the Place”): שהוא מקומו של עולם ואין עולמו מקומו (“For He is the place of the ôlam, and His ôlam is not His place;” ב"ר פס"ח סי' ט'). G-d is not subject to the physical and temporal constraints to which we are subject. He created them for us to hide reality from us (the root meaning of ôlam is “hide”) so that we can exercise our free choice.

The Torah itself tells us this at the beginning: B’réshith bara Eloqim begins the Torah, a phrase which Rashi finds untranslatable, שאין לך ראשית במקרא שאינו דבוק לתיבה שלאחריו (“for the term réshith does not occur in Scripture unless it is bound to the term after it”), which usually requires the grammatical realtionship in Hebrew called smichuth, in which two nouns are in apposition; yet, réshith is followed by the verb bara.

The Ramban explains that the phrase can only mean that הקב"ה ברא כל הנבראים מאפיסה מוחלטת, ואין לנו בלשון הקדש בהוצאת היש מאין אלא ל' ברא (“the Holy One, Blessed is He, created all created things from absolute nihility. We have no way in the Holy Language to express bringing forth something from nothing save the term bara”). Réshith, then, is a word which has no referent whatever before it; to have meaning, it must be דבוק לתיבה שלאחריו, bound to what follows, in this case, the physical ôlam.

Even though we are within the ôlam, bound to physical means of perception, we are in fact not of it; our essences, our neshamoth, belong to Meqomo shel ôlam, and our actions here are never simply what they seem. Idolatry, worship of the “forces of nature,” does not seem at all unreasonable within the parameters of the temporal ôlam; viewed from the perspective of the atemporal Meqomo shel ôlam, it is seen as the outrage it is. Nevu’a, “prophecy,” is the Divinely granted faculty to perceive metaphysical reality. The atemporality demonstrated by the fact that the mountains of Bashan remained unsullied by idolatry. Despite Og’s tfisath yad, in the merit the bnei Efrayim who had left the world so much earlier and re-entered it so much later, is primâ facie an indication of the fundamental, ultimate unreality of the ôlam and the true nature of our total environment.