And I will hide My face on that day, because of all the evil they have committed, when they turned to other deities. (Devarim 31:18)

 

The meaning of I will hide is that if they call Me I will not answer; it is metaphorically like someone who does not see and does not know what to do. And the doubling of the verb (haster astir) is a linguistic convention known to grammarians.

(Ibn Ezra ad loc)

 

And I will hide My face Once the Holy Rabbi Bunim of Peshischa - may his merit protect us - asked the Holy Rabbi from Lublin - may his merit protect us: Is it really true, as the Rabbi says, that if a person knows his self-worth and the accounting of his soul, that it is like the folk saying about calculating a bill of sale: "The calculation of the bill is already half of its payment." And he replied that, yes, it is a matter of common sense. Just as goods stored outside the country are acceptable if they bear the king's seal, so too, if one recognizes his own genuine worth, then the name of the King of the kings of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He, is called upon him. God's seal is truth and this renders the man acceptable, and understand this for it is deep. This is similar to that which is written in the book Keter Shem Tov (vol. 1 section 25, translated by Rabbi Yehoshua Starrett, http://www.baalshemtov.com/display3.php?type=kesser) in the name of the Holy Baal Shem Tov, may his merit protect us, and this is how it is stated: "When a person becomes aware of what deeply ails him, of the fact that he is spiritually ill - that his mind is constricted in katnut/immature consciousness - this very awareness softens his constriction, and this awareness itself is the healing of his illness. However, if one is unaware - referred to as hester/concealed consciousness (as the verse says, "I will conceal Myself" (Deuteronomy 31:18) - and does not realize that he is spiritually ill, then there is nothing that can heal his wounds)."

(Siah Sarfei Kodesh - Lashon Hasidim al Parashat Vayelekh)

 

For Life is for Love

Rami Pinchover

The conclusion of Moses' speeches and of the Torah - especially chapter 30 - contains two theological ideas which constitute the central theological axes of all biblical literature: Teshuva ["return" or "repentance"] and choice. These are also the axes upon which the months of Elul and Tishrei turn.

Free choice and teshuva are closely interconnected and are mutually interdependent. Teshuva cannot exist without free choice and free choice cannot achieve its potential without the possibility of teshuva. True freedom lays a heavy responsibility on man's shoulders, since he must choose his way at every moment, and his choices will determine his fate. Teshuva, however, grants him the right to occasionally err in his choices; if he errs, it is usually possible to correct the error through teshuva.

And thus, it is written: Behold, I have set before you today life and good, and death and evil, and later: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. You shall choose life, so that you and your offspring will live, and yet later: To love the Lord your God, to listen to His voice, and to cleave to Him. For that is your life (Devarim 30:15-20).

The parallel use of the words life and good signifies that the choice of the good is a choice for life! It may be demonstrated that in Scripture life refers to more than physical existence; it includes life's purpose and content, as well as the way of life.

People have wondered about the meaning of that wonderful phrase, choose life. Exegetes disagree regarding its interpretation: is it a command, a bit of advice, a direction, or the description of a psycho-philosophical situation? Rashi writes: "I instruct you to choose the portion of life." Saadia Gaon says: "I advise you to choose life." Rabbeinu Behayeiy says: "From here [we learn] that permission is granted to man and the choice is in his hands... for if not so, there would be no room for the Torah and reward and punishment would be made void." Kli Yakar states: "It comes to warn him not to try to do that which God deems good [merely] in order to live, but rather to live in order to do that which is good." RaMBaM writes: "The Creator does not coerce human beings or decree that they do good or evil. Rather, it is all given over to them [to choose]" (Hilkhot Teshuva 5:3). In a completely different vein, R. Yishmael offers a surprising and practical interpretation: "Choose life - that is a craft" (J. Kiddushin 1:7); learning a craft is choosing life, for it is the key to one's physical and spiritual existence as well as to one's personal gain and one's utility for humanity.

It is interesting that most of the commentators do not point out to us that the Torah alludes to a much more complex message by justifying the choice of life with life itself - You shall choose life, so that you and your offspring will live. What is this life that promises us life? Or as the NeTzIV MiVolozhin asks in his Ha'Amek Davar: "If he does not want life, how can you offer him the rationale that he must choose life in order to live?"

It would seem possible to interpret the verse as saying You shall choose life - i.e., choose the proper way for a person to live, so that you and your offspring will live - that is the reward for having made the correct choice. Saadia Gaon and Ibn Ezra, however, take note of the verses that follow: You shall choose life, so that you... will live... To love the Lord your God, to listen to His voice, and to cleave to Him. Both these sages claim that love - the love of God - is life's purpose. We have already learned that love of God consists of walking in His path, as the Sages put it: "Just as He is merciful and compassionate, so you too should be merciful and compassionate (Sifrei Devarim 49; Shabbat 133). That is to say that the choice of life is realized via the love of humanity which was created in God's image. (And take note: it does not say, "Just as He is jealous and vengeful, wrathful, etc. so too yourselves.") Malbim directs us to the verses: Who is the man who desires life, who loves days to see goodness? Guard your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceitfully. Shun evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it, thus hinting that the goal of life is to seek and pursue peace.

Ibn Ezra seems to have gone even farther by concluding his comments on these verses with a wonderful message: "The meaning is that life is for love" (Devarim 30:19). And as R. Akiva said (Sifra Kedoshim 2) - that is the great principle of the Torah and it contains within itself the entire Torah.

In his book, BePardes HaHassidut (pg. 114), Martin Buber describes the Hassidic understanding of the commandment, Love your neighbor as yourself, I am the Lord. He explains that, "Only he who learns to love men one by one reaches, in his relation to heaven, God as the God of all the world. He who does not love the world can only refer, in his relationship to God, to an equally solitary God or to the God of his own soul (translation by Nahum Glatzer).

My teacher and rabbi, Rabbi Prof. Moshe Greenberg (who died on Shavu'ot eve of 5770) wrote in his article "Erekh HaHayim Bamikra" ("The value of life in Scripture," from his book, HaHayyim Mahut Ve'erekh, starting on pg. 109) that according to Scripture, the point of our existence is, "partnership with the Creator of the world in the improvement of His creation. According to Scripture's understanding, creation has been left incomplete while man becomes adjusted to his place within it. All other creatures are imprinted with a set way of life; only man lacks an innate way of life, instead, he has been given the freedom to shape it through choice. The Creator left it to man to determine his own path, while showing him life's way and granting him the rationality needed to achieve it. This view of man makes him responsible for his own fate and for the success of the entire divine project. It sets before him the goal of participating in the Creator's intention, granting his life meaning, challenge, and hope - the three spices which make life worthwhile."

Later Greenberg writes: "In Scripture, the value of life is based upon its being part of God above, a divine splinter/spark embedded in a living creature."

In the early 1930s Einstein wrote similar words when describing his world-view: "How strange is our situation, we mortals! Each of us is here for a short visit, not knowing the reason why, yet sometimes seeming to feel it. In our daily lives and without deeper thought, man knows: he is here for the sake of other human beings, first of all for those people upon whose happiness and wellbeing his own happiness depends, and beyond them also for the sakes of the many strangers with whose fate he is connected through binds of sympathy. I think countless times each day how my life - inner and outer - is based on the work of others, people living and dead, and how therefore I must struggle to give as much as I have received and continue to receive."

Einstein continues: "I do not believe at all in free will in the philosophical sense. Everyone acts not only due to outer pressures but also according to inner needs. Schopenhauer's words: "Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills," [Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz dealt at length with the question of free will in his discussion of this parasha, and he cites the opinions of RaMBaM (see above) and Kant, who believe in human free will while Hasdai Crescas, Spinoza, and Schopenhauer reject it, see his Sheva Shanim shel Sihot al Parashat HaShavua beginning on pg. 910] accompany me since my youth. They were always consoling and served as an ever-dependable source of patience as I witnessed the difficulties of life and experienced them... The question of my life's purpose. What, more generally, is the purpose of the existence of all creatures? Objectively speaking, this always seemed to me a pointless question... the ideals that lit my way and filled me again and again with courage and joie de vivre have been goodness, beauty, and truth." These words seem naïve in light of the horrors inflicted by mortal men upon each other a few years after they were written, but I am certain that even after those years of evil Einstein would have repeated himself and combined the ideals of "goodness, beauty, and truth" with Greenberg's "meaning, challenge, and hope - the three spices which make life worthwhile."

The Sages also dealt (a bit) with the question of life and its essence. It is proper in these days of teshuva to cite the famous disagreement about life and its point: "Our Rabbi taught: The House of Shammai and the House of Hillel disagreed with each other for two and a half years. These said, "It would be better for a person not to have been created than to have been created," while those said, "It is better for a person to have been created than not to have been created." They finally voted and decided that it would be better for a person not to be created than to be created, but now that he has been created, let him investigate his past deeds, and some say: "Let him reconsider his present deeds" (Eruvin 13b).

It seems possible to link all these ideas together to achieve a creative and succinct interpretation of the words choose life. To choose life is to choose the Creator's living creations which surround us. The command to choose obligates us to sanctify - in every way we have mentioned - the lives of "all that which has the breath of living spirit in its nostrils" and not to sanctify death or the non-living.

It seems that the various words of Torah and of the wise we have cited prove Prof. Greenberg's highly meaningful words, which he personified in his life both as a great bible scholar and as a teacher of God's word to generations of students: "The biblical message is still surprisingly appropriate to the self-understanding and yearnings of contemporary people."

May these words serve as a memorial candle to the blessed memory of Prof. Moshe Greenberg.

Rami Pinchover is an engineer

 

Alexander of Macedon put ten questions to the elders of the south country.... He said to them: What shall a man do to live? They replied: Let him mortify himself. What should a man do to kill himself? They replied: Let him keep himself alive.

(Tamid 31b, Soncino translation)

 

He said to them: What shall a man do to live, etc. Rashi interprets this as having to do with pride and humility; the Arukh wrote similar things in his entry on hai. It seems better to me to explain it plainly: "What shall a man do to live? They replied: Let him mortify himself" - that he should keep himself from the pleasures of this world in order that he live in the world to come, as it is said if a man dies in a tent. "What should a man do to kill himself? They replied: Let him keep himself alive" - in this world with pleasures and he will die in the world to come.

(MaHaRaShA ad loc)

 

Sulfur and salt have burned up its entire land! It cannot be sown, nor can it grow [anything], not [even] any grass will sprout upon it. It is like the overturning of Sodom, Gemorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord overturned in His fury and in His rage.

(Devarim 29:22)

 

R. Yehudah son of R. Ila'i said: The Land of Israel burned for seven years with sulfur and fire, for it is said: Sulfur and salt have burned up its entire land! In those seven years, God has already collected [the debt of punishment] from Jeroboam ben Nevat and his companions, so that even Jeroboam ben Nevat and his companions will live in the Messianic Age. What saved them from the punishment of Gehinom? Burial in the Land of Israel, for it is said: and His land shall atone for His people.

(Yalkut Shimoni Tehillim 847)

 

...the main point is in accordance with RaShBA's interpretation of the verse, that if the blessed Lord gave [them] the land in order that they uphold His covenant then, if they transgress it the gift is void. Since the covenant is void, so is the gift of the land. That is [what they meant when] they said that when He took them out of Egypt, he established a covenant with them but they could claim they had been forced ("He held the mountain over them like a basin") and so the gift is void. That is why He poured His wrath and anger upon the land alone - unlike the case of Sodom and Gomorrah where the land's inhabitants were destroyed. Rather, He sent them to another land so that they would wander and sojourn in strange lands to this very day; that He had taken them out of Egypt and did not destroy them. Therefore, when they repent in all the nations, etc. (Devarim 30:1) as when they accepted [the Torah] in the days of Ahasuerus, then He will return and collect them from all the peoples (30:3) when it [their acceptance of the Torah] will be with all your heart (30:2) - without any duress.

(R. Meir Simha MiDvinsk, Meshekh Hokhma 29:23-24)

 

Midrashei Tzafon - From the pen of our member, Ronen Ahituv

Perhaps there is among you a man, woman, family, or tribe, whose heart strays this day... And the Lord will separate him for evil, out of all the tribes of Israel... Sulfur and salt have burned up its entire land!... And all the nations will say, Why did the Lord do so to this land? What [is the reason] for this great rage of fury?

(29:17-23)

Could it be that a single man or woman sins and the entire land is smitten? Rather, the verse teaches us: will separate him, and it is said the soul that sins shall be the one to die (Ezekiel 18:20). For there is no joint accountability for deliberate sins and we are not responsible for cheaters. And it only says have burned up its entire land when all of Israel sins. And the Sages said "All Israelites are accountable for each other" (Sanhedrin 27b) only when they are capable of opposition and forcing their wills on others.

The drasha is based upon the transition from the singular in the beginning of the passage to the plural in its conclusion. It sets limits to mutual accountability and relieves us of impracticable responsibility for the deeds of others. The expression "we are not responsible for cheaters" is taken from the Mishnah Demai 3:5, and its meaning is that that we are not responsible to force someone to observe a halakha if he has consciously exempted himself from it. The Talmud in Sanhedrin also explicitly states that we are accountable only when we have means to oppose such sins. Despite the Sages' explicit statements, various elements protest - without any halakhic basis - against the desecration of the Sabbath and other violations.

 

 

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