Rabbi Pinchas in the name of Rabbi Hoshaia said, "While the king sits at his table" (Song of Songs, 1:12), before the King, the King of Kings, the Holy One, blessed be He, sits at his table in heaven, He went first, as it is said (Ex. 19:16): "And it came to pass on the third day in the morning." This is like a king who decreed, "On a certain day I will enter the country," and the people of the country slept all night, and when the king came and found them sleeping, he made loud noises of trumpets and rams horns, and the minister of that state woke them up and brought them toward the king, and the king walked before them until they reached his palace, so, too, the Holy One, blessed be He, went first, "for on the third day the Lord will come down in the sight of all the people" (Ex. 19:11). The Israelites slept that whole night since the sleep on the night of the holiday is pleasant, and the night is short. As R. Yodan said, not even a tick bit them on that night, the Holy One, blessed be He, came and found them sleeping. He began to make loud noises, as it is written, (Ex. 19:16) "And it came to pass on the third day in the morning, that there were thunders and lightnings," and Moses awakened the Israelites and brought them toward the king, the King of Kings, the Holy One, and it is written there (Ex. 19:17): "And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God." And the Holy One, blessed be He, walked before them until He reached Mount Sinai, as it is written, (Ex. 19) "And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke." Rabbi Yitshak said, this is the complaint of Isaiah, as it is written (Is. 50): "Wherefore, when I came, was there no man? When I called, was there none to answer? Is my hand shortened at all, that it cannot redeem?"

(Shir Hashirim Raba, 1:2)

 

The Magid of Duvna was visiting the Gaon on the Holiday of Shavuot, and the Gaon recited a Tikkun for the night of Shavuot, and the Magid did not recite one. He just studied a single book. And the Gaon asked him why he hadn't recited the Tikkun, too. And he answered with a parable: There was a young yeshiva student, and a few years after his marriage his father-in-law asked him why he had not opened a business. He asked him: What commercial business should I engage in? And he told him to go to the market and look at what the other people were doing, and he should do the same. He went to the market and saw that people had hung various things in front of the shops, and this was their business. He also went and rented a shop, and outside of it he hung some objects, and inside the shop there was nothing at all. Customers came to the shop, and he had nothing to sell them, and his father-in-law came and asked him how his business was going. He told him he had done what the other stores did, but he had no income, and his father-in-law shouted at him and said: "You fool! What the other shopkeepers hang in front of their stores is just a sign to show that they have to sell inside the store, and it isn't enough for them." In the same way, every tikkun is just the beginning of a section and the end of it, and it is just a sign of the entire Torah. Since Your Honor the Gaon possesses the entire Torah, the signs are enough for you. But I am unable to make do with just the signs.

(Siah Sarfei Kodesh - Leshon Hasidim meHasidut Peshiskha, Kotsk, Gur, and Alexander, collected by Yoets Kayam Kadish).

 

The Secret of the Bread and the Revelation

Daniel Epstein

Dedicated to the memory of my mother,

Edith Barnard, Yakha Gittel bat Avraham Yitzhak z"l,

on her 20th yahrzeit, 25 Iyar, 5771.

If you ask someone, "What the first association that arises in your mind in response to the word 'Shavuot,'?" most likely he will say: "A rich dairy meal on the eve of the holiday." According to a certain custom, people also wander from lesson to lesson and try to find what they are looking for by deciphering the names of the teachers and their subjects on the posters that are put up everywhere; they attend prayer at the Western Wall at sunrise and maybe are left with a feeling of a missed opportunity, if they didn't achieve revelation. So the question arises: Where are we on Shavuot? Where is the body, and where is the soul, and why do people look forward to a meal, study, and prayer? For there cannot be revelation without the expectation that precedes it and makes it possible, just like the days of Counting the Omer and the days of restriction before the giving of the Torah.

In the Parasha of the holidays (Lev. 23) the Torah speaks about an entirely different event:

And you shall count unto you... even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall you number fifty days; and you shall offer a new meat offering unto the Lord. You shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves of two tenth deals: they shall be of fine flour; they shall be baked with leaven; they are the firstfruits unto the LORD. (Lev. 23: 14-17)

Surprisingly, the Torah does not go on to list the laws governing the following holiday, according to the annual calendar. Rather it presents a law connected with the work of harvesting:

And when you reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not make clean riddance of the corners of your field when you reap, neither shall you gather any gleaning of your harvest: you shall leave them unto the poor, and to the stranger: I am the LORD your God. (Lev. 23:22)

Here, in these verses, we find the both the simple and esoteric meaning of the holiday of Shavuot. Yes, I mean that "the simple and esoteric meaning" are not separable. They are intertwined like "two companions who cannot be parted."

The simple meaning of the holiday is the new bread that is brought to the Temple with the first fruits, as we heard in the beginning of Leviticus (2:11): "No meat offering, which you shall bring unto the LORD, shall be made with leaven: for you shall burn no leaven, nor any honey, in any offering of the LORD made by fire." The simple meaning refers to a deviation from the sacrificial service, the bringing of leavened bread to the Temple in contrast to the prohibition explicitly stated in a verse, and therein lies the secret of the bread and of the holiday.

The secret of the bread?

Is not bread, the basis of our sustenance, the simple meaning of life itself, since the expulsion from the Garden of Eden? Is bread not the simple meaning of our material life, which constantly reminds us of itself, with the hunger that strikes us at regular times, telling us with a shout that arises from our empty stomach: You, who are splendor of Creation, who glory in your mighty achievements, depend on your daily portion of bread! This is the eternal truth of materialism, the truth emphasized in the verse: "For man does not live by bread alone." Not by bread alone, but also not without it.

Is it possible that the secret of our existence, which is revealed in the holiday of revelation in the desert, is actually hidden in the basis of our material lives, in our connection with the earth and with working the soil, as if it were the concrete manifestation of the revelation itself? Perhaps we, who are nourished in our spirit, by the fruits of scientific rationalism, are mistaken in our understanding of "human material," and in our understanding of human needs, and that is why the revelation seems to distant from us?

This question must reverberate when we return to the chapter on the holidays in Leviticus 23.

It is interesting that in this chapter the sacrifices are called "bread," as in verse 21:6 from the beginning of the Parasha: "the bread of their God, they do offer: therefore they shall be holy." It is no less interesting to discover that at the end of the Parasha, after the laws concerning the holidays, the commandment to arrange the bread on the pure table in the Temple is mentioned. What is the place of this commandment here, after mention of bringing the bread before the Lord on Shavuot? Another hint is given to us in the Parasha of the one who curses: "And the son of an Israelite woman went out" (Lev. 24:10) Rashi asks: "From where did he go out?" And he answers: "Rabbi Berakhia says: he went out of the Parasha above it. He mocked and said: 'On the Sabbath day they will arrange it" (verse 8).' It is customary for a king to eat hot bread every day. Could the bread be cold for nine days?"

Bread appears at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the Parasha. The bread mentioned at the end is the shewbread. Why is the shewbread literally called "face bread" in Hebrew? Since when does bread have a face? Is the face not what characterizes people, recalling the image of God and the obligation to honor everyone who is created in the image of the Creator? Emanuel Lévinas bases his entire ethics on seeing a person's face as an invitation to go beyond the visible world to the infinite, the source of infinite obligation and responsibility. If so, what is "face bread"?

In New Talmudic Readings on Tractate Menahot 99b ("Beyond Verse") Lévinas quotes two interpretations of the shewbread, that of Rashi and that of Ibn Ezra.

According to Rashi, the bread placed on the table in the Temple was called "face bread" because "It had faces that looked in one direction and another, from one side of the Temple to the other." In other words: the bread faced those who entered the Temple, the human faces that drew near to God, while observing the pilgrimage commandment (Ex. 34:23): "Thrice in the year shall all your men children appear before the Lord GOD, the God of Israel." The bread greets the faces of those who seek the face of God. Ibn Ezra suggests a different interpretation: "According to the simple meaning, the 'face bread' is called that because of the interpretation that follows it." That is to say: the shewbread is always before My face. In Ibn Ezra's reading, the bread looks at the face above, the hidden face of God, "whose face cannot be seen." Are these really two different interpretations? Are the horizontal direction, which relates to people, and the vertical direction, which relates to the Creator, truly opposed to one another, or do they complement one another? Perhaps this is the secret of the bread, which is given to mankind by God, and which is offered by one person to another, as Jethro said to his daughters: "Call him so he will eat bread" (Ex. 2:20). This invitation to a stranger in the desert is what brought Jethro in under the wings of the Divine Presence, just like Boaz' invitation to Ruth, the foreign woman who had come from the fields of Moab, "Come here and eat of the bread," gave him a place in the genealogy of the messianic king.

The interpretations of Rashi and of Ibn Ezra are directed toward the same point: concern for human needs, and first of all for bread, is what brings us close to the Creator. It enables us to see the face that cannot be seen. The two directions, according to Lévinas, the horizontal and the vertical, complement each other. Only he who sees the face of a human being when he is in need, the face of the "stranger, the orphan, and the widow," is privileged to see the face of the Divine Presence.

Therefore, not only is there no contradiction between the holiday meal, nocturnal study in a large community, and reading the account of the Revelation, and, after it, reading the Book of Ruth, but in fact these are a symphony on a single theme. In the words of Rabbi Israel Salanter, which Lévinas liked to quote so much: the material needs of my fellow human being are my own spiritual needs.

Everything else, everything that one studies on the night of the holiday and throughout the year, is an interpretation of that simple, marvelous statement: Go and study, forever.

The day of the Revelation is the approach of face to face: "The LORD talked with you face to face in the mount out of the midst of the fire" (Deut. 5:4), and "you shall not see My face empty-handed." As the tragic story of the man who cursed teaches us, it is forbidden to be contemptuous of the shewbread, it is forbidden to be contemptuous of the miracle that is done every day with the marvelous bread that retained its freshness so as to make people's hearts happy and to satisfy human hunger.

"Great is the drinking," says Rabbi Yohanan in Tractate Sanhedrin 103b. Let us drink together, with the stranger, the orphan, and the widow, the life-giving drink of the holiday of Revelation.

Daniel Epstein is a rabbi and philosopher. He teaches at Matan, at Midreshet Lindenbaum, and in various groups throughout the country.

 

 

External and Inner Peace: Juxtaposition in Parashat Nasso.

It appears that this parasha was placed here in order to remove evil from the camp, which might lead to quarrel and altercation; [the purpose is to ensure] that man be wary of holding his fellow's property illegally, and he should not depend upon the weakness of the other, who has no redeemer.

...Therefore this parasha (Sotah) is adjacent to the preceding parasha, its purpose being to eliminate controversy and dispute from the home, and peace of the home precedes peace of the nation.

...And the Parasha of the Nazir is adjacent to that of the Sotah - the purpose of which was to remove conflict in the home. Its purpose is to pacify contention and loss from man himself, lest his physical desires lead him to sin...

After having mentioned that which will lead to the eradication of man's inner wars, and will remove quarrel and fights from the home and from the nation in general, the Torah, in this parasha, talks about the Priestly Benediction, which illuminates with wondrous light the matter of wholeness and true peace."

(From Ralbag's commentary, quoted by Prof. Nechama Leibowitz, in "Studies in the Book of Vayikra, pp. 45-46)

 

And he heard the voice speak to him

What is the meaning of And he heard the voice speak [midaber]to him? (It should be pointed out that this conjugation of the verb occurs only once again in Scripture, in Ezekiel's account of the Chariot). Here is what Rashi says about speak to him:

Midaber is the same as mitdaber - He heard the voice uttering itself - it was out of reverence for the Most High God that Scripture speaks thus: The Voice was speaking to itself, and Moses of himself heard it. (Silbermann trans.)

That is to say, the first to him, the voice midaber to him, refers to the speaker Himself, God. Moses heard God speaking to Himself, heard it within himself. This was not an acoustic event in which the sound reached Moses, but rather a process occurring in Moses' own consciousness, which, in Rashi's bold formulation, speaks to itself. He achieves acquaintance with that which is taking place within the Divinity. He captures the meaning and direction that is within God, and he hears it from within himself.

(From Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz z"l, He'arot le'OParshiyot HaShavua)

 

Reception of the Torah: Forced or Freely Taken?

And they stood beneath the mountain: R. Avdimi bar Hama bar Hasa said: This teaches us that the Holy One blessed be He held the mountain over them like a basin and told them, "If you accept the Torah, all is well, but if not here shall be your graves." R. Aha bar Yaakov said: This implies a great claim against [the validity of the acceptance of] the Torah. Rava said: Even so, the generation received it [again] in the days of Ahasuerus, for it is written, the Jews observed and accepted (Esther 9); they observed what they had already accepted.

(Shabbat 84a)

 

It is important to stress repeatedly that the religious decision does not result from events, but derives from man's judgment and decision. In this context it is proper that we return to the RaMBaM as he deals with an issue which is ostensibly a purely halakhic ruling, but which has deep ideological significance.

In The Responsa of the RaMBaM (ed. Freiman, Chap 30), the RaMBaM is asked regarding the wording of the conclusion of the blessings over the Torah... should it be "Blessed are you, O Lord, who gives the Torah" or perhaps "Who teaches Torah to His people Israel"? It should be mentioned that both phrases are found in our daily prayer book, in the "Blessings of Dawn", but the version "who gives Torah" is also the accepted benediction recited by one who is called up to the Torah.

RaMBaM responds and rules that the correct version is "who gives Torah"; he rejects "who teaches the Torah to his people Israel," emphasizing:

Inasmuch as the ending "who gives the Torah" is the essence of the benediction, for its substance is that He charged us with its reading.

It should be understood that for the RaMBaM, "its reading" means "its study", and this, too, is the meaning of its "being given." The Giver of Torah gave us the Torah so that it be studied. RaMBaM adds:

This is the substance of the benediction, to beseech assistance in its study, and whoever concludes with "He who teaches Torah" sins (variant reading errs"), because God does not teach us, He commanded us to study it and to teach it. This is based upon a primary principle of the Torah - that observance of the commandments is in our hands; we are not forced to perform them by God.

The importance of the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people lies not in what is described in the famous Aggadic embellishment: 'The Holy One, Blessed Be He, suspended over them a mountain as if it were a basin," but rather in Israel's accepting the Torah of their own accord, and this is not what happened at the Revelation at Sinai, which was acceptance by compulsion - which did not succeed.

This story represents a great devaluation of the significance of faith base it upon revelation and miracles and wonders, and they ignore the fact that there can be no true faith unless it comes from within man's self.

(Y. Leibowitz: Sheva Shanim shel Sihot al Parshiyot HaShavu'a, pp. 300-301)

 

 

 

 

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