rabbisakhai

Most of the portion of Ha’azinu is a song, written in the Torah in two parallel columns. Moshe summons heaven and earth to stand as eternal witness to what will happen if the Jewish People sin. He reminds the people to examine world history and note how the Jewish People are rescued from obliteration in each generation — that Hashem “pulls the strings” of world events so that the Bnei Yisrael can fulfill their destiny as Hashem’s messengers. Hashem’s kindness is such that Israel should be eternally grateful, not just for sustaining them in the wilderness, but for bringing them to a land of amazing abundance, and for defeating their enemies. But, this physical bounty leads the people to become self-satisfied and over-indulged. Physical pleasures corrupt their morals. They worship empty idols and indulge in depravity. Hashem will then let nations with no moral worth subjugate Israel and scatter them across the world. However, the purpose of these nations is to act as a rod to chastise the Jewish People. When these nations think that it is through their own power that they have dominated Israel, Hashem will remind them that they are no more than a tool to do His will. The purpose of the Jewish People is to make mankind aware of the Creator. Neither exile nor suffering can sever the bond between Hashem and His people, and in the final redemption this closeness will be restored. Hashem will then turn His anger against the enemies of Israel. Hashem then gives His last commandment to Moshe: That he ascend Mount Nevo and be gathered there to his People.

On this, the last day of his life, Moshe goes from tent to tent throughout the camp, bidding farewell to his beloved people, encouraging them to keep the faith. Moshe tells them that whether he is among them or not, Hashem is with them and will vanquish their enemies. Then he summons Yehoshua, and, in front of all the people, exhorts him to be strong and courageous as the leader of the Jewish People. In this manner, he strengthens Yehoshua’s status as the new leader. Moshe teaches them the mitzvah of Hakhel: That every seven years on the first day of the intermediate days of Succot, the entire nation, including small children, will gather together at the Temple to hear the king read from the Book of Devarim. The sections that he reads deal with faithfulness to Hashem, the covenant, and reward and punishment.

Hashem tells Moshe that Moshe’s end is near, and that he should therefore summon Yehoshua to stand with him in the Mishkan, where Hashem will teach Yehoshua. Hashem then tells Moshe and Yehoshua that after entering the Land, the people will be unfaithful to Him, and begin to worship other gods. Hashem will then completely hide His face, so that it will seem that the Jewish People are at the mercy of fate, and that they will be hunted by all. Hashem instructs Moshe and Yehoshua to write down a song — Ha’azinu — which will serve as a witness against the Jewish People when they sin. Moshe records the song in writing and teaches it to the Jewish People.

Moshe completes his transcription of the Torah and instructs the Levi’im to place it to the side of the Aron (Holy Ark), so that no one will ever write a new Torah scroll that is different from the original — for there will always be a reference copy.

There is Life on Mars

“And all the nations of the world will say, ‘Why did Hashem do so to this Land? Why this wrathfulness of great anger?’ And they will answer: ‘Because they forsook the covenant of Hashem, the G-d of their Fathers, which He sealed with them when He took them out of the land of Egypt.’” (29:23)

Richard Rhodes writes in “The Making of the Atomic Bomb”: “Out of the vulnerable Hungarian Jewish middle class came no fewer than seven of the twentieth century’s most exceptional scientists: in order of birth, Theodor von Kármán, George de Hevesy, Michael Polanyi, Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann and Edward Teller. All seven left Hungary as young men; all seven proved unusually versatile as well as talented and made major contributions to science and technology; two among them, de Hevesy and Wigner, eventually won Nobel Prizes. The mystery of such a concentration of ability from so remote and provincial a place fascinated the community of science. Recalling that ‘galaxy of brilliant Hungarian expatriates,’ Otto Frisch remembers that his friend Fritz Houtermans, a theoretical physicist, proposed the popular theory that “these people were really visitors from Mars; for them it was difficult to speak without an accent that would give them away and therefore they chose to pretend to be Hungarians whose inability to speak any language without accent is well known.”

However refined the accent of a Jew, he will always sound like a Hungarian to the world. But the problem begins when we start to sound like Hungarians to ourselves — when we start to think that we are just the same as everyone else. But, more so, when we forget that we really are from Mars.

The Jews “fell from Mars,” three thousand years ago with the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai.

From the birth of Adam until Mount Sinai, all mankind had an equal role in the purpose of Creation. With the giving of the Torah, the Director invited the Jewish People to step out of the chorus line, to go up to the mic and perform mankind’s soliloquy to its Creator. But being a star needs more that just star-quality. There’s a massive gap between potential and performance.

Our Sages teach that Sinai is connected to the word in Hebew sinah — which means “hatred.” When Moshe came down from the mountain, along with the Torah he brought anti-Semitism.

But that anti-Semitism is not absolute. It is conditional on how well we perform our starring role.

“And all the nations will say, ‘Why did Hashem do so to this Land? Why this wrathfulness of great anger?’ And they will say, ‘Because they forsook the Covenant of Hashem, the G-d of their Fathers, that He sealed with them when He took them out of the land of Egypt.’”

There is no privilege without responsibility. Even in Hungary.

Fear of Elul

“But if you do not hearken to the voice of Hashem, your G‑d, to observe, to perform all His commandments and all these decrees that I command you today, then all the curses will come upon you and overtake you.” (28:15)

There’s a well-known tradition that in Europe before the war, when the chazan would announce in shul that “Rosh Chodesh Elul will be on day(s) such as such…” — you could hear the dull thud of some people fainting to the floor. Such was the fear and trepidation that was caused by those words and the approach of Rosh Hashanah, the Day of Judgment.

I must say I feel a similar trepidation when I hear those words in shul, but likely for a different reason. When confronted with the enormous prospect of having to turn my life and my emotions upside down, I go into a panic that results in total spiritual paralysis. Fear of Elul.

In 1907 Robert Yerkes and John Dodson conducted one of the first experiments that illuminated a link between anxiety and performance. They saw that mice became more motivated to complete mazes when given electric shocks of increasing intensity — but only up to a certain point. Above a certain threshold, they began to hide, rather than perform. Yerkes and Dodson applied this idea to the human mind,enunciatinga core idea that our nervous system has a Goldilocks zone of arousal. Too little, and you remain in the comfort zone where boredom sets in. But, too much, and you enter the ‘panic’ zone, which also stalls progress.

I’m in the panic zone.

My esteemed rabbi and teacher once told me that, as a young boy in Chicago, his European grandmother gave him a short talk on the day of his Bar Mitzvah. She then admonished him to keep the Torah, warning him in Yiddish with words that loosely translate as “In the next world, they hit you with iron bars.” I’m not sure too many grandmothers give that kind of encouragement to a Bar Mitzvah boy nowadays.

In 1600 Samuel Butler wrote, “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” Meaning: “If you do not punish a child when they do something wrong, they will not learn what is right.” Times have changed. We get stressed by the mere thought that our WhatsApp is not working.

Rabbi Noach Orlowek once said that the best kind of education is to “catch your children doing something right.” Positive reinforcement works miracles — and for our generation is possibly the only road to improvement.

So, this Elul, I thought, rather than thinking about all the things that I’m doing wrong and had promised G-d last Yom Kippur that I’d never do again, I would think about all the things I am doing right — and how great it feels! When I do that, it makes me feel close to Hashem, and when I feel that, I want to feel even better and closer.

So, last thing at night, I go through a catalogue of things I did right during the day. For example, the first thing I did after opening my eyes this morning was to say “Modeh Ani.” I thanked Hashem for giving me back my soul. I acknowledged that my life is a gift — not a right.

And I went to daven. True, my mind wandered all over the place. But I went.

I try to go through much of the day in this way, thinking like this, until sleep overcomes me.

It may not be the classic approach to Elul, but at least I may have achieved some ahavat Hashem — love for Hashem — instead of just Fear of Elul.

Beating the Beast

“When you go out to war against your enemies…” (21:10)

The BBC ran an article on July 21st about Lee Butler.

“Butler was a cocaine addict and he hated himself. But now Lee hasn’t had a drink or taken drugs for four years — and insists he never will again.

“Lee tried Alcoholics Anonymous, which has helped millions of people around the world, but didn’t like their 12-step approach. He wanted to feel powerful, not — as the first step states — powerless. He wanted to beat his addiction, not battle it every day.

“‘I just couldn’t buy into this ‘addiction is a disease, you’re powerless, and you have to surrender.’ They say you have to take one day at a time, for the rest of your life, and every day you wake up you’re an addict. I just thought — I don’t want that future.’”

“It was while visiting one recovery service that Lee met Chris Farrell, a counselor who introduced him to Addictive Voice Recognition Technique. AVRT was coined by an American ex-alcoholic, Jack Trimpey, who calls it a ’very simple thinking skill that permits anyone to recover immediately and completely from alcohol or drugs.’

“The technique is not that well known in rehabilitation circles. Some experts contacted by the BBC had not heard of it; one charity — while not dismissing it — said it was not ‘evidence-based.’ ‘As I understand it, there is not any evidence base to support it — but that may be because no one has researched it,’ said one professor from a different organization.

But for Lee, AVRT “just clicked immediately.”

“In effect, says Lee, AVRT recognizes that ‘two parts of you are at war’ — the rational voice and the addictive voice; the real you and, as Trimpey dubs it, ‘the beast.’”

“When you go out to war against your enemies…”

When we go out against our greatest enemy, our Negative Drive; when we try to do Teshuva, to return to Hashem, our first step is recognizing that our ‘addictive voice’ is not us.

In the service of Yom Kippur, two identical goats are selected. One is brought as a korban and the other is hurled from the summit or a peak in the Judean desert known as Azazel. The goat that is brought on the mizbeach — the Holy Altar — represents the Yetzer HaTov — the ‘rational voice.’ The goat that is sent to the desert is the ‘beast.’ They are almost identical. The message is that the only way a person can rescue himself from the many addictions of this world is to sort out the ‘rational voice’ from ‘the beast.’

The Cause of Pain

“Who is the man who has built a new house and has not yet inaugurated it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he will die in the war and another man will inaugurate it.” (20:5)

Rashi: “and this thing will pain him.”

Rashi’s comment on the above verse cannot mean that the thought of someone else inaugurating his new home will be extremely painful to him. For, in the painful thoughts department, nothing is more painful than the thought of death itself.

The Midrash teaches that when the Romans executed Rabbi Chananya for teaching Torah in public, they wrapped him in his Sefer Torah and set it alight. To prolong his agony, they packed water-soaked wool around his chest. Rabbi Chananya said, “The parchment is consumed, but the letters fly up in the air.” The Roman executioner was deeply moved by Rabbi Chananya’s holiness and asked, “If I remove the wool from around your heart, will I have a share in the World to Come?” Rabbi Chananya promised him that he would. The Roman then removed the wool, added wood to the fire to curtail Rabbi Chananya’s agony, and jumped into the flames and died. A Heavenly voice proclaimed, “Rabbi Chananya and the executioner are about to enter the World to Come.” One thought of teshuva (repentance) can undo a lifetime of sin.

And one thought of sin can undo a lifetime of teshuva.

Arguably, the most important moment in a person’s life is his last moment. At that moment he has the potential to fix a lifetime’s wrongdoing. What a waste to spend that last moment immersed in the cares of this world, rather than one’s gaze on eternity!

This is what Rashi means when he says, “and this thing will pain him.“How great will this man’s pain be if he spends his last moments thinking about his real estate rather than preparing himself to enter the World of Truth!

Moshe presents to the nation the blessing of a spiritually oriented life, and the curse of becoming disconnected from Hashem. When the nation enters Eretz Yisrael, they must burn down any trees that had been used for idol-worship, and destroy all idolatrous statues. Hashem will choose only one place where the Divine Presence will dwell. Offerings may be brought only there, but not to a private altar.

Moshe repeatedly warns against eating animal blood. In the desert, all meat was slaughtered in the Mishkan, but in Eretz Yisrael meat may be shechted anywhere. Moshe lists the categories of foods that may be eaten only in Jerusalem. He warns the nation against copying the ways of the other nations. Since the Torah is complete and perfect, nothing may be added to or subtracted from it. If a so-called prophet tells the people to permanently abandon a Torah law or indulge in idol worship, he is to be put to death. One who entices others to worship idols is to be put to death. A city of idolatry must be razed. It is prohibited to show excessive signs of mourning, such as marking the skin or making a bald spot.

Moshe reiterates the classifications of kosher and non-kosher food and the prohibition of cooking meat and milk. Produce of the second tithe must be eaten in Jerusalem, and if the amount is too large to carry, it may be exchanged for money with which food is bought in Jerusalem and eaten there. In certain years this tithe is given to the poor. Bnei Yisrael are instructed to always be open-hearted, and in the seventh year any loans must be discounted, and then Hashem will bless the person in all ways. A Jewish bondsman is released after six years, and must be sent away with generous provisions. If he refuses to leave, his ear is pierced with an awl at the door post and he remains a bondsman until the Jubilee Year. This Torah portion concludes with a description of the three pilgrimage festivals: Pesach, Shavuot and Succot.