Devarim
5770 פרשת דברים
In this week’s Parsha, the Torah describes to us how before the death of Moshe Rabbeinu, he rebuked Bnei Yisroel for all the sins that they had committed over the 40 years they were in the Midbar. Moshe first began rebuking Bnei Yisroel about their sins with the eigel and their other sins relating to complaints again God.
Then Moshe Rabbeinu rebuked Bnei Yisroel for what would seem to be acts between man and man. One of things Moshe Rabbeinu rebukes Bnei Yisroel for is “their arguments” which the Sipurno interprets as being monetary claims against each other.
The Sipurno gives a very interesting interpretation of this rebuke. Moshe was telling them that even though God had already told you that you would be getting Eretz Yisroel without the need to fight the natural way which was something that was more meaningful than any possession you could have owned in the Midbar, you were still constantly bringing monetary claims against one another until it was imperative to appoint one judge for every ten people.
It seems from the Sipurno that the sin of Bnei Yisroel was that even though they were getting a great gift being Eretz Yisroel, they were still concerned over the monetary claims they had against one another.
This would seem to be very hard to understand. Just because a person receives a great gift, why should he then stop caring about his other monetary issues? A person can be grateful for what he received but that doesn’t mean that he should ignore everything else that he has. If that is true, why was it considered to be such a great sin for Bnei Yisroel to have legitimate monetary claims against other people?
If we look at the Sipurno a little bit closer, we might be able to answer our question. The Sipurno said that “there were so many claims made that Moshe had to appoint one judge for every ten people”. If the sin of Bnei Yisroel was just that they had financial claims after they knew they were receiving Eretz Yisroel, then this added idea about how many judges were appointed would be extraneous.
However, we can explain that the sin of Bnei Yisroel was not keeping things in perspective. The sin of Bnei Yisroel was that they were constantly making small monetary claims against one another. If it would have been a one time monetary claim against someone that would certainly not have been considered a sin, it was the fact that they were constantly focusing on looking to have claims against one another not paying attention to all the good they had. If Bnei Yisroel really appreciated all the good they had, they would not be constantly looking for reasons to have small monetary claims against one another.
5769 פרשת דברים
In this week’s Parsha, the Torah describes to us the rebuke that Moshe Rabbeinu gave to Bnei Yisroel before his death and the entering of Bnei Yisroel to Eretz Yisroel. The Parsha begins with an introduction to the rebuke by saying these are the words that Moshe said to Bnei Yisroel on the banks of the Jordan River. The Ohr Hachayim explains that the fact that the Torah used the word “Ayleh Hadevarim” meaning “these words” means that these words of rebuke were different than all the other rebukes Moshe Rabbeinu gave in the Midbar over the past 40 years.
The Ohr Hachayim explains the difference between this rebuke and the other rebukes that Moshe Rabbeinu gave to Bnei Yisroel is that this is the only time that Moshe spoke harshly to all of Bnei Yisroel as an entity where the other times that Moshe spoke harshly to Bnei Yisroel, it was only to the segments of the population that sinned.
If we look at this Ohr Hachayim a little more closely we can ask the following question. We know that the Torah does not even have one extra word. In this Pasuk the Torah used an extra word to tell us that Moshe only this once spoke harshly to Bnei Yisroel as an entity but all the rest of the times only spoke harshly to those who sinned. It would seem that the Torah in adding this word is trying to teach us an important lesson. However, in truth, this would seem to be quite obvious. If a group of children misbehave in a classroom, would the teacher yell at the whole class or just the group who misbehaved? Obviously he would only yell at the children who misbehaved. The same logic should apply here, so what special trait of Moshe Rabbeinu is the Torah trying to impart to us?
The answer could be that our comparison isn’t completely accurate. In truth, if it were just one or two segments of the population that consistently sinned, certainly it would not be such a great testimony to Moshe’s greatness that he did not speak harshly to Bnei Yisroel at any juncture before this final rebuke. However, that was not the case. Many of the sins that Bnei Yisroel transgressed in the Midbar were perpetrated by different segments of the population. For example, the rebellion of Korach was done mostly by the tribes of Reuvein and Levi, the actions of Zimri with the Bnos Midyan was mostly the tribe of Shimon and so on. The different sins were spread throughout Bnei Yisroel with some of them being done by all segments of Bnei Yisroel. When Moshe Rabbeinu was consistently inundated by transgression from members of the entire spectrum of the population; sometimes this one and sometimes the other one, he might at one point in time lump them all in one basket and speak harshly to all of Bnei Yisroel even though for that particular sin only a small part of Bnei Yisroel was involved.
This would actually be compared to a case where a teacher is constantly having his lesson interrupted: The first time from the left of the room, the second time from the right side of the room, the next time from the front, etc. At some point in time even though there were some boys in the class that were not interrupting, the teacher would lash out at all of them. Moshe Rabbeinu was the exact opposite. He had such control over his anger that even though Bnei Yisroel was sinning from all its distinct parts at different times, he never lumped them all together as one bad apple and never spoke harshly to them as an entity.
The only time Moshe Rabbeinu did speak to all of Bnei Yisroel was not at a time of anger and a loss of control but rather when he felt it important to rebuke Bnei Yisroel in a harsh manner before they went into Eretz Yisroel so that they would not stray from God and the Torah.
Now that we are entering the nine days leading up to Tisha Be’av, we are entering the period of time where the mourning over the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash reaches its apex. We also know that the Beis Hamikdash was destroyed due to baseless hatred. We know that in order to merit the rebuilding of the Beis Hamikdash we need to remove the feelings of baseless hatred from our lives. In order to do that, we should first try to understand the sources of baseless hatred. There are many causes of baseless hatred but one of them can be seen from this Ohr Hachayim. Many times we find ourselves generalizing about a particular segment of society because of the actions of one or even a group of its members. If one person does something wrong, we should not condone it, however we should realize that it was only that one person that sinned. Even if we see people from different parts of that same segment sinning, we still should not paint with a wide brush. This truly causes baseless hatred since even if it was permitted to hate someone who sins, (it is not in the case of most if not all sins), it would be only that one person and no one else. This could be what the Torah is teaching us by using the word “Ayleh”.
5768 פרשת דברים
In this week’s Parsha the Torah describes the final rebuke that Moshe gave to Bnei Yisroel before he died. One aspect of the rebuke that Moshe gave Bnei Yisroel related to the fact that they had so many court cases that needed judging that Moshe had to set up levels of judges. When instructing the judges in proper Torah jurisprudence Moshe said the following:
The judges should not be afraid of any man since justice is from God. Moshe continues and says any difficult question you should bring to me to judge.
The Gemara as brought by Rashi says on this Pasuk:
From the fact that Moshe said that any difficult question should be brought to me, he was punished that he forgot the law of inheritance when asked by the Bnos Tzalafchad.
The Rabbeinu Bechai asked on this Rashi:
You can ask what sin was there in the speech of Moshe that should have caused him to be punished. Was there any haughtiness in what Moshe said, it was something that the judges had to know. If the lower level of judges didn’t know the answer, they needed to know what to do.The Rabbeinu Bechai answers:
Since Moshe had mentioned already that justice is from God and then he said that the judges should bring the hard questions to me shows that Moshe was not exact in his language which seemed to imply that he was equating himself to God. For this reason Moshe was punished.
If we look at this Rabbeinu Bechai a little more closely we can learn an incredible lesson.
Moshe Rabbeinu was the epitome of a modest person. He had no desire for honor. In fact from the words of Rabbeinu Bechai we see that in truth Moshe Rabbeinu did not think at all that he was equal to God. Nevertheless since his words were not exact and had a misleading connotation he was punished.
From here we see that words have an incredible potential. When we speak we must realize that our words can have meaning of their own even if we don’t mean what came out of our mouths. We see that Moshe was punished for not being exact in his speech, even though his words did not hurt anyone. How much more careful do we have to be with our speech where people can be hurt even by our unintentional words.
In this time before Tisha Beav we should try to commit ourselves to watching what comes out of our mouths so that we can prevent even unintentional sin that might come from our words. If we can do this we should merit that this Tisha Beav should become a chag with the coming of the Geulah.
5767 פרשת דברים
The beginning of this week’s Parsha discusses the rebuke that Moshe Rabbeinu gave to Bnei Yisroel just before he died. In the middle of rebuking Bnei Yisroel for their actions relating to the Meraglim, the Torah throws in the following seemly unrelated Pasuk:
Moshe Rabbeinu said “Also God got angry at me saying even you won’t go into Eretz Yisroel.”
The Chizkuni explains the Pasuk the following way:
Because of you who caused me to get angry and I was not exacting in my language and my actions and for that I was punished.
There are 2 questions that can be asked on this Chizkuni:
- First of all, as we mentioned above it seems to be out of place, what does this have to do with rebuking Bnei Yisroel for their actions relating to the Meraglim?
- The Bnei Yisroel caused Moshe Rabbeinu to get angry when they complained that they had no water by the Mei Meriva. If we look through the Pasukim there is no direct rebuke of Bnei Yisroel for their actions at Mei Meriva (i.e. their lack of faith in God) only that they caused Moshe Rabbeinu to get angry. When Moshe Rabbeinu is rebuking Bnei Yisrel why does he mention his sin, and seemingly gloss over the sin of Bnei Yisroel that occurred at the same place?
A possible answer to both of the questions relates to understanding exactly what Moshe Rabbeinu was telling Bnei Yisroel. In fact Rashi at the beginning of the Parsha tells us that the list of places that the Torah mentions in the first Pasuk were all the places Bnei Yisroel sinned and the Torah hinted to them so as not to disgrace the honor of Bnei Yisroel. In this Pasuk, Moshe Rabbeinu was rebuking Bnei Yisroel for one of their sins.
The sin that Moshe Rabbeinu was rebuking Bnei Yisroel for was not being aware of how their actions can impact other people. This is what Moshe was telling Bnei Yisroel, not only did you have the main sin of not having enough faith in God, you did not pay enough attention to how your actions could impact other people.
With this idea, we can also answer, why this Pasuk was thrown in to the middle of the rebuke of Moshe Rabbeinu relating to the Meraglim. Chazal tell us that when the Meraglim came back from Eretz Yisroel, they each went back to their tent and began to cry about how they would be killed if they tried to conquer Eretz Yisroel. The crying started with them and then their families began to cry and then their neighbors and then it slowly spread to all of Bnei Yisroel. The Meraglim used this tremendous power that we all have to influence people for the bad.
The same idea relates to both sins. Whether it was the Meraglim who understood the tremendous potential they had to influence others and used it for bad or Bnei Yisroel who weren’t aware of how their actions can influence and hurt another person, even indirectly, are both hinted to in this Pasuk.
This is also the idea behind the saying in Avos “who is wise, a person who sees the future” which means that every person must realize the possible outcomes from his actions.
Now let us take this idea a step further. As we saw in last week’s Prsha, Bnei Yisroel loved Moshe Rabbeinu and would not want him to die due to their actions. In this case, all they wanted was water and the unwanted result was the death of their beloved leader. For this, undesired and unintentional act Bnei Yisroel were taken to task by Moshe Rabbeinu.
Now that we are about to be coming up to Tisha Be’av we must realize how much potential we have to impact other people both for the good and the bad. Every action we do can have so many unintentional results, but as we see from the Chizkuni that unintentional isn’t an excuse. If we can all try to impact the people around us for the good and try to prevent doing any action that can impact people for the bad, we should merit to truly see the redemption in our days.
5766 פרשת דברים
Parshas Devarim always comes out the Shabbos before Tisha Be’av, we know from Chazal that when a particular Parsha comes out every year at the same time of year, for example Parshas Mikeitz comes out every year on Chanuka that there are aspects in that particular פרשה that relates directly to that time of year, or that particular holiday.
The question becomes what aspects in Parshas Devarim relate to Tisha Be’av?
One answer can be seen from the beginning of the Parsha. Moshe Rabbeinu was rebuking Bnei Yisroel for all the sins they transgressed over their 40 years in the midbar. According to the explanation of Rashi, the rebuke ranged from the actions that related to the golden calf and worship of ba’al peor (both relating to idol worship), to the lack of faith in God that can be seen by their actions just before the splitting of the sea when Bnei Yisroel said “are there not enough graves in Egypt that God took us out to die die the midbar” saying that we would have been better off if you left us in Mitzrayim then bringing us to the Yam Suf to die not trusting that God would save them even after seeing all the miracles of the exodus.
After Moshe Rabbeinu rebuked Bnei Yisroel for their sins between man and God, he began to rebuke them for their sins between man and his fellow man. We see this from the explanation of the Sipurno on the Pasuk where Moshe Rabbeinu laments ”how can I deal alone with all your arguments” that all of these were different types of sins between man and his fellow man, from arguments not related to monetary issues, to arguments relating to monetary issues, and issues relating to the needs of the Tzibbur.
There is a very interesting question that can be asked here. When discussing the rebuke of Bnei YIsroel regarding their sins between man and his fellow man the Torah uses the language of “Aycha” (the word used when lamentingtragedy)while regarding the rebuke of Bnei Yisroel for their sins between man and God, including idol worship and lack of faith inGod the Torah does not use the word “Aycha”. How can this be, are sins between man and man worse than idol worship and the showing of a lack of faith in God even after seeing all the miracles of the exodus, that the Torah used the same language of ”Aycha” which is used several times when we discuss the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash?
The answer can be found from the Midrsh that says “the generation of Achav who worshipped idols were always victorious in battle since they did not speak Lashon Hara”, what we see from here is that even when Bnei Yisroel transgressed one of the worst sins of idol worship God still protected them from their enemies since there was peace between people. This is why Moshe Rabbeinu when he was rebuking Bnei Yisroel used the word ”Aycha” only regarding the sins between man and his fellow man. As long as there is peace within Bnei YIsroel there is still hope but once there is internal strife we don’t get the special protection from God when we transgress other more severe sins.
During the period of the three weeks especially the period right before Tisha be’avwe should spend time concentrating and improving on all the facets of our service of God but especially regarding the commandments that apply to our actions between man and our fellow man.
We should all merit that this year should bring the end of all the suffering of Bnei Yisroel and bring the redemption soon .