To Be Jewishly Inspired - Find Inspiring Jews!

Parshat Naso

by Rabbi Avi Billet

One of the laws discussed in Parshat Naso concerns the Nazir, a person - man or woman - who chooses to remove himself or herself from society to a limited degree, through not consuming wine and grape products, refraining from cutting hair, and avoiding becoming “tameh” through contact with a dead body. Much has been written as to why a person would want to take on these borderline ascetic practices, and those answers are beyond the scope of this essay.

Suffice it to say, Seforno reminds even those who will take on ascetic practices that there is a realm of asceticism that the Torah supports (although perhaps begrudgingly), and there is a level that is “too far,” that even puts the ascetic at risk.

“He shouldn’t torture himself with fasting – which takes him away from serving God, and he should not flog himself or torment his body – as is the way of ascetics in other religions. He must merely separate himself from wine, which otherwise leads to licentiousness. This way, he will not weaken himself (through denial of necessary food).”

Getting back to the Nazir, what is only a little troubling is the prohibition on grape products other than wine. A restriction on wine is completely understandable. We all know what a little too much wine can do to the mind, to reason, and to one’s ability to think and act rationally.

But grapes? Raisins? You can eat as many of these as you want and never even get close to drunkenness, because without fermentation, there will be no alcohol! So why doesn’t the Torah give allowance for eating raw and unprocessed grapes, while disallowing the Nazir from imbibing in wine?

The simple answers that are offered by some of the commentaries seem intuitive. It’s a fence to prevent a slippery slope – consuming grapes will lead to consuming wine (Ibn Ezra). Grapes are what produce wine, so it’s one step removed. (Alshikh) Alshikh goes on to say that “anyone who distances oneself from sin, and from that which causes sin… there is no doubt that he will be considered holy.”

And so we see that even the Torah sets up the concept of a fence, of a slippery slope, of a need to take on restrictions that go beyond the level of the law, just to preserve the law.

How often are we willing to do this? I recently finished reading an OTD memoir, written by someone who is no longer part of the observant community. Reading about the community of Jews who have abandoned all forms of observance to be “freed of the shackles of Judaism” and in order to “be the true me,” one tends to wonder how much a slippery slope played into the choices that were made. It is hard to know how many people could find fulfillment in a different “stream” of Orthodoxy than the kind they reject if they only saw the options available to them.

At the same time, a “crisis of faith,” or even just a “breaking of the bonds” may be the end result of a circumstance, situation and process that is impossible to summarize in a very short essay.

One question that stuck out at me from this memoir went something like this: “If I hadn’t been born into this religion, would I choose it on my own? Would this particular brand of living we live have had any appeal whatsoever?”

The author didn’t satisfactorily give an answer. But I will take a simple stab at it. Every person in the world, upon reaching adulthood, has the opportunity to ask real questions, take long looks in the mirror and ask ‘is this who I am?’ A friend of mine who works on a college campus once told me that he gets several inquiries a week from students who are looking to explore Judaism (most are not serious, they are just experimenting college kids looking for their flavor of the week).

But I look at the great rabbis of old, and of our own times. I see their brilliance, I read of their scholarship and their dedication to find answers to some of the most difficult moral and ethical dilemmas humans can face, and how they scour all of rabbinic literature to come to their fantastic and inspirational conclusions. Are they perfect humans? Never. But are they tremendous sources of inspiration? Yes. And did they find the truth in the Judaism they knew and draw out incredible lives from it? Absolutely.

I look at the righteous converts to Judaism. Those who “had it all.” They were “free of the shackles of Judaism.” They could go where they wanted, eat what they wanted, do whatever they wanted. But they found their lives to be missing something – and whatever that something was, they found it in observant Judaism.

And I am inspired. Because they chose to put up fences. They chose to accept that when wine is forbidden, grapes are forbidden – even though grapes, in and of themselves, are harmless and will never do what wine does to a person.

Is everything about Judaism perfect? Surely not. To bring one silly example – I would love to get to an airport three hours before my flight, and sit down to have lunch at a restaurant airport. Right now, it’s only in the cards to do this at Ben Gurion airport, and that’s OK.

For this life that we choose to be meaningful, we must jump into it fully, accept that it is imperfect, and be comfortable living with questions. And, as the grapes and raisin prohibition for the Nazir teaches us, we need to see that even in an effort to make Judaism more deeply meaningful, we still have fences and boundaries we put up, to make sure we don’t go too far in any direction; not too far that we damage ourselves and our health, and not too far that we lose sight of what our observant life is supposed to do for us in giving us a meaningful existence.

May we all be blessed to find the right kind of balance and continue to enhance our relationship with the God we know is One, Whom we serve with all our hearts and souls.

Carrying Curtains: Easiest Job, Or Most Significant?

Parshat Naso

by Rabbi Avi Billet

The jobs of the Levitic families were spelled out in last week’s Torah portion, and the expanded version of their designated assignments began in Chapter 4, giving us the jobs of the Kehat family, moving into our parsha, with the depictions of the jobs of the Gershon and Merari families.

                

It seems to be undisputed that the Gershon family had the easiest job, because all they really needed to carry were curtains and similarly fabric-style materials, along with the tools used to hang them up. The “parochet,” (curtain for the Holy of Holies) the various “masakh”s (entrance to the courtyard and the Mishkan), and the covers (roof) of the Mishkan all fit into this category.

                

Compare this to the job of Merari – who carried the beams and all of the copper – and this job is a walk in the park. Even the Kehatites, who perhaps didn’t carry the heaviest items (though the gold is measured by length, and not weight), had to carry the most “important” items, especially the Aron (Ark), all of which carry with them a much deeper sense of responsibility (and expense) than the curtains and the goat-skin roof cover.

                               

Ibn Ezra and Rabbenu Bachaye note that the verse simply says “tapestries, the Communion Tent, the roof, the over-roof of processed skins that is above it, the drape at the Communion Tent entrance, the enclosure's hangings, the drape at the entrance to the enclosure around the Tabernacle and altar” (4:25-26) leaving out any reference to the red-colored ram skin cover (Shmot 25:5, 26:14)

                

Rashi notes that the phrase “the roof” refers to the ram-skin cover, but obviously it is not spelled out in the text.

                

Why would this be left out? Ibn Ezra and Rabbenu Bachaye suggest that the Torah is speaking in a summary-language, perhaps leaving out non-essential (or obvious) details. On the other hand, they suggest, maybe the beautiful red-skinned cover was attached to the goat-skin cover.

                

Were one to walk inside the Mishkan and look up, the beautiful woven cover, a tapestry made of fine and colorful threads, would be visible. (Here this related "shmooze" by Rabbi Marc Penner) Above it – covering its appearance from the outside – was a dark, unbeautiful goat-skin cover. Above the goat skins was the red ram-skin cover.

                

There are debates as to whether the red ram-skin cover paralleled the two covers beneath it like an over-flowing table cloth, or whether it just lined the top of the Mishkan. The distinction between the two options is whether the goat skin cover could be seen at all.

                

There is surely symbolism embedded in the need for a goat-skin cover to hide the beauty of the Mishkan. But what are we to make of the possibility that the ram cover and the goat cover may have been attached to one another? Why could they not be separated as different layers?

                

Look at any artistic rendition of the Mishkan, and the most striking element of the edifice, from the outsider’s view, is the red, ram-skin cover. Whether it only lines the roof, and especially if it drapes over the sides, it is attached to something which is on the one hand gray and dull, but on the other hand strong, durable and rugged.

                

Perhaps this takes the expressions “beauty is only skin deep” to a whole new level – a goat-skin level!

                

In all seriousness, maybe the lesson we can take from Ibn Ezra and Rabbenu Bachaye’s possibility is that the animal skin covers were attached to one another to unify goat and ram.

                

Aside from the animal sacrifices on various holidays that include goat and ram, we specifically recall the goat and the ram on our High Holidays. On Rosh Hashana we utilize the ram’s horn for the shofar-sounding, and on Yom Kippur we recall the fascinating role of the “Se’ir La’azazel,” the goat that carried the burden of the sins of Israel that was thrown over a cliff on the Day of Atonement.

                

These animals were meant, on those days, to be symbols of repentance and of returning to God. Perhaps the Mishkan, whose ultimate purpose was to be a place where atonement could be achieved, symbolically modeled the union of the two animals of atonement through the attachment of the ram and goat skins.

                

Maybe we had it wrong. Maybe the family of Gershon had the most significant job, that of carrying the symbol of atonement that the people could see on a daily basis, through a mere glance at the Mishkan.

Sotah-So-Good For Marriage?

Parshat Naso

by Rabbi Avi Billet

R. Shalom Isaac Mizrachi (Divrei Shalom Responsa YD 9) was asked a question: If a person slaughtered an animal but did not cover the blood, is the meat of the animal permitted to be eaten?

He begins his answer quoting the Shulchan Arukh, who says there is a mitzvah to cover the blood (based on Vayikra 17:13), and the Rama who says that mitzvah is separate from the valid slaughtering which is still good even if he deliberately did not cover the blood.

            

As in any good responsa where the Shulchan Arukh is the tip of the iceberg, he goes on for pages and pages. He distinguishes between this case and circumstances which arise in the Torah in which an antidote is prescribed for a problem.

            

A slaughtered animal is permitted to be eaten regardless of whether one followed or violated the mitzvah to cover the blood. However, a person would remain 'tameh' forever had we not had a mitzvah of the Parah Adumah (Red Heifer). He goes on to say that if we did not have the mitzvah of the Sotah drink (Bamidbar 5 – our parsha), peace would never be attainable for a husband and wife living under a cloud of suspicion and jealousy. The doubts of faithlessness would be enough to force a mandated separation.

            

As he develops the comparison between covering the blood of the slaughtered animal against the Parah Adumah equation and the Sotah, he further distinguishes between the former and the latter two cases. Without the covering of the blood, one can still derive benefit from the slaughtered animal. But it is only with the ashes of the Red Heifer that one derives the benefit of becoming 'tahor.' It is only with the Sotah drink that one derives the benefit of achieving the peace in the home that comes from the divine clarification that leads to a clear conscience.

            

In explaining how he derives these comparisons from the words of Rashi, the Divrei Shalom says, "Had we not been commanded about the Sotah drink (literally 'the dirt of Sotah' which is dissolved in the drink) there would not be peace between husband and wife."

            

This final formulation is a little different than before. Earlier he suggested that peace would not be attainable under the circumstance of suspicion, and now he is suggesting that peace would be impossible in general, were the mitzvah of Sotah not in the books.

            

Is he suggesting that the possibility of undergoing the Sotah embarrassment is meant to be a deterrent? That knowing that "a mere suspicion of faithlessness could be enough to possibly end a marriage" would cause people to be scrupulously attentive to their spouses and to behave in a manner that is, at all times, above suspicion?

Was Sotah, like the mitzvah of the rebellious son (Devarim 21:18-21), which the Talmud (Sanhedrin 71a) claims never happened, a ritual placed in the Torah as a warning and deterrent, simply for us to learn the lesson of how to and how not to behave?

Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai abolished the Sotah ritual (Sotah 47a) because, as the Talmud suggests, it did not serve very well as a deterrent during his time.

Nowadays, the idea of Sotah seems so anachronistic, on the one hand, and so chauvinistic on the other. And yet I wonder what such a deterrent would do for marriages today.

There are different ways people look at marriage. Some go into it and are committed to stick with it through thick and thin. Some have a very special relationship built on a mutual respect, a shared vision of a life, and the ability to communicate well with one another. Some view it as a commitment that will last as long as it feels right. Some might even assume that they will one day become a statistic.

We don't have the Sotah ritual, but we live in a world in which faithlessness can't hide forever, only to be exposed in some divine ritual. It eventually comes out. And the inevitable exposé doesn't stop those (men or women) who will not respect their marriages.

But maybe there is something to a deterrent of some kind. If Rabbi Mizrachi is correct that peace would be impossible for husbands and wives to achieve without the Sotah ritual being "out there," there are grounds to say that a good number of people will heed the "warning" and will view their marriage commitment as sacred. The "Shalom Bayit" – peace in the home – they will achieve will be elevated by their efforts to renew their love and kinship on a regular basis. They will see only one another, and will never even be tempted to see if there's someone better out there. And any attempt of the yetzer hara (Evil Inclination) will be scornfully turned aside, because "There is none more beautiful in my eyes, or more appropriate for me than the one to whom I am married."

May we merit to think of the Sotah ritual in this way, as an encouragement to find and bring out the best in our spouses so that our marriages can be elevated in the Bayit Neeman B'Yisrael we are all blessed at our weddings to build until we reach the age of 120.

Embracing Mitzvot Properly

Parshat Naso


by Rabbi Avi Billet

The Yalkut Shimoni (Naso 6:710) raises an interesting non-halakhic debate between Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Shimon as to what was the motivation for becoming a Nazir.

Rabbi Yehuda claims the Chassidim Harishonim (the early pious ones) would take upon themselves the vow of Nezirut (abstaining from cutting hair, drinking wine, and becoming tameh to a dead body) in order to obligate themselves to bring a Sin offering on the completion of the vow.

Rabbi Shimon disagrees as he finds it unconscionable that people would take a vow of Nezirut for the sole purpose of having to bring a certain sacrifice afterwards. For instance, there are many offerings people could commit to bringing without having to go through a process that, noble and ascetic as it may be, brings about an obligation for a sin offering upon its completion. In fact, claims Rabbi Shimon, they would never commit to be a Nazir because they did not want to have a sin – mild as it may be in the scheme of things – on their record. Regardless of the impetus, bringing a Sin-offering is a sure sign that the one bringing it has sinned. 

The question of who is right is either a question for historians to explore or for the philosophers to debate. My gut tells me Rabbi Shimon is correct. At the same time, I am fascinated by the thought Rabbi Yehuda ascribes to these early pious ones.

 Chapter 6 describes the personal and spiritual responsibilities and goals of the Nazir during the Nezirut period, a time in which the Nazir is considered holy, and consecrated to God (Bamidbar 6:8). The Children of Israel, certainly have a responsibility to achieve that end as much as we can (Vayikra 19:2).

But the method that is utilized by the Nazir, as it were, is highly criticized. What gives a person the right to withdraw completely from the world? To swear off wine – which is considered one of the sources of true joy (Tehillim 104:15, Kohelet 10:19)? During the minimal one month period of Nezirut, for example, the Nazir will miss 4 or 5 opportunities to perform Kiddush properly on Shabbos!

What gives a person the right to neglect one's grooming, to have the appearance of a mourner?

What gives a person, especially a non-kohen, the right to swear off becoming tameh to one's relatives?

To understand the thought process of the Nazir is to understand one who either is trying to commit wholly to God at a price, or who is looking to get away from the world because that seems the best choice at this time, in a manner that successfully pushes off one's problems for the duration of the Nezirut (of course there may be other reasons driving a person).

According to Rabbi Yehuda, the early pious one purposely sought this existence not necessarily because they felt being a Nazir was a good thing, but because they wanted to be able to fulfill a mitzvah they could not otherwise do without going through the process.

Imagine a person wants to make the Yom Kippur confession and repentance a more meaningful experience. A person might deliberately sin, might deliberately eat forbidden foods or engage in sinful behavior as a one-time shot, knowing full well that a one-time satisfied craving will be enough to last a life-time, such that it will never really be a challenge again, in order to be counted as sincerely penitent on Yom Kippur, in a manner the person knows can be maintained. A real baal teshuvah!

This method is certainly a lot easier than promising not to return to the sinful ways we nonetheless return to each year. And yet we know it is ludicrous. How does the future penitence justify the current wrong behavior? It doesn't! Being committed to the Torah and its mitzvot does not mean a person needs to fulfill every one of the mitzvot.

It does mean that one's heart and mind is committed to the life-system that is ordered by the Torah. I don't need to kill an Amalekite, I never to need to send away the mother bird, and I don't need to become a Nazir.

Any marriage that lasts a lifetime never needs to see the issuance of a get. Even the prophet Shmuel chastised the people for asking for a King – there is an element of ideal in a Jewish king, but apparently it is not always the best option for the people of Israel.

A committed Jew seeks to perform mitzvot either because they are simply available without arm-twisting, or because they enhance a person's life. But mitzvot that are set-up as a follow up to a less than ideal circumstance – such as denying certain pleasures we are encouraged to enjoy – are not meant to be for everybody. They are not mitzvot that must be fulfilled at all cost.

Rabbi Shimon said it best when he said "Chas Veshalom" that a person feel obligated to t ake such a route. This is an aberration of the Torah's stance on commitment and obligation. It is a sign of weakness and false piety – certainly not a sign of strength.

In Good Faith

Parshat Naso - Being Faithful

by Rabbi Avi Billet

I cherish the fact that the Torah does not hide from truths, and does not whitewash unpleasant situations. Biblical narratives in and beyond the Torah include examples of individuals who struggled with the most primal of human urges. More than monetary fraud and tax evasion, this sin remains, to this day, one that ends even the greatest of political careers (unless you were U.S. president for most of the ‘90s).

Yosef, Shimshon, and King David are three examples of great Jewish leaders who faced these challenges. Yosef triumphed, David failed, and Shimshon dealt with his desires through a faithful intermarriage in order to infiltrate the enemy’s inner circle.

With this background, however, one can still argue that nothing about the circumstances surrounding the Sotah, the suspected adulteress, is particularly pleasant. It is nice that our parsha instructs in how to deal with a real-life possibility of unfaithfulness, but the focus is on exposing the unfaithful married woman, and there is no particular focus on her partner-in-sin, nor whether he is likewise married.

Not to say that he is faultless, blameless, or unpunished in the Torah’s presentation of the case or in the Talmud’s subsequent analysis of the circumstances. [Aish.com takes a stab at explaining this conundrum]

But in the Torah’s depiction of the particulars, it seems translators have a debate as to what really happened.

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan’s translation of the verses (5:12-13) reads thus:
“[This is the law] if any man's wife is suspected of committing adultery and being false to her husband. A man may have lain with her carnally, keeping it hidden from her husband, and they may have acted secretly so that there could be no witness against [the woman]. [The woman] was not raped.”

ArtScroll translates the same words, “Any man whose wife may go astray and commit treachery against him; and a man could have lain with her carnally, but it was hidden from the eyes of her husband, and she became secluded and could have been defiled — but there was no witness against her — and she had not been forced.”

Rabbi J.H. Hertz translates the same words, “If any man’s wife go aside, and act unfaithfully against him, and a man lie with her carnally, and it be hid from the eyes of her husband, she being defiled secretly, and there be no witness against her, neither she be taken in the act.”

The husband’s jealousy follows, and the Torah then says she may have or may have not actually committed the act.

In all cases, she is brought to the temple, and the procedure with the kohen and the special waters follows.

Clearly there is talk of her husband being suspicious. The Hebrew text (5:13) says “V’shakhav ish otah shikhvat zera, v’ne’elam me’einei ishaH.”

Where Rabbi Kaplan and ArtScroll translate “a man may have” and “a man could have,” Rabbi Hertz writes “and a man lie with her.” The question therefore goes beyond, ‘does her husband have real grounds to suspect, beyond his warning to her?’ The question is, “Did she or didn’t she? And is it only because her husband warned her that she goes through this process?”

Hertz’s translation is the most literally accurate. The Torah does seem to suggest at the outset that the woman is guilty, before it retracts and says she may have or she may have not committed the sinful offense against her husband. Could it be, then, that she might maintain a complete secret from her husband, and though personally guilty of adultery, nonetheless get away with it on the human level?

It would seem so.

In our Jewish community, we value and focus on the nuclear family, and are meant to do our utmost to preserve its sanctity. Some of our communities have a standard of conduct that prevents married men from becoming too “familiar” with married women, and vice versa. The Mishnah in Avot 1:5 (see part I and part II) even suggests a healthy distance, to avoid problems.

In explaining the custom that women would not work in the evenings of Sefirat Haomer (Shulchan Arukh 493:4), Shibbolei Haleket (Pesach laws 235) compares the Omer offering to the Sotah offering — both are a tenth of an eiphah of barley — and says because the Omer offering might cause us to think of a Sotah and thus arouse suspicion that our righteous women are unfaithful, it is to their continued honor and glory that they refrain from work during these evenings, because they are above suspicion.

May all of us, men and women, continue to live up to the category of “above suspicion” of the Shibbolei Haleket, as we model ideal family life for ourselves and for our children.