Avraham Avinu (Our Father Abraham) didn’t have children for most of his life. He lived in a generation that valued having children. Having children was a blessing, and his contemporaries regarded it as such. How was he able to relay HaShem’s (G-d’s) message to the world that there is only one Creator who is responsible for everything that exists and happens in the world? I could imagine people telling him that either his message is not true, or if it is true, then clearly he is the wrong messenger because he was not blessed with children while most of them were. Taking this a step further, can one of modest means represent Torah teaching to the wealthy? Aren’t they more blessed by G-d’s bounty?
That’s an interesting question. I would suggest that that might have been part of Avraham’s message: HaShem’s message for the world isn’t “do this and you’ll have loads of fun and endless toys to play with,” but, “do this because there’s nothing closer to the truth and, by the way, there’s no greater and more sublime pleasure than knowing you’re accomplishing something of substance.”
In fact, Rav Hirsch actually describes the difference between avodas HaShem (Serving G-d) and idolatry in very similar terms: an idolater worships his god because he’s convinced that doing just this or that service will force that god to do his (the worshiper’s) will. That, effectively, makes the worshiper into a god and his god into a slave; forced to dance for anyone who pushes the right buttons.
A Jew, on the other hand, worships HaShem, not because he expects or even wants Him to do his will, but so as to force himself (the Jew) to do HaShem’s will! Davening (Prayer) and mitzvos (Observing the Commandments), according to Rav Hirsch, are tools to inspire and educate ourselves to greater heights of service and to refine and reform our personalities so our eyes can see things the way our Creator wanted them to.
A consequence of all this is that wealth and material success (and failure) are really nothing more than HaShem’s methods of teaching and improving us.
For an essay that, in some parts at least, is closely related to this discussion, you might want to read Living With Pain. I’ve also attached an old Jewish Observer article that examines a more sophisticated approach to success.
I hope these help.
With my best regards,
Rabbi Boruch Clinton
Ottawa, Canada
Pesach in Autumn
By Rabbi Yisroel Greenwald
The View From Down Under
Many commentators wax poetic when expounding on the link between the holiday of Pesach with the spring season in which it occurs. But as a born and bred New Yorker, I found the eloquent paeans quite Superfluous as the spring fever naturally penetrated my hones. I would gaze in marvel at the freshly formed delicate buds that magically opened into soft, translucent, pale green leaves, on a tree that grew in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. Hachodesh hazeh lachem: this month of Nissan is the month of renewal, a fresh start, a new beginning. Wherever I turned, I saw living testimony to this creation. Squirrels awaken from their peaceful winter slumber to dash nimbly across telephone wires; newly born kittens frolic playfully in garbage bins, safely out of our reach; the message was clear – just as nature renews itself, so does the Jewish nation. Pesach is the springtime of the Jews.
This year our family moved to Australia, otherwise known as “the Land Down Under.” While I find it uplifting to he part of the vibrant and growing Torah community of Melbourne, I must admit that my biological calendar has still to recover from Holiday jet lag. Due to the earth’s tilt on its axis, the residents of the Southern Hemisphere experience some peculiar phenomena, like having the water in the tub go down the drain in opposite direction I have become accustomed to my entire life, or observing that the fixed navigational star in the night sky is not the faithful Northern star but within the Southern Cross. However, most perturbing to me is the reversal of seasons. My childhood memories of Chanuka recall playing dreidel late into the long winter night, sitting in the sukka in overcoats to brace the chilly winds, and occasionally trudging in the snow in our Purim costumes. Now Shavuos night falls in the middle of winter (providing a marathon twelve hour learning seder instead of my accustomed six ), Chanuka lamps are lit at 9:00 PM; and my children may come to confuse snowballs with matza balls. This disconcerting Sibilation initially evoked a reaction similar to the Amora who briefly glimpsed the World to-Come and exclaimed, olam hafuch ani roeh – I see an upside down world!” But as the brave and bold pioneers of old, I too will come to pass these rites of passage, with the help of Hashem and a box of Kleenex at my side.
One aspect of the problem, however, continues to haunt me. The Torah requires that Pesach fall out in the spring (Devarim 16,1). Doesn’t Pesach in autumn clash with all the messages that Pesach is supposed to represent?
An intriguing insight in the writings of Rabbi Tzadok Hakohen may help solve this riddle. He writes that the word for holiday in Hebrew is chag which derives from the word “to dance” (see Tehillim 107,27), generally an expression of unrestrained joy. Yet the word also connotes an exact opposite meaning “mourning” (see Ya – 19,17). He propounds that in the Divine tongue every word possesses a homonym of its opposite meaning. For example, kedusha means holiness, and kedaisha a harlot.
Shoresh can mean to take root or uproot; rash can mean poor, but it also means head. Just as in physics, there is matter and anti matter, and actions create opposing reactions, so too does the spiritual world also have its counterpart, by G-d creating forces and opposing forces which often pivot around the very same point. Just like when looking in a mirror one’s right hand is the mirror’s left, so too, says Rav Tzodok, one person’s joy may be another’s source of unhappiness (Dover Tzeddek 42b).
This principle can be extended to a deeper understanding of Yom Tov. Jewish holidays also convey dual and even opposite messages. Yom Kippur is generally a time for weeping and repentance. Yet in the ArtScroll book, Lt. Birnbaum, the author describes the Kol Nidrei sermon of the Klauzenberger Rebbe to a group of Holocaust survivors in a D.P. camp shortly after the war.
“The Rebbe stood there with his Machzor in his hand, flipping through its pages. Periodically, he would ask rhetorically, “Vehr haht dos geshribben – Who wrote this? Does this apply to us? Are we guilty of the sins enumerated here?” One by one, he went through each of the sins listed in the Ashamnu confessional and then the AI Cheit, and concluded that those sins had little to do with those who survived the camps.
The Rebbe closed his Machzor, but then asked once again, “Who wrote this Machzor? I don’t see anywhere the sins that do apply to us…
“How many times did we recite Krias Shema on our wood slates at night, and think to ourselves: ‘Ribbono Shel Olam, let this be my last Hamapil I can’t carry on any longer. I’m so weak. Ribbono Shel Olam, please take my neshama…. I don’t need my soul. you can keep it.’..Every morning, we saw this one didn’t move and that one didn’t move, and as we carried the dead out, we looked upon them with envy….”
The only “sin” the Rebbe found in the pure, cleansed souls of the Holocaust survivors was losing their will to survive and to have faith and trust in Hashem for a brighter tomorrow. The Rebbe concluded by imploring his listeners to revive their strength and vitality by reclaiming the trust and confidence in Hashem that went to sleep these last few years in the camps.
I experienced a similar response when I brought a close friend to several gedolim for chizuk. My friend who had recently suffered a nervous breakdown, was feeling acute anxiety as the Yamim Noraim were approaching. When I brought him to Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetzky zt”l, he sat with us and in his warm fatherly manner told him that he lived through two world wars. What sustained him – and what every Jew must have to survive – is courage and hope. Next I took him to Rabbi Avigdor Miller shlita, who told him,”Yom Kippur means different things to different people. Your particular service on Yom Kippur is to be happy and full of hope and trust in Hashem, and to be confident that you will be blessed with a happy and successful future.”
The holiday of Sukkos, as well, has different lessons for different citizens of the nation. As Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch explains:
Leave your sound and solid house; dwell under the sparse ceiling of foliage, and learn its lesson….
If you are wealthy, you will become aware of this fact: it is neither riches nor property and certainly not man’s talents, of which he is so proud. It is G-d alone, G d Who sustains even in booths those who surrender themselves to Him in complete faithfulness. Remember, then, to thank G d alone for your wealth, your distinction, your treasures; for you possess these only as long as G d wills it…. Cling to these ideals; they will make it easier for you to free yourself from indolence and the treacly ties of riches to follow Him even though the way lead through desert and desolation….
And if you are poor, my fellow-Jew, if you are poor and in despair, move, I pray you, into the foliage topped booth! Depart from under your sheltering roof and of your own accord live the poorer life and learn the lesson:
G-d sustained your forefathers in the wilderness in booths. That same G d still lives and He is your G d, and as the twinkling of the stars shines through the roof of foliage so does He with His watchful eye embrace you in loving kindness, behold your suffering, behold your tears, hear your sighs and know your cares. He will not forsake you as He did not forsake your forefathers…. (HOREB VOL. 1 PP. 124 125)
SPRING TO LIFE… WITH AUTUMN CHILL
The holiday of Pesach falls in the springtime a time where Hashem implanted into the natural world the mechanism that prods the human spirit to buoyancy, and aids for the festival to be celebrated with joy. But simultaneously, in an opposite part of the globe, the summer fades away as the days get darker and chillier. There, the festival of Pesach is unaccompanied by the external assistance of spring, and therefore requires more internal effort to compensate for the absence of vernal renewal.
For many, even those living in the Northern Hemisphere, the aura of springtime is sometimes overshadowed by other autumns in their lives. Someone who recently lost a loved one, one whose home is lacking domestic tranquility, an older single person, or an infertile couple may all feel out of place during this ostensibly family oriented holiday. The festival verses enjoins us to rejoice with one’s family (Devarim 16,11 ). But for some, it must take Herculean efforts just to dampen the pain during the festivals, let alone to rejoice. What is the Pesach lesson of autumn for them?
In a general sense the Torah coincides with the natural cycles of the world. Even as the Torah proclaims, “Hachodesh hazeh lochem”- as Rabbi S.R. Hirsch explains – the Jewish people are not bound by the limiting rules of nature. Yet the Torah eases the lesson by having Pesach occur at a time when a person naturally feels uplifted. For on one fundamental level, the Torah coincides with the natural world, and its mitzvos fulfil the physical, emotional and psychological needs of a person. The sages of the Talmud immediately dismiss the possibility that the species to be used to fulfil the mitzva of Slav is to be taken from plants whose thorny edges prick the hand. Although the species in question fulfill all the halachic requirements for Slav, the sages knew that the Torah could not have possibly commanded us with a mitzva that causes pain, based on the dictum “d’racheha darkei noam – all [the Torah’s] ways are sweet” (Sukka 32).
This principle was first taught to me by Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetzky zt”l. I once asked him regarding the law that dictates that if two people are stranded alone in a wilderness and one of them has only enough water to sustain one life, he should use the water for himself and not give it away to his travelling companion. One of the reasons the Gemora gives is, “Who said your friend’s blood is redder (more worth saving) than yours? Perhaps your blood is redder than his.”
I asked the Rosh Yeshiva,”Suppose you know your friend’s blood is redder. If I am a simple person and my friend is a great Torah scholar, isn’t his life more worth saving than my own? Shouldn’t I then give him the water to save his life?”
Reb Yaakov gave me two answers, one of them as follows: “Self preservation is an intrinsic part of human nature. And teva (nature) is also halacha.”
A SMALL BUT DISTINCT UNDERCURRENT
Running counter to this general flow, runs a small but distinct undercurrent which seems to defy the system. While the Torah promises worldly reward to those who fill its precepts; the righteous sometimes suffer. Yamim Tovim, which the Sefer HaChinuch says were given to express the innate human urge of joy celebration, force others to muster their last reserves of spiritual energy in order to observe adequately. Those who fulfil the Torah under these trying conditions, without the natural assistance of the physical world but in defiance of it, are not utilizing the world as a vessel to rise in spirituality, but rather are turning the world vessel over and rising above it. Such people who turn the world upside down from its natural order in their mitzva observance may very well be the subject of the following tale mentioned in the Talmud (Babba Basra 10b):
Yosef the son of Reb Yehoshua took ill, and his soul temporary left his body and ascended to heaven. When he regained consciousness, his father asked him, “What did you see in the next world?” He replied, “I saw an upside-down world. The uppermost in this world are below in the World-to Come. And the lowly in this world are supreme in the World to Come.” When I was younger, my dream of success was predicated on the simple standing world view. I hoped to learn well, do mitzvos, and either land a choshuva shtelleh (distinguished position in chinuch or the rabbinate), gain prominence by communal activity, or become a generous philanthropist. It was those people who were my models of success, and it was usually the “haves” rather than the “have nots” whose company I sought. But as the script of life which Hashem handed to me landed me in destinations far from where I had originally anticipated, my worldview also began gradually inverting. Eventually, my highest respect and admiration were reserved not for those whose efforts were wreathed in success, but to those who celebrate Pesach in Autumn: those who persevere despite the challenges and obstacles they face in life.
David N. epitomizes such a person. A baal teshuva from his mid twenties, he gave up a glamorous career as a performing artist and rooted himself in a baal teshuva yeshiva. Unfortunately, his learning skills didn’t quite match his strength of character, and he never climbed the levels of Talmudic acuity with his peers. Compounding his frustration with scholastic achievement, his subsequent efforts in parnasa and shidduchim were also not blessed with success. Over a decade later he was still struggling in all these areas, but amazingly, his unwavering commitment to Yiddishkeit was as solid as ever.
As a close friend to David, I once took him to the world renowned Mashgiach, Rabbi Dan Segal, to receive a blessing for him for shidduchim and success. As David didn’t know Yiddish, I accompanied him to serve as an interpreter. When we came to the Mashgiach, I pointed out that David, an extraordinarily muscular and handsome young man, was formerly enjoying an extremely successful and pleasurable life in his secular lifestyle. He had a successful career, money, and an unending stream of female admirers. Since he had become religious, he had found neither prestige, parnasa, nor a shidduch.
I expected Rabbi Dan Segal to give him a warm blessing, as I always have seen him do, but instead the Mashgiach clasped David’s hand in his own, humbly lowered his head and in an emotional voice said, “I envy your portion in the World-to-Come. If only I should merit the place in olam habba which you have!” For the two decades I have known the Mashgiach, I have never heard him give exaggerated praise nor did I ever hear him making even a remotely similar statement to anyone.
The Mashgiach’s statement reflected an “olam hafuch” worldview, which was aligned with the one Rabbi Yehuda’s son described. The prophet Yeshaya (66,1 2) reveals that this perspective is also Hashem’s, one which He beckons us to share:
“Hashamayim kisi the heavens are My throne.”
Just as when gazing out the window of an airplane, the difference between a mansion and a hovel, a Chevy and a Lexus, shrinks to trivial insignificance, so too does Hashem say to the man who comes to pride himself of his wealth and success: The heavens are My throne From My vantage point in heaven, your palaces are but specks in the vast expanses of space, your physical prowess pales before the powerful angels, which fill my heavens. Yet, “Ha’aretz hadom ragli – the earth is my footstool”
The Divine spirit rests and is upheld specifically in the small earth where man serves My will. But although the earth – the natural world, which facilitates the service of Hashem – is in the general sense the source of My comfort and satisfaction . . .
“Ei zeh vayis asher tivnu pi v’eizeh makom menuchasi. V’es kol eileh yadi assassa vayifiyu chow eileh, next Hashem – What house could you build for Me, and what place could be My resting place? My hand created all these things and thus all these things came into being, says Hashem.”
There still remains a degree of incompletion in man’s service since I helped create the house which you built to serve me. I provide man the resources – the world with its wealth and happiness, as the tools that facilitate My service.
“V’el zeh abit- And to such a person I gaze.”
There are those individuals who stand out and receive my special attention because they rise above the earth, by serving Me despite the adverse conditions the physical world presents to them. who are these people who are the focus of my special love and affection?…. “el ani unechei ruach ve’choreid al devari- to the poor and broken spirit who fears My word.”
The “poor” which in the Torah lexicon encompasses the entire gamut of every difficulty, challenge, and disability – who, despite their broken spirit, still perform My will; such people are the delight of My eye.[2]
THE GLORY OF THE STRUGGLING YESHIVA BACHUR
Seepage from the hellinistic influenced society in which we live may have engendered in us an overaffinity towards tangible perfection and achievement. While secular schools tend to grade results and award top honors to their highest scorers, our chinuch system should more closely reflect Hashem’s marking system, as expressed in Berachos 17a,”Both the one who accomplishes much and the one who does little are equally rewarded, provided that each directs his heart towards Heaven.” While it is a natural tendency for the bright and the blessed to attract our attention and affection, it is very often the weaker, struggling, and less respected students who, in the olam hafuch world, are deemed the great ones.
These sentiments were clearly expressed by Rabbi Yerucham Levovitz, the Mashgiach of the Mirrer yeshiva in prewar Europe:
“A yeshiva bachur today who toils while trying to understand the Torah of the gedolim from earlier generations, and despite all his efforts is still unable to comprehend their words, is quite possibly – no, undoubtedly greater than the gadol himself whose words he attempts to understand….
“Is it a small matter – all the honor and esteem that surrounded the Gaonim of earlier generations? The power of honor is no small matter. It is told that in the days of the Gra, there lived in Vilna a man who fasted from Shabbos to Shabbos. And it was a wonder in everyone’s eyes how he was able to sustain such a regimen. When word of this ascetic feat was reported to the Gra, the Gra inquired after the man’s behavior. He was told that on every Friday afternoon, the man left the mikva and was surrounded by many children from the vicinity who came to behold his great feat, and would express their astonishment and reverence toward him. The Vilna Goan commanded that the children be chased away and not allowed to approach the man as he Ieft the mikva From that time onward, the man’s strength left him, and he never fasted again.
“The honor that this man received from all these children, this honor was able to sustain him and give him a strength and fortitude to bear all torturous fasting!
“The honor which Rabbi Akiva Eiger (the great sage of Posen) received did not come from small children rather from geonim and gedolin Every footstep of Rabbi Akiva Eiger was surrounded with the greater honor! And a Torah student today who, instead of receiving honor, suffers a great deal of humiliation an embarrassment, and nevertheless finds the strength to stand firmly in place – it is certain that this yeshiva bachur is quite possibly greater than the giants of earlier times!” (DAAS TORAH, BAMIDBAR PP. 147-8 )
Many schools label the class for brighter students as the “Alef’ class and the weaker students the “Beis” class using the same grading terminology the USDA uses on its egg cartons.[3] While it may be easy to grade eggs, it is impossible to grade the value of a Jewish soul. Which brings us to the second answer that Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetzky told me concerning why one must keep for himself the jug of life sustaining water though he knows he is just a simple person and his companion a great person. On this, Reb Yaakov said, “Because one never really knows who is more precious in the eyes of Hashem.”
We should respect those who observe Pesach in the lushness of spring. But let us revere those who must celebrate it in the chill of autumn.
[2] Based on this “upside down” G d’s eye view, we can understand a statement of the Gra who says that the world stands in the merit of the poor people. As the prophet explains, they alone serve Hashem unaided by G d given blessings and gifts. The perfection of the wealthy can only be achieved by connecting with the poor person and thus sharing the ultimate reward that is the poor man’s destiny. This is accomplished by their assisting the less fortunate in life. As Rabbi Akiva told Turanus Rufus, who asked, “If your G d loves the poor, why does he not sustain them?” – to which Rabbi Akiva replied, “In order that through them [by our sustaining the poor] we may be saved from the judgment of Gehinnom” (Babba Basra 10a). The statement implies that the wealthy need to “ride the coattails of the pauper” in order to gain access to Gan Eden. Were there no paupers in the world to give charity to, the wealthy man’s position in the World-to-Come would not be secure, notwithstanding their strict adherence to all the other precepts of the Torah. See also Shemos Rabba 31:3.
[3] Were it just an arbitrary number for identification purposes only, why not call the weaker class the Alef class, or still better, not assign any number but simply call the class by the name of the teacher giving it?