Remaining Near Jerusalem

If the place chosen by God your Lord to be dedicated to His name is far from you, you need only slaughter your cattle and small animals that God will have given as I have commanded you. You may then eat them within your gates in any manner you desire.             Deuteronomy 12:21 “Far from you” – but you are not far from the place                                                 Alshikh

            In the four (Hebrew) words of his comment, Alshikh teaches an important lesson about the attitude of Jews towards the place which God chose, the Holy City of Jerusalem. Even when a Jew is physically far from Jerusalem, he must never be emotionally or spiritually far from her. As God Himself has inscribed Jerusalem on the palms of His hands and has her walls continually before Him [Isaiah 49:16], so too, we, the sons of His chosen nation, must always “see” and remember Jerusalem. [based upon Rashi’s elucidation of the verse]

            Indeed, for a traditionally observant Jew, the maximum amount of time which can pass without mentioning Jerusalem is from the recital of Shema on one’s bed until the morning prayers. The names Jerusalem and Zion (the second most frequent of Jerusalem’s seventy names) appear in the daily prayers approximately thirty times! As well, one who says the Grace After Meals prays for the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Under the bridal canopy, the groom raises Jerusalem above his greatest joy [Psalms 137:6] and breaks a glass as a sign of mourning the destruction of Jerusalem. Even those who are less traditionally observant do not ignore Jerusalem. The majority of Jews celebrate some form of the Paschal Seder and sing “next year in Jerusalem.” As well, in synagogues throughout the world, at the end of the Yom Kippur prayers, before breaking the fast, Jews dance around the synagogue singing “next year in Jerusalem.”

            One who studies Jerusalem realizes that one of the most consistent lessons of the city’s history is that all those foreigners who captured her sooner or later disappear from history, while we, Jerusalem’s children, have been privileged through God’s grace to return to her. Indeed, in our parents’ generation, we returned following an absence of almost fifty generations. To me it is clear that the reason we have been privileged to return is the simple fact that we never left Jerusalem. Even during the period when the law forbade Jews entering Jerusalem, under penalty of death, we did not forget the place which is “Beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth” [Psalms 48:3], the light of the world [Yalkut Shimoni, Isaiah 501], God’s city. [Psalms 48:9]

            Shai Agnon expressed the point well in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, when he said:

As a result of the historic catastrophe in which Titus king of the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and exiled Israel from its Land, I was born in one of the cities of the Diaspora. But always, and at all times, I have considered myself one who was born in Jerusalem.

Agnon’s words are the practical application of Alshikh’s enlightening comment.  

A Tale of Two Mountains

When God your Lord brings you to the land which you are about to occupy, you must declare the blessing on Mount Gerizim, and the curse on Mount Ebal.      Deuteronomy 11:29

                Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal delimit the city of Sh’chem. Mount Ebal on the north and Mount Gerizim on the south.

                There is a noticeable difference between the two mountains: Mount Gerizim, the mount of the blessings, is green and fertile while Mount Ebal, the mount of the curses, is relatively arid and barren. (This is true at least for the slopes facing Sh’chem.)

                Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch explains the symbolism of the choice of Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim as the places for the curses and blessings. Man is faced with the choice between “The blessing (which will come) if you obey the commandments of God” [v. 27] and “The curse (which will come) if you do not obey the commandments of God.” [v.28] It is this choice which determines whether there will be the fruitfulness and plenty of Mount Gerizim or the desolation of Mount Ebal. The difference between the two mountains symbolizes “the extreme choice between attaining the highest degree of spiritual ascent and the deepest animalistic degradation, the choice between blessing and life and curse and death.”

                Ultimately, the blessing and curse are dependent upon “our behavior towards that which is to bring blessing,” namely observance of God’s mitzvot. “By our own moral behavior, we have to decide for ourselves for a Gerizim or Ebal future.”

                We were commanded upon entering the Promised Land, to build an altar specifically on Mount Ebal, the mount of the curse [Deuteronomy 27:5], while we would expect to build the altar on the mount of blessing, Mount Gerizim.

                Ḥizkuni (1250 - 1310) suggests that building the altar on Mount Ebal was, as it were, compensation for the six tribes who stood at the foot of Mount Ebal for the curses [Deuteronomy 27:13], “to comfort and calm them.”

                Rabbi Hirsch, following his own approach, notes that as the Torah was given in the wilderness, a place of desolation, so too, the first altar which the nation of Israel built in its Land was built in a place of desolation, Mount Ebal. Rabbi Hirsch suggests the symbolic significance of the choice of Mount Ebal for the location of the altar:

It was on Ebal, the bleak mount, that the altar of the Torah was built, for completely without prior conditions for it, is an Ebal to become a Gerizim through Torah. Land and people belong intimately together, neither really blossom without the other.

                The great lesson of the altar on Mount Ebal is that “the altar of Torah can be built on the most desolate soil,” and fulfillment of Torah can turn that desolate soil into fertile and blessed land.

                The choice is ours!

The Hafetz Hayyim and Mongolia

You shall not go about as a talebearer among your people…                                           Leviticus 19:16

It is a negative commandment not to tell anyone things that another person said about him. There is an even greater sin included within this prohibition, and that is evil gossip, which refers to one who speaks disparagingly of his fellow-man, even if he tells the truth. The Concise Book of Mitzvot compiled by Ḥafetz Ḥayyim [Negative Mitzva #77]

       My friend Barry, who took early retirement from his position as advisor to the Governor of the Bank of Israel and now works as an international consultant, recently returned from a trip to Mongolia.

Upon meeting Barry and noting his kippa, the Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Mongolia asked Barry if he is familiar with Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, adding, “You might know him as the Ḥafetz Ḥayyim.”  Barry expressed curiosity about his interlocutor’s familiarity with the rabbi.

The Deputy Governor explained that he completed his doctorate in the United States where his mentor was a Jewish professor. At some point the Deputy Governor told his mentor that staff meetings at the Central Bank of Mongolia were totally unproductive, as the participants spent most of their time screaming at each other. The professor gave his student an English translation of the Ḥafetz Ḥayyim’s Shmirat haLashon (“Guarding the Tongue”), which the student read. The Deputy Governor returned to Mongolia with copies of Shmirat haLashon, and insisted that all participants in meetings read it.

Since then, the meetings at the Central Bank of Mongolia have become more civilized and productive.

This is sent in honor and appreciation of my friendship with Barry and Carol, which has already entered its fifth decade.

By the Rivers of Babylon

By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept as we remembered Zion.                    Psalms 137:1 Jeremiah said to them (the Israelite exiles):”I take heaven and earth as my witnesses, if you had cried but once while still in Zion, you would not have been exiled.”          Midrash Tehilim 137

      At first glance, Jeremiah’s comment is difficult to understand, since the time for crying would seemingly be after  the Temple’s destruction and Israel’s subsequent exile from its Land.

However, there are cries of sorrow and cries of joy. Jeremiah’s intention is: had the Israelites cried tears of joy (even once) during the time they were in Zion, thereby expressing their joy at the Temple’s existence, then they would not have been exiled.

        Two verses later, we find the Babylonian captors’ taunt of the Levites (who were responsible for musical accompaniment of the Temple service):

For there our captors asked us to sing; our tormentors requested songs of joy: "Sing us a song of Zion!" they said.

The Midrash [Breishit Rabbati, Parashat vaYetzei] provides the Levites’ response:

World class fools; had we but sung (the song of Zion) we would not have been exiled from our Land.”

    The first Midrash elucidates the second. Rabbi Shimshon Pinkus comments that crying flows from within a person and therefore is an expression of a deep attachment. Accordingly, we can understand the Levites’ response to be: had we but sung a song of Zion which originated from within us, from our hearts and souls, we would not have been exiled.

      In truth, the exiled Israelites took Jerusalem with them to Babylonia and to all corners of the earth to which we were subsequently exiled. It is unique in world history for a nation to have been exiled from its land and return to re-establish its sovereignty, and we have done it twice, with the second exile having lasted 1878 years! It is clear that the reason we Jews were privileged to return to Jerusalem is the simple fact that we never abandoned her. Throughout the years of exile, three times daily and whenever reciting the Grace After Meals, we continued to pray for the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and the Holy City is prominent in all our rituals. This connection to our eternal capital has allowed us to return, while all those who tried to keep us from her have disappeared from history.

      May the tears of sorrow we shed over Jerusalem in her destruction bring us to be privileged to cry tears of joy at her rebuilding, and may we merit singing songs of Zion which originate from the depths of our hearts and souls, within the rebuilt Jerusalem.

This Dvar Torah is dedicated to the memory of my wife. Sunday, 14 Menaḥem Av, would have been our 44^th wedding anniversary. It was the tears of joy which Gloria shed in Jerusalem which first attracted me to her. Through God’s grace, we had more than 41 years together to cry tears of joy and of sorrow within the Holy City, with the joyful tears exceeding the sorrowful ones.