The Real Story – Devarim
אֵיכָה ... (דברים א, יב)
In this shiur I would like to revisit the story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza, one of the iconic stories of the destruction of Bayit Sheini that appears in the Gemara (Gitin 55b).
We have all heard this story a thousand times before. What could one possibly add to it, right? Well, apparently there are a lot of new things to learn from this story, that we only begin to understand when our reality and circumstances change, as they have recently. When our eyes are opened to things that we never saw before, it gives different insights.
Just to briefly recap the story. I translate from the text in the Gemara.
"Because of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza, Jerusalem was destroyed. A certain man who had a friend called Kamtza and an enemy called Bar Kamtza, made a banquet [probably for a wedding]. He told his servant to go and invite Kamtza [his friend]. The servant [mistakenly mixed up the names and] went to invite Bar Kamtza [the enemy]. The ba'al habayit [who made the banquet] saw Bar Kamtza sitting there and said to him "You are my enemy, what are you doing here? Get out!"
Bar Kamtza [understanding that there was a mix-up with the invitation] said "Since I am here anyway, let me finish eating what is on my plate and I will pay you for the portion". The ba'al habayit said "No!" Bar Kamtza [not wanting to be publicly embarrassed] said "I will pay half the cost of the banquet [if you allow me to remain]". The ba'al habayit said "No!" Bar Kamtza said "I will pay the full cost of the entire banquet!" The ba'al habayit said "No!" and physically picked him up by his arm and ejected him from the banquet.
Bar Kamtza said [to himself] "Since there were distinguished rabbis at the banquet and they did not object [to this public shaming], it must mean that they approved of it. I will go and inform on them to the Roman emperor". Bar Kamtza went to the emperor and said "The Jews have rebelled against you!" The emperor said "Prove it!" Bar Kamtza said "Send them a korban and see if they offer it". The Roman emperor sent a prime quality calf and in transit, Bar Kamtza made a blemish on the calf. Some say on the lip, some say on the eyelid. This kind of blemish was not considered a blemish by the Romans for their sacrifices, but is considered a blemish by halacha.
The Chachamim considered offering it [even though there was blemish – to prevent war with the Romans]. R' Zechariya ben Avkulas [the gadol hador] said "We cannot do such a thing because people will say that it is permissible to offer blemished animals as a korban on the mizbeach". The Chachamim suggested killing Bar Kamtza [so that he would not go back and inform on them to the Romans]. R' Zechariya said "If we kill him, people will say that the punishment for someone who makes a blemish on an animal for a korban is death!" [They ended up not offering the korban and not killing Bar Kamtza, who returned and informed on them to the Romans, and this began the war that ended in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Beit HaMikdash.
R' Yochanan said "The 'humility' of R' Zechariya ben Avkulas destroyed the Mikdash, burned the Heichal and exiled us from our land!"
That is the story in the Gemara.
There are a lot of characters in this story on whom it is possible to lay the blame. The servant who got the "postal address" wrong and delivered the invitation to the wrong person. The [anonymous] ba'al habayit who made the banquet and publicly shamed Bar Kamtza. The rabbanim at the banquet who did not object to this public shaming. Bar Kamtza, who informed to the Romans. R' Zechariya ben Avkulas and his 'humility'.
There is one character, however, who we cannot blame and that is Kamtza. Kamtza appears to have no active part in the story at all - he is an "address on an envelope", which never arrived. He never went to the wedding, he never participated in all the goings on.
Despite this and incredibly, Kamtza is the primary figure blamed for the debacle, his name is at the top of the list. The Gemara doesn't say "אֲהָהוּא גַּבְרָא וּבַר קַמְצָא חֲרוּב יְרוּשָׁלַיִם", blame it on the ba'al habayit and Bar Kamtza. it doesn't say "אַשְׁמַעְיָה", blame it on the servant. It doesn't say " אָר' זְכַרְיָה בֶּן אַבְקוּלָס", blame it in the gadol hador, (R' Yochanan does, however) etc.
The Gemara squarely lays the blame on two people only "אַקַּמְצָא וּבַר קַמְצָא חֲרוּב יְרוּשָׁלַיִם". The primary culprit is Kamtza and after him Bar Kamtza – just those two!
So, how are we to understand this?
The character of Bar Kamtza is easily understood. He is an embittered man who was publicly shamed by the community and its leaders and he resolved to take revenge on them (and anyone else who got in the way). From hints in the story, we can construct a profile for Bar Kamtza.
Bar Kamtza was obviously a rich man, otherwise he could not have offered to pay for the entire banquet, a sizable amount by any standards. If it was a wedding (which it appears to be), where the costs are split 50-50 between the families of the bride and groom, an offer to pay for the entire banquet should have appealed to the ba'al habayit, who was only paying his half. The ba'al habayit could have fully covered his costs and made a net profit of an additional sum (the second half).
Bar Kamtza was obviously not a big tzaddik, quite the opposite. What kind of person goes to inform on his own people to the Roman enemies? What kind of person goes to try destroy his entire nation? Not just the specific people who wronged him? What kind of twisted mind works in that way? that it mattered not if innocent men, women and children would die as a result. A tzaddik does not behave in such a manner. The fact that he was the ba'al habayit's enemy and the ba'al habayit was well connected with the rabbanim and the rabbanim didn't object to Bar Kamtza being shamed publicly - all shows that the "good guys", the rabbinical establishment, were against him (before he informed). Most probably because he was already a rasha.
Bar Kamtza was obviously knowledgeable in halacha. He knew all the nuances of blemishes in a korban. A regular man on the street is not so knowledgeable. In his past Bar Kamtza must have studied Torah extensively to achieve such a level of knowledge, and due to some reason (prior to the banquet) he must have strayed from the path and gone in the opposite direction.
Bar Kamtza was obviously well connected with the Roman authorities. Imagine if 'Joe Shmo' knocked on the door of the White House and asked to speak with president Trump? They would chuck him out, or more likely arrest him thinking he might be an Iranian assassin. Bar Kamtza is immediately granted an audience with the emperor! The Gemara doesn't say that he was bumped up one level at a time. אָזַל לַמַּלְכוּת אָמַר לֵהּ לַקֵּיסָר, straight to Caesar himself.
That's Bar Kamtza, someone who began as a yeshiva bochur and ended up (for some reason) as an enemy of the state.
Trying to construct a profile for Kamtza, on the other hand, is not as simple. We know very little about Kamtza – he is like the mystery character in the story.
We know that Kamtza was the friend of the ba'al habayit, who was well connected with the rabbanim, including the gadol hador (some Mefarshim say R' Zechariya ben Avkulas was one of the rabbanim at the banquet and his 'humility', i.e. not preventing the public shaming of Bar Kamtza, resulted in the destruction of the Mikdash, according to R' Yochanan). So, most probably, Kamtza was also one of the 'good guys'. We know very little else about him, except that he ended up not being invited to the banquet.
Despite this, the Gemara lays the primary blame on Kamtza!
So, who was Kamtza really?
The answer to the riddle lies in his name - "Kamtza". It is not incidental that the Gemara specifies these two names Kamtza and Bar Kamtza. It is not simply "anecdotal", trying to show a similarity in their names and the source of the mix-up. If it were simply similar names that lay at the heart of the story, the Gemara could have brought other similar names, like "Kamtza" and "Kamtzan", for example. However, the Gemara chose to use two names which have a common denominator between them, the word "Kamtza" appears both in Kamtza and also in Bar Kamtza – the same word. The only thing that separates them is the extra word "Bar" in Bar Kamtza.
According to the pshat, Bar Kamtza means the son of Kamtza, i.e Kamtza was Bar Kamtza's father! This is the clue that explains why the onus is primarily laid squarely on the shoulders of Kamtza – the father, and only secondly on the son – Bar Kamtza. The issue in question here is a father-son relationship. It was a dysfunction in this relationship that led to the destruction of Bayit Sheini and galut Edom for almost 2000 years.
I would like to propose an explanation to the real story of Kamtza (the father) and Bar Kamtza (the son), using another father-son relationship as a parable – the relationship between Yitzchak Avinu and his son Eisav.
I choose this relationship as the model, because there are hints to a connection between Kamtza/Bar Kamtza and Yitzchak/Eisav. The gematria of בַּר קַמְצָא is - עֵשָׂו הַבֵּן and the gematria of קַמְצָא is - יִצְחָק הָאָב, י בְּאָב (Bayit Sheini was actually destroyed on the 10th of Av, however the fire began on the 9th and the Chachamim chose to commemorate the 'beginning of the thing' and not the end, by fasting on the 9th. However, the mourning continues into the day of the 10th, when the final destruction took place חֲרוּב יְרוּשָׁלַיִם).
Until age bar-mitzvah Yitzchak's two sons, Eisav the firstborn and the younger Yaakov, were practically indistinguishable (in character – in physical appearance there was a marked difference between them). Both attended the Beit Midrash and studied Torah from Yitzchak Avinu himself. Imagine being taught Torah by Yitzchak Avinu! They were both 'yeshiva bochurim' and part of the 'good guys'.
Only after bar-mitzvah did their individual characters begin to emerge. Eisav was more interested in what went on "out of the yeshiva" and Yaakov was more interested in being "in the yeshiva". For the purposes of this shiur, I would like to concentrate only on Eisav and his relationship with his father.
The passuk says וַיֶּאֱהַב יִצְחָק אֶת עֵשָׂו כִּי צַיִד בְּפִיו, that Yitzchak had a preference for Eisav because he brought him good dishes of food from when he went hunting. Chazal in the Midrash say that צַיִד בְּפִיו means that Eisav would deceive his father 'with his mouth' by pretending to be someone he wasn't, asking seemingly advanced questions with the purpose of getting Yitzchak to think he was a big talmid chacham and tzaddik.
Although Yitzchak was physically blind, he knew exactly who Eisav was and the proof of this is when he sent Eisav to hunt before blessing him, Yitzchak specified the precise laws of shechita to Eisav. If Eisav was such a talmid chacham and a tzaddik, that would not have been necessary! You could not pull the wool over Yitzchak's eyes, he knew exactly who his two sons were, who they became after bar-mitzvah, and who they were destined to become in the future.
The Torah tells us, episode after episode, about the evil nature of Eisav.
On the day Avraham Avinu died, Eisav "lost it". In the same day Chazal tell us that Eisav raped an engaged girl, he killed Nimrod, he renounced תְּחִיַּת הַמֵּתִים, he became an apikorus, and he rejected his birthright. How do Chazal know this? Word must have gotten around, certainly about killing Nimrod – suddenly Nimrod turns up dead in the field and Eisav suddenly has Nimrod's special clothes that he inherited from Adam Harishon?? Rivka surely knew about it, because Eisav gave these clothes to Rivka to look after for him (which she later gave to Yaakov to dress in before getting Yitzchak's blessing). Surely the incident with the engaged girl must have also been known - suddenly her wedding is called off??
The Torah tells us about Eisav's "non-Jewish", idol worshipping wives offering idolatrous sacrifices and burning incense in Yitzchak and Rivka's house.
After Yaakov "stole" Eisav's blessing, Eisav plots to kill Yaakov. Rivka knows about it so she sends Yaakov away to save him.
Etc. etc.
There is an "elephant in the room" here and it is "Where is Yitzchak in all of this?"
You could say that only Rivka knew about these things and not Yitzchak, but that is not true. We already showed above, with the shechita, that Yitzchak knew exactly who Eisav was. The passuk says explicitly about Eisav's wives וַתִּהְיֶיןָ מֹרַת רוּחַ לְיִצְחָק וּלְרִבְקָה, both Yitzchak and Rivka. It is hard to escape smelling the incense of idol worship smoking up your house. Some say it was this smoke that made Yitzchak go blind.
Not once do we hear a word of rebuke for Eisav from Yitzchak. How can it be possible that Yitzchak never rebuked his son, with all these evil deeds? Why did Rivka not tell Yitzchak to banish Eisav from their home, like Sarah told Avraham to banish Yishmael? Instead, they had to send Yaakov (the victim) away and not Eisav (the villain).
Surely Yitzchak Avinu knew about the principle of לְעוֹלָם תְּהֵא שְׂמֹאל דּוֹחָה וְיָמִין מְקָרֶבֶת (סנהדרין קז, ע"ב), i.e "pushing away/rebuking" with the left hand and "gathering in/comforting" with the right hand? This is a basic fundamental of educating children – rebuking when they need rebuking and rewarding them when they do something good. This is the task of the father! There is an explicit halacha קָטָן אוֹכֵל נְבֵלוֹת אֵין בֵּית דִּין מְצֻוִּין לְהַפְרִישׁוֹ אֲבָל אָבִיו מְצֻוֶּה (שו"ע, אורח חיים, שמג, א), based on the Gemara (Yevamot 114a). If a child under the age of bar-mitzvah does an isur de'oraita, the bet din is not responsible to deal with him, but the father is.
Where was Yitzchak? Where is the rebuke with the left for Eisav and the comforting with the right? There is no rebuke, no left – at all! Rivka knew if she approached Yitzchak to banish Eisav, like Sarah did with Yishmael, that he would have refused, so she didn't even bother!
How does one explain Yitzchak's behavior? Perhaps Yitzchak was so traumatized by his brother Yishmael being banished by Avraham, that he vowed never to repeat the mistake with his children Eisav and Yaakov. Perhaps Yitzchak was scared to lose Eisav completely, so he refrained from rebuking him at all, and only hugged him and kept him close. Even when Eisav and his wives were serving idols in his own home, he did not cast them out and allowed them to stay. Perhaps Yitzchak was trying to rescue even a tiny percent of the rasha that was Eisav and thought that by rebuking him he might lose 100% of him (Eisav's head is buried in Me'arat HaMachpeila in Yitzchak's lap). These are just presumptions, we will never really know the reason.
The fact is that Yitzchak never rebuked Eisav/Edom - not once. There is not a single passuk that reflects any rebuke.
We cannot judge Yitzchak אִם רִאשׁוֹנִים בְּנֵי מַלְאָכִים אָנוּ בְּנֵי אֲנָשִׁים, וְאִם רִאשׁוֹנִים בְּנֵי אֲנָשִׁים אָנוּ כַּחֲמוֹרִים (שבת קיב, ע"ב), but perhaps, it is a faint possibility, that Eisav turned out the way he did because of the absence of rebuke from his father. That such a father-son relationship is a prototype of a dysfunctional relationship?
Getting back to Kamtza and his son Bar Kamtza.
We know that the ba'al habayit was good friends with the father (Kamtza) and enemies with the son (Bar Kamtza) - because Bar Kamtza was a no-good rasha! How did it come about that Bar Kamtza strayed from the path? He obviously started out well, like Yaakov and Eisav learning Torah – Bar Kamtza had Torah knowledge, but something happened later and put a spanner in the works. We cannot know for sure, because the Gemara and the Mefarshim do not tell us, but we have a hint. Kamtza, the father קַמְצָא (in milui format קוף מם צדי אלף) is the same gematria of יָמִין שְׂמֹאל. It is very possible that Kamtza did not apply the basic fundamental in educating his son Bar Kamtza – rebuke with the left and gather in with the right. Perhaps Kamtza never rebuked his son sufficiently and this spoiled him for life.
Was Kamtza at the wedding banquet? At face value it seems that he wasn't - because he didn't get the invitation, however that is not plausible. If the ba'al habayit and Kamtza were such good friends and Kamtza knew that one of the ba'al habayit's children was getting married and he saw that he hadn't been invited, he would have said something to the ba'al habayit and they would have both assumed that the invitation got waylaid somehow. The chances are very high that Kamtza was also at the banquet and when his son was shamed, even his own father did not speak out. It is even possible that Kamtza was one of the rabbanim, perhaps even R' Zechariya ben Avkulas himself!
When Bar Kamtza, the 'no-goodnik', received the invitation from the ba'al habayit, what was he thinking? Receiving an invitation to the wedding of a child of your greatest enemy? The servant of the enemy appears on our doorstep and invites you to the wedding! What would you think in such circumstances? There is only one possibility – perhaps the enemy, the ba'al habayit wants to make Shalom with you!
If you are such a rasha and the guy is your enemy, why not tell the messenger to get lost and refuse to go to the banquet? Here we get a flash of light, an insight to Bar Kamtza's innermost feelings. Despite straying from the path and becoming a rasha as a result of the dysfunctional relationship with his father, what Bar Kamtza craved more than anything was acceptance! Just like with Eisav.
Eisav knew he was a rasha, he had studied Torah and could distinguish right from wrong. What possible reason could there be for him to try deceive Yitzchak into thinking he was a tzaddik? Eisav could have said "To hell with it!" and flaunted his evilness in front of his father, to spite him! But no! Eisav bent over backwards to at least give the outer appearance that he respected his father - because deep down inside he craved acceptance. He knew that Yitzchak knew that he was evil, but Yitzchak had never rebuked him once, which meant that Yitzchak never truly loved him, because a father who truly loves his son rebukes him when he does something wrong.
Bar Kamtza went to the banquet on the off chance that he would finally get acceptance from his enemy and his father!
Instead, he received rejection. He pleaded, over and over, to the ba'al habayit, if not to accept him, at least to refrain from shaming him in public. "Just ignore me, pretend I am not here – nobody will notice, I will finish my plate and withdraw!" Instead, the ba'al habayit made a spectacle of it. Loud exchanges of words, physically picking Bar Kamtza up and throwing him out. Nobody could miss such a scene, even if the band was exceeding the decibel level on the dance floor. Nobody objected, not the rabbanim, not even his own father Kamtza!
When you have someone who craves acceptance and is violently denied it, it can make a person snap. Until then Bar Kamtza was a simple 'no-goodnik', despised by the community and unloved by his father, for his unsavory behavior and connections with the Romans. However, this debacle at the banquet was rejection of a different level and it made Bar Kamtza snap. That morning, he was disliked, rejected, but still had faint hopes of reconciliation – that is why he showed up at the wedding in the first place.
The wedding debacle clarified to Bar Kamtza that he had no family/father, he had no people/community/rabbis, so he resolved to destroy them all.
Where did all this begin? With Kamtza, the father's inability to raise his son correctly. He is ultimately responsible for what became of Bar Kamtza and the repercussions of his son's hateful revenge. The reason the 2nd Beit HaMikdash was destroyed began with Kamtza and it ended with Bar Kamtza. This is the way the Gemara describes it אַקַּמְצָא וּבַר קַמְצָא חֲרוּב יְרוּשָׁלַיִם. Look what a dysfunctional father/son relationship can wreak, learn from it and don't repeat it. The dysfunctional relationship between Yitzchak and Eisav/Edom was the root of the destruction of Bayit Sheini and galut Edom.
If you think these stories belong to the realm of biblical and Talmudic folklore alone, think again.
Almost daily we unfortunately see well-known people on the Israel TV news, who are a carbon copy of Eisav and Bar Kamtza, Jews who are inexplicably aligned with our worst enemies, totally disconnected from their own people and heritage. Of all our enemies, these are the most malicious. They are at the root of all the hatred towards Am Yisrael, the instigators of it in foreign governments, on campuses, in demonstrations. And we ask "How can such a thing be?"
It begins with a dysfunctional parent/child relationship and the absence of לְעוֹלָם תְּהֵא שְׂמֹאל דּוֹחָה וְיָמִין מְקָרֶבֶת in the child's education.
This can be a total absence of rebuke (only comfort), like with Yitzchak/Eisav. It can also be the flip side - a total absence of comfort (only rebuke). The rashei teivot of מִשְׁפְּטֵי צֶדֶק קִרְבַת אֶ-לֹקִים [ישעיהו נח, ב] are קַמְצָא and also the rashei teivot of עַל קַצְוֵי אֶרֶץ צֶדֶק מָלְאָה יְמִינֶךָ (תהילים מח, יא). When a parent only knows how to criticize and not praise, that has an equally destructive effect.
It culminates in total rejection of that person as an adult and pushes that person over to the "dark side", creating the worst enemies the Jewish People have ever known. This is the real story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza.
For those who have already crossed over to the other side, little can be done. We still have the chance to "rollback" for those who have not yet - by showing true love and acceptance using שְׂמֹאל דּוֹחָה וְיָמִין מְקָרֶבֶת and preventing further, future destruction.
This is the practical lesson of Tisha Be'Av.
Shabbat Shalom
Eliezer Meir Saidel
Machon Lechem Hapanim
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