Easy Rashi – Devarim

36 last days

ג אב 

 מְתים מֵתי

what happened in 9 Av 17 Elul

 

 וַיֵּצֵ֥א מן בת מִבַּת־צִיּ֖וֹן כׇּל

אבק לשון הרע

Reb Neuberger: Devarim – The Bais HaMikdash

“THERE MAY YET BE HOPE”

There is a place in Yerushalayim where our Bais Hamikdosh used to stand, and we are wondering: “What happened? Why is it not yet rebuilt? Why has Moshiach not come?”

My friends, it is not so difficult to understand. 

Every year we read Parshas Dvarim before Tisha B’Av. This is heavy medicine. 

The entire Sefer Dvarim is a step down from the first four Books of the Chumash. We now read the words of Moshe Rabbeinu, no longer the words of the Ribono shel Olam. Moshe is the greatest of all Prophets, but he is a man. So we are already a step removed from the direct words of Hashem which we heard in the previous four books. 

And what does Moshe Rabbeinu tell us? “Moshe began … by reminding [the People] of the long string of sins and rebellions that marked the forty years since the Exodus. If they and their parents could sin when they were surrounded by miracles, surely there would be greater dangers” ahead, after the deaths of Moshe and Yehoshua, in the years, centuries and millennia that lay ahead. (Artscroll commentary)

These “sins and rebellions” relate to the Generation of the Desert, but they were the lucky ones! The vast majority of the Children of Israel never even made it out of Mitzraim, but rather died during the Plague of Darkness or in the failed attempt of members of Shevet Ephraim to leave Mitzraim prematurely (See Sanhedrin 92b). 

Here is a nation brought up from the depths, a nation guided by Hashem, rescued from slavery, given the Holy Torah, escorted through the “howling wilderness,” provided with constant spiritual and physical sustenance and protection. 

At the same time, our ancestors appear constantly ungrateful to Hashem. Moshe himself says to them, “Listen now, oh rebels….” (Vayikra 20:10) Although Moshe is faulted for his anger, it is certainly understandable, for Am Yisroel appears to be a nation of ingrates who fail to appreciate the constant acts of kindness which Hashem lavished upon them. 

And we? Have we learned anything in the 3300 years since then? 

Do we appreciate the kindness of Hashem, Who, after millennia of rebellion on our part, still sustains us? We say in Tachanun, “Guardian of Israel, protect the remnant of Israel. Let not the unique nation be destroyed ….” Every weekday we beg Hashem to prevent our destruction! We are in constant danger, yet He saves us!

Just last week, Ha Gaon Ha Rav Moshe Shternbuch Shlita”h was quoted as having said, “Hakadosh Baruch Hu is shaking up the whole world … before the coming of Moshiach. [As we near the Redemption] Hashem … will prove to us … that we cannot obtain a yeshua through natural means [but] that the yeshua is dependent only on Him…. Hashem is [showing us] that we … are forced to trust in Him.”    

Are we trusting in Hashem?

I see in myself the same personal stubbornness, the same rebellion as I read about in our forefathers. I personally have been blessed with countless miracles and kindnesses. I am not speaking only of the fact that I am alive, that I am a Jew, that I can breathe and walk and talk, but countless remarkable, direct and clear acts of kindness from Above. 

Am I grateful? Do I appreciate Hashem’s kindness to me? 

I see that I am ungrateful! I complain! I constantly have to remind myself to feel gratitude to the Ribono shel Olam! In Moshe Rabbeinu’s portrayal of the ingratitude of my ancestors, I see the reflection of my own ingratitude!

But this brings us to a moment of tremendous hope!

Hope? What hope is there in this? 

If we and our ancestors could be so ungrateful and rebellious over so many millennia, and Hashem has not given up on us … then surely we can trust that He will save and redeem us. We can trust that He will never forget the Bris He made with our Fathers Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov! If He has saved us until now – with all our rebellion and ingratitude! -- then surely He will bring us to the Final Redemption which He has promised us! 

Even though we provoke Him beyond comprehension, He has not forsaken us! 

“Avinu Malkainu … our Father, our King, be gracious with us and answer us. Though we have no worthy deeds, treat us with charity and kindness and save us!”

Please look at the last two brachas in Shemoneh Esreh: “Modim” and “Shalom.” 

In order to reach the final bracha -- Shalom -- we have to say “Modim,” we have to express gratitude for Hashem’s overwhelming kindness. “Shalom” comes only after we express gratitude. There can be no peace in the world, my friends, until we humble ourselves and thank Hashem for all that He gives us at every moment, including life itself. 

Our obstinate, rebellious behavior has not prevented Hashem from gracing us with His favor. We can learn from this that, just as He extricated us from Mitzraim after we had sunk to the forty-ninth level of degradation, so He will extricate us from this Golus. 

Let’s shed tears on Tisha B’Av and beg Hashem to send the complete Redemption soon in our days. “Let him put his mouth to the dust. There may yet be hope.” (Eichah 3:29)

THE PLACE WHERE THE BAIS HAMIKDOSH WILL SOON STAND

GLOSSARY

Bais Hamikdosh: The Holy Temple

Mitzraim: Biblical Egypt

Shevet Ephraim: The Tribe of Ephraim

Tisha B’Av: The Ninth Day of the Month of Av, on which both Temples were destroyed

Yehoshua: Joshua

Yeshua: Redemption

Rabbi WInston – Devarim and Shabbos Chazon: Wake Up to The Signs

I TOLD YOU so. Famous words, usually said to someone who chose to ignore a warning and later paid for it. Somehow at the time they just didn’t think it was such a risk to ignore it, either because they are reckless or because it just did not click that what they were going to do was the same thing they were being warned about. 

They just didn’t think that this was that.

If a person is reckless there is not much that can be done for them, except to try to save them from themself. In the latter case, the person has to somehow be made to see that what they are being warned about is the same thing they want to do. It can work, and has many times, and it has saved a lot of people over the generations.

The same thing is true about the signs of Moshiach’s imminent arrival. We know what they are because the Talmud and Midrash has told us them. The trouble we have is that when we experience them in real time, we wonder if this event is that sign. If yes, Moshiach is about to reveal himself. If not, then history is just droning on.

For example, one such sign is that the Erev Rav will be in charge of the Jewish people at the End-of-Days. That’s bad news, because they have never been a friend of the Torah world, just a painful and often deadly thorn in its side. Today there are many Jewish leaders who fit that bill, but does that make them Erev Rav and a sign of Moshiach’s closeness? Some say yes, some say no.

The Zohar and the Vilna Gaon concurred about the prominent role the Erev Rav will play at the end of history, and identified five types of Erev Rav (Zohar, Bereishis 25a). Some will be into licentiousness, others into kavod, while others will do the most they can to financially cut off the Torah world, even when they could help it. It’s just different attack strategies against G–D and morality. 

But are they truly Erev Rav, or just very misguided people? Wasn’t it a miracle that secular Israeli governments funded yeshivos until now, given that they really wanted to shut them? What can you expect from someone who grew up agnostic, and who has zero appreciation of the value of Torah learning…in a tiny country with a small population that needs its work force and standing army?

A sign of Moshiach, or just a sign of the times? 

After all, the whole Western world is going liberal. Religious values have faded everywhere. For the most part, the Torah world has done little to try and bridge the gap between themselves and the secular world around them. It’s been a “to each his own” kind of approach to the outside world, and we should have anticipated that it lacks sustainability the moment we started taking “their” money for our learning.

It certainly seems more like a sign of the times than a sign of Moshiach…

IN LAST WEEK’S parsha, the tribes of Reuven, Gad, and half tribe of Menashe did the unthinkable as if it was the most normal thing to do. After wandering for 39 extra years in the desert for rejecting Eretz Yisroel, they rejected Eretz Yisroel, except they didn’t think that this was that.

 

They had a lot of animals that graze, and east of the Jordan had a lot of grazing land. So it wasn’t so much that they rejected Eretz Yisroel all over again as much as they chose a different land on which to raise their livestock. Or so they seemed to have thought until Moshe set them straight saying, “No, this is that.” 

As mentioned previously, the problem could be traced back to Bilaam in Parashas Balak. It was his plan to send the women of Midian into the Jewish camp to upset the balance. Midian “infected” the Jewish people with ta’avah, material desire, and this led to promiscuous behavior and idol worship. All told, 200,000 Jewish people died either by plague or stoning by Bais Din. The effect of the “infection” has lingered until this very day.

But who hasn’t asked how this could happen in the first place? Bilaam pointed out how the tent of one Jewish family did not face the opening of another, to avoid potentially immodest situations. Yet gentile women from a foreign culture came to sell their wares, and no one was suspicious or worried about the spiritual challenge it might create, and avoid it? It seems so obvious to us. Why wasn’t it so obvious to them? 

Isn’t this what Eichah is all about, alluded to in the second aliyah of this week’s parsha? Yirmiyahu did not just mourn the destruction of the Jewish people of his time. He asked how it could even happen in the first place. How was it possible that they had prophets foretelling the future doom and gloom and they did not recognize it when it happened and put the brakes on? How was it that only after they were being dragged off to Babylonia in chains that they finally realized that this had indeed been that?

But why stop there? Why not go all the way back to beginning of human history and ask the same question? Which part of, “do not eat from the fruit of the Aitz HaDa’as Tov v’Ra” did Adam and Chava not understand? How was it that they were able to think, after first being warned, that they were not going against the commandment of G–D? Who cares how smart the snake was? It was a simple command, one that we think should have been simple to obey.

And Europe was not Egypt, so how could the same thing have happened there that happened in Egypt? America is not Europe, so how can the same thing that happened there happen in America…or Canada…or anywhere in the Diaspora…like it happened all cross Europe? This is NOT that. 

And when Yisro came and suggested a hierarchy legal system, it was not a rejection of Moshe Rabbeinu, right? After all, the idea came from Moshe’s own father-in-law, and was agreed to by G–D Himself. That makes it kosher, correct? Not according to Moshe Rabbeinu, who tells them otherwise in this week’s parsha. “Sorry,” he told them. “THIS following of Yisro’s suggestion is THAT rejection of me”

SOME PEOPLE GET it. Some people always do. In Egypt, they were barely one-fifth of the population. In Europe, they were a very small percentage who left early. The Talmud says that a wise person is one who can see what is being born (Tamid 32a). Not just born, but how it will “grow up,” meaning to what it will probably lead.

The mitzvah of killing the rebellious son teaches a similar message, if it was even ever carried out. A ben sorrer umoreh is not killed by Bais Din because he has already done something that warrants the death penalty. He is killed because he has done things that seem to indicate that he may do such things in the future. So the Bais Din kills him now, while he is still “meritorious,” before he becomes guilty of the death penalty.

How many other societies have laws like that? None. What if the boy does teshuvah? What if he grows up and matures nicely, leaving behind his troubling ways, as so many other “rebellious” children have done over the ages? And even if he doesn’t, how many will end up needing to be killed by Bais Din? If saving one soul is like saving an entire world, isn’t it worth the risk to see how he turns out?

We might have wondered, “What if this is not that?” 

The Torah says assume that it is, and go with the signs.

So why don’t many people do that when it comes to antisemitism? Why do so many people ignore the signs of impending trouble until they become so obvious that it is too late to do anything about them? Cognitive dissonance, when psychological conflict results from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously. For example:

Rising antisemitism is telling us to get out as soon as possible. But if we leave quickly, we’ll lose everything we spent so long building up, not to mention throw our lives into complete disarray. Let’s wait a little longer just to be sure…  

That’s what they said in Europe in the late 1930s. That is what i being said today in 2021. Yeah, but who says this is that…

THERE ARE THREE approaches to a case of “this and that,” and each is valid in its own way, in its own time. One approach is to look for the similarities between this and that, and draw conclusions. The other is to look for the differences between the signs and the situation, and act accordingly. The third is the business approach, which is to consider both and all other information that might bear on the subject in order to better measure the risk-versus-safety factor.

For example, there are the signs themselves. How many people even know what a lot of them are? Secondly, there are sources that put the End-of-Days into historical perspective, acting as canvas on which the signs can paint their picture for us to interpret. Such a complete picture has made believers out of a lot of would-be naysayers when it comes to believing Moshiach is close. They create the intellectual crosshairs that line up the “this” and the “that” to reveal they are one and the same. 

For example, if a person thinks that history is open-ended and that Moshiach can come any time between now and one thousand years, then there is no immediacy regarding the events of today. History is like a pendulum swinging back and forth between liberalism and conservatism, with a bunch of wars in-between to help it move a little quicker in one direction or the other. 

But if history is only six thousand years, as the Talmud says and Kabbalah confirms, then there are only 218 years left during which Moshiach can come. That’s still a fair bit of time, until one learns the Zohar and Leshem who say that 210 years of that is set aside for Techiyas HaMeisim, the resurrection of the dead. That period of history is already after Moshiach has already come and rectified the world. 

Suddenly 218 years became eight years. 

No immediacy? Tremendous immediacy!

Then there is the incredible fulfillment of all these incredible prophecies made thousands of years ago, like the ingathering of the Jewish people at the End-of-Days. The Torah predicted it, the GR”A initiated it, and we’re living through it. But really, is THIS actually THAT? 

Those who have rushed to make aliyah say yes. 

Those who have held out say no.

And if the Talmud says that one of the signs that the geulah is imminent is that the Jewish people make the desert bloom again, and that has happened, is it not a messianic sign? Is what has happened not what was predicted? Again, it depends upon who you ask.

It goes on, and on, and on. There are signs, and more signs, and more signs. There have been miracles upon miracles upon miracles. But in all honesty, is this really that? If it seems like it isn’t, then you have not done your homework well enough. If it seems that it is, then welcome to the world of the final redemption. And buckle up, because the final act is about to begin, if it hasn’t already.

The Shabbos before Tisha B’Av is called “Chazon,” which means “vision.” The temples were destroyed and the Jewish people were exiled because we failed to read the warning signs, to recognize that “this” was “that.” As the Talmud warns, if the Temple is not built in our generation, it’s because we’re doing the same thing, and that is definitely not a safe thing.

May we merit to wake up to the signs of G–D and make the necessary changes on our own, so that we can see Tisha B’Av become the holiday it is destined to become.

Rabbi Kahana: Masai and Devarim – Denying Jewish Inheritance

BS”D 

Parashat Masai and Devarim 5781

Rabbi Nachman Kahana

 

Denying Jewish Inheritance

An unscrupulous lawyer was instructed by a secretly wealthy client that, only after his death, should his son be informed of the fortune that his father had accumulated and bequeathed to him as an inheritance. The father passed away, but the lawyer never informed the son of the vast treasure that was his.

What can one say regarding the conduct of this lawyer who withheld from the son what was his rightful possession? Please use moderation when expressing your expletives.

An Un-Jewish Request?

There is something amiss in the request of the tribes of Reuven and Gad to relinquish their tribal homesteads in the west bank of the Jordan River, where the other eleven tribes would be settling, in favor of the pasture lands conquered from Sichon and Og in the areas east of the Jordan.

What happened to the dream of reaching the Holy Land, whose more sanctified districts were to the west of the Jordan, and after suffering the hardships of 40 years in the desert for it?  Why did they barter away their superior homesteads for grazing lands?

I offer the following reason for this strange and even “un-Jewish” request.

That Moshe was prohibited from crossing the Jordan River was no secret. The tribes knew that, after seven years of conflict against the 31 Canaanite city-states in the western part of the land and an additional seven years of apportioning the individual parcels of land, the agricultural laws (tithes, Sabbatical Year, etc.) would come into effect. However, this could only be valid in the areas of the Holy Land which were officially settled by a tribe through the halachic process (including lottery or drawing of lots) and directed by Yehoshua Bin Nun and Elazar ben Aharon the Kohen Gadol.

In other words, if no tribe were to settle the eastern bank of the Jordan, then that area would be halachically inferior in some way to the apportioned areas to the west in terms of many halachot.

In their minds, it was inconceivable that Moshe Rabbeinu, the pre-eminent master of Torah and the binding force between our Father in heaven and the Jewish nation, would be buried outside of the major sanctified areas of the land – in an halachically inferior part of the land.

Under the pretext of the necessity for grazing lands, the tribes of Reuven and Gad planned to populate the areas in the east of the Jordan with their people.  In this way, they would draw the sanctity of the west bank to the east and provide Moshe Rabbeinu with the sanctity of Eretz Yisrael, all the while abiding by HaShem’s decree that Moshe could not pass over to the west bank of the Jordan.

An ingenious plan indeed. Moshe ascended Mount Nevo in the area allotted to the tribe of Reuven, and then HaShem moved his body to the deep gorge in the tribal area of Gad.

Denying the Inheritance of Jews

To our great sorrow, we are witnessing a phenomenon in the United States diametrically opposed to the spirit and the law of what motivated the tribes of Reuven and Gad – and later to include half the tribe of Menashe. Wannabe “poskim” are dissociating the Holy Land from the possession of good and trusting Jews by declaring that one should not go on aliya.  This is in stark contrast to what the tribes of Reuven and Gad did by bringing the Holy Land into the “possession” of Moshe Rabbeinu.

Despite all the miracles we have experienced here in the Holy Land, there are still contemporary spiritual leaders in the galut who disseminate their “halachic” decisions that Jews must wait patiently in the galut – and suffer whatever might come upon them – until the Mashiach appears.

Many rabbinic sources state that just as every Jew has his place in the World-to-Come, so too does every Jew have a part in Eretz Yisrael (including the tribe of Levi). So, by depriving a Jew from his innate possession, these rabbinic figures are no different than the lawyer I wrote about above.

I once met a survivor who told me that whoever was in Bergen Belsen for 10 minutes, can justifiably say Hallel every day in Medinat Yisrael.

HaShem’s Choice

Bereishiet 17,8:

ונתתי לך ולזרעך אחריך את ארץ מגריך את כל ארץ כנען לאחזת עולם והייתי להם לאלקים

I will give to you and to your descendants after you where you now reside as a foreigner, the whole land of Canaan as an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.

And Rashi explains the phrase “and I will be their God”:

ושם אהיה לכם לאלקים – אבל בן ישראל ה’הדר בחוצה לארץ כמו שאין לו אלוה

“And there (in Eretz Yisrael) I shall be their God. However, a Jew who (willingly) lives in chutz la’aretz (out of Eretz Yisrael) is as if he is without HaShem”.

The “Siftei Chachamim” (an explanatory commentary on Rashi authored by Harav Shabbetai Bass) notes:

לפי שארץ ישראל נחלת השם ולקחה לחלקו וחוץ לארץ חלק לשרים ולכך כל הדר בחוץ לארץ דומה כאילו הוציא את עצמו מתחת רשותו של הקב”ה כביכול

Eretz Yisrael is HaShem’s (personal) domain which He chose for Himself, while all the lands outside of Eretz Yisrael Hashem relegated to Ministers (heavenly entities, like angels). Therefore, whoever lives in chutz la’aretz is as if he consciously and premeditatedly removed himself from HaShem’s guidance (authority), as it were.

In conclusion, Eretz Yisrael is not a game. It is a major factor in deciding where one’s place will be when his life is terminated in this world.

Have a meaningful fast. It might be the last time we fast on Tisha b’Av, which according to the prophet Zecharya will eventually turn into a day of joy.

Shabbat Shalom,

Nachman Kahana

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