Parshat Tzav
by Rabbi Avi Billet
The tragic story of a fire in Brooklyn coming on the ten year anniversary of a similar story in Teaneck has left the greater Jewish community reeling. We mourn with these families, and wish for a recovery for those still in medical care.
Having seen and experienced devastating loss, the only thing I know to be experientially true is that love and the passage of time are the most important ingredients to being able to continue with life and to find happiness once again – if that becomes a goal in life. Having faith in God is also helpful, because it can help a person find a sense of purpose in living beyond tragedy.
Towards the beginning of its commentary on our parsha, the Midrash Rabba aims to explain how those who suffer through devastating ordeals can get closer to God, utilizing the experience of King David, who said in Tehillim (Psalms 51:19): “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; O God, You will not despise a broken and crushed heart.”
How true this statement is, and how true do we hope for it to always be.
Of course, the Midrash does not raise this sentence in a vacuum. The parsha does focus heavily on sacrifices. And the Midrash paints King David’s statement as one of hope for how he could get closer to God despite having suffered terrible calamities.
One utilization of the verse asserts King David’s Teshuva (repentance) process, in the aftermath of the Batsheva incident of Samuel II 12 as, “God, I have overcome my evil inclination, and I have repented before You. If You accept my repentance, I know that my son Shlomo will build the Beit Hamikdash, and build the Mizbeach, and burn the sacrifices on it.” This is how “a broken spirit” can turn into the fulfillment of “the sacrifices of God,” when the dream of what future generations can hopefully accomplish can be articulated and hopefully actualized.
Another view utilizes the same verse as the answer to a question – not about King David and his son Shlomo, but about any person looking to find God: How do we know that a person who repents is given the credit for having gone up to Jerusalem, having built the Temple, having built the Mizbeach, and for sacrificing all of the offerings? Because this is how “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit.” The broken heart that accompanies repentance can bring about the highest level of serving God.
But closeness to God is not only achieved through repentance, as is demonstrated through the concluding teaching of the Midrash, in the name of Rabbi Alexandri. If a human being is served with broken vessels, it is assumed to be an insult. But God is the opposite – He knows that the most powerful and the most poignant service comes from the brokenhearted. “The Lord is near to the broken-hearted, and He saves those of crushed spirit.” (Tehillim 34:19) God is the One “Who heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” (Tehillim 147:3). The prophet Isaiah (57:15) quotes God Himself, who said, “With the lofty and the holy ones I dwell, and with the crushed and humble in spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the crushed…”
What, therefore, is the meaning of “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit?” That through a broken heart one has the ability to come closest to God.
The broken heart can be demonstrated in one of two ways. Either a person sins and breaks one’s heart through repentance. Or tragedy breaks one’s heart, and the person turns to God through serving him.
When a nation can collectively have a broken heart, this Midrash is suggesting that we are experiencing the closest chance we have to seek out God’s presence, and to feel His comforting hand. When King David wrote Tehillim 51 in the aftermath of the Batsheva tale, he had two experiences which weighed heavily on his conscience.
The first was that his conduct in that story was sinful and he needed to return to God. His deed was public, his exhortation from the prophet was spelled out to him, and he was also made aware through prophesy of what was expected of him.
The second was that he had suffered the ultimate loss of several of his children – the first child born from his union with Batsheva (Shlomo was the 2nd child of that union), the deaths of his sons Avshalom and Amnon in his lifetime, as well as his daughter Tamar’s defilement at the hands of her half-brother Amnon. (Adoniyahu, another son, was killed shortly after King David’s death.)
In our local story, there is no sin. There is no prophet. And there are no answers. There is only tragedy, suffering, and loss, for a family and for a community.
There is no healing from losses of this kind. There is always an emptiness in the lives of surviving family members, as well as in the greater community.
Hopefully, with the outpouring of love and with time, everyone will be able to find some kind of comfort from the ultimate Comforter because He will see that what brings us closest to Him is the broken heart.
Showing posts with label tzav. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tzav. Show all posts
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Karet: Guilty/Innocent or by Choice?
Parshat Tzav (and pre-Pesach)
by Rabbi Avi Billet
Whenever I come across the word "v'nikhr'ta" (and he/she/they will be cut off from the Jewish people) in the Torah, I marvel over where such a notion stands in the 21st century world that defines how we live. While once upon a time people really cared about what the Torah says, I find more and more that people care about what others think of what they do.
The concept of "karet" can be simply summarized in this manner: there are two positive commandments in Torah that are so important that people who opt of them are considered to have opted out of the entire religion. They are bris milah (circumcision) and the korban pesach (the Paschal Lamb).
Along similar lines, there are negative commandments so important that should one violate them, one is also "opting out of Judaism." [I do recognize that "opting out" is not the same as "being cut off spiritually from one's people" (the literal meaning of the term). But I do think the "opt out" is a little more appealing than the excision.]
Karet is a punishment placed, like a price on one's head, in theory. God tries you and convicts you, and He'll get you in the way He feels is right, in the proper way and in the right time.
In Vayikra 7:20-21, the Torah presents some of the rules related to how individuals would go about eating the peace offerings they had brought. "But if any person eats the flesh of a peace sacrifice to God while still in a state of spiritual impurity, his soul will be cut off from his people. Any person who comes in contact with human (spiritual) impurity, or with an impure mammal or other impure creature, and then eats the flesh of a peace offering to God, shall have his soul cut off from his people."
The concepts of spiritual impurity and purity (tumah and taharah) are largely monitored by each individual. I know when I am tameh because I know where I have been and what I have done. You know when you are tameh for your own reasons. This status is something others "might" be aware of, but it does not have to be something which becomes public knowledge. Obviously nothing is beyond God, so as He is the one who imposes the "karet," He is the one keeping tabs on our personal status.
I wonder if a person would really push the envelope. Knowing of one's own "tumah status," was there a person who said, "I don't care about karet. I want to partake of the meat of the peace offering?" Could such a decision transpire and be acted upon?
In these days when people are preparing for the holiday of Pesach (Passover), I marvel over how many people pay so much attention to the karet concerns of this holiday. Shmot 12:15,19 speaks of how those who eat Chametz during the holiday will get karet – they are opting out of being a part of this people. People who ignore the karet warning about Shabbos (Shmot 31:14) sometimes are more strict about "doing Passover right" than those who observe the Shabbos on a weekly basis.
In the final analysis, each person will decide what they want to focus on, and what they want to ignore – this is, after all,
Maybe there is something to the karet warning. Maybe there is not. The idealist in me says people on the fringes are concerned about it, but the realist in me is a little more skeptical because I honestly don't think people who are less observant scrutinize the Torah all that much, or at least not to the finest details.
At the same time, I wonder even about the more observant. For example, people take a lot more stringencies on themselves than necessary during this holiday (particularly with regard to what is permitted and forbidden to be eaten), more as a result of blindly following instructions that are meant to "avoid problems" than they are meant to educate.
Rabbi Moshe Feinstein clearly states in Orach Chaim III:63 that peanuts should not be prohibited on Pesach. But if people have accepted not to eat them, then that should be followed. Jewish Action (OU's magazine) featured an article (Spring 2010) about "kitniyos" entitled "Curious About Kitniyot?" in which the authors recycled Rabbi Feinstein's ruling, concluding that "Today, in deference to those who accept peanuts as kitniyot, one is unlikely to find a certified kosher-for-Pesach peanut product."
Rabbi Feinstein's analysis is fascinating and a real education.
Like those who may or may not have eaten the peace offering in a state of spiritual impurity (though in that case at the risk of karet), I wonder how many people will consider Rabbi Feinstein's ruling and enjoy the PB&J Matzah sandwich – where a guilty conscience (at most), and certainly not karet, is all that's at stake.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Moral Values - The Torah Way
Parshat Tzav
In the first chapter of our parsha, Moshe is told to (6:18) "Relate the following message to Aaron and his descendants: This is the law of the sin offering: The sin offering (korban chatat) must be slaughtered before God in the same place that the burnt offering (korban olah) is slaughtered. It is holy of holies."
The term "holy of holies" often refers to the partitioned area where the Ark of the Covenant lay. On the other hand, many pieces of the sacrificial puzzle are also referred to as "holy of holies" – Kodesh Kodashim. The most common use beyond the room housing the Ark is the Mizbeach, the altar upon which animal offerings (korbanot) were to be burned, which is often defined as being the holiest of places. Beyond that, different foodstuffs that the kohanim are instructed to eat, and not to leave over, are also considered to be "kodesh kodashim."
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch explains this verse in a way which, perhaps unknowingly, is quite profound.
"The burnt offering is occasioned by the failure to actualize moral aims. The sin offering is occasioned by the lack of adherence to moral values. And the source of the problem in both instances is the heightened influence of material and of the senses. Only self-sacrifice in the material and sensual side of life leads to adherence to moral values, as it also leads to ascent and advancement. It is Holy of Holies because the basis of the sin offering, like that of the burnt offering, is the consecration of actions, and what underlies this consecration is the sanctification of the material and the sensual."
The sin stems from a lack of adherence to moral values. The problem stems from the influence of the material and the senses. I think I begin to understand.
This week has been tremendously devastating for me. I am sure it is true for many of us as well.
A few too many korban olahs were brought in Israel this past shabbos. I am beginning to think that this is bothering me more than a suicide bomb of a bus or a pizza store, even though that method typically results in more killed, and many more maimed for life. The goal in that case is wanton destruction, with no real aim in mind, which makes it less real, more distant. At the same time, there is nothing new in many members of one family dying together in one attack.
I think that here, it was mostly the method which got to all of us. In the "comfort" of their own home, while they were resting or sleeping, where they had no opportunity to even attempt to be vigilant because the cowards came in after bedtime, stabbed and slit throats of parents, children and baby.
Hirsch said it exactly right – there is a lack of adherence to moral values. The monster(s) who perpetrated the crime are the lowest form of life on this earth. The political pundits who say "we condemn such murders, but they are because of the occupation" don't rank that much higher on the totem pole. Such justifications, in Hirsch's words "must stem from the influence of the material and their morally corrupt senses." In actuality, such thoughts make NO sense (aside from being morally corrupt).
What will make this right? Nothing will bring back the lost members of the Fogel family. Not even the capture of their killer, whoever he or they may be.
Taking a homiletical leap off of the Torah's written page, might I suggest that the next step is to (find and) slaughter the sin offering at the same spot where the burnt offering took place? No, in this case it will not make anything "Holy of Holies," most certainly not the sin offering.
In Hirsch's words, the offerings achieve "the consecration of actions, and what underlies this consecration is the sanctification of the material and the sensual." On a simple level, actions speak louder than words. And Israel needs to achieve a better understanding of moral clarity, and needs to take action that will send a message loud and clear that Israel will not accept "korban olahs" any more, unless the Arabs are willing to become the "Korban Chatat" who is killed at the same spot, to have everything come full circle. I speak not of suicide bombers, who take their own lives, but of capital punishment for heinous crimes against humanity and the Jewish people.
If Samir Kuntar can get life in prison without parole, and is now living free as you and me, and if Abdelbaset al-Megrahi (Pan Am 103), who also had a life sentence, is now alive and well in Libya*, there is something very wrong with the legal system that allows people who should never have a free breath on earth to once again enjoy freedom. They and their ilk should perish from the earth.
In these days before Purim, as we recall the efforts of Haman to wipe out "All the Jews, young and old, children and women" (Esther 3:13), we must recall how the evil people of his time met their respective ends. Haman met his end four days after his decree was written, at the end of a rope that was displayed high for all to see.
His sons and cohorts met their ends on the 13th of Adar 11 months later, when those with moral clarity and an understanding that you can't just kill Jews because they're Jews and expect to get away with it stood up to fight and kill (no drawn out trial, no justification for their hate necessary) the filled-with-hate enemies.
May we merit to see moral clarity enter the eyes, minds and hearts of the morally blind. And may the crimes of these hateful terrorists be viewed by Israel as crimes against the Jewish people, with an end no different than the one meted out to the only prisoner who ever found himself at the short end of an Israeli noose. His name was Adolf Eichmann.
* Abdelbaset al-Megrahi died 5/20/2012 - more than a year after this was written
In the first chapter of our parsha, Moshe is told to (6:18) "Relate the following message to Aaron and his descendants: This is the law of the sin offering: The sin offering (korban chatat) must be slaughtered before God in the same place that the burnt offering (korban olah) is slaughtered. It is holy of holies."
The term "holy of holies" often refers to the partitioned area where the Ark of the Covenant lay. On the other hand, many pieces of the sacrificial puzzle are also referred to as "holy of holies" – Kodesh Kodashim. The most common use beyond the room housing the Ark is the Mizbeach, the altar upon which animal offerings (korbanot) were to be burned, which is often defined as being the holiest of places. Beyond that, different foodstuffs that the kohanim are instructed to eat, and not to leave over, are also considered to be "kodesh kodashim."
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch explains this verse in a way which, perhaps unknowingly, is quite profound.
"The burnt offering is occasioned by the failure to actualize moral aims. The sin offering is occasioned by the lack of adherence to moral values. And the source of the problem in both instances is the heightened influence of material and of the senses. Only self-sacrifice in the material and sensual side of life leads to adherence to moral values, as it also leads to ascent and advancement. It is Holy of Holies because the basis of the sin offering, like that of the burnt offering, is the consecration of actions, and what underlies this consecration is the sanctification of the material and the sensual."
The sin stems from a lack of adherence to moral values. The problem stems from the influence of the material and the senses. I think I begin to understand.
This week has been tremendously devastating for me. I am sure it is true for many of us as well.
A few too many korban olahs were brought in Israel this past shabbos. I am beginning to think that this is bothering me more than a suicide bomb of a bus or a pizza store, even though that method typically results in more killed, and many more maimed for life. The goal in that case is wanton destruction, with no real aim in mind, which makes it less real, more distant. At the same time, there is nothing new in many members of one family dying together in one attack.
I think that here, it was mostly the method which got to all of us. In the "comfort" of their own home, while they were resting or sleeping, where they had no opportunity to even attempt to be vigilant because the cowards came in after bedtime, stabbed and slit throats of parents, children and baby.
Hirsch said it exactly right – there is a lack of adherence to moral values. The monster(s) who perpetrated the crime are the lowest form of life on this earth. The political pundits who say "we condemn such murders, but they are because of the occupation" don't rank that much higher on the totem pole. Such justifications, in Hirsch's words "must stem from the influence of the material and their morally corrupt senses." In actuality, such thoughts make NO sense (aside from being morally corrupt).
What will make this right? Nothing will bring back the lost members of the Fogel family. Not even the capture of their killer, whoever he or they may be.
Taking a homiletical leap off of the Torah's written page, might I suggest that the next step is to (find and) slaughter the sin offering at the same spot where the burnt offering took place? No, in this case it will not make anything "Holy of Holies," most certainly not the sin offering.
In Hirsch's words, the offerings achieve "the consecration of actions, and what underlies this consecration is the sanctification of the material and the sensual." On a simple level, actions speak louder than words. And Israel needs to achieve a better understanding of moral clarity, and needs to take action that will send a message loud and clear that Israel will not accept "korban olahs" any more, unless the Arabs are willing to become the "Korban Chatat" who is killed at the same spot, to have everything come full circle. I speak not of suicide bombers, who take their own lives, but of capital punishment for heinous crimes against humanity and the Jewish people.
If Samir Kuntar can get life in prison without parole, and is now living free as you and me, and if Abdelbaset al-Megrahi (Pan Am 103), who also had a life sentence, is now alive and well in Libya*, there is something very wrong with the legal system that allows people who should never have a free breath on earth to once again enjoy freedom. They and their ilk should perish from the earth.
In these days before Purim, as we recall the efforts of Haman to wipe out "All the Jews, young and old, children and women" (Esther 3:13), we must recall how the evil people of his time met their respective ends. Haman met his end four days after his decree was written, at the end of a rope that was displayed high for all to see.
His sons and cohorts met their ends on the 13th of Adar 11 months later, when those with moral clarity and an understanding that you can't just kill Jews because they're Jews and expect to get away with it stood up to fight and kill (no drawn out trial, no justification for their hate necessary) the filled-with-hate enemies.
May we merit to see moral clarity enter the eyes, minds and hearts of the morally blind. And may the crimes of these hateful terrorists be viewed by Israel as crimes against the Jewish people, with an end no different than the one meted out to the only prisoner who ever found himself at the short end of an Israeli noose. His name was Adolf Eichmann.
* Abdelbaset al-Megrahi died 5/20/2012 - more than a year after this was written
Friday, March 26, 2010
Chametz: The Bread of Freedom
This article appears in the Jewish Star
Parshat Tzav and Pesach
A child looks at the holiday table that always has a plump centerpiece with an ornate cover. The cover is lifted to reveal… three matzos. Bummer. Where is the bread?
The first of the four rhetorical statements in the Mah Nishtanah is, “Tonight we eat only matzo.” One can argue this observation is not motivated simply due to the innocent questions of a child. Rather, there is a real contradiction in that on the evening when we are supposed to be celebrating freedom, we are only eating poor man’s bread. (I think matzo is called poor man’s bread because once you’ve bought matzo made under the strictest conditions, you become a poor man who can’t afford bread anyway.)
Interestingly, there is only one korban (offering) in this week’s parsha that includes a series of breads. Usually the bread used for a korban is matzo. But in chapter 7, we find that the Korban Todah — the thanksgiving offering — includes real bread along with the matzo.
What is the significance of including bread in the offering?
According to Rashi, the reasons one would bring a Korban Todah are the same reasons one should nowadays say Birkat Hagomel (the blessing recited over personal miracles): being saved from the sea, crossing the desert, imprisonment, or a major health decline — all of these are alluded to in Psalms 107.
[A brief aside: Should one recite the blessing when traveling by plane across an ocean? The literalists argue: If you cross the ocean you say the blessing. The realists say the difficult part of the journey is trying to sleep while seated upright in a 1.5 cubic foot area. A plane crash is highly unlikely and physical needs are otherwise met. Surviving a car crash is a bigger personal miracle than stepping off an El-Al flight at Ben Gurion airport — especially if you travel business or first class.]
Following Rashi’s interpretation, it would be appropriate to bring the Korban Todah for events which would cause one to sponsor a Seudat Hoda’ah — (a meal of thanksgiving) for real moments when G-d deliberately intervened to save you.
At such a moment, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch explains, “[Chametz] represents man in control of all that is his, with nothing to impede him. He was delivered from some difficulty that had inhibited his step. He emerged from dire straits and attained broad independence. This full independence… has no means of expression more fitting than ten chametz loaves… [Ten] is the quantitative expression of qualitative perfection.”
This is a beautiful concept. But Rabbi Hirsch is well aware that the 10 bread loaves are accompanied by thirty matzos. That is a ratio of three to one, matzo to chametz, an offering the individual is comfortable with, says Hirsch, due to how he understands and perceives his state of well-being.
“What appears as chametz from the standpoint of his position in the world appears to him as ‘matzo’ when he stands before G-d… only by G-d’s grace does he regain chametz — independence. Thus, as he regains worldly independence, his sense of dependence on G-d is renewed and he commits himself anew to dedicate his whole life and all his independent powers to the service of G-d. He brings matzo in the same measures in which he brings chametz, and only this law of matzo opposite chametz makes his offering a todah.” (The thirty matzos had the same amount of flour as the ten loaves of bread according to the list of ingredients from Parshat Emor and Korach and the Talmud Menachot 77-78).
Perhaps the first statement in Mah Nishtana is really a question. “We have all the trimmings of a Seudat Hoda’ah. We should really have matzo and bread. Why only matzo?”
And the answer is that we are celebrating a kind of freedom and independence that is not about our physical survival. “Had G-d not taken us out, we’d still be slaves,” we declare in the Haggadah. But we would have survived!
Chametz and matzo are brought together when we celebrate what might have otherwise been our death. But when we celebrate our complete dependence on G-d on the evening of the exodus from slavery, we are not yet at a point when chametz and matzo can be rejoined. Therefore only matzo has a role in the holiday, until complete independence is established at the splitting of the sea on the last day of the holiday. Only then can chametz be reintroduced to our diets, when we are completely free once the holiday comes to an end.
Parshat Tzav and Pesach
A child looks at the holiday table that always has a plump centerpiece with an ornate cover. The cover is lifted to reveal… three matzos. Bummer. Where is the bread?
The first of the four rhetorical statements in the Mah Nishtanah is, “Tonight we eat only matzo.” One can argue this observation is not motivated simply due to the innocent questions of a child. Rather, there is a real contradiction in that on the evening when we are supposed to be celebrating freedom, we are only eating poor man’s bread. (I think matzo is called poor man’s bread because once you’ve bought matzo made under the strictest conditions, you become a poor man who can’t afford bread anyway.)
Interestingly, there is only one korban (offering) in this week’s parsha that includes a series of breads. Usually the bread used for a korban is matzo. But in chapter 7, we find that the Korban Todah — the thanksgiving offering — includes real bread along with the matzo.
What is the significance of including bread in the offering?
According to Rashi, the reasons one would bring a Korban Todah are the same reasons one should nowadays say Birkat Hagomel (the blessing recited over personal miracles): being saved from the sea, crossing the desert, imprisonment, or a major health decline — all of these are alluded to in Psalms 107.
[A brief aside: Should one recite the blessing when traveling by plane across an ocean? The literalists argue: If you cross the ocean you say the blessing. The realists say the difficult part of the journey is trying to sleep while seated upright in a 1.5 cubic foot area. A plane crash is highly unlikely and physical needs are otherwise met. Surviving a car crash is a bigger personal miracle than stepping off an El-Al flight at Ben Gurion airport — especially if you travel business or first class.]
Following Rashi’s interpretation, it would be appropriate to bring the Korban Todah for events which would cause one to sponsor a Seudat Hoda’ah — (a meal of thanksgiving) for real moments when G-d deliberately intervened to save you.
At such a moment, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch explains, “[Chametz] represents man in control of all that is his, with nothing to impede him. He was delivered from some difficulty that had inhibited his step. He emerged from dire straits and attained broad independence. This full independence… has no means of expression more fitting than ten chametz loaves… [Ten] is the quantitative expression of qualitative perfection.”
This is a beautiful concept. But Rabbi Hirsch is well aware that the 10 bread loaves are accompanied by thirty matzos. That is a ratio of three to one, matzo to chametz, an offering the individual is comfortable with, says Hirsch, due to how he understands and perceives his state of well-being.
“What appears as chametz from the standpoint of his position in the world appears to him as ‘matzo’ when he stands before G-d… only by G-d’s grace does he regain chametz — independence. Thus, as he regains worldly independence, his sense of dependence on G-d is renewed and he commits himself anew to dedicate his whole life and all his independent powers to the service of G-d. He brings matzo in the same measures in which he brings chametz, and only this law of matzo opposite chametz makes his offering a todah.” (The thirty matzos had the same amount of flour as the ten loaves of bread according to the list of ingredients from Parshat Emor and Korach and the Talmud Menachot 77-78).
Perhaps the first statement in Mah Nishtana is really a question. “We have all the trimmings of a Seudat Hoda’ah. We should really have matzo and bread. Why only matzo?”
And the answer is that we are celebrating a kind of freedom and independence that is not about our physical survival. “Had G-d not taken us out, we’d still be slaves,” we declare in the Haggadah. But we would have survived!
Chametz and matzo are brought together when we celebrate what might have otherwise been our death. But when we celebrate our complete dependence on G-d on the evening of the exodus from slavery, we are not yet at a point when chametz and matzo can be rejoined. Therefore only matzo has a role in the holiday, until complete independence is established at the splitting of the sea on the last day of the holiday. Only then can chametz be reintroduced to our diets, when we are completely free once the holiday comes to an end.
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