Torat Moishe - Moishe's Torah

Shabbat Nitzavim-Vayelech
D’varim 29:9 – 31:30
25 Elul 5770 / Sept. 3 – 4, 2010

Standing Together
By: Dani Mor from MH Vienna

This week's Torah reading begins, “Atem nitzavim (You are standing here today).”
The commentaries explain that Nitzavim in Hebrew means "standing firm." This comes to teach us that our standing firm is conditional upon it being all of us standing together. Each one of us, from the highest to the lowest, has our part to play and our own potential to fulfill.

The Talmud's Ethics of the Fathers tells us, "Who is rich? He who is happy with his lot." Rather than worrying about why we are not standing in somebody else's shoes, our task is to fulfill our potential at the level we are at, in the situation where we are now, knowing that even if it may seem insignificant, each of us contributes on our own level and in our own way to the greater picture.

The story was told of Rabbi Aryeh Levin (known as "The Tzaddik from Jerusalem') who said to a doctor, "My wife’s leg is hurting us." This idea applies to all of us, as a community. When one person suffers, another feels the pain, even at a distance. When an event takes place in a distant country, this affects us as much as if it were to happen next door.

There is no "us and them." Anything which undermines decency and the sanctity of human life, the very fabric of our community, has an effect on all of us, whether we are directly involved or not. Each person needs to be intact, in order for us to achieve our communal potential.

Parshat Ki Tavo
Dvarim 26:1 – 29:8
18 Elul 5770 / August 28^th, 2010

First Fruits
Parsha Ki Tavo opens with God continuing his instructions of what the Israelites should do when they enter the Promised Land:

“And it will be, when you come into the land which the Lord, your God, gives you for an inheritance, and you possess it and settle in it, that you shall take of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you will bring from your land, which the Lord, your God, is giving you. And you shall put [them] into a basket and go to the place which the Lord, your God, will choose to have His Name dwell there. And you shall come to the Kohen who will be [serving] in those days, and say to him, "I declare this day to the Lord, your God, that I have come to the land which the Lord swore to our forefathers to give us."

For years, the Israelites had been longing to enter the land of Israel, a land that had been promised to them. However, even though the land is spoken of as if it is inextricably theirs – promised to them by God – the first fruits of its yield are not to be enjoyed by the Israelites. Rather, they are to be brought to the temple and made as a sacrifice for God.

The thought of not reaping the first benefits of a new possession, inheritance, or action – but rather setting them aside as an offering to God – is a lesson that need not be relegated to a distant moment in Jewish history when our people first entered the land of Israel. Each day we are given gifts, we acquire possessions, we have new experiences. While they may be small in relationship to the entrance of a people into their homeland, each of these moments can, too, be an opportunity to acknowledge that what may seem ours by birthright or acquisition is actually a part of a broader creation, of which we are only temporary stewards.

The act of bringing the first fruits from a new land to the Temple was a way of sanctifying the land. Judaism provides us a vehicle for continuing to transform the mundane to the holy, if only we maintain the intentionality to acknowledge that there is Godliness in everything.

Benjamin Bechtolsheim, Moishe House Silver Spring

Parshat Ki Teizei
11 Elul 5770 / August 13 – 14, 2010
Dvarim 22:5 – 25:19

In this week’s parsha I would like to consider why two scenarios are presented next to each other. The verse from Parshat Ki Teitzei are pasted below from Chapter 22. The first case is a prohibition about cross dressing and the second is an obscure law about sending a mother bird away before taking the young birds or eggs. The later mitzvah is known as Shiluach HaKen (שלוח הקן) Sending from the Nest.

5 A woman shall not wear that which pertains unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment; for whosoever does these things is an abomination unto the LORD thy God. {P}

ה לֹא-יִהְיֶה כְלִי-גֶבֶר עַל-אִשָּׁה, וְלֹא-יִלְבַּשׁ גֶּבֶר שִׂמְלַת אִשָּׁה: כִּי תוֹעֲבַת יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, כָּל-עֹשֵׂה אֵלֶּה. {פ}

6 If you happen upon a bird's nest on the way, in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs, and the mother is sitting upon the young, or upon the eggs, thou shalt not take the mother with the young;

ו כִּי יִקָּרֵא קַן-צִפּוֹר לְפָנֶיךָ בַּדֶּרֶךְ בְּכָל-עֵץ אוֹ עַל-הָאָרֶץ, אֶפְרֹחִים אוֹ בֵיצִים, וְהָאֵם רֹבֶצֶת עַל-הָאֶפְרֹחִים, אוֹ עַל-הַבֵּיצִים--לֹא-תִקַּח הָאֵם, עַל-הַבָּנִים.

7 thou shalt let the mother go, but the young thou may take unto thyself; that it may be well with you, and that thou may prolong your days. {S}

ז שַׁלֵּחַ תְּשַׁלַּח אֶת-הָאֵם, וְאֶת-הַבָּנִים תִּקַּח-לָךְ, לְמַעַן יִיטַב לָךְ, וְהַאֲרַכְתָּ יָמִים
.

What might the Torah possibly be teaching us by juxtaposing these two commandments together? I would like to suggest that these two cases provide for an opening to talk about empathy and compassion as human qualities. In the first verse we are prohibited from dressing up like the other gender. Rashi commented that this is purely in the case where dressing up like the other gender is for the purpose of sexual deviance. For example, dressing up like a woman to sneak into the Women’s locker room for voyeuristic escapades. This is very different from a modern woman wearing pants or a transgender male to female wearing lipstick. The ability to assume another’s role or experience is an important piece of expressing empathy. While empathy is one key to human connectivity, complete enmeshment can be harmful. Thus, there are limitations to “walking in another shoes,” that seems to be a good protective measure for our world.

Similarly, shooing away a mother bird and stealing her eggs is not an example of compassion at first glance. But when we consider what a fox might do who happens upon a bird’s nest – goodbye momma bird and so long chickies! Perhaps this commandment gives us pause to recognize our base-animal tendencies and also our ability to act against them. Thus, shooing away momma is perhaps not better then leaving the chicks alone, but it opens the door for choosing with compassion and respect for our involvement in the chain of life.

Many Blessings!
Zvi Bellin, MHHQ

Parashat Shoftim begins with God commanding the Jewish people to establish a legal system. God commands us to appoint “magistrates and officials” to “govern the people with due justice.”[1] Law is the modus operandi of an imperfect world. The functionality of society depends on the willingness of individuals to sacrifice a certain amount of autonomy in order to obtain the benefits of order; therein lays the logic behind the social contract. It is this social contract that creates the mandate for the rule of law, and our obedience to it. In democracies, the goal of this contract is to elevate man from his lowly individual existence and to hopefully create a just society. However, the very fact that the creation and practice of law are a human-led endeavour marks it with an inevitable fallibility, especially in its pursuit of justice. Since man is fallible and subject to unjust tendencies, so too the law he creates is also subject to such imperfection. In the image of man, law was made. Although intermittently unjust, law is our saving grace from the barbarity of anarchy, and necessitates obedience. As Justice Felix Frankfurter once said: Fragile as reason is and limited as law is as the institutionalized medium of reason, that's all we have standing between us and the tyranny of mere will and the cruelty of unbridled, undisciplined feeling.