Few commands in all of Scripture are more celebrated, or more often quoted, than the one we encounter in this week’s parsha. It has been echoed in every major civilisation, inscribed into the conscience of the world, adopted as a kind of universal shorthand for goodness itself. No one, as a rule, dissents.

That verse is none other than loving one’s neighbor as one loves oneself:

וְאָהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵעֲךָ֖ כָּמ֑וֹךָ You shall love your neighbour as yourself.

Beautiful.

And inspiring.

Who would say otherwise?

And yet, I have a question.

How is it to be done?

It is a practical question. Not abstract, not theoretical — a question of moment to moment, of situation to situation, of what one does when the ordinary tests of life arrive. How is one to live this mitzvah?

Simply to feel warmly towards others?

To be kind?

Maybe it means I should smite more?

Or be civil and politie?

Maybe all of the above.

The key word there is “maybe”.

If I told you that I put on tefillin, we would all have a clear image in your mind of what I did.

If I told you that I ate matzos on seder night, another clear image would arise.

And we would all, for the most part, have the same image in mind.

But what if I tell you that I loved someone like I love myself. What would come to mind? What image would you have? How would you envision or describe it?

Is there some concrete action (or category of actions) that comes to mind?

Some sort of emotion or feeling that you conjure up?

In short, what does it mean to actually fulfil this mitzva?

That is my question.

I shall not attempt to answer it in full. I shall not survey all the sources or every approach. I shall take (mainly) Rashi, and walk through the verse and its context line by line. Literally, as our main focus will be on just two lines.

And in doing so, I will try and come up with something akin to a definition or principle or concept that we can refer to and say — this is it. This is an example of actually loving someone as we love ourselves.

Sounds good?

Great — then lets begin.

Where to begin

Well, truth be told, beginning is a bit of a problem. What I want is context. In other words, I want to zero in on Sefer Vayikra, chapter 19, verse 18 (our verse) and work our way back to to some sort of starting point. The first verse in this sub-section.

The problem is, I don’t know where that verse actually is.

I could go back to verse 15. That would make structural sense, as it comes right after a pesucha — what one can argue is the Torahs equivalent of a new section.

The problem is that it is hard to see how that sentence relates in particular to ours. That line is about favortism in court cases. That is to say, not showing favoritism in a court case.

As such, it is directed towards judges. And I don’t think that our line is directed solely towards judges.

As such, I’ll look elsewhere. The next verse, for example. That talks about not speaking loshon hora and not standing idly. Definitely more promising. But, for our purposes, I’ll skip that one to.

But not without first making one crucial observation. It ends with an interesting phrase:

אֲנִ֖י י׳ I am Y-K-V-K

That phrase may not seem so promising, but if we look closer, we’ll notice that our line ends exactly the same way:

וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵעֲךָ֖ כָּמ֑וֹךָ אֲנִ֖י י׳ And you will love your fellow man as you love yourself, I am Y-K-V-K

This phrase shows up periodically in the Chumash. And one can (and should) wonder — what’s it doing here. What does this little addition add?

For now, we’ll leave that question on the side. Instead, though, we’ll made an (hopefully) educated assumption — that this functions as a mini-break.

That is to say, we are in a major section — we know that from the pesucha. But maybe there are sub-units within that section. And perhaps this tiny little phrase demarcates the division between these sub-units.

Or, put otherwise. The first two sentences of this section are related in some way. And so are the next two sentences. But they are each related in different ways.

If so, that means we have found our immediate context. A small context — just two verses. But a context nonetheless.

And, as I hope to show, it will be more than a good enough context for our purposes.

Beginning Again

Now we can actually begin. We’ll start with the verse:

לֹֽא־תִשְׂנָ֥א אֶת־אָחִ֖יךָ בִּלְבָבֶ֑ךָ הוֹכֵ֤חַ תּוֹכִ֙יחַ֙ אֶת־עֲמִיתֶ֔ךָ וְלֹא־תִשָּׂ֥א עָלָ֖יו חֵֽטְא׃ Do not hate your brother in your heart, reprove your fellow and do not bear a sin on account of him.

We have begun.

But have you noticed how we have begun?

With hate.

In short, the opposite of love.

But it’s not just any type of hate.

It’s a hate that is in our hearts.

Does this mean that if I outwardly hate him it’s okay? That’s it’s only secret, hidden hatred that is forbidden?

Perhaps, but let’s first look at the next few words.

לֹֽא־תִשְׂנָ֥א אֶת־אָחִ֖יךָ בִּלְבָבֶ֑ךָ הוֹכֵ֤חַ תּוֹכִ֙יחַ֙ Do not hate your brother in your heart, reprove your fellow

Let me slightly rewrite this — in what I think this phrase means:

Do not hate your brother in your heart, rather reprove your fellow

That word rather is not written, but it is understood. It is, as they say, implicit (as opposed to explicit).

And with that, a picture is starting to emerge. Don’t keep your hatred buried deep inside, rather express it. But, express it in a particular way. A way that is expressed (pun definitely intended) by the Hebrew phrase הוֹכֵ֤חַ תּוֹכִ֙יחַ֙.

In other words, if we want to know what we are supposed to do, then we need to know what this word means. Ideally, that would send us through Tanach on an exploration for the meaning of this word.

But for now, we’ll have to settle for a working hypothesis — and hope and pray that we find the time for that exploration some other time.

I’ll start my working hypothesis by making an observation. We are speaking here of emotions. One man hates his fellow.

Which means, that I do not think we are talking here about logical proofs. to hochiach does not mean to “prove” to him that you are right and he is mean.

I don’t think the context allows for such an understanding.

Instead, here is what I propose — clearly communicate to him why you feel as you do.

Yeah, I know, that’s a bit long for a translation. But it’s the idea I want to get across. What the Torah is saying is that if you have negative emotions towards someone out, that you need to find a way to communicate how you feel and why — in a way that will “work”.

We’ll define “work”, in a second.

But first, let’s explore those negative emotions.

Hatred, you may say, is a bit stronger than negative emotions. And in English, you are right. But I wonder about in Hebrew. As I have noted before, Hebrew words are richer than English ones. English is a more exact language — with many more words which describe nuances which don’t exist in Biblical Hebrew.

On the flip side, a single word in Hebrew can carry a much richer array of meanings and associations than English can.

Richness vs specificity. They each have their advantages. And they each have their challenges when translating.

Thus the problem with the translation “hate”. Yes, that is one of the meanings of our verse. But I don’t think it is the only one. I think sinah (שינא) encompasses the full array of negative thoughts and emotions that one has towards another.

And, as such, the Torah is telling us — don’t keep it bottled up inside. Rather, find a way to communicate to the other person why you feel as you do.

Perhaps they wronged you.

Perhaps they insulted you.

Perhaps they ignored you.

Perhaps they caused you financial damage.

The list is virtually endless.

The point is. They did something that has changed how you see and feel about them.

And they are evidently clueless about that.

Your goal, therefore, is to find a way to “demonstrate it” to them. Not “prove it” to them, but communicate it in a way that they get it.

A small illustration

At this point, I think an example may help.\

I am currently reading a book about marketing. It is, like most self-help books, full of stories. Too many stories. But this one is worth it — if for no other reason then for this dvar Torah.

This story involves a consultant who has been hired to help teach a division of a real estate agency how to better advertise their services. The problem is that this particular division was rather successful.

True, they could do better. But they were doing well. And that was a problem — because it meant that they wouldn’t listen.

In other words, they had no interest in listening to what some outside “consultant” had to tell them about advertising real estate. They had been doing it for years. Were successful. And didn’t need any more help.

And so, our “hero” had a problem. A communication problem.

But our hero would not be a hero if he didn’t have a solution (and this story would also be pointless if he didn’t). And so, we fast forward to the day of his presentation.

He starts off by going to the local drug store and buying the local paper. He then proceeds to get some masking tape and covers up each and every headline on the front page.

So far, so strange.

He then walks into the conference room, newspaper in hand and hangs it up on the wall for all to see.

Now, this group may not be interested in what he had to say, but they were curious about this newspaper.

“What’s the deal with the newspaper,” one of them asked?

“And why the masking tape,” asked another.

“Fair questions” he responded. “But before I answer your question, I’d like you to answer mine. What’s the problem with this page?”

“Well,” one of them replied. “You can’t really know what you want to read.”

“Right,” he replied. “I imagine you all know why”.

“Sure, there are no headlines. And without the headlines, you have no idea if you are interested in the article or not.”

“Exactly,” he replied. “And with that said, I’d like to turn the page and have you take a look at the latest ad that you published in this very same newspaper”.

A collected “aha” fell over the crowd.

“What’s the problem with this ad,” he asked.

“There’s no headline. And if there is no headline, then our customers don’t know if they want to read our ad.”

“Bingo!”

And with that, they listened eagerly to the rest of his presentation.

That, I would like to suggest, is a brilliant example of a “demonstration”. It wasn’t a logical proof. It was a means of helping someone else see what you see.

And that, I believe, is what our verse is saying. Not in terms of marketing and money. But in terms of emotions and feelings. Find a way. Your way. A way that works. To enable them to see why you feel the way that you feel.

But, there is a problem — as noted in the continuation of this verse.

Is it Just About Your Feelings?

So far, our verse makes sense.

Do not keep negative feelings about your brother burried up inside of you, find a way to communicate how you feel to your fellow man

Yeah, I know. Loose translation. But it works.

But then the next part:

וְלֹא־תִשָּׂ֥א עָלָ֖יו חֵֽטְא and do not bear a sin on account of him.

What is this addition doing here? What sin are we worried about? We are just having a conversation. I’m attempting (perhaps clumbsily) to express how I feel and why I feel that way.

Isn’t that good?

Isn’t that mature?

Isn’t that what the Torah wants me to do?

Yes. But not only yes. Let us take a look at Rashi:

לֹא תַלְבִּין אֶת פָּנָיו בָּרַבִּים Do not publicly embarrass him

Yes, says the Torah.

You should express yourself.

And you should do so in a loving and sensitive manner.

But let us use our imagination and see why this may not be enough.

You are at a gathering. It could be anywhere. At shul. A wedding. Your home. It doesn’t matter.

The point is that there are people there. You, friends. And the guy you (currently) can’t stand.

And you decide to be a tzadik. You aren’t going to keep it in any longer. You are going to patiently and lovingly explain to him why he upset you so.

And you succeed. He gets it. And so does everyone else. And that is the problem.

Yes, says the Torah. Skillfully and lovingly and respectfully “rebuke” him. But don’t do so in a way that will lead him to be embarrased. Because if you do, you will have sinned against him.

Him, you say?

The guy who insulted me?

The guy who double crossed me?

The guy who (fill in the blank)?

Yes, that guy. When you learn how to successfully and skillfully express what is going on inside for you, don’t do so in a way that will embarrass him.

Of course, it’s not just about embarrassment. That’s just an example. The point is. He wronged you. You hate him. You are expressing that to him. And in that situation, you still need to be concerned about him.

Let’s continue.

Revenge, Grudges & Love

We can move on, now, to the next verse:

לֹא־תִקֹּם וְלֹא־תִטֹּר אֶת־בְּנֵי עַמֶּךָ וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ אֲנִי ה’׃ Do not take vengeance and do nor bear a grudge against the children of your people. [Rather], love your neighbour as [you love] yourself. I am Y-K-V-K.

Two words — revenge and grudge. We need definitions. Or, more accurately, representative examples. We may not realize it yet, but we do.

And (once again) Rashi is here to help. He describes to scenarios. One describes revenge. The other bearing a grudge. I will paraphrase.

Scenario #1

Reuven needs a sickle.

Shimon has a sickle.

Reuven asks to borrow Shimon’s sickle.

Shimon says no.

Reuven goes home.

Time passes. The rolls are reversed.

Shimon needs a hatchet.

Reuven has a hatchet.

Shimon asks to borrow Reuven’s hatchet.

Reuven says no — and adds:

Just like you didn’t lend me your sickle, I’m not lending you my hatchet

That, says Rashi, is revenge — aka nekama.

Scenario #2

Reuven needs a hatchet.

Shimon has a hatchet.

Reuven asks to borrow Shimon’s hatchet.

Shimon says no.

Reuven goes home.

Time passes. The rolls are reversed.

Shimon needs a sickle.

Reuven has a sickle.

Shimon asks to borrow Reuven’s sickle.

Reuven says yes — and adds:

Sure, I have no problem lending you my sickle. Unlike “others” who wouldn’t lend me their hatchet.

That, says Rashi, is bearing a grudge — netira.

The switch

Now, you may have noticed that Rashi has a subtle switch between the two “stories”. In the first case, Reuven initially asks for a sickle. In the second, for a hatchet.

I’ll leave you to explore why. I have a couple of ideas — but for now, I’ll keep them to myself. Instead, I’ll encourage you to see what you come up with.

For now, let’s just note what the Torah is telling us.

Reuven is in need. Shimon is not there for him. Shimon hypocritically asks Reuven to help him in the exact same way that he refused to help Reuven.

This is a scenario ripe for either revenge or a grudge.

Revenge, I won’t help him just like he didn’t help me.

A grudge. I bear up and guard my negative feelings and interact with him purposely from that place of anger and resentment.

That, the Torah says, we should not do. Instead, we should love them as we love ourselves. What now, do you think that means? What is it that the Torah is directing us to do? And, in these situations, what would it mean to love them as we love ourselves?

I think the answer is clear. We should lend Shimon what Shimon needs. We should relate to his needs irregardless of whether or not he was there for us when we needed him.

Indeed, it is exactly the opposite. You know what it is like for Shimon to not be there for you. And you know what it would have been like if he had been there for you.

That is the place that you need to relate to him (and everyone else) from. Take that knowledge, and let that be the basis of your interactions.

Love him — i.e., give to him from a place of caring and concern — as you would like him to love you.

That doeesn’t mean that you let him take advantage of you. We aren’t talking about a situation where you suspect that Shimon won’t return what you lend him.

No, the only issue is that you naturally have a desire and inclination to take revenge and/or bear a grudge. And comes along the Torah and says that that should not be the principle by which you interact with others.

Rather, you should see what they need and how you can help them. And act accordingly — regardless of whether or not they would do the same for you.

The Great Principle

One last point.

Rabbi Akiva says that this principle is a klal gadol baTorah.

I wish to offer a suggestion. I do not know whether it fully captures the meaning of klal gadol — but I shall offer it.

A klal in the Torah is a principle. Principles are what we live by. They guide us. They show us how to do things. So — in the life of Torah, in the study and the living of it, this klal must always be with me.

Take, for example, the famous question of what intention one should have when they put on their tallis: “not to hit the person standing behind you with your talis as you wrap it around your head”.

In other words. You want to grow in ruchniyos. You want to do mitzvos.

Great. But do so within the principle of v’ahavta l’reacha k’mocha. Make sure that when you are connecting to G-d that you are still connected to everyone else.

But honestly, I think this is just half the story. The other half is that when you do connect to G-d, do so in a way that enables you to connect to everyone else.

In short, when you learn and live the Torah — make sure you are doing so with the principle of v’ahavta l’reacha k’mocha standing right beside you.

Share masmid

I don’t have time this week to write a d’var Torah on this week’s Parsha. I hope to get something out soon — by “soon” I mean sometime next week, I hope — but in the meantime, I want to ask a question that we can all think about over Shabbos.

We know that last week’s Parsha takes place on the eighth day. It’s the inauguration. It’s the beginning of the avodah in the Mishkan.

We also know that it doesn’t go so well — or at least, there’s a tragedy that stains that day. But we make it through. Aharon and his sons — the ones who survived — make it through.

When it’s all over, we get an interesting halacha: kashrus.

Now, I don’t know about you, but this seems like an unexpected detour in terms of the narrative of Sefer Vayikra. We started off with the kriya — with the call — which connects us directly to the end of Sefer Shemos. We spent seven days preparing for the eighth day. And that eighth day has just ended.

And now we’re talking about kashrus.

Why here?
Why now?

Let me note — it’s not as if there isn’t a narrative to continue. It’s not as if there’s no story left to tell.

Let’s fast forward to Parshas Acharei Mos. The name of the Parsha says it all:

וַיְדַבֵּ֤ר יְהֹוָה֙ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֔ה אַחֲרֵ֣י מ֔וֹת שְׁנֵ֖י בְּנֵ֣י אַהֲרֹ֑ן

Hashem spoke to Moshe after the death of the two sons of Aharon.

When did they die? In last week’s Parsha. On the eighth day.

Moshe has something he has to tell Aharon — namely, about Yom Kippur.

Why not tell that story? Why, in this week’s Parsha, do we all of a sudden detour into kashrus?

And let me note — this is a long detour.

After we talk about kashrus, we talk about the shemoneh sheratzim — the eight creatures that are tamei. In other words, we have entered into the world of tumah.

One could obviously argue — it seems reasonable to say — that perhaps we are talking about kashrus now because we are talking about tumah now. While we talk about tumah, we’ll also mention the kashrus aspect of these animals.

OK. But why are we talking about tumah?

We talk about a woman who gives birth — and the tumah that results. We talk about the different types of tzara’as — of a person, their clothing, their house. We talk about certain types of bodily emissions that make a person tamei.

And then we pick up the narrative we left off.

So this is what I want to know.

In terms of the narrative flow.
In terms of the messages and ideas of Sefer Vayikra.
In terms of the nature and essence of these mitzvos themselves.

Why are they here?
Why now?
Why this way?

Good Shabbos.

Share masmid

Our Parsha starts on the eighth day.

Without knowing anything else — without looking at a single commentary, without reading any other verses — we can already know two things from that fact alone.

First, there were seven days before this.
Second, the number eight carries weight. It always carries weight in the Torah.

And if we want to begin to understand our Parsha, then we need to start by understanding these two facts.

What were these seven days about?
And why specifically did this “dedication” happen on the eighth day?

And that is going to take us on a journey.

A journey that will take us back to Sefer Shemos — to the time that Moshe Rabbeinu was with Hashem, on Har Sinai, getting the Torah.

And it will then continue to the beginning of Sefer Vayikra — to the moment when Hashem called out to Moshe.

And it will venture again until last week’s Parsha — and the various “Torot” that Aharon and his sons were given.

And then, it will end up here — the very verse that sent us on this journey in the first place.

And along the way, we’ll take a detour to one of our favorite destinations — Gan Eden.

And we’ll even get to the Sneh (again).

Or, put otherwise — buckle up. We’re going for a ride.

Back to the Mountain

We are once again on the mountain.

Well, truth be told, we are at the foot of the mountain. Moshe Rabbeinu is on the mountain itself, receiving the blueprints and the plan for the Mishkan.

First topic, funding.
Second topic, the essential “kelim” — the Aron HaKadosh, the Shulchan and the Menorah.
Third topic, the structure of the Mishkan — the tents, the beams, the courtyard and more.

And then, our topic... Well, almost.

First, for some reason, we need to take a couple of lines to talk about oil. Olive oil in particular. For the Menorah if you want to be really exact:

וְאַתָּ֞ה תְּצַוֶּ֣ה ׀ אֶת־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֗ל וְיִקְח֨וּ אֵלֶ֜יךָ שֶׁ֣מֶן זַ֥יִת זָ֛ךְ וכו׳‎

And you shall command the children of Israel, that they bring to you pure olive oil...

Now this is strange. Not the topic itself. But the placement. We just had a whole section about the Menorah. Why not mention the oil then, when it was relevant?

Why wait and (seemingly) randomly insert it here — between the courtyard and the clothing?

I don’t know, but I have an idea.

And it has nothing to do with the courtyard.
And nothing to do with the candles.
And probably nothing to do with the clothing either.

But it does have something to do with the man who wears those clothing. I.e., Aharon.

You see, until now, the Mishkan was about “things”.

Holy things.
Beautiful things.
Important things.

But things nonetheless.

But now, we are going to transition into people.

Holy people.
Beautiful people.
Important people.

The Kohanim with their honorable and magnificent clothing (לְכָב֖וֹד וּלְתִפְאָֽרֶת).

And so, we hold off on the oil because it is Aharon and his sons who will be the ones who will be lighting the Menorah. And, as such, they will be the ones who will set up the Menorah — oil and all.

And so, we mention the oil which enables us to mention Aharon, which enables us to transition to the people of the Mishkan:

וְאַתָּ֞ה תְּצַוֶּ֣ה ׀ אֶת־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֗ל וְיִקְח֨וּ אֵלֶ֜יךָ שֶׁ֣מֶן זַ֥יִת זָ֛ךְ כָּתִ֖ית לַמָּא֑וֹר לְהַעֲלֹ֥ת נֵ֖ר תָּמִֽיד׃ בְּאֹ֣הֶל מוֹעֵד֩ מִח֨וּץ לַפָּרֹ֜כֶת אֲשֶׁ֣ר עַל־הָעֵדֻ֗ת יַעֲרֹךְ֩ אֹת֨וֹ אַהֲרֹ֧ן וּבָנָ֛יו מֵעֶ֥רֶב עַד־בֹּ֖קֶר לִפְנֵ֣י יְהֹוָ֑ה חֻקַּ֤ת עוֹלָם֙ לְדֹ֣רֹתָ֔ם מֵאֵ֖ת בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃

And you shall command the children of Israel, that they bring to you pure olive oil, beaten, for the light — to cause the lamp to burn always. In the Tent of Meeting, outside the curtain which is before the Testimony, Aharon and his sons shall arrange it from evening to morning before Hashem — a statute forever, for their generations, from the children of Israel.

Now, we may not find this particularly interesting, but perhaps that just indicates a certain lack of sensitivity we have to the issue.

Who says that a Mishkan has to have Kohanim.
Who says that anyone has to be in charge.
Who says it can’t be more “democratic”?

Evidently, G-d.

And that is interesting.

Why?
Good question (I think).

And we’ll have to wait for a good day for (hopefully) a good answer.

For now, though, let’s just note this as a fact.

There needs to be someone who is in charge.
Someone who does the avoda.

And that someone is not Moshe. The man on the mountain will not be the man of the Mishkan.

He can bring us out of Egypt.
He can bring down the manna.
He can bring down the Torah.

But he can’t offer up the korbanot.
Or can he?

Let’s find out.

Coming Closer

וְאַתָּ֡ה הַקְרֵ֣ב אֵלֶ֩יךָ֩ אֶת־אַהֲרֹ֨ן אָחִ֜יךָ וְאֶת־בָּנָ֣יו אִתּ֗וֹ מִתּ֛וֹךְ בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל לְכַהֲנוֹ־לִ֑י

And you, bring close to you Aharon your brother, and his sons with him, from among the children of Israel, to serve as a Kohen to Me.

And you.

Such an interesting phrase. I know, you may not think so. But let me see if I can change your mind.

Let’s go back again — to topic number two.

Remember topic number one. That was the funding. That required a conversation (it’s never easy to get money):

דַּבֵּר֙ אֶל־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל וְיִקְחוּ־לִ֖י תְּרוּמָ֑ה

Speak to the children of Israel, and they shall take for Me a contribution.

But once you have the money, it’s time to get to work.

The Aron:

וְעָשׂ֥וּ אֲר֖וֹן

And they shall make an Ark.

The covering on the Aron:

וְעָשִׂ֥יתָ כַפֹּ֖רֶת

And you shall make a covering.

The Shulchan:

וְעָשִׂ֥יתָ שֻׁלְחָ֖ן

And you shall make a table.

Do, do, do.

They will make the Aron. You will make the covering. You will make the Shulchan.

And I could go on.

The Menorah. The Yerios (tent coverings). The beams. Any and everything related to the structure of the Mishkan is about doing.

Check it out.
See whether or not I’m right.

And then we get to the oil.

וְאַתָּ֞ה תְּצַוֶּ֣ה

And you shall command.

That seemingly out of place command.

And you will command...

Who (you might ask) is you. You is Moshe.

That is, G-d is speaking to Moshe. And G-d is emphasizing that “you” — i.e., Moshe — will be the one to command the Jewish people to bring the oil that Aharon (and his sons) will set up in the Menorah in the Mishkan.

And then “you” returns again:

וְאַתָּ֡ה הַקְרֵ֣ב אֵלֶ֩יךָ֩ אֶת־אַהֲרֹ֨ן אָחִ֜יךָ וְאֶת־בָּנָ֣יו אִתּ֗וֹ מִתּ֛וֹךְ בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל

And you, bring close to you Aharon your brother, and his sons with him, from among the children of Israel.

And here you has a job. To bring Aharon (and his sons who are with him) close to you from within the midst of the Jewish people.

I know, it’s a bit confusing. We’ll break it down in just a moment.

But for now, let’s note that as soon as you comes, you also seems to go.

In fact, he leaves the moment there is something to do again.

For example, making the Ephod:

וְעָשׂ֖וּ אֶת־הָאֵפֹ֑ד

And they shall make the Ephod.

Or the Mishbetzos Zehav:

וְעָשִׂ֥יתָ מִשְׁבְּצֹ֖ת זָהָֽב

And you shall make settings of gold.

The Choshen Mishpat:

וְעָשִׂ֜יתָ חֹ֤שֶׁן מִשְׁפָּט֙

And you shall make a Breastplate of Judgment.

And more.

The Mishkan has to be made.
The clothing has to be made.

But Aharon and his sons have to be brought close. Because right now they are not close.

Right now they are distant. Like the rest of the nation. But Moshe has to bring them out from within the midst of the people and close to him.

him, with a lower case h.
Not Him with a capital H.

Did you notice that?

Moshe is not bringing Aharon closer to G-d.
Moshe is bringing Aharon closer to Moshe.

Aharon, Therefore Moshe

Let’s take a closer look.

Moshe is supposed to bring Aharon close to him.

How?

Evidently through clothing:

וְאַתָּ֡ה הַקְרֵ֣ב אֵלֶ֩יךָ֩ אֶת־אַהֲרֹ֨ן אָחִ֜יךָ וְאֶת־בָּנָ֣יו אִתּ֗וֹ מִתּ֛וֹךְ בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל לְכַהֲנוֹ־לִ֑י אַהֲרֹ֕ן נָדָ֧ב וַאֲבִיה֛וּא אֶלְעָזָ֥ר וְאִיתָמָ֖ר בְּנֵ֥י אַהֲרֹֽן׃ וְעָשִׂ֥יתָ בִגְדֵי־קֹ֖דֶשׁ לְאַהֲרֹ֣ן אָחִ֑יךָ

And you, bring close to you Aharon your brother, and his sons with him, from among the children of Israel, to serve as a Kohen to Me — Aharon, Nadav and Avihu, Elazar and Itamar, the sons of Aharon. And you shall make holy garments for Aharon your brother.

And therefore he will have to speak to the wise of heart:

וְאַתָּ֗ה תְּדַבֵּר֙ אֶל־כׇּל־חַכְמֵי־לֵ֔ב אֲשֶׁ֥ר מִלֵּאתִ֖יו ר֣וּחַ חׇכְמָ֑ה וְעָשׂ֞וּ אֶת־בִּגְדֵ֧י אַהֲרֹ֛ן לְקַדְּשׁ֖וֹ לְכַהֲנוֹ־לִֽי׃

And you shall speak to all the wise of heart, whom I have filled with a spirit of wisdom, and they shall make the garments of Aharon, to sanctify him, to serve as a Kohen to Me.

And look, there’s that word again: you (וְאַתָּ֗ה).

There is something specific here about Moshe. And it has nothing to do with the information that Moshe has and it seems to have everything to do with Aharon.

In other words, it’s not that Moshe knows about the oil and therefore he has to command the Jewish people.

Or he knows about the clothing and therefore he has to speak to the wise of heart.

Because Moshe also is the one who knows about the donations and the Aron HaKadosh and the Menorah and more — and yet, G-d doesn’t emphasize Moshe’s personhood in regards to any of that.

Nope.

Only when Aharon is involved does G-d focus on Moshe.

Aharon sets up the candles.
Therefore you (Moshe) have to command the Jewish people.

Moshe has to make holy clothes for Aharon.
Therefore you (Moshe) have to speak to the wise of heart.

And Moshe has to bring Aharon close to him.
Therefore you (Moshe) have to bring Aharon close to you.

Moshe and Aharon.
The brothers who spoke to Paro.

The brothers who did the signs, wonders and plagues.

The brothers who G-d gave the first Commandment of the Torah to:

וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהֹוָה֙ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֣ה וְאֶֽל־אַהֲרֹ֔ן בְּאֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרַ֖יִם לֵאמֹֽר׃ הַחֹ֧דֶשׁ הַזֶּ֛ה לָכֶ֖ם רֹ֣אשׁ חֳדָשִׁ֑ים

And Hashem said to Moshe and to Aharon in the land of Egypt, saying: This month shall be for you the head of the months.

Two brothers who seem so very close. And yet, G-d tells us, it’s not so.

Somehow or other Aharon is far away. He is distant — from Moshe.

And it is Moshe’s job to bring him close.

Evidently Moshe — and only Moshe — can bridge that gap.

And therefore: and you (וְאַתָּ֡ה).

After the Clothes

With this present distance and future closeness now established, G-d can now return to the business of making clothes.

And so, as He did with the Mishkan itself, G-d informs Moshe of all the different types of clothes that must be made.

And no sooner has G-d finished that He adds an interesting addition. Not only does Moshe need to commission clothes for Aharon, but he also needs to dress him in those clothes:

וְהִלְבַּשְׁתָּ֤ אֹתָם֙ אֶת־אַהֲרֹ֣ן אָחִ֔יךָ וְאֶת־בָּנָ֖יו אִתּ֑וֹ וּמָשַׁחְתָּ֨ אֹתָ֜ם וּמִלֵּאתָ֧ אֶת־יָדָ֛ם וְקִדַּשְׁתָּ֥ אֹתָ֖ם וְכִהֲנ֥וּ לִֽי׃

And you shall dress them — Aharon your brother and his sons with him — and you shall anoint them, and you shall fill their hands, and you shall sanctify them, and they shall serve as Kohanim to Me.

Indeed, it’s more than that.

Moshe needs to dress Aharon (and his sons).
And he has to anoint them with oil. And he has to fill their hands.
And he has to sanctify them.

So that they (Aharon and his sons) can serve G-d.

A striking parallel to the beginning of this parsha.

You, Moshe, speak to the wise of heart, to make the clothes of Aharon to make him holy so he can serve me:

וְאַתָּ֗ה תְּדַבֵּר֙ אֶל־כׇּל־חַכְמֵי־לֵ֔ב אֲשֶׁ֥ר מִלֵּאתִ֖יו ר֣וּחַ חׇכְמָ֑ה וְעָשׂ֞וּ אֶת־בִּגְדֵ֧י אַהֲרֹ֛ן לְקַדְּשׁ֖וֹ לְכַהֲנוֹ־לִֽי׃

And you shall speak to all the wise of heart, whom I have filled with a spirit of wisdom, and they shall make the garments of Aharon, to sanctify him, to serve as a Kohen to Me.

Similar, with variations and additions.

Dressing Aharon — a variation. Anointing with oil — an addition. “Filling their hands” — an addition.

So Moshe needs to have clothes made for Aharon.

And he needs to dress Aharon in those clothes.

And he needs to annoint Aharon.

And “fill his hands”.

This is quite a bit of focus on Moshe for a section that presumably is about Aharon.

But, to tell you the truth, there is something else that Moshe has to do. He has to make them (Aharon and his sons) holy.

Beyond Clothes

Some orientation is in order.

We are talking about creating a Mishkan. A Mishkan is a place where G-d’s presence can dwell among us, the Jewish people:

וְעָ֥שׂוּ לִ֖י מִקְדָּ֑שׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּ֖י בְּתוֹכָֽם׃

And they shall make for Me a sanctuary, and I shall dwell among them.

In order to make a Mishkan, you need the structure — as we have just mentioned.

And you need the kohanim — as we just mentioned.

And the kohanim, need special clothing — again, as we have just mentioned.

And that is where we stand right now — at the end of chapter 28 of Sefer Shemos.

G-d has told Moshe to gather together all the material that we need to build a Mishkan — the beginning of Chapter 25.

He has informed him of all elements he must build to have the physical building of the Mishkan — the rest of chapter 25 through (almost) the end of chapter 27.

He mention the need for the oil for the Menorah — the very end of chapter 27.

And then he has detailed all the clothes that must be made for Aharon and his sons in order that they can minister to G-d in the Mishkan (chapter 28).

But evidently, the clothes are not enough.

There also has to be some sort of sanctifying process for Aharon and his sons.

And thus we reach the beginning of chapter 29:

וְזֶ֨ה הַדָּבָ֜ר אֲשֶֽׁר־תַּעֲשֶׂ֥ה לָהֶ֛ם לְקַדֵּ֥שׁ אֹתָ֖ם לְכַהֵ֣ן לִ֑י

And this is the thing that you shall do for them, to sanctify them, to serve as Kohanim to Me.

We are back to doing. But this is a different type of doing. Here (as we shall see) nothing is being made.

First act: take the requisite animals.

One young bull. Two rams. Unblemished.

וְזֶ֨ה הַדָּבָ֜ר אֲשֶֽׁר־תַּעֲשֶׂ֥ה לָהֶ֛ם לְקַדֵּ֥שׁ אֹתָ֖ם לְכַהֵ֣ן לִ֑י לְ֠קַ֠ח פַּ֣ר אֶחָ֧ד בֶּן־בָּקָ֛ר וְאֵילִ֥ם שְׁנַ֖יִם תְּמִימִֽם

And this is the thing that you shall do for them, to sanctify them, to serve as Kohanim to Me: take one young bull and two rams, unblemished.

Now, here is my question. Who has to take these animals?

Moshe.

I don’t know if Moshe has to buy these animals (although perhaps he does). But it certainly seems that he physically has to take them.

And it’s not just these animals. He (Moshe) also has to take Matzos:

וְלֶ֣חֶם מַצּ֗וֹת וְחַלֹּ֤ת מַצֹּת֙ בְּלוּלֹ֣ת בַּשֶּׁ֔מֶן וּרְקִיקֵ֥י מַצּ֖וֹת מְשֻׁחִ֣ים בַּשָּׁ֑מֶן סֹ֥לֶת חִטִּ֖ים תַּעֲשֶׂ֥ה אֹתָֽם׃

And unleavened bread, and unleavened cakes mixed with oil, and unleavened wafers anointed with oil — of fine wheat flour you shall make them.

And then Moshe has to take the Matzos (which he has placed in a basket) and bring them... and the bull... and the two rams... and Aharon... and his sons...

to the entrance to the Ohel Moed:

וְנָתַתָּ֤ אוֹתָם֙ עַל־סַ֣ל אֶחָ֔ד וְהִקְרַבְתָּ֥ אֹתָ֖ם בַּסָּ֑ל וְאֶ֨ת־הַפָּ֔ר וְאֵ֖ת שְׁנֵ֥י הָאֵילִֽם׃ וְאֶת־אַהֲרֹ֤ן וְאֶת־בָּנָיו֙ תַּקְרִ֔יב אֶל־פֶּ֖תַח אֹ֣הֶל מוֹעֵ֑ד

And you shall place them on one basket, and you shall bring them close in the basket — along with the bull and the two rams. And Aharon and his sons you shall bring close to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting.

And it is there — at the entrance to the Ohel Moed — that Moshe will actually dress Aharon and his sons.

In the holy clothes. That Moshe asked the men of wisdom to make. For Aharon. And for his sons.

And then, with Aharon and his sons dressed, comes the first sacrifice.

But note — who is doing what.

Moshe brings the bull close:

וְהִקְרַבְתָּ֙ אֶת־הַפָּ֔ר לִפְנֵ֖י אֹ֣הֶל מוֹעֵ֑ד

And you shall bring the bull close, before the Tent of Meeting.

Aharon (and his sons) lean their hands on the head of the bull:

וְסָמַ֨ךְ אַהֲרֹ֧ן וּבָנָ֛יו אֶת־יְדֵיהֶ֖ם עַל־רֹ֥אשׁ הַפָּֽר

And Aharon and his sons shall lean their hands on the head of the bull.

Then Moshe shechts the bull:

וְשָׁחַטְתָּ֥ אֶת־הַפָּ֖ר לִפְנֵ֣י יְהֹוָ֑ה פֶּ֖תַח אֹ֥הֶל מוֹעֵֽד

And you shall slaughter the bull before Hashem, at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting.

And Moshe takes the blood:

וְלָֽקַחְתָּ֙ מִדַּ֣ם הַפָּ֔ר

And you shall take from the blood of the bull.

And Moshe places it on the corners of the altar:

וְנָתַתָּ֛ה עַל־קַרְנֹ֥ת הַמִּזְבֵּ֖חַ בְּאֶצְבָּעֶ֑ךָ

And you shall place it on the horns of the altar with your finger.

And I could go on.

Every step of the way, it is Moshe who is doing the avoda. All that Aharon and his sons do is smicha — leaning their hands on the head of the bull (and later on the ram).

And this dynamic, it’s familiar. Let’s fast forward, to the beginning of Sefer Vayikra.

There Moshe is told to speak to the Jewish people and explain to them the laws of the korbanot.

First things first, the olah.
Bring it to the entrance of the Ohel Moed. Then do smicha — lean your hands on the head of the animal.
Then shecht it.

And then...

Well, then you are done.
You have done all that you can do.

At this point, Aharon and his sons take over.

They take the blood and throw it on the altar.
They skin the animal. They cut it up into its pieces. And they burn those pieces on the altar.

And as it is with the olah, so too it is with the shelamim. And the chatas.
And the asham.

From the blood on, it’s Aharon and his sons.

But that is in Sefer Vayikra. Evidently after Aharon and his sons have been made holy.

But here, in Sefer Shemos, we are told of a time before Aharon and his sons have been made holy.

And at that time, Aharon and his sons are like everyone else. They can do smicha. They can lay their hands on the head of the animals.

But the actual avoda.
The sprinkling or throwing the blood on the altar. And the burning of the meats and fats.

That they do not do. That Moshe does.

And so I wonder, who here is the Kohen? And who is, well, just like everyone else?

Back to the Sneh

We will take a slight detour — a detour from a detour. It won’t be our last one.

Moshe is at the Sneh. G-d has revealed Himself to him and let him know that He (the Creator Himself) will be taking the Jewish people out of Egypt.

“All”, He needs is for Moshe to go to Paro and He (G-d) will take care of the rest.

But Moshe is not so sure.
“Who am I that I will go to Paro”? “Or that I will take the Jewish people out of Egypt”?

Don’t worry, says Hashem. I’ll be with you.

And so it goes on. Moshe has a question. Or a doubt. Or a concern.

And time after time, Hashem answers him.

Until we come to the last “issue”.

“I’m not a very good speaker”.
Loose translation.

“Don’t worry about it. Just go with My flow”.

Even looser.

And now, the conversation should be over.

All the questions have been answered. All the doubts have been dispelled. It will work out.

And yet, Moshe has one more line. Not a question. Not a concern. Rather, seemingly, a flat out refusal to do the will of the Divine:

וַיֹּ֖אמֶר בִּ֣י אֲדֹנָ֑י שְֽׁלַֽח־נָ֖א בְּיַד־תִּשְׁלָֽח׃

And he said: Please, my Lord — send, I pray, by the hand of whomever You will send.

And with this, G-d gets angry — with Moshe:

וַיִּֽחַר־אַ֨ף יְהֹוָ֜ה בְּמֹשֶׁ֗ה

And the anger of Hashem burned against Moshe.

And in this anger, he seemingly makes a change:

וַיֹּ֙אמֶר֙ הֲלֹ֨א אַהֲרֹ֤ן אָחִ֙יךָ֙ הַלֵּוִ֔י יָדַ֕עְתִּי כִּֽי־דַבֵּ֥ר יְדַבֵּ֖ר ה֑וּא וְגַ֤ם הִנֵּה־הוּא֙ יֹצֵ֣א לִקְרָאתֶ֔ךָ וְרָאֲךָ֖ וְשָׂמַ֥ח בְּלִבּֽוֹ

And He said: Is there not Aharon your brother, the Levite? I know that he will surely speak. And also, behold, he goes out to meet you — and when he sees you, he will rejoice in his heart.

It is here that we need to pause and ask a question.

What would have happened if Moshe had not asked this last question?

Would Aharon have gone with Moshe to Paro. Or would Moshe have gone by himself?

Would Aharon have thrown his staff down before Paro and his necromancers? Or would Moshe have done it by himself?

Would Aharon have helped bring down some of the plagues? Or would Moshe have done it all by himself?

It’s not clear.
But it does seem possible that the answer to all of the above is no — and yes.

No, Aharon would not have been involved. And yes, Moshe would have done it all by himself.

With that in mind, let’s ask one more question.

If Moshe had not asked this last question, would Aharon have been the Kohen? Or would Moshe have been the Kohen — and only Moshe?

Let us note the following Midrash:

מַה חֲרוֹן אַף הָיָה שָׁם, שֶׁנִּטְלָה כְּהֻנָּה מִמּשֶׁה וְנִתְּנָה לְאַהֲרֹן. אָמְרוּ רַבּוֹתֵינוּ זִכְרוֹנָם לִבְרָכָה: הֲלֹא אַהֲרֹן אָחִיךָ הַלֵּוִי, וְכִי מֵאַחַר שֶׁאָמַר: אָחִיךָ, אֵינִי יוֹדֵעַ שֶׁהוּא לֵוִי, אֶלָּא אָמַר לוֹ רָאוּי הָיִיתָ לִהְיוֹת כֹּהֵן וְהוּא לֵוִי, וּלְפִי שֶׁאַתָּה מְסָרֵב עַל דְּבָרַי, תִּהְיֶה אַתָּה לֵוִי וְהוּא כֹהֵן

What was the anger there? That the kehunah was taken from Moshe and given to Aharon.

Our Rabbis of blessed memory said:
“Is there not Aharon your brother the Levite”...

Once He said “your brother,” do I not already know that he is a Levite

Rather, He said to him: You were fitting to be a Kohen and he a Levi. But since you are resisting My word — you will be the Levi and he will be the Kohen.

It seems that anger in the Chumash, certainly divine anger, is not an indication of an emotional response. No, if the Chumash says that G-d was angry with Moshe, it means that G-d did something to Moshe. The type of “something” that expresses anger.

And so we wonder, what could that something be.

Well, let’s look at the context.

Context #1: G-d brings in Aharon to the picture. Until now, there was no mention of Aharon. But now, G-d is angry (with Moshe) and in His “angry” response, He references Aharon.

And so, it is with regards to Aharon that the Midrash looks for an indication of the Divine wrath.

Context #2: The parsha we have been studying. The one about Aharon and the clothes and the bull and the rams.

What did we see there.
We saw Moshe as the Kohen.

That, says the Midrash, is how it was supposed to be. Moshe was supposed to be the Kohen.

But somehow, for some reason — this last question changed things. How (and why), we don’t know. That’s not our focus right now.

All that we need is the fact that there was a change. And according to the Midrash (based on the context), that change related to the kehunah itself.

Moshe — you were going to be the Kohen. But no more. Now, that will be Aharon’s job.

But there is one problem. The fact is that Aharon is not a Kohen.
The fact is that Moshe is the Kohen.

This isn’t just a status or a title. It’s a reality.

Moshe, in his being, is the Kohen.
He is the one who can do the job. He is the one able to do the Divine service.

And Aharon, in his being, is not the Kohen.
At this moment, he cannot do the job. At this moment, he is not able to do the Divine service.

In short, he is far away.
That is, far away from the “level” of Moshe.
And it is Moshe’s job to bring him close.

And for that, we need clothes. Special clothes. Clothes that will make Aharon holy. That is, when Moshe dresses him in those clothes.

But first things first, we have to find the clothes.

Back to the Garden

I have mentioned it before — and others (greater than me) have mentioned it before me.

The Mishkan is the garden. It’s not literally the garden.
But it’s the same type of place as the garden.

It’s the place where man and G-d meet.
Where we live life together.

Where G-d brings us the animals and we give them their names.

And in that act, man comes to a level of self-discovery that he did not have before.

My partner is not here.

No matter how loyal the dog. No matter how loving the cat. No matter how graceful the swan.

They are not me. And I am not them.

My deeper fulfillment is not to be found there.

And so G-d, upon seeing that we were ready, gave us the greatest gift of them all — the gift of relationship. Of true and deep and meaningful relationship.

Bone of my bone. Flesh of my flesh.

The Divine fire itself:

איש and אשה.

Fire (אש) and the name of G-d (which I will not spell -- but it’s in the remaining letters).

Fire — as in the torch of fire that went through the parts. Fire — as in the fire that came down on Har Sinai. Fire — as in the fire that lead us by night.

And fire — in all its other Divine forms.

There, in that relationship of bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, was a Divine and holy passion.

And so, there was no need for clothes:

וַיִּֽהְי֤וּ שְׁנֵיהֶם֙ עֲרוּמִּ֔ים הָֽאָדָ֖ם וְאִשְׁתּ֑וֹ וְלֹ֖א יִתְבֹּשָֽׁשׁוּ׃

And the two of them were naked — the man and his wife — and they were not ashamed.

No shame. No embarrassment.

In short, unlike us — who either feel embarrassment, or else conjure up a non-holy passion to overcome that embarrassment.

But why? Why are we today embarrassed and not back then?

I have a guess. Actually, I have two guesses, but only one is worked out enough to share today.

And that guess is based off of a guess as to what embarrassment is.

It’s not vulnerability — although that is part of it.

Rather, it is fear.
Fear of the other. Fear of derision or ridicule or abandonment.

Can I be myself in front of you? Can I truly and utterly be myself in front of you? If I am — if I am laid bare — will you still see me?

Will you still connect to me? Care for me? Relate to me?

If I know — truly know — that you will be there, then I have nothing to fear. And I will feel no shame, because there will be nothing to be ashamed of.

I am as I am and do not pretend otherwise. You are the same. And we are together.

And so, they were naked and not ashamed.

But then came the nachash — who is more transparent (read “naked” — ערום) then any other creature.

You have it wrong, he said.
It is not relationships that you really seek, but power.

You want to be god-like — deciding what is good and bad.
You want to be self-focused — seeing how lustful the tree can be.

You don’t want to see the other as the other is. You don’t want to relate to the other, as they are. No, you want to see the other in terms of what they can be for you.

That is what you want?
Consume that. Live that. Be that.

And then — they knew that they were naked.
They knew that the other could see them as they really were — and that they were no longer safe.

And so, they covered up.
Covering up is not clothes.
It’s simply protection.

And then they heard. And then they hid. And then they denied. And then G-d punished.

And then...

Then What

And then, man gave a name to his wife. Chava — because she was the mother of all.

Then man saw. He saw a quality in his wife that was not within him. A quality that he appreciated and recognized.

And then...

And then G-d made for man clothes. Special types of clothes. Clothes that are quite familar:

וַיַּ֩עַשׂ֩ יְהֹוָ֨ה אֱלֹהִ֜ים לְאָדָ֧ם וּלְאִשְׁתּ֛וֹ כׇּתְנ֥וֹת ע֖וֹר

And Hashem Elokim made for the man and his wife garments of skin.

Look at the Hebrew: כׇּתְנ֥וֹת

What an interesting word.
The wise men, filled with spirit. What type of clothes are they to make for Aharon and his sons?

I’ll mention one of the eight (of the Kohen Gadol): וּכְתֹ֥נֶת

Don’t worry about the translation. Worry about the Hebrew root: כ-ת-נ (Kaf-Tav-Nun).

It’s the same root. The same word (read: concept) as the type of clothes that G-d made for Adam and Chava.

That is part of the clothes of Aharon — the Kohen Gadol.

But what about for Aharon’s sons? The regular Kohanim?

וְלִבְנֵ֤י אַהֲרֹן֙ תַּעֲשֶׂ֣ה כֻתֳּנֹ֔ת

And for the sons of Aharon you shall make tunics.

There it is again. The same word. The same root. The same concept.

But there is more.

Because what does G-d do after he makes these clothes for Adam and Chava?

He dresses them:

וַיַּ֩עַשׂ֩ יְהֹוָ֨ה אֱלֹהִ֜ים לְאָדָ֧ם וּלְאִשְׁתּ֛וֹ כׇּתְנ֥וֹת ע֖וֹר וַיַּלְבִּשֵֽׁם

And Hashem Elokim made for the man and his wife garments of skin, and He clothed them.

Just like Moshe dresses Aharon.

Putting it All Together (so far)

Time to take stock again.

Noteworthy point #1: Adam, it seems, was a Kohen. That, at least, is one opinion found in the Yalkut Shimoni:

דָּבָר אַחֵר, מַה כְּתִיב לְמַעְלָה “וַיַּעַשׁ ה’ אֱלֹהִים כָּתְנוֹת עוֹר וַיַּלְבִּישֵׁם”, מְלַמֵּד שֶׁעָשָׂה לוֹ הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא בִּגְדֵי כְּהֻנָּה

Another interpretation: What is written above? “And Hashem Elokim made garments of skin and clothed them” — this teaches that the Holy One, Blessed be He, made him priestly garments (bigdei kehunah), as it says (Daniel 10:5) “And behold, a man clothed in linen,” and it is written (Vayikra 16:4) “A holy linen tunic shall he wear” — from here you learn that the Kohen Gadol is like an angel, as it says (Malachi 2:7) “for he is a messenger of Hashem of hosts.”

Which is odd. One doesn’t usually think of directly disobeying G-d and sinning as a path to becoming a Kohen.

And yet, there it is. Assuming that these verses are in chronological order, G-d seems to be promoting Adam — post sin — to the position of a Kohen.

And He is doing so vis-a-vis clothes.

Noteworthy point #2: Moshe was a Kohen. And Aharon was not.

Now this is striking on a number of levels.

Level #1: Moshe wasn’t the first born. And at that time, it was the first born who were supposed to be the Kohanim.

Level #2: Aharon was the first born.

But Moshe loses that — by somehow or other angering G-d.

But we could also look at it the other way around. Aharon gains it by Moshe somehow or other angering G-d.

Slightly similar. Adam sins, becomes a Kohen. Moshe angers G-d, Aharon becomes a Kohen.

Noteworthy point #3: To become a Kohen one needs clothes.

Well, actually more than clothes. He needs to be dressed in those clothes.

Putting it all together. There seems to be some connection between sinning and becoming a Kohen. And that transformation is made by the right entitity dressing the right person in the right clothes.

Back to the Mishkan

So we’re back in the Mishkan. And we see a two-step process — between G-d, Moshe, and Aharon.

Step number one is the vision.

You, Moshe, have to take your brother Aharon and bring him close to you.
You have to raise him up to where you are.
You have to make him capable of doing what you can do.
You have to transform him into a Kohen.

Therefore, you’re going to have to make holy clothes. And you, Moshe, yourself are going to have to speak to those who have the ability to make those clothes.

It has to be sourced from you — because only you can transfer this to him. You have it. Aharon doesn’t yet have it. But you can raise him up.

Speak to them so they’ll make Aharon’s clothes, so that they can make Aharon holy, so that he can go and serve Me.

And so, part one is letting Moshe know the clothes he’s going to have to make — in order to transform Aharon into a Kohen Gadol, and his sons into regular Kohanim.

Once Moshe is given that vision and understanding, Hashem lets him know: he’s going to have to clothe them. He’s going to dress them in these clothes. And there’s a bit more. Once they’re dressed, you can then anoint them. And do something called filling their hands. Then you, Moshe, will make them holy. And then they can serve Me.

That’s part one: the vision, the general statement, the blueprint.

But then there’s part two: the procedure, the ceremony, the method.

I told you in a general way that you have to clothe them. But I have to tell you exactly how that is going to work.

You are going to serve as Kohen and do everything needed for the avodah. After that, you are going to take Aharon and his sons to the entranceway of the Ohel Moed.

They are not yet going inside.

You will have them go into a mikvah — v’rachatzta osam ba’mayim. And then, at the entranceway to the Ohel Moed, having surrounded themselves with the Waters of Torah (in all the ways that water represents Torah), you will dress them right there at the entranceway.

And the first garment noted in this procedure is the kesones — once again, the same type of garment that G-d dressed Adam in.

Then, after you dress them, you take the Shemen HaMishchah and pour it on their heads.

And then you (Moshe) will perform the avodah. And you will perform it for seven days.

Seven days.
Do you remember that number?
It was mentioned way back at the very beginning of this D’var Torah.

We are in Parshas Shmini, which starts out on the eighth day. And we noted that if there’s an eighth day, then there must be seven days before it.

We’ve just found our seven days.

For seven days, Moshe will take Aharon and his sons to the entranceway of the Ohel Moed.
For seven days he will clothe them, dress them in the clothing of the Kohanim.
And for seven days, he will do the avodah — and they will, for the most part, watch.

In Aharon’s Hands

It’s only for the most part. There is this interesting phrase. We’ve seen it already a couple of times.

Let’s go back to Parshas Tetzaveh, where G-d gives Moshe the general overview — where He tells him what all the clothes are going to look like, and then explains that he, Moshe, will clothe Aharon and his sons, and that afterwards he will anoint them with the Shemen HaMishchah. And then our interesting phrase: u’mileisa es yadam — “and you will fill their hands.” And then you, Moshe, will make them holy, and they will serve Me.

Now, there’s a machlokes Rashi-Ramban on the meaning of that phrase. I have not yet merited to go into that machlokes in any sort of depth or any sort of substantive way. But I have an idea that I want to share — not because I know it’s true, but so that we can consider whether or not it may be true.

So let us remember the sequence:

1. Dressing them in the clothes.

2. Anointing them with oil.

3. Filling their hands.

4. Making them holy.

In other words — is the phrase u’mileisa es yadam a state of being that exists as a consequence of dressing them and anointing them with the Shemen HaMishchah? Or is it another stage in the process, in the activity, in the actions of making Aharon and his sons Kohanim?

Let’s consider the second option right now — even though there may be some slight textual and other difficulties with it. We’ll try to do the best we can.

We are returning to chapter 29 — the chapter of the process, of the means by which we make Aharon and his sons into Kohanim, that seven-day process.

We’re told in verse 5 that you dress Aharon, and then we are told that afterwards you take the Shemen HaMishchah and pour it on his head. Then we’re told that he’s going to do the same thing with his sons. He’s going to dress them in kesonos — our familiar word by now — and the other clothes. But they don’t get the Shemen HaMishchah. They’re not the Kohen Gadol.

Then we have this phrase: u’mileisa yad Aharon v’yad banav — “and you shall fill the hand of Aharon and the hand of his sons.”

We split it up into two steps:

1. You do Aharon.

2. You do his sons.

Now we bring them back together. You might have brought them back together in the previous phrase — v’hayta lahem kehunah l’chukas olam — but I’m skipping that phrase for now.

What might it mean to fill their hands? Can we see anything in this chapter that indicates that we are filling their hands?

Well, let us look at the next couple of verses. Moshe is to take the bull, and Aharon and his sons are to lay their hands on the head of that bull.

Might it be possible to say that we are filling their hands with the head of the bull?

Perhaps. But perhaps that’s a bit of a stretch. Let’s see, though, if we can make it work.

We’ll start with a question.
In general, what does someone do when they lean their hands on the head of the bull?

They do vidui. That is, they confess their sins.

וּמַנִּיחַ שְׁתֵּי יָדָיו בֵּין שְׁתֵּי קַרְנָיו וּמִתְוַדֶּה עַל חַטָּאת עֲוֹן חַטָּאת וְעַל אָשָׁם עֲוֹן אָשָׁם. וְעַל הָעוֹלָה מִתְוַדֶּה עֲוֹן עֲשֵׂה וַעֲוֹן לֹא תַּעֲשֶׂה שֶׁנִּתַּק לַעֲשֵׂה:

And he places his two hands between its two horns and confesses.

On a chatas — the sin of the chatas.
On an asham — the sin of the asham.
And on an olah he confesses the sin of a positive commandment and the sin of a negative commandment that has been rectified by a positive commandment.

Three elements come together:

Hands (of the confessor). Head (of the animal). The confession itself.

What’s the connection? Don’t know yet. But I do know that Aharon himself has a very particular sin that he needs to atone for.

Let us note the first animal that Moshe brings:

פַּ֣ר אֶחָ֧ד בֶּן־בָּקָ֛ר

One bull, a son of the herd.

Why a bull? Why so young?

Rashi:

לְכַפֵּר עַל מַעֲשֵׂה הָעֵגֶל שֶׁהוּא פַּר:

To atone for the act of the Calf — which was [itself] a bull.

There it is again. Sin and kehunah. Seemingly going hand in hand again.

And can we note that this young bull was a sin offering — a korban chatas?

Let’s see what else we can find.

The first ram is similar to the bull — at least in terms of Aharon’s hands. Once again, the animal is brought to the entranceway of the Ohel Moed, and once again, Aharon and his sons lay their hands on the head of the animal.

Of course, it’s a different type of korban — a korban olah. For which one has to confess different types of sins.

But it’s the same pattern.

Hands. Head. Confession.

Now comes the second ram.
And once again, come the hands on the head.

But this time, things are a bit different.

We’ll start with the blood.
Moshe needs to take some of the blood and put it on Aharon’s right ear lobe.

And on his right thumb (of the hand — the Chumash’s words, not mine). And his right big toe:

וְעַל־תְּנ֨וּךְ אֹ֤זֶן בָּנָיו֙ הַיְמָנִ֔ית וְעַל־בֹּ֤הֶן יָדָם֙ הַיְמָנִ֔ית וְעַל־בֹּ֥הֶן רַגְלָ֖ם הַיְמָנִ֑ית

And on the right ear lobe of his sons, and on the right thumb of their hand, and on the right big toe of their foot.

Not (only) the hands. And not fully the hands.

So, not so sure. At the very least, let’s say that the hand is (somewhat) represented.

But we aren’t done yet.

Next comes the matzos. Those are brought in a basket. And Moshe takes out three Matzos from the basket and places them in the palms of Aharon’s hands.

It seems that these hands need to be full. Full with the head of the sacrificial animals.
And full with the matzos.
Perhaps even full of blood.

Is it a stretch?
I don’t know.

After all, these hands will be the hands that the Kohanim bless the nation with. See, for example, our parsha:

וַיִּשָּׂ֨א אַהֲרֹ֧ן אֶת־יָדָ֛ו אֶל־הָעָ֖ם וַֽיְבָרְכֵ֑ם

And Aharon lifted up his hands toward the people and blessed them.

And it is these same hands that the kohanim will wash on the way to the avodah:

וַיְדַבֵּ֥ר יְהֹוָ֖ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֥ה לֵּאמֹֽר׃ וְעָשִׂ֜יתָ כִּיּ֥וֹר נְחֹ֛שֶׁת וְכַנּ֥וֹ נְחֹ֖שֶׁת לְרׇחְצָ֑ה וְנָתַתָּ֣ אֹת֗וֹ בֵּֽין־אֹ֤הֶל מוֹעֵד֙ וּבֵ֣ין הַמִּזְבֵּ֔חַ וְנָתַתָּ֥ שָׁ֖מָּה מָֽיִם׃ וְרָחֲצ֛וּ אַהֲרֹ֥ן וּבָנָ֖יו מִמֶּ֑נּוּ אֶת־יְדֵיהֶ֖ם וְאֶת־רַגְלֵיהֶֽם׃ בְּבֹאָ֞ם אֶל־אֹ֧הֶל מוֹעֵ֛ד יִרְחֲצוּ־מַ֖יִם וְלֹ֣א יָמֻ֑תוּ א֣וֹ בְגִשְׁתָּ֤ם אֶל־הַמִּזְבֵּ֙חַ֙ לְשָׁרֵ֔ת לְהַקְטִ֥יר אִשֶּׁ֖ה לַֽיהֹוָֽה׃ וְרָחֲצ֛וּ יְדֵיהֶ֥ם וְרַגְלֵיהֶ֖ם וְלֹ֣א יָמֻ֑תוּ וְהָיְתָ֨ה לָהֶ֧ם חׇק־עוֹלָ֛ם ל֥וֹ וּלְזַרְע֖וֹ לְדֹרֹתָֽם׃

And Hashem spoke to Moshe, saying: You shall make a copper basin, and its base of copper, for washing. And you shall place it between the Tent of Meeting and the altar, and you shall put water there. And Aharon and his sons shall wash from it — their hands and their feet.

Death? That seems to be quite a serious consequence for not washing one’s hands (and feet).

But, of course, this is not just about the hands and the feet. It’s about entering into the Ohel Moed. It’s about approaching the Mizbeach. It’s about the service and the fire offering.

The fire offerings which we bring to the Ohel Moed will carry the confessions that we make with our hands...

They will be carried to the Mizbeach by the feet of the Kohanim.

And they will be placed on the Mizbeach by the hands of the Kohanim.

And it is those hands and those feet which need to be washed.

They need to have water poured upon them.

These aren’t just any hands and any feet. They are the hands and feet of fire offerings. Of sin and confession. Of the avodah of self-transformation.

But while we are focusing on these hands, let’s not forget the clothes.

After all, they seem connected.

Step #1: the clothes Step #2: the oil. Step #3: the hands.

It’s a process. There is a connection. I don’t know where step #2 fits in yet — but I do see a connection between step #1 and step #3.

Remember those clothes that HaKadosh Baruch Hu clothed Adam and Chava in?

Well, those clothes have a history — as told by Rav Moshe HaDarshan in Bereishis Rabati (on Bereishis 27:15).

The clothes begin with G-d. G-d dressed Adam and Chava in them. And Adam gave them to Shem (the first born son of Noach). And Shem gave them to Avraham. And Avraham to Yitzchak. And Yitzchak to Esav (his first born).

Because (as we mentioned above), these are the clothes of the Kohanim — of those who do the avodah.

And so, they belonged to Esav.

Except that Esav sold the bechorah to Yaakov.

And so the time came when Rivka dressed Yaakov in those clothes:

כשעמד יעקב ולקח הבכורה מן עשו אמר רבקה הואיל שלקח יעקב את הבכורה מיד עשו, בדין הוא שילבש הבגדים הללו, שנאמר ותקח רבקה את בגדי עשו בנה הגדול

When Yaakov arose and took the bechorah from Esav, Rivka said: ‘Since Yaakov has taken the bechorah from Esav’s hand, by right he should wear these garments’ — as it says, ‘And Rivka took the garments of Esav her elder son.’

And Yaakov went in with those clothes to Yitzchak.

And Yitzchak heard the voice. It was the voice of Yaakov.

But he wasn’t sure. So he felt the hands. They were the hands of Esav.

And so he proclaimed:

וַיֹּ֗אמֶר הַקֹּל֙ ק֣וֹל יַעֲקֹ֔ב וְהַיָּדַ֖יִם יְדֵ֥י עֵשָֽׂו׃

And he said: The voice is the voice of Yaakov — but the hands are the hands of Esav.

How can that be? How can the hands be the hands of Esav if the voice is the voice of Yaakov?

That can’t be.
Those are two opposites which cannot be reconciled.

The voice of truth, love and peace. The hands that deceive, fight and destroy.

Those aren’t the hands that we want. The words are the right words. The tone is the right tone.

But the hands — they need work. You can’t have a kohen with hands like that.

Just like you can’t have the material of war (iron) used to make the mizbeach.

So too you can’t have the hands which raise up the offerings onto the mizbeach be the hands that grasp the (iron) sword.

No, the hands of the kohen have to be a different type of hand.

And the job of Aharon and his sons are to create those hands.

Says HaKadosh Baruch Hu to Moshe: “Fill Aharon’s hands. Let him feel the head of that sacrifice. Let him recognize that, in some ways, it should be him upon that altar. Let him viscerally experience the temporal nature of his life. In so doing, let him confess and be honest about where he has come short and what he has done wrong.

“Let him take the food, the bread that came from the work of our brow — working the field day in, day out — which we are recognizing is gifted to us by G-d. Let him hold that in his hands and use those hands to wish all that is truly good for his fellow Jews.

“That, I’d like to suggest, is what it means to fill Aharon’s hands. Because one requirement of being a kohen is not just having the right clothes — it’s also having the right hands.”

Seven Days

So far, everything we have learned is vision. This, Hashem tells Moshe, is what you need to do.

But the time for doing has not happened yet.
And there will be a few hiccups along the way. For one, the Chet HaEgel.

Moshe will have to come down. And then he will have to go back up again.

But eventually, the time will come. He will gather together the Jewish people and tell them what they should do.

And they will begin to do. They’ll donate the money. Make the vessels. Build the structure. Make the clothes.

Everything will be ready.

Which means two things.

Thing #1: Moshe will have to set up the Mishkan.

Thing #2: Moshe will have to do the avodah (for seven days).

Sefer Shemos ends with Thing #1.

It starts in chapter 39. The Jewish people bring the Mishkan to Moshe:

וַיָּבִ֤יאוּ אֶת־הַמִּשְׁכָּן֙ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֔ה אֶת־הָאֹ֖הֶל וְאֶת־כׇּל־כֵּלָ֑יו

And they brought the Mishkan to Moshe — the Tent and all its vessels.

And they also bring the clothes:

אֶת־בִּגְדֵ֥י הַשְּׂרָ֖ד לְשָׁרֵ֣ת בַּקֹּ֑דֶשׁ אֶת־בִּגְדֵ֤י הַקֹּ֙דֶשׁ֙ לְאַהֲרֹ֣ן הַכֹּהֵ֔ן וְאֶת־בִּגְדֵ֥י בָנָ֖יו לְכַהֵֽן

The woven garments for serving in the holy place; the holy garments for Aharon the Kohen, and the garments of his sons to serve as Kohanim.

And so now, everything is ready:

וַיַּ֨רְא מֹשֶׁ֜ה אֶת־כׇּל־הַמְּלָאכָ֗ה וְהִנֵּה֙ עָשׂ֣וּ אֹתָ֔הּ כַּאֲשֶׁ֛ר צִוָּ֥ה יְהֹוָ֖ה כֵּ֣ן עָשׂ֑וּ

And Moshe saw all the work — and behold, they had done it just as Hashem had commanded; so they had done.

And so now we can begin:

וַיְדַבֵּ֥ר יְהֹוָ֖ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֥ה לֵּאמֹֽר׃ בְּיוֹם־הַחֹ֥דֶשׁ הָרִאשׁ֖וֹן בְּאֶחָ֣ד לַחֹ֑דֶשׁ תָּקִ֕ים אֶת־מִשְׁכַּ֖ן אֹ֥הֶל מוֹעֵֽד׃

And Hashem spoke to Moshe, saying: On the day of the first month, on the first of the month, you shall erect the Mishkan of the Tent of Meeting.

Did you note the date?
Rosh Chodesh Nisan. One year to the day when Moshe and Aharon received the first Mitzvah — HaChodesh HaZeh Lachem.

On that day, Moshe is to set up the Mishkan — starting with the Aron HaKadosh:

וְשַׂמְתָּ֣ שָׁ֔ם אֵ֖ת אֲר֣וֹן הָעֵד֑וּת וְסַכֹּתָ֥ עַל־הָאָרֹ֖ן אֶת־הַפָּרֹֽכֶת

And you shall place there the Ark of Testimony, and you shall cover the Ark with the Parochet.

And on that day, Moshe is to cloth the Kohanim:

וְהִלְבַּשְׁתָּ֙ אֶֽת־אַהֲרֹ֔ן אֵ֖ת בִּגְדֵ֣י הַקֹּ֑דֶשׁ

And you shall dress Aharon in the holy garments.

And indeed, soon enough, Rosh Chodesh Nisan comes. And we are told the story of Moshe setting up the Mishkan:

וַיְהִ֞י בַּחֹ֧דֶשׁ הָרִאשׁ֛וֹן בַּשָּׁנָ֥ה הַשֵּׁנִ֖ית בְּאֶחָ֣ד לַחֹ֑דֶשׁ הוּקַ֖ם הַמִּשְׁכָּֽן׃ וַיָּ֨קֶם מֹשֶׁ֜ה אֶת־הַמִּשְׁכָּ֗ן

And it was in the first month, in the second year, on the first of the month — the Mishkan was erected. And Moshe erected the Mishkan.

Item by item, bit by bit, the Chumash tells the story of Moshe setting up the Mishkan.

The foundation.
The boards.
The tent.\

The aron. The shulchan. The menorah.

Including the kiyor — the basin from which Aharon and his sons wash their hands and feet.

And then, the story stops.

The structure, the vessels. Told in detail. Aharon and his clothes. Not a word.

That is, not in Sefer Shemos.
Sefer Shemos ends with the structure and skips the story of the clothes and the anointment and of “filling their hands”.

Of the seven days it has nothing to say.
Even though — according to Rashi — those days have already passed.

Let us return for just one moment to our Parsha. To the very first line — the line with which we started this D’var Torah:

וַֽיְהִי֙ בַּיּ֣וֹם הַשְּׁמִינִ֔י

And it was on the eighth day.

The eighth day. The eighth day of what? Rashi has an answer:

לַמִּלּוּאִים; הוּא רֹאשׁ חֹדֶשׁ נִיסָן שֶׁהוּקַם הַמִּשְׁכָּן בּוֹ בַיּוֹם וְנָטַל עֶשֶׂר עֲטָרוֹת הַשְּׁנוּיוֹת בְּסֵדֶר עוֹלָם:

Of the miluim. This is Rosh Chodesh Nisan, on which the Mishkan was erected on that very day, and which took the ten crowns enumerated in Seder Olam.

Rosh Chodesh Nisan.
The day the Mishkan was set up. The day upon which Sefer Shemos ends.

Which means that the seven days of the “fulfilling” — did you notice that that word is exactly same word used in the phrase “filling their hands”:

miluim — “fulfilling”
וּמִלֵּאתָ֧ אֶת־יָדָ֛ם — “and you will fill their hands.”

There is no chronological reason why that story can’t be told in Sefer Shemos.

Indeed, there is no literary reason why that story can’t be told in Sefer Shemos. After all, we have just gone through — step by step — setting up the physical structure of the Mishkan.

There is no reason why we can’t follow that up with the story of setting up the Kohanim of the Mishkan.

And yet — according to Rashi — we don’t.
That story does not belong in Sefer Shemos. Or, it belongs in Sefer VaYikra. Or perhaps both are true.

Either way, Sefer Shemos skips that story and ends with the cloud. The cloud that covers the Mishkan and with Moshe not being able to enter the Mishkan because of that cloud.

When did that happen?
On Rosh Chodesh Nisan?

That seems hard to believe. That is the eighth day.
That is the day when not just Moshe, but Aharon and his sons entered into the Mishkan.

It’s not impossible. I believe this is how the Ramban understands what happens.

I would like to make another suggestion. I would like to suggest that we need to go back to a time when the Mishkan was set up, but in which no one had yet entered.

After all, there is a tradition that Moshe erected and dismantled the Mishkan each of the seven days of the “fulfilling” (aka miluim).

Indeed, the Mishkan is made to be taken apart and put back together. In many ways it makes sense that this would be part of the seven days of preparation for the inauguration of the Mishkan.

As such, I would like to suggest that Sefer Shemos ends with the first day. Yes, it had just told the story of the eighth day. But that narrative related solely to the (final) setup of the Mishkan.

That is a Moshe story.
As such, it is told here in Sefer Shemos.

But there is another story of the eighth day — and that is the story of the avodah of the eighth day.

That is an Aharon and his sons story. A Kohanim story. Not a story of the man who will be transferring the kehunah (Moshe), but of the people who will receive the kehunah (Aharon and his sons).

And that story is told in Sefer Vayikra — also known as Torat Kohanim (the laws of the Kohanim).

But if we are going to tell the story of the Kohanim, we can’t begin on the eighth day. Their story doesn’t begin on the eighth day.

It begins on the first day. And that day has two stories.

One story is the story of Moshe (for the first time) setting up the Mishkan.
That story is not actually told. Only the story of Moshe setting up the Mishkan on the eighth day is narrated.

But it is referenced.
Right here, at the end of Sefer Shemos.

Moshe, for the first time, sets up the Mishkan. And a cloud covers it. And Moshe can’t enter.

Moshe, the original Kohen. Moshe, who is still Kohen. Moshe, the one who ascended (three times) to the heavens.

That Moshe cannot enter. No, he must wait — for a call (ויקרא).

The very call that will come to Moshe at the very beginning of Sefer VaYikra. But while it will come to Moshe, it won’t be for Moshe.

Rather, it will be for the Jewish people. And it will be for Aharon and his sons. And it will take place on the first of the seven days.

Why Aharon

It is starting to come together.

The first day is the first day of instruction. It is the first day of preparation. It is the first day of transferring the kehunah from Moshe to Aharon.

Step #1 on day #1 is to set up the Mishkan. That has been taken care of — in Sefer Shemos.

Step #2 is to teach the Jewish people what the Mishkan is for — and how to use it.

Of course, Aharon and his sons will have a role here.

They will bring the blood to the mizbeach. They will skin the olah. They will cut it up. They will place it on the mizbeach.

They will do all of this — and more.

But they will not be doing it for themselves. They will be doing it for everyone else.

And herein we can answer a question that we have left unasked (and unanswered) until now.

Why Aharon?
Why did he merit to be the Kohen?

I hear that Moshe lost the Kehunah. Something about his response at the Sneh indicated that Hashem needed someone else for this particular job.

And that man was Aharon.

But why? Why him?

For that, I would like to turn to the Malbim. But before I do, I’d like to take a moment and talk about math.

Wait, come back.\ It isn’t going to be that bad.
I promise.

There is a problem with math.
It’s perfect. Too perfect.

In math a line is straight. Perfectly straight. A circle is round. Perfectly round. And so it is with squares and triangles and everything else.
Everything is just right.

It’s beautiful. It’s elegant. It works.

But let’s be honest. It’s not really of this world.

We don’t live in a world of perfect lines and squares. Our angles aren’t truly right. Our circles aren’t truly round.

And this is a problem if you want to use math to build something. If you want to take it’s axioms and formulas and use them to build a bridge or a sky scraper or a car or anything else where math can be of use.

After all, when I turn the steering wheel, I want the car to turn. It doesn’t have to be perfect. But it does have to be good enough.

But that road, it’s not perfectly flat. That turn, not perfectly smooth.

And as it is with roads so it is with buildings and bridges and basically everything else.

And thus, the engineer needs to devise methods to deal with the chasm between the perfect world of math and the imperfect world of man.

That is, if he wants it to work.

And so he has tolerances and margins of error and other “tricks” that he uses to bring the perfect models of math down to the imperfect world that we inhabit.

As it is with math, so it is with the Torah.

G-d’s Torah is perfect.
It is elegant and beautiful and pure.

But we aren’t.

We have desires. We have fears. We have weaknesses.

And so, we sin. Sometimes purposefully. Oftentimes inadvertently or unwittingly.

And that is a problem.
That is, if we want to actually live the Torah.

And so, it’s not enough to bring the Torah down to man.
We also need to bring man up to the Torah.

Or, put otherwise.
Moshe is the man who can tell us what G-d wants. Aharon is the man who can help us actually live the way that G-d wants.

He is the one who can bring us up to the Torah.

Moshe’s Job

And so, G-d tells Moshe to bring Aharon close to him.

In one way, this is figurative.

You, Moshe, are on high.
You understand the Torah. You know how to do the avodah.

Aharon is not there — yet.

So teach him. Inspire him. Instill in him the holiness that already resides in you.

But in another way, this is quite literal.
Again, I’ll paraphrase the Malbim.

There will come a time when will we prepare for the day that we have all been waiting for — the eighth day.

That time will last for a period of seven days.
During that time, you Moshe, will do it all.

You will erect the Mishkan — and you will take it down. You will do the avodah — every bit of it.

And the nation will watch — from afar. But not so Aharon and his sons.

You will bring them close.
To the entrance of the Ohel Moed.

They will see that they are close. And so will the nation.

You will physically bring them closer to you.

But there’s more. You will dress them.

They will see that they are dressed. And so will the nation.

They will intellectually and emotionally feel closer.

All of this will take place in Chapter 8 of Sefer Vayikra.

Before that, it will be class time.
Moshe will teach everyone what they need to know about the Mishkan and the avodah.

Class will go on for seven chapters.

But once class is over, it will be time to bring Aharon and his sons close.

It will be time for chapter eight and the passing of the kehunah.

That is when the narrative of the transition of the kehunah will take place. What was dictated in Chapter 29 of Sefer Shemos will now be lived in Chapter 8 of Sefer Vayikra.

And when chapter 8 is done, we will have arrived at our Parsha — and the eighth day.

The day that we have been waiting for. But what is it that we have been waiting for?

What is so important about this moment?

This is the day we have been waiting for.

The question is — what is it that we have been waiting for.

The Garden (again)

We need to go back to the eighth day. The first, eighth day.

After the sin. After Adam and Chava were kicked out of the garden.

What we had lost was the relationship with G-d. The ability to live with Him — day in and day out.

And so we had options.

**Option #1: ** live life without G-d.

This is the option that Kayin and his descendants took.

**Option #2: ** Try to go back to the garden.

This is (I believe) what Noach was trying to do after the flood.

Option #3: Find a way to rebuild the essence of the garden, while dealing with the reality that we are not going back to the garden.

In other words, create a place where G-d and man can live together. And find a way to deal with sin.

There is no going back to the garden.
That path is closed.

But there is a way to go back to the relationship.
That path is open.

But we can’t pretend. When we are naked, we are ashamed. That’s our new reality.

And so, instead of going back to the garden, we build a Mishkan.

A modified version of Gan Eden. It has the properties of Gan Eden. There are keruvim. There is the Eitz HaChaim.

But it has something that was missing in the garden — a way of dealing with the issue of sin.

That is the mizbeach. That is the korbanot. And that is the kohanim.

The kohanim are the ones who enable us to relate not only to who we are, but who we want to be.

And not only who we want to be, but who we are.

The Kohanim are the ones who enable us to raise ourselves up — so that no matter what, we can live with G-d.

Even if the Mishkan (or the Beis HaMikdash) is destroyed.

Even if we can’t technically bring the korbanot, we can viscerally do so. It won’t be as effective. It won’t work as well.

But it will work.
It will enable us one way or the other to raise ourselves up and meet the Torah that Moshe has brought down.

This is why the kehunah passed to Aharon.

Aharon — and his sons — are the ones who excel at relating to the Am.

Moshe is the master of the Torah. He is the one who is able to bring it down and make sure that it stays down.

Aharon is the master of the souls. He is the one who is able to bring us up to the Torah and makes sure that we stay up.

Share masmid

We have reached the end. Egypt is no longer a threat. Their economy, in ruins. Their army, gone. The Jewish people, free. Truly and utterly free.

And then, we sing.

Song — that is what happens next. And we know that it happens because the Torah emphasises that fact with one tiny word: אָז‏ — “then.”

Now, we take this word for granted. But honestly, it’s strange. Indeed, upon first reading it seems totally unnecessary. With a simple stroke of my virtual pen, I could easily rewrite this sentence and we would never know that anything is missing:

וַיָּשִׁר מֹשֶׁה‏

And Moshe sang

In other words, remove the word אָז‏ and replace it with a simple ו‏ (vav). What is known as vav hachibur (the connecting vav).

After all, this is the standard way that the Torah continues a narrative. It happens all the time, line after line, story after story.

And we need to look no further than the previous lines for a clear example. Let’s start with verse 27 (chapter 14):

וַיֵּט֩ מֹשֶׁ֨ה אֶת־יָד֜וֹ עַל־הַיָּ֗ם וַיָּ֨שׇׁב הַיָּ֜ם לִפְנ֥וֹת בֹּ֙קֶר֙ לְאֵ֣יתָנ֔וֹ וּמִצְרַ֖יִם נָסִ֣ים לִקְרָאת֑וֹ וַיְנַעֵ֧ר יְהֹוָ֛ה אֶת־מִצְרַ֖יִם בְּת֥וֹךְ הַיָּֽם׃

And Moshe stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea returned as morning approached to its full strength, and Mitzrayim fled toward it, and Hashem shook Mitzrayim into the midst of the sea.

The English “and” is the literal translation of the Hebrew ו‏ (vav). But honestly, when translating, we don’t necessarily translate that vav:

Moshe stretched out his hand over the sea and the sea returned as morning approached to its full strength. Mitzrayim fled toward it and Hashem shook Mitzrayim into the midst of the sea.

Two vavs translated, two ignored.

On the other hand, theoretically speaking, G-d could have inserted the word אָז‏ — “then” — here:

אָז יֵּט֩ מֹשֶׁ֨ה אֶת־יָד֜וֹ עַל־הַיָּ֗ם וכו׳

Then Moshe stretched out his hand over the sea...

Indeed, I imagine we could start from the very beginning of the Chumash and find countless times when the word אָז‏ — “then” — would work perfectly well in the narrative flow:

בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹקִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ. וְהָאָרֶץ הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ וְחֹשֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵי תְהוֹם... אָז יֹּאמֶר אֱלֹקִים יְהִי אוֹר

In the beginning G-d created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep... Then G-d said, let there be light...

In short, the word אָז‏ — “then” — could go almost anywhere, but seems to be needed nowhere.

And yet, here it is, in our verse. Prominently displayed.

Which means that it particularly belongs here. At this moment. After the miracle of Yam Suf.

Why? Why here? What is it telling us that we otherwise would not know?

That is our first question. There is one more.

Second Question

Second word, second question.

But first, a short introduction. There is an English word — conjugation. Some of us know what it means, some of us have no idea. But for all of us, it’s worth taking a moment and discussing it.

We’ll start by discussing the idea of a root. Words, we are told, have roots. Of course, they don’t literally have roots — roots belong to plant life. Trees have roots. Carrots are roots.

The tree and/or plant grow out of the root.

What about in Biblical Hebrew? Do Hebrew words grow out of Hebrew roots?

To answer that, let’s get a working hypothesis of a root. For me, a root is a concept. An abstract idea. Or, better yet, a flexible idea.

For example: ש-י-ר‏. The root of our word. It relates to the concept or idea of singing — combining melody and words.

Now let’s ask some particular questions. We’ll start with “who.”

Who is singing? I.e., who is combining melody and words?

Am I singing? Perhaps you are singing? Or maybe both of us together.

How about another question — when?

When did I (or is it you) sing?

Now, there are many other questions that a language needs to be able to answer. But these are two of the most common. Which may be a problem for us as we continue.

But for now, let’s run with these two and we’ll deal with any problems that come up as they arise.

For now, let’s just note the following — languages need methods for answering these types of questions. And that is where conjugation comes in.

Conjugating a root is the means by which the Hebrew language answers these implied questions. And in our particular verse, it tells us two vital pieces of information.

One, Moshe sang the song. Yes, I know that it says that Moshe and the Jewish people sang the song — but evidently Bnei Yisrael are secondary to Moshe.

Moshe sang — and the Jewish people joined in.

Or, Moshe sang — and taught it to the Jewish people.

Not sure. The key point is that Moshe is the essential doer here. He is primary, the Jewish people are secondary.

Two, Moshe hasn’t actually yet sung the song.

And here we get to our second question.

The (seeming) literal translation of this word is “Moshe will sing.” Not “Moshe sang,” but “Moshe will sing”:

יָשִׁיר מֹשֶׁה‏

Moshe will sing

That’s what it means to add a yud (י‏) to the root ש-י-ר‏. It answers both who and when at one time.

Who? He. That’s what yud means as a stand-alone prefix (i.e., without a vav being added to the end of the word).

Who is he? It is Moshe. That’s what our third word in our verse tells us:

אָ֣ז יָשִֽׁיר־מֹשֶׁה֩

Then Moshe will sing

And when did he (i.e., Moshe) sing? In the future. I.e.:

אָ֣ז יָשִֽׁיר־מֹשֶׁה֩

Then Moshe will sing

Now, our first response may be to say that this makes no sense. But that should not be our first response. Rather, we first should take it at face value and see if we can make sense of it.

What would it mean for the verse to say that “Then Moshe will sing”?

Well, for starters, it would mean that they didn’t sing this song at this moment. I.e., at the moment when G-d saved them from essentially certain destruction and they saw all the Egyptians drown.

That, after all, is the context of this song — as the previous lines detail:

וַיּ֨וֹשַׁע יְהֹוָ֜ה בַּיּ֥וֹם הַה֛וּא אֶת־יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל מִיַּ֣ד מִצְרָ֑יִם וַיַּ֤רְא יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ אֶת־מִצְרַ֔יִם מֵ֖ת עַל־שְׂפַ֥ת הַיָּֽם׃ וַיַּ֨רְא יִשְׂרָאֵ֜ל אֶת־הַיָּ֣ד הַגְּדֹלָ֗ה אֲשֶׁ֨ר עָשָׂ֤ה יְהֹוָה֙ בְּמִצְרַ֔יִם וַיִּֽירְא֥וּ הָעָ֖ם אֶת־יְהֹוָ֑ה וַֽיַּאֲמִ֙ינוּ֙ בַּֽיהֹוָ֔ה וּבְמֹשֶׁ֖ה עַבְדּֽוֹ׃

And Y-K-V-K saved Yisrael on that day from the hand of Mitzrayim, and Yisrael saw Mitzrayim dead on the bank of the sea. And Yisrael saw the great hand that Y-K-V-K did with Mitzrayim, and the nation feared Y-K-V-K, and they believed in Y-K-V-K and in Moshe His servant.

If we take the future tense seriously, then that means that despite this tremendous miracle, this was not the time that Moshe and the Jewish people sang this song.

Even though they saw the Egyptians dead.
Even though they saw the great hand of Hashem.
Even though they started to fear Hashem.
Even though they now believed in Hashem and in His servant Moshe.

No — they didn’t sing the song. Not yet. But then, at some future point, they will.

OK. That would be quite unexpected. But if we want to take this conjugation seriously, then evidently that is what the verse would be telling us.

Except — if that’s what it means, what’s the “then”? What is אָז‏ referring to?

If “then” is referring to the immediate context — and if it is telling me that now, in this particular situation, Moshe (and the Jewish people) sang this song — then that would make sense.

At this point in the narrative. At this point in Jewish history. At this particular salvation, Moshe and the Jewish people sang this song.

In other words, if I want to take the meaning of the word “then” seriously, then I need to understand that they sang this song right now, at this moment.

Not in the future.

So, I have an internal contradiction.

If I take the word “then” seriously, it means right now.

If I take “will” seriously, it means in the future.

Something must give. And it seems the best giving candidate is the future tense. It’s hard to argue that “then,” at this moment, it was determined or decided that Moshe will in the future sing this song.

After all, when else did they sing this song? Is there any pasuk anywhere in Tanach that indicates that finally Moshe (and the Jewish people) sang this song?

Is there any future reference to this song?

In other words, let’s say that at this moment, Moshe set in his mind that he would some day sing this song. Perhaps he wrote the song now — in the context of this miracle — but did not yet sing it. Perhaps he was waiting for some future miracle or some future event.

Then, at that future event he would sing this song.

That’s a really intriguing idea. The only problem is there is no reference to that future event. There is no record, no indication that Moshe sang this song again.

So it seems that “will” will have to go.

It seems that it has to be now. At this moment Moshe sang this song.

But then, let’s be honest. That’s not what is written. The word is written as it is written — and that is in the future tense. I can’t just magically declare it to be the past tense simply because it’s inconvenient to have it in the future tense.

So, we’re stuck.

And we seemingly have only one of two options.

Option #1: See if there is something that we are missing in the grammar.

Option #2: See if there is something hidden in the future that we are missing.

In other words, either we find a way to say that the future tense is not actually the future tense.

Or that the future tense is the future tense, but there is something in Moshe’s future that we missed. Some song he is destined to sing, but has not yet sung.

Personally speaking, I plan to choose both options.

Option #2: Something Hidden in the Future

I’m going to share a secret with you — I don’t have time to fully and properly answer these questions. Yom Tov is coming too soon.

So I will write from memory what I have so far, and I encourage all of you to look further into this over Yom Tov.

Let’s start with the second option. There is a Gemara in Sanhedrin (91b) that says from this very pasuk — from the future tense of יָשִׁיר‏ — we learn about תְּחִיַּת הַמֵּתִים‏, the resurrection of the dead:

תַּנְיָא, אָמַר רַבִּי מֵאִיר: מִנַּיִן לִתְחִיַּת הַמֵּתִים מִן הַתּוֹרָה? שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״אָז יָשִׁיר מֹשֶׁה וּבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶת הַשִּׁירָה הַזֹּאת לַה׳״. ״שָׁר״ לֹא נֶאֱמַר, אֶלָּא ״יָשִׁיר״ – מִכָּאן לִתְחִיַּית הַמֵּתִים מִן הַתּוֹרָה.

It is taught in a Baraisa: Rabbi Meir said: From where is the resurrection of the dead derived from the Torah? As it is stated: “Then Moshe and Bnei Yisrael will sing this song to Y-K-V-K.” It does not say שָׁר‏ — “sang.” Rather, it says יָשִׁיר‏ — “will sing.” From here we derive that the resurrection of the dead is from the Torah.

Rabbi Meir is taking the future tense literally. There will be a time when Moshe Rabbeinu himself will come back to life and sing this song. The Gemara is telling us: you were right to be bothered by the future tense. It is the future tense. And there is a future.

But I have an idea — a thought to be considered and explored. I would like to suggest that there is another literal meaning of the future tense, one which is the background of this Gemara.

Let us remember the future that was as well as the future that was supposed to be.

In less than three months’ time, the Jewish people will be receiving the Torah at Har Sinai. There has not yet been a Chet HaEgel. There has not yet been a Chet HaMeraglim. Moshe has not yet been told that he cannot enter Eretz Yisrael. The plan — the l’chatchilah plan — is to get the Torah and to march straight into Eretz Yisrael.

And what was supposed to happen then? The nations would flee or fall. Moshe would build the Beis HaMikdash. The final redemption would have already been here.

My guess is that at this moment, Moshe had in mind that he was going to sing this song at the building of that Beis HaMikdash. He knew the full plan. He knew what was supposed to be. And he was going to connect this moment — the miracle at Yam Suf — to that moment — the building of G-d’s house. We may not know today exactly what that connection is, but Moshe saw it.

That was what was supposed to be.

But that was not what happened. We sinned. Moshe was prevented from entering Eretz Yisrael. And so we had a first Beis HaMikdash and then a second. Please G-d, some day we will have a third. And then Moshe will come back and sing this song at that third Beis HaMikdash.

That is Rabbi Meir. The thought that entered Moshe’s mind is not going to disappear. Moshe understands that one way or another, he will be singing this song at the final Beis HaMikdash. It just depends on us: will it be the first and only Beis HaMikdash, or the third one — with Techiyas HaMeisim?

That is the l’chatchilah understanding of “Then Moshe will sing.” The original plan was that Moshe would take the Jewish people into Eretz Yisrael and sing it then. What happened instead is that the singing got pushed to the future — to Techiyas HaMeisim, when Moshe will rise and sing this song at the full and final Beis HaMikdash.

Option #1: Something Hidden in the Grammar

On the other hand, even according to the reading above, I still want to say that they sang this song at that time, right there at the sea. That seems clear from the pesukim. After all, Miriam herself comes out afterwards and sings the song with the women. So it’s not that Moshe wrote the song now with the intention of only reciting it later. It was rather that he also intended to recite it later.

And in that sense, perhaps our word יָשִׁיר‏ can be understood slightly differently.

Let’s go back to our world of roots and conjugations. As I hinted at before, there are more than two questions that a language needs to answer. One is “who?” Another is “when?” But even within the world of “when,” we have sub-questions. Did he do it one time, or many? Did he actually do it, or did he just plan on doing it? Did he intend to do it? Language has to cover a lot of different scenarios if it’s going to be sophisticated and helpful.

And with that said, I want to reference — without, unfortunately, the ability to fully explore right now — two other possible understandings of our conjugation.

The first we find in Sefer Iyov. Iyov 1:5 says:

כָּכָה יַעֲשֶׂה אִיּוֹב כׇּל הַיָּמִים

Thus Iyov would do, all the days.

The word יַעֲשֶׂה‏ — “would do” — is the same conjugation as our יָשִׁיר‏. Third person, future tense. But it doesn’t mean Iyov will do this at some point in the future. It means he would do this — over and over, on a regular basis. The future tense here indicates an ongoing state, something that happens not just now but tomorrow and next week and next month.

Perhaps that is what אָז יָשִׁיר מֹשֶׁה‏ means. Then, at this moment, Moshe began singing this song — and it became a song he would sing again and again. Perhaps he already brought it into the regular prayers of the Jewish people.

But there’s another possibility, and this is the one that Rashi brings. Rashi, whom I encourage everybody to look into in detail, says the following:

אָז כְּשֶׁרָאָה הַנֵּס עָלָה בְלִבּוֹ שֶׁיָּשִׁיר שִׁירָה

Then — when he saw the miracle — it arose in his heart that he would sing a song.

Rashi is saying that the same conjugation, the same tense, has this idea of intention. Then, at this moment, Moshe resolved in his heart to sing this song. And so he did — as the pasuk continues: וַיֹּאמְרוּ לֵאמֹר אָשִׁירָה לַה׳‏ — “and they said as follows: I will sing to Y-K-V-K.” First came the intention, then came the act.

Rashi brings several other verses that have the same grammatical structure — אָז יְדַבֵּר יְהוֹשֻׁעַ‏ (Yehoshua 10:12), וּבַיִת יַעֲשֶׂה לְבַת פַּרְעֹה‏ (Melachim I 7:8) — and in each case, the future tense indicates not “he will do” but “he purposed in his heart to do.” I don’t have time to go through those right now, but I encourage everybody to look at that Rashi and look up the sources he brings and see the pattern.

And this actually fits quite nicely with the Gemara in Sanhedrin and our earlier explanation. Perhaps both things are happening at once. Moshe is singing the song now — but at this very moment, looking at this miracle, it entered his mind that he was going to sing this song again in the future, at the building of the Beis HaMikdash.

The point is this: the same conjugation can sometimes have different understandings depending on the context, just like the same word can sometimes have multiple meanings. We cannot be locked into just one explanation of a conjugation, because it might limit us too much in our ability to understand what the Torah is saying. Even if there is a primary or more common usage, it doesn’t mean there aren’t variations that we need to be sensitive to.

What About “Then”?

So now let’s get to our final question.

אָז‏\u200E — “then” — indicates that something happened right now. At this moment, Moshe sang this song and the Jewish people followed.

And this raises another question. Why is it that only now we sing a song?

Why not, for example, after Makkas Bechoros — after the killing of all the firstborn? Wasn’t that a great time to sing? Freedom! You’re leaving Egypt! You’ve been enslaved in the most brutal way for who knows how long. They gave you no respite. They tortured you. They wouldn’t let you go for a moment. And now they’re kicking you out — they can’t get you out quick enough — and they’re giving you all sorts of stuff. Isn’t that a great time to sing a song?

Indeed, as far as I know, G-d hadn’t yet told Moshe to go back toward the Yam Suf, that there was going to be one more confrontation. I don’t know if Moshe knew, until this moment, that there was going to be a Krias Yam Suf. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. But even so — isn’t Makkas Bechoros a great time for שִׁיר‏?

Or how about the first מַכָּה‏? G-d’s fighting on our behalf already. The Mitzrim are being struck. Maybe some song back then. Something. I see that G-d sees what happened to us. He’s already judging the Mitzrim, already revealing their crimes. Some joy, some song, some celebration. Something.

Why only now?

I have a few ideas, but the one I want to share right now is one that I read in the Or HaChaim HaKadosh. What is the immediate verse right before ours? It says that the Jewish people — not just that they saw the יָד הַגְּדוֹלָה‏ of Hashem — but that they had יִרְאָה‏ — they feared Hashem. Not fear — awe. And then: they had אֱמוּנָה‏ — they believed in Hashem and in Moshe His servant.

You know the difference between fear and awe?

Let me take a detour to explain.

Imagine you’re in a spaceship and all of a sudden the computer malfunctions and starts taking you directly toward the sun. And there’s no way to override it. You would be filled with fear of the sun. You know how powerful it is. You know what it can do to you. That’s fear.

Now let’s take that same sun and look at it in a different way.

Imagine a place a mile away from you. Now imagine building a bonfire out of wood — a fire so large that you can feel its heat a full mile away. How much wood do you think you need for such a fire? How big would it have to be?

If that’s too close, make it a thousand miles. Make it on the other side of the earth if you want. Just try to picture how much wood you would have to use to build one fire so big that you can feel it from that distance.

Whatever number you have in mind — now imagine that you have to keep that fire going for a whole day. How much wood do you need now?

Now imagine not just one day, but every day. Day after day, year after year, going back from the very beginning of the earth all the way into the future. How much wood would you need?

Now picture the sun.

The sun is not one mile away. It’s not a thousand miles away. It’s not twelve thousand miles away. It’s 93 million miles away. And it’s not just that I can feel it where I happen to be standing. My entire city, my entire country, the entire continent, the entire hemisphere, the entire earth can feel its rays. It might be colder at night, but there is still some heat. It’s not absolute zero. And in the day — particularly a hot day — the heat is unmistakable. And this happens every single day without stop.

Imagine how powerful the sun is.

Now imagine that the sun is a small star. And they say there are about 100 billion stars in an average galaxy. And there are about 100 billion galaxies.

Imagine how much power there is in the universe.

Now imagine the One who created all of that.

That is yirah of awe. That is what the Jewish people felt at Yam Suf. They were filled with awe of Hashem unlike anything they had experienced before — despite all the Makkos, including Makkas Bechoros.

But they didn’t just have awe of Hashem. They had אֱמוּנָה‏. In Hashem. In Moshe His servant. They believed in Him. They trusted Him. They were loyal to Him.

Says the Or HaChaim HaKadosh — at least as I would like to understand him — now that the Jewish people had reached that מַדְרֵגָה‏, now that they had awe of Hashem and they were truly loyal to Him, now they could sing this song.

It’s not that they couldn’t have sung earlier. It’s that they weren’t ready to sing earlier. They hadn’t reached that state of awe and emunah yet. Moshe could have written this song any time. But he needed us. Just like he couldn’t go into Eretz Yisrael if we weren’t ready — we, the Jewish people, had to be on a certain level for this song to be sung.

So “then” — at that moment — when we finally achieved that level of yirah and emunah — Moshe sang this song.

And “then” — at that moment — Moshe said in his heart: this is the song I am going to sing when we build the Beis HaMikdash.

Share masmid

בְּטַכְסִיסֵי מִלְחֲמוֹת מְלָכִים בָּא עֲלֵיהֶם, כְּסֵדֶר מַלְכוּת כְּשֶׁצָּרָה עַל עִיר וכו׳‎

He [G-d] came upon them with the tactics of kings waging war, according to the protocol of a kingdom besieging a city...

— Rashi on Shemos 8:17 (based on the Tanchuma)

Rashi says something striking about the makkos: they are not just punishments. They are a war.

The Tanchuma lays out one strategic pattern behind that war, and Rashi points us toward it. That alone is worth careful study.

But perhaps there are other layers here as well.

Perhaps the war is not only a sequence of blows. Perhaps it is also a sequence of revelations. Perhaps each makah does not merely strike Egypt, but exposes something about Egypt — what it did, what it worshipped, what it relied on, what it thought it could hide.

That is what I want to explore.

My method is simple. I want to go through the makkos one by one, slowly, and pay attention to what each one seems to target, what language the Torah uses, what earlier scenes it echoes, and what larger pattern begins to emerge.

We do not need to force a perfect scheme from the start.

We can begin more modestly than that.

We can look carefully. We can make associations. We can test them. And then we can see what kind of war this really is.

Blood in the Water

The first makah is Dam. The Nile turns to blood.

What exactly is the point of that?

There are at least three different elements here, and each matters.

First: blood. Not just ruined water, but blood specifically. The substance itself is part of the message.

Second: water. Egypt’s water is struck, and with it Egypt’s ability to drink normally and live normally.

Third: the Ye’or — the Nile. Not just water in general, but Egypt’s great river in particular.

Those three things together create the opening blow.

Blood.
Water.
The Nile.

And once you put blood together with the Nile, one association presses itself forward almost immediately.

Go back to the beginning of Sefer Shemos:

וַיְצַו פַּרְעֹה לְכׇל עַמּוֹ לֵאמֹר כׇּל הַבֵּן הַיִּלּוֹד הַיְאֹרָה תַּשְׁלִיכֻהוּ וְכׇל הַבַּת תְּחַיּוּן‎

Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying: “Every boy that is born, throw him into the Nile. Every girl, you shall let live.” (1:22)

That river is not just a river.

It is where Egypt tried to hide its violence.

The babies were drowned, not stabbed. No blood filled the streets. No battlefield remained behind. The murder disappeared beneath the water. It could be denied. It could be obscured. It could be made to look clean.

That is part of the point.

As the Ramban explains on the earlier policy of dealing with Israel בְּחָכְמָה‎, Egypt’s oppression was not only cruel. It was calculated. It was meant to be effective and deniable at once.

It happens at night.
It happens quietly.
It happens in a way that buries the evidence.

And now the Nile itself is turned into blood.

That first makah therefore does more than afflict Egypt. It exposes Egypt.

The place where the blood of Jewish children was concealed now displays blood openly. The river that covered the crime now reveals it. The message is not subtle: We have not forgotten. You did not hide anything. G-d saw.

This also explains why the Nile is the focal point, even though the makah expands beyond it. When Moshe warns Pharaoh, the emphasis is the Ye’or:

בזאת תדע כי אני ה׳

...by this you will know that I am Hashem.

But the actual plague spreads wider:

rivers
canals
ponds
gathered waters
even water in wood and stone.

The center is the Nile, because that is the moral center. The expansion is broader, because the judgment is broader. Egypt’s crime was concentrated there, but Egypt’s guilt was not.

There may be something else here too.
The blood in the Nile is not only memory.
It is warning.

At the beginning of the story, it most naturally evokes the blood Egypt already spilled there — the blood of the murdered children. But by the end of the story, another image comes into view: Egyptian blood in water.

The empire that began by throwing Hebrew children into the river will end with Egyptians overwhelmed in the sea. The first plague is therefore not only indictment. It is forewarning.

Beware of the blood in the water.

That is how the war begins.

Not with the destruction of Egypt’s army. Not with the collapse of Pharaoh’s throne. Not even with direct human death.

It begins with revelation.

Before G-d brings Egypt down, He shows Egypt what it is.

Crying Out

The next makah is Tzefardea.

At first glance, it is a strange plague. What exactly is the affliction here?

We usually picture Tzefardea as frogs. That is certainly the standard understanding. But Abarbanel — and, according to Ibn Ezra, others as well — identify them as crocodiles.

Why would they do that? Presumably because the plague seems to demand something more threatening than mere annoyance. Frogs are invasive, filthy, and exhausting. Crocodiles are frightening.

The Netziv offers a kind of middle position: frogs for the masses, crocodiles for Pharaoh’s court.

Whatever one makes of that zoological debate, it serves mainly to sharpen the problem. This plague is not meant to be read as simple inconvenience. And once that is clear, the deeper question comes into focus: not only what the creatures are, but why they emerge specifically from the Ye’or.

That question matters because the first plague already taught us that the river is not just a setting. It is a witness. It is the place where Egypt tried to bury its crime. So when the next plague also rises from the Ye’or, we should assume the Torah wants us to connect the two.

But how?

Not in bricks. Nor in mortar or city-building. Rather, in cries:

וַיֵּאָנְחוּ בְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל מִן הָעֲבֹדָה וַיִּזְעָקוּ וַתַּעַל שַׁוְעָתָם אֶל הָאֱלֹהִים מִן הָעֲבֹדָה‎

The Israelites groaned under the bondage and cried out, and their plea rose up to G-d from the bondage. (2:23)

Israel cries out. And at the bush, Hashem says:

כִּי שָׁמַעְתִּי אֶת צַעֲקָתוֹ... הִנֵּה צַעֲקַת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל בָּאָה אֵלָי

“I have heard their cry... the cry of the children of Israel has come to Me.” (3:7, 9)

And now, under the pressure of Tzefardea, Pharaoh turns to Moshe and Aharon:

הַעְתִּירוּ אֶל ה’ וְיָסֵר הַצְפַרְדְּעִים מִמֶּנִּי וּמֵעַמִּי וַאֲשַׁלְּחָה אֶת הָעָם

“Entreat Hashem to remove the frogs from me and from my people, and I will send the people out.” (8:4)

And what does Moshe do?

וַיִּצְעַק מֹשֶׁה אֶל ה’

Moshe cried out to Hashem. (8:8)

Moshe himself cries out to Hashem.

The reversal is sharp.

The empire that ignored cries must now depend on them.

What Egypt would not hear from Israel, Pharaoh must now seek for himself. The very man who stood over a system of suffering is reduced to asking someone else to plead for relief.

This is why Abarbanel’s formulation is so powerful. He describes these creatures as הַצּוֹעֲקִים‎ — the ones that cry out — and connects their emergence from the Nile to the cries that once came from that same river:

כְּצַעֲקַת וִילְלַת בְּנוֹת יִשְׂרָאֵל וַיֵּצְאוּ מִן הַיְאוֹר כִּי מִשָּׁם יָצְאָה צְעָקָה וִילְלָה

Like the crying and wailing of the daughters of Israel, they came out from the river, for from there came crying and wailing.

That line transforms the plague.

The river does not only return blood. It returns sound.

In Dam, the Ye’or becomes a visible accusation. In Tzefardea, it becomes an audible one.

And the pattern does not stop there. In Dam, death in the water produces stench. In Tzefardea, death on the land produces stench again. The corruption of the river now spreads outward, from water to land, from hidden crime to public disorder.

That outward movement matters.

The babies in the river were the most concentrated and horrifying expression of Egypt’s cruelty. But they were not the whole story. Israel cried not only because children were taken, but because the whole machinery of slavery was crushing them. So the plague begins in the Ye’or, where the worst of the crime was hidden, and then it spills onto dry land, as if to say: the suffering was broader than that, and G-d sees that too.

If Dam reveals what Egypt did, Tzefardea reveals what Egypt refused to hear.

The Dust Strikes Back

The third makah is Kinim.

Aharon strikes the afar ha’aretz — the dust of the earth — and that dust becomes kinim on adam and behemah.

By now a clear progression has emerged.

Dam was rooted in the water. Tzefardea began in the Ye’or and then spilled onto the land. Kinim comes from no river at all. Its source is the earth itself.

The plague has moved fully onto dry ground.

And that matters, because dust is not neutral in the story of Egypt’s oppression.

Egypt worked Israel with chomer, leveinim, and avodah basadeh. Brickmaking. Field labor. Backbreaking work close to the ground, in dust, sweat, and humiliation. The Kli Yakar makes the physical point directly: hard labor leaves a laborer covered in dust and sweat, and kinim belong to exactly that world. The Malbim adds a deeper layer. Kinim is a makah of בִּזָּיוֹן‎ — not only pain, but disgrace.

That is the heart of the plague.

The dust of slavery strikes back.

What Egypt forced onto the bodies of its slaves now comes upon Egypt’s own bodies. The substance of degradation becomes the instrument of degradation. This is not yet the murder of Dam, and it is not the returning cry of Tzefardea. It is something broader and, in a certain sense, more ordinary: the daily humiliation of servitude, the reduction of human beings to filthy, sweating, dust-covered labor.

And that is precisely why Kinim belongs here.

The first three makkos now read as a single moral movement.

Dam exposes the blood Egypt tried to hide. Tzefardea gives back the cries Egypt refused to hear. Kinim returns the degradation Egypt made others live in.

The progression is striking. It moves from the most concentrated and horrifying crime — the murder of the children in the Nile — to the wider field of suffering that Egypt ignored, and then to the atmosphere of degradation that saturated the whole system. The evil becomes less concentrated, but more expansive. The first makah reveals what Egypt did at its worst. The third reveals what Egypt had become all the time.

That is why Kinim matters so much.

It is the completion of the first triad.

The theme of these opening blows is not yet total collapse. It is moral exposure. G-d is showing Egypt what it has done, and what kind of kingdom it has become. Blood. Cries. Dust. Murder. Indifference. Degradation.

G-d sees all of it.

And now, for the first time, even the chartumim cannot keep up. They fail, and they say: אֶצְבַּע אֱלֹהִים הִוא‎ — “It is the finger of G-d.”

Of course it is.

By the third plague, the dust itself has begun to testify.

The Second Round

We are not just moving to the next plague here. We are entering a new round.

And the Torah marks that shift in a recognizable way. At the opening of each new elevation, Hashem explains what this stage is for. With Dam, the point was:

בְּזֹאת תֵּדַע כִּי אֲנִי ה’

by this you will know that I am Hashem.

Now, at the opening of the second round, the formula returns — but it deepens:

לְמַעַן תֵּדַע כִּי אֲנִי ה’ בְּקֶרֶב הָאָרֶץ

so that you know that I am Hashem in the midst of the earth.

The point is not only repeated. It is expanded.

First: that I am Hashem.
Now: that I am Hashem in the midst of the earth.

The claim is growing as the plagues unfold.

And as it is with the explanation for why G-d is sending plagues, so it is with the actual plagues themselves.

Arov

Let’s start with Arov.

There is a real connection here to Tzefardea. In both plagues, creatures invade human space. Tzefardea penetrates bedrooms, ovens, and houses. Arov does the same thing more violently. The private sphere is not merely disturbed now. It is overrun.

There may also be a resonance here, even if I would not press it too far. Egypt invaded Jewish homes. It entered the private sphere, shattered its safety, and took children from their families. Now Egyptian homes are invaded in turn. Tzefardea had already entered bedrooms and ovens. Arov fills “your houses and the houses of your servants.” The home itself is no longer secure.

This is also where the hafla’ah begins. For the first time, Goshen is explicitly set apart. Hashem distinguishes between Egypt and Israel, and from here that distinction will only sharpen.

Dever

Then comes Dever.

And here I think something new is happening.

Until now, the blows have exposed guilt, invaded space, and afflicted bodies.

But Dever is different. This is a direct attack on Egypt’s economic life and power.

Until now, as painful as the other plagues were — they came and they went. Psychologically they may have been traumatic. And the stench was a constant reminder of what had been.

But the blood — gone.
The frogs (or crocodiles) — gone.

Not so with Dever. When Dever is done, there is devastation in its wake.

Your cattle — dead.
Your horses — dead.
Your donkeys — dead.
Your camels — dead.
Your sheep and goats — dead.

Every single one? I don’t think so. After all, later on, the Egyptians chase after Am Yisrael on their horse and carriages. And the plague of Barad (hail) struck any domesticated animal left in the field (which presumably contained horses and donkeys and camels and more).

But it was devastating nonetheless. One with lasting economic consequences.

Transport. Agricultural power. Stored wealth. Productive strength.

All struck and damaged.

In short, this is a new phase of the war. G-d has upped the ante.
He is now going after the Egyptian economy.

Shechin

Now for Shechin.

Here we are back on more familiar ground. Shechin clearly intensifies Kinim.

In Kinim, the dust of the earth (עפר — afar) becomes a bodily affliction on adam and behemah.

In Shechin, Moshe takes soot from the kiln (פיח כִּוְשָׁן — piach kivshan), and throws it heavenward.

Dust and soot — similar, yet different. We’ve seen that pattern before. It’s the stuff that variations are made of.

If I were to venture a guess — the dust of the earth relates to the work of the field. Soot, on the other hand, relates to the work of bricks and mortar.

Both of which were mentioned back in chapter 1:

וַיְמָרְר֨וּ אֶת־חַיֵּיהֶ֜ם בַּעֲבֹדָ֣ה קָשָׁ֗ה בְּחֹ֙מֶר֙ וּבִלְבֵנִ֔ים וּבְכׇל־עֲבֹדָ֖ה בַּשָּׂדֶ֑ה אֵ֚ת כׇּל־עֲבֹ֣דָתָ֔ם אֲשֶׁר־עָבְד֥וּ בָהֶ֖ם בְּפָֽרֶךְ׃

And they made their lives bitter with hard labor in mortar and in bricks, and in all the work of the field, which they made them do with rigor. (1:14)

Either way, we see that the material world of the slave becomes the instrument of the plague.

And we see that which they did to the Jews, is now being done to the Egyptians and their domestic animals (אדם ובהמה — adam and behemah).

And once again, we see an escalation as we work our way through the rounds of the plagues.

Kinim irritate and degrade. Shechin wounds and disables.

Indeed, with shechin even the chartumim cannot stand before Moshe. What had been bodily misery becomes bodily incapacity.

The Third Round

Now we come to the third round.

And once again, at the opening of a new elevation, Hashem explains what this stage is for:

בַּעֲבוּר תֵּדַע כִּי אֵין כָּמֹנִי בְּכׇל הָאָרֶץ

so that you know that there is none like Me in all the earth.

The progression is unmistakable.

First: that I am Hashem.
Then: that I am Hashem in the midst of the earth.
Now: that there is none like Me in all the earth.

The claim is growing as the plagues unfold.

And as it is with the purpose-statements, so it is with the plagues themselves.

Barad

Begin with Barad.

Here the textual connection to Dever is hard to miss.

Dever struck the mikneh in the sadeh:

הִנֵּה יַד ה’ הוֹיָה בְּמִקְנְךָ אֲשֶׁר בַּשָּׂדֶה בַּסּוּסִים בַּחֲמֹרִים בַּגְּמַלִּים בַּבָּקָר וּבַצֹּאן

behold, the hand of Hashem will be upon your livestock that are in the field — upon the horses, the donkeys, the camels, the cattle, and the flock.

Barad returns to that same terrain — mikneh and sadeh — but expands it:

וְעַתָּה שְׁלַח הָעֵז אֶת מִקְנְךָ וְאֵת כָּל אֲשֶׁר לְךָ בַּשָּׂדֶה כָּל הָאָדָם וְהַבְּהֵמָה אֲשֶׁר יִמָּצֵא בַשָּׂדֶה וְלֹא יֵאָסֵף הַבַּיְתָה וְיָרַד עֲלֵהֶם הַבָּרָד וָמֵתוּ

and now send, bring your livestock and everything that is yours in the field under shelter; every man and beast that is found in the field and is not brought home — the hail will come down upon them, and they will die.

And then the Torah makes the further expansion explicit:

וַיַּךְ הַבָּרָד בְּכׇל־אֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם אֵת כׇּל־אֲשֶׁר בַּשָּׂדֶה מֵאָדָם וְעַד־בְּהֵמָה וְאֵת כׇּל־עֵשֶׂב הַשָּׂדֶה הִכָּה הַבָּרָד וְאֶת כׇּל־עֵץ הַשָּׂדֶה שִׁבֵּר

and the hail struck throughout all the land of Egypt all that was in the field, from man to beast; and the hail struck every herb of the field, and every tree of the field it shattered.

Dever struck the animal world of the field.
Barad widens the blow.

Now it is not only mikneh, but also כל האדם והבהמה אשר ימצא בשדה. And beyond that, the Torah explicitly adds plant life: כל עשב השדה and כל עץ השדה.

So this is not simply a repetition of Dever. It is an expansion of it.

The attack on Egypt’s economic life is now widening. First the animal life of the field was struck. Now the growing life of the field begins to be struck as well.

And here the house suddenly changes meaning.

With Tzefardea and Arov, the house had become vulnerable. Creatures entered bedrooms, ovens, and private spaces. But now the house becomes the place of refuge. Bring your servants inside. Bring your animals inside. Whoever comes into the house can be saved.

The place Egypt once violated now becomes the place in which one may seek protection.

Arbeh

Then comes Arbeh.

Now the blow spreads even further:

וְכִסָּה אֶת עֵין הָאָרֶץ ... וְאָכַל אֶת יֶתֶר הַפְּלֵטָה הַנִּשְׁאֶרֶת לָכֶם מִן הַבָּרָד

it will cover the surface of the land ... and it will eat the surviving remnant that was left for you from the hail.

Barad began the attack on plant life.
Arbeh completes it.

Barad breaks.
Arbeh devours.

These are twin agricultural strikes.

The first damages what is standing.
The second consumes what remains.

And now the economic war has clearly moved from animal life to plant life — from the creatures that work the field, carry goods from the field, and support the field, to what grows in the field itself.

All this work in the field that the Jewish people had done, all this benefit Egypt had been drawing from Jewish slave labor — now it is being lost.

Choshech

Then comes Choshech.

Now Moshe’s hand is stretched not toward water, not toward dust, not toward soot, but toward heaven:

נְטֵה יָדְךָ עַל הַשָּׁמַיִם

stretch out your hand toward the heavens.

That matters.

Until now, the plagues have been expanding the territory of Egypt that is being struck.

First the waters.
Then the dust.
Then the homes.
Then the fields.
Then the borders.

And now, with Choshech, it is not only territory that is struck. It is time itself.

וְיָמֵשׁ חֹשֶׁךְ

and one will feel darkness.

Choshech is different from the plagues that kill.

Dever destroys livestock.
Barad and Arbeh together destroy plant life.
But Choshech does something else.

It blocks light.

And by blocking light, it prevents growth, recovery, and rebirth.

Light gives warmth.
Light gives visibility.
Light makes fertility and growth possible.

To remove light is not merely to make Egypt suffer. It is to cut off one of the great conditions of life itself.

That is one reason Choshech feels like a kind of parallel to Dam.

The Nile is a source of life.
The sun is a source of life.

One gives water.
The other gives light.

Both sustain human life.
Both sustain agricultural life.
And both, in Egypt, were bound up with divinity. The Nile was treated as a god. Ra was the Egyptian sun god.

So it is striking that the first plague begins with water, and the ninth comes to darkness.

At the beginning of the sequence, Hashem strikes one of Egypt’s great life-sources.
Near the end, He strikes another.

And in both, there seems to be some independent medium which prevents the Egyptians from benefiting from their “gods.”

The river is full of blood — so they cannot drink the water.

The air in Egypt seems to be thick — perhaps indicating a foreign substance which prevents the light from shining through.

And the message is theological as well as practical.

These powers are not what you think they are.
They are not independent.
They are not self-sustaining.
They can be taken away.

That is how Egypt learns dependency.

Barad damages what is there.
Arbeh consumes what remains.
Choshech prevents anything from growing back.

That is the third round.

And one way to see the structure of the makkos as a whole is 3 + 3 + 3 + 1.

Three rounds of three, each introduced by its own purpose-statement, each one building on the last.

The first round exposes what Egypt did and what Hashem sees.
The second round expands the war and begins the attack on Egypt’s animal-based economy.
The third round widens that attack further — first to the growing life of the field, then to the possibility of growth itself.

Each round maintains what was present in the previous round and expands upon it.

At this point we should step back and notice the nature of the battle.

It is painful.
It is devastating.
It strikes Egypt’s ordinary life and economic foundations at ever deeper levels.

But Egypt’s military might has not yet been directly touched.

Until this point, the war has been fought through the systems that sustain Egypt — its water, its bodies, its animals, its fields, its produce, and even its access to light itself.

Future for Future

By the time we reach Makkas Bechoros, death has been expanding for a long time.

The fish die, and the Nile stinks of death.
The tzefardea die, and the land stinks of death.
With Arov and then Dever, death moves closer and closer.
With Barad and Arbeh, plant life itself is destroyed.
Choshech is not death, but darkness and death are close cousins.

And now the blow reaches its human climax.

Adam and Behemah

And when it does, it also brings to completion a textual line that has been building for some time.

In Kinim, the plague falls on אדם ובהמה:

וַתְּהִי הַכִּנָּם בָּאָדָם וּבַבְּהֵמָה

and the lice were on man and beast.

In Shechin, the same pair returns in more acute form:

וַיְהִי שְׁחִין אֲבַעְבֻּעֹת פֹּרֵחַ בָּאָדָם וּבַבְּהֵמָה

and there were boils breaking out on man and beast.

And now, in Makkas Bechoros, that line reaches its end in death:

וּמֵת כָּל בְּכוֹר בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם מִבְּכֹר פַּרְעֹה ... עַד בְּכוֹר הַשִּׁפְחָה ... וְכֹל בְּכוֹר בְּהֵמָה

and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh ... to the firstborn of the maidservant ... and every firstborn of beast.

So there is an escalation here as well.

Kinim.
Shechin.
Bechoros.

Affliction.
Incapacity.
Death.

And the target is precise.

The firstborn is not merely a child.
The firstborn is continuity.
The firstborn is inheritance.
The firstborn is the future passing from one generation to the next.

That is what Egypt attacked when it went after the Jewish baby boys. And that is what is being struck now in return.

Future for future.

Cry and Silence

There is also a great cry in Egypt:

וְהָיְתָה צְעָקָה גְדֹלָה בְּכׇל אֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם

and there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt.

But among Israel there is silence:

וּלְכֹל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לֹא יֶחֱרַץ כֶּלֶב לְשֹׁנוֹ

but against any of the children of Israel, not a dog shall whet its tongue.

The people whose cries rose to heaven pass through the night in silence. The nation that ignored those cries is now filled with its own.

The Middle of the Night

And this happens in the middle of the night.

Egypt’s violence against Israel’s children was hidden, deniable, and bound up with the secrecy of night. Children were taken under cover of darkness and cast into the Nile. Now, in the middle of the night, the hidden crime returns in a form no one can deny.

The Nile Returns

And here we should note a second structure within the Ten Makkos.

As we noted earlier, the Nile is parallel to the Sun — both are sources of life.

But the Nile filled with blood is parallel to Makkas Bechoros. Not as life-source, but as blood-guilt.

At the Nile, blood appeared where Egyptian violence had been hidden.
Here, at the end, that blood-guilt is answered in Egypt’s own homes.

The Egyptians had been warned. G-d saw all that you had done.

Admit it.
Rectify it.
Ask forgiveness for it.

That was the warning. It was a warning the Egyptians ignored. Here, we see the consequences of that choice.

G-d did not forget.

Pharaoh’s War

Let us now try to tie this together.

By the end of the ninth plague, Egypt has been devastated. By the end of the tenth, its future itself has been struck. At that point, the story could have ended. Israel could have left. Egypt could have let them go. The entire chapter of Egypt might have closed there.

But Pharaoh makes a choice.

He cannot allow it to end that way.

So he harnesses his chariot, gathers his army, takes his elite force — six hundred chosen chariots — and goes after Israel.

War.
What a choice for Paro to make.

At the very beginning, Pharaoh’s fear was not simply that the Jews would multiply. His fear was that they would leave in the context of war:

הָבָה נִתְחַכְּמָה לוֹ פֶּן יִרְבֶּה וְהָיָה כִּי תִקְרֶאנָה מִלְחָמָה וְנוֹסַף גַּם הוּא עַל שֹׂנְאֵינוּ וְנִלְחַם בָּנוּ

let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and it happen that when a war occurs, they too join our enemies and fight against us.

Paro feared war.
Now he is starting a war.
And he is about to learn that Hashem is a “man” of war:

ה׳ אִ֣ישׁ מִלְחָמָ֑ה

Hashem is a man of war. (Exodus 15:3)

Paro was afraid of the Jewish people leaving Egypt via war — and so he attempted to outsmart them.

He thought that by enslaving them, he could control them and prevent them ever leaving.

He sought to contain them, weaken them, and prevent that future from ever arriving. He enslaved them so they would never leave.

And now, when they are in fact leaving, he does the very thing he feared from the beginning.

He goes to war.

The Great Irony

And here is the great irony of this tale.

The man who feared war, used cunning and subterfuge to prevent the Jewish exodus:

הָבָה נִתְחַכְּמָה

let us deal shrewdly

And now, that very same exodus is going to be secured by G-d outmaneuvering Paro vis-a-vis the war that Paro himself is now starting.

Hashem leads Israel to the sea. Egypt sees them hemmed in and trapped. Paro thinks he has finally regained control. He pursues them into the water.

And there, the Nile returns.

Because that blood in the Nile was not only a sign of what Egypt had done. It was also a warning of what Egypt was becoming.

The blood in the water said two things at once.

First: you killed their children, and your children will die in turn.

Second: you are murderers, and murderers themselves must answer for the blood they spill.

That is why the Nile opens more than one line at once.

It opens the line that leads to the smiting of the Egyptian Sun god.

It leads to the line of the smiting of the Egyptian first born.

And now it will lead to the line of the smiting of Paro and his army.

And that military power is brought to the bottom of the sea.

The same kingdom that cast Israel’s children into water is itself cast into water.

The same regime that tried to bury its crimes beneath the Nile is now buried beneath the sea.

One sign — blood in the water of the Nile.
Two warnings.
Two fulfillments.
Brought together by One G-d.

Share masmid

Parashas Tzav starts with a new word. I don’t mean a new word in that we haven’t seen this word before. I mean new in a narrative sense. The word is צַו (tzav): command.

HaKadosh Baruch Hu speaks to Moshe and says to him, “Command Aharon and his sons.” That is interesting. Last week, Hashem said to Moshe, “Have a conversation with the Jewish people about these korbanos.” This week, He’s telling Moshe to command Aharon about these same korbanos.

What’s the difference?

Rashi:

צו — אין צו אלא לשון זירוז מיד ולדורות

Tzav — tzav is nothing other than the language of urging, immediately and for all generations. (Rashi on Vayikra 6:2)

A conversation, evidently, does not have the same sense of urgency as a command. It’s information, preparation for the moment when you will need to act.

A command, on the other hand, means get going right now.

And what is it that Aharon and his sons need to do right away? It has to do with fire.

צַו אֶת אַהֲרֹן וְאֶת בָּנָיו לֵאמֹר זֹאת תּוֹרַת הָעֹלָה הִוא הָעֹלָה עַל מוֹקְדָהּ עַל הַמִּזְבֵּחַ כׇּל הַלַּיְלָה עַד הַבֹּקֶר וְאֵשׁ הַמִּזְבֵּחַ תּוּקַד בּוֹ

Command Aharon and his sons, saying: This is the teaching of the olah — it is the olah, upon its burning place, upon the mizbeach, all the night until the morning, and the fire of the mizbeach shall be kindled on it. (Vayikra 6:2)

The korban olah has to be put on something called a מוֹקְדָה (mokdah). Now I don’t 100% know what the word mokdah means, but my (not yet) working hypothesis is that it has to do with kindling. Perhaps it’s the place where the fire is kindling. Or the state of being kindled.

Not sure. The key point for us, though, is that it relates to fire.

The olah is going to be on the mokdah — on the place that’s lit with fire — all night long until the morning.

Now, this is not the only reference to fire in this short little section. We are also told that אֵשׁ הַמִּזְבֵּחַ תּוּקַד בּוֹ (eish hamizbeach tukad bo) — the fire of the mizbeach will be kindled on it.

So we are connecting the fire to the mizbeach. The fire is kindled on the mizbeach, and the olah goes on that fire. It doesn’t just go on the mizbeach — it specifically goes on the fire of the mizbeach.

And it’s this fire — and the olah that goes on it — that Aharon (and his sons) are commanded to tend to immediately.

Fire has (once again) come to the fore.

We saw fire play a prominent role at the sneh. We saw fire play a prominent role at Har Sinai.
And now we are seeing fire play a prominent role in the Mishkan.

But it’s not just the fire that gets prime play in our parsha. It’s also the ash which the fire creates:

וְלָבַשׁ הַכֹּהֵן מִדּוֹ בַד וּמִכְנְסֵי בַד יִלְבַּשׁ עַל בְּשָׂרוֹ וְהֵרִים אֶת הַדֶּשֶׁן אֲשֶׁר תֹּאכַל הָאֵשׁ אֶת הָעֹלָה עַל הַמִּזְבֵּחַ וְשָׂמוֹ אֵצֶל הַמִּזְבֵּחַ

The kohen shall put on his linen garment, and his linen breeches he shall put upon his flesh, and he shall lift up the deshen that the fire has consumed of the olah upon the mizbeach, and place it beside the mizbeach. (Vayikra 6:3)

That דֶּשֶׁן (deshen), the mefarshim say, is a fatty type of ash.

Ash. That is familiar.

Remember the chet ha’eigel — Moshe ground it down until it was very fine, dust-like.

And the parah adumah was burned until it became אֵפֶר (efer) — ash (Bamidbar 19:9).

And just like the ash (אֵפֶר — efer) of the parah is taken to a מָקוֹם טָהוֹר (makom tahor — a “pure” place), so too the ash (הַדֶּשֶׁן — deshen) is taken to a pure place.

Once again, we see a connected theme. And we note that connection.

And once again, we note a variation off of that theme — efer vs deshen.

Why the difference? As always, we start with not knowing — and (bezras Hashem) work our way from there to some levels of understanding.

Today we will merely mention the deshen, without trying to figure it out. But we will leave some mental notes.

Note #1: Pay attention if (in our journey through the yam shel Torah) any clues come that indicate what this may mean.

Note #2: Try and circle back to this quesiton some day.

With that said, let’s return to the fire.

We have been waiting to find the fire. We have already noted the call and the cloud — הקרִיאָה and הענן. We saw how the cloud covered both Har Sinai and the Mishkan. And we noted that there was a call both at Har Sinai and the Mishkan (not to mention the Sneh — and elsewhere).

And so we figured that it was only a matter of time until we found the fire. And now we have. Yes, it was also mentioned last week — but now it is taking center stage.

And as we look further at this command to Aharon, we notice how much focus is placed on this fire.

Aharon is told that the fire of the mizbeach will be kindled on it (i.e., on the mizbeach):

וְאֵ֥שׁ הַמִּזְבֵּ֖חַ תּ֥וּקַד בּֽוֹ

And the fire of the mizbeach shall be kindled on it. (Vayikra 6:2)

And then he is told that again.

וְהָאֵ֨שׁ עַל־הַמִּזְבֵּ֤חַ תּֽוּקַד־בּוֹ֙

And the fire on the mizbeach shall be kindled on it. (Vayikra 6:5)

And then again.

אֵ֗שׁ תָּמִ֛יד תּוּקַ֥ד עַל־הַמִּזְבֵּ֖חַ

A perpetual fire shall be kindled on the mizbeach. (Vayikra 6:6)

Furthermore, he is told not to extinguish that fire:

וְהָאֵ֨שׁ עַל־הַמִּזְבֵּ֤חַ תּֽוּקַד־בּוֹ֙ לֹ֣א תִכְבֶּ֔ה

And the fire on the mizbeach shall be kindled on it, you shall not extinguish it. (Vayikra 6:5)

And then he is told that again:

אֵ֗שׁ תָּמִ֛יד תּוּקַ֥ד עַל־הַמִּזְבֵּ֖חַ לֹ֣א תִכְבֶּ֔ה

A perpetual fire shall be kindled on the mizbeach, you shall not extinguish it. (Vayikra 6:6)

Why the repetition? We don’t know. And we won’t focus on it today. But we will create some mental notes.

The point is, this fire is important. Or, put otherwise, there is something about the mizbeach and fire that is of central importance.

And that is something that we will focus on today.

But first, we have to take a closer look at fire itself.

Seeing Fire Everywhere

There is an interesting “side-effect” of this Dvar Torah. Now that I’m looking for fire, I’m seeing it everywhere. Well, in a lot of places.

For example, the Bris Bein HaBesari — aka the covenant between the pieces. G-d is “represented” by fire. Or, more accurately, a flame of fire:

וַיְהִ֤י הַשֶּׁ֙מֶשׁ֙ בָּ֔אָה וַעֲלָטָ֖ה הָיָ֑ה וְהִנֵּ֨ה תַנּ֤וּר עָשָׁן֙ וְלַפִּ֣יד אֵ֔שׁ אֲשֶׁ֣ר עָבַ֔ר בֵּ֖ין הַגְּזָרִ֥ים הָאֵֽלֶּה׃

And the sun came down, and there was a deep darkness, and behold — a smoking furnace and a flame of fire that passed between these pieces. (Bereishis 15:17)

Let me explain what I mean by “represented”. G-d is make a covenant with Avraham. Essentially, he is “signing” a contract. So, how does the Creator indicate that He is “signing”, by having a flame of fire pass between the parts.

Now, this becomes even more interesting when we note the Hebrew word which I translated as “flame”. it’s אֵ֔שׁ (lapid).

That same word is used at Har Sinai, in the context of the Ten Statements (aka Ten Commandments):

וְכׇל־הָעָם֩ רֹאִ֨ים אֶת־הַקּוֹלֹ֜ת וְאֶת־הַלַּפִּידִ֗ם וכו׳

And all the people saw the voices and the flames (הַלַּפִּידִ֗ם — halapidim)...

And it becomes even more interesting when we remember that G-d descended upon Har Sinai in fire:

וְהַ֤ר סִינַי֙ עָשַׁ֣ן כֻּלּ֔וֹ מִ֠פְּנֵ֠י אֲשֶׁ֨ר יָרַ֥ד עָלָ֛יו יְהֹוָ֖ה בָּאֵ֑שׁ וַיַּ֤עַל עֲשָׁנוֹ֙ כְּעֶ֣שֶׁן הַכִּבְשָׁ֔ן

And Mount Sinai was all in smoke because Hashem descended upon it in fire, and the smoke ascended like the smoke of a kiln...

And honestly, that reference to a kiln at Har Sinai reminds me of the smoking oven at the Bris Bein HaBesarim. In essence, a kiln and an oven are the same thing, the only difference is what is inserted — food or clay.

The key takeaway — G-d can (and is) represented by fire. Which is interesting. And which leads us to wonder — why?

Let’s keep looking.

G-d smote Sedom and Amora with fire and brimstone:

וַֽיהֹוָ֗ה הִמְטִ֧יר עַל־סְדֹ֛ם וְעַל־עֲמֹרָ֖ה גׇּפְרִ֣ית וָאֵ֑שׁ וכו׳

And Hashem rained upon Sedom and Amora brimstone and fire...

And as it was with Sedom and Amora, so it was with the Egyptians:

וַיֵּ֨ט מֹשֶׁ֣ה אֶת־מַטֵּ֘הוּ֮ עַל־הַשָּׁמַ֒יִם֒ וַֽיהֹוָ֗ה נָתַ֤ן קֹלֹת֙ וּבָרָ֔ד וַתִּ֥הֲלַךְ אֵ֖שׁ אָ֑רְצָה וַיַּמְטֵ֧ר יְהֹוָ֛ה בָּרָ֖ד עַל־אֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרָֽיִם׃ וַיְהִ֣י בָרָ֔ד וְאֵ֕שׁ מִתְלַקַּ֖חַת בְּת֣וֹךְ הַבָּרָ֑ד וכו׳

And Moshe stretched out his staff toward the heavens, and Hashem sent thunder and hail, and fire went down to the earth, and Hashem rained hail upon the land of Mitzrayim. And there was hail, and fire flashing within the hail...

This is a hard verse to translate. But what’s not difficult is that once again G-d rained fire upon those that He punished.

So, G-d is represented by fire. And G-d uses fire to punish.

And there is more.

We were commanded in Egypt to eat the Korban Pesach צְלִי־אֵ֣שׁ (tzeili esh — roasted by fire).

The Torah is called an אֵשׁ דָּת (eish dat) — a fiery law.

Yirmiyahu HaNavi talks about the word of G-d burning like a fire inside him (וְהָיָ֤ה בְלִבִּי֙ כְּאֵ֣שׁ בֹּעֶ֔רֶת).

And I’m sure we can find other examples.

But for now, I want to focus our attention on one specific example.

Where There’s Wood There’s Fire

Let’s go back to the Akeida. Note the command and how Avraham responds.

For starters, what exactly is Avraham supposed to do? He is to offer Yitzchak as an olah:

וְהַעֲלֵ֤הוּ שָׁם֙ לְעֹלָ֔ה

And offer him there as an olah. (Bereishis 22:2)

Like the olah of our parsha — the one that goes on the mokda (מוקדה). In other words, where there is an olah, there’s fire.

And sure enough, Avraham gets up in the morning, saddles his donkey and starts chopping wood:

וַיַּשְׁכֵּ֨ם אַבְרָהָ֜ם בַּבֹּ֗קֶר וַֽיַּחֲבֹשׁ֙ אֶת־חֲמֹר֔וֹ וַיִּקַּ֞ח אֶת־שְׁנֵ֤י נְעָרָיו֙ אִתּ֔וֹ וְאֵ֖ת יִצְחָ֣ק בְּנ֑וֹ וַיְבַקַּע֙ עֲצֵ֣י עֹלָ֔ה

And Avraham got up in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took with him two of his servants and Yitzchak his son, and he chopped wood for the olah. (Bereishis 22:3)

Wood. For the olah. Because an olah gets placed on the wood which is on the fire:

וְ֠נָתְנ֠וּ בְּנֵ֨י אַהֲרֹ֧ן הַכֹּהֵ֛ן אֵ֖שׁ עַל־הַמִּזְבֵּ֑חַ וְעָרְכ֥וּ עֵצִ֖ים עַל־הָאֵֽשׁ׃ וְעָרְכ֗וּ בְּנֵ֤י אַהֲרֹן֙ הַכֹּ֣הֲנִ֔ים אֵ֚ת הַנְּתָחִ֔ים אֶת־הָרֹ֖אשׁ וְאֶת־הַפָּ֑דֶר עַל־הָעֵצִים֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר עַל־הָאֵ֔שׁ אֲשֶׁ֖ר עַל־הַמִּזְבֵּֽחַ׃

And the sons of Aharon the kohen shall put fire on the mizbeach and arrange wood on the fire, and the sons of Aharon the kohanim shall arrange the pieces, the head and the fat, on the wood that is on the fire that is on the mizbeach. (Vayikra 1:7)

Indeed, this is what the Kohanim do each and every morning:

וּבִעֵ֨ר עָלֶ֧יהָ הַכֹּהֵ֛ן עֵצִ֖ים בַּבֹּ֣קֶר בַּבֹּ֑קֶר וְעָרַ֤ךְ עָלֶ֙יהָ֙ הָֽעֹלָ֔ה

And the kohen shall burn wood on it in the morning, and arrange the olah on it. (Vayikra 6:9)

So here is Avraham Avinue, in the morning, chopping wood which he plans to place on the Mizbeach and kindle so that he can place the olah on top of it.

Three days later, and they see “the place” from a distance. Avraham takes the wood and gives it to Yitzchak to carry. Avraham has something else that he needs to bring — the fire (and something else):

וַיִּקַּ֨ח אַבְרָהָ֜ם אֶת־עֲצֵ֣י הָעֹלָ֗ה וַיָּ֙שֶׂם֙ עַל־יִצְחָ֣ק בְּנ֔וֹ וַיִּקַּ֣ח בְּיָד֔וֹ אֶת־הָאֵ֖שׁ וְאֶת־הַֽמַּאֲכֶ֑לֶת וַיֵּלְכ֥וּ שְׁנֵיהֶ֖ם יַחְדָּֽו

And Avraham took the wood of the olah and placed it upon Yitzchak his son, and he took in his hand the fire and the ma’acheles, and they both went together. (Bereishis 22:6)

Now, I haven’t translated that word הַֽמַּאֲכֶ֑לֶת (ma’acheles). Rashi (and the Rashbam), will soon enoug tell us that it’s a knife.

But I want to focus on something besides its meaning. I want to focus on its root: א-כ-ל (alef-kaf-lamed) — because we find that word associated with fire over and over again.

At Har Sinai, G-d’s honor (כבוד) is described as being like a consuming fire (אֵשׁ אֹכְלָה):

וּמַרְאֵה֙ כְּב֣וֹד יְהֹוָ֔ה כְּאֵ֥שׁ אֹכֶ֖לֶת בְּרֹ֣אשׁ הָהָ֑ר

And the appearance of the kavod of Hashem was like a consuming fire on the mountaintop. (Shemos 24:17)

Indeed, Moshe Rabbeinu himself describes G-d Himself as being an אֵשׁ אֹכְלָה (eish ochla) — a consuming fire:

כִּי יְהֹוָ֤ה אֱלֹהֶ֨יךָ֙ אֵ֣שׁ אֹכְלָ֔ה הוּא אֵ֖ל קַנָּֽא

For Hashem your G-d is a consuming fire, a jealous G-d. (Devarim 4:24)

At the Sneh, what is remarkable is the fact that the Sneh is not consumed (אֵינֶנּוּ אֻכָּל — einenu uchal) by the fire.

And remember that deshen (דֶּשֶׁן) that we discussed above? That deshen was created by the fire consuminig (אכל — achal) the olah on the mizbeach:

וְהֵרִים אֶת הַדֶּשֶׁן אֲשֶׁר תֹּאכַל הָאֵשׁ אֶת הָעֹלָה עַל הַמִּזְבֵּחַ וְשָׂמוֹ אֵצֶל הַמִּזְבֵּחַ

And he shall lift up the deshen that the fire has consumed of the olah upon the mizbeach, and place it beside the mizbeach. (Vayikra 6:3)

And so, here we are, on a mountain. Indeed, a mountain (Har Moriah) which is very much like Har Sinai. A mountain which will eventually become known as Har HaBayis.

And we have a mizbeach — like the mizbeach in the Mishkan and (eventually) in the Beis HaMikdash. And we are being told that Avraham took both the fire and that consuming item.

I get that it means a knife. Rashi gives two explanations for why it means a knife. But all these other associations tell me that it’s not for naught that the Torah uses this word in particular to refernce the knife.

And when we take a deeper look at the grammar of the word itself, we see something quite interesting. The root of the word is a three letter root: א-כ-ל (alef-kaf-lamed).

This seems common enough.

But look deeper, there seems to be a two letter root “hidden” within that three letter root: כ-ל (kaf-lamed).

A root which means completion, as in And G-d completed (וַיְכַ֤ל — vayechal) on the seventh the work he had done.

But a root that also means destruction, as in:

יַדְבֵּ֧ק יְהֹוָ֛ה בְּךָ֖ אֶת־הַדָּ֑בֶר עַ֚ד כַּלֹּת֣וֹ אֹֽתְךָ֔ מֵעַל֙ הָאֲדָמָ֔ה אֲשֶׁר־אַתָּ֥ה בָא־שָׁ֖מָּה לְרִשְׁתָּֽהּ׃

Hashem will cause the pestilence to cling to you, until it has completely finished you off from upon the land that you are coming there to inherit. (Devarim 28:21)

Indeed, the Malbim in his work Ayelet HaShachar directly relates the two words:

שפעל ‘אכל’ מציין פעולת האש עצמו שאוכל ומכלה את הגשם

The verb “achal” (אכל) indicates the action of the fire itself that eats and completley finishes a physical substance.

It’s as if the root itself is combined of a more fundamental (כל) with an alef as a prefix. Which seems to be one of the ways that Hebrew roots are formed (Rav Hirsch, I believe, has a theory about this).

Fire has the ability to totally and completely destroy something — so much so that at the end there basically nothing left. Indeed, whatever ash (deshen or efer) is left is utterly and totally devoid of any of the substance and essence that was previously there.

That makes sense by fire. But by a knife? Not as much so. True, we find the same root (א-כ-ל) used in reference to a sword (as Rashi and the Rashbam note):

וְחַרְבִּי תֹּאכַל בָּשָׂר

And my sword will eat flesh. (Yeshayahu 31:8)

But this usage is difficult — which may be why Rashi explains why a knife is called a ma’acheles:

וְשֶׁמַּכְשֶׁרֶת בָּשָׂר לַאֲכִילָה

Because it prepares the flesh for eating.

In other words, in its essence, a knife is not a ma’acheles. It does not consume. Rather, it enables consumption.

And who (or what) is the consumer? In our case here it is the fire on the mizbeach. Yet another time where in fire is “representing” G-d.

Put otherwise, the knife “prepares” the flesh to be totally and utterly destroyed on the mizbeach.

It will be consumed by fire, because that is what fire does. And that is what an olah is about — total and physical destruction of the physical substance of a given entity.

At the Akeida it was Yitzchak’s physical body that G-d had asked Avraham to destroy.

In the Mishkan, it is the physical body of the korban that is being totally and utterly consumed on the mizbeach.

And this is a quality that G-d Himself has. G-d is called an Eish Ochla (אֵשׁ אֹכְלָה) — a consuming fire.

Why? Well, perhaps this verse can give us a sense as to why:

וְעַתָּה֙ הַנִּ֣יחָה לִּ֔י וְיִֽחַר־אַפִּ֥י בָהֶ֖ם וַאֲכַלֵּ֑ם וְאֶֽעֱשֶׂ֥ה אוֹתְךָ֖ לְג֥וֹי גָּדֽוֹל

And now, leave me alone, and let my anger burn against them and I will consume them, and I will make you into a great nation. (Shemos 32:10)

At the Chet HaEgel, G-d was essentially asking Moshe to “allow” Him to totally and utterly destroy the Jewish people. We wouldn’t even be a footnote in a history book.

Totally and utterly gone. Essentially erased from existence. If anything remained, it would just be the ash of our previous existence. Nothing more.

Thus Moshe’s warning to the Jewish people:

הִשָּׁמְר֣וּ לָכֶ֗ם פֶּֽן־תִּשְׁכְּחוּ֙ אֶת־בְּרִ֤ית יְהֹוָה֙ אֱלֹ֣הֵיכֶ֔ם אֲשֶׁ֥ר כָּרַ֖ת עִמָּכֶ֑ם וַעֲשִׂיתֶ֨ם לָכֶ֥ם פֶּ֙סֶל֙ תְּמ֣וּנַת כֹּ֔ל אֲשֶׁ֥ר צִוְּךָ֖ יְהֹוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֶֽיךָ׃ כִּ֚י יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ אֵ֥שׁ אֹכְלָ֖ה ה֑וּא אֵ֖ל קַנָּֽא

Guard yourselves, lest you forget the covenant of Hashem your G-d that He made with you, and you make for yourselves a carved image, a form of anything that Hashem your G-d commanded you not to. For Hashem your G-d is a consuming fire, a jealous G-d. (Devarim 4:23-24)

Be careful, says Moshe. G-d, in all His glory, has a certain destructive capacity to Him. Not a vindicative quality. Not a vengeful one. When fire destroys, it doesn’t do so out of mallace or spite. It does so because this is its nature if not handled properly.

Of course, fire can be of great benefit. And how much more so can a deep and meaningful relationship with the Creator of all that is.

But be careful. With that benefit comes a risk — the risk of total and utter destruction.

And so, we see here, this quality of fire. It’s destructive quality. And we see that it is that quality that we want on the Mizbeach.

And all we can wonder is, why?

Why would the Creator of all that is want us to use the ultimate destructive force when serving Him?

Why would that same G-d who planted a garden and place man there to work it and guard it, want us to use fire?

And why, on the place that would eventually become the replacement for that garden — the Beis HaMikdash — would He want us to use fire?

Why destruction in the heart of construction?

Construction or Destruction

All of the above is true — fire has the ability to destroy. But that is not all that fire can do.

Fire can cook. It can transform our food from something that we cannot eat, to something that can nourish and sustain us.

It can refine. It can take something that is impure and separate out the impurities, leaving behind something that is pure.

It can provide warmth when it is cold and light when it is dark.

In short, fire is a force. A powerful force that can be constructive or destructive — depending upon how we use it.

This is why it is such a good “representative” for G-d. It’s its combination of creative flexibility and destructive potential that makes it a fitting symbol for the Creator.

And the place where that is most clearly visible is on the mizbeach itself.

The mizbeach is not simply the place where we bring korbanos. It is also a source of other fires in their various forms.

The light of the Menorah is (one way or the other) sourced from the fire of the mizbeach.

The incense burns from coals taken from the fire of the mizbeach.

And the Kohen Gadol enters the Kadosh HaKadoshim with a fire pan (a מַחְתָּה) filled with coals taken from the fire of the mizbeach.

Put otherwise, you want to shine the light of Torah out to the world (the Menorah)? Then you need the fire of the mizbeach.

You want the unity and inner richness of the Torah (the incense)? Then you need the fire of the mizbeach.

You want the transformative power of teshuva on Yom Kippur (the machta)? Then you need the fire of the mizbeach.

In short, the destructive heart of the mizbeach is also the constructive source for much of the avoda of the Beis HaMikdash.

In short. If we really want to understand fire and its importance in the Torah — it seems like the mizbeach is the place to look.

Two Fires, One Altar

Up until this time, we have been talking about the fire on the mizbeach — as if there is one.

But, according to Rashi (based on Chazal) there were two fires on the mizbeach. The one that came down from heaven and the one that we (man) raise up to the altar:

אַעַ”פִּי שֶׁהָאֵשׁ יוֹרֶדֶת מִן הַשָּׁמַיִם מִצְוָה לְהָבִיא מִן הַהֶדְיוֹט

Even though fire descends from heaven, it is a mitzvah to bring from the ordinary — from human hands.

Two fires. One altar.

Interesting. And confusing.

Does anyone out there have any idea what a heavenly fire look like? Does it function any different?

In short, what is the difference between a heavenly fire and the earthly one that we bring?

Physically speaking, I don’t know. But there is another type of fire — the one that Yirmiyahu HaNavi mentioned — the fire of passion.

He talked about G-d’s word burning inside him like a fire.

That is an example of a heavenly fire.

And there are more like it.

The Meeting Point

G-d’s fire came down to Yirmiyahu and burned inside him.

This is the fire of truth and values.
Of meaning and purpose. Of principles and ideals.

These fires come down from heaven and inspire and move us. Both as individuals and as communities.

They are the fires of movements and ideologies.
Of schools of thoughts and worldviews.

They are lofty.
On high.
Intellectual.
Spiritual.

They are heavenly fires

The earthly fires are of a different nature.

There are our drives and desires. Our emotions and wants.

They are lowly. Animalistic. Base.

They are the earthly fires.

And we are commanded to lift these up onto the mizbeach where they can meet up with and connect to the heavenly fires.

In other words, both fires need to be on G-d’s altar. The fire of values and the fires of drives. That is the consuming fire we want — when are base, animalistic self is in sync with our higher, spiritual self.

Both alive. Both passionate. And both in sync with G-d’s will.

That is the fire that Aharon and his sons were commanded to place on the mizbeach. That is the fire that has to burn all night long — even in the most difficult times.

And that is the fire that we can never extinguish.

And if we learn to kindle that fire — then (and only then) can we kindle the other fires.

The flame of the menorah. The coals of the ketores. The fire pan of Yom Kippur.

It’s all there, sourced in the union of the earthly and heavenly fires.

Share masmid

We ended last time learning how much weight the word וַיִּקְרָא carries at the opening of the sefer. Not just that G-d called to Moshe — the word arrives loaded with context.

The immediate context is Sefer Shemos. The Sneh. The first time G-d calls directly to a human being — מִתּוֹךְ הַסְּנֶה. That is where the kriya begins for Moshe.

But the full context starts earlier. And what is striking is not how the word is used — but how it is not used.

G-d spoke to Avraham. He commanded Avraham. He appeared to Avraham.

As it was with Avraham, so it was with Yitzchak and Yaakov.

What we do not find is G-d calling to the Avos.

Or do we?

There is one time that it may be that G-d Himself calls to Avraham. It is toward the end of the Akeida — the moment when Avraham is about to sacrifice Yitzchak:

וַיִּקְרָא אֵלָיו מַלְאַךְ יְהוָה מִן־הַשָּׁמַיִם וַיֹּאמֶר אַבְרָהָם אַבְרָהָם וַיֹּאמֶר הִנֵּנִי׃

“And the angel of Hashem called to him from the heavens, and said: ‘Avraham, Avraham!’ And he said: ‘Here I am.’”

Was that HaKadosh Baruch Hu Himself? The mefarshim disagree. The Ramban reads it as an angel relaying G-d’s word. Rashi seems to treat the speaker as Hashem Himself. What it may represent is one unique moment — perhaps the only moment — when HaKadosh Baruch Hu called out to Avraham. Beyond that, He never called, never summoned, never invited any of the Avos.

Then there is Moshe. Hiding away in Midian. Shepherding the flocks. There, he sees a vision. And from within that vision, Elokim Himself (not a malach) calls out to him:

וַיִּקְרָא אֵלָיו אֱלֹהִים מִתּוֹךְ הַסְּנֶה וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה מֹשֶׁה וַיֹּאמֶר הִנֵּנִי׃

“And G-d called to him from within the bush and said: ‘Moshe, Moshe!’ And he said: ‘Here I am.’”

And as it was at the Sneh, so it was at Har Sinai — except that at Sinai, it is Shem Havayah (יקוק) who calls to him:

וַיִּשְׁכֹּן כְּבוֹד־יְהוָה עַל־הַר סִינַי וַיְכַסֵּהוּ הֶעָנָן שֵׁשֶׁת יָמִים וַיִּקְרָא אֶל־מֹשֶׁה בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי מִתּוֹךְ הֶעָנָן׃

“And the honor of Hashem rested upon Har Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days, and He called to Moshe on the seventh day from within the cloud.”

And as we noted, that same cloud now covers the Mishkan. And Moshe is unable to enter on account of it.

‎And as it was at the Sneh and Har Sinai, so too it was at the Mishkan:

וַיִּקְרָא אֶל־מֹשֶׁה וַיְדַבֵּר יְהוָה אֵלָיו מֵאֹהֶל מוֹעֵד לֵאמֹר׃

“And He called to Moshe, and Hashem spoke to him from the Ohel Moed, saying.”

There is something about Moshe and being called.

Of course, as we noted, it may not only be Moshe. Avraham was also called. But it was only one time. And it’s not clear if it was Hashem who called him or a malach.

And if we look a little deeper, there is another prophet who was called: Shmuel HaNavi. And like Moshe, he was called in the Mishkan.

But that too was a one time event. One night. While asleep.

Avraham.
Moshe.
Shmuel.

What is the connection?

I have a guess.
The Mishkan/Beis HaMikdash.

After all, Avraham was on Har HaMoriah when Hashem (or the malach) called out to him.

And even those other two times that Hashem called to Moshe — at the sneh and Har Sinai. They too seem to share the same properties of the Mishkan, even if they aren’t physically the same place.

After all, as the Ramban notes, the Mishkan seems to be the continuation of Har Sinai. And as the pasuk tells us — Moshe was on Har Sinai when he saw the vision of the sneh.

So clearly, there is a Mishkan, calling connection. It’s not about the Mishkan per se — but about some property that the Mishkan has that it shares with the Beis HaMikdash and Har Sinai.

But what is that connection? And what are those properties?

A Puzzling Beginning

And so, we move on. But no further do we textually travel that we hit upon another puzzling fact.

Chazal often refer to Sefer VaYikra as Toras Kohanim — the laws of the Kohanim. And there is a simple reason for that — because much of Sefer VaYikra relates to laws that are relevant specifically to the Kohanim.

And that is particularly true with regards to the Mishkan. As we find out in Parshas Tzav:

וַיְדַבֵּ֥ר יְהֹוָ֖ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֥ה לֵּאמֹֽר׃ צַ֤ו אֶֽת־אַהֲרֹן֙ וְאֶת־בָּנָ֣יו לֵאמֹ֔ר זֹ֥את תּוֹרַ֖ת הָעֹלָ֑ה

And Hashem spoke to Moshe, saying: “command Aharon and his sons, saying: ‘this is the Torah of the Olah...”

It doesn’t get much clearer than this. Command Aharon and his sons — i.e., the Kohanim. Tell them that this is the Torah of the Olah. Put it all together — Toras Kohanim.

And it’s not just the Olah.

It’s also the Torah of the Mincha.
And the Torah of the Chatas.\ And of the Asham.\
And the Shlomim.

So far, so good.

But as I noted, all this is in Parashat Tzav. We are in Parshas Vayikra and in the very beginning of the Sefer that is known as Toras Kohanim, where we finally have the first Kriya to Moshe from within the Ohel Moed. Who does Hashem want to speak to?

Not the Kohanim.
Not Aharon and his sons.

No. He wants to speak to the entire nation.

דַּבֵּר אֶל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל

Speak to B’nei Yisrael...

And what does he want to talk to them about?

About the Korban Olah.
And the Mincha.
And the Shelamim.
And the Chatas.
And the Asham.

The order is (slightly) different. But the subject matter is exactly the same.

Now this does not seem to make sense.

Why start with the Jewish people?
Indeed, why is he talking to them at all. After all, it is the Kohanim that do the essential avoda with the Korbanot.

They throw the blood on the Mizbeach. They put the Korban on the Mizbeach. They arrange the fire on the Mizbeach. And much, much more.

So why is he addressing the Jewish people about this at all? And why does he start with them?

Evidently, there is something about the korbanot that HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants the nation as a whole to know. Something that does not relate to the Torah of these korbanot.

What is that something?

A Different Word

But with just a little effort, we can see one clear distinction between what HaKodesh Baruch Hu has to tell the Kohanim and what he has to tell the Jewish people.

With regards to the Kohanim, it’s all about the Torah, as we mentioned above. It’s the Torah of the Olah. The Torah of the Minchah. And so on.

But with regards to the Jewish people — that word does not appear. Another word, takes its place.

אָדָ֗ם כִּֽי־יַקְרִ֥יב מִכֶּ֛ם קׇרְבָּ֖ן לַֽיהֹוָ֑ה

A man who will cause to come close a korban to Y-K-V-K...

Korban (קרבן)

A word which will remain untranslated for the time being.

Each and every time. By the Olah (as I just mentioned).

By the Minchah:

וְנֶ֗פֶשׁ כִּֽי־תַקְרִ֞יב קׇרְבַּ֤ן מִנְחָה֙ לַֽיהֹוָ֔ה

A soul who will cause to come close a korban Minchah to Y-K-V-K...

By the Shelamim:

וְאִם־זֶ֥בַח שְׁלָמִ֖ים קׇרְבָּנ֑וֹ אִ֤ם מִן־הַבָּקָר֙ ה֣וּא מַקְרִ֔יב אִם־זָכָר֙ אִם־נְקֵבָ֔ה תָּמִ֥ים יַקְרִיבֶ֖נּוּ לִפְנֵ֥י יְהֹוָֽה׃

And if a slaughtering of shelamim is his korban, if from the cattle he causes it to come close before Y-K-V-K...

And it’s even by the Chatas (and asham) — but we have to search a bit to find it:

אִ֣ם הַכֹּהֵ֧ן הַמָּשִׁ֛יחַ יֶחֱטָ֖א לְאַשְׁמַ֣ת הָעָ֑ם וְהִקְרִ֡יב עַ֣ל חַטָּאתוֹ֩ אֲשֶׁ֨ר חָטָ֜א פַּ֣ר בֶּן־בָּקָ֥ר תָּמִ֛ים לַיהֹוָ֖ה לְחַטָּֽאת

If the anointed Kohen will sin to the detriment of the people — he will cause to come close with regards to the sin that he committed, a bull from the cattle, unblemished, to Y-K-V-K for a sin offering...

So far we have two out of three:

1. coming close - וְהִקְרִ֡יב

2. Y-K-V-K (יקוק) — did you notice that Shem Havaya shows up each and every time.

But we don’t yet have the word Korban (קרבן). But it will show up. We just have to move past the Kohein HaMashiach and his Chatas — and move on to the Nasi and his chatas:

אֲשֶׁ֥ר נָשִׂ֖יא יֶֽחֱטָ֑א וְעָשָׂ֡ה אַחַ֣ת מִכׇּל־מִצְוֺת֩ יְהֹוָ֨ה אֱלֹהָ֜יו אֲשֶׁ֧ר לֹא־תֵעָשֶׂ֛ינָה בִּשְׁגָגָ֖ה וְאָשֵֽׁם׃ אֽוֹ־הוֹדַ֤ע אֵלָיו֙ חַטָּאת֔וֹ אֲשֶׁ֥ר חָטָ֖א בָּ֑הּ וְהֵבִ֧יא אֶת־קׇרְבָּנ֛וֹ שְׂעִ֥יר עִזִּ֖ים זָכָ֥ר תָּמִֽים׃

If a Nasi will sin and do one of all the mitzvos of Hashem his G-d that should not be done in error, and he is guilty — or if he is informed about his sin that he committed in it, and he will bring his korban, a male goat, unblemished...

But here, it basically ends. When it comes to the Korban Meilah, Korban Talui and (perhaps) the Korban Asham we lose our structure. No use of the word Korban. No statement that one is bringing the Korban close. Although Hashem (as always) is still there.

Why the difference? I don’t know — and we’ll have to leave that question for another time.

But all in all, the pattern is clear. For all the other korbanos there is a clear theme of coming close. Indeed, the idea of closeness is in the very root of the word that we all too often translate as “sacrifice” or “offering”.

קָרְבָּן (korban) comes from the root קרב (ק-ר-ב).

As Rav Hirsch points out, a korban is not something you give up. It is something that helps you draw close to HaKadosh Baruch Hu.

And it’s this facet of a korban that our parsha is emphasizing.

This is utterly different than next week’s parsha. There the focus is on the Torah of these korbanos. It is on the Kohanim’s responsibility.

But here, in our parsha, the focus is on coming close. Evidently, there is something about this moment which requires that we hold off on talking to the Kohanim and the laws that they need to know.

Closeness takes precedence.

Or, more accurately, closeness of the entire nation takes precedence.

And that closeness happens here, in the Mishkan. The Mishkan that has the cloud hovering over it. And into which Moshe is invited — via a kriah.

And in case you are wondering — yes, I do think that there is a connection between the kriah and the closeness.

Not Just Now

Moshe was invited into the cloud on Har Sinai via a Kriah. And if we think about it — there is something interesting about that kriah.

That kriah (the kriah to enter a cloud) was after the Aseres HaDibros and after the giving of the Mishpatim.

But it was before the laws about building the Mishkan.

Now that is interesting.

You want to learn about how to build a Mishkan? You need to be invited into a cloud to do so.

You want to learn about how to do the avodah in the Mishkan.
You need to be invited to do so.

Now that is fascinating. And I have absolutely no idea what it means. But I do have a hunch.

Let’s take a closer look at the first verse of our parshas — the verse that gives our sefer its name: Sefer VaYikra:

וַיִּקְרָ֖א אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֑ה וַיְדַבֵּ֤ר יְהֹוָה֙ אֵלָ֔יו מֵאֹ֥הֶל מוֹעֵ֖ד לֵאמֹֽר׃

“And He called to Moshe, and Hashem spoke to him from the Ohel Moed, saying.”

This verse seems simple enough — similar in nature and form to a thousand other verses like it.

But look again.

We’ll start with the first three words:

וַיִּקְרָ֖א אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֑ה

“And He called to Moshe...”

Still seems pretty simple, right? But one question — Who is speaking with Moshe?

We all know. It is Hashem, Y-K-V-K. But He is not mentioned yet.
No, that happens in the next clause:

וַיְדַבֵּ֤ר יְהֹוָ֙ה֙ אֵלָ֔יו

“And Y-K-V-K spoke to him...”

Now this is a bit strange. Why not combine it together. Something like this:

וַיִּקְרָ֖א י-ק-ו-ק אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֑ה מֵאֹ֥הֶל מוֹעֵ֖ד לֵאמֹֽר

“And Y-K-V-K called to Moshe from the Ohel Moed, saying...”

Now that would actually be simple. Straight and to the point. No extra pronouns, no unnecessary repetition.

But that’s not what happens. We break it up.

And He called to Moshe and Y-K-V-K spoke with him...

Why?

Another question. Take a look at this Rashi:

לְכָל דִּבְּרוֹת וּלְכָל אֲמִירוֹת וּלְכָל צִוּוּיִים קָדְמָה קְרִיאָה

Every dibbur, every amirah, every tzivuy was preceded by a kriya, a calling.

According to Rashi (based on Chazal), this kriah was not a one time event. Now, that is a beautiful idea — where did this idea come from? What proof is there for it.

There is nothing in the words that indicate it.

Or perhaps there is something we are missing.
Something hidden in the very structure of the verse itself.

It’s in the Words

Take a look at the following verse:

וַיֵּרָ֤א יְהֹוָה֙ אֶל־אַבְרָ֔ם וַיֹּ֕אמֶר

“And Y-K-V-K appeared to Avraham and said...”

Do you see anything noteworthy? No.

Okay, then let’s try this one:

וַיִּגַּ֥שׁ אַבְרָהָ֖ם וַיֹּאמַ֑ר

“And Avraham approached and said...”

Is that better?
Still no.

Okay, let’s try again.

וַתַּ֤הַר לֵאָה֙ וַתֵּ֣לֶד

“And Leah conceived and bore a son...”

I know, I don’t need to ask — it’s still not clear.

So let me try to present it a different way:

[action] [subject] [second action]

Or

[verb] [noun] [verb]

This is what I will call a linguistic template (if it has a technical name, I don’t know it). One that we can use for various different sentences of certain types.

Let me illustrate with an example.
We have a young baby (a yeled — יֶלֶד) named Yitzchak. And this yeled ends up doing two actions.

Action #1: He grows older Action #2: He is weaned from nursing

Same subject, two separate actions.
In that case, this is how Biblical Hebrew works.

First you mention the first action (the verb). Then you mention the subject (the noun). Then you mention the second action (the second verb).

And thus we have:

וַיִּגְדַּ֥ל הַיֶּ֖לֶד וַיִּגָּמַ֑ל

“And the child grew and was weaned...”

In other words, in this linguistic situation, use this grammatical form.

Linguistic situation: two actions done by one subject. Grammatical form: verb, noun, verb.

How do we know that it’s a rule. Because we see it time and time again. Look up above at the other three examples I gave above. They all follow this pattern. And, according to the Malbim (who is the source of this rule and these examples) this is the pattern we see time and again.

So, we have a rule.

And that means that we have a problem. Because take a look at our verse — not the words, but the structure.

One subject: Y-K-V-K.

I have to pause here and note that Moshe is not the subject of this verse. Rather, he is the object. The subject is the one doing the action. In this case, Hashem is the One who is calling and speaking.

Moshe is not doing either of those actions. Rather, he is the “recipient” of those actions. He is the one being called and the one being spoken to. That is what we mean (in grammatical terms) by the object.

So, let us return to our problem.

One subject: Y-K-V-K. Two actions: calling and speaking.

And we have one rule: [verb] [noun] [verb].

So we can easily plug this in:

וַיִּקְרָ֖א י-ק-ו-ק אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֑ה וַיְדַבֵּ֤ר אֵלָ֔יו

“And Y-K-V-K called to Moshe and spoke to him...”

If we follow our rule, then this is how the verse should be written.

And yet, that is not the structure of our verse. Our verse follows a rather different (and convoluted) structure:

[verb] [object] [verb] [noun] [object]

The structure is off. The object is needlessly repeated.

More importantly, the verse places the subject after the second verb as follows:

[verb] [verb] [noun]

And that breaks our rule of [verb] [noun] [verb].

So, the question is — what are we supposed to do with this?
We have two options.

Option #1: Shrug our shoulders and move on. Option #2: Look for an answer.

Option #1 is easier. But it keeps us locked in our ignorance.

So, we’ll go with option #2

Even if it takes time.
Even if it is hard.
Even if we have no idea where to start.

Rules and Variations

Above we noted a rule. And rules are set in stone.

But stones don’t have to have just one rule.

That was our initial problem. Yes, we have one subject. And yes, we have two actions. But that’s not always the whole story.

Yitzchak grew up. Very nice. He stopped nursing. Great.

How many times do you think that Yitzchak did this? My guess — once.
The same is true with Leah becoming pregnant and giving birth (as noted above). For this child, she became pregnant once and gave birth to him once.

Nothing out of the ordinary here.

But what if it’s a bit different. What if it’s not a one-off event. What if it’s something that recurs again and again. How does the language (read grammar) handle that?

One option, by switching up the order. And so, we have a variation to our rule.

Rule #1: all things equal, [verb] [noun] [verb] Rule #1b: if the actions are recurring, then [verb] [verb] [noun]

And this is what Chazal (and Rashi in their wake) is telling us. Let us retranslate our verse and see how it makes sense:

וַיִּקְרָ֖א אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֑ה וַיְדַבֵּ֤ר יְהֹוָ֙ה֙ אֵלָ֔יו

And Y-K-V-K would call to Moshe and say to him...

See that subtle switch I made in the translation? There is no Hebrew equivalent of the word “would”, so the language needs to find other methods of conveying the same idea.

I believe that one such method (there may be more than one) is this very switch in the order of the verbs and the noun. And I believe that this is why Rashi (following Chazal) is telling us that this was not a one time event. This was something that happened again and again.

I should note that the Malbim understands it slightly differently (see the appendix at the end of this article).

Of course, this verse is still part of a narrative flow. The anan (ענן) did cover the Mishkan. Moshe was (later on) invited in.

All of that is true.

But the way the narrative is being framed tells us something beyond that narrative flow. In our case, it is telling us that when Hashem spoke with Moshe, He always called him first.

And He did so because of His love and affection for us.

And that love — and that affection — they are crucial for understanding our parsha. Indeed, perhaps one can even say that this kriah here was a paradigmatic kriah — one that clearly shows just how much Hashem really loves us.

About that Narrative Flow

There is something that is bothering me.

I see how the Mishkan is parallel to Har Sinai. I see the connection. It is so clear — and so beautiful.

But (and I don’t mean to be blunt), what is the point? Why are we recreating Har Sinai?
I’m not against it. Love the idea.

But I want to understand it.
What is HaKadosh Baruch Hu trying to accomplish?

Remember, He told us that we should make a Mishkan so that He can dwell among us:

וְעָ֥שׂוּ לִ֖י מִקְדָּ֑שׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּ֖י בְּתוֹכָֽם

“And they shall make for Me an inherently holy place, and I will dwell among them.”

As such, I assume that this facet of being a mini-Har Sinai relates somehow or other to that goal. I just want to know how.

And I already have in mind two ideas.

**Idea #1: ** Rabbi Yishmael. **Idea #2: ** Rabbi Akiva.

Idea number one is, in some ways, easy. It’s the notion that there are more mitzvahs to receive. HaKadosh Baruch Hu has more Torah to reveal to us. Not every one of the 613 mitzvahs was given to Moshe on Har Sinai.

Yes, we got the 10 Statements (aka the Ten Commandments). And yes, we got Parshas Mishpatim. And yes, we got the laws about building the Mishkan.

But there is so much more that we did not get:

We didn’t get the laws of the korbanos. We didn’t get the laws of arayos. We didn’t get the laws of the legal and judicial system.

So, for example, during the Ten Statements (aka the Ten Commandments) we got the commandment to not commit adultery. We usually see this as a specific prohibition to do a specific action.

But it may be what I call a paradigmatic example.

A paradigmatic example is when the Torah uses a particular example of a particular Mitzva as a means of representing an entire class of Mitzvos. In that case, adultery would be representative of illicit marital relations. And it would be singled out because it is the most common method by which people violate this class of prohibitions.

The same would be true of not murdering. Not murdering would not be mentioned in the Ten Commandments as an isolated prohibition, but as an example of a class of prohibitions against causing physical harm to another human being.

It would be singled out because it is the most extreme form of causing physical harm to someone else.

And this would fit in quite nicely with the chazal that teaches us that not stealing is about kidnapping, which is the most extreme form of stealing we can imagine.

As such, these mitzvahs and others given at Har Sinai would be considered general principles rather than specific details. And, says Rabbi Yishmael, it was only in the Ohel Moed that the details of these prohibitions got specified.

So, for example, it’s only in the Ohel Moed that we get the full list of prohibited marital relations. Only there do we learn about incest, homosexuality, and bestiality.

And therefore we need the mishkan.

Because without the Mishkan we cannot get the full Torah. And without the full Torah, HaKadosh Baruch Hu cannot fully dwell among us.

And so we have the cloud and we have the calling. And as I still hope to show, we have the fire — although I don’t know if I’ll show it this week. Hopefully, at the very latest, next week.

This seems to me, in some ways, the easiest and most straightforward reading of the narrative that we’ve been following. It would map perfectly to what we have read so far. The mitzvahs are revealed in the Torah in the order and at the time that they were given.

For example, in Egypt we already got the laws about the sanctification of the month (aka Kiddush HaChodesh).

Later on at Marah, we got various parshas of the Torah to study and learn. And those particular parshas were fleshed out during the Ten Commandments in Parshas Mishpatim.

Then, after that, Moshe goes up to Har Sinai for forty days and forty nights — not to get the full Torah. Rather, to get the laws of building the Mishkan, which is the next step in our redemptive process.

And now that the Mishkan is built, we now need to get the rest of the Torah.

Which is why the luchos are in the Aron HaKodesh. And why the keruvim are on top of the luchos.

So that between those keruvim on that Aron with those luchos, HaKadosh Baruch Hu can reveal to us the rest of the Torah.

And thus, ויקרא.

But what about Rabbi Akiva?

According to Rabbi Akiva, it was not just the general legal principles that were given on Har Sinai. No, the Torah in its entirety was given at Har Sinai. Details and all.

True, it is not presented that way, but that’s an issue of narrative presentation, not about what historically happened.

Okay, fine.

I hear the idea, but why? Why present it this way? What are we being told?

What is the point of this particular narrative presentation as understood by Rabbi Akiva?

The answer to that question is hidden within the Mishkan itself.

A House and a Home

The Mishkan, as we know, is the desert version of what is eventually going to be known as the base of the Beis Hamikdash (בית המקדש) -- the Inherently Holy House.

It’s the word Beis (בית, house) that I want to focus on.

A house, in my definition, is just a structure — a structure with potential. A house can become a home if one takes advantage of it. If there is love in the home, caring, connection, growth.

Or, put otherwise, if the people who are living in a house are close to one another; then you have a home.

But more often than not, people do not begin close to one another. They may desire to have that closeness. They may want to build a home. But they are who they are at that moment when they begin.

They’re different. They lack understanding. They have emotions and desires and drives which aren’t in sync with the other members of the home.

And so if one wants to build a home, there’s a certain type of work that one has to do. It’s the work of coming close.

Of learning to understand the other. Of modifying oneself so that one can connect to and live with the other.

With that said, let’s take a look at our home away from home. Our true home, in the Jewish sense of the word, is the Beis Mikdash on Har HaBayis in Yerushalayim in Eretz Yisrael.

But we aren’t yet in Eretz Yisrael. We can’t build up Yerushalayim, let alone build a Beis Hamikdash. But that doesn’t mean we can’t build a home.

A home needs a structure.
And if that means that we have to build the equivalent of a rental unit or a vacation home, so be it.

It still can be a place where we can all live and grow together. And by “all”, I mean G-d and the Jewish people.

And so we build the Mishkan. And the holiness of the Mishkan is in its name itself.

The name מִשְׁכָּן (Mishkan) comes from the root שׁ-כ-נ — meaning to dwell. The Mishkan is the dwelling place of the Shechinah — aka the Divine Presence. It is the place where G-d meets the Jewish people.

But how does that work? What makes the Mishkan such a place. We have already partially touched upon that — the luchos.

The luchos I’ve been calling the ten statements, because that’s the most accurate English translation. They are commonly known in English as the Ten Commandments, which is also defensible.

For our purposes here, though, I would like to introduce a new, more literary translation — the Ten Principles. We noted above the idea of a paradigmatic example. Built within these ten statements or these ten commandments are ten categories of laws which encompass the Torah as a whole. Rashi already notes this in the name of Rav Saadia Gaon.

How that works fully is beyond the scope of this article, but it’s there. We’ve already seen a few examples. Here’s a few more:

• Shabbos as the paradigmatic example of all the Moadim (holidays).

• Not having other gods as the paradigmatic example of all the prohibitions against idolatry.

• Not bearing false witness as the paradigmatic example of having an honest court system.

Of course, this is only a partial list and I have not fully made my case yet. But for now, I think this suffices. The point right now is not so much how the Ten Principles encompass the entire Torah, but that they do. The how will have to be fleshed out another time.

So, principles in hand (and heart and mind), we build an Aron to house these ten Torah-encompassing principles.

We place it in the holy of the holies — the place that is the most sanctified. Because it’s the place where you can most clearly see G-d. And, by extension, where G-d can most clearly see us.

We put that into a mishkan. In short, it is, for lack of a better word, a shrine to the principles and values and ideals of the Torah.

But just like a home, all we have right now is potential. We have the values. We have the ideals. We have even the details, but there’s something that’s still lacking: the ability to live it, to put into practice those ideals and those details that we so deeply cherish.

It is like a man and a woman getting married and wanting to start a home. Do they yet know how to actually and truly love and care for each other? Are they ready at that moment to actually love and parent their children?

The desire is there, but is the ability there? Often times yes and often times no. I think most often yes and no. We begin with certain capabilities but also with certain limitations. If we want to build a home, we have to sharpen our capabilities and develop them while dealing with and working on our limitations. As it is in our everyday homes, so too it is in our home away from home.

It’s not enough to build the shrine. It’s not enough to say we will do and we will hear. We need to work on the transformation. We need to become the people who can actually live what we desire and profess to be.

And that is where our Parsha comes in. Our Parsha is the next stage in the journey.

The journey begins with the initial desire to be committed. With the naaseh (נעשה) without the v’nishmah (ונשמע).

It then moves on to the initial listening — the hearing of the Ten Principles (or, at the very least, the first two).

It then continues with an actual commitment. We hear more fully what is involved and then we add the v’nishmah — naaseh v’nishmah (נעשה ונשמע).

And then we build our home — the Mishkan.
And like a couple who hangs their kesubah on the wall of their home, we place the Aron with the luchos at the heart of the Mishkan.

And if we look, we see this is the narrative flow of Sefer Shemos leading up to Sefer Vayikra. The Torah isn’t giving us a chronology of what happened and when. It’s laying out the process — the transformation — that had to take place. For Rabbi Yishmael, sequence means chronology. For Rabbi Akiva, sequence means process. That (may be) how he reads the narrative of the Torah.

And with this said, we’re now ready to go back and re-read the opening of Sefer Vayikra.

Ready to Begin

So the Mishkan is built, and the cloud is hovering above it. We’ll take a second to talk about that cloud, not in any sort of depth and not fully. Rather, we’ll just touch upon one aspect of the cloud andleave a fuller explanation for another time.

It’s a hot day. You’re traveling — outside.
For hours at a time. Day after day.

It’s difficult. It’s tiring. Even dangerous.

And then a cloud appears. There’s still light. But a much more pleasant light.

This type of cloud is an act of caring. As such, the cloud can also be a sign of love. And that sign is what hovered over the Mikdash.

And then comes the loving call: “Moshe, Moshe”. And Moshe enters. This is the context. It’s the love. It’s the desire to have not just a house, but a home.

As such, we begin Sefer Vayikra not with the Kohanim, but with Am Yisrael. At the end of the day, the Mishkan is not about the Kohanim. The Kohanim work there, but they are not the focus or the purpose.

The focus and purpose of the Mishkan is so that Hashem will dwell among us — the Jewish people. The Kohanim are the facilitators. But they can only facilitate if we — the Jewish people — are ready, willing, and able.

And therefore, with that first call, HaKadosh Baruch Hu lays out the essence of what we are supposed to do with the Mishkan — transform. Or, in the language of the Torah, to becoming close to HaKadosh Baruch Hu.

So what does it mean to come close?

The answer laws within the very structure of the Mishkan itself.

The heart and soul of the Mishkan are the luchos. Which is to say that the values and principles of the Torah are the heart and soul of the Mishkan.

And that is the key. Let’s see how.

Did we follow Hashem into the desert? Check. Did we pldge our allegiance to Him and His Torah? Check. Did we make the covenant? Check.

How about the Mishkan?

Did we donate our time? Check. Did we donate our efforts? Check. Did we donate our skills? Check.

In short, we are inspired, dedicated and committed.

All of that is necessary. But it is not sufficient.

Let’s take a trip into the future (not our future, our ancestors future).

We are past the Makos. Past Yam Suf. Past Har Sinai. Past building the Mishkan. Past entering the land.

And it is Tuesday.
What, you might ask, is so special about Tuesday?

Absolutley nothing! And that is the point.

Tuesday is Moshe speak for a regular day. And the question we need to ask is what then. How are we on a regular day?

When things are going well — or not.
When we are in a good mood — or not.
When we are inspired — or not.

What happens when those thoughts enter our mind. You know, the thoughts that we don’t tell anyone about. The thoughts that we wish we didn’t have?

And what about those desires?
What happens when those inner drives hit and urge us to do that what we should not do — or not do that which we should?

And ditto goes for our emotions or habits (good and bad) and everything else that keeps us from actually living the principles of the Torah — in all their details.

If you are a human being reading this, then you know what I’m talking about. You know that it’s easy to talk the talk, but not always easy to walk the walk.

But that’s not the end of the story. Rather, it is the beginning.

Relationships have to be built. Because each of us start as we are — not as who we need to be. In the context of marriage, it means that we don’t always speak as we want. We aren’t always there for each other. We don’t always do what we need to do and often times we do what we should not do.

But if we are dedicated to the relationship, then we work on it. We learn how to become the person we need to be in order to develop the relationships that we want to have.

And that is how it is with HaKadosh Baruch Hu.

Entering a relationship with G-d, means that Tuesdays will not be easy. We will find that we aren’t always as in sync with G-d and His will as we originally thought. That we have drives that we don’t know how to deal with and thoughts that we don’t know what to do with.

Or, put otherwise, there are G-d’s principles and values — and there are our thoughts, desires and emotions. And they need not be in sync. Often times they are not.

And, as such, we are distant from G-d and need to find a way to come close. As it says in Pirkei Avos — make G-d’s will your will.

How? By doing the work to align yourself with G-d’s principles and values. Because that is what G-d wants — for us to live these values (not merely preach them).

As such, we have the karbonot.

We have the Korban Olah, which is about dealing with our inappropriate thoughts and those positive commandments (our responsibilities) that we failed to fulfill.

We have the Korban Mincha — which I have to admit may be connected to the manna and the shulchan (an idea I hope to develop further some time in the future). But it may (also?) be a poor man’s version of an ola.

We have the Shelamim. Not 100% sure about this one. What I would like to say is that the Shelamim is about learning how to live with each other (aka peace). And it is about being complete and whole — to further devloping those Torah and Mitzvos that I most readily resonate with while dealing with and shoring up those areas where I struggle.

We have the Korban Chatat, which relates to what we did wrong. Not to the things that we purposely did wrong, but rather to those commandments that we didn’t want to violate, but inadvertantly did so.

In short, when we want to work on the relationship. We take something of value and bring it to the opening of the Mishkan (אֶל־פֶּ֜תַח אֹ֤הֶל מוֹעֵד֙) — the shrine of G-d’s values — and work on transforming us into the people that G-d (and we) want to be.

The Music of Closeness

One last example.

Imagine someone who doesn’t know how to play piano. Indeed, he has never once set a single finger on a single key.

You hand them a book on how to play piano. It is a gem of a book. It doesn’t just teach how to play the piano, but everything that could possibly be related.

The history of pianos. How to make pianos. How to fix them. Music theory. How to write songs. The various different styles of music. And — of course — how to actually play the piano.

And this man, genius that he is, reads and masters the entire book. He knows it backwards and forwards.

But he still has never set a single finger on a single key.

All knowledge, no training.

Now, let’s introduce him to an actual piano. We’ll seat him at the best there is — in carnegie hall. In front of a crowd of thousands.

How do you think he would do? How long until you — and everyone else — walk out?

Perhaps you’ll stay out of kindess. Perhaps you’ll leave out of kindness.

I don’t know.
But what I am sure about is that he won’t be playing the piano. He can’t.

He never trained himself.

True, all his knowledge helps. It can aid him tremendously in his development. But only if he at some point actually plays.

Which means hitting the wrong note. Playing the wrong chord. Losing rhytm.

And all the other mistakes that naturally come with getting better.

The analogy is clear. The Torah is the book.
The Mishkan is the piano.
The Korbanot are the training sessions. Our life is the concert. And Hashem is the One who keeps inviting us to play.

וַיִּקְרָא

Appendix: The Malbim’s Reading of Vayikra 1:1

In the article above, we noticed that the structure of our verse is unusual. The subject (Hashem) appears after the second verb, not between the two verbs where we would expect it. We suggested that this change in word order signals a recurring action — that Hashem would call to Moshe every time He spoke with him, not just this once.

The Malbim, in his commentary on Vayikra 1:1, notices the same problem — but reads it differently. Here is his approach, step by step.

The Rule

The Malbim establishes a rule of Biblical Hebrew grammar. When one subject performs two actions, the standard word order is:

[verb] [subject] [verb]

He brings several examples:

וַיֵּרָא יְהוָה אֶל־אַבְרָם וַיֹּאמֶר

“And Hashem appeared to Avram and said...” (Bereishis 12:7)

וַיִּגַּשׁ אַבְרָהָם וַיֹּאמַר

“And Avraham approached and said...” (Bereishis 18:23)

וַיִּגְדַּל הַיֶּלֶד וַיִּגָּמַל

“And the child grew and was weaned...” (Bereishis 21:8)

In each case: first verb, then the subject (the person doing the actions), then the second verb. That is the normal pattern.

The Problem

Now look at our verse:

וַיִּקְרָא אֶל־מֹשֶׁה וַיְדַבֵּר יְהוָה אֵלָיו

If we follow the rule, it should read:

וַיִּקְרָא יְהוָה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה וַיְדַבֵּר אֵלָיו

“And Hashem called to Moshe and spoke to him...”

But instead, the subject (יְהוָה) is pushed past both verbs to the end. The Malbim calls this a סֵרוּס — a displacement, an inversion. And he says: the Torah does not invert its language without reason.

What the Displacement Means

The Malbim explains that Chazal have a consistent principle for reading such displacements. When the subject is pushed past both verbs, it fuses the two actions together. It teaches that the two actions were alike in some way — and therefore the Torah presses them close together, with no space between them.

He brings a proof from Bereishis Rabbah on the verse about Sarah:

וַתַּהַר וַתֵּלֶד שָׂרָה לְאַבְרָהָם

“And she conceived and bore — Sarah — to Avraham” (Bereishis 21:2)

The subject (שָׂרָה) is pushed to the end. Chazal derive: just as the birth was certainly from Avraham, so too the conception was from Avraham and from no one else. The displacement equates the two actions.

Another example, about Lavan:

וַיֵּלֶךְ וַיָּשָׁב לָבָן לִמְקוֹמוֹ

“And he went and returned — Lavan — to his place” (Bereishis 32:1)

The subject (לָבָן) is pushed past both verbs. Chazal derive: the going and the returning were immediate and inseparable. The moment Lavan turned away from Yaakov, he returned to his old ways.

Applied to Our Verse

The Malbim applies the same principle here. The kriya (calling) and the dibbur (speaking) are pressed together — inseparable. The calling is not an introduction or a preliminary. It is part of the speaking itself. Every dibbur had a kriya bound to it.

As the Malbim puts it: the Torah placed the subject after both verbs to teach that the kriya was תְּכוּפָה — pressed close — to the dibbur, and was a part of it. There cannot be a dibbur without a kriya.

This is slightly different from the reading we offered in the article. We suggested the word order signals that the action was recurring — that it happened again and again. The Malbim’s reading is that the word order signals fusion — that the two actions are inseparable. In both readings, the result is the same: every time Hashem spoke to Moshe, He first called to him. But the mechanism is different. We read recurrence into the grammar. The Malbim reads inseparability.

Share masmid

We are at the end of Sefer Shemos, and I want to take a step back and look at the sefer as a whole. Not to construct a single grand theory — that’s a bit ambitious — but to trace several themes that run through it, connecting the beginning to the center to the end, and into the opening of Sefer Vayikra. The goal is to see whether the sefer has an architecture, and whether that architecture reveals something we might otherwise miss.

To do that, I want to start in the center.

There are forty chapters in Sefer Shemos. Chapters 19, 20, 21 — the giving of the Torah at Har Sinai, the Aseres HaDibros, the beginning of Parshas Mishpatim — sit at the physical center of the sefer. I believe they also sit at the conceptual center. So we will begin there and radiate outward — backwards into the story of the Exodus, forward into the Mishkan — until the structure of the whole sefer begins to emerge.

The Destination

Let’s begin with a simple observation.

When Bnei Yisrael arrive at Midbar Sinai, something happens that has not happened at any other stop on their journey: וּמֹשֶׁה עָלָה אֶל הָאֱלֹהִים — Moshe went up to the Divinity (19:3).

Two things are remarkable about this.

First, note what it says and what it doesn’t say. It doesn’t say Moshe went up to the mountain. It says he went up to Elokim — to the Divinity. This sounds like a spiritual ascent. Perhaps he physically went up the mountain to aid him in his spiritual elevation, but the ascent itself seems spiritual in nature.

Second — and this is crucial — no one told him to do it. There was nothing he was reacting to. No crisis, no complaint, no instruction from Hashem. Moshe, on his own volition, decided to have a spiritual ascent. And then, from the mountain, Hashem calls out to him: וַיִּקְרָא אֵלָיו ה׳ מִן הָהָר.

This is unlike any of the other stops made until now.

Trace the journey that brought them here. From Ramses to Sukkos, from Sukkos to Eisam, through the Yam Suf to Midbar Shur, Marah, Eilim, Midbar Sin, Refidim — at every stop along the way, there are crises: no water, no food, quarreling. And at every stop, Moshe responds. He cries out to Hashem, he is given solutions, he deals with whatever arises. But he never initiates. There is no stop at which Moshe, on his own, unprompted, goes up to the Divinity.

Until Sinai.

At Sinai, unprompted, uninstructed, Moshe goes up. Why?

Because this was always the destination.

Go back to the very beginning. At the sneh, on this very mountain, Hashem told Moshe: בְּהוֹצִיאֲךָ אֶת הָעָם מִמִּצְרַיִם תַּעַבְדוּן אֶת הָאֱלֹהִים עַל הָהָר הַזֶּה — When you take this nation out of Mitzrayim, you will serve the Divinity on this mountain (3:12).

Isn’t that interesting? The verse says they will serve Ha’Elokim (האלהים) — the Divinity. And what did Moshe just do? He went up el Ha’Elokim (אל האלהים) — to the Divinity. The same word. Moshe knew exactly where they needed to go, and when he returns here, he knows exactly what he needs to do. The other places were just stops on the way. This is the destination.

The Proposal

It’s not just Moshe who knows what to do. HaKadosh Baruch Hu also knows exactly what He needs to do. He needs to talk to the Jewish people. He needs to get a message to them, and Moshe is the one to deliver it. So after Moshe rises up towards God, God calls to Moshe. We need to take note of that word kriyah (קריאה) — what it means for God to call Moshe — but He does so. And when He does, He tells Moshe there is a message he has to give to the Jewish people.

That message begins with two words: ko somar (כה תאמר). We need to remember those two words. They are going to come back.

כֹּה תֹאמַר לְבֵית יַעֲקֹב וְתַגֵּיד לִבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל

Thus shall you say to Beis Yaakov, and tell to Bnei Yisrael.

Two different verbs — tomar (תאמר) and tageid (תגיד). Ko somar suggests a precise formulation, almost a direct quote. Tageid, from the root of Haggadah (הגדה), suggests something more expansive: relate, discuss, tell the story. There is both a message and a conversation about that message.

So what is it that God wants to tell the Jewish people? It starts with another two words: atem re’isem (אתם ראיתם). We have to remember those two words also. They too are going to come up again — and in fact, they are going to come up in conjunction with ko somar. “Thus you shall say” and “all of you have seen” are going to appear together a second time. For now, we’ll see what HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants them to see right now.

אַתֶּם רְאִיתֶם אֲשֶׁר עָשִׂיתִי לְמִצְרָיִם — You have seen what I did to Mitzrayim.

וָאֶשָּׂא אֶתְכֶם עַל כַּנְפֵי נְשָׁרִים וָאָבִא אֶתְכֶם אֵלָי — And I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Me.

God says to the Jewish people: you’ve seen what I did to Mitzrayim. You’ve seen the ten makos (מכות). You’ve seen Yam Suf (ים סוף). But it’s not just what I did to Mitzrayim. You’ve also seen how quickly I brought you here — to Me. I bore you on eagles’ wings. And you’ve seen and noted that.

And then the crucial word: וְעַתָּה — And now. Now that you’ve seen what I did in Egypt, and now that you’ve seen that I brought you to Me — you have an opportunity.

אִם שָׁמוֹעַ תִּשְׁמְעוּ בְּקֹלִי וּשְׁמַרְתֶּם אֶת בְּרִיתִי — If you listen to My voice and guard My covenant...

וִהְיִיתֶם לִי סְגֻלָּה מִכָּל הָעַמִּים — You will be a treasure to Me from among all the nations.

וְאַתֶּם תִּהְיוּ לִי מַמְלֶכֶת כֹּהֲנִים וְגוֹי קָדוֹשׁ — And you will be for Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

If you listen to My voice and you guard My covenant, you will end up being more precious to Me than any other nation in the world. That’s what segulah (סגולה) means — essentially a type of treasure that one holds dear and stores away. You will also be a mamleches kohanim (ממלכת כהנים) — a kingdom of priests, we’ll translate it as priests for now — and a goy kadosh (גוי קדוש), a holy nation, a holy unit.

Obviously, listening to God’s voice and keeping His covenant are quite important. It would be nice, therefore, if we knew what He meant. Which voice are we listening to? Which covenant are we keeping? Is it the voice that God is about to speak to us, or a different voice that we’ve already heard? Is it a covenant that He’s going to make with us, or a covenant that He’s already made with our forefathers?

We don’t know yet. But as we’ll see, it seems that the Jewish people do have an idea.

Now, we are not yet sure what mamleches kohanim means. But goy kadosh — we have an idea. We have our working hypothesis of the word kadosh (קדוש). Something kadosh is something that, when you see or interact with it, helps you to think of and be aware of God — or helps God to be aware of and think of you. Says HaKadosh Baruch Hu: if you will listen to My voice and you guard My bris, you, as a nation, as a unit, will be holy. People will see you, and by seeing you they’ll see Me.

How? How is that going to happen?

I would like to suggest that it has to do with mamleches kohanim. You’ll be a kingdom of priests. Now, usually priests are a subclass within a kingdom. A whole nation of priests — that is what people are going to see, and by seeing that, they’re going to see God. But what does it mean to be a kingdom of priests?

“Priest” is probably the wrong word. A kohen (כהן) does a type of service, a job — perhaps a holy job — for God. Within the Jewish people, the kohanim are the assistants who work in the Beis HaMikdash (בית המקדש). They help bring the korbanos (קרבנות), they help people bring their bikurim (ביכורים), and the like. They do a particular service for God. So too, says HaKadosh Baruch Hu, the entire nation can do a particular job that God needs done — if we will listen to His voice and guard His covenant.

Putting it all together: the Jewish people are given the opportunity to become segulah mikol ha’amim — precious, more desired than every other nation — and a kingdom of priests who do some service or job for God. And by becoming these priests, they become a holy unit. Even if there are individuals within the nation who are not so holy, as a unit they will be holy. And this will help other people to see God Himself.

Moshe comes and he thoroughly explains this concept, this proposal from God, to the elders of the Jewish people. How do we know he did it thoroughly? Because it says: וַיָּשֶׂם לִפְנֵיהֶם אֵת כָּל הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה — he placed before them all of these words. We’ve seen that phrase — tasim lifneihem (תשים לפניהם) — before. It appears at the beginning of Parshas Mishpatim: וְאֵלֶּה הַמִּשְׁפָּטִים אֲשֶׁר תָּשִׂים לִפְנֵיהֶם. Without going into all the details here — we’ll get to that shortly — it means that Moshe made sure they thoroughly understood what they were getting themselves into.

And the response? As a whole, as a unified whole, the nation said: כֹּל אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר ה׳ נַעֲשֶׂה — Everything that Hashem speaks, we will do.

Moshe returned these words of the nation to Hashem. He told Him what they said.

Preparation and Revelation

Moshe has gone up to the Divinity. Hashem has made His offer. The Jewish people have accepted it. What more do we need?

We need to make sure that commitment sticks.

God says to Moshe:

הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי בָּא אֵלֶיךָ בְּעַב הֶעָנָן — Behold, I am coming to you in the thickness of a cloud.

The anan (ענן) — the cloud — is another word we are going to pay careful attention to. It’s going to come up again and again.

We may not understand why specifically a cloud, and why specifically a thick cloud. But however that works, whatever that means, HaKadosh Baruch Hu explains why it’s going to be this way: it’s so that the nation can hear Hashem having a conversation with Moshe.

I want to introduce here a close cousin to the working hypothesis, which I’ll call the working understanding. I believe the difference between the word amirah (אמירה) and devarim (דברים) is that amirah is something like a statement and devarim is something like a conversation. This is not a hypothesis; it’s what I remember from what the Radak says, I believe cited by the Malbim. I don’t have time to check and verify it right now, so I’ll work with it because I think it works well in many, many verses.

That would be what Hashem is saying to Moshe right now. I’m going to have a conversation with you — b’dabri imach (בדברי עמך). I want the Jewish people to overhear that conversation. I want them to hear Me speak with you. In order to do that, though, that conversation has to be within the thickness of a cloud. Why? We don’t know. We’ll just accept that for now.

וְגַם בְּךָ יַאֲמִינוּ לְעוֹלָם — And they will also be loyal to you forever.

So we understand why Hashem needs to speak to Moshe in a thick cloud — because that will enable the Jewish people to hear Hashem have a conversation with him. But why is it important for the nation to hear that?

I think that’s what the continuation of the verse means: so that they will believe in you forever. That word gam (גם) — “also” — makes me think there’s some value in just the hearing and the conversation itself. But beyond any value that exists there, there is this very real need for the Jewish people to trust and believe in Moshe forever.

Why? Why is that so important?

Because God’s word is going to travel through Moshe Rabbeinu. If we don’t trust that Moshe Rabbeinu is delivering God’s word, then that word will never reach us. It doesn’t matter how faithful a servant he is. It doesn’t matter how accurately he transmits what God says, or how deeply he understands God’s word. If we don’t trust him, we won’t pay attention to it. God needs us to trust Moshe, and therefore God needs us to hear Him have a conversation with Moshe.

Or, to put it into the context of what we’re talking about in this chapter: if the Jewish people are committed to hearing what God’s voice is, they have to know that they’re hearing God’s voice. And so they have to hear the conversation.

That is Hashem’s plan: they will hear. Note the verb. The nation will hear Hashem speaking with Moshe, and that hearing will produce emunah (אמונה).

At this point, we would think we go to the next stage of the back-and-forth between God and Moshe, Moshe and the Jewish people. But instead, Moshe has a strange response. The verse tells us:

וַיַּגֵּד מֹשֶׁה אֶת דִּבְרֵי הָעָם אֶל ה׳ — and Moshe told over the words of the nation to Hashem.

He just did that one second earlier. Before God told him about having this conversation that the people could overhear, Moshe had returned the words of the nation: וַיָּשֶׁב מֹשֶׁה אֶת דִּבְרֵי הָעָם אֶל ה׳. Now it’s the exact same sentence, except that instead of the word vayashev (וישב) we have vayageid (ויגד).

Without even knowing the precise difference between the two words, there must be some noticeable distinction — either a significantly different way of presenting it, a stronger way of presenting it, or some other distinction we don’t yet understand. Moshe evidently does something different this time, and Hashem takes it rather seriously.

He says: go to the nation. Sanctify them today and tomorrow. Launder their clothes. Let them be ready for the third day, כִּי בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁלִישִׁי יֵרֵד ה׳ לְעֵינֵי כָל הָעָם עַל הַר סִינָי — because on the third day, Hashem will descend in front of the eyes of the entire nation on Har Sinai.

This is quite a shift. In the first response, the nation didn’t have to do anything except overhear a conversation. Now they have to prepare themselves. In the first response, they heard; they were listening to what was going on. Now they are going to see. We have gone from passive to active, and from listening to seeing.

But this is not a replacement for the first plan. It’s an addition. We have two parallel tracks, two complementary plans: one which is passive and auditory, and the other which is active and visual.

And there are new elements introduced in this second track. There need to be some sort of borders and boundaries — gevulot (גבולות) — for the nation. They cannot go up the mountain or even touch it; that is dangerously deadly. I assume that having moved to the visual is an indication of a heightened spiritual experience, which means also a more dangerous spiritual experience, and thus the need for boundaries. There is also the idea of the shofar (שופר): בִּמְשֹׁךְ הַיֹּבֵל הֵמָּה יַעֲלוּ בָהָר — when the yovel (יובל), which is a type of shofar, has a long continuous sound, that would be the indication that the Shechinah (שכינה) has gone away and they can now go up on the mountain.

So the second track adds new elements related to this heightened spiritual experience: the idea of Hashem descending on the mountain, the nation seeing that, the need for gevulot, and the shofar. In response, Moshe goes down and gets the nation ready.

The Third Day

And then the third day arrives.

קֹלֹת וּבְרָקִים וְעָנָן כָּבֵד עַל הָהָר וְקֹל שֹׁפָר חָזָק מְאֹד

Kolot (קולות) are sounds. Berakim (ברקים) are, I assume, something like flashes — that’ll be my initial guess. There’s also an anan kaved (ענן כבד) — a weighty cloud — on the mountain. That sounds a lot like that thick cloud that Hashem was talking about. I can’t be sure, but it sounds like a reasonable guess.

And there’s the kol shofar chazak me’od (קול שופר חזק מאד).

So we have an element that relates to the first track — to the conversation we’re going to overhear. And we have an element that relates to the second track — to the Divine descent we’re going to see.

The nation is in the camp and they’re trembling. Moshe brings them out — וַיּוֹצֵא מֹשֶׁה אֶת הָעָם לִקְרַאת הָאֱלֹהִים — to meet, to greet the Divinity. They present themselves, standing, waiting, at the bottom of the mountain — וַיִּתְיַצְּבוּ בְּתַחְתִּית הָהָר. That mountain is filled with smoke because Hashem has descended upon it in fire. The mountain itself is trembling.

Now I want us to understand the focus of these verses. It is primarily on the state of the mountain itself, although there is this element of Moshe bringing the people out to the bottom of that mountain, and of the fear and trembling of that very same people. There is a mention of Hashem descending in fire, but that’s only mentioned so as to explain why the mountain is all covered with smoke.

We should note on the side that smoke and clouds are somewhat similar. They can both be white, ephemeral-type substances, and the words — ashan (עשן) and anan (ענן) — are almost the same. Just the middle letter changes.

The verse tells us that the kol hashofar is getting stronger, exceedingly strong. That’s one of the elements of the visual track. And then it says: מֹשֶׁה יְדַבֵּר וְהָאֱלֹהִים יַעֲנֶנּוּ בְקוֹל — Moshe would speak, and the Divinity would answer him with a voice (19:19). That seems to relate to the auditory track. And note who is leading this conversation — Moshe. Not our topic for now, but worth noting nonetheless.

And now the verse switches focus. No longer is the main subject the state of the mountain, but rather it’s the interaction between Hashem and Moshe. We are told once again that Hashem descended upon Har Sinai — albeit without any mention of the fire. Rather, we are told where on the mountain He descends to: to the top of the mountain. And that Hashem calls Moshe to the top of that mountain. Again, there’s a kriyah (קריאה) from Hashem to Moshe, and Moshe ascends.

Hashem says to Moshe: go down and warn the nation, lest they break through to Hashem to see, and many of them will fall. This is part of the visual track — this need for gevulot. They might want to see more than they should see. Also, the kohanim (כהנים) who are nigashim el Hashem (נגשים אל ה׳), who are accustomed to approaching Hashem — they should sanctify themselves. Sanctifying themselves is part of the visual track. They might think that they can go up; they too have to stay back.

Moshe responds and says: the nation can’t go up. You already warned us to make gevulot. What I understand Moshe to be saying is: I’ve already set up the barriers, I’ve already set up the officers. They can’t go up.

Now, I’m not sure that we see a direct response to this point of Moshe in the Chumash. The next line you might read as one, but I have my reasons to think that the next line relates to a different conversation and a different point, as we will see as we make our way through this narrative.

Hashem says to Moshe: לֶךְ רֵד וְעָלִיתָ אַתָּה וְאַהֲרֹן עִמָּךְ — go down, and come back up, you and Aharon with you. But the kohanim and the nation should not break through to Hashem, lest Hashem break out against them.

This is not, I think, a response to what Moshe said about the borders and the policemen. This is something else. At some point, Hashem said to him: you’ve got to go down and come back up with Aharon. Whether He means to go down this second or at some set time, I think it’s a different point entirely. It’s brought here because in this section of the narrative, these two relevant and important conversations between Hashem and Moshe are brought together.

We are told that Moshe did go down to the nation and said it to them. That sounds like a reference going back to the issue of the gevulot. It’s confusing, and I understand that the way I’m reading it sounds like we’re ping-ponging back and forth between conversations. Yet I think that’s actually what’s going on. It’s not that it’s a difficult reading; it’s that the Chumash is, for some reason, purposely presenting the story this way.

And then the next transition: וַיְדַבֵּר אֱלֹהִים אֵת כָּל הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה לֵאמֹר — And God spoke all these words, saying.

Who did He speak them to? Did He say them to Moshe? Did He say them to the entire nation? Where is Moshe when He says this? Is Moshe down at the camp because Hashem told him to go down, or is Moshe back up? Is Moshe up with Aharon? We don’t know. It doesn’t say וַיְדַבֵּר אֱלֹהִים אֶל מֹשֶׁה or וַיְדַבֵּר אֱלֹהִים אֶל הָעָם. It leaves out that bit of information, which is interesting. How many times do we see וַיְדַבֵּר ה׳ אֶל מֹשֶׁה לֵאמֹר? Constantly. But not here.

And what follows needs no introduction: the ten statements, the ten devarim (דברים). Note that we are no longer in the mode of a conversation. It’s not that Hashem is speaking to Moshe and everyone’s overhearing Him — or is it? We are not focused on the mountain, and we are not focused on the conversation between Moshe and God going back and forth. This is, you might say, a monologue. We know it as revelation, but it’s a one-way communication.

In other words, to recap: the narrative started with a description of the state of the mountain, with a little insertion about how the nation related to that. It then added in the notion of a conversation between Moshe and God: Moshe would speak, and the Divinity would answer him. Then there’s a conversation between Yud-Kei-Vav-Kei and Moshe — which doesn’t sound like it’s the same thing as Moshe speaking and the Divinity answering him. It’s a different name of Hashem, and in one case Moshe sounds like he’s the one speaking with Hashem responding, while in the other Hashem is the one speaking and Moshe is the one responding. And then we have revelation.

We would think that once the revelation is over, the narrative would continue with what happened next. But it doesn’t seem to do that. It seems to circle back to that narrative describing the state of the mountain when Hashem descended on the third day — this time with the focus on the nation’s experience of it.

What the Nation Sees

It’s as if we are zooming in on the line that says the nation was trembling in the machaneh. That might be our initial thought based on what we’re about to read. But I think we’re actually zeroing in on the next verse — where it says that Moshe brought the nation out from the machaneh to greet the Divinity, and that they are standing, prepared, waiting at the bottom of the mountain. It’s at that moment that I think this narrative picks back up. We left that moment behind! They are there waiting, and then we panned away from the nation and went to the mountain, seeing it all covered in smoke. Now the narrative continues from their vantage point.

The entire nation sees the kolot (קולות) and the lapidim (לפידים) — those kolot and lapidim that were mentioned in the narrative about the state of the mountain. But there it was kolot and berakim (ברקים). My working assumption — it’s not yet at the level of a hypothesis — is that berakim are flashes of light and lapidim are something like bolts of light, like lightning bolts. The nation sees this, and they see the kol shofar (קול שופר), and the mountain awash in smoke.

What’s being left out here, rather conspicuously, is the heavy cloud. It doesn’t say that the people see that. We skip over that part in the list. Before the Dibros, the list was: kolot, berakim, anan kaved al hahar, kol shofar. Now: they see the kolot, they see the lapidim, they see the kol shofar, and then we go to the next one on the list and they see Har Sinai ashan kulo — the mountain all in smoke. That cloud is hidden so far. It’s not there. We’ll have to see where it is.

What happens? They see all this, and — וַיָּנֻעוּ וַיַּעַמְדוּ מֵרָחֹק — they move back and stand at a distance. This is why I think we’re talking about the point when they were at the tachtis hahar (תחתית ההר), at the bottom of the mountain. If they’re in the machaneh, they’re not going to move back — they’re already at a distance. But if they’re at the bottom of the mountain, they’re afraid. On the other hand, if they’re moving back in fear, why, in that earlier conversation between Hashem and Moshe, is Hashem saying “go down and warn them”? They don’t need warning. They don’t want to get any closer. They didn’t even want to go in the first place — Moshe had to take them out. They’re trembling in fear. All this needs explanation another time.

But for us it’s the next line that we need to pay attention to. They say to Moshe:

דַּבֵּר אַתָּה עִמָּנוּ וְנִשְׁמָעָה — You speak with us and we will listen.

וְאַל יְדַבֵּר עִמָּנוּ אֱלֹהִים פֶּן נָמוּת — And let not Elokim speak with us, lest we die.

As opposed to what? As opposed to Hashem speaking with them directly. Now we have to wonder: have they heard Hashem yet? It doesn’t say so — it just says that they’ve seen the state of the mountain. Did they ever get to hear when Moshe is speaking and Hashem is answering b’kol (בקול)? Perhaps, but it doesn’t mention it. Indeed, they say: don’t let Hashem speak with us lest we die. We can wonder: did they ever hear Hashem speak directly to them, or not?

Moshe says to them: אַל תִּירָאוּ — don’t be afraid:

כִּי לְבַעֲבוּר נַסּוֹת אֶתְכֶם בָּא הָאֱלֹהִים — The Divinity has come in order to test you.

That word nasot (נסות) — we have to put that aside. We’re going to see a variation of it soon enough.

וּבַעֲבוּר תִּהְיֶה יִרְאָתוֹ עַל פְּנֵיכֶם לְבִלְתִּי תֶחֱטָאוּ — And so that His fear will be upon your faces, that you not sin.

And that word ba’avur (בעבור) is also interesting. Hashem had said to Moshe: I’m going to come to you in the thickness of a cloud ba’avur — so that the nation can hear Me when I speak with you, and also so that they will believe in you forever. We see that already they seem to be believing in Moshe — “you speak with us and we will listen” — but we don’t seem to have the cloud yet! The cloud hasn’t been mentioned here in these verses.

Could it be that there is more to that ba’avur than is written there? We’re back to this narrative style of the Chumash, where when it references a previous narrative it seems to add in relevant details that weren’t mentioned the first time. We see this pattern again and again.

Either way, here are two reasons why the Divinity has come: l’nasot etchem — to test you — and so that the fear of Hashem will be on your faces, that you not sin. What sin is He worried about? What sin does He want to make sure won’t happen?

Either way, the nation stays distant: וַיַּעֲמֹד הָעָם מֵרָחוֹק. It seems that they do not return to their previous closeness. And listen to this:

וּמֹשֶׁה נִגַּשׁ אֶל הָעֲרָפֶל אֲשֶׁר שָׁם הָאֱלֹהִים — And Moshe approached the arafel (ערפל), the deepest, thickest cloud that there is, because there is the Divinity.

We found our cloud.

I’m assuming that this moment here — of Moshe approaching the arafel — is right before what we saw earlier: that Moshe would speak, and the Divinity would answer him with a voice.

And now we can maybe understand why the cloud wasn’t mentioned earlier. The people aren’t afraid of the cloud. The cloud is comforting. Even if there is a certain fear of entering into it, or perhaps a certain respect for it, a certain awe that holds one back, they didn’t go backwards in fear because of the cloud. They went backwards because of all the other elements. But the cloud was what enabled the nation to hear Hashem have a conversation with Moshe.

And I am wondering: even though they are now distant, perhaps they can still hear that conversation. We would like to know what the content of that conversation was. As important as that question might seem, I’m not going to get into it here. I’ll just note the following from the Ramban. It says in the Mechilta (מכילתא) that this conversation — where Moshe would speak and the Divinity would answer him — was during the time of Matan Torah (מתן תורה), and that Moshe would make the Dibros (דברות) heard to Yisrael. According to the Ramban, in the method of pshat (פשט), we aren’t yet speaking about the Aseres HaDibros. According to him, it relates to the conversation that Hashem had with Moshe — go down and warn the nation — and they heard the conversation but they didn’t understand it. We’ll have to leave this question for another time.

The Second Revelation

We are now post-Aseres HaDibros. That seems to me clear from the pesukim. And we have Hashem speaking to Moshe again. Listen to what He says:

וַיֹּאמֶר ה׳ אֶל מֹשֶׁה כֹּה תֹאמַר אֶל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל — And Hashem said to Moshe: Thus shall you say to Bnei Yisrael.

Ko somar (כה תאמר). Remember that phrase? Remember I told you to take note of it? When Moshe went up for the first time to the Divinity, Hashem had a message for Bnei Yisrael: כֹּה תֹאמַר לְבֵית יַעֲקֹב וְתַגֵּיד לִבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל. Well, once again Hashem has a message for Bnei Yisrael.

And how does that message start?

אַתֶּם רְאִיתֶם — You have seen.

Atem re’isem (אתם ראיתם). Just like before, when Moshe first went up. Atem re’isem.

The same two words. Both times, ko somar. Both times, Bnei Yisrael. Both times, atem re’isem.

And what did they see? The first time: אַתֶּם רְאִיתֶם אֲשֶׁר עָשִׂיתִי לְמִצְרָיִם — you have seen what I did to Mitzrayim. The second time: אַתֶּם רְאִיתֶם כִּי מִן הַשָּׁמַיִם דִּבַּרְתִּי עִמָּכֶם — you have seen that from the heavens I have spoken with you.

The first one said: you saw what I did to Egypt. You saw how I brought you here. And now I want to know — are you in or out? Do you want to be an am segulah (עם סגולה)? Do you want to be a mamleches kohanim (ממלכת כהנים)?

And this second time, it is also related to this question. But it will be harder to see. Indeed, initially, it seems disconnected — more like a random set of halachos. But it’s there. We’ll just have to take the time to actually see it.

And to do that, we’ll have to take a closer look at these halachos.

What are these halachos?

לֹא תַעֲשׂוּן אִתִּי — Do not make with Me.

What does that mean — “with Me”? Iti (אתי), aleph-tav-yud. It doesn’t quite sound the same as lo yihyeh lecha elohim acheirim al panai — don’t have other gods before Me — or lo ta’aseh lecha pesel — don’t make yourself an idol. Those were in the Aseres HaDibros. This seems like something related but different. Don’t make with Me — don’t make something alongside Me? To accompany Me? I’m not sure yet.

אֱלֹהֵי כֶסֶף וֵאלֹהֵי זָהָב לֹא תַעֲשׂוּ לָכֶם — Gods of silver and gods of gold, do not make for yourselves.

That’s clearer — don’t make gods of silver and gold. But why is He saying this now? He just told them in the Aseres HaDibros not to make idols. Why say it again?

And then something unexpected. After telling them what not to make, He tells them what to make:

מִזְבַּח אֲדָמָה תַּעֲשֶׂה לִּי — Make Me an earthen altar.

וְזָבַחְתָּ עָלָיו אֶת עֹלֹתֶיךָ וְאֶת שְׁלָמֶיךָ — And slaughter upon it your olos (עולות) and your shelamim (שלמים).

Why is Hashem giving halachos about a mizbeach (מזבח) right here, right now? Three halachos which seem to randomly appear and just as quickly randomly disappear. We don’t know what lo ta’asun iti means. We don’t know why He’s repeating the prohibition against gods of silver and gold. And we don’t yet know what a mizbeach is doing in the middle of all this. We’ll come back to these.

Because finally, we get the parashah (פרשה) that we have been waiting for:

וְאֵלֶּה הַמִּשְׁפָּטִים אֲשֶׁר תָּשִׂים לִפְנֵיהֶם — And these are the mishpatim which you shall place before them.

As much as I want to delve into this parashah right now, as much as I want to talk about what’s in it, I have to skip over it for a moment and read the passage that comes right after the revelation of these halachos. But before we skip over them, we will make two observations.

The first is that letter vav (ו) at the beginning: v’eileh (ואלה) — and these are the mishpatim. This is a continuation of what Hashem just said, starting with ko somar. You’re going to tell all this to Bnei Yisrael. You’re not just going to tell them that you heard Me speak from the shamayim (שמים). You’re going to tell them lo ta’asun iti, and about the gods of silver and gold, and about the mizbeach — and then you’re going to do more than tell them these mishpatim. You’re going to place them in front of them.

What does it mean to place the mishpatim in front of them? Says Rashi: don’t just teach it to them so they can recite it ba’al peh (בעל פה), by memory. No, you need to do more than that. They have to understand these halachos — the ta’am hadavar u’feirusho (טעם הדבר ופירושו), the reason for them and their explanation.

What we have here seems to be a second revelation. And just like Moshe let Bnei Yisrael know the content of the Aseres HaDibros, soon enough he is going to let them know the content of these halachos, these mishpatim. That’s what we are going to read about right now.

The Covenant

I have to admit: there seems to be something about revelation which leads to — maybe even requires — interesting narrative techniques. We have already seen that in the narratives that come right before and right after the Aseres HaDibros, and we’re going to see it again right now, in the parashah that begins right after the second revelation of Parshas Mishpatim.

And it starts with an interesting grammatical point.

It says: וְאֶל מֹשֶׁה אָמַר — and to Moshe He said. Now, in biblical Hebrew, the normal way to tell a story is to put the verb first: וַיֹּאמֶר — and He said. When you do that, the narrative moves forward. First this happened, then that happened, then that happened. Each vayomer or vaya’as is the next step in the story. It’s what we call the continuous past.

But here, the Torah doesn’t do that. It doesn’t write וַיֹּאמֶר אֶל מֹשֶׁה — and He said to Moshe. Instead, it puts the noun first: וְאֶל מֹשֶׁה אָמַר — and to Moshe He said. When the noun comes before the verb, it breaks the sequence. It’s no longer telling you what happened next. It’s telling you what had already happened — what had been said at some earlier point. In English, we’d use the word “had”: “And to Moshe He had said.”

Think of it this way. If I say, “I walked to the store and I saw my friend,” that’s a sequence — first I walked, then I saw. But if I say, “I walked to the store, and I had seen my friend across town earlier that day” — now the seeing didn’t happen at the store. It happened before. The word “had” takes you back in time.

That’s what the Torah is doing here. By putting Moshe before the verb, it’s saying: this wasn’t said now, after Parshas Mishpatim. This was said earlier. It’s being brought here now because it becomes relevant now.

What happened earlier, before Parshas Mishpatim, that we need to know about right now? It’s that Hashem told Moshe:

עֲלֵה אֶל ה׳ אַתָּה וְאַהֲרֹן נָדָב וַאֲבִיהוּא וְשִׁבְעִים מִזִּקְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל

Come up to Hashem, you and Aharon, Nadav and Avihu — Aharon’s two oldest sons — and seventy of the elders of Yisrael.

Now this sounds semi-familiar.

Remember those conversations right before the Aseres HaDibros, between Moshe and Hashem? Hashem said to Moshe, “Go down and warn the nation not to come up.” Moshe said, “I don’t need to. We’ve already set up the gevulot and the boundaries.” And Hashem responded with a line that didn’t seem like a response: לֶךְ רֵד וְעָלִיתָ אַתָּה וְאַהֲרֹן עִמָּךְ — go down, and come back up, you and Aharon with you. I noted at the time that I felt like that was a separate conversation — a different instruction about a different aliyah (עליה).

I think this is that conversation. Hashem is telling Moshe: there will be a time that I need you and Aharon and his sons and the seventy elders to come up. And we once again encounter this narrative style of the Chumash — when it references back to an earlier narrative, it adds in relevant details. In chapter 19 it was just Aharon. Now it’s Aharon, Nadav, Avihu, and seventy elders.

So when the Chumash is about to tell us a story that takes place after Parshas Mishpatim, before it tells that story, it references that earlier conversation to remind us: previously — seemingly before the Aseres HaDibros — Hashem had already said to Moshe that you and Aharon and his sons and the elders need to come up to Me. Why it’s related this way, I’m still trying to figure out. But it seems to me that this is what’s going on.

We’re going to enter this new narrative not on the mountain. Moshe hasn’t gone up yet with Aharon and his sons and the elders — that’ll happen soon enough. Moshe is in the camp with the people, after the Aseres HaDibros, after Parshas Mishpatim. And let’s see what happens next.

Moshe, we are told, relates to the nation all the words of Hashem and all the mishpatim:

וַיְסַפֵּ֤ר לָעָם֙ אֵ֚ת כׇּל־דִּבְרֵ֣י יְהֹוָ֔ה וְאֵ֖ת כׇּל־הַמִּשְׁפָּטִ֑ים

And the nation, when they hear this, they respond in one voice:

כָּל הַדְּבָרִים אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר ה׳ נַעֲשֶׂה — Everything that Hashem has spoken, we will do.

Now that phrase should be familiar to us. We have heard it before, back in chapter 19, when Hashem first proposed the covenant. The same words, the same phrase. Could it be that they’re relating to the same issue, the same idea?

Could it be that before the revelation, they had the sense and understanding of what the revelation would be about — if not the details, at least the general direction? At that point, Hashem said: are you in? Will you listen to this, will you observe it, will you be dedicated to it? And they said yes: we will do all that Hashem has spoken. Now, after the details have been revealed — the full list of laws — they’re asked again: are you still in? And they say yes: we will do all that Hashem has spoken.

Let us continue.

Moshe writes down kol divrei Hashem (כל דברי ה׳). And he builds a mizbeach (מזבח) at the foot of the mountain.

And once again, this should sound familiar. A mizbeach. We just had a revelation about a mizbeach right before Parshas Mishpatim. Remember, we wondered: why is Hashem telling us this law now? It seems so out of place. No — it is so in place. Now is when you need to know this halachah, because now you are going to be building a mizbeach, and it is crucial that this mizbeach is of earth, or, if it is of stone, that no sword touches it.

Indeed, let’s take a closer look at that halachah right now. Hashem said you have to make an earthen mizbeach, and you slaughter upon it your olos (עולות) and your shelamim (שלמים). And what happens in our story? Moshe builds his mizbeach, and he sends the na’arei Bnei Yisrael (נערי בני ישראל), and they offer olos and shelamim. It certainly seems connected.

But why are they doing all this now? What is so special, so unique about Parshas Mishpatim that they are making a sacrifice and offering olos and shelamim?

Because they are going to make a covenant — a bris (ברית).

Remember? Hashem said to us: if you will listen to My voice — seemingly the voice of the Aseres HaDibros and Parshas Mishpatim — and guard My bris — the bris that we are making right now — then you will be segulah mikol ha’amim (סגולה מכל העמים). Then you will be mamleches kohanim (ממלכת כהנים) and goy kadosh (גוי קדוש). This is the bris He was talking about.

And at the moment that they actually make this covenant on these words — when Moshe takes the Sefer HaBris (ספר הברית) and reads it in the ears of the nation — then they say:

כֹּל אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר ה׳ נַעֲשֶׂה וְנִשְׁמָע — Everything that Hashem has spoken, we will do and we will listen.

Na’aseh v’nishma (נעשה ונשמע). At that moment, Moshe takes the dam habris (דם הברית) and throws the remaining half on the nation.

The bris is sealed.

And with that, Moshe and Aharon, Nadav, Avihu, and the seventy elders of Israel all ascend the mountain. They have visions of the God of Israel. They gaze upon the Divinity — וַיֶּחֱזוּ אֶת הָאֱלֹהִים. And they eat and they drink.

And yet we still need to wonder: what is so special about Parshas Mishpatim? Why is it specifically this parashah that Hashem says — if we listen to it, if we guard it, if we do and understand it — that we will be segulah mikol ha’amim and mamleches kohanim and goy kadosh?

The answer is where the story began.

Back to the Beginning

Let us return to the third chapter of Sefer Shemos.

Moshe is shepherding the flock of his father-in-law. He leads them achar hamidbar (אחר המדבר) — after the desert, or perhaps to the desert, the one he knows. And he comes to Har HaElokim (הר האלהים), Chorev (חורב).

A malach Hashem (מלאך ה׳) appears to him בְּלַבַּת אֵשׁ מִתּוֹךְ הַסְּנֶה — in a flame of fire, from within the sneh (סנה).

Fire. At the mountain of the Divinity. This is where the story of redemption begins — and it begins with fire. And as we know, when Hashem descends upon the mountain, He descends in fire. There seems to be some interesting connection between revelation and fire. We’ll have to park that on the side for now.

As we were saying, there is a fire. A bush — a sneh — is burning. And yet it is not being consumed. And Moshe, upon noticing this, has a question:

מַדּוּעַ לֹא יִבְעַר הַסְּנֶה — Why doesn’t the sneh burn?

This is not idle curiosity. This is, for Moshe, a deep question. Perhaps the question. He has been asking this type of question for a while — just not in this particular form.

To see what I mean, we need to go back to what the Chumash tells us about Moshe before this moment.

Moshe has grown up. And for the first time, he goes out to see his brothers. He sees their burdens — the torturous labor, the beatings, the attempt by Egypt to break the Jewish people’s will and spirit. He sees an Egyptian striking a Jew, and he intervenes. The next day, he sees two Jews fighting, and he intervenes again. Then he flees to Midyan, where he sees the daughters of Yisro being driven away from the well by bullying shepherds — and he intervenes yet again.

Moshe sees the same pattern wherever he goes: the powerful oppressing the weak — the fires of the world consuming the snehs of the world.

And yet, through it all, Moshe notices another constant. If there is another interceding power that is willing and able — then there is a means by which one can protect those who are weaker from those who are stronger.

If there is a Moshe around, then there is hope. But he has to be around. If not, then what? No hope.

And so Moshe wonders. Why is the sneh not being consumed? What power or force is protecting it? This is what I am looking for. This is what I want to understand.

And so Moshe turns to gaze — intellectually — at this wondrous vision. And once Hashem sees that this is the question Moshe wants an answer to, He calls to him:

וַיִּקְרָא אֵלָיו אֱלֹהִים מִתּוֹךְ הַסְּנֶה — And Elokim called to him from within the sneh.

Hashem calling to Moshe. Sounds familiar.

And He doesn’t just call to him, but from within the sneh.

The answer you are looking for is right here. I am in the sneh — and that is why it is not being consumed.

You want to fundamentally change reality? You want to find a way to stop the oppression? Then help bring Me down to earth.

And to that, Moshe said: הִנֵּנִי — Hineni (הנני).

What Egypt Was

So Moshe is in. But let us understand the task ahead of him. Let us get a full sense of the fires of the world and how they like to consume the snehs of the world.

It starts with Pharaoh and an irrational fear. The Jewish people were no threat, but they were growing — growing faster than the Egyptians were growing. They were still smaller than them. But who knows? Perhaps someday they could catch up, maybe even surpass us:

פֶּן יִרְבֶּה

And who knows? There could be a war. And who knows? They may join our enemies. And if that happens, they may leave Egypt.

A long list of maybes. And the great evil that could happen if this long list of maybes all comes true is that the Jewish people will go back to where they came from.

That’s it. No real evil done, and no real reason to believe that it will happen.

And yet, on the basis of this fear, Pharaoh lashes out.

He sets taskmasters upon them. He afflicts them with the burdens of the Egyptians. He gives them backbreaking labor. He makes their lives bitter.

And when none of that works, he sets to killing every single Jewish baby boy.

Murder, theft, enslavement — all in the pursuit of an irrational, unreasonable, immoral fear.

This is what Moshe Rabbeinu signed up for. This is what HaKadosh Baruch Hu went to war against.

You have seen, says Hashem, what I did to Egypt. All the plagues. The plagues weren’t there just to bring the Jewish people out of Egypt — at least not the first nine. They were there to show the world that HaKadosh Baruch Hu and His moral law will not be trifled with.

I am Hashem, your God, who took you out of Egypt. I want you to know that I saw your affliction. I heard your cries. I felt your pain.

And I proclaim, as clearly as can be, right now:

Lo tirtzach (לא תרצח) — you cannot murder. Lo tignov (לא תגנוב) — you cannot steal. Lo tachmod (לא תחמוד) — you cannot covet that which belongs to your neighbor.

These laws are the antithesis of Mitzrayim. And they are the essence of how God wants us to treat — or not treat — each other.

But they are general principles. They require specifics if we are truly going to transform mankind and this world.

And that is the place of Parshas Mishpatim.

Parshas Mishpatim

The starting point. Look at the very first halachah. It’s about buying a Jewish slave — an eved Ivri (עבד עברי). We just had chapter after chapter about Jewish slavery. The Egyptians used slavery to crush people, to embitter their lives, to break them. And now Hashem says: when there is slavery among you, there will be rules.

The slave serves for six years. Then he goes free. He has rights. If he comes in with his possessions, he leaves with them — you can’t steal them from him. Even if a man sells his daughter into servitude — the most vulnerable person in the most vulnerable position — she too has rights and protections.

Why does the Torah start here? Because this is the weakest member of society. And if you want to build the opposite of Egypt, you start by protecting the people Egypt would have crushed.

Lo tirtzach in practice. Pharaoh said to kill every newborn Jewish boy. HaKadosh Baruch Hu said lo tirtzach (לא תרצח) — don’t murder. Parshas Mishpatim tells us how to implement this principle in practice. Intentional murder is a capital offense. And nothing — not even the mizbeach (מזבח) — can protect you from that punishment. Unintentional murder is not a capital offense. But it still has consequences.

Lo tignov in practice. The Egyptians stole everything from the Jewish people — their time, their labor, their freedom, their children. HaKadosh Baruch Hu said lo tignov (לא תגנוב) — don’t steal. But what counts as stealing? What if you were watching someone’s possessions and they got stolen — are you responsible? Parshas Mishpatim works through the cases.

Don’t afflict the stranger — כִּי גֵרִים הֱיִיתֶם בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם — because you were strangers in the land of Mitzrayim.

If you see the donkey of your enemy collapsing under its burden — help him. Even your enemy.

And Shabbos appears here too — not as testimony to creation, but so that your animals, your servants, and the stranger may rest. The exact opposite of how Egypt treated its slaves.

The heart of the sefer. This is what Parshas Mishpatim is. It takes the broad principles of the Aseres HaDibros and turns them into the detailed blueprint of the kind of society God wants — a society built on tzedek u’mishpat (צדק ומשפט), the exact opposite of Egypt.

The First Taste

Let’s go back — before the mountain, before the cloud, before all of it. There is one more piece of this architecture, and it is hidden in a stop along the way we may have passed over too quickly.

We are at Marah (מרה). The bitter waters have just been sweetened. And there, the Torah tells us:

שָׁם שָׂם לוֹ חֹק וּמִשְׁפָּט וְשָׁם נִסָּהוּ

There He placed for them chok and mishpat, and there He tested them.

And at this point, we should already start to see some connections. Soon enough — at Har Sinai — we will get the Mishpatim (משפטים). And here, at Marah, we received mishpat (משפט).

And when we do get the Mishpatim, G-d will instruct Moshe to set (שם) these mishpatim before them (לפניהם). And here, we are told that G-d set (שם) this mishpat to him (לו) — him being a reference to the nation.

Not exactly the same thing.
But not so different either.
שָׂם לוֹ versus תָּשִׂ֖ים לִפְנֵיהֶֽם.

And that is not the only similarity. There is more. For example:

אִם שָׁמוֹעַ תִּשְׁמַע לְקוֹל ה׳ אֱלֹהֶיךָ וְהַיָּשָׁר בְּעֵינָיו תַּעֲשֶׂה וְהַאֲזַנְתָּ לְמִצְוֹתָיו וְשָׁמַרְתָּ כָּל חֻקָּיו

If you listen to the voice of Hashem your G-d, and you do what is straight in His eyes, and you pay attention to His mitzvos, and you guard all His chukim...

That structure should sound familiar. At Sinai, in the proposal, Hashem will say: אִם שָׁמוֹעַ תִּשְׁמְעוּ בְּקֹלִי — if you listen to My voice. Nearly the same words. The voice at Marah and the voice at Sinai are the same voice.

My guess — at Marah we got the principles. At Har Sinai we got the details. The Malbim in Parshas Mishpatim says something similar (although he offers a different proof for this idea).

Either way, in both cases, there is a positive benefit to listening.

At Sinai, we know what it is — segulah mikol ha’amim, mamleches kohanim, goy kadosh. That is Sinai’s gift: who you will become.

At Marah it was not who we would become, but rather what would not happen to us:

כָּל הַמַּחֲלָה אֲשֶׁר שַׂמְתִּי בְמִצְרַיִם לֹא אָשִׂים עָלֶיךָ כִּי אֲנִי ה׳ רֹפְאֶךָ

All the machalah that I placed upon Mitzrayim, I will not place upon you — for I am Hashem, your healer.

Machalah (מחלה). We could attempt a translation — sickness, ailment. But we don’t need to translate it. We can figure it out by asking: what did the Jewish people just witness?

They had seen the Nile turn to blood. Frogs. Lice. Boils. Darkness. The death of every firstborn. Then they walked through the sea, and they watched the entire Egyptian army swallowed by the waters. That happened days ago. It is not yet a memory — it is still present, still raw.

That is the machalah. Not a clinical illness. But the war that G-d had just waged against Egypt. And now Hashem is saying: if you will listen to these mishpatim, I will not place these ailments upon you — i.e., I will not go to war against you.

In other words, want to know why I visited these makos on Mitzrayim? Because they violated these principles. They took Jewish babies and threw them into the Nile. They enslaved an entire nation. Backbreaking labor. Torture. Murder. They violated every principle that Mishpatim was about to enshrine.

So don’t take these mitzvos lightly. Because if you do, those makos can be visited upon you too — as we saw to our horror at the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash and the exile.

But there is more to keeping the mishpatim than simply not getting destroyed. There is the opportunity to become an am segulah, a mamleches kohanim, and a goy kadosh.

We will be segulah mikol ha’amim (סגולה מכל העמים) — more precious than all the other nations.

No matter what generation, no matter what place, no matter what the circumstances — the remnant of this people will remain dedicated to these Mishpatim.

Not every Jew in every era. But a certain core will remain true no matter what. This is what makes you precious.

We will be a mamleches kohanim (ממלכת כהנים) — a kingdom of priests.

What does a kohen (כהן) do? He serves HaKadosh Baruch Hu. In the Mishkan, that involves one set of tasks — korbonot, bikurim, and the like. In the world as a whole, it involves another set of tasks — namely, mishpatim. By being dedicated to and implementing these mishpatim, we become G-d’s kohanim vis-à-vis the rest of the world.

And we will be a goy kadosh (גוי קדוש) — a holy nation. Kedushah (קדושה), as we have discussed, is what causes people to think of G-d.

When the nations of the world see the Jewish people living by these principles — no matter the time, place or circumstances — they will see G-d.

Segulah, mamleches kohanim, goy kadosh. All three flow from the same source: listening to G-d’s voice, guarding His bris, and dedicating ourselves — in principle and in detail — to the laws of tzedek u’mishpat.

That is what begins at Marah. And that is what reaches its fullness at Sinai.

What About the Chok?

Everything so far has been about mishpat. The laws. The moral framework. The antithesis of Egypt. But the Torah says Marah gave us chok and mishpat. We haven’t touched the chok yet. Does it also fit?

Here we need the help of Rashi based on Chazal. Chok, we are told, relates to the parashah which is, in essence, the paradigmatic example of a Chok. Indeed, when the Torah itself introduces the laws of the Parah Adumah by labeling it a chok: זֹאת חֻקַּת הַתּוֹרָה (Zos chukas HaTorah).

So if our Parsha here in Mara is going to tell us that we were given a Chok without any further information, it makes sense to connect it to the Parah Adumah, which is labeled a Chok, just as we connected Mishpat to Parsha Mishpatim.

And yeah, once again, we don’t just have a linguistic connection. It’s not just that the words are the same or very similar.

Let us remember from last week’s parashah. What happened when Moshe Rabbeinu saw the egel? As we have already noted, he essentially destroyed it just like one destroys the Parah Adumah.

He burns it in fire (like we burn the Parah Adumah). He grinds it into dust (just like we burn the Parah Adumah into ash). He scatters on water (just like we sprinkle the dust on water). And then has the nation drink the water (this is probably more similar to Sotah, but perhaps we can compare it to sprinkling the water on one who needs to become tahor).

And we also noted the famous Rashi that directly connects the Parah Adumah to the chet ha’egel: let the mother come and clean up the mess of her child.

Not to mention the fact that a molten calf may very well look like a red heifer.

As such, I wonder — did HaKadosh Baruch Hu know that the risk of a chet ha’egel already existed at this point in the journey? And was He preparing them to either withstand the temptation or deal with it if they succumbed?

That’s my guess. And I think there may be another bit of evidence backing it up.

Remember those three laws that seemed out of place — the ones given right after the Aseres HaDibros and before the Mishpatim? One we made sense of — the mizbeach. Soon they were going to need to make a mizbeach, so they now need the laws relating to the mizbeach.

Could those other two halachos also be needed soon. Let’s consider the first one:

לֹא תַעֲשׂוּן אִתִּי — Don’t make with Me.

It still is an awkward phrase — hard to make sense of it. But we have two (and only) two clues. “Making” and “with me”.

Could this be a reference to the golden calf? Could the golden calf have functioned as some sort of intermediary — as a physical means of connecting to the Divine that Hashem had not sanctioned?

It certainly seems likely. The Ibn Ezra thought so (although Rashi sees this as a reference to the Kruvim). And it would partly fit with the next verse — about not making idols of silver or gold.

The golden calf was, well, golden. So that rules out silver. But the gold part still works.

So maybe.

I need to do more research into this to be fully confident. But the pieces (somewhat) seem to fit: the parah adumah and the chet ha’egel are deeply connected. Chazal clearly saw the connection. The procedure Moshe uses to destroy the egel mirrors the parah adumah. And these halachos after the Aseres HaDibros — which we noted seemed puzzling and out of place — may in fact be part of the same thread, warning about a danger that was already present and would soon manifest.

If all of this is correct, then the parah adumah at Marah is not random at all. It is Hashem seeding the antidote before the sin — the same pattern we see with mishpatim, where He gives them the principles before the full details.

And Then There’s Shabbos

Theoretically speaking, we should be done. But that Rashi I mentioned above (based on Chazal) mentioned three halachas that were given at Marah. We’ve mentioned two already: Parah Adumah and Mishpatim, but Rashi also mentions Shabbos. We will wonder once again: How does Shabbos fit into our story? Not the story of the Man, where it clearly fits in and which we need to further delve into when the time comes, but the story of Mishpatim and perhaps, and obviously, the story of the Mishkan. How does Shabbos fit into that? What preparation or awareness did we need that was given to us at Mara?

Before we directly address that question, let’s ask a second one. Is Shabbos a chok or a mishpat? We were given two categories of halachas at Marah: chok and mishpat, and three halachas. We have to map these three halachas onto these two categories. The first two are easy: mishpatim relates to mishpat and Parah Adumah relates to chok, but what about Shabbos?

Our first instinct may be to call Shabbos a chok. After all, Shabbos is not a law which relates to monetary or physical damages. It’s about creation and providence.

G-d made the world in six days and rested on the seventh — so rest on the seventh day. G-d took us out of Egypt — so rest on the seventh day.

True, there is a clear logic to it, which means it doesn’t fit neatly into the classic definition of a chok (something that seems to defy human logic). But if you have to choose between chok and mishpat, it seems more chok-like than mishpat-like.

And yet, I think (not so) hidden within Shabbos is a mishpat element to Shabbos. And the best place to see it is in Parshas Mishpatim itself.

שֵׁשֶׁת יָמִים תַּעֲשֶׂה מַעֲשֶׂיךָ וּבַיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי תִּשְׁבֹּת לְמַעַן יָנוּחַ שׁוֹרְךָ וַחֲמֹרֶךָ וְיִנָּפֵשׁ בֶּן אֲמָתְךָ וְהַגֵּר

Six days you shall do your work, and on the seventh day you shall rest — so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and the son of your maidservant and the stranger may be refreshed.

Look at the reason the Torah gives here for Shabbos. It’s not creation. It’s not the Exodus. It’s social. Your animals need rest. The people working for you — the son of your amah (אמה), the ger (גר) who is in a harder financial position — they need to rejuvenate. You need to take their welfare into account. You cannot just work them endlessly.

This is a mishpat. This is about how you treat other people. And it fits perfectly within Parshas Mishpatim, right alongside the laws about not oppressing the stranger and not afflicting the widow.

But it goes further than Shabbos itself.

Right before Shabbos in Parshas Mishpatim, we find Shemitah (שמיטה):

שֵׁשׁ שָׁנִים תִּזְרַע אֶת אַרְצֶךָ וְאָסַפְתָּ אֶת תְּבוּאָתָהּ וְהַשְּׁבִיעִת תִּשְׁמְטֶנָּה וּנְטַשְׁתָּהּ וְאָכְלוּ אֶבְיֹנֵי עַמֶּךָ וְיִתְרָם תֹּאכַל חַיַּת הַשָּׂדֶה

Six years you shall seed your land and gather its produce. And the seventh year, you shall relinquish it and let it lie fallow — and the destitute of your nation shall eat from it, and what remains, the wild animals of the field shall eat.

Shemitah is also about the social good. The destitute get to eat. The wildlife gets to partake. And Shemitah is essentially Shabbos for the land — שַׁבַּת הָאָרֶץ. The same six-plus-one framework, just on a different scale.

And the framework keeps scaling. Six days, then Shabbos. Six years, then Shemitah.

And then we have Parshas Behar (פרשת בהר). Yes, it is in Sefer VaYikra — but the Torah goes out of its way to tell us that these halachas were also part of the Mishpatim. And there, we count cycles of Shemitah years and arrive at Yovel (יובל) — the Jubilee. The time when slaves go free and land reverts to its original owners.

And finally, in Devarim (דברים), we learn that debts are released at the end of the Shemitah year.

This is Shabbos in its fullest form — in terms of days, years and years of years. And they all relate to social needs, not “religious” ones.

To not overworking ones workers (or animals).
To granting debt release. To freeing slaves. To preventing monopoly power and granting renewed economic opportunity.

This is Shabbos as much as a recognition of creation and providence is Shabbos.

And it was given at Marah — alongside the general principles of the mishpatim. But not only alongside.

As we have noted, Shabbos also relates to the Man. And it also relates to building the Mishkan.

Soon enough, we will build a home to house the luchos. The luchos which contain the Ten Statements (aka Ten Commandments) which G-d gave us on Har Sinai. The Ten Statements which form (among other things) the general foundation upon which the Mishpatim are built.

And we are told — when building that house, do not violate Shabbos. Do not violate this institution which is foundational to all that the luchos themselves represent.

Do not violate the day that tells you to give rest to people who are working too hard — in order to build a place that enshrines the principle that you should not work people too hard?

Do not violate the seventh day in order to build a place which enshrines the memory that G-d rested on the seventh day.

In short, do not violate a principle in order to establish that principle.

And so, before the Man and Parshas Mishpatim and building the Mishkan, we needed to know about Shabbos. And so Hashem informed us about it at Marah.

The Architecture Complete

The laws of Parshas Mishpatim have been given. The bris has been sealed. Moshe and Aharon, Nadav, Avihu, and the seventy elders have gone up, gazed upon the Divinity, and eaten and drunk.

But there is something more.

Once again, Hashem says to Moshe: עֲלֵה אֵלַי הָהָרָה וֶהְיֵה שָׁם — come up to Me to the mountain and be there. Stay there. וֶהְיֵה שָׁם. This time, Moshe is not coming back quickly. Aharon stays with the machaneh (מחנה) — “whoever has issues, come to him.” That’s an interesting instruction, because there are going to be issues very soon. Yehoshua accompanies Moshe partway.

And what is Moshe going up to receive?

וְאֶתְּנָה לְךָ אֶת לֻחֹת הָאֶבֶן וְהַתּוֹרָה וְהַמִּצְוָה אֲשֶׁר כָּתַבְתִּי לְהוֹרֹתָם

The luchos ha’even (לוחות האבן) — the stone tablets — and the Torah and the mitzvah which I have written, to instruct them.

Hashem has already written these. Asher kasavti (אשר כתבתי) — past tense. But Moshe doesn’t have them yet. He needs to go up for forty days and forty nights to receive them.

But why forty days? Not just for the luchos. For the Mishkan (משכן). The whole structure. The house that will hold the luchos, the Torah, these values. There’s going to be an aron (ארון) with the luchos inside, and a kaporet (כפורת) on top of it, and kruvim (כרובים) on top of that. And from between those kruvim, Hashem’s word will come forth. That’s the conversation that is going to continue — HaKadosh Baruch Hu speaking to Moshe from between the kruvim, on top of the aron, inside the Mishkan.

Moshe goes up. The anan (ענן) covers the mountain. The kevod Hashem (כבוד ה׳) rests upon Har Sinai. For six days the anan covers it.

And on the seventh day:

וַיִּקְרָא אֶל מֹשֶׁה בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי מִתּוֹךְ הֶעָנָן

Hashem calls to Moshe on the seventh day from the midst of the cloud.

That word — מִתּוֹךְ (mitoch) — from within. We have seen that word before. At the sneh, Elokim called to Moshe מִתּוֹךְ הַסְּנֶה — from within the sneh. Now He calls to him מִתּוֹךְ הֶעָנָן — from within the cloud. At the sneh, Hashem was inside the thornbush, and the fire could not consume it. Now Hashem is inside the cloud, and from within it He is going to give Moshe the instructions for building the house where these values will live.

And the appearance of the kevod Hashem (כבוד ה׳) is like an eish ocheles (אש אוכלת) — a consuming fire — on the top of the mountain...

Fire. Clouds. Revelation.

Over and over again, these come together.

There was fire at the sneh. There was a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire that led the Jews in the desert. There were clouds and fire at Har Sinai. And now, once again, clouds and fire.

And so Moshe enters the cloud and goes up to the mountain. He is there for forty days and forty nights — to receive the laws of the Mishkan.

And now we transition to our parashah (פרשה) and the end of Sefer Shemos. Here we will see the entire nation willingly donate to this project. They are implementing, with their hearts, their souls, and their pocketbooks, na’aseh v’nishma (נעשה ונשמע). Every person whose heart inspires him — כָּל אִישׁ אֲשֶׁר נְשָׂאוֹ לִבּוֹ — and everyone whose spirit moves them to generosity, brought the terumas Hashem (תרומת ה׳) for the meleches Ohel Moed (מלאכת אוהל מועד). And they brought so much that eventually they had to make a proclamation: no more!

The day to erect the Mishkan comes. It’s the first of Nissan (ניסן) — exactly one year after Hashem told Moshe הַחֹדֶשׁ הַזֶּה לָכֶם רֹאשׁ חֳדָשִׁים, the day that freedom began. One year later, Hashem says: you’re going to set up this Mishkan.

And Moshe does. He takes the luchos — the second luchos that he received — and places them in the aron. He takes the aron, with the kaporet on top, and brings it into the Mishkan. He sets up the paroches (פרוכת) and covers the entranceway to the Aron HaEidus (ארון העדות). He sets up the rest of the keilim (כלים) of the Mikdash. All just as Hashem commanded him.

And then Moshe finishes the work. And what happens?

וַיְכַס הֶעָנָן אֶת אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד וּכְבוֹד ה׳ מָלֵא אֶת הַמִּשְׁכָּן

The anan (ענן) — a cloud!

And because of that cloud, Moshe cannot enter the Mishkan.

And that is where Sefer Shemos ends — at least in terms of the chronological narrative.

And then, Sefer Vayikra begins:

וַיִּקְרָא אֶל מֹשֶׁה וַיְדַבֵּר ה׳ אֵלָיו מֵאֹהֶל מוֹעֵד לֵאמֹר — And He called to Moshe, and Hashem spoke to him from the Ohel Moed, saying.

It begins with a calling — from Hashem to Moshe.

And there will also be a fire. But that will have to wait for when we actually enter Sefer Vayikra.

Share masmid

As most of us know, Rashi wrote a running commentary on the Chumash. Line by line, he works through the text. He addresses difficulties, clarifies meaning and thereby helps us flow through the Torah with a deeper sense of what it is teaching us.

But the very first Rashi doesn’t quite fit that pattern.

The first Rashi on the first pasuk of the Torah doesn’t function like a typical running commentary on a particular difficulty in a particular pasuk. It reads more like a quasi-introduction — a window into the nature of the Chumash as a whole, rather than a comment on a single textual issue.

We’re going to treat it that way. But we’re also going to treat it as something else: an introduction to Rashi’s own method. Rashi never explains his method outright. We have to figure it out as we go along, and certain Rashis along the way will give us hints. This first Rashi is one of them.

And the hint is hiding in the first three words.

אמר רבי יצחק

Rabbi Yitzchak said.

Everything that follows those words — the entire substance of this Rashi — is a quote from Rabbi Yitzchak. But before we get to what Rabbi Yitzchak said, we need to stop and ask: who is Rabbi Yitzchak? And why is Rashi quoting him?

These may seem like small questions. They are not.

If I were giving a lecture and opened with “As Oliver Wendell Holmes once said...” or “In the words of Einstein...” — those names carry weight. They signal to you that what follows comes from someone whose insight you should take seriously, someone whose authority in a particular domain is well established. Rashi is doing the same thing here. Rabbi Yitzchak is a name that means something. And if we take some time to understand who he is and why Rashi considers him worth quoting, we will begin to understand one crucial aspect of what Rashi is doing in his commentary on the entire Chumash.

To get there, though, we need some background. More than just a bit.

We need to understand something fundamental about the Torah — something that some people readily grasp, and others find quite difficult. The Torah has two pillars. There is the תורה שבכתב, the Written Torah — that part which is actually written down. And there is the תורה שבעל פה, the Oral Torah — that part which was transmitted orally through the generations.

The goal of what follows is not to prove this claim or to argue theology. The goal is much simpler: to show that the idea of an oral tradition accompanying a written text should not surprise us at all.

In fact, what should surprise us is if there weren’t one.

The World the Torah Was Given Into

From the time of Avraham Avinu onward — and probably earlier — oral traditions existed throughout the ancient world. The Egyptians had them. The Hittites, the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Phoenicians — all of them passed down knowledge orally. Some of these traditions were stories, like the Epic of Gilgamesh, which scholars believe began as an oral tradition long before it was written down. Some were laws and customs. The Phoenicians passed on trade routes and navigational knowledge through oral teaching. Various forms of wisdom literature circulated by word of mouth across the ancient Near East.

This makes sense for two reasons.

The first is technical. We are talking about a world before electricity, before the printing press, before mass literacy. Writing was the province of specialized scribes, often cloistered in temples or royal courts. Reading and writing were simply not the most practical means of disseminating information to large numbers of people. In this context, the Torah’s insistence that everyone in the nation should be able to engage with the written text is itself quite remarkable — a striking departure from the norms of the ancient world.

But there is a second, deeper reason why oral traditions flourished: they have qualities that writing does not. Oral transmission involves engagement. It involves dialogue — the ability to question, to discuss, to push back. A written text sits on a page. It cannot defend itself. It does not respond to your confusion. But a teacher, a conversation partner, a court of law — these can.

And it is here that we should look at two striking examples, both from the world outside the Torah, that illuminate this idea in different ways.

Homer and the Power of Memory

In the eighth century BCE — roughly the time of Yeshayahu HaNavi, Chizkiyahu HaMelech, and the exile of the ten tribes — a poet (or perhaps a tradition of poets) known as Homer composed two monumental works: the Iliad and the Odyssey.

These are massive texts. Hundreds of pages of material. And they were not written down — not for centuries. They were composed in a form designed for memorization and oral performance, using rhythmic structures and formulaic phrases that made them easier to remember, to recite, and to transmit. Generation after generation of performers memorized and passed on these epics, perhaps improvising in places, but preserving the core narrative with remarkable fidelity.

Hundreds of pages. Transmitted orally. For centuries.

That is remarkable. And it tells us something important: oral transmission, when done with care and structure, is capable of preserving vast quantities of information across long stretches of time.

Socrates and the Value of Not Writing Things Down

A few centuries later — in the period when the Jewish people were returning to Eretz Yisrael after the destruction of the First Beis HaMikdash, the time of Koresh (Cyrus) of Persia and the early prophets of Shivas Tzion like Chaggai and Zechariah — a man named Socrates was walking the streets of Athens.

Socrates did not write anything down. Not because he couldn’t, but because he believed he shouldn’t.

In one of the dialogues recorded by his student Plato — the Phaedrus — Socrates articulates a position that may sound surprising. He argues that writing things down is actually bad for learning. Writing weakens memory. It weakens understanding. When you commit something to writing, the words become fixed. They can’t defend themselves. They can’t respond to questions. They don’t invite the kind of thinking that emerges from genuine dialogue.

In a conversation, ideas are alive. Each side can challenge and refine the other’s thinking. That, for Socrates, was where real understanding happened.

Now, we might disagree with Socrates — and I think he takes his point too far. But there is truth in what he says. There is something irreplaceable about dialogue, about the back-and-forth of thinking together with another person, that a written text alone cannot fully replicate.

Greek society as a whole did not go as far as Socrates. The Greeks wrote prolifically. But they also built an extraordinary culture of oral education — the academy, the lyceum, public debates, rhetorical training. There was a dual track: a recognition that writing things down has value, and that discussing things orally has a different and complementary value.

This dual-track idea — writing and oral discussion working together — should sound familiar.

A Living Tradition Within the Torah Itself

So we’ve established that oral traditions were common throughout the ancient world, and that there are real reasons — both practical and philosophical — for why information might be transmitted orally rather than in writing.

Now let’s look at the Torah itself. Because within the written text of the Chumash, there are clear indications that something very much like an oral tradition must have existed alongside it.

Yisro and the Court System. Consider the story in Sefer Shemos where Yisro observes Moshe sitting from morning to night, fielding questions from the entire nation. People are coming to him with legal questions, questions about how to conduct themselves, disputes that need resolving. They come all day long. Yisro tells him this is unsustainable — he needs to set up a system of judges and courts at multiple levels.

Think about what this means. There are questions being asked. There are answers being given. There is, implicitly, a growing body of legal reasoning. Do we really think that once a question was answered, it was never discussed again? That no one remembered the ruling, passed it on, or referred to it when a similar case arose?

The Chumash describes a sophisticated court system — local judges in every city, higher courts for difficult cases, a supreme court in Yerushalayim. Any serious legal system generates precedent. New cases raise new questions about how to apply the law. That accumulated reasoning has to go somewhere.

The Shema. Then there is the Shema. In Devarim, we are explicitly told:

וְדִבַּרְתָּ בָּם בְּשִׁבְתְּךָ בְּבֵיתֶךָ וּבְלֶכְתְּךָ בַדֶּרֶךְ

And you shall speak of them when you sit in your home and when you walk on the road.

The Torah itself commands us to talk about these things — at home and away, day and night. And to teach them to our children. When people discuss ideas, when they teach their children, when they engage with a text over the course of generations — new understandings develop. That is how intellectual societies work. That is how education works.

And the evidence does not stop with the Chumash.

Yehoshua. In the very first chapter of Sefer Yehoshua, HaKadosh Baruch Hu tells Yehoshua:

וְהָגִיתָ בּוֹ יוֹמָם וָלָיְלָה

You shall meditate upon it day and night.

If the leader of the nation is instructed to contemplate the Torah constantly, do we imagine he kept every insight to himself? In a society whose foundational text demands that the Torah be taught, discussed, and lived?

Tehillim. The same idea appears in the very first chapter of Tehillim — the righteous person is described as one who meditates on the Torah day and night. So this is not only for leaders. It is a quality of anyone who takes the Torah seriously.

Shmuel, Devorah, and Shlomo. In Sefer Shmuel, we see Shmuel himself traveling throughout the land, judging the nation — which means adjudicating cases, which means applying the law, which means generating the kind of legal reasoning that accumulates over time. Devorah sat under a tree and took questions. Shlomo HaMelech was famous for his wisdom and his judgments, and the text references teachings of his that do not appear in any of the books we have.

Bnei Neviim. In Sefer Melachim, we encounter the בני נביאים — schools of prophets. Whatever they were studying in those schools, they were learning something, discussing something, and passing it on to their students.

Iyov. And then there is Sefer Iyov — a book-length dialogue in which a man and his companions sit together for days and engage in a passionate, searching debate about the deepest questions of suffering and justice. This is the portrait of a culture that valued sustained, serious oral discourse.

Ezra. Finally, when the Jews returned from Bavel in the time of Ezra, the text tells us they gathered the people together, read the Torah aloud, and explained it — making sure everyone understood. There was teaching. There was explanation. There was a living engagement with the text.

All of this points in one direction: from the time of Moshe through the end of Tanach and beyond, there was a rich, active, ongoing conversation about the Torah — its meaning, its application, its implications. The Chumash itself tells us to have these conversations. And human societies that value education do not simply ask questions and forget the answers.

Where Did It All Go?

So we have centuries — more than a millennium — of discussion, debate, teaching, and legal reasoning about the Torah. All of it happening orally, alongside the written text.

What happened to all of that?

The tradition tells us that this information was passed down through the generations. I assume this means that the deepest insights, most meaningful interpretations, and most authoritative legal reasoning were preserved and transmitted — while the less significant material was naturally filtered out over time.

And at a certain point in history, this vast oral inheritance began to be gathered together and organized into written collections. The Mishnah compiled legal traditions. The Gemara recorded the discussions and debates surrounding the Mishnah.

And then there were the Midrashim — some focused on halacha, legal matters, and others on aggadah, the philosophical, narrative, and homiletical dimensions of the Torah. Much of this material relates directly to understanding what the Chumash says and means.

Can Information Really Survive That Long?

At this point, a reasonable person might object. Can information really be preserved faithfully over a thousand years of oral transmission?

It can — if the system is designed for it. And to see why, consider a game most of us have played: Telephone.

In the classic version, someone whispers a word to the person next to them, who whispers it to the next, and so on down the line. By the end, “elephant” has become “pajamas,” and everyone laughs. This is a terrible system for transmitting information — and it is designed to be terrible. You whisper, which makes it hard to hear. You pass the message to only one person. There is no verification, no redundancy, no way to check whether the message arrived intact.

Now redesign the game.

This time, you don’t whisper. You write the word down clearly on a piece of paper and hand it to Reuven. Then you speak the word aloud and have Reuven repeat it back to you. He writes it down and shows it to you. You verify — written and oral, in both directions. Then you do exactly the same thing with Shimon.

Before either of them passes it on, Reuven and Shimon verify with each other — writing and speaking, checking and confirming. Only then do they move to the next row, where each of them repeats the entire process with Levi and Yehudah.

What you have now is a system built on two principles: redundancy and verification. Multiple people hold the same information. Multiple modes of transmission — written and oral — reinforce each other. And at every stage, the information is checked before it moves forward.

With a system like this, it does not matter whether there are ten rows or ten million. So long as the system is maintained, the information arrives intact.

Now, there can be disruptions. An earthquake. An exile. A period of upheaval where the lines of transmission thin out. But notice — the system does not require that every single link remain intact. If a hundred people in one generation hold the information and a disruption reduces that to five, those five can faithfully transmit to the next generation, and from there the chain can expand again. What matters is that a critical mass of carriers is maintained.

And when we look at the Torah’s own system, we see redundancy and verification everywhere. The Torah is written on scrolls. It is also written on stones. It is read publicly. There is a national gathering every seven years — הקהל — where the entire people hear the Torah read aloud. Every person is supposed to study it, teach it to their children, discuss it day and night. There are schools, courts, teachers, judges. Even in periods of decline, there were always core groups who preserved the tradition.

This is not wishful thinking. This is how information systems work. It is why DNA can replicate faithfully across billions of generations. It is why you can send an email that gets forwarded a million times and arrives with every word intact. The principle is the same: redundancy, verification, and a system designed to catch and correct errors.

What Rashi Is Doing

Now we can finally understand what Rashi is up to — and who Rabbi Yitzchak is.

An analogy might help. Most of us are familiar with the United States Constitution. Imagine you wanted to write a book explaining, line by line, what the Constitution means at its most fundamental level — its peshat, so to speak.

You wouldn’t just read the text and offer your own thoughts. You would go to the source material.

The debates that took place during ratification. The landmark court cases that interpreted and applied the text. The academic scholarship that has accumulated over two hundred and fifty years. And more.

You would sift through this enormous body of material and select the most authoritative, most insightful voices — the ones that best illuminate what the Constitution is actually saying.

That is something like what Rashi is doing with the Chumash.

The Chumash was written over three thousand years ago. Between then and Rashi’s time in eleventh-century France, more than two millennia of discussion, study, debate, and interpretation had taken place. Much of this was captured in the Mishnah, the Gemara, and the various Midrashim.

But it doesn’t stop there. Even within Tanach itself, the books of Nevi’im and Kesuvim contain passages that elucidate and develop ideas found in the Chumash. A line in Tehillim, a story in Melachim, a passage in Yeshayahu — these can shed light on what a verse in the Chumash means, even if the connection is not immediately obvious to us.

One aspect of Rashi’s genius is as a curator. He goes through this vast body of literature — the Midrashim, the Gemara, the rest of Tanach — and he selects. Not everything in that literature relates to peshat. Not every insight is about the straightforward, first-level reading of the text. Some material relates to remez, or drush, or sod — deeper layers of meaning. Rashi’s task is to find those statements, from among the thousands available to him, that best help us read the Chumash at the level of peshat.

And peshat, let me be clear, does not mean superficial. It means the first level of deep understanding. Think of it like meeting a person. You might interact with someone at length — observe their body language, listen to how they speak, watch how they conduct themselves — and come away with a genuinely good understanding of who they are. But there may still be deeper layers, things you would only discover through years of close relationship or in moments of crisis. Peshat is that first good understanding. It may be very deep. But there is deeper still.

Rashi wants to give us peshat. And one of his primary methods is drawing on the accumulated wisdom of the oral tradition — the insights of the sages whose words were preserved in the Midrashim and the Gemara — and selecting those that illuminate the straightforward reading of the text.

Meeting Rabbi Yitzchak

And so we arrive at Rabbi Yitzchak.

Rabbi Yitzchak was one of the Tanna’im — the sages of the Mishnaic period — whose teachings are found in the Midrash Tanchuma, among other sources. He is one of those great minds whose insights, transmitted and preserved across the generations, help us understand what the Chumash is saying at its most fundamental level. Rashi quotes him here, at the very opening of the Torah, because what Rabbi Yitzchak has to say speaks directly to the peshat of why the Torah begins where it begins.

It is like opening a book on constitutional law by quoting one of the great justices. The name signals authority. It signals that what follows is not casual opinion but the fruit of serious, sustained engagement with the text — the kind of engagement that has been happening, as we have seen, since the Torah was first given.

Now, Rashi does not continue this pattern of attribution throughout his commentary. He does not say אמר רבי פלוני before every comment. Most of the time, he simply presents the insight without naming the source. But here, at the very beginning, he lets us see behind the curtain. He is telling us: this is how I work. I am drawing on a tradition. I am drawing on the accumulated insight of the greatest minds who have engaged with this text over the centuries. And I am selecting from among them the ones that I believe best help us understand what the Torah is saying on the level of peshat.

That is what the first three words tell us.

אמר רבי יצחק

Three words — and in them, an entire methodology. A tradition of learning stretching back over a thousand years. A vast body of literature, carefully preserved, from which Rashi draws with extraordinary discernment. And an invitation to us: when you learn Rashi, you are not only reading the thoughts of one of the greatest Rishonim to ever live. You are also accessing a chain of insight that reaches back to the earliest conversations about the Torah itself.

Share masmid

As we noted last time, the very first word of the Rambam’s Introduction to the Commentary on the Mishnah is דע — know. We took this to mean that the idea which follows is meant to transform how we understand the Mishnah itself. We are now ready to read that idea.

And when we do, we may find ourselves underwhelmed.

I ask for a little patience. Let us work our way through the Rambam’s opening lines, and I believe the significance of what he is saying will become clear — even if, on first reading, it seems almost obvious.

Here is what he writes:

דע כי כל מצוה שנתן ה׳ למשה רבינו — נתנה לו עם פרושה

Know that every mitzvah which God gave to Moshe, He gave with its explanation.

This does not, at first glance, seem like a particularly profound claim. But let us slow down and notice what the Rambam is telling us. According to him, two things were given to Moshe at Sinai: the mitzvah itself, and its peyrush — its explanation. The commandment, and the explanation of the commandment.

We will want to understand these two terms more precisely — what exactly was given, and why the Rambam insists on the distinction. But the Rambam himself seems sensitive to the need for clarification, because he immediately elaborates. Using Rav Shilat’s Hebrew translation of the Arabic original, the Rambam continues: God would say to Moshe the mikra.

This word deserves attention. A mikra is not merely a text that is written down and read. It is a text that is written down to be publicly recited. The word carries within it the act of proclamation — a verse designed not only for private study but for the ears of all who would hear it. We should not underestimate the importance of this idea, and we will have reason to return to it.

The Rambam then tells us that after giving Moshe the mikra, God would give him three further things: its peyrush, its inyan, and all that the mikra ha-mukhkam encompasses.

Let us take these one at a time.

The peyrush is the explanation — what the words of the verse mean. The grammar, the concepts, the plain sense of the language. If you have a legal text, the peyrush answers: what do these words say?

The inyan is harder to pin down. Rav Shilat, drawing on the Arabic source, describes it as an explanation that goes beyond the plain meaning of the language. My friend R’ Daniel Price translates the Arabic term as “elucidation” and, citing an article by Cohen, defines it as “clarifying matters not explicit in the text, but nonetheless intended.”

This is a subtle but important distinction. The peyrush explains what the words mean. The inyan clarifies what the words intend — the subject matter, the issues the text is addressing, the implications that flow from the stated principle even though they are not contained in the literal grammar.

Consider, by way of analogy, the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution:

No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

We can explain what these words mean — that is the peyrush. But what is due process? What procedures are required? Must a person receive notice before a hearing? What counts as impartial? What standards of evidence apply? Can a trial be dragged out for years? Is there a right of appeal?

These questions are not answered by the phrase itself. Yet, if one is aware of the context and discussion surrounding this phrase, they will understand that the phrase relates to these (and other similar) ideas. That is the inyan — the elucidation of what the principle encompasses.

Finally, the Rambam speaks of the mikra ha-mukhkam and all that it contains. I understand this as a “wisdom-filled mikra.” That is to say, that mikra — that verse which is written to be recited — is full of wisdom. Meaning, that it is precisely phrased, and within that precision are ideas and interpretations which are just waiting to be discovered.

So here is what emerges. According to the Rambam, what was given at Sinai was not simply a list of commandments. It was a carefully constructed text — a mikra, designed to be both studied and publicly recited — together with: its explanation (what the words mean), its elucidation (what the words intend), and everything that the precisely composed text encompasses.

The Rambam offers a concrete example, and it is worth examining. He turns to the mitzvah of Sukkos and quotes the verse:

בסכת תשבו שבעת ימים

Let us leave the verse untranslated for a moment and simply ask the obvious questions.

What is a sukkah? What does it mean to sit — or perhaps dwell — in one? Who is obligated? Men only, or women as well? What if a person is sick, or traveling? What materials may be used to build a sukkah? What is its minimum size? What activities must be done inside it?

None of these questions are answered by the verse itself. The information exists elsewhere — in the explanation that accompanied the directive.

The Rambam lists a number of these details: who is obligated, what materials are permitted, what activities are required, the minimum dimensions. These are not in the verse. They cannot be derived from the verse alone. The verse states the principle. The explanation makes it functional.

I find it helpful to think of an analogy from everyday life.

Imagine you walk into your child’s room and find a disaster. Clothes — dirty and clean — piled together. Half-eaten food. Books, games, and toys all jumbled into one magnificent heap. You issue your directive: Clean up your room. And you walk out.

An hour later you return, and to your amazement, the room looks spotless. Not a thing in sight. Until you notice that the bedsheet hangs all the way to the floor. Your son watches nervously as you lift the sheet and discover everything — all the clothes, all the food, all the toys — stuffed under the bed.

And so you explain what you meant. Dirty clothes go in the laundry. Clean clothes go on the shelf. Books go on the bookshelf. Food and garbage go in the garbage can.

The explanation tells your son what it means to have fulfilled the directive. Stuffing everything under the bed does not count. (Whether the clothes in the closet need to be folded — that, perhaps, is a machlokis between Beis Shammai and Beis Hillel.)

This, I believe, is the first fundamental idea in the Rambam’s introduction. When we speak of the 613 mitzvos — or perhaps more precisely, 613 Toros (תורות) — we are speaking of directives. General principles. Statements of what is to be accomplished, but not yet how to accomplish it.

You cannot do melacha on Shabbos. You must place totafos between your eyes. You must dwell in a sukkah for seven days.

Not one of these lines tells you how to do what you are being told to do, or even what exactly you are supposed to do.

Take our verse about Sukkos: you shall תשבו in the sukkah for seven days. Does תשבו mean sit — and not stand? Or does it mean “dwell” — i.e., to live in the Succah for seven days? And if it does mean “dwell”, then what does one have to actually do in order to be considered “dwelling” in a Succah?

The answer is not in the verse. It is in the explanation.

The verse is the principle — the what. The explanation provides the how.

And so let us return, with fresh eyes, to the Rambam’s opening lines.

Know that every mitzvah, every general directive, was given with its explanation for how to fulfill that principle.

G-d would give Moshe the mikra: the written formulation of the base legal idea, composed in an extremely exact literary and legal manner. Designed both for recitation and interpretation.

And then He would give its explanation — what the words mean — and its elucidation — the subject matter it addresses, the implications it carries, the matters intended though not stated.

And everything that this carefully constructed verse encompasses: who it applies to, who it does not, and under what conditions.

The Torah’s commandments, in other words, are like the phrase “due process of law.” The principle is stated with magnificent economy. But without the accompanying body of explanation, the principle alone cannot function. Look at halacha after halacha in the Torah, and you can see from how each is written that it requires an explanation if it is going to work — if it is going to be livable.

That is the Rambam’s first point. We are still far from the Mishnah — we have not gotten close to it yet. But we are not quite as far as we were when we started.

Share masmid

It is forty days later.

Forty days (and forty nights) after HaKadosh Baruch Hu told Moshe to go up the mountain to get the Luchos, the Torah, and the Mitzvah. And during this entire time, we have joined Moshe as he received the directive to build the Mishkan (while still keeping Shabbos).

And yet, we almost forgot something; namely, the Jewish people.

They’re not on the mountain with HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Nope. They are down below, in the camp, waiting.

And evidently, this is a problem. If not for all of them, then for at least some of them:

וַיַּרְא הָעָם כִּי בֹשֵׁשׁ מֹשֶׁה לָרֶדֶת מִן הָהָר…

And the people saw that Moshe was boshesh to come down from the mountain

But here’s my problem. What does this word mean — בֹשֵׁשׁ (boshesh)?

I have no idea.

And if I don’t know what the word means, I can’t know what the problem is. And if I don’t know what the problem is, how can I understand why the Jewish people responded the way they did?

But let’s read the rest of the verse:

וַיַּרְא הָעָם כִּי בֹשֵׁשׁ מֹשֶׁה לָרֶדֶת מִן הָהָר, וַיִּקָּהֵל הָעָם עַל אַהֲרֹן, וַיֹּאמְרוּ אֵלָיו: קוּם עֲשֵׂה לָנוּ אֱלֹהִים אֲשֶׁר יֵלְכוּ לְפָנֵינוּ, כִּי זֶה מֹשֶׁה הָאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר הֶעֱלָנוּ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם, לֹא יָדַענוּ מֶה הָיָה לוֹ.

The people saw that Moshe was boshesh to come down from the mountain, and the people gathered on Aharon and said to him: Get up, make us gods that will go before us — because this man Moshe who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we don’t know what happened to him.

They gather עַל (al) Aharon — the man Moshe left in charge — and tell him:

כִּי זֶה מֹשֶׁה הָאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר הֶעֱלָנוּ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם, לֹא יָדַעְנוּ מֶה הָיָה לוֹ

Ki zeh Moshe ha’ish asher he’elanu me’eretz Mitzrayim, lo yadanu meh hayah lo — this man Moshe who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we don’t know what happened to him.

They don’t think Moshe is coming back. He’s בֹשֵׁשׁ (boshesh) — whatever that word means.

Maybe he fled.
Maybe he died.
Maybe he wants to stay with G-d on the mountain.

However they understand it, the bottom line is the same: he’s not here, and they don’t think he’s coming back.

So they need a new Moshe.

Therefore, they command Aharon:

קוּם עֲשֵׂה לָנוּ אֱלֹהִים אֲשֶׁר יֵלְכוּ לְפָנֵינוּ

Get up and make for us an Elohim that will go before us.

Now honestly, I have no idea what they have in mind here. Moshe is gone, so therefore Aharon should make them a god or some sort of divine power which will go before them?

How exactly does that work? I don’t know, but that’s what they asked for.

And how exactly will this god or whatever it is replace Moshe? I also don’t know, but they think it will work.

And why don’t they just ask Aharon to take Moshe’s place? After all, if he is capable of making a replacement for Moshe, then why not just ask him to be the replacement?

None of it makes any sense.

Aharon’s Response: The Gold

Now, as strange as this request is, it’s even stranger that Aharon takes it seriously:

פָּרְקוּ נִזְמֵי הַזָּהָב

Take off the gold earrings.

And not just any gold earrings, but the gold earrings of your wife and kids:

פָּרְקוּ נִזְמֵי הַזָּהָב אֲשֶׁר בְּאָזְנֵי נָשֵׁיכֶם וּבְאָזְנֵי בָנֵיכֶם וּבְאָזְנֵי בְּנוֹתֵיכֶם, וּבִיאוּ אֹתָם אֵלַי.

Take off the gold earrings that are in the ears of your wives and your sons and your daughters, and bring them to me.

We’ll leave aside the question of how Aharon could make such a suggestion. Instead, we’ll just notice a seeming similarity.

We just had Parshas Terumah. And at the beginning of that parsha, HaKadosh Baruch Hu requests donations from the entire Jewish people to build the Mishkan.

And here is Aharon requesting donations from (most of) the Jewish people to build the golden calf.

But, as I note, it’s only most of the Jewish people.

The wives. And the sons. And the daughters.

One’s closest family members.

Why them specifically? Why only them?

And why their jewelry in general and their earrings in particular?

The Calf Emerges

Somehow or other, it actually worked. Either their wives and kids voluntarily gave up their golden jewelry — or they took it from them (my guess is the latter).

Either way, they bring the golden jewels to Aharon. And, surprise (again), he takes it from them.

וַיִּקַּח מִיָּדָם

And he took it from their hands.

And he shapes it.

וַיָּצַר אֹתוֹ בַּחֶרֶט

And he gave it shape with a cheret.

And he makes it into a molten calf.

וַיַּעֲשֵׂהוּ עֵגֶל מַסֵּכָה

And he made it into a molten calf.

This isn’t a golden calf.
This is a molten golden calf.

Fresh out of the oven. Burning hot. Glowing bright orange (or red).

Red. What an interesting color for a bovine (aka cattle aka baby cow).

So we have our golden (molten) calf. Singular. As in one.

And yet, note the next of the “people”:

אֵלֶּה אֱלֹהֶיךָ יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲשֶׁר הֶעֱלוּךָ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם.

“These are your gods, Israel, who took you up from the land of Egypt.”

These? Plural?

A moment ago everything was singular.

“Aharon formed it.” Aharon made a calf.”

So where did the plural suddenly come from?

I don’t know.

The Claim That Doesn’t Make Sense

But even before that, we have a much larger problem. What they say doesn’t make any sense.

Just a moment ago they themselves said that Moshe was the one who took them out of Egypt — and that they now needed someone or something to go before them because Moshe was gone.

But now things have changed. Now, it is no longer Moshe who took them out of Egypt.

Nope.

Instead, it is the calves. The singular turned plural, molten golden calves took the Jewish people out of Egypt.

This is their message. To the people who just came out of Egypt. Who saw all the plagues.
And the splitting of the sea. And manna. And who stood at Har Sinai some forty days earlier where G-d Himself told them that He took them out of Egypt.

You expect these people to believe that it was a calf that they just made that took them out of Egypt?

Evidently they do.

Why Rewrite History?

And there’s another question. Why is this even necessary? Why do these gods have to be the ones who took them out of Egypt?

If they need someone to lead them now — fine. That at least would make some sense.

But why rewrite the past? Why redefine history?

I still don’t know. But at least this time I have an idea.

Moshe hasn’t come down and now they “need” to replace him.

To do that, they are constructing a narrative. And for that to work, the people need to believe that these golden molten calves are responsible for their salvation.

Why? Still don’t know.
But if I had to guess...

If these are the ones who took you out of Egypt, then you owe them your allegiance. And if you give them your allegiance, then they can lead you.

Aharon’s Next Move

Aharon builds a mizbeach before it — before the calf — and proclaims:

חַג לַה׳ מָחָר.

“Tomorrow will be a festival for Hashem.”

And, indeed, the next morning comes and the people are up bright and early.

וַיַּשְׁכִּימוּ מִמָּחֳרָת.

And they offer sacrifices.

Olot (עלות) — burnt offerings. Shlamim (שלמים) — peace offerings.

And then they eat and drink. And then they “play”:

וַיָּקֻמוּ לְצַחֵק.

And all of this (except for the “playing” part) feels familiar

Let’s go back again to the end of Parshas Mishpatim. But this time to the story just before Moshe goes up the mountain. The covenant ceremony. When the Jewish people accept the covenant with Hashem.

Moshe writes the words of Hashem. He builds a mizbeach at the foot of the mountain. The young men of Israel bring olot and shlamim. Moshe takes the blood — half he places in bowls, half he throws on the mizbeach. He reads the Sefer HaBrit to the people. And they say:

נַעֲשֶׂה וְנִשְׁמָע.

We will do, and we will understand.

Then Moshe throws the blood on the people and declares:

הִנֵּה דַם הַבְּרִית אֲשֶׁר כָּרַת ה׳ עִמָּכֶם.

“This is the blood of the covenant.”

Then Moshe, Aharon, Nadav, Avihu, and the seventy elders ascend the mountain. They see the God of Israel. And what do they do? They eat and drink.

Now look again at what is happening with the calf.

Aharon builds a מִזְבֵּחַ (mizbeach). They rise early the next morning. They bring עֹלֹת (olot) and שְׁלָמִים (shlamim). They eat and drink.

The structure is almost identical.

Except for one detail. One extra phrase.

וַיָּקֻמוּ לְצַחֵק.

They rise to revel.

So what is going on here? Are they trying to recreate the covenant ceremony? Are they trying to reproduce what Moshe did — but now with a new covenant? If so, where is the covenant?

And here, I have another guess.

The most effective way to lead people astray is not to create something entirely new. It is to imitate what is real. To keep the same forms. The same rituals. The same language.

But give it an entirely different meaning.

You will act unjustly in the name of justice. You will oppress in the name of freedom. You will torture in the name of love.

Give it the same appearance. But direct it toward a completely different reality.

Is that what is happening here? All the trappings of the covenantal ceremony — but without the covenant?

Moshe on the Mountain

Moshe is still on the mountain when all of this is happening.

But not for long.

HaKadosh Baruch Hu sends him down — and soon enough he (and Yehoshua) approach the camp. And something is not right.

There is noise.

What kind. I do not know (but you knew that, right). But it is noteworthy:

וַיִּשְׁמַע יְהוֹשֻׁעַ אֶת קוֹל הָעָם בְּרֵעֹה.

I don’t know what that word means. בְּרֵעֹה (bere’o). I don’t know what they are doing.

But Yehoshua has an idea:

קוֹל מִלְחָמָה בַּמַּחֲנֶה.

It sounds like war in the camp.

Moshe responds:

אֵין קוֹל עֲנוֹת גְּבוּרָה.

It’s not the sound of victory.

וְאֵין קוֹל עֲנוֹת חֲלוּשָׁה.

It’s not the sound of defeat.

Instead:

קוֹל עֲנוֹת אָנֹכִי שֹׁמֵעַ.

I hear קוֹל עֲנוֹת (kol anot). What is kol anot? I have no idea.

So I have בֹשֵׁשׁ (boshesh) — I don’t know what that means.\ I have רֵעֹה (re’o) — I don’t know what that means.
And I have עֲנוֹת (anot) — I don’t know what that means either.

Starting to see a pattern?

Then They See

Moshe and Yehoshua continue on. And then, Moshe sees what is happening.

וַיַּרְא אֶת הָעֵגֶל וּמְחֹלֹת.

And he saw the calf and dancing

He sees the calf. And he sees dancing.

Dancing.

Before they were “playing”. Now they are dancing.

Are they worshipping the calf? Or is this just some sort of celebration?

Not clear.

But whatever it is, Moshe does not like it. Indeed, it angers him (as it had angered Hashem before):

וַיִּחַר אַף מֹשֶׁה וַיַּשְׁלֵךְ מִיָּדָיו אֶת הַלֻּחֹת וַיְשַׁבֵּר אֹתָם תַּחַת הָהָר.

And Moshe’s anger flared, and he cast the tablets from his hands, and he shattered them at the foot of the mountain.

Sounds like it is more than just a celebration.

The Destruction of the Calf

There is more breaking to be done.

Moshe takes the calf.

וַיִּקַּח אֶת הָעֵגֶל אֲשֶׁר עָשׂוּ.

He burns it in fire:

וַיִּשְׂרֹף בָּאֵשׁ.

Then he grinds it into golden dust:

וַיִּטְחַן עַד אֲשֶׁר דַּק.

Then Moshe scatters it over water:

וַיִּזֶר עַל פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם.

And then he makes the Israelites drink it:

וַיַּשְׁקְ אֶת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל.

In short, their wives and kids are not getting their gold back. And the people are not getting their calf back.

Nope. It is gone. Totally and utterly destroyed.

I get all of that. It’s the last part I don’t quite get. Why make the nation drink it? Why not just scatter the dust to the wind or throw it into the sea?

Why must they drink it? Why must they consume it?

And yet, I once again hear an echo.
Again, to the covenantal ceremony. The one with the olot and shlamim and the eating and drinking which we mentioned above.

There was something else there. Not water, but blood. The blood of the sacrifices. And it was that blood which was used to formalize the covenant.

Half of it was thrown on the mizbeach. And the other half was thrown on the nation.

Blood. Water. And the nation.

Is it a stretch?
I don’t think so. But I also don’t know what it means.

The Levites

I have more questions — many more questions. But I’m going to skip them for now. Instead, I’ll focus on one last part of the story which I just don’t understand.

Moshe stands at the gate of the camp. And he calls out:

מִי לַה׳ אֵלָי.

Whoever is for Hashem — come to me.

The tribe of Levi gathers to him. And Moshe commands them:

שִׂימוּ אִישׁ חַרְבּוֹ עַל יְרֵכוֹ, עִבְרוּ וָשׁוּבוּ מִשַּׁעַר לָשַׁעַר בַּמַּחֲנֶה, וְהִרְגוּ אִישׁ אֶת אָחִיו וְאִישׁ אֶת רֵעֵהוּ וְאִישׁ אֶת קְרֹבוֹ.

Put every man his sword on his thigh, go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and strike down every man his brother, every man his fellow, and every man his relative.

Three thousand people die that day.

Why is this necessary? Moshe has already destroyed the calf. He already burned it, crushed it, made everybody drink it. No one seems to have stood up to him.

Was there still some sort of threat? If so, what was it? If not, then what is Moshe (and the Leviim) doing?

The Questions Remain

We’ve gone through the story.

It almost led to the destruction of the people as a whole.

It did lead to the destruction of the first tablets.

And it also led to the killing of some three thousand people.

And yet, despite its severity. I still have no idea what exactly the issue is. I understand it was bad. But I don’t understand the nature of the problem.

And in some ways I’m more confused about the story now that I read it closely, than I was before I delved into it.

So, how are we going to make sense of this?

By going back. By looking at the story again.
By trying to find answers and connections. And by looking at what Chazal and the mefarshim have to say.

What Did the Nation See?

So let us remind ourselves. Where did this all start:

וַיַּרְא הָעָם כִּי בֹּשֵׁשׁ מֹשֶׁה לָרֶדֶת מִן הָהָר.

The people saw that Moshe was boshesh to come down from the mountain.

What does this word mean? As you know, I don’t know.
But Rashi might.

Let’s see what he has to say:

כְּתַרְגּוּמוֹ — לְשׁוֹן אִחוּר

According to its translation — it means “delay.”

But Rashi does not stop there. He brings another place in Tanakh where the same word appears — in Sefer Shoftim.

Which means, we are going to take a little detour to Sefer Shoftim.

We are after the war with Sisera and Devorah and Barak sing their famous victory song. Towards the end of this song, we are presented with a vivid image:

בְּעַד הַחַלּוֹן נִשְׁקְפָה וַתְּיַבֵּב אֵם סִיסְרָא.

Through the window she looks out, and Sisera’s mother laments.

Why is Sisera’s mother looking out the window? Because she is waiting for her son to come home. We know that he is dead, but she does not yet know that.

And so, she sits, waits, worries and wonders:

מַדּוּעַ בֹּשֵׁשׁ רִכְבּוֹ לָבוֹא?

מַדּוּעַ אֶחֱרוּ פַּעֲמֵי מַרְכְּבוֹתָיו?

Why is his chariot delayed in coming? Why is the sound of his chariots late to arrive?

So here we have two words that seem to mean something similar: בֹּשֵׁשׁ and אֶחֱרוּ. Both seem to refer to delay.

But if we follow the approach of the Malbim, synonyms in Tanakh are rarely identical. There is usually some nuance separating them.

In other words, conceptually speaking, they are the same. But they each have a unique take (so to speak) on that concept.

That’s a bit abstract. So let’s see a concrete example from the Malbim himself as relates to these two words:

כִּי יֵשׁ הֶבְדֵּל בֵּין אִחֵר וּבֵין בּוֹשֵׁשׁ. בּוֹשֵׁשׁ הוּא הַמִּתְמַהְמֵהַּ יוֹתֵר מִן הָרָגִיל, וְהַמְאַחֵר מְאַחֵר זְמַן קָבוּעַ שֶׁהָיָה מְעוּתָּד לַחֲזוֹר

There is a difference between achar and boshesh. Boshesh is one who tarries more than is customary. Me’acher means being late past a fixed time when one was expected to return.

In other words, אִיחוּר (ichur) means simply being late. There was a time you were supposed to arrive, and you came later than that.

But בֹּשֵׁשׁ (boshesh) is something stronger. It is a delay that is far beyond what is normal or expected. Not just a little late. But significantly so.

It’s the difference between being 5 minutes late for an appointment and 5 hours.

In one case, they fit you in. In the other, you still pay for the appointment. And you still have to reschedule.

Another Example in Shoftim

Rashi brings another example from Sefer Shoftim. This time from the story of Ehud.

Ehud assassinates Eglon, the king of Moav, who had been oppressing Israel. After killing him, Ehud escapes. He locks the doors of the upper chamber behind him. Eglon’s servants arrive and see the locked doors. They assume the king is relieving himself. So they wait.

And they wait. And wait.

Eventually, they can’t wait any more:

וַיָּחִילוּ עַד בּוֹשׁ.

And they waited until bosh.

Bosh, very similar word. Essentially, our word but with just one shin instead of two. And according to Rashi, it also means waiting a long time:

עַד בּוֹשׁ. עַד עִכּוּב, כְּלוֹמַר זְמַן אָרוֹךְ:

Until bosh. Until a delay, meaning a long time.

So What Does “בֹּשֵׁשׁ” Mean?

So according to Rashi — and supported by these other examples — the word boshesh does not simply mean “late.” It means late beyond reason.

A delay so long that it begins to raise alarm.

Something is wrong. Something has happened. This is not normal.

So when the Torah says:

וַיַּרְא הָעָם כִּי בֹּשֵׁשׁ מֹשֶׁה.

It means the people believed Moshe had delayed far beyond what was reasonable. Not simply that he was late. But that he had been gone too long. Long enough to make them think something must have gone wrong.

The Satan and the Cognitive Yetzer Hara

So what went wrong?

According to Rashi, it was a miscalculation. I’ll spare us the math for now (but I’ll encourage you to look up and see Rashi’s calculation).

For now, we’ll note that Moshe was supposed to come down on the morning of the 17th of Tammuz and they thought he was supposed to come down on the 16th.

But that’s not the interesting part. Rather, what I want to focus on is the Satan (הַשָּׂטָן).

But be careful. We are not talking about a devil like creature. No, we are talking about something far more interesting.

Rashi writes:

בְּי”ו בָּא שָׂטָן וְעִרְבֵּב אֶת הָעוֹלָם, וְהֶרְאָה דְּמוּת חֹשֶׁךְ וַאֲפֵלָה וְעִרְבּוּבְיָה, לוֹמַר וַדַּאי מֵת מֹשֶׁה לְכָךְ בָּא עִרְבּוּבְיָא לָעוֹלָם,

On the 16th, the Satan came and mixed up the world, and showed a semblance of darkness and confusion, to say: Moshe must have died.

To understand this Rashi, let me use one of my favorite learning tools: the working hypothesis.

I have a working hypothesis about the Satan. I believe he is the intellectual yetzer hara (see, no devil in disguise).

Sometimes we have desires which when left unchecked lead us astray.

Sometimes we have emotions which do the same.

And sometimes we have cognitive distortions which are the culprit.

All of them are “inclinations”. We are not forced to go after them, but our default state is to follow them.

And all of them are destructive if we don’t properly channel or relate to them.

Thus the term, yetzer hara — a destructive inclination (I prefer destructive over evil).

And, as I mentioned above, not all inclinations are drives, desires or emotions. We may have certain inclinations on how to interpret or understand events.

Interpretations which are off one way or the other.

And that is where the Satan comes in.

HaKadosh Baruch Hu tells Avraham that through Yitzchak he will build up the Jewish people. And then He tells him to sacrifice Yitzchak.

And for three days the Satan tells him that it makes no sense.

And then there is Kashrus and Parah Adumah. The Satan and Umas Haoloam tell us that it makes no sense.

Or how about Sefer Iyov. Where the Satan sets Iyov up and orchestrates events that directly test Iyov’s intellectual understanding of G-d and how He operates in the world.

That is the Satan.

And, according to Rashi, he was at work here as well. He mixed things up. Led people to believe that Moshe was dead.

After all, he went up To the mountain without any food or water, and now the day that we expected him (erroneously) to arrive has come, but he has not.

He must be dead.

That was their unchecked interpretation. That was the darkness.
The fear.

We are now alone in the desert. We don’t know how to navigate the desert. We can’t split the sea. We can’t make bitter waters sweet. We can’t bring manna from the heavens.

We need someone. And we have no one. And we know of no one.

So we need something else.
Something divine.
Not G-d, but G-d like.
Like Moshe was G-d like.

Now things are starting to make sense. But honestly, I think there is another piece of the puzzle we should check out before we move on.

A Familiar Word

That word בֹשֵׁשׁ (boshesh) is interesting. It is so familiar. We have seen it before.
And not just in Sefer Shoftim.

No, here, in the Chumash. We have seen it. But we just didn’t see the connection.

But, I think it is there.

So, once again, we are going to go back to the garden. Because so much of the Chumash flows out from the garden.

Man has been created. As has woman. And they are in their natural state, as the Chumash notes:

וַיִּהְיוּ שְׁנֵיהֶם עֲרוּמִּים הָאָדָם וְאִשְׁתּוֹ וְלֹא יִתְבֹּשָֽׁשׁוּ.

And the two of them were naked, the man and his wife, and they were not yitboshashu.

Note that beautifully untranslated word — יִתְבֹּשָֽׁשׁוּ (yitboshashu).

Look at the root: ב-ש-ש.

It is the same root.
Moshe was בֹשֵׁשׁ (boshesh) from going down the mountain. The man and the women were not יִתְבֹּשָֽׁשׁוּ (yitboshashu) — even though they were naked.

Could it be that Moshe was embarrassed to come down the mountain? Because clearly, the word yitboshashu (יִתְבֹּשָֽׁשׁוּ) means embarrassed — as the targum and numerous mefarshim point out and as is clear from the context itself.

So, could Moshe have been embarrassed to come down the mountain? Or, more accurately, could it be that the people (through the influence of the Satan) thought that Moshe was embarrassed to come down the mountain?

Indeed, before I make this case, can I note the following midrash:

שְׁלוֹשָׁה הֵן שֶׁלֹּא הִמְתִּינוּ בִּשְׁלוֹתָן שֵׁשׁ שָׁעוֹת, וְאֵלּוּ הֵן: אָדָם וְיִשְׂרָאֵל וְסִיסְרָא.

Three are those who did not endure six hours in their tranquility: Adam, Israel, and Sisera.

Adam, as it is stated: “and they were not ashamed [velo yitboshashu]” — not even six hours passed with him being in peace.

Israel, as it is stated: “The people saw that Moses tarried [boshesh]” (Shemos 32:1) — six hours had passed, and Moses had not come.

Sisera, as it is stated: “Why does his chariot tarry [boshesh] to arrive” (Shoftim 5:28) — every day he was accustomed to come home during the third or fourth hour, but now the sixth hour had passed and he had not come. That is the meaning of “velo yitboshashu.”

Did you catch that?

The Midrash explicitly links all three verses — Bereishis 2:25, Shemos 32:1, and Shoftim 5:28 — through the same word. The doubled shin contains שֵׁשׁ (shesh) — six. Three cases of people who could not endure past the sixth hour. Adam in the garden. Israel at the mountain. Sisera’s mother at the window.

Now, the Midrash is giving a classic midrashic reading of the word — a sort of play on words.

But what is meaningful for us is the connection. That the Midrash connects these three verses and these three words.

Back to Shoftim with New Eyes

Now let us take a detour back to Shoftim before we return to our verse with Moshe and the mountain.

Do we remember what it said? Sisera’s mother is looking through the window.

מדוע בשש רכבו לבוא?

We translated it, we understood it as Rashi said: why does his chariot tarry to come?

Let’s look at it again with our new understanding of the word בֹּשֵׁשׁ (boshesh).

Could she be asking a (slightly) different question — why is he embarrassed to come home?

Did he perhaps lose the war and is ashamed to come home?

Or maybe we can combine the two words — בֹּשֵׁשׁ (boshesh) and אֶחֱרוּ (acheru). Maybe it is the type of delay that happens because of embarrassment.

He is late — purposely late because he is embarrassed. Perhaps hesitate is a better word than delay.

She asks — why does he hesitate to come home? Why is he reluctant?

Indeed, now the story with Eglon makes more sense as well. They waited עד בּוֹשׁ (ad bosh).

They waited until it became embarrassing to wait any longer.

Moshe’s (Assumed) Hesitation

Now let’s go back to our story.

Let me try and get into the people’s mind. Into that confusion caused by their miscalculation.

Moshe has gone up to the heavens to get the Torah.

Who says that he is going to succeed. Perhaps he failed. Perhaps he has nothing to give us and is בֹּשֵׁשׁ (boshesh) — embarrassed. He promised so much and in the end will deliver so little.

True, when it came to taking us out of Egypt and guiding us in the desert, he succeeded. But this was the whole point. All of that was about all of this.

And now he has failed.

Maybe that is why he is not coming down the mountain. Indeed, perhaps he will never come down, unable or unwilling to face the certain shame he would feel when facing the nation.

And so, we are alone. And in the desert. And the Torah — it will eternally remain in heaven.

Only Moshe can bring it down, and he is not coming back. So we need a substitute. Not one that can bring us the Torah, but one that can just keep us alive.

The problem is, no man can take Moshe’s place.
And they don’t believe that they can connect to G-d without Moshe.

And so, they need something that is neither G-d nor man.

And perhaps also, that is not an idol either (albeit a close cousin).

The Gold

Let’s take a closer look at that gold.

Aharon tells the people to bring gold:

פָּרְקוּ נִזְמֵי הַזָּהָב אֲשֶׁר בְּאָזְנֵי נְשֵׁיכֶם בְּנֵיכֶם וּבְנֹתֵיכֶם וְהָבִיאוּ אֵלָי.

Remove the golden rings that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.

Not just any gold, but נִזְמֵי הַזָּהָב (nizmei hazahav) — golden rings. And not just any earrings, but from their wives and children.

And note the word: בְּאָזְנֵי (b’oznei) — in the ears of.

Why?

One common explanation (one that I like) is that this was a delay tactic. Aharon expects resistance. He expects the wives and kids to hold the men at bay — long enough for Moshe to return.

That, indeed, is why he said that there would be a chag for Hashem tomorrow.

Tomorrow. The day Moshe is actually supposed to (and going to) return.

But still. The people aren’t foolish. They aren’t going to fall for just any old delay tactic. It seems to me that there must be something substantial about Aharon’s suggestion. Something that has appeal for those who want his assistance.

This is the brilliance (and problem) of his response. He relates to their request in a way that speaks to them, but also buys him (and them) time.

So what is that something substantial?

I have a thought. But, I have to admit, it is only a thought. Meaning, I don’t have any sources to back it up.

So I offer as an initial attempt to come up with a substantive answer. But not a final one. It is, I hope, at the very least a decent start.

So, let’s think about wives and earrings and gold (not in that order). This isn’t just any old gold. It has value beyond its financial worth.

It is a symbol of family. Of love. Of connection. It means something to the wives and the kids.

And it means something to the husbands and fathers as well.

And it is that extra something that Aharon is suggesting they give. Of course, he is not suggesting that they give only that extra something.

It does need to be gold. Something of financial value and aesthetic beauty and appeal.

But that is not enough.

Rather, it is all of them (and more) combined. Financial value. Aesthetic beauty. Emotional connection. And hard work (as represented by the calf). And untapped potential (as represented by the fact that it is a calf and not a full grown ox).

That is what is going to lead them through the desert. These values, the possessions, these capabilities. If they can tap into and develop them, then they can make it through.

That is the substitute for Moshe Rabbeinu.

And that was the appeal of Aharon’s idea.

It wasn’t an idol, but a symbol.

They were not worshipping the calf or using it to channel some sort of divine power. Rather, they were using it as a means of concentrating all of the above values in one unifying symbol.

What About the Ear

And so, they run with Aharon’s idea. And to Aharon’s dismay, they succeed.

But there was something else in Aharon’s suggestion. Something subtle which they did not pick up on.

And that is the ear.

Aharon didn’t suggest that they take gold necklaces or bracelets or even nose rings. No, specifically earrings.

Perhaps as a (not so) subtle reference. Those ears that heard HaKadosh Baruch Hu say:

אָנֹכִי ה׳ אֱלֹקֶיךָ אֲשֶׁר הוֹצֵאתִיךָ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם.

I am Hashem your G-d who took you out of the land of Egypt.

Those ears should wait. They should have faith and believe that the same G-d who took them out of Egypt will give them the full Torah.

Similar to the symbolism of that very first Mitzvah given in Parshas Mishpatim — that a slave who wants to remain a slave should have his ear pierced at the doorpost:

וְרָצַע אֲדֹנָיו אֶת אָזְנוֹ בַּמַּרְצֵעַ

And his master shall pierce his ear with an awl.

And Rashi asks: why the ear? Why not any other part of the body?

אֹזֶן שֶׁשָּׁמְעָה עַל הַר סִינַי “לֹא תִגְנֹב” — וְהָלַךְ וְגָנַב, תֵּרָצַע.

The ear that heard at Mount Sinai “You shall not steal” — and went and stole — shall be pierced.

The ear that heard at Sinai. That is the ear Aharon is pointing to.

But, as we know, they didn’t get the hint.

The Reinterpretation of History

So far, so good (at least I think so).

But what happened next?
Why the switch once the calf came out of the fire?

Why did they turn to the rest of the nation and say:

אֵלֶּה אֱלֹהֶיךָ יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲשֶׁר הֶעֱלוּךָ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם.

These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.

Remember what they originally asked for:

קוּם עֲשֵׂה לָנוּ אֱלֹהִים אֲשֶׁר יֵלְכוּ לְפָנֵינוּ

Get up and make for us gods that will go before us.

The first was forward-looking — יֵלְכוּ לְפָנֵינוּ (yelchu lefaneinu), “will go before us.” The second is retroactive — הֶעֱלוּךָ (he’elucha), “brought you up.” That is a significant shift.

I have a guess. That there was a switch once they actually saw the calf. Originally, it was about making it through the desert.

But once they actually beheld it — and all that it represented — they reinterpreted their history. They started to wonder, perhaps it really was these values that brought us out of Egypt.

At the very least, it was these values that helped us to survive Egypt. Long before Moshe came on the scene we already blossomed in Egypt. And no matter how much they tried to keep us down, we kept rising up.

Maybe it wasn’t really Moshe Rabbeinu (or even HaKadosh Baruch Hu) after all. Perhaps this is all we really need.

Is that what it means? I don’t know. It’s just a suggestion. But it’s something to work with and/or think about.

The Mother and the Son

Now we arrive at the destruction of the egel.

We already listed the five steps in the first pass. Moshe takes the calf. Burns it in fire. Grinds it to powder. Scatters it on water. Makes the people drink.

But there is another process in the Torah that follows an eerily similar sequence. The parah adumah — the red cow, described in Bamidbar 19.

And the parah adumah is not a latecomer to the story. Rashi on Shemos 15:25 tells us:

בְּמָרָה נָתַן לָהֶם מִקְצָת פָּרָשִׁיּוֹת שֶׁל תּוֹרָה שֶׁיִּתְעַסְּקוּ בָהֶם, שַׁבָּת וּפָרָה אֲדֻמָּה וְדִינִין

At Mara, He gave them some sections of the Torah to engage in: Shabbat, the red cow, and civil law.

The parah adumah was already part of the Torah given before Sinai. It was already in their hands.

The process: Take a red cow. Burn it entirely outside the camp. Reduce it to ash. Mix the ash with water. Apply to the person who needs purification.

Take. Burn. Reduce to ash. Mix with water. Apply to the people.

Now go back to what Moshe did with the egel.

He took the calf. He burned it in fire. He ground it to powder. He scattered it on water. He made the people drink.

Take. Burn. Grind to powder. Mix with water. Apply to the people.

The structure is the same (see Rashi to Bamidbar 19:22).

And then there is the mashal. The Midrash Tanchuma (Chukat 8) and Bamidbar Rabbah (19:8) both bring it:

תָּבוֹא אִמּוֹ וּתְקַנֵּחַ אֶת הַצּוֹאָה... תָּבֹא פָּרָה וּתְכַפֵּר עַל מַעֲשֵׂה הָעֵגֶל

Let the mother come and clean up the excrement of the son. Let the cow come and atone for the deed of the calf.

The parah — the cow — is the mother. The egel — the calf — is the son. The mother comes to clean up the mess the son made.

And remember what I noted earlier about molten gold? If you’ve ever seen gold at high temperatures, it glows with a deep red-orange color. Striking. Beautiful.

The same color as a parah adumah — a red cow. There is more to say here. But (once again), I’m out of time.

What Remains

Why were the Levites needed?

The egel was already destroyed. Everyone had already drunk the water. No one seems to have stood up to Moshe. So what was still going on? What was Moshe seeing when he saw that the nation was פָרֻעַ (parua) — out of control, exposed?

I don’t know.

These are open questions. And I’m comfortable with that. But as I learned many years ago in Yeshiva — no one’s ever died of a kasha.

Share masmid

Everyone knows the halacha of עד דלא ידע, and we all have different relationships with this mitzvah. Some of us love it. Some of us, dare I say, may hate it — or at least strongly dislike it. Others put up with it.

For me personally, my relationship to the mitzvah is more positive than most — but maybe not as excited as others. But I would like to move beyond my emotional relationship to the mitzvah and just take some time to try to understand it.

Regardless of whether we enjoy it, I think we can agree that it’s a bit difficult to understand.

It certainly does not seem in line with the nature of most of the mitzvot in the Torah.

After all, on Yom Kippur and other fast days we hold ourselves back from regular food and water.

On Shabbos we do have a Mitzvah of eating pleasurable food, but not to excess.

The same on Yom Tov, when there is a Mitzvah of simchas Yom Tov — which involves eating meat and drinking wine — once again that is not to excess. That is for enjoyment and no more.

And so it is with Mitzvah after Mitzvah. When there is a Mitzvah to partake of the physical, it is always limited and controlled in nature.

Over and over again in the Torah we see the principles of balance and healthy limits combined with self-control and restraint.

And then there is Purim.

Is it that on Purim we are finally supposed to let go. Throw off all shackles of self-control and drink until we get into a stupor and lose our awareness (aka daas — דעת)?

Are we really not supposed to know? To become unaware and wild like an animal?

Such a position seems so out of line with the rest of the Torah. And yet, there is the Mitzvah, clear as day:

אָמַר רָבָא: מִיחַיַּיב אִינִישׁ לְבַסּוֹמֵי בְּפוּרַיָּא עַד דְּלָא יָדַע...

Rava said: A person is obligated to become intoxicated on Purim until he does not know... (Megillah 7b)

I know — I stopped the line early.
We’ll finish it soon enough.
But for now I just want that first part to sink in.

What in the world are we being commanded to do?

Just the Words

So how about we finish that line:

עד דלא ידע בין ארור המן לברוך מרדכי

Until one does not know between Haman is cursed and Mordechai is blessed

Now this kind of works in English, but it’s slightly awkward. And there is a reason for that. The line is missing a short phrase — one that is understood, but not actually written (as is common in both Tanach and the Gemara).

So let’s try a new translation — one that adds a small word that is implied but not actually written:

עד דלא ידע להבדיל בין ארור המן לברוך מרדכי

Until one does not know how to distinguish between “cursed is Haman” and “blessed is Mordechai.”

The word להבדיל (lehavdil) — “to distinguish” — is not actually in the original line, but it is understood. And without it, the line does not make grammatical sense.

We find the same pattern in Sefer Shmuel, when Barzilai declines Dovid HaMelech’s invitation to stay with him in Yerushalayim:

בֶּן־שְׁמֹנִים שָׁנָה אָנֹכִי הַיּוֹם הַאֵדַע בֵּין־טוֹב לְרָע

I am eighty years old today. Can I still distinguish between good and bad? (Shmuel Bes 19:35)

The same structure and the same implied word: להבדיל. Rashi there confirms it.

So now our line makes sense.
Well, at least grammatically speaking.
But now that it makes grammatical sense, it doesn’t make logical or moral sense.

Because let’s understand what we are being told — that we drink until we can no longer distinguish between the fact that Haman is cursed (ארור המן) and Mordechai being blessed (ברוך מרדכי)

What?

Why in the world would I want to drink to the point where I cannot make that distinction?
What is the goal?
To somehow or other see them as the same?

Is this some sort of radical moral relativism? Where I see no moral distinction between Haman and Mordechai? Is it some sort of radical moral apathy? Where I don’t care who’s blessed and who’s cursed?

Neither of these seem possible. And yet, if we take the time to read the words properly, that is exactly what they seem to be saying.

Expanding Our Options

So far, we have limited ourselves to two types of distinctions.

One is a moral distinction — in that we see no moral distinction between Haman and Mordechai. The second distinction is in terms of outcomes — in that we do not care about the outcomes of either Haman or Mordechai.

And both options seem deeply problematic.

So what are our options?

For starters, perhaps we are missing something with one or both of our two distinctions that we mentioned above.

It’s hard to see. Moral relativism and moral apathy are hardly noble positions. I can’t imagine that the Torah is encouraging us to be less moral.

But maybe there is a nuance that we are missing.

That is one option — one that we will explore.

But there is another. And that is to expand our list of distinctions. Perhaps there is another way to understand this Mitzvah that we are missing. A type of distinction that we make that we shouldn’t.

A Third Distinction

Let’s start with our second option — looking for a new distinction. We’ll start by giving it a name — we’ll call it a narrative distinction.

When we talk about narratives, we’re talking about stories. About tales. About how things are transmitted and told.

Now life, as we have pointed out before, often has narrative elements to it. There is tension. There is suspense. There is not knowing how things are going to play out. And we often live the news and the events of our lives from that perspective.

We get emotional about it.
We care and talk about it.
We wonder and worry about it.

And we oftentimes analyze it.

And it could be that on that level — the level of analyzing the story of life — we are being told: you need to drink until you do not see the distinction between Haman and Mordechai, Mordechai and Haman — on that level.

Let’s see what that might mean from the perspective of the Megillah.

Let’s jump into Chapter three and live that chapter.

Haman has the king’s ring.
He has a sealed decree.
He has political authority and military backing.
He has secrecy and surprise.

And the Jews are scattered and vulnerable.

וַיָּסַר הַמֶּלֶךְ אֶת־טַבַּעְתּוֹ מֵעַל יָדוֹ וַיִּתְּנָהּ לְהָמָן בֶּן־הַמְּדָתָא הָאֲגָגִי צֹרֵר הַיְּהוּדִים

The king removed his signet ring from his hand and gave it to Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the enemy of the Jews. (Esther 3:10)

If someone stands up at that moment and confidently declares ארור המן וברוך מרדכי. We would think such a person is detached from reality. All the visible data points the other way.

Why?

Because in Chapter 3 it looks like Haman is blessed and Mordechai is cursed. Or, more accurately, it looks like Haman will be blessed and that Mordechai will be cursed.

Did you catch that — this is a key point!

Being blessed or cursed is a state of being that is usually the end result of a process. Right now, in Chapter 3, Haman does look blessed. He has money, power, prestige.

But what about Mordechai and the Jews. They are not yet cursed. Haman and his men have not yet attacked them. They are (thank G-d) not destroyed.

That is just the trajectory of the story as it currently stands. The facts and analysis back up that trajectory. That is, indeed, where things are heading at the moment.

That is what the future looks like.

But we don’t live our lives in the future, we live them in the present.

At the moment that Chapter 3 took place, there was no sound, rational reason for declaring that Mordechai was blessed and Haman was cursed.

There was nothing in the data of the moment that leads to that conclusion. Indeed, as we noted, the data indicates that the opposite is most likely to be true.

And it is here that we reach our first (but not last) insight into the Mitzvah of עד דלא ידע.

We are not being told to be blind to this distinction in all situations. There are clearly moments when it matters. But in terms of the narrative perspective of life — wherein we are living the story — we are being told to stop trying to read the blessings of Mordechai and the curses of Haman into the present moment.

Why?

Because sometimes it is not there. Yes, eventually Mordechai will be blessed and Haman will be cursed. But who says that you can see that in the present moment. Who says that G-d has written that into the script of life?

No one!

And yet, we read life this way all of the time. We read the headlines, analyze events and make our proclamations about what will be. Who will live and who will die. Who by fire and who by water.

We think we can figure out blessings and curses from the narrative of the moment. As if we were the Creator Himself. Comes the Megillah and says — G-d runs the world. And He runs it in ways that you cannot always see or understand.

And so, on Purim, we are enjoined to reorient ourselves. Yes, you should see which way the wind is blowing. Mordechai did. He saw what was happening and went out and protested.

But note, protesting is the opposite of predicting. Protesting is saying that yes, the data indicate that we are heading one way. But I refuse to be a slave to destiny. I refuse to assume that the data of the moment equals the fact of the future.

And so this is our first level understanding of עד דלא ידע. And, like the other Mitzvos of the Torah, it is a level of limitation. We are limiting our analytical perspective to be in sync with what reality allows. And not letting it extend into the realm of the rationally unknowable.

Living the Future

Let us move beyond the moment into the future. We’ll start, though, by remembering a promise from the past:

וַאֲבָרְכָה מְבָרְכֶיךָ וּמְקַלֶּלְךָ אָאֹר

I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. (Bereishis 12:3)

Thus said HaKadosh Baruch Hu to Avraham Avinu at the very beginning of Jewish history. And this promise is not merely a particular promise to a particular person at a particular point in time.

No, there is something more fundamental going on here. There is a universal promise, made to the Jewish people (Avraham’s spiritual descendants) that permeates all of time. In short, this promise is built into the very fabric of human history. It is as much a law of nature as the laws of physics.

Which means that I am not limited to living the moment. It does not matter if all the data of the day points to Mordechai being cursed and Haman being blessed (as it did in the third chapter of the Megillah). Because we know how the story will eventually end.

True, it may not be that the particular Mordechai of the Megillah will end up blessed. That’s for G-d to decide.

But we do know that at some point, there will be some Mordechai (in spirit, if not in name) who will end up being blessed. While at the same time there will be some Haman who will end up being cursed.

That ending is known. It’s just the specifics of the ending that are not known.

And we can live this reality.

We can live with the knowledge that we don’t know how the day-to-day history will play out, while also knowing that there is a covenantal architecture to history. That there is a divine plan that will eventually play out.

This is a healthier way to live the narrative of life. But even here, there is a hidden danger.

When we need to know the future, then we are no longer living it. And by need, I mean a psychological need. One where we worry about and fret over the story and how it will end.

At this level, we turn to the tradition not for guidance on how to live the moment, but as some sort of pyschological reassurance that things will work out. Yes, on one level this is healthy. Life is hard and we need to be reassured. But there is another level where this is no longer health.

What, then, is a healthy perspective?

That is where I am aware of and live by the covenant, but where I don’t use the covenant as a psychological crutch. I don’t need to mull over my head how it could be that the present moment can lead to the future promise. I don’t worry about the details and try to figure everything out.

Instead, I am okay with living with the unknown. I don’t need to figure out how the covenant will play out. I may investigate that from a point of curiosity or a desire to see the possible ways in which the Divine Will plays out. But not out of psychological necessity.

This, then, is our second level of עד דלא ידע. The level where I don’t need to know how Haman will be curses and Mordechai will be blessed. Where I can simply live with HaKadosh Baruch Hu’s promise without worry about the promise.

So yes, on the one hand I still make the distinction on the intellectual/covenantal level. I know that Haman will be cursed and Mordechai will be blessed. But I don’t need to know how.

Instead, I simply live the Divine historical narrative — watching it play out in real time. I’m engaged, but not driven.

Artistic Examples

Pick your favorite form or art.

Is it music (for me, it is).

How about painting?
Or sculptures?
Or plays or poetry?

I could go on.

Now put yourself in the artistic moment. You are listening to the symphony, walking through the gallery, reading the poem.

What is that like?
And what is it not like?

It is not analytical. In the artistic moment you are not analyzing the music. Rather you are engaged with and being uplifted by it. After the artistic experience you may analyze it. But not during.

And even then, in the mode of analysis, there is an experiential element. We analyze because we enjoy. We want to understand the beauty that we have witnessed and experienced.

That is the mode of living Divine history that I am attempting to describe. Whereby we experience the Divine story as it unfolds and analyze it from that perspective of the experience.

Of course, art is often a required taste. Indeed, we don’t always allow ourselves to enjoy the artistic moment.

One’s parents drag us to the symphony.
Or put on Shlomo Carlebach in the car (Abba, that is so old).
Or take us to the art museum.

We are bored.
Uninterested.
We want to leave.

We have not yet learned how to live the art — because we haven’t yet learned how to tap into its (not so) hidden beauty.

But that can change.
We can open yourself up to the experience.

I write music. And (some of) my music has a certain jazzy element to it. And my son — well, he doesn’t jazz with the jazz.

And yet, one day, he said something akin to the following:

You know, this song is actually quite nice, even if it is jazzy.

He has started to transcend his artistic tastes.

And so it is with the Divine narrative. We can transcend our artistic experience of G-d’s history. We can open ourselves up to it.

A Job to be Done

There is, I believe, an even deeper level. Although, I do wonder — perhaps it is not deeper, but just different. This is the level of the job to be done.

In chapter four of the Megillah there is a moment of transition for Esther. The moment when she realizes that she has a job that is to be done:

לֵךְ כְּנוֹס אֶת־כׇּל־הַיְּהוּדִים הַנִּמְצְאִים בְּשׁוּשָׁן... וְכַאֲשֶׁר אָבַדְתִּי אָבָדְתִּי

Note what she is and she is not doing.

She does not sit calculating probabilities.
She does not forecast outcomes.
Rather, she gathers, fasts, prepares, and acts!

Like a team down in a game — they are not staring at the scoreboard wondering how it will end. They are asking: what is the next play? What is required of us now?

And they execute.

At this level, we do not distinguish between ארור המן and ברוך מרדכי. We do not analyze, predict or even experience the Divine narrative.

Rather, we ask what does Hakadosh Baruch Hu want from me right now? What is my role?

The Blessing within the Curse

There is one final level I wish to discuss — in many ways the most difficult one.

At this level, the cursing of Haman and the blessing of Mordechai are no longer experienced as separate and competing realities. Instead, they are intricately connected realities, with one being the source of the other.

Ask yourself, what would have happened if Haman had never come on the scene? Would we have ever reached the level of kimu v’kiblu (קימו וקבלו) — the national renewal that takes place in Chapter 9 of the Megillah?

Or how about the joy that we are all experiencing at the (hopefully) pending downfall of the modern day equivalent of Haman — the evil regime in Iran. Would we and the people of Iran be singing and dancing in the streets if it weren’t for the years of evil that we have all had to endure?

No.

There is a certain type of joy that one can only experience if they have first had to deal with a certain type of evil. Or, put otherwise, we can only get to the blessings of Mordechai if we first deal with the curses of Haman.

Would we prefer not to take this road. 100%!

But that is not the point. The point is that when we do travel on this road, the transformation, salvation and joy that we experience is a direct result of the evil that has transpired.

And from this persepctive, there is no distinction. One is inherenet in the other. Or, put otherwise, they are both part of one Divinely orchestrated whole.

Time to Drink

We are now ready to drink some wine.

Why wine?

Because wine has particularly properties that help us make these types of transformations.

Wine lowers our internal defenses.
Removes the barriers.
Sets us free.

So, once a year, we are commanded — drink to set your mind free.

Leave behind your analytical mind when analysis won’t help.
Detach yourself from your psychological needs.
Allow yourself the artistic experience.

Or, put in terms of the Mitzvah.

Drink until you don’t analyze how Haman will be cursed and Mordechai will be blessed.

Drink until you don’t have a psychological need to know how Haman will be cursed and Mordechai will be blessed.

Drink until you can just live the story of Haman becoming cursed and Mordechai becoming blessed.

Drink until you can see what your role is in the Divine narrative.

Drink until you see the interconnected nature of the curses and blessings in the world.

This, I believe, is (part of) the Mitzvah of drinking on Purim. It is the Mitzvah of a change in our mindset.

Which means that once we have reached that new mindset, we have fulfilled our obligation. There is no need — and perhaps no Mitzvah — to drink anymore.

May you have a freilichin and elevating Purim!

Share masmid

Before I even open the parsha, I already know what I want to explore.

It’s the stones. The precious jewels — or more accurately, the precious rocks.

And it’s their connection to the names of the Shevatim (the twelve tribes). What do the Shevatim have to do with rocks — even precious ones?

And what does any of this have to do with Aharon HaKohein and the Mishkan?

Why stones? Why these stones? Why Aharon HaKohein? Why the Mishkan?

Those are my questions. And I come in without any answers. Not even a clue where to start.

So, I’ll start where I always start — with the verses themselves.

The Clothes and the Kehuna

The section we want begins three pesukim into the parsha — with Aharon and his clothes. The stones aren’t just stones in isolation. They’re part of the clothing. So if we want to understand the stones, we first have to understand the clothing. And if we want to understand the clothing, we have to understand Aharon and the kehuna.

Hakadosh Baruch Hu tells Moshe to bring Aharon close:

וְאַתָּ֡ה הַקְרֵ֣ב אֵלֶ֩יךָ֩ אֶת־אַהֲרֹ֨ן אָחִ֜יךָ וְאֶת־בָּנָ֣יו אִתּ֗וֹ מִתּ֛וֹךְ בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל לְכַהֲנוֹ־לִ֑י אַהֲרֹ֕ן נָדָ֧ב וַאֲבִיה֛וּא אֶלְעָזָ֥ר וְאִיתָמָ֖ר בְּנֵ֥י אַהֲרֹֽן׃

“You shall bring forward your brother Aharon, with his sons, from among the children of Yisrael, to serve Me as priests: Aharon, Nadav and Avihu, Elazar and Isamar, the sons of Aharon.” (Shemos 28:1)

הַקְרֵב אֵלֶיךָ (hakrev eilecha). Bring him close. There’s distance here — Aharon and his sons are no different from anybody else in Klal Yisrael right now. But they’re about to be. לְכַהֲנוֹ לִי (l’chahano li) — not to be a Kohen in the abstract, but to do the active work of kehuna.

Aharon has to be transformed into something he isn’t yet. He has to become someone who can bring people closer to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, and Hakadosh Baruch Hu closer to people. That’s the job. And Moshe has to bring him into it.

But how? How do you transform someone into a Kohen?

With clothes.

וְעָשִׂ֥יתָ בִגְדֵי־קֹ֖דֶשׁ לְאַהֲרֹ֣ן אָחִ֑יךָ לְכָב֖וֹד וּלְתִפְאָֽרֶת׃

“Make holy garments for Aharon your brother, for kavod and for tiferes.” (Shemos 28:2)

Clothes! בִּגְדֵי קֹדֶשׁ (bigdei kodesh) — holy garments. Remember our working definition of kedusha: something is קָדוֹשׁ (kadosh) when it leads you to think about and connect to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. A mezuzah, tefillin, Shabbos — these things cry out God. These clothes are going to do that too.

And they’re לְכָבוֹד וּלְתִפְאָרֶת (l’kavod ul’tifares). כָּבוֹד (kavod) comes from כָּבֵד (kaved) — heavy, weighty, a certain gravitas. תִּפְאֶרֶת (tiferes) comes from פְּאֵר (pe’er) — not beauty exactly (we have יֹפִי / yofi for that), but something more like radiance. I don’t have a full handle on kavod and tiferes yet, and I think they’re going to matter more as we go deeper. For now: the clothes carry weight and they carry light.

Now, who makes them?

וְאַתָּ֗ה תְּדַבֵּר֙ אֶל־כׇּל־חַכְמֵי־לֵ֔ב אֲשֶׁ֥ר מִלֵּאתִ֖יו ר֣וּחַ חׇכְמָ֑ה וְעָשׂ֞וּ אֶת־בִּגְדֵ֧י אַהֲרֹ֛ן לְקַדְּשׁ֖וֹ לְכַהֲנוֹ־לִֽי׃

“Speak to all the wise of heart, whom I have filled with a spirit of wisdom, and they shall make the garments of Aharon, to make him holy, to serve Me as a Kohen.” (Shemos 28:3)

חַכְמֵי לֵב (chachmei lev) — wise of heart — filled with רוּחַ חׇכְמָה (ruach chochma). Not just technically skilled — wise in the heart. And God Himself fills them with that wisdom. You can’t make garments that carry kedusha through craftsmanship alone.

And look at what these clothes are for: לְקַדְּשׁוֹ לְכַהֲנוֹ לִי (l’kadsho l’chahano li) — to make him holy, so he can serve as a Kohen.

The clothes are going to make Aharon kadosh. Not just be kadosh themselves — make him kadosh. Make him someone who just by being there puts you in mind of God. That’s what the transformation looks like.

But notice something. The clothes are no longer called בִּגְדֵי קֹדֶשׁ (bigdei kodesh). They’re called בִּגְדֵי אַהֲרֹן (bigdei Aharon) — the garments of Aharon.

Why? I’m not sure. But perhaps the Torah is telling us that the chachmei lev need to understand they’re making Aharon’s clothes. They have to have him in mind.

Now the Torah lists what’s to be made:

וְאֵ֨לֶּה הַבְּגָדִ֜ים אֲשֶׁ֣ר יַעֲשׂ֗וּ חֹ֤שֶׁן וְאֵפוֹד֙ וּמְעִ֔יל וּכְתֹ֥נֶת תַּשְׁבֵּ֖ץ מִצְנֶ֣פֶת וְאַבְנֵ֑ט וְעָשׂ֨וּ בִגְדֵי־קֹ֜דֶשׁ לְאַהֲרֹ֥ן אָחִ֛יךָ וּלְבָנָ֖יו לְכַהֲנוֹ־לִֽי׃

“These are the garments they are to make: a choshen, an eifod, a me’il, a kesones tashbetz, a mitznefes, and an avneit. They shall make these bigdei kodesh for Aharon your brother and for his sons, to serve Me as priests.” (Shemos 28:4)

The first two garments on this list — the choshen and the eifod — carry stones. Stones with names on them. That’s where we’re headed.

The Eifod’s Shoulders

The eifod seems to be some sort of apron-like garment. I want to skip its details and get to what matters for us — its shoulders:

וְלָ֣קַחְתָּ֔ אֶת־שְׁתֵּ֖י אַבְנֵי־שֹׁ֑הַם וּפִתַּחְתָּ֣ עֲלֵיהֶ֔ם שְׁמ֖וֹת בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃

“Then take two stones of shoham, and engrave upon them the names of the children of Yisrael.” (Shemos 28:9)

Two stones of shoham. We’ll come back to what shoham is — but mark that word. You’re taking two particular stones. And then: וּפִתַּחְתָּ עֲלֵיהֶם שְׁמוֹת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל (u’fitachta aleihem shemos Bnei Yisrael) — you’re going to open up on them the names of Bnei Yisrael. That word — פִּתַּח (pitach). Not “write.” Not “carve.” Open. As if the names are somehow already inside the stone, waiting to be revealed.

שִׁשָּׁה֙ מִשְּׁמֹתָ֔ם עַ֖ל הָאֶ֣בֶן הָאֶחָ֑ת וְאֶת־שְׁמ֞וֹת הַשִּׁשָּׁ֧ה הַנּוֹתָרִ֛ים עַל־הָאֶ֥בֶן הַשֵּׁנִ֖ית כְּתוֹלְדֹתָֽם׃

“Six of their names on the one stone, and the names of the remaining six on the second stone, in the order of their birth.” (Shemos 28:10)

Six names on one stone, six on the other — כְּתוֹלְדֹתָם (k’soledosam), according to their birth order.

And how are we going to open them? The Torah tells us:

מַעֲשֵׂ֣ה חָרַשׁ֮ אֶ֒בֶן֒ פִּתּוּחֵ֣י חֹתָ֗ם תְּפַתַּח֙ אֶת־שְׁתֵּ֣י הָאֲבָנִ֔ים עַל־שְׁמֹ֖ת בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל

“The work of a stone engraver, seal engravings — you shall open the two stones with the names of the children of Yisrael.” (Shemos 28:11)

מַעֲשֵׂה חָרַשׁ אֶבֶן (ma’asei charesh even) — the work of a stone engraver. פִּתּוּחֵי חֹתָם (pituchei chosam) — engravings like a seal, like a king’s signet ring. That’s how you open the names onto the stones. And they’re set in מִשְׁבְּצוֹת זָהָב (mishbetzos zahav) — settings of gold.

Now, where do they go?

וְשַׂמְתָּ֞ אֶת־שְׁתֵּ֣י הָאֲבָנִ֗ים עַ֚ל כִּתְפֹ֣ת הָֽאֵפֹ֔ד אַבְנֵ֥י זִכָּרֹ֖ן לִבְנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל וְנָשָׂ֨א אַהֲרֹ֧ן אֶת־שְׁמוֹתָ֛ם לִפְנֵ֥י יְהֹוָ֖ה עַל־שְׁתֵּ֥י כְתֵפָ֖יו לְזִכָּרֹֽן׃

“Attach the two stones to the shoulder-pieces of the eifod, as stones of remembrance for the children of Yisrael. And Aharon shall bear their names before Hashem on his two shoulders, for remembrance.” (Shemos 28:12)

On the shoulders. That’s where you carry weight.

אַבְנֵי זִכָּרֹן לִבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל (avnei zikaron l’Vnei Yisrael). Stones of remembrance for Bnei Yisrael — not the shevatim themselves, but their children. All of us. And we need to be remembered.

But who is doing the remembering? Let’s listen to the pasuk carefully.

וְנָשָׂא אַהֲרֹן אֶת שְׁמוֹתָם (v’nasa Aharon es shemosam) — Aharon will bear up their names. לִפְנֵי ה׳ (lifnei Hashem) — before Hashem. עַל שְׁתֵּי כְתֵפָיו (al shtei ketefav) — on his two shoulders. לְזִכָּרֹן (l’zikaron) — for remembrance.

Hashem needs to remember these names — as in וְאֵלֶּה שְׁמוֹת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל הַבָּאִים מִצְרָיְמָה (v’eileh shemos Bnei Yisrael haba’im Mitzrayma). Those names which went down to Egypt are now going up to and before Hashem — so that Hashem can remember us.

This is quite an idea. One that needs to be explored from numerous perspectives.

For now, though, I’d like to explore it from the perspective of our working definition of kedusha. Until now, our working definition has been that something is holy when it helps man to remember and be mindful of Hakadosh Baruch Hu.

But I think it’s time for an expansion of our working definition.

It seems to me that something can also be holy if it helps Hakadosh Baruch Hu to remember and be mindful of us. After all, we have just learned that this is one of the central — if not the central — jobs of the eifod.

And we know that the eifod is one of the bigdei kodesh.

So it follows that an item can be holy if it has the quality of helping Hakadosh Baruch Hu to remember us, His people.

What’s in a Name?

But what exactly is Hashem being reminded of? What’s in these names?

I had said in my first article on Sefer Shemos — which is called Shemos, “Names” — that the names themselves carry content, meaning, perspectives. The mothers gave them particular meanings, and we carried those meanings with us into Egypt. But there’s something else in the names too: the people who first bore them. Their stories.

Take Yehuda. On the one hand, you hear the meaning of the name — recognition and thanks to Hashem. But we also remember the man who said מַה בֶּצַע (mah betza) — “What profit do we get if we kill Yosef?” Not Yehuda’s finest moment.

And we remember the same Yehuda who said צָדְקָה מִמֶּנִּי (tzadka mimeni) — who, when he could have protected his reputation at the cost of Tamar’s life, chose instead to protect her life at the cost of his reputation. We remember the man who told Yaakov אָנֹכִי אֶעֶרְבֶנּוּ (anochi e’ervenu) — “I will be the collateral for Binyamin” — and when the moment came, offered himself as a slave in Egypt so that Binyamin could go free.

All of that is in the name. The good and the bad. The growth.

So Aharon is bearing up all of this — all the weight of these names, their meanings and their histories — on his shoulders, before Hakadosh Baruch Hu. That’s not a light load.

And he does so on אַבְנֵי שֹׁהַם (avnei shoham) — stones of shoham.

Back to Gan Eden

We almost forgot about the shoham. We’ve been thinking about the names, the shoulders, the remembrance. But Aharon carries all of that on a particular type of stone. And that name — שֹׁהַם (shoham) — we’ve seen it before.

Which means, once again, we need to go back to Gan Eden. Because that’s where we first encountered it:

וּֽזְהַ֛ב הָאָ֥רֶץ הַהִ֖וא ט֑וֹב שָׁ֥ם הַבְּדֹ֖לַח וְאֶ֥בֶן הַשֹּֽׁהַם׃

“The gold of that land is good; bdellium is there, and the even hashoham — the shoham stone.” (Bereishis 2:12)

But we need to see this verse in context. And that context is the river.

Let me go back to the moment when God plants the garden:

וַיִּטַּ֞ע יְהֹוָ֧ה אֱלֹהִ֛ים גַּן־בְּעֵ֖דֶן מִקֶּ֑דֶם וַיָּ֣שֶׂם שָׁ֔ם אֶת־הָֽאָדָ֖ם אֲשֶׁ֥ר יָצָֽר׃

“Hashem Elokim planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and placed there the man whom He had formed.” (Bereishis 2:8)

God plants a garden in Eden, מִקֶּדֶם (mikedem) — from the east — which seems to imply that the garden is in the eastern part of Eden.

He also places man inside the garden and grows all the trees of the Garden:

וַיַּצְמַ֞ח יְהֹוָ֤ה אֱלֹהִים֙ מִן־הָ֣אֲדָמָ֔ה כׇּל־עֵ֛ץ נֶחְמָ֥ד לְמַרְאֶ֖ה וְט֣וֹב לְמַאֲכָ֑ל וְעֵ֤ץ הַֽחַיִּים֙ בְּת֣וֹךְ הַגָּ֔ן וְעֵ֕ץ הַדַּ֖עַת ט֥וֹב וָרָֽע׃

“From the ground Hashem Elokim caused to grow every tree that is pleasant to look at and good to eat, and the Eitz HaChaim in the midst of the garden, and the Eitz HaDaas Tov v’Ra.” (Bereishis 2:9)

At this point, we would expect the story to continue to tell us about man and his time in the garden. But instead, it goes on a seemingly irrelevant tangent and starts talking about rivers:

וְנָהָר֙ יֹצֵ֣א מֵעֵ֔דֶן לְהַשְׁק֖וֹת אֶת־הַגָּ֑ן וּמִשָּׁם֙ יִפָּרֵ֔ד וְהָיָ֖ה לְאַרְבָּעָ֥ה רָאשִֽׁים׃

“A river goes out from Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four heads.” (Bereishis 2:10)

Let’s break this verse down.

There is a river that starts somewhere in Eden. Where, we don’t know. But not inside the garden.

No, it starts outside of the garden.

And this river passes by (or is it through) the garden. Indeed, this is the purpose of this river — to water the garden.

But it doesn’t just water the garden. When it reaches the garden it divides. It splits into four heads — וְהָיָה לְאַרְבָּעָה רָאשִֽׁים (v’hayah l’arba’ah rashim).

And each of those “heads” becomes a separate river in and of itself.

Why do we need to know this? I have no idea. But I’ll venture a less than satisfactory guess.

We have just been told that G-d planted a garden and grew in that garden all varieties of trees.

And we know that trees in particular need a good deal of water to grow — particularly fruit trees.

And so, we are told that G-d provided that water. That would “explain” at least half of this verse — and also “explain” why this verse appears specifically here, right after the verse about all the trees of the garden.

But honestly, this answer is so mundane that it seems impossible to believe. This simply is not the type of information that the Torah is interested in.

There has to be something more. But for now, that’s all we have.

Let’s continue.

One of these four rivers is called Pishon, and we’re told it encircles a land called Chavilah:

שֵׁ֥ם הָֽאֶחָ֖ד פִּישׁ֑וֹן ה֣וּא הַסֹּבֵ֗ב אֵ֚ת כׇּל־אֶ֣רֶץ הַֽחֲוִילָ֔ה אֲשֶׁר־שָׁ֖ם הַזָּהָֽב׃

“The name of the first is Pishon — it is the one that encircles the entire land of Chavilah, where the gold is.” (Bereishis 2:11)

And we are also told that the gold of this land is good.

וּֽזְהַ֛ב הָאָ֥רֶץ הַהִ֖וא ט֑וֹב שָׁ֥ם הַבְּדֹ֖לַח וְאֶ֥בֶן הַשֹּֽׁהַם׃

“The gold of that land is good; bdellium is there, and the shoham stone.” (Bereishis 2:12)

Here we have yet another seemingly mundane and irrelevant piece of information. Honestly, I have never been that interested in the goings on of the land of Chavilah.

And it’s great that they have good gold, but honestly — what does this have to do with Gan Eden and Adam and Chava or anything else that the Torah (and we) are interested in?

Seemingly nothing.

And yet, we pause and think for just one second. Why is it that we are reading this verse again?

Oh yeah, because of the shoham stone. The same shoham stone that Aharon carries on his shoulders into the Kodesh Kedoshim.

Well, it’s in this verse — the one that talks about the land of Chavilah and its high quality gold — that we first encounter the shoham stone.

And it is at this point that we remember that those shoham stones with the names of the Jewish people were set in מִשְׁבְּצוֹת זָהָב (mishbetzos zahav) — settings of gold.

All of a sudden this gold seems a bit more interesting. Here is a land with gold and stones of shoham.

And here is a priestly garment with stones of shoham set in gold.

And these stones, in this gold, are supposed to be carried into the Kodesh Kedoshim — where the Eitz HaChaim (aka the Torah) is housed within the Aron HaKadosh which has on top of it the Keruvim — the guardians of the path to the Eitz HaChaim.

And all of this we are being told right after we are told that G-d caused all the various trees of the Garden to grow — including the Eitz HaChaim.

Now that’s interesting.

What’s more — there are four rivers mentioned. But none of these other rivers get nearly the amount of attention and detail that Pishon does.

Only Pishon gets a description of its land — the gold, the bedolach, the shoham. Gichon encircles Cush — similar language, but no details about what’s there. Chidekel goes east of Ashur, but again no details.

And Pras? Just its name. Nothing else.

The Torah is pointing us somewhere — at that first river and its land, where our shoham (and gold) comes from.

And no sooner is our interest finally piqued that the Torah drops the entire subject of these rivers and returns to the story of the garden:

וַיִּקַּ֛ח יְהֹוָ֥ה אֱלֹהִ֖ים אֶת־הָֽאָדָ֑ם וַיַּנִּחֵ֣הוּ בְגַן־עֵ֔דֶן לְעׇבְדָ֖הּ וּלְשׇׁמְרָֽהּ׃

“Hashem Elokim took the man and placed him in Gan Eden, to work it and to guard it.” (Bereishis 2:15)

When all is said and done, all I have left from these stories is some curiosity and some questions.

Why is the Torah telling us about the rivers at all? This is a story about God placing man in Gan Eden, about man’s relationship with God and God’s relationship with man.

Why do I need to know about any of these rivers — even the river that watered the garden, let alone the rivers that didn’t?

Why do I need to know about the gold and jewels found in the land of Chavilah?

What do they have to do with the story of Gan Eden?

Once again, I have no idea.
And we won’t have any idea, until we get a bit more wisdom.

Nothing Like Wisdom

Chapter 28 in Sefer Iyov is an interesting chapter (although, truth be told, every chapter in Sefer Iyov is an interesting one).

The chapter begins discussing silver and gold.

Gold — sounds familiar.

Later on, though, it turns to the subject of חׇכְמָה (chochma) — wisdom.

And then, just a little bit further, it starts to compare chochma to gold.

But not just any gold, fine gold. The best gold. The type of gold you would find in the land of Chavilah.

But not just to fine gold. Also to the shoham stone:

לֹא־יִתֵּ֣ן סְג֣וֹר תַּחְתֶּ֑יהָ וְלֹ֥א יִ֝שָּׁקֵ֗ל כֶּ֣סֶף מְחִירָֽהּ׃ לֹֽא־תְ֭סֻלֶּה בְּכֶ֣תֶם אוֹפִ֑יר בְּשֹׁ֖הַם יָקָ֣ר וְסַפִּֽיר׃

“It [chochma] cannot be bought with fine gold, and silver cannot be weighed as its price. It cannot be praised against the gold of Ophir, or against precious shoham and sapphire.” (Iyov 28:15–16)

What an interesting combination. High quality gold and the shoham stone.

Haven’t we seen that duo before?

Now, for those of you who read Hebrew, you may be wondering — where did I get this translation of “fine gold”. The original Hebrew is סגור.

Well, let’s take a look at Rashi:

״זָהָב סָגוּר״ (מלכים א ו:כ) זֶהוּ זָהָב טוֹב, שֶׁבְּשָׁעָה שֶׁנִּפְתָּח, כָּל חֲנֻיּוֹת שֶׁל זָהָב נִסְגָּרוֹת:

“Gold of Segor (I Melachim 1:20) — this is good gold (זהב טוב), that when it is opened, all the shops of gold are closed.” (Rashi on Iyov 28:15)

Now, in case you are still not convinced, let us look just two verses later:

לֹא־יַעַרְכֶ֣נָּה זָ֭הָב וּזְכוֹכִ֑ית וּתְמ֖וּרָתָ֣הּ כְּלִי־פָֽז

“It cannot be valued with gold and glass, and its exchange is not vessels of fine gold.”

Either way, wisdom is being compared to gold and to precious shoham stones.

And we are being told that when you do compare them, there really is no comparison.

To compare gold to wisdom is like comparing a hot dog to a filet mignon or a can of coke to a glass of fine wine. They’re not even in the same category. They’re not even close.

Wisdom is simply in a category all of its own.

That, for any and all who think about it, is obviously true. But that is the point — you have to think about it.

What happens, though, if you do not think about it? What do you spend more time chasing — wisdom or gold?

Given a choice, most people would choose the gold. Gold and precious jewels have an immediate appeal that wisdom does not.

And so we need to be reminded. If we have to choose, what we really want is wisdom, not gold.

But we need to be reminded. And we need to choose.

Upstream and Downstream

Let us go back to those rivers.

The river goes out from Eden to water the garden. That’s its purpose — לְהַשְׁקוֹת אֶת הַגָּן (l’hashkos es hagan).

And then, when it reaches the garden, it splits — and it continues.

And when it splits, and when it continues — it reaches a land and produces gold.

Well, “produces” is not quite the right word. The river doesn’t create the gold. But it contains it — gathers it together, concentrates it, makes it accessible to man. The same may be true of the shoham stone.

Think about that.

The same water. Upstream, it nourishes the garden. Downstream, after it leaves the garden, it deposits material wealth.

So up above, life. Indeed, the עֵץ הַחַיִּים (Eitz HaChaim) — the Tree of Life. Which is the Torah. Which is wisdom (see last week’s dvar Torah).

And down below.
Gold. And precious stones — including the Shoham stone.

That is not to say that there was no gold or precious stones in the Garden of Eden. But they weren’t the essence or the focus.

But in Chavilah. That was the essence. That is what that land was known for.

And they are all connected by the same river. That one, singular river which starts not in the garden, but in Eden.

Eden.

We haven’t paid enough attention to Eden. We’ve been focused on gardens and rivers and gold and jewels.

But honestly, Eden deserves some attention now.

Note the name. Eden (עֵדֶן). What does it mean?

Pleasure. Delight.

This river flows not just from a place, but from a state of being. Pleasure itself is flowing. And that pleasure, that joy — first and foremost it is there to nurture the garden.

It wants to nurture life and growth and wisdom. There is a joy in wisdom — if only you take the time to notice it and choose it.

It is a taste that perhaps needs to be developed (like fine wine). But once you taste it, nothing compares.

But there are other pleasures in life. They are, of course, downstream from wisdom. But they are there.

One such pleasure is found in gold and precious jewels. Don’t believe me.

Let’s try a little experiment. Buy your wife a diamond necklace and tell me whether or not a smile comes across her face.

Tell a man that he won the lottery and see whether or not he jumps up and down with joy.

Walk into Fort Knox and tell me whether or not you are in awe of all that gold.

So there is a river which flows out of pleasure itself. And once it nourishes life and wisdom, it splits and nourishes all sorts of other types of joys.

You see, it’s not a tangent at all. The Torah tells us that G-d planted various trees in the garden. Some were pleasant to behold. Some were beneficial to consume. And, of course, there was the Eitz HaChaim and the Eitz HaDaas of good and evil.

But these trees are more than trees. They are the good things of life — pleasant to behold, good to consume, and they give us life. Yes, there is danger within the good. The Eitz HaDaas is also there. But in essence, these are the sources of meaning and depth and wisdom.

And they need to be nourished. If there is no joy in the process, no pleasure in the pursuit, we won’t do it. But when you find that joy — nothing can stop you.

And so, there is a flow — from that state of pleasure which nourishes all that is good in this world. We take joy in our families. Joy in our studies. Joy in our work.

But it doesn’t stop there. That same flow, that same river, divides and drives so many other types of pleasures — money, power, and more.

Of course, this isn’t the literal meaning of the verse. But I think it’s hiding right behind the surface. The essence is the garden and all that it contains. But that nurturing water doesn’t stop at the garden. It continues on and nourishes other places, other pleasures — including the pleasure of gold and precious jewels.

And yet, for some reason, it is that gold and those jewels which end up on the shoulders of the Kohen Gadol, when he carries our names in front of G-d in the Holy of Holies.

And it is there, in that seemingly paradoxical place, that everything starts to come together.

The Reversal

Let us return yet once again to our working (and newly expanded) definition of the word Kedushah. Something is kadosh — it is holy — if it reminds us of God or God of us.

And yet, the Mishkan, which is known as a mikdash, a place of holiness, is filled with gold and with precious stones.

How can that be if gold and stones are downstream from the garden? After all, aren’t we reproducing the garden — not the actual place, but the actual experience, the actual connection? The Mishkan is the place where God and man meet. And the stones are downstream!

Or are they?

In Sefer Yechezkel, we find an interesting dirge in “honor” of the king of Tyre. In there, Hakadosh Baruch Hu mourns the loss of wisdom and beauty that the king of Tyre once had:

בֶּן־אָדָ֕ם שָׂ֥א קִינָ֖ה עַל־מֶ֣לֶךְ צ֑וֹר וְאָמַ֣רְתָּ לּ֗וֹ כֹּ֤ה אָמַר֙ אֲדֹנָ֣י יֱהֹוִ֔ה אַתָּה֙ חוֹתֵ֣ם תׇּכְנִ֔ית מָלֵ֥א חׇכְמָ֖ה וּכְלִ֥יל יֹֽפִי׃

Son of man take up a dirge over the king of Tyre and say to him, “Thus said My L-rd, Hashem: ‘You were a seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty’.

Wisdom and beauty. Where did he have this wisdom and beauty? In Gan Eden:

בְּעֵ֨דֶן גַּן־אֱלֹהִ֜ים הָיִ֗יתָ כׇּל־אֶ֨בֶן יְקָרָ֤ה מְסֻכָתֶ֙ךָ֙ אֹ֣דֶם פִּטְדָ֞ה וְיָהֲלֹ֗ם תַּרְשִׁ֥ישׁ שֹׁ֙הַם֙ וְיָ֣שְׁפֵ֔ה סַפִּ֣יר נֹ֔פֶךְ וּבָרְקַ֖ת וְזָהָ֑ב

In the garden of Elokim you were, every precious stone was your covering: Odem, pithdah, yahalom, tarshish, shoham, yishpeh, sapir, nofech, bareket and zahav. The workmanship of your settings and sockets was in you...

Did you see that list?
Does that list look familiar? If we read a little further on in our Parsha, it will become more familiar.

There are nine precious stones and gold. And those nine precious stones are nine of the twelve stones found in the Choshen Mishpat, which we will discuss soon enough.

But which nine?

All three stones from the first row of the Choshen are here. All three from the second row. All three from the fourth row. But the entire third row — לֶשֶׁם, שְׁבוֹ, אַחְלָמָה (leshem, shvo, achlamah) — is completely absent. Nine of twelve, and the three missing ones are all from the same row.

Why is that row absent? I have the beginning of a hunch. The Malbim has a fully worked out theory (you can read it in his commentary on Yechezkel).

But whether it is hunches or fully worked out theories — our point is that these stones (including the shoham) and the gold were all found in Gan Eden.

It’s not that in Gan Eden there was only wisdom and life and all the “good things” of life. There was also gold and precious stones.

But they were not the focus.

The focus was the trees and their fruit. The same river that nourished the trees also contained the gold and the precious stones. They just weren’t the essence.

But in Chavilah, that changed. Chavilah was known for its gold and precious jewels — and only for its gold and precious jewels.

The flow of pleasure continued beyond Gan Eden, but it was a lower form of pleasure. A pleasure solely of material wealth.

And that perspective took off — particularly after the sin and the exile from the garden.

But now, with the building of the Mishkan, came time for the reversal.

Yes, there is an abundance of gold and precious stones in the Mishkan. But they are not there for their own sake. They are there — at least in the case of Aharon HaKohein — for לְכָבוֹד וּלְתִפְאָרֶת (l’kavod ul’tifares), for honor and radiance.

But this is not for Aharon’s honor and beauty. This is not an act of self-aggrandizement.

No, we are turning Aharon HaKohein into a holy man. A man who, when you see him, reminds you of Hakadosh Baruch Hu — and who reminds HaKadosh Baruch Hu of us.

And the gold and precious jewels help with that. They still draw our attention, but they then take that attention and direct it to Hakadosh Baruch Hu.

It’s not gold and jewels for their own sake or for the sake of wealth, but because of the experience that they create — and the ability to channel that experience to help connect us to our Creator and our Creator to us.

That is why the clothes are holy. But even moreso, that is why Aharon HaKohein is holy. Because he is able to bear up those items which most naturally draw our attention away from G-d and use them to draw it towards G-d.

The Rest of the Stones

Of course, we have not yet covered all the stones. Until now, most of our focus has been on the shoham stone.

But there are many more stones in the bigdei kodesh. In particular, the Choshen Mishpat with its four rows of precious jewels — each jewel unique in its own precious way.

Twelve stones in all, each one with a name of one of the twelve tribes.

And I wonder about these twelve stones. I understand why we have gold and jewels in the Mishkan. They create an atmosphere, an impression, which, when used properly, can be quite holy.

But what about the names? We have the names on these stones, and as prominent as they are on the avnei shoham, they’re even more so on the Choshen Mishpat, where each tribe gets its own unique stone. What is the connection between the stones and the names?

So I have an idea, which seems to be true, but I don’t have a source for it.

Imagine you are looking at a diamond. Can you see the colors? Can you see that almost magical display of light that is unique to diamonds? The diamond doesn’t create that light — but it does reveal an otherwise hidden aspect of light.

So it is (I imagine) with every precious stone. Each one has its own unique property which makes it one of a kind.

And all in all, there are twelve of them. Which means twelve unique qualities and properties.

That’s what the twelve tribes are.

Each shevet sees and reflects the divine light differently. Yehuda sees it one way. Binyamin another. Yissachar yet another.

Twelve facets of the same infinite light.

And there’s a midrash that brings this home — one that we touched upon before.

When Yaakov laid down at Beis El, he placed stones around his head — some say twelve stones. And the stones argued with one another:

“On me this tzaddik will rest his head!” “No, on me.”

Each one insisted it was the right one. Not out of arrogance — each had a real claim. Each “rock” was aware of its unique quality and property.

And then Hakadosh Baruch Hu unified them into a single stone. Twelve became one.

Now, until now, I always thought of these rocks as the regular old, “boring” rocks that we find strewn around the natural world.

A regular old rock.

But no more. I now think of these twelve rocks as twelve precious stones. Each one with its own unique quality and property. Each one with its own unique way of reflecting the divine light.

It was these precious rocks (aka precious stones) that were fighting with each other. After all, in Hebrew it is the same word — אֶבֶן.

And when and how did HaKadosh Baruch Hu unify these rocks? In the Choshen Mishpat. There, on the heart of Aharon HaKohein, they found their unification and essentially became one rock.

A singular rock that can help us better see and understand HaKadosh Baruch Hu. A singular rock that can help HaKadosh Baruch Hu better see and understand us.

And one that can help HaKadosh Baruch Hu see and remember us.

Further Questions

• What is the Choshen Mishpat and how does it function? Why is it called mishpat — judgment?

• How do the twelve individual stones on the Choshen relate to their specific tribes?

• What is the relationship between the six-and-six names on the shoulders and the twelve names on the heart?

• The four rivers of Gan Eden, the four rows of the Choshen, the four camps of the degalim — is this a pattern?

• Why is the entire third row of the Choshen missing from Yechezkel 28? Is the Malbim’s explanation the whole story?

• The full context of Yechezkel 28 — what does the Gan Eden imagery in the prophecy against Tyre mean, and how do the mefarshim understand it?

• What does tiferes really mean in the context of the bigdei kodesh?

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The Rambam begins his introduction to the Mishnah with a single word: דע.

Da. Know.

It’s easy to skip past this short little word. To not pay it much thought. But that, I believe, is a mistake. There is quite a bit hidden in that word, and we would be wise to take a moment to understand it.

As such, let’s turn to what may be the best initial source to try and understand this word — the very book named after it: Sefer HaMadah (ספר המדע -- Sefer HaMadah).

Note the name. It shares the same root as our two-lettered friend — ידע, to know.

And also note that the Rambam actually explains why he named this work Sefer HaMadah. Of course, it’s not so easy to find — one has to know where to look.

We start with the Rambam’s introduction to the Mishnah Torah.
We then continue by skipping that introduction.

At this point we have hit a section called Minyan HaMitzvos (מנין המצוות -- The Count of the Mitzvos). This is a section where the Rambam lists all the mitzvos in the Torah. 248 positive commandments (מצוות עשה) and 365 negative commandments (מצוות לא תעשה).

We will skip that section also.

Then, after enumerating them all — and after a short section discussing them — the Rambam writes the following line:

וראיתי לחלק חיבור זה לארבעה עשר ספרים

And I saw fit to divide this work into fourteen books.

This is the section we want. It’s short and easy to pass by. If you find yourself in the area where the Rambam lists all the different halachos found in each of these fourteen books, then you have gone too far.

Come back and enjoy this view — because it is here that we will finally find what we have been looking for:

ספר ראשון

אכלול בו כל המצוות שהן עיקר דת משה רבינו וצריך אדם לידע אותן תחלת הכל

First Book

In it, I will include all the mitzvos that are the essence of the religion of Moshe Rabbeinu, and a person needs to know them before anything else.

I love this line.

Because (as we will see) this line will give us our working-hypothesis for what the Rambam means by דע. Of course, as we make our way through the Rambam, we may need to update, modify or radically change our hypothesis. But for now, we have something to work with.

So let’s dive deeper into what the Rambam is saying here.

Sefer HaMadah, says the Rambam, is not like any other sefer (book) in the Mishnah Torah. Rather, it contains a special class or category of Mitzvos — namely, those Mitzvos which one needs to know first (תחלת הכל) because they are the essence of the entire system of Torah (עיקר דת משה רבנו).

Now, this is a bit abstract. We need something concrete to help us fully understand what it is that the Rambam is saying.

And I have just the story for that.

A Real World Example

The story I have in mind involves a man named Stephen Covey (the author of the ever so famous book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People).

In this story, Covey was riding a subway when a man boarded with his children. The children were not just misbehaving.

They were yelling.
Throwing things back and forth.
Grabbing other people’s newspapers (remember those).

And the father?

He simply sat there, closed his eyes and did nothing. This irked Covey.

How could the father be so insensitive to everyone else?
How could he not take responsibility for his children?

Eventually, Covey confronted the man.

Sir, your children are really disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you couldn’t control them a little more?

The man looked up at Covey — as if he was just now becoming aware that his kids were misbehaving — and softly replied:

“Oh, you’re right. I guess I should do something about it. We just came from the hospital, where their mother died about an hour ago. I don’t know what to think, and I guess they don’t know how to handle it, either.”

In that moment, everything changed for Covey. His entire interpretation of the situation changed.

What he thought changed.
How he felt changed.
What he said changed.
How he acted changed.

But you know what did not change — the actual situation.

It was the same boys running wild in the same subway car. It was the same father who was still doing nothing to rein them in.

All the data, all the facts — the entire reality — was exactly as it had been one moment earlier.

The only thing that changed was the information that Covey had. He now knew something that he did not know before.

And with that knowledge, his entire perspective and experience were fundamentally transformed.

Bringing it Back to the Rambam

Now let’s go back and read the Rambam’s words again:

וצריך אדם לידע אותן תחלת הכל

A person needs to know them before anything else.

Notice the Rambam’s language.

It’s not enough to just know these Mitzvos at some time point in one’s learning. No, these are Mitzvos that one needs to know before anything else.

Why?

Because without this knowledge, a person will experience the entire Torah the way Covey experienced that father and his children — with all the facts in front of him, but missing the crucial information needed to understand those facts.

As such, we now have our working definition of what the Rambam means by דע:

Daas (דעת) is knowledge that transforms how you understand the facts in front of you.

And the Rambam himself signals this in the name he chose. He didn’t call it Sefer Madah — the Book of Knowledge (ספר מדע). He called it Sefer HaMadah — the Book of the Knowledge.

Note that word “the”. It sticks out. No other book in the Mishnah Torah has “the” in its name. Why does this one?

The word “the” is a defining and limiting word.

Can you please bring me the book.

That means I have a particular book in mind. Not just any old book, but a specific one.

So too, for the Rambam. Not just any old knowledge, but specific, crucial, essential knowledge — the knowledge that transforms how we understand the Mitzvos of the Torah.

Back to the Mishnah

With that said, let’s return to the first word of the Rambam’s Introduction to the Mishnah: דע.

It is in command form — there is something (says the Rambam) which you have to know. Some bit of information which will transform how you understand the Mishnah.

So, what is it?

That’s what we need to find out. And we’ll start on that avodah in the very next article.

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Let’s go back to the end of Parshas Mishpatim.

Moshe is about to go up to Har Sinai for forty days and forty nights. And right before he goes up, Hakadosh Baruch Hu tells him what he’s going to receive:

וַיֹּאמֶר ה׳ אֶל מֹשֶׁה עֲלֵה אֵלַי הָהָרָה וֶהְיֵה שָׁם וְאֶתְּנָה לְךָ אֶת לֻחֹת הָאֶבֶן וְהַתּוֹרָה וְהַמִּצְוָה אֲשֶׁר כָּתַבְתִּי לְהוֹרֹתָם

And Y-K-V-K said to Moshe: “Come up to Me to the mountain and stay there. And I will give you the stone tablets, the Torah, and the Mitzvah, which I wrote to instruct them.”

Three things:

The stone tablets (לֻחֹת הָאֶבֶן)
The Torah (הַתּוֹרָה)
The Mitzvah (הַמִּצְוָה)

Now, let’s pretend we don’t know anything.

We don’t know what the tablets are.
We don’t know what the Torah is.
We don’t know what the Mitzvah is.

Let us note — these terms aren’t explained here. Now, we obviously have a rather good idea of what the stone tablets are. But not necessarily as good an idea as what is meant by The Torah and The Mitzvah. Either way, I want to understand what these terms mean from within the experience of reading the Torah itself — not from any outside information or knowledge I may (or may not) have.

And on that front, the Chumash so far is silent. My expectation (or should I say hope) is that in the verses, chapters, and parshas to come, they will be explained.

And my expectation will be partially met.
It’s the part that will not be met, though, that interests me.

But first — let’s see where things “go right” (so to speak).

Tracking the Luchos

Let’s track the Luchos HaEven — the stone tablets. It’ll take us a little while. We’re at the very end of Parshas Mishpatim, the last few pesukim of chapter 24. We’re going to have to skip over the next two parshios and plant ourselves in the second aliyah of Parshas Ki Tisa.

What happens in these two-plus parshios?

We go step by step through the different keilim of the Mishkan.
We detail the structure of the Mishkan itself.
The clothes of the Kohen Gadol.
Who will be in charge of actually building the Mishkan.

Then, when all of that is done, Hakadosh Baruch Hu goes on a (seeming) tangent and reminds us to keep Shabbos. In other words, by all means, build the Mishkan. Just don’t violate Shabbos when doing so.

At this point, we are done. Fully done.

And then — two parshios and six chapters later — the promise is (partially) delivered. G-d gives Moshe the Luchos HaEidus — the stone tablets:

וַיִּתֵּן אֶל מֹשֶׁה כְּכַלֹּתוֹ לְדַבֵּר אִתּוֹ בְּהַר סִינַי שְׁנֵי לֻחֹת הָעֵדֻת לֻחֹת אֶבֶן כְּתֻבִים בְּאֶצְבַּע אֱלֹהִים

And He gave to Moshe (when he finished speaking with him on Har Sinai) the two testifying tablets — stone tablets, written by the finger of G-d.

And so we have it, (part of) the moment we have been waiting for. The Luchos HaEven have been given to Moshe. Just like G-d promised.

Of course, there is more to this moment than Moshe just receiving the tablets. There is what he is supposed to do with those tablets. But for now, I have a question.

Where are the Torah and the Mitzvah?

We all know that the Luchos are wondrous — indeed, miraculous.

Written by the finger of G-d.
The tablets themselves are the work of G-d.
Engraved completely through — from side to side.

And we know what happens to those tablets. Moshe takes them down from the mountain and destroys them in a rage when he sees the golden calf.

In short, the Luchos get a lot of press. In terms of narrative focus, they are prominently displayed.

But the Torah and the Mitzvah?

Zip.
Zilch.
Nothing.
Nada.

No mention.
No hint.
No indication.

Just silence.

What happened? G-d told Moshe that He would give him the Luchos HaEven (the stone tablets), the Torah, and the Mitzvah.

And now we have the stone tablets.
But where are the Torah and the Mitzvah?
What happened to them?
And why the silence?

The Aron

We are now ready for Parshas Terumah.

But no longer are we simply reading the Parsha. Rather, we are searching it. We are looking within the Parsha for some hint, even a simple clue of the Torah and the Mitzvah.

The Parsha begins (as always) with its namesake. With terumot — raising up our physical possessions by voluntarily dedicating them to the building of the Mishkan.

There is a lot hidden within this little section. But for now, we are going to skip over the opening and move on to the list of vessels that are to be built for the Mishkan.

First on the list, the Aron.

וְעָשׂוּ אֲרוֹן עֲצֵי שִׁטִּים

And they shall make an Aron of shittim wood.

Now this sounds promising. They’re going to build an Aron. And what’s going to be in that Aron?

Well, for one thing, the Torah — as we find out at the end of Sefer Devarim:

וַיְצַ֤ו מֹשֶׁה֙ אֶת־הַלְוִיִּ֔ם נֹ֥שְׂאֵ֛י אֲר֥וֹן בְּרִית־יְהֹוָ֖ה לֵאמֹֽר׃ לָקֹ֗חַ אֵ֣ת סֵ֤פֶר הַתּוֹרָה֙ הַזֶּ֔ה וְשַׂמְתֶּ֣ם אֹת֔וֹ מִצַּ֛ד אֲר֥וֹן בְּרִית־יְהֹוָ֖ה אֱלֹהֵיכֶ֑ם וְהָיָה־שָׁ֥ם בְּךָ֖ לְעֵֽד׃

And Moshe commanded the Levi’im, the carriers of the Aron of the Covenant of Y-K-V-K, saying: “Take this book of the Torah and place it from the side of the Aron of the Covenant of Y-K-V-K, your G-d. And it shall be there with you for a witness.”

That is quite interesting.

The Torah will be either on the side of the Aron HaKadosh or placed inside the Aron HaKadosh — alongside one of the walls.

Is this what was meant by “I’m going to give you the Torah and the Mitzvah”? Namely, I’m going to give you an Aron to house the Torah and the Mitzvah?

Perhaps, but it doesn’t sound quite right to me.

If I said to you, “I’m going to give you a beautiful set of jewelry.” If I show up with beautiful boxes — boxes for earrings, for bracelets, for necklaces — and they’re all empty — how impressed would you be?

“Just what I wanted! Beautiful boxes! I can’t wait to put my jewelry in there!”

The boxes, no matter how ornate they are, no matter how well-crafted — they are not the jewels that go inside them.

So it can’t be that the Aron in and of itself is the Torah and the Mitzvah that G-d promised to give Moshe. The Aron is the container. The Torah and the Mitzvah are the contents.

But perhaps it’s not that simple.

Back to the Luchos

Let’s take a (short) trip back to Parshas Ki Tisa — back to the moment when everything is finished. When all was said and done, what did G-d do? He gave Moshe the Luchos.

Now, let’s return to our Parsha when nothing was finished and nothing yet commanded. In essence, to the beginning. Yes, I know that the absolute beginning are the donations. The true beginning is when Am Yisrael collectively — albeit by individual volition — donate all the materials for the Mishkan.

But then, once we have all the “stuff”, everything that we need to start building the Mishkan, what is the first item mentioned before any other?

It is the Aron.
And that is interesting.

After all, it need not be so. Why not start with the foundation — with the boards and the bases that hold up the boards. Why not start with the structure of the Mishkan and then move to the vessels?

The Torah could have done that, but it didn’t. Instead, it started with the keilim (the vessels) — and not just any vessel, but the Aron.

And what is it that goes inside the Aron?
Yes, I know above we said it is the Torah.

But even if the Torah is inside the Aron, it is not there by itself:

וְנָתַתָּ֖ אֶל־הָאָרֹ֑ן אֵ֚ת הָעֵדֻ֔ת אֲשֶׁ֥ר אֶתֵּ֖ן אֵלֶֽיךָ׃

And you shall put into the Aron the testimony that I will give you.

The “testimony”. What is the testimony? The Luchos, as we saw before in Parshas Ki Tisa:

וַיִּתֵּן אֶל מֹשֶׁה כְּכַלֹּתוֹ לְדַבֵּר אִתּוֹ בְּהַר סִינַי שְׁנֵי לֻחֹת הָעֵדֻת לֻחֹת אֶבֶן כְּתֻבִים בְּאֶצְבַּע אֱלֹהִים

And He gave to Moshe (when he finished speaking with him on Har Sinai) the two testifying tablets — stone tablets, written by the finger of G-d.

In other words, the Mishkan begins with the Luchos and it ends with the Luchos. It begins with the Aron which houses the Luchos and it ends with the actual giving of those Luchos.

I know, I know — we are looking for the Torah and the Mitzvah. And I know that we still have not found them.

But this is what we have found. We have found that the Aron HaKadosh houses the Luchos and (eventually) will also house the Torah itself.

Or, alternatively, it houses the Luchos on the inside and will hold the Torah on the outside.

Either way, one Aron — two of the three promises.
I think we are on to something.
But we still have to look further.

And that something won’t be found inside of the Aron. But it will be found on top of it.

The Kruvim

The Aron HaKadosh is remarkable. Obviously I have never seen it, but I can see its beauty nonetheless. It is described meticulously in the Chumash and the details are quite stunning.

Gold plated (with pure gold) inside and out.
A gold crown surrounding it.
Gold rings on its sides.
And a cover made of pure gold.

And on top of this cover (the kapores) are two Kruvim also made of gold. Indeed, made of the very same gold as the covering itself.

We have seen Kruvim before.

We saw them in Gan Eden, when man was expelled from the garden:

וַיַּשְׁכֵּן מִקֶּדֶם לְגַן עֵדֶן אֶת הַכְּרֻבִים וְאֵת לַהַט הַחֶרֶב הַמִּתְהַפֶּכֶת לִשְׁמֹר אֶת דֶּרֶךְ עֵץ הַחַיִּים

He placed the Kruvim east of Gan Eden, with a revolving fiery sword, to guard the path to the Eitz HaChaim (the tree of life).

The tree of life — eitz hachaim. What is the tree of life?

In Gan Eden, I don’t know. Today, though, I have an idea.
Not my idea, Shlomo HaMelech’s idea.

The Tree of Life

Mishlei is a difficult sefer — but that difficulty is worthwhile.

Let us note its beginning. Here Shlomo HaMelech tells us that he will write a book of proverbs and parables — what he calls meshalim.

A mashal is a type of example. Let me focus your attention on something that you understand and use that as a means for you to understand something that you do not understand.

A stitch in time saves nine.
If I use one stitch now, while a tear is small, I’ll save myself the trouble of having to use nine stitches later, when the tear is big.

In short, nip the problem in the bud.

Of course, this phrase is not really about sewing, but rather about life. There are many “tears” that need “sewing”. Take care of them now, don’t wait until the problem is much worse.

So that is the heart of Sefer Mishlei, examples from every day life designed to teach something larger than the example itself.

Now, what is that larger something that Shlomo HaMelech wants us to learn. He has a list. We’ll focus on the first item on the list:

לָדַ֣עַת חׇכְמָ֣ה וּמוּסָ֑ר

To know wisdom and restraint (aka musar).

We’ll ignore the restraint part for now. It’s the wisdom that interests us.

What does Shlomo HaMelech have in mind when he speaks about chachma (חכמה) — which I translated as wisdom?

I’m not sure. But may I note the following. In one of the last speeches he ever gave to the nation, Moshe Rabbeinu tells Am Yisrael to keep and observe the statutes and judgments he has taught them:

וּשְׁמַרְתֶּם֮ וַעֲשִׂיתֶם֒ כִּ֣י הִ֤וא חׇכְמַתְכֶם֙ וּבִ֣ינַתְכֶ֔ם לְעֵינֵ֖י הָעַמִּ֑ים

Keep and observe them, for that is your chachma and your understanding in the eyes of the nations.

The nations, he says, will look at us and declare:

רַ֚ק עַם־חָכָ֣ם וְנָב֔וֹן הַגּ֥וֹי הַגָּד֖וֹל הַזֶּֽה

Surely a wise and understanding people is this great nation.

And what makes us wise? What are these statutes and judgments? They are:

כְּכֹל֙ הַתּוֹרָ֣ה הַזֹּ֔את

This entire Torah.

There is some essential connection between the Torah and its chukim and mishpatim that are wise and which give us chachma.

Is this what Shlomo HaMelech had in mind? Seems possible. Indeed, there are other proofs, but for now this will suffice.

Let’s continue in Mishlei. A few verses later:

שְׁמַ֣ע בְּ֭נִי מוּסַ֣ר אָבִ֑יךָ וְאַל־תִּ֝טֹּ֗שׁ תּוֹרַ֥ת אִמֶּֽךָ׃

My son, listen to the instruction of your father and do not forsake the Torah of your mother.

This is line eight of Sefer Mishlei (still the first chapter) and we finally have our first mention of the word Torah. But it’s not just any old mention, there’s another word hiding there in plain sight: מוסר (musar). The same “musar” that we found in the third verse alongside chachma.

All in all, there seems to be a close connection between wisdom (chachma) and Torah in Sefer Mishlei — and with both of them and musar.

And it is in this light that we take a look at the third chapter of Mishlei. Which begins with a reference to the Torah:

בְּ֭נִי תּוֹרָתִ֣י אַל־תִּשְׁכָּ֑ח וּ֝מִצְוֺתַ֗י יִצֹּ֥ר לִבֶּֽךָ

My son, do not forget my Torah, and let your heart keep my Mitzvos.

Here we have Shlomo HaMelech speaking as G-d’s messenger — enjoining them to not abandon His Torah (see Rashi to Mishlei, 4: 2).

Now, why should we not forget G-d’s Torah? Because the Torah will lengthen our days, grant us years of life and give us peace:

כִּ֤י אֹ֣רֶךְ יָ֭מִים וּשְׁנ֣וֹת חַיִּ֑ים וְ֝שָׁל֗וֹם יוֹסִ֥יפוּ לָֽךְ

Because they will lengthen your days and grant you years of life, and they will give you peace.

Thus starts the first section of the third chapter.

Let’s move on to section two and its opening line:

מוּסַ֣ר יְ֭הֹוָה בְּנִ֣י אַל־תִּמְאָ֑ס וְאַל־תָּ֝קֹ֗ץ בְּתוֹכַחְתּֽוֹ׃

My son, do not reject the musar of Y-K-V-K, and do not despise His rebuke.

Torah, then musar.
Interesting.

Want to make a guess what word appears in the third section of the third chapter:

יְֽהֹוָ֗ה בְּחׇכְמָ֥ה יָסַד־אָ֑רֶץ כּוֹנֵ֥ן שָׁ֝מַ֗יִם בִּתְבוּנָֽה׃

Y-K-V-K with chachma laid the foundation of the earth; and built the heavens with bina.

Torah > musar > chachma.

I think they are connected.

And with that said, let us return to the second section, the one that starts with musar — and note its transition to chachma:

אַשְׁרֵ֣י אָ֭דָם מָצָ֣א חׇכְמָ֑ה וְ֝אָדָ֗ם יָפִ֥יק תְּבוּנָֽה׃

Fortunate is the man who finds chachma, and the man who acquires understanding.

Chachma and understanding. The same chachma and understanding that G-d used to lay the foundation of the earth and build the heavens.

This chachma is more valuable than silver and fine jewels.
The length of days are in its right hand.
It is a tree of life for all who take possession of it.

A tree of life. Eitz HaChaim.

The Torah is a Tree of Life.

And now, my mind races back. Not to the Garden of Eden, but to the waters of Marah.
To the time that the Jewish people first travelled in the desert. When they were in need of water. They had travelled for three days — and found no water.

No water means no life.

But then, they make their way to Marah. And finally, water. Life itself, right in front of them. But, alas, it is bitter. They cannot drink it.

Bitter water means no life.

But Hashem instructs them.
He shows them.
He מורה them.

וַיּוֹרֵ֤הוּ יְהֹוָה֙

And Y-K-V-K showed them.

Look at the root. It is the same root as the word Torah.

What does He instruct them in? What does He show them? What is He מורה them?

About a tree.

וַיּוֹרֵ֤הוּ יְהֹוָה֙ עֵ֔ץ

And Y-K-V-K showed them a tree.

A tree which sweetens the waters when you throw it into the waters.

וַיּוֹרֵ֤הוּ יְהֹוָה֙ עֵ֔ץ וַיַּשְׁלֵךְ֙ אֶל־הַמַּ֔יִם וַֽיִּמְתְּק֖וּ הַמָּ֑יִם

And Y-K-V-K showed them a tree, and he threw it into the waters, and the waters were sweetened.

A tree of life! Sweet waters means life.

But this is the key — this is what makes this story so telling. What happens next? Once the waters are sweetened? Once they can drink water and live. What does Moshe (or is it Hashem) do?

He gives them some Torah!

שָׁ֣ם שָׂ֥ם ל֛וֹ חֹ֥ק וּמִשְׁפָּ֖ט

There he (or is it He) gave them chok and mishpat.

Do you see how it all comes together? Do you understand why, at that moment, He (or is it he) gives them Chok uMishpat?

Now they can appreciate life. And so now they can appreciate the Torah — which extends life and gives it vitality.

In other words, the Torah is also a tree that makes bitter waters sweet.

Of course, it doesn’t make literal waters sweet.
But then again, nipping a problem in the bud doesn’t mend a literal rip in a literal pair of pants either.

The Path to the Tree of Life

Back in Gan Eden, we partook of the Eitz HaDaas Tov v’Ra — the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And once we did, we could no longer partake of the Eitz HaChaim. You can’t have both.

But through it all — through the trials and tribulations of Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, and the Shvatim, through the slavery and the redemption from slavery, through the desert, following G-d into the unknown — we had somehow removed ourselves from the venom of that first tree.

And so now we can partake of the Eitz HaChaim once again.

But not so fast. It’s one thing to be able to partake of the Eitz HaChaim. But first you have to reach the tree.

And that requires going down the right path.

Remember. After the chet of Adam and Chava.
After we were exiled from the garden.

Then (and only then) G-d stationed the Kruvim (vayashkein) to guard the path to the Eitz HaChaim.

וַיְגָ֖רֶשׁ אֶת־הָֽאָדָ֑ם וַיַּשְׁכֵּן֩ מִקֶּ֨דֶם לְגַן־עֵ֜דֶן אֶת־הַכְּרֻבִ֗ים וְאֵ֨ת לַ֤הַט הַחֶ֙רֶב֙ הַמִּתְהַפֶּ֔כֶת לִשְׁמֹ֕ר אֶת־דֶּ֖רֶךְ עֵ֥ץ הַֽחַיִּֽים׃

And He drove out the man, and He placed the Kruvim east of Gan Eden, with a revolving fiery sword, to guard the path to the Eitz HaChaim.

The English translation hides so much. The Hebrew word is (וַיַּשְׁכֵּן֩) which has the exact same root as the word Mishkan. As in the Mishkan that Hakadosh Baruch Hu is now commanding us to build. That same Mishkan which will have an aron which will have a cover which will have Kruvim on top of it.

What is the connection?

I don’t really know yet. But the word is there and so the (possible, I would say likely) connection is also there.

For now, though, we’ll focus on the word that is easier for us to understand — the word “shomer” (שְׁמֹ֕ר) — to guard.

What does it mean for the Kruvim to guard the path to the Eitz HaChaim?

On the one hand, it is obvious. They are to prevent unwanted visitors — those people who are unworthy — from getting to the tree of life.

After all, if you can’t get to the tree, you can’t partake of it.

But there is another sense which I think is equally obvious (once it is pointed out to you). And that is the sense of preserving.

There is a way to reach this tree. It’s not an obvious way. Not everyone knows it. But it is there. And it has to be preserved — even if no one is presently using it.

Because some day it will be needed. Someday there will be a people worthy of traveling down this road. And when that day comes, the path will still be there — because the Kruvim were entrusted (by G-d Himself) to preserve it.

If we put it all together: there is only one way to the Eitz HaChaim, and that is through the path to the Eitz HaChaim.

And there is only one way to walk that path, and that is by passing through its guards — aka the Kruvim.

Back to the Aron

So we have the Aron.
And on top of the Aron, we have the Kruvim.
And inside the Aron — the Luchos.

And now the Pasuk I have been waiting for.

וְנוֹעַדְתִּי לְךָ שָׁם וְדִבַּרְתִּי אִתְּךָ מֵעַל הַכַּפֹּרֶת מִבֵּין שְׁנֵי הַכְּרֻבִים אֲשֶׁר עַל אֲרוֹן הָעֵדֻת אֵת כׇּל אֲשֶׁר אֲצַוֶּה אוֹתְךָ אֶל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל

I will meet with you there, and I will speak with you from above the Kapores, from between the two Kruvim which are upon the Aron HaEidus — everything that I will command you concerning Bnei Yisrael.

Did you catch that?
No?

Then read it again.
And again.
And again — until you see something.

Don’t just have me spoon-feed it to you. Read that verse and see what you come up with. Then, I’ll give you my thoughts.

G-d is going to meet Moshe (וְנוֹעַדְתִּי). And when He meets him, He is going to speak with him (וְדִבַּרְתִּי אִתְּךָ).

And what are they going to talk about?
Everything that G-d wants to command the Jewish people through Moshe (אֵת כׇּל אֲשֶׁר אֲצַוֶּה אוֹתְךָ אֶל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל).

Remember what Bnei Yisrael said to Moshe at Har Sinai?

קְרַ֤ב אַתָּה֙ וּֽשְׁמָ֔ע אֵ֛ת כׇּל־אֲשֶׁ֥ר יֹאמַ֖ר יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֵ֑ינוּ וְאַ֣תְּ ׀ תְּדַבֵּ֣ר אֵלֵ֗ינוּ אֵת֩ כׇּל־אֲשֶׁ֨ר יְדַבֵּ֜ר יְהֹוָ֧ה אֱלֹהֵ֛ינוּ אֵלֶ֖יךָ וְשָׁמַ֥עְנוּ וְעָשִֽׂינוּ׃

You draw near and listen to all that Y-K-V-K our G-d will say, and you shall speak to us all that Y-K-V-K our G-d will say to you, and we will listen and do.

In other words, G-d is going to communicate to Moshe the Torah.

And where is He going to communicate it — between the Kruvim (מִבֵּין שְׁנֵי הַכְּרֻבִים)!

That is the path to the Torah.
That is the road to the Eitz HaChaim.
Through the Kruvim who are on top of the Aron which house the Luchos.

Because that is the only way to get the Torah.

But I get ahead of myself (again).

The Other Direction

It’s starting to become clear.

וַיֹּ֨אמֶר יְהֹוָ֜ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֗ה עֲלֵ֥ה אֵלַ֛י הָהָ֖רָה וֶהְיֵה־שָׁ֑ם וְאֶתְּנָ֨ה לְךָ֜ אֶת־לֻחֹ֣ת הָאֶ֗בֶן וְהַתּוֹרָה֙ וְהַמִּצְוָ֔ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר כָּתַ֖בְתִּי לְהוֹרֹתָֽם

And Y-K-V-K said to Moshe: “Come up to Me on the mountain and be there, and I will give you the Luchos HaEven and the Torah and the Mitzvah that I have written to instruct them.”

How will I give you the Torah?
By giving you the Luchos.

It’s as if the vav of “and the Torah (וְהַתּוֹרָה֙)” means “therefore”.

I will give you the Luchos and (therefore) I will (be able to) give you the Torah...

Because by putting the Luchos in the Aron HaKadosh (inside the Mishkan), My word will be able to travel through the Kruvim to you.

You see, we had it all wrong.
We don’t travel through the Kruvim, onto the path to the Eitz HaChaim.
No, the Eitz HaChaim travels on the path, through the Kruvim to us.

We receive the Eitz HaChaim. We don’t take it.

That doesn’t mean we don’t have anything to do. That we just sit back and wait for it to come to us. It doesn’t work that way.

But the direction is clear.
What is not yet clear is why.
Why this way? Why through the Kruvim?

What is it about the Kruvim that makes this work?

A Closer Look at the Kruvim

Let’s look at the Kruvim a bit more carefully.

וְעָשִׂיתָ שְׁנַיִם כְּרֻבִים זָהָב מִקְשָׁה תַּעֲשֶׂה אֹתָם מִשְּׁנֵי קְצוֹת הַכַּפֹּרֶת

You shall make two Kruvim of gold, hammered from one piece, from the two ends of the Kapores.

Two points.

First: מִקְשָׁה — hammered from one piece. They come from the same stock. They are united in their source, in their etzem, in their essence.

Second: מִשְּׁנֵי קְצוֹת — from the two ends. The two extremes. Two opposites — as far apart as they physically can be while still being on top of the aron.

In short, same source, opposite positions. And our two extremists are facing each other.

And let’s not try and wiggle out of their extremism — the Torah emphasizes this over and over again:

וְעָשִׂ֛יתָ שְׁנַ֥יִם כְּרֻבִ֖ים זָהָ֑ב
מִקְשָׁה֙ תַּעֲשֶׂ֣ה אֹתָ֔ם
מִשְּׁנֵ֖י קְצ֥וֹת הַכַּפֹּֽרֶת׃
וַ֠עֲשֵׂ֠ה כְּר֨וּב אֶחָ֤ד מִקָּצָה֙ מִזֶּ֔ה
וּכְרוּב־אֶחָ֥ד מִקָּצָ֖ה מִזֶּ֑ה
מִן־הַכַּפֹּ֛רֶת תַּעֲשׂ֥וּ אֶת־הַכְּרֻבִ֖ים עַל־שְׁנֵ֥י קְצוֹתָֽיו׃

And you shall make two Kruvim of gold,
hammered from one piece,
from the two ends of the Kapores.
And make one Keruv on one end
and one Keruv on the other end,
from the Kapores you shall make the Kruvim on its two ends.

At the same time, it emphasizes their singular, shared source.

They will be “hammered from one piece“.
They will be made from the Kapores.

Each Kruv has its position. Each has its perspective. Each has its edge — its extreme.
And yet, they are both sourced from the same gold, from the same Kapores.
They are opposites, but they are unified in their source.

And they face each other.

Why?
What does it mean to face each other?
What does that look like?

Let me give you an example of two people who faced each other and tell me, is this the vision you have of the Kruvim?

Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.

In case I date myself, let’s put it this way. Imagine two boxers, in the ring. One in this corner, the other in the opposite corner.

Two extremists.
The bell rings and they each work their way to the center of the ring to face each other — and to try and knock each other’s face off.

Is that what you have in mind when you think of the Kruvim?

No? Why not? Isn’t that an example of two people facing each other — in battle, conflict, confrontation?

Why wouldn’t our Kruvim be like that? After all, they are opposites.
And what’s worse — they come from the same stock.

Tell me, who hates each other more.
A capitalist sitting in the United States and a communist sitting in Cuba

OR

A capitalist sitting in the United States and a communist sitting in the United States?
How about MAGA and leftists?
Bibi and leftists?

I could go on and on.

So is this the way to revelation?
By staking out our position, sticking to it and hating those who oppose it.

I don’t think so.
But it’s not as far off as we may imagine.

For now, though, let’s change the vision. Let’s leave behind the battles and hatred and be a bit more positive.

What is the phrase — opposites attract?
Or how about the idea that men and women are two halves of a whole?

That also sounds a bit like our Kruvim, doesn’t it?

Love, care and respect — all wrapped up in a strange sort of attraction alongside a natural sort of frustration. Husbands frustrate wives and wives frustrate husbands.

The modern way of saying this is that men are from venus (or is it mars) and women are from the other one.

The Torah way of saying this is that woman was created from the side of man — and thereby became a helper, opposite him.

Or perhaps we could just say that men are hewed from one side of the Aron and women from the other side.

So, which is it?

Opposites attract.
The battle of the sexes.
A fight to the death.

It’s all of the above.

And within the world of the Torah, we have one particular relationship which contains all of these elements in one — it’s called a chavrusa.

A chavrusa — from the word “chaver” — a friend. But what kind of friend?

The kind you yell at when they say something ridiculous.
The kind you battle against when they say something foolish.
And the kind you listen to when you (finally) realize that it was you who was saying something foolish and ridiculous all along.

Of course, it’s not just a Chavrusa.

It’s Satmar vs Chabad.
Or Satmar vs Zionism.
Or Zionism vs Chabad.
Or Daati Leumi vs Chareidi.
Or Modern Orthodox vs Chareidi.
Or Litvish vs Chassidish.
Or Musar vs Chassidus.

Battles.
Look at all these battles.
And look at all the Torah that has come out from them.

Is it pretty? No!
Is it enjoyable? Oftentimes doubly no.

And yet, we keep doing it. Because we care! Because it’s about the Torah and truth and values and what is right and what is wrong.

And I have a secret. Through all those battles. All that yelling and passion and more, there is something much deeper — love.

You don’t believe me?
Let’s see.

A number of years ago, a young man named Gilad Shalit was kidnapped by Hamas.
Now, that very same week, a young boy from Yitzhar was also murdered. I wish I remembered his name. I ask him and his family for mechila that I do not remember his name. But I remember him. He was hitch-hiking outside of Beitar and was picked up by Hamas (or some other similar terrorist group).

And minutes later, they brutally murdered him (because that is what Hamas does). Hashem Yikom Damo!

Now, all of this happened around the time of disengagement. I don’t remember if it was before, during or shortly after. But it was that time period.

And, as is often the case with the Jewish people — we were divided. We were each of us in our camps, in our extremes.

I remember my mother was sure that it was going to come to bloodshed. “I hope I’m wrong”, she said. But she didn’t see how such heated passions over such fundamental issues could end otherwise.

Thankfully, my mother was wrong. And that should already tell us something.

But that is not the point I want to make. The point I want to make is about this young man’s mother. Let us remember, she lives in Yitzhar. I don’t personally know her, but one can imagine Yitzhar on one extreme of the Jewish world. I’m not saying it’s good or bad, right or wrong. That’s not the point of this story. I’m just noting that it is on a polar opposite of the political spectrum of those who fervently believed in disengagement.

And during that week, she said something akin to the following:

There are big disagreements in our nation and heated passions surrounding those disagreements. We are in many ways divided. And I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

But this week, I saw something deeper. I saw that deeper than all of those divides is a love that unites us all. I saw Jews from all walks of life, all ends of the political and religious spectrum come to support us and show us their love.

So yes, there are differences. But there is a unity much deeper than those differences.

I think this is one of the most profound and honest truths that I have ever heard. And I think it describes our nation to the t.

And I don’t think this is a one-off occurrence. I think we all experienced it on October 8th (even if we don’t all still experience it right now).

We have seen the love that can shine. And we have for sure seen the divisions that can also shine.

And when these two elements are properly combined, you have a special unit known as Kruvim (notice the plural).

Divided in their extremism, united in their source — and therefore in their love.

And they are facing each other, but not only each other.

וּפְנֵיהֶ֖ם אִ֣ישׁ אֶל־אָחִ֑יו אֶ֨ל־הַכַּפֹּ֔רֶת יִהְי֖וּ פְּנֵ֥י הַכְּרֻבִֽים

And their faces, one towards the other, towards the Kapores shall the faces of the Kruvim be.

They are looking at each other while also looking down towards the Kapores (the Kapores which covers the Aron which contains the Luchos).

They see each other while they simultaneously see the Torah.

In other words, Kruvim don’t battle each other.
They battle for the Torah.
They aren’t trying to win.
They aren’t trying to overpower.
They are trying to understand.

They each come from their perspective. They each have their point of view. But it is a perspective focused on the Torah.

What does it mean?
What does Hashem want from us?
What am I supposed to do?

This is what I think the Torah says.
No, that’s wrong — this is what it says.

It’s about the Torah.
It’s what Chazal call a machlokes l’shem shamayim.
Machlokes — from the word “chalak” — to divide.
A division for the sake of heaven.

I am divided not because I’m distant from you, but because I see the Torah differently than you do. But I am facing you, because I am facing how you see the Torah. I face you as I face the Torah. And you do the same with me.

And through that, we remain divided — but in service of the same Torah. And through that honest division, we reach new understandings. And we even sometimes change our minds:

חזרו בית הלל להורות כדברי בית שמאי

The School of Hillel revised (their opinion) to teach according to the position of the School of Shamai.

So you have these two Kruvim. Made from the same Kapores, housing the same Luchos, but from the two different sides. The two different perspectives. The two different angles. Facing each other — hammering it out with love, with care, but with passion and with strength.

And that space between these two lovingly different perspectives has a name — the path to the Eitz HaChaim.

The path is found between this divide — in the space that is formed when two extremes can lovingly, yet honestly face each other in their unified, but different love for the Torah.

If you can master that, then you can receive the Torah which G-d sends down that path.

And the one man who could master that more than anyone else was Moshe Rabbeinu.

We all know (or should know) the different Gemaras and midrashim. That anything that a Talmid vatik was destined to say was already given over to Moshe on Har Sinai.

That he (Moshe) received the Tanach and the Mishnah and the Gemara.

Okay — but how? How could Moshe receive all of this? What did he possess that enabled this?

Let me make a suggestion — by mastering the art of being an extremist.

Because, let’s be honest. There is no reason why one man can’t be an extremist on both sides. Why he can’t see both sides of the argument and both perspectives.

After all, we walk into Yeshiva and spend our time understanding the machlokes between:

Beis Hillel and Beis Shamai.
Between Abaye and Rava.
Between Rashi and Tosfos.
Between the Rambam and the Raavad.

And then we stop. Some of us may go a little further — until it reaches something we care about. Then, we don’t try to understand, we try to be right.

But who says we have to wait until after the machlokes to understand both sides? There is no law of nature that that need be the case.

Indeed, if we can understand both sides of an issue after the fact, then it is at least theoretically possible to understand both sides of an issue before the fact.

And my guess is that Moshe Rabbeinu didn’t just understand both sides of a machlokes — he lived them. He stood at both ends of the Kapores. He felt the truth and passion of each position without being captured by either — holding the contradictions in his love for the Torah.

He was, in a sense, both Kruvim at once.

And that is why G-d spoke to him from between them.

Done, but Not Done

We aren’t done yet. We still have to find the Mitzvah.

But we are (basically) done for now with the hope that we can continue another time.

But I do want to leave you with a hint. I think the Mitzvah is also hidden within the Mishkan. Indeed, I think it’s hidden within the very next kli — the Shulchan.

Somewhere within there is the Mitzvah. I hope to write about it soon.

For now, though, take a look yourself and see what you see.

You can start from whichever extreme position you want. So long as you are also looking down at the Torah (while simultaneously lovingly sheltering it with your wings), I’m happy to meet you there.

B’hatzlachah.

Share masmid

There’s a certain kind of question that motivates me. It’s when you come across a phrase in the Torah — a law or idea — that seems cruel. Primitive. Obviously so. G-d’s command to totally wipe out Amalek — men, women, and children — obviously comes to mind, but as we shall soon see, there are other examples also.

For many people, the reaction and analysis stop there. They simply take the surface impression and walk away.

I can’t do that.

This is the same Torah that tells us that man is created in the image of G-d. The same Torah that says: do not murder, do not steal, do not lie in court. The Torah that commands us to love our neighbors as ourselves. To care for the stranger — because we know what it’s like to be a stranger, because we were strangers in Mitzrayim. To do what is good and what is straight in the eyes of Hashem. To have honest weights and measures. To take care of the poor. To be holy. And more (much more).

Time and again, the Torah is filled with moral depth and sophistication — and not merely filled with it, but revolutionarily so. It is unmatched in history. Thousands of years later, the moral clarity of the Torah rings out as brilliantly and as brightly as it always has — this is true on the level of peshat, and even more so when one takes the time to study the Torah in-depth.

As such, if we come upon what looks like an exception to that rule — something that seems immoral, uncaring, primitive, cruel — and we simply stop there, then the problem is not what’s written in the Torah.

The problem is how we approached the Torah. The problem is that we didn’t take the time to see how this too is moral. This too is just. This too is deep and sophisticated.

If we don’t search, we shouldn’t be surprised if we don’t find.

And there’s another issue.

We can’t simply treat the Torah like any other work — like the work of a great scholar, a great author, a great mind. We are talking about the Author of all authors, the Mind of all minds. The Creator Himself, revealing to us His will and how we are to live our lives.

To dismiss these words as primitive is to claim that the Creator of morality Himself somehow failed to understand basic moral principles.

I tell you all of this because it is the fuel which powers this week’s dvar Torah — and it relates to one of the most famous lines in the Torah:

“An eye for an eye” — עין תחת עין.

Time after time, from person after person and institution after institution, this line is presented as the basis for a cruel, primitive form of justice. We’ll start with Matthew — yes, that Matthew — who understood “an eye for an eye” as a base form of retaliation: doing unto an evildoer the very evil he has done to you.

From there we move on to the early Church Fathers — and those who followed in their wake — who understood this as a law of permitted retaliation: revenge is allowed, but limited to the extent of the damage that the victim suffered. A legalized form of revenge, a moral version of revenge — but revenge nonetheless.

So said the Church Fathers. So says the modern-day Catholic Church.

Tolstoy stated that the law of an eye for an eye was a law of violence. Mahatma Gandhi famously proclaimed that “an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.”

Now, may I pause for a moment to note that for all of its poetic beauty, Gandhi’s line doesn’t make any sense.

Even if we take the verse literally (as he does), his conclusion only follows if we live in a world in which people are continuously blinding one another. But if I do not take out your eye, and you do not take out mine, then neither of us will be blind.

Indeed — are we all dead because we execute murderers?

I certainly hope not; it would greatly reduce my readership ;-)

But I digress.

I will leave with one more quote — this one said all but yesterday by Pope Francis:

“If we live according to the law ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,’ we will never escape the spiral of evil.”

Here this law has been elevated to the status of a worldview and modus operandi, one that condemns us to a never-ending spiral of evil. Sounds like it doesn’t get much worse than that!

Over and over again, this line is taken literally — as prescribed revenge, as an immoral worldview. Over and over again, it is misconstrued and misunderstood.

And when I hear that, I feel like a young David standing before the mighty Goliath, listening as the giant confidently blasphemes the G-d of Israel.

So, like David, I pick up my weapon of choice — the very words of the Torah themselves — and prepare to forge a new path for all those who care about the truth of what this short little phrase actually means.

Where to begin?

Well, if we’re going to make sense of this phrase, we have two main paths to start with:

Path number one: the words themselves. Path number two: the context in which the words appear.

We’re going to take both paths — but we’ll start with the second one, context.

So where should we start for context?

I suggest that we start with the name of our parsha itself - Parshas Mishpatim. And let’s ask a simple question -- what is a mishpat? We know that there are different types of halachos -- there are chukim (חוקים) and mishpatim (משפטים). There are Torot (תורתות) and Mitzvot (מצוות). One would assume that there is some meaningful distinction between each of these types of halachos.

What are they?

I don’t know. I have ideas, but ideas are not the same thing as knowledge. For now, though, let’s see if we can come up with a working hypothesis. We’ll start by connecting our Parsha to another parsha of almost the same name -- Parshas Shoftim.

Shoftim and mishpatim, two sides of the same linguistic coin, both of which share the same root: shin-peh-tet (ש-פ-ט).

Shoftim are judges.
Is it such a stretch to suggest that mishpatim are the types of laws that judges judge.

What does that mean?

We’ll get there as we go through the context. It will start to naturally appear. For now, though, we can say the following. In our parsha, we expect to encounter a group of laws which share this particular quality of being judgeable (whatever that means). And since an eye for an eye (עין תחת עין) appears in our parsha, we will assume that it too has this quality (again, whatever that means).

With that said, let’s take an intellectual journey through the opening halachos of Parshas Mishpatim. In particular, we’ll start with the laws relating to murder.

From Murder to Money

Take a look at the following laws:

מכה איש ומת מות יומת

ומכה אביו ואמו מות יומת

וגנב איש ומכרו ונמצא בידו מות יומת

ומקלל אביו ואמו מות יומת

Strike a man and he dies — death he shall die.

Strike his father or his mother — death he shall die.

Steal a man and sell him...— death he shall die.

Curse his father or his mother — death shall he die.

Let us make a few observations on both the substance and presentation of these laws.

First, the format. These are short, pithy lines. You do this — this is the consequence. You do this — this is the consequence. All expressed essentially the same way.

Strike a man and he dies... Strike his father or his mother... Steal a man and sell him... Curse his father or his mother...

And what is true about the nature of the crime is doubly true about the consequence — capital punishment.

...death shall he die. ...death shall he die. ...death shall he die. ...death shall he die.

Notice the emphasis on “death”. We usually translate this as “he shall surely die”, but that misses the power of the phrase as it appears in Hebrew.

These are capital cases — and it is linguistically impossible to miss that fact.

Second, the nature of the crime. These all involve one human being committing a crime against another human being — and, in many ways, in their most severe form.

Murder is the most severe form of physical violence.

To kidnap someone and sell them into slavery is the most severe form of theft.

To physically or verbally attack one’s parents (the very people who gave you life and raised you) is the most severe form of ingratitude and disrespect.

Third, the progression. We go from physically striking someone — a violent attack on their body.

To physically taking control of someone — an (often times violent) attack on their freedom.

To verbal assault.

We will see variations of these progressions as we make our way through the parsha.

But there is something else quite significant almost hidden within these short, pithy laws. And that relates to the case of murder. There we find our first nuance — wherein the Torah distinguishes between premeditated and negligent homicide.

This type of distinction is more relevant than we realize right now. As we will soon find out.

A Different Style

We are done with our first set halachos. A new batch is about to begin — and with it, a new literary form.

Gone are the short pithy lines.
Gone is the clear, unambiguous consequence.

A new style is arising, and to appreciate and understand it we first have to note it.

We will start with the first word in every halacha that is about to follow: וכי.

We will translate this as: “when”. When as in: when this happens...

So, for example:

וְכִי־יְרִיבֻן אֲנָשִׁים

וְכִי־יַכֶּה אִישׁ אֶת־עַבְדּוֹ

וְכִי־יִנָּצוּ אֲנָשִׁים

וְכִי־יִגַּח שׁוֹר

וְכִי־יִפְתַּח אִישׁ בּוֹר

וְכִי־יִגֹּף שׁוֹר־אִישׁ אֶת־שׁוֹר רֵעֵהוּ

כִּי יִגְנֹב־אִישׁ שׁוֹר

When men quarrel...

When a man strikes his slave...

When men fight...

When an ox gores...

When a man opens a pit...

When a man’s ox strikes his fellow’s ox...

When a man steals an ox...

This is not a mere linguistic quirk, but rather the foundation of a different set of halachos. One that have one key component -- their variability. The actual halacha is not set within the situation itself. There are factors which will determine how we apply the law.

And that is indicated by the other lingustic element in these halachos, the inclusion (most of the time) of the conditional word “if”. Note that word conditional. It tells us that there are variations.

Sometimes this situation works out this way — if so, this is the law. But other times it works out this way — in that case, this is the law.

Let us see with some concrete examples.

Two men are quarreling (וְכִי־יְרִיבֻן) and then (unexpectedly) one of them strikes ( וְהִכָּה) the other with a deadly weapon (a stone or even his fist).

This sounds familiar. We just had a couple of laws about striking with deadly force. But here there is a twist. The man does not die. Rather, he is bed ridden (read, he may die, he may not).

So let’s say he dies. What then. Well, that was covered above.
But what if he doesn’t die:

אִם־יָקוּם וְהִתְהַלֵּךְ בַּחוּץ עַל־מִשְׁעַנְתּוֹ

If he will get up and walk outside with the help of a walking stick...

So now what.
What is the law? He did not die — but he could have. Well, in terms of capital punishment, he is absolved:

וְנִקָּה הַמַּכֶּה

And the one who struck him will be exempt

Exempt from what? From the punishment mentioned above (capital punishment).

But that’s not the full story.

רַק

But...

You see that word, but. We are not done. Yes, we don’t execute him, but there are still legal consequences.

What are those:

רַק שִׁבְתּוֹ יִתֵּן וְרַפֹּא יְרַפֵּא

But he must give his cessation and heal him.

Now let’s take this step by step.
What do you think it means that he has to heal him? That he has to become a doctor? That he needs to go to medical school for seven years and then treat him?

I’m sure that would make his mother proud, but somehow or other I don’t think his victim is so concerned about his mother’s happiness right now.

No, “healing him”, means paying for his medical costs.
And so it is with “his cessation”. Cessation here comes from the word Shabbas (shevet — שבת).

Shabbas means to cease. To stop. On the seventh day G-d ceased the creative process that He had been involved with for six days.

So too here. Reuven had a job. He was working. Making a living. But Shimon’s fist put a (temporary) halt to that. In general, it’s hard to work when one is recovering from almost being murdered.

And so Shimon owes Reuven money.

How much?

Well, we know the theoretical amount, but not the actual amount.

Did you catch that? Did that line mean anything to you or did you just read it and move on?

Don’t do that. No moving on. Because in that line we can finally complete our working hypothesis of what it means for a law to be a mishpat (משפט).

A mishpat is a law that has to be judged because the principle and situation are not enough to determine the outcome.

What were his medical expenses? How long was he bedridden? How much did he lose in wages?

These are questions that can’t be answered by principle alone, only by circumstance. The principle can tell us that he has to pay, but it can’t tell us how much. That has to be judged (by a shofet — שופט). Ergo mishpatim (משפטים — laws that are judged).

A Different Type of Fight

The previous quarrel was what I would like to call a transition case.

It was the case of one man attacking another.

מַכֵּה אִישׁ וָמֵת

וְכִי־יְרִיבֻן אֲנָשִׁים וְהִכָּה־אִישׁ אֶת־רֵעֵהוּ בְּאֶבֶן אוֹ בְאֶגְרֹף וְלֹא יָמוּת

Strike a man and he dies...

When men quarrel and one strikes his fellow with a stone or with his fist and does not die...

Almost the same case, just one slight variation. And that slight variation introduces us to the world of monetary damages.

We now come upon a different type of fight. One where they are fighting each other (וְכִי־יִנָּצוּ) — but not necessarily trying to kill each other. There are no striking blows (וְהִכָּה).

But there is pushing and shoving (וְנָגַף). And it is here that our first question arises. Who gets pushed?

It turns out that Reuven does not push Shimon. And Shimon does not push Reuven. Rather, one (or both) of them push Sarah.

Sarah? Who is Sarah?

Is Sarah involved in the fight?

No — and that’s the point. No one was trying to push Sarah. Not Reuven. Not Shimon.

But, it happens.
One (or both) of them pushes Sarah.
They were trying (or succeeding) at pushing each other. But one time they miss (each other) and don’t miss Sarah.

Now, here is the (legal) issue.
Sarah is pregnant.
Which is (legally) interesting — because it allows us to consider two different (legal) scenarios.

Scenario number one: Sarah lives, but she loses her child.

Scenario number two: Sarah dies.

Let’s start with scenario number one.
What is it that we need to (legally) figure out.

Legal question #1: Is Reuven or Shimon (or both of them) criminally liable for the loss of the child?

Legal answer #1: No.

Legal question #2: Are they financially liable for the loss of the child?

Legal answer #2: Yes.

But for our purposes — for the purposes of understanding an eye for an eye — it is scenario number two that we want to take a close look at.

For this is the situation in which Sarah dies.

So, what is the legal question here?

Legal question #1: Is Reuven or Shimon (or both of them) criminally liable for Sarah’s death?

Legal answer #1: Yes.

And no.

Well, honestly, it’s not clear. Indeed, it’s what we call a makhlokes Chazal (an argument of the Rabbis — to put it in the vernacular).

To live and understand the confusion, let’s take a look at the verse. We are told that if Sarah dies, then:

וְנָתַתָּה נֶפֶשׁ תַּחַת נָפֶשׁ

I would love to translate this verse. Every single word cries out for an explanation. And we will attempt to explain every single word.

But first, let’s just go with a “standard” translation:

And you will give a life for a life.

And let’s assume that what is meant here is that you execute Reuven or Shimon (or both of them) because we hold them criminally liable for the death of Sarah.

If that is what this phrase means, then why the linguistic change. We have just seen a number of references to the death penalty.

We started with a whole list of capital offenses. And each and every time, the Torah had a clear phrase to indicate that the punishment was execution: מוֹת יוּמָת.

There is, though, another phrase — one mentioned in a case that we skipped over. That where a man strikes (וְכִי־יַכֶּה) his slave or maidservant with a rod and they die.

In that case, we are told that נקם ינקם — he (the slave) shall be avenged. Meaning, even though they are a slave (male or female, makes no difference), it is still a capital offense to murder them.

For our purposes, though, we note the linguistic similarity. In both cases — מוֹת יוּמָת and נָקֹם יִנָּקֵם — the Torah uses the same grammatical construction: an infinitive absolute followed by a conjugated verb of the same root.

An infinitive absolute is the raw, unconjugated form of a verb — the action itself, with no subject, no tense, no specification. Think walking, talking, hitting, striking, etc.

It is the verb in its purest form — focusing solely on the action itself with no indication of who is doing the action or when.

A conjugated verb is the opposite — it tells you who, when, and in what form the action takes place.

I walked to school.
You will talk with father when he gets home.
He hit the ball. Lightning struck twice.

When the Torah places the infinitive absolute directly before the conjugated verb of the same root, the two work together. The infinitive sets up the action; the conjugated verb delivers it.

In our case, the action is the punishment. It is execution, death.

No ambiguity.

And it is the person who committed the crime who will be executed.

No ambiguity.

Thus:

מוֹת יוּמָת: dying (infinitive) — he shall be put to death (conjugated)

נָקֹם יִנָּקֵם: avenging (infinitive) — he shall be avenged (conjugated)

This is biblical Hebrew’s way of expressing a definitive punishment. This is how we are going to punish you as a consequence of what you did.

What is particularly noteworthy right now is that this very same grammatical form was just used one line earlier in this very same case.

In scenario number one, where Sarah survives but loses her child, the Torah says:

עָנוֹשׁ יֵעָנֵשׁ: punishing (infinitive) — he shall be punished (conjugated)

Onosh (ענש) is used to indicate financial fines (aka, punishments) — wherein the amount “owed” is not related to any damages done or money owed.

Same grammar. Same construction. Same point.

He — or they — are being financially punished for causing Sarah to lose her baby.

And so, I wonder, if נֶפֶשׁ תַּחַת נָפֶשׁ means execution — if we are being told that Reuven or Shimon, or both of them, must be executed for Sarah’s death — then why doesn’t the Torah just say מוֹת יוּמָת, or one of its variations?

That is clearly the grammatical form and phrase used in our parsha to indicate capital punishment.

So why the change?

It seems that something else is going on here. And indeed the words themselves indicate that something else is indeed going on (as we shall see when we more carefully translate them).

Perhaps at the end of the day, it will be the same old capital punishment. But even if that is the case, there is still something else going on.

But first, we need to finally get to the line that we have all been waiting for.

Not Moving On

Theoretically speaking, we should be done with this case. We have said all that needs to be said and related to all that needs to be related to.

There was a fight.
Sarah inadvertently got pushed. She lives, the baby dies — he pays. She dies — there is a consequence.

All angles have been covered.
Time to move on to the next case.

And yet, the Torah does not move on. Rather, it has a bit more to say. Actually, more than just a bit. It has a whole list of statements in almost the exact same form as וְנָתַתָּה נֶפֶשׁ תַּחַת נָפֶש (which is the phrase that we have not yet translated):

עַיִן תַּחַת עַיִן

שֵׁן תַּחַת שֵׁן

יָד תַּחַת יָד

רֶגֶל תַּחַת רָגֶל

כְּוִיָּה תַּחַת כְּוִיָּה

פֶּצַע תַּחַת פָּצַע

חַבּוּרָה תַּחַת חַבּוּרָה

Once again, we have to hold off on a “real” translation. But we’ll use a “standard” one for now — just so we have something to talk about:

An eye for an eye A tooth for a tooth A hand for a hand A foot for a foot A burn for a burn A gash for a gash A bruise for a bruise

Were we talking about eyes or teeth or hands or feet (let alone burns and gashes and bruises)? Were Shimon’s hands burning hot and burned Sarah when he (accidentally) pushed her.

I don’t think so.

No, that’s not what is going on here. Rather, the Torah is broadening the principle just laid out to numerous other similar (but still different) cases.

Don’t think that it’s only when Sarah dies that we have a life for a life (again, this is a placeholder translation). Not at all.

If Sarah loses her eye — then it’s an eye for an eye. If she loses her tooth — then it’s a tooth for a tooth.

And as it is for her eyes and teeth, so it is for her hands and feet or any other type of physical damage she may suffer.

This is an interesting legal move for the Torah to make — and we still do not know why it is making it. But that is what is happening.

And it will make much more sense once we get that better translation under our belt. And the beginnings of a better translation are waiting for us in the very next verse.

The Eyes (and Teeth) of Slaves

We are back to striking blows:

וְכִי־יַכֶּה אִישׁ אֶת־עֵין עַבְדּוֹ אוֹ־אֶת־עֵין אֲמָתוֹ וְשִׁחֲתָהּ לַחׇפְשִׁי יְשַׁלְּחֶנּוּ תַּחַת עֵינוֹ

But this time there is no death — or even threat of death. But there is blindness. A man has struck his slave or maid-servant and, in so doing, has blinded him or her.

Alternatively, it is not his eye that he has struck, but his tooth — which he has knocked out:

וְאִם־שֵׁן עַבְדּוֹ אוֹ־שֵׁן אֲמָתוֹ יַפִּיל לַחׇפְשִׁי יְשַׁלְּחֶנּוּ תַּחַת שִׁנּוֹ

So, we know the drill. Here is a case. What, then, is the law?

Simple (and quite telling). The slave or maid-servant will go free תחת their eye or tooth.

Did you catch that?
Did you see what just linguistically happened here.

We have an eye. We have a tooth. And we have an ever so important word — תחת.

Let us start on a better translation.

Instead of translating it as an eye for an eye, let’s try this:

an eye תחת an eye. a tooth תחת a tooth.

I know what you are thinking. That doesn’t seem like much of an improvement.

But notice that word. תחת.

It is the same exact word that we find in עין תחת עין and שן תחת שן.

And what does it mean here? It doesn’t say you take out the owner’s eye. It says you set the slave free — תחת עינו. In other words, in compensation for his eye.

The same with the tooth: ואם שן עבדו או שן אמתו יפיל לחפשי ישלחנו תחת שנו — if he knocks out his slave’s tooth, he shall send him free — תחת שנו — in compensation for his tooth.

Nothing is done to the owner’s body. No eye is taken. No tooth is knocked out. Rather, something is given to the slave — his freedom — in compensation for what was taken from him.

And why freedom rather than money? Because the slave has no financial independence. Any money you give a slave goes right back to the owner. Why is that the case — that’s another dvar Torah for another time.

The point is that the owner has to compensate his slave for the loss of his eye. He can’t do so with money. But he can do so with freedom. And so that is what he gives him.

Either way, linguistically it is clear that at least in this verse, the word תחת means “in compensation for”.

But is it only in this verse?

Let’s see.

We will fast forward a few cases — and leave the world of man against man. Now it is ox against ox.

In particular, Reuven has an Ox. And Reuven’s ox shoves (וְכִי־יִגֹּף) Shimon’s ox. And, alas, Shimon’s ox dies.

We know the drill, what is the law?

It depends (of course it depends, these are mishpatim). Was this a known, violent ox or not? Was Reuven officially warned in court that his ox was dangerous and nonetheless did not properly guard it?

No. Then Reuven pays half. Yes. Then Reuven pays the full amount.

But note how the Torah phrases it.

בְּעָלָיו שַׁלֵּם יְשַׁלֵּם שׁוֹר תַּחַת הַשּׁוֹר

His owner paying, he will pay — an ox in compensation for the ox.

Did you see that? An ox תחת an ox. The same word, the same construction. And it is once again about making financial restitution for the damage done.

Reuven’s ox killed Shimon’s ox.
Reuven must pay him the financial value of the ox that was killed.

That is what the phrase שַׁלֵּם יְשַׁלֵּם. Indeed, there is an earlier case, just a few lines back, where Reuven digs a pit in the public square and an ox or a donkey falls in. And the Torah clearly states:

בַּעַל הַבּוֹר יְשַׁלֵּם כֶּסֶף יָשִׁיב לִבְעָלָיו

The owner of the pit shall pay; he shall return silver to the owner of the animal...

Silver!
You know, money.
Cash. Not an ox (or, not necessarily an ox).

And so it is here with our case. You have a dangerous ox that you didn’t guard and it killed someone else’s ox:

שַׁלֵּם יְשַׁלֵּם

Paying, he shall pay.

Remember our grammatical rule. The infinitive absolute (שַׁלֵּם) sets up the action — the payment. The conjugated verb (יִשַׁלֵּם) delivers it — he shall pay.

He will definitely pay.
There is no question about that.

No question that he will pay. But there is a question as to how much.

And that is what the next phrase tells us. An ox תחת an ox. He will pay the financial value of the ox that was killed.

Read otherwise, (the financial value) of an ox in compensation for (the financial value) of the ox (that was killed).

Of course, no one is stopping you from giving an actual ox, but that is not what the line is saying. It is rather delineating the principle of reciprocity in cases of financial compensation.

We are talking here about a case where you owe them this money. This is not a fine. Not a punishment. This is paying that which you owe.

And the Torah is laying down as clear as can be that the amount that you pay is directly proportional to the damage that you caused.

You killed an ox, you pay the value of an ox.

And with that said, let us return to the case of Sarah and scenario number two. And let us remember that in scenario number one we already see the concept of a financial fine.

Why a fine?

Because, says the Ramban, no one really knows the financial worth of the baby lost.

But what about scenario number two where Sarah dies? There we can estimate her financial worth. Of course, that requires going to court — after all, these are mishpatim (laws which are judged).

In that case, how much do you pay?
Simple, you give the financial value of her life in compensation for her life.

Indeed, take a closer look at that phrase:

וְנָתַתָּה נֶפֶשׁ תַּחַת נָפֶשׁ

And you will give a life in compensation for a life.

Notice the word “give”. You are giving something. You are not taking something. And if we look closer, we see giving in the sense of financial payment throughout this parsha.

Remember when Reuven almost killed Shimon and he had to pay for his medical expenses and lost wages? Look at the phrase for paying his lost wages:

שִׁבְתּוֹ יִתֵּן

He must give his cessation.

Notice that word give: יִתֵּן.

Or how about a case that we didn’t look at — where one Reuven did not guard his ox and his ox went and killed Shimon. In that case, there is the concept of “redemption” money — wherein Reuven can help redeem his soul from heavenly punishment by giving money to the family of his victim.

Note how that is phrased: וְנָתַן פִּדְיֹן נַפְשׁוֹ

Once again, we have the word give: וְנָתַן. But guess what else is hidden in that line. We have the word soul (נפש). And we have the word give (נתן). And we have the concept of giving money in compensation for a life (נפש).

In short, in our parsha the word give (נתן) is used to indicate financial payment. Combined we have the concept of giving a life in compensation for a life.

And that word give (וְנָתַן) doesn’t end with a life in compensation for a life. Rather it carries on for all the other phrases also. It is as if it said that:

• you will give a life in compensation for a life and

• you will give an eye in compensation for an eye, and

• you will give a tooth in compensation for a tooth, and so on.

This, indeed, is common throughout the Torah (but again, that’s another Dvar Torah for another time).

Hammering the Point Home

I honestly do not want to leave any doubt in your mind that the word תחת can and does mean “in compensation for”. As such, here are a few more examples just for your edification.

Our chapter concludes with the case of a man who steals an ox or a sheep then either slaughters it or sells it. That is the case.

What is the law in such a case. The Torah tells us:

חמישה בקר ישלם תחת השור

Five cattle he will pay in compensation for the ox

וארבע צאן תחת השה

And four animals from the flock in compensation for the sheep.

There it is again. תחת השור. תחת השה.

In compensation for the ox. In compensation for the sheep.

The word תחת — in every single one of these cases — means the person who did wrong gives something of value to the person he wronged.

Kayin & Hevel, Chava & Shet

And it’s not just in halacha.

Remember Chava — yes that Chava. And do you remember Kayin and Hevel?

Do you remember that Kayin killed Hevel? Do you remember that Hevel was Chava’s son?

Which means that Kayin killed Chava’s son.

So far, so good.

Well, a number of years later, Chava has another son — Shet.

Why did she call him Shet?
She tells us.

כִּ֣י שָֽׁת־לִ֤י אֱלֹהִים֙ זֶ֣רַע אַחֵ֔ר תַּ֣חַת הֶ֔בֶל כִּ֥י הֲרָג֖וֹ קָֽיִן

Because G-d has given me another offspring in compensation (תחת) for Hevel, because Kayin killed him.

Let us put this all together. Chava originally had two sons and then lost one. And now, G-d is giving her another son in compensation for the one she lost.

Chava is receiving something to make up for her loss.

The Ayil at the Akeidah

Now let’s go to the Akeidah — the binding of Yitzchak.

HaKadosh Baruch Hu tells Avraham to take Yitzchak and offer him up as a korban, as an olah. Avraham goes through with it — he builds the altar, binds Yitzchak, takes the knife in his hand, stretches out his arm to actually perform the sacrifice.

And G-d sends His angel, who tells Avraham: stop. Don’t do it. Don’t sacrifice your son.

So Avraham stops.

And when he does he sees a ram caught in the thicket by its horns. And Avraham understands: HaKadosh Baruch Hu has prepared this ram for me to offer in place of my son.

So Avraham takes the ram and offers it up as an olah — תחת בנו — in place of his son.

Why in place? Because G-d is still “owed” his sacrifice. Avraham needs to give G-d something in compensation for the sacrifice that he just took away from G-d.

What is that something? Vicariously offering Yitzchak via the ram. See Rashi on that verse — and see our dvar Torah on that parsha for a deeper understanding.

Wrapping Up (for now)

Let us go back to where we started.

Matthew — yes, that Matthew — claimed that עין תחת עין is a base form of retaliation: doing unto an evildoer the very evil he has done to you.

Where in the world does he get that? Certainly not from our parsha.

Our parsha is not talking about taking away anyone’s eye. That doesn’t make any grammatical sense. It doesn’t make any contextual sense.

Look at the context — the full context.

This is a parsha about monetary cases.

You have to pay if your ox kills someone else’s ox. You have to pay if you dig a pit and someone else’s animal falls in. You have to pay if you are negligent and someone dies because of your animal. You have to pay — פדיון נפשו — for your own soul, so to speak. You have to pay if you steal someone’s ox and slaughter it or sell it.

The entire subject matter — from beginning to end — relates to one of two things: either I have acted criminally against someone else’s body, or I have acted negligently against their body or their property. And in either case, the question is the same: how do we deal with this in a court of law?

No one is taking the law into their own hands. There is no vigilante justice here. There is no taking of anyone’s eyes. There is no idea of revenge here. There is the principle of reciprocity.

Financial reciprocity.

When you cause someone a loss, you compensate them proportionally to the loss you caused. That’s the principle.

And Pope Francis. Such slander of G-d’s beautiful words.

This is not a spiral of evil. This is civil law. This is the Torah telling us: when you wrong someone, you go to court, and you pay them what you owe. The amount you pay is proportional to the damage you did. If there is a “worldview of עין תחת עין”, it is the worldview that financial restitution for the damage you cause is no more and no less than the damage you caused.

I should note that there is much more to say.

Not the least of which is the machlokes within Chazal themselves — for there are those among the Sages who hold that נפש תחת נפש is to be taken literally.

That position deserves serious engagement. And I hope to merit someday to give it the seriousness that it is due. For now, though, I am out of time.

In the meantime, though, if you want to further delve into this question, I remember the commentary of Rav Hirsch being particularly helpful. What’s more, when I did read him, I noted that I am in essence parroting much of what he has to say. Although he says much more, and I myself hope to one day go back over his words much more thoroughly.

In the meantime, I will leave you with this.

If you want to understand what the Torah has to say, there is only one way to do it: to study it deeply — with all your heart and with all your soul.

If we do that, then no amount of lies and no amount of slander can touch us.

The lies may carry far and wide and it may be that most people are not willing to hear what we have to say (yet).

But we’ll hear. We’ll know it. And we’ll live it.

And G-d will see that.

And no amount of lies and slander can touch that.

Share masmid

We begin this week’s dvar Torah not in the words of the Torah itself, but in the words of the Rambam.

In particular, we’re going to take a look at the first line in the first set of halachos in the first book of the Mishneh Torah. Why? Because this Rambam is going to relate directly to our parasha.

יְסוֹד הַיְסוֹדוֹת וְעַמּוּד הַחָכְמוֹת

The foundation of all foundations and the pillar of all wisdoms...

Now, we have to stop here for a moment.

These four words of the Rambam have to be understood in and of themselves before we get to the point that we actually want to discuss. Because the Rambam is telling us that he’s about to share an idea that is the foundational idea of all foundational ideas. And if that doesn’t make sense to you yet — hold on. We’re about to explain it.

He’s also telling us that this idea is the pillar of all the different types of wisdoms that exist. And again, if that sounds confusing — don’t worry. We’re going to explain that too.

Let’s start with the foundation of all foundations.

This first set of halachos of the Rambam — the one that this line is found in — is called Yesodei HaTorah. The Foundations (plural) of the Torah. It’s a set of halachos that the Rambam tells us are fundamental to the entire Torah.

Just as a foundation holds up a building, so too these halachos hold up the Torah. That’s why the Rambam calls them Yesodei HaTorah — the Foundations (plural) of the Torah.

But here, in this line, in these two words — *yesod ha-yesodos* — the Rambam is saying something more. This halacha that we are about to learn — it’s not only fundamental to the Torah — it’s fundamental to the other foundations of the Torah as well. In other words, the Rambam is about to define for us the idea upon which everything else — including all the other foundational ideas — is built.

It’s as if you have a building with two foundations. One foundation holds up the building. The other foundation holds up the first foundation.

And there is another point that the Rambam wants us to know — that this upcoming halacha is also the *amud ha-chochmos* (the pillar of all wisdoms — plural). In other words, there are different types of “wisdoms” in the world — and they too are held up by our halacha.

One last point before we actually get to this halacha itself — I would be remiss if I didn’t point out a beautiful linguistic detail in this line. Take a look at the first letter of each word:

יְסוֹד הַיְסוֹדוֹת וְעַמּוּד הַחָכְמוֹת

יסוד: Yud (י)
היסודות: Heh (ה)
ועמוד: Vav (ו)
החכמות: Heh (ה)

Combined, these letters make up the Shem Havayah (the “proper” name of Hashem). Which should give us a hint as to what this halacha is about to tell us.

But we won’t really need hints. Because we’re about to learn it ourselves right now.

Matzui Rishon

So — what is this foundation of all foundations and this pillar of all wisdoms?

The Rambam tells us right away:

לֵידַע שֶׁיֵּשׁ שָׁם מָצוּי רִאשׁוֹן. וְהוּא מַמְצִיא כָּל נִמְצָא.

To know that there is a First Existing Entity. And He brings into existence all that exists.

This is philosophical language — exact and precise. So let’s take a moment to read it as exactly as the Rambam wrote it. I’ll do so by “modernizing” the Rambam — relating to the world as we understand it today. But the concepts, I believe, are the same.

Two words need unpacking: “existence” and “first.”

Existence. We exist — you, me, the universe, everything in it. But our existence is finite and unstable. Ice melts into water. Water evaporates into air. Seeds become trees, trees produce fruit, and the right match on the right day turns it all to ash. Things are. But the things that are don’t stay the same.

First. This word carries two meanings. One is temporal — first in sequence, in cause and effect. I had parents. They had parents. At some point, there has to be a starting point. An infinite chain of cause and effect going back forever? I find that inherently absurd. Can I disprove it? I don’t know. But I see no reason to take it seriously. I look at it the way a chess grandmaster looks at a board — not every move is worth considering. I shrug my shoulders, roll my eyes, and move on.

The second meaning is structural — first in terms of building blocks. I’m made of organs,

which are made of cells,
which are made of molecules,
which are made of atoms,
which are made of particles,
which are made of quarks,
which are made of... I’m not sure we know yet.

At some point, there has to be a foundation. An infinite regress of smaller and smaller parts? I find that also inherently absurd. And if anyone wants to suggest otherwise, I give the same shrug and the same eye roll — unless, of course, HaKadosh Baruch Hu built that sort of infinity into the very fabric of the universe. A sense of the infinite within the finite. But then that just means that HaKadosh Baruch Hu Himself is the ultimate foundation. Either way, we arrive at the same place.

And here’s the key. Whether we approach it through time (cause and effect, going back to a beginning) or through structure (building blocks, going down to a foundation) — the Rambam is telling us we arrive at the same place. There is an entity which exists, which is the source of everything else that exists.

The Rambam calls this a *Matzui Rishon* — a First Existing Entity.

That’s all the Rambam tells us here. He doesn’t tell us *how* we know this. He doesn’t tell us what he means by “knowing” — whether it’s awareness, understanding, or rigorous proof. He leaves that unstated. For now, he simply wants us to know *that* such an entity exists.

The Dependency

So there exists a First Existing Entity — a Matzui Rishon — and everything else that exists comes from it.

But what exactly is the *relationship* between the Matzui Rishon and everything else?

The Rambam answers this with a thought experiment. Actually, two thought experiments — mirror images of each other.

Here’s an analogy that might help us feel what the Rambam is getting at.

Imagine someone invents a time machine. He travels back to the past, gets into a terrible car accident, and accidentally kills his parents — before he was ever born.

What happens to him?

He ceases to exist. Not dies — ceases. He’s erased from reality. Because his existence depends entirely on his parents. No parents, no him. He doesn’t have within himself the capacity for his own existence. He’s derivative. Dependent. And when the source is gone, so is he.

Now flip it.

Same time machine. Same car accident. But this time, he accidentally kills his younger self.

What happens to his parents?

Nothing. They’re fine. They’ll grieve, but they’ll still exist. Because their existence doesn’t depend on his. The dependency runs one way. He needs them for his existence. They don’t need him for their existence.

That is exactly what the Rambam is telling us about the Matzui Rishon and everything else.

וְאִם יַעֲלֶה עַל הַדַּעַת
שֶׁהוּא אֵינוֹ מָצוּי
אֵין דָּבָר אַחֵר יָכוֹל לְהִמָּצְאוֹת.

וְאִם יַעֲלֶה עַל הַדַּעַת
שֶׁאֵין כָּל הַנִּמְצָאִים מִלְּבַדּוֹ מְצוּיִים
הוּא לְבַדּוֹ יִהְיֶה מָצוּי.
וְלֹא יִבָּטֵל הוּא לְבִטּוּלָם.

If it were to arise in the mind
that the First Existent did not exist,
nothing else could exist at all.

And if it were to arise in the mind
that nothing exists besides Him,
He alone would still exist,
and He would not be nullified by their absence.

We don’t have within us the capacity for our own existence. We are entirely derivative. Entirely dependent. The Matzui Rishon doesn’t depend on us for anything.

The dependency runs one way.

We are one hundred percent dependent. The Matzui Rishon is one hundred percent independent.

Hashem Elokim Emet

Let’s recap what we’ve learned so far.

The Rambam has told us that there’s an ultimate source to all of reality — a Matzui Rishon. He brought all of reality into existence. All of reality is one hundred percent dependent upon Him. And He is in no way whatsoever dependent upon it.

Says the Rambam: this means something.

לְפִיכָךְ אֵין אֲמִתָּתוֹ כַּאֲמִתַּת אֶחָד מֵהֶם.

The nature of His reality is utterly different from ours. He is, in essence, the only truly existing entity.

Now, I don’t think the word *emet* here means “true” in the sense of true versus false. I think a better translation would be something like “real.” So: His reality is not like the reality of anything in the natural world. He is of a different nature than us entirely.

And the Rambam shows us that this idea is not his own — it’s found in the Navi Yirmiyahu:

הוּא שֶׁהַנָּבִיא אוֹמֵר וַה’ אֱלֹהִים אֱמֶת.

What did Yirmiyahu mean by *Hashem Elokim Emet*? Says the Rambam: he meant that Hashem is the true reality. Only Hashem is *Emet*. He alone truly exists. Nothing else exists the way He does.

הוּא לְבַדּוֹ הָאֱמֶת וְאֵין לְאַחֵר אֱמֶת כַּאֲמִתָּתוֹ.

And the Rambam adds: we find this same concept, in different words, in the Torah itself:

וְהוּא שֶׁהַתּוֹרָה אוֹמֶרֶת אֵין עוֹד מִלְּבַדּוֹ.

*Ein od milvado* — there is nothing else besides Him.

If you understand that everything exists only because of this Matzui Rishon, and that without Him nothing else could exist, then in the deepest sense — there really is nothing else. Everything else is an extension of His existence. A reflection of His reality. Dependent upon Him for every moment of its being.

The Mitzvah

Let’s take stock of what we’ve learned.

There is a First Existing Entity. He brings everything into existence. Everything depends on Him — if He didn’t exist, nothing could. But He depends on nothing — if nothing else existed, He would still be. His reality is not like our reality. He is the only truly existing entity. There is nothing else besides Him.

That’s the definition.

And now the Rambam tells us something remarkable:

וִידִיעַת דָּבָר זֶה מִצְוַת עֲשֵׂה.

And knowing this matter is a positive commandment.

According to the Rambam, everything we just learned is not simply philosophy or theology. It is a mitzvah — a commandment. This is something that we need to know, like we need to keep Shabbos and keep kashrus. Or perhaps even more so.

But of course, if there’s a commandment — and by commandment here, the Rambam means a mitzvat aseh min HaTorah, a positive commandment from the Torah itself — then it has to have a source in the Torah.

Where in the Torah does it tell us that we have a mitzvah to know all of this?

Says the Rambam: in our parasha. At Har Sinai. In the first of the Aseres HaDibros. When HaKadosh Baruch Hu said to us:

שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר אָנֹכִי ה’ אֱלֹהֶיךָ.

Anochi Hashem Elokecha.

Those three words, says the Rambam, are not just information. They are a commandment — a commandment to know and understand everything that the Rambam just explained to us.

And we should note: this is not something that the Rambam made up. This idea is found in the Gemara, in Masechet Makkos.

The Gemara is found at the bottom of daf 23b and continues to the top of 24a. It reads as follows:

דָּרַשׁ רַבִּי שִׂמְלַאי: שֵׁשׁ מֵאוֹת וּשְׁלֹשׁ עֶשְׂרֵה מִצְוֹת נֶאֶמְרוּ לוֹ לְמֹשֶׁה, שְׁלֹשׁ מֵאוֹת וְשִׁשִּׁים וְחָמֵשׁ לָאוִין כְּמִנְיַן יְמוֹת הַחַמָּה, וּמָאתַיִם וְאַרְבָּעִים וּשְׁמוֹנָה עֲשֵׂה כְּנֶגֶד אֵיבָרָיו שֶׁל אָדָם. אָמַר רַב הַמְנוּנָא: מַאי קְרָא – ״תּוֹרָה צִוָּה לָנוּ מֹשֶׁה מוֹרָשָׁה״, ״תּוֹרָה״ בְּגִימַטְרִיָּא שֵׁית מְאָה וְחַד סְרֵי הָוֵי, ״אָנֹכִי״ וְ״לֹא יִהְיֶה לְךָ״ – מִפִּי הַגְּבוּרָה שְׁמַעְנוּם.

Rabbi Simlai taught: Six hundred and thirteen mitzvos were said to Moshe. Three hundred and sixty-five negative commandments, corresponding to the days of the solar year, and two hundred and forty-eight positive commandments, corresponding to the limbs of a human being. Said Rav Hamnuna: What is the pasuk that tells us there are 613 mitzvos? He quotes a pasuk at the end of Sefer Devarim: *Torah tziva lanu Moshe, morasha kehilas Yaakov* — “Moshe commanded us Torah, an inheritance for the congregation of Yaakov.” The word *Torah* in gematria equals 611. “Anochi” and “Lo yihyeh lecha” — we heard directly from the mouth of the Almighty.

Now, you may notice that 611 and 613 are not the same number. Rav Hamnuna noticed that too. But he says: there are two more mitzvos. Anochi and Lo yihyeh lecha — the first two statements of HaKadosh Baruch Hu at Har Sinai. Those we heard directly from HaKadosh Baruch Hu Himself. So you take the 611 mitzvos that Moshe commanded us, add the two that Hashem commanded us directly, and you get 613.

For our purposes, we just want to note that Rav Hamnuna says that the phrase Anochi Hashem Elokecha — which is what he references when he uses the word Anochi — is a mitzvah. The Rambam didn’t make this up. This understanding already existed in the time of Chazal. The Rambam is simply explaining to us what the mitzvah is.

The Problem

But whether the idea comes from Chazal or from the Rambam, we still don’t understand what either of them is talking about.

Because where is the command?

Let’s look at the other mitzvah that came mi-pi ha-Gvurah, directly from Hashem: Lo yihyeh lecha — “There shall not be for you [other gods].” That’s command language. You cannot do this.

Or look later in the Aseres HaDibros. Zachor es yom haShabbos l’kadsho — Remember the day of Shabbos to sanctify it. That’s a command. Lo sirtzach — Don’t murder. That’s a command. Lo signov— Don’t steal. That’s a command. They’re all phrased as directives. HaKadosh Baruch Hu tells us: do this, don’t do that.

But Anochi Hashem Elokecha? That’s a statement. An introduction. A declaration. HaKadosh Baruch Hu is telling us who is speaking — but He’s not telling us to do anything.

So how does the Rambam, following Chazal, derive a mitzvah from this?

We need to understand these three words. Because evidently there’s a lot more hidden in them than we realized. We thought it was just information — a sort of introduction before the “real” commandments begin. But evidently we’re missing something. And we want to see what we’re missing.

In order to do so, we have to take the time to understand each of these three words: the word Anochi, the word Hashem, and the word Elokecha. We’ve already explored the names Hashem and Elokim a bit, so that will be easier. But even the word Anochi has hidden treasures in it that we didn’t think to look for.

And then — and this is the beautiful part — we’re going to have to figure out how these three words relate to each other. How to punctuate them, so to speak. Because the relationship of one word to the next is not at all obvious, as we will see when we start to explore the commentaries.

These three words. What they mean. And what they mean when put together — particularly in the context of Har Sinai.

Anochi

In order to see how this is a mitzvah, we first have to address a particular challenge — or one might say, opportunity — that exists within the Hebrew language.

Hebrew doesn’t have punctuation. And Hebrew doesn’t really have a word for “is” or “am.” Which means we have to figure out where to put them ourselves.

And that’s particularly true with our verse:

אָנֹכִי ה’ אֱלֹהֶיךָ אֲשֶׁר הוֹצֵאתִיךָ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם

I am Hashem your God who took you out of the land of Egypt.

How are we to translate this verse? It’s not so simple — particularly because we don’t know where to place the word “is” or “am” in this sentence. And there’s nothing in the actual words themselves that gives any indication. The answer comes from how we intone the verse, not from anything inherent in the words as they’re written on the page, on the daf, in the Torah.

As such, let me give you three possible translations.

Possibility One: I, Hashem your God, am the one who took you out of Egypt.

Let’s ask ourselves: according to this translation, what is the message of HaKadosh Baruch Hu? What does He want us to know?

He wants us to know that He is the one who took us out of Egypt. The phrase “Hashem your God” is what we call a parenthetical statement. It’s not what He’s trying to tell us. He’s not trying to tell us about Himself — that He is Hashem, our God. He’s just identifying who He is. So the point would be: He and no other god, no other power, is the one who took us out of Egypt. That is what He would be telling us if we intone the verse in such a way that this would be the proper translation.

Possibility Two: I am Hashem — your God, the one who took you out of Egypt.

Let’s ask the same question. What does He want us to know?

Here, the message is that He is Hashem — Yud-Keh-Vav-Keh. And He’s just identifying a bit more about who Hashem is, what His function is. His essence is Hashem, but He’s also our God, and He’s also the one who took us out of Egypt. But those are parenthetical statements.

Possibility Three: I am Hashem, your God — the one who took you out of Egypt.

We’ll ask our question one last time. What does He want us to know?

According to this reading, He wants us to know that He is Hashem. And He wants us to know that He is our God. Both of those points are being communicated at once. What the fact about taking us out of Egypt has to do with anything — that’s not our focus right now. It’s an interesting question, but not one we’re going to address today.

The Third Reading

Now, this third reading is the one we need.

If we are going to derive a mitzvah from this line, we need to understand what it means for Hashem to address the entire Jewish people all at once, to reveal Himself unmasked to all of them, and to say: Anochi Hashem Elokecha (אָנֹכִי ה’ אֱלֹהֶיךָ) — I am Hashem, your God. Where the main point is not something about what Hashem did, but something about who He is. That He is the entity represented by the combination of the proper name Hashem and the descriptive name Elokim.

Ani and Anochi

To get the full weight of this statement, we have to understand the difference between the word ani (אֲנִי) and the word anochi (אָנֹכִי).

It’s quite fascinating that in the Hebrew language, there are two ways to say the word “I.” One is ani (אֲנִי) — aleph, nun, yud. The other is anochi (אָנֹכִי) — aleph, nun, chaf, yud.

If there are two ways to say the word “I,” it stands to reason that there is some significant nuance in meaning between them.

And indeed, the Malbim offers one such nuance. He gives a very interesting example.

Imagine someone says, “I am standing.” In English, he could mean: I am standing as opposed to sitting. Or he could mean: I am standing, as opposed to the other people who are sitting.

In the first example, the focus is on what he’s doing. What am I doing? Standing or sitting? In the second, the focus is on him as opposed to other people. I’m the one standing — not others.

Says the Malbim: the word ani (אֲנִי) relates to the first idea — something about what one is doing. If I want to say that I am standing as opposed to sitting, I’d say ani omeid (אֲנִי עוֹמֵד). I’m not talking about me and my personhood. I’m not the focus — what I’m doing is the focus.

But if I want to talk about me — if the focus is on my personhood — I’d use anochi (אָנֹכִי). If I want to say I’m standing and no one else is, then it’s anochi omeid (אָנֹכִי עוֹמֵד).

As such: Anochi Hashem Elokecha (אָנֹכִי ה’ אֱלֹהֶיךָ).

When the message is that HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants us to know something about Him — that’s anochi. Not just “no one else” — although that’s part of it. But: I want you to know something about the essence of who I am. I want you to understand who is speaking to you. And that can be expressed in the two words: Hashem Elokecha.

The Names

Now, we have already spent time on these two names (though there is more to the names than we mentioned before). But for now, we just have to note that the philosophical definition the Rambam gave to God — everything we just went through at the beginning of Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah — can be derived from these names.

As a short reminder, the Shem Havayah (Yud-Keh-Vav-Keh) is considered Hashem’s “proper” name. Whereas Shem Elokim relates to His “position.”

It’s as if Bibi said, “I am Bibi Netanyahu, your Prime Minister.” His name is Bibi Netanyahu. His position is Prime Minister.

So it is with God. He has a proper name which tells us something about the essential nature of Hashem (as far as we can relate to it). And He has a position which tells us something about how Hashem created and runs the world.

Within that name and that position, if you understand what they mean, you understand everything the Rambam just laid out. It’s all in there. You just have to understand what the names mean.

And if you understand the grammar of the word anochi, then you understand that when all of Am Yisrael stood before Hashem at Har Sinai — this is what He wanted them to know.

I am of a totally different nature than anything else. I am the ultimate source of all reality. All reality finds existence within Me. I am totally independent of the world. And you are totally dependent upon Me.

That is who I am.

One Moment, One Message

But we still don’t have a mitzvah yet.

We can see how the concept is there — this is what Hashem is saying. And we can see how the philosophically exact language the Rambam uses at the beginning of his work is found within the names of God as expressed directly to the Jewish people at Har Sinai.

But where is the command?

So this is how I see it.

From the first moment that HaKadosh Baruch Hu spoke to Moshe Rabbeinu and told him that He was going to take the Jewish people out of slavery and bring them to Eretz Yisrael, He mentioned that they were going to serve Him on this mountain — Har Sinai. And indeed, the entire request to Paro was framed upon this revelation. They didn’t come to Paro and say, “Set us free and let us return to our homeland.” They said, “Let us go into the desert and serve Hashem.” Let us have Matan Torah.

And then finally, HaKadosh Baruch Hu brings the entire Jewish people before Him, and He is going to speak to them directly. One time.

According to Rav Hamnuna, this is the only line they heard directly from Hashem. The rest was conveyed through Moshe (see Rashi). Anochi Hashem Elokecha and Lo yihyeh lecha — I am Hashem your God, and you will not have any other gods.

But only one part of this says anything about Hashem Himself. Lo yihyeh lecha is just saying: you’re not going to have anyone else. It’s as if your wife says, “I am your wife — you’re not going to have any other girlfriends.” When you get married to me, that’s it. It’s just the two of us. But only one part says something about who she is.

So there’s only one line in which Hashem says to the Jewish people directly anything about Himself.

And this, evidently, is the one message He wanted them to hear directly from Him. Not through Moshe Rabbeinu. When the whole nation was in front of Him, and He could say whatever He wanted to say to them — what did He want to say? What did He want them to hear directly from Him, while the rest could be passed on through Moshe?

Understand who I am. Understand the relationship between the two of us — the nature of that relationship. Because everything else flows out from it. It is the yesod of all the yesodos. It is the basis of the entire relationship. It’s why we do everything we do. The entire structure and relationship and everything else flows out from that.

And so — if I only have one moment, and only one thing to say to you — this is what I want to say.

The Command is Understood

And so I ask you.

If Hashem thought that this was the most important message to give over to the Jewish people — and this was the one message He wanted all the Jewish people to hear directly from Him — do you think this was just something they were supposed to hear and get for the moment, but afterwards they could remember it if they wanted to or forget if they wanted to?

Do you think Hashem wanted them to know this — and their children, and their grandchildren, and their great-grandchildren?

It is self-evident. It is obvious. This is what Hashem wants every single Yid in every single generation to know.

And therefore — there’s no need to command.

Because once you hear it, you know. This is what we’re supposed to know. Not just on an intellectual level, but in our guts. Intuitively. At the foundation and the deepest level of who we are. Because when we hear Hashem say that — we get it. We live that. We experience that connection.

The mitzvah is built into the entire way the statement was given over. The fact that it was to everyone. From Hashem directly to them.

When you’re talking to Moshe, then you have to tell Moshe: command them. But when I’m speaking to them directly — you don’t have to say that.

If your wife says to you, “I’m your wife,” she doesn’t have to add, “Remember that.” It’s self-evident. It’s understood.

If your parent says to you, “I’m your father, I’m your mother,” they don’t have to add an explanation of how to act. They do sometimes — but if the child gets it, they don’t need to.

If a friend says, “That’s your father — you shouldn’t act that way. That’s your mother — you shouldn’t talk that way. That’s your wife — you shouldn’t treat her that way” — then they add in the command.

But when it comes directly from the source?

The command is understood.

Share masmid

Freedom. That is where we start this week’s parsha — with full freedom.

Paro attacks.
G-d responds.
We sing.
And now we are free.

But then what?

First things first — we travel three days into the desert and don’t find any water. That, of course, is a problem.

We travel further — to Marah — and we do find water. But we can’t drink it; it’s bitter. The problem persists. And we complain (וַיִּלֹּ֧נוּ): ‘What will we drink (מה נשתה)?’

As far as I can tell, this is a perfectly reasonable question. There is no indication that God, or Moshe, or anyone else is upset by it. And indeed, there is a solution.

Moshe davens.
God instructs — throw a certain tree into the water.
And we have water to drink.

Problem solved.

But it gets better.

We then arrive at Elim and find twelve springs of water.

At this point, we have clearly moved beyond crisis. This is no longer a story of scarcity or emergency. In the desert, water is life — and here there is abundance.

But of course, it seems like there is something more going on here than our technical needs being taken care of. After all, there are twelve springs. It is hard to read Chumash and come across the number twelve without taking note. That number carries meaning in the literary way God guides the Jewish people.

Something is being hinted at here.

And when we move beyond water into the world of food, that suspicion only grows stronger. For not only are there twelve springs of water — there are also seventy date palms.

Twelve and seventy.

Could this have anything to do with the twelve names and seventy souls that came down to — and were freed from — Egypt?

Let us recall:

וְאֵ֗לֶּה שְׁמוֹת֙ בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל הַבָּאִ֖ים מִצְרָ֑יְמָה
אֵ֣ת יַעֲקֹ֔ב אִ֥ישׁ וּבֵית֖וֹ בָּֽאוּ׃
רְאוּבֵ֣ן שִׁמְע֔וֹן לֵוִ֖י וִיהוּדָֽה׃
יִשָּׂשכָ֥ר זְבוּלֻ֖ן וּבִנְיָמִֽן׃ דָּ֥ן וְנַפְתָּלִ֖י גָּ֥ד וְאָשֵֽׁר׃
וַֽיְהִ֗י כׇּל־נֶ֛פֶשׁ יֹצְאֵ֥י יֶֽרֶךְ־יַעֲקֹ֖ב שִׁבְעִ֣ים נָ֑פֶשׁ
וְיוֹסֵ֖ף הָיָ֥ה בְמִצְרָֽיִם׃

English translation:

And these are the names of the children of Israel,
who were coming into Egypt —
with Yaakov,
each man and his household came.

Reuven, Shimon, Levi, and Yehudah.
Yissachar, Zevulun, and Binyamin.
Dan and Naftali, Gad and Asher.

And all the souls who came forth from the loins of Yaakov
were seventy souls;
and Yosef was already in Egypt.

Indeed, let’s take this one step further — these dates trees were able to grow because of these springs of water. They literally drew water from these springs and used them to blossom.

So too, the seventy souls sprang up from the twelve sons of Yaakov. And just as the water of the streams are literally present within the fruit of the date palms, so too the 12 sons of Yaakov — and their 12 names — are themselves counted among the seventy souls who went down to Egypt.

Now, as compelling as this is — it’s worth noting that the Midrash Halacha (which Rashi brings down) has a different understanding of the significance of the number seventy — they hold that it relates to the seventy elders (presumably of the Sanhedrin).

Seems a bit out of left field.

For now, though, let’s just note that this does not seem to be a coincidence — there is clearly something going on with these twelve springs and seventy date palms. For some reason or other — right here, right now — at the beginning of our journey, we need to encounter these springs and these trees.

Why?

We don’t know — and hopefully I will someday be able to delve into this aspect of the story further. For now, we’ll note it and move on.

We travel from Elim and arrive in Midbar Sin — on the fifteenth day of the second month after leaving Egypt. In other words, on the day that will eventually become Pesach Sheni.

Is there any connection? I don’t know yet. I’m just reading and wondering.

Either way, we once again complain (וַיִּלּ֜וֹנוּ). But this time, it sounds anything but reasonable:

וַיֹּאמְר֨וּ אֲלֵהֶ֜ם בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֗ל
מִֽי־יִתֵּ֨ן מוּתֵ֤נוּ בְיַד־יְהֹוָה֙ בְּאֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרַ֔יִם
בְּשִׁבְתֵּ֙נוּ֙ עַל־סִ֣יר הַבָּשָׂ֔ר בְּאׇכְלֵ֥נוּ לֶ֖חֶם לָשֹׂ֑בַע
כִּֽי־הוֹצֵאתֶ֤ם אֹתָ֙נוּ֙ אֶל־הַמִּדְבָּ֣ר הַזֶּ֔ה
לְהָמִ֛ית אֶת־כׇּל־הַקָּהָ֥ל הַזֶּ֖ה בָּרָעָֽב׃

English translation:

And the children of Israel said to them:
‘Would that we had died by the hand of Hashem in the land of Egypt,
when we sat by the pot of meat,
when we ate bread to fullness;
for you have brought us out into this wilderness
to put to death this entire assembly in hunger.’

Whoa — what happened?

Why not simply ask, ‘What will we eat?’ — just as they earlier asked, ‘What will we drink?’ Why this extreme response?

And did they forgot that just a week or two ago they had no water — and that, in the end, they found not just water, but abundance: twelve springs of water?

Yes, it took a moment. But the problem was solved.

Why the doom and gloom?
Why the death wish?
Why the sense of no hope.

After all, lack of water is far more dangerous than lack of food. And yet here, in the desert, the (seeming) absence of food is perceived as a death sentence for the nation as a whole.

Why?

Clearly, they viewed this situation as significantly worse than the lack of drinkable — or any — water that they had experienced not long before. And interestingly, G-d’s response suggests that they may have a point.

Because this time, G-d does not lead to them to a place of bounty. He does not reveal a hidden resource. Instead, He bends — or suspends — the natural order itself and rains food down from the heavens.

Which suggest that, on some level, their assessment of reality was correct.

From a natural perspective, there was no way to bring an entire nation through this desert and have them survive. And from that perspective, the complaint has a certain logic to it. They were not interested in freedom for freedoms sake if the cost of that freedom was national suicide.

But I suspect that this was precisely the point.

G-d intentionally brought them into a place where logic, experience and reason all said: this cannot work.

And it was precisely there — in that arational space — that G-d introduces a test: whether or not we could walk in His Torah:

וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהֹוָה֙ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֔ה
הִנְנִ֨י מַמְטִ֥יר לָכֶ֛ם לֶ֖חֶם מִן־הַשָּׁמָ֑יִם
וְיָצָ֨א הָעָ֤ם וְלָֽקְטוּ֙ דְּבַר־י֣וֹם בְּיוֹמ֔וֹ
לְמַ֧עַן אֲנַסֶּ֛נּוּ הֲיֵלֵ֥ךְ בְּתוֹרָתִ֖י אִם־לֹֽא

English translation:

And Hashem said to Moshe:
‘Behold, I am about to rain down for you bread from the heavens;
and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion on its day,
in order that I may test them —
whether they will walk in My Torah or not.’

Which brings us to the questions.

Why the need for a test at all?
Why is the test through food?
What is the connection between food and the Torah?
What is the connection between food and Shabbos?
And why now?
- Why not immediately create this test?
- Why wait until after Marah — after the twelve springs and seventy date trees?

I hope to deal with some of these questions this week (others will have to wait to another time).

And while we’re asking: what is the deal with Marah and the twelve springs and seventy date trees.

Those stories go almost as quickly as they come. A brief mention and that is it.
But — and this is an important but — let’s note what is hiding in plain site within those stories.

At Marah, there is Torah:

וַיִּצְעַ֣ק אֶל־יְהֹוָ֗ה
וַיּוֹרֵ֤הוּ יְהֹוָה֙ עֵ֔ץ
וַיַּשְׁלֵךְ֙ אֶל־הַמַּ֔יִם
וַֽיִּמְתְּק֖וּ הַמָּ֑יִם

שָׁ֣ם שָׂ֥ם ל֛וֹ חֹ֥ק וּמִשְׁפָּ֖ט
וְשָׁ֥ם נִסָּֽהוּ׃

וַיֹּ֩אמֶר֩
אִם־שָׁמ֨וֹעַ תִּשְׁמַ֜ע לְק֣וֹל ׀ יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֗יךָ
וְהַיָּשָׁ֤ר בְּעֵינָיו֙ תַּעֲשֶׂ֔ה
וְהַֽאֲזַנְתָּ֙ לְמִצְוֺתָ֔יו
וְשָׁמַרְתָּ֖ כׇּל־חֻקָּ֑יו
כׇּֽל־הַמַּחֲלָ֞ה אֲשֶׁר־שַׂ֤מְתִּי בְמִצְרַ֙יִם֙
לֹא־אָשִׂ֣ים עָלֶ֔יךָ
כִּ֛י אֲנִ֥י יְהֹוָ֖ה רֹפְאֶֽךָ

English translation:

And Moshe cried out to Hashem;
and Hashem showed him a tree.
He cast it into the waters,
and the waters became sweet.

There He set for them statute and judgment,
and there He tested them.

And He said:
‘If you will surely listen to the voice of Hashem your God,
and do what is upright in His eyes,
and give ear to His commandments,
and guard all His statutes,
all the illness that I placed upon Egypt
I will not place upon you—
for I am Hashem, your healer.’

Here we see some sort of connection between water and Torah. Okay, it’s not food — but food and water are essentially two sides of the same coin. And we have already noted the (seeming) connection between the twelve springs and seventy date trees on the one hand and the twelve names and seventy souls that came down to Egypt on the other.

And now we note that it is the descendants of those twelve sons and seventy souls who are here, at this moment in this desert, being given this Torah.

They are the ones who are receiving the chok u’mishpat (חֹ֥ק וּמִשְׁפָּ֖ט).
They are the ones who G-d will test — to see whether or not they will walk in G-d’s Torah.
They are the ones who will soon stand at Har Sinai, hear G-d declare that He is Hashem, their G-d.
And they — or their children — will be the ones who fully receive the Torah at the end of forty years in the desert.

And it is here — at Marah and Elim, the first two post-Yam Suf stops in this forty-year journey — that we are given an introduction to the story of the manna, and to its test: whether we will walk in G-d’s Torah.

It all seems pretty connected to me.

The Torah connection we will have to explore another time — but just note, it is there and it needs to be understood.

For now, though, I just want to focus on the element of food.
And I would like to do so by first going back to the beginning.
The very beginning.
As in day one beginning.

The Heavens and the Earth

We all know that in the beginning, G-d created the heavens and the earth. But, interestingly enough — the Torah does not seem to be so interested in the heavens, just the earth.

For example, take a look at the second verse of the Torah (the one that follows in the beginning):

וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָיְתָ֥ה תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ
וְחֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י תְה֑וֹם
וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם

English translation:

And the earth was tohu va-vohu,
and darkness was upon the face of the watery-depth,
and a G-dly wind hovered over the face of the waters.

Note the subject — the earth. The earth (ארץ) is tohu va-vohu (whatever that means). And the waters in this verse refer to the waters that are upon the earth (at least that is how Rashi reads it — and we’ll go with Rashi for now).

And speaking of the waters — they reappear in day two — when G-d splits them into the upper and lower waters. And those lower waters — they reappear on day three, when G-d gathers them into one place so that the dry land can appear.

But what about the upper waters? If we assume that they refer to the rain as the Ibn Ezra, Sforno, the Malbim (and perhaps also Rashi) do, then the upper waters are those waters which fall upon the earth.

In short, the Chumash starts out with a broad view and slowly and methodically moves towards the earth in the more limited sense of the word (aka dry land).

We start with (celestial) heavens and the (planet) earth.
We then move to just the planet earth.
We then move to just the dry land.

And now — with the dry land and the rain it needs firmly established, we narrow our focus again — to food.

וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֗ים תַּֽדְשֵׁ֤א הָאָ֙רֶץ֙ דֶּ֗שֶׁא
עֵ֚שֶׂב מַזְרִ֣יעַ זֶ֔רַע
עֵ֣ץ פְּרִ֞י עֹ֤שֶׂה פְּרִי֙
לְמִינ֔וֹ אֲשֶׁ֥ר זַרְעוֹ־ב֖וֹ עַל־הָאָ֑רֶץ וַֽיְהִי־כֵֽן׃

וַתּוֹצֵ֨א הָאָ֜רֶץ דֶּ֠שֶׁא
עֵ֣שֶׂב מַזְרִ֤יעַ זֶ֙רַע֙ לְמִינֵ֔הוּ
וְעֵ֧ץ עֹֽשֶׂה־פְּרִ֛י אֲשֶׁ֥ר זַרְעוֹ־ב֖וֹ לְמִינֵ֑הוּ

English translation:

And God said:
‘Let the earth bring forth vegetation —
seed-bearing grasses,
and fruit trees producing fruit,
each according to its kind,
whose seed is within it, upon the earth.’
And it was so.

And the earth brought forth vegetation —
seed-bearing grasses according to their kinds,
and trees producing fruit
whose seed is within it, according to their kinds.

We are focused on plant life. But notice the focus — grasses (עֵ֚שֶׂב) and fruit trees (עֵ֣ץ פְּרִ֞י). And then let’s fast forward to the sixth day — and to G-d’s blessing to man:

וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֗ים
הִנֵּה֩ נָתַ֨תִּי לָכֶ֜ם אֶת־כׇּל־עֵ֣שֶׂב ׀ זֹרֵ֣עַ זֶ֗רַע אֲשֶׁר֙ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י כׇל־הָאָ֔רֶץ
וְאֶת־כׇּל־הָעֵ֛ץ אֲשֶׁר־בּ֥וֹ פְרִי־עֵ֖ץ זֹרֵ֣עַ זָ֑רַע לָכֶ֥ם יִֽהְיֶ֖ה לְאׇכְלָֽה׃

וּֽלְכׇל־חַיַּ֣ת הָ֠אָ֠רֶץ
וּלְכׇל־ע֨וֹף הַשָּׁמַ֜יִם
וּלְכֹ֣ל ׀ רוֹמֵ֣שׂ עַל־הָאָ֗רֶץ אֲשֶׁר־בּוֹ֙ נֶ֣פֶשׁ חַיָּ֔ה
אֶת־כׇּל־יֶ֥רֶק עֵ֖שֶׂב לְאׇכְלָ֑ה וַֽיְהִי־כֵֽן׃

English translation:

And God said:
‘Behold, I have given you every seed-bearing grass
that is upon the face of all the earth,
and every tree in which there is the fruit of a tree, bearing seed —
to you it shall be for food.

And to every beast of the earth,
and to every bird of the heavens,
and to everything that creeps upon the earth in which there is a living soul,
every green grass for food.’
And it was so.

What an interesting connection. G-d tells man that he has given him for food

• Every seed-bearing grass (עֵ֣שֶׂב ׀ זֹרֵ֣עַ זֶ֗רַע)

• And every tree that bears fruit (כׇּל־הָעֵ֛ץ אֲשֶׁר־בּ֥וֹ פְרִי־עֵ֖ץ)

Which is exactly what was mentioned on day three. Take a look.

GRASSES:

• Day three: seed-bearing grasses (עֵ֚שֶׂב מַזְרִ֣יעַ זֶ֔רַע)

• Day six: seed-bearing grass (עֵ֣שֶׂב זֹרֵ֣עַ זֶ֗רַע)

FRUIT:

• Day three: trees producing fruit (עֵ֧ץ עֹֽשֶׂה־פְּרִ֛)

• Day six: every tree in which there is the fruit (כׇּל־הָעֵ֛ץ אֲשֶׁר־בּ֥וֹ פְרִי)

Of course, in the plant world — there is much more than just grasses (read vegetables) and fruit. There are bushes and flowers and more. But that is not the focus of the Chumash. The Chumash focuses solely on food (including the food that the animals eat).

And that is interesting. It’s almost as if we are slowly zooming in and moving towards food. In the beginning, G-d worked towards creating food!

A Slight Tangent

Before continuing, I’d like to go on a tangent — a short one, but a tangent nonetheless.

I’ve just argued that the first three days are essentially about setting up the conditions for food. The vegetation created on day three is precisely what G-d later tells man He is giving him to eat.

But what about the other days?

I don’t yet have an answer for day four — the sun, the moon, the stars. That will have to wait.

But days five and six? Those are about creating animal life: fish, birds, land animals — and then man. And here, too, we see the same pattern. The Torah is not giving us a comprehensive catalog of creation. It is telling us about creation in relation to man.

Let’s trace it through.

Before G-d speaks to man about food, He speaks to him about dominion.

In verse 26, before G-d actually makes man, He clearly articulates what man’s position will be in the creation vis-a-vis the other animals:

וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֔ים
נַֽעֲשֶׂ֥ה אָדָ֛ם בְּצַלְמֵ֖נוּ כִּדְמוּתֵ֑נוּ

וְיִרְדּוּ֩ בִדְגַ֨ת הַיָּ֜ם
וּבְע֣וֹף הַשָּׁמַ֗יִם
וּבַבְּהֵמָה֙
וּבְכׇל־הָאָ֔רֶץ
וּבְכׇל־הָרֶ֖מֶשׁ הָֽרֹמֵ֥שׂ עַל־הָאָֽרֶץ

English translation:

And G-d said:
Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness,

and they will rule over the fish of the sea,
and the birds of the heavens,
and the domesticated animals,
and all the earth,
and every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.

In short, G-d notes that man will be made in the “image of G-d” (b’Tzelem Elokim — בצלם א-לקים) — and that because he will be made in Tzelem Elokim, he will rule over these creatures.

All this G-d stated before He made man. And then, once He actually made man, he essentially repeated this point — but this time He articulated it to man himself:

וַיְבָ֣רֶךְ אֹתָם֮ אֱלֹהִים֒
וַיֹּ֨אמֶר לָהֶ֜ם אֱלֹהִ֗ים

פְּר֥וּ וּרְב֛וּ
וּמִלְא֥וּ אֶת־הָאָ֖רֶץ
וְכִבְשֻׁ֑הָ

וּרְד֞וּ בִּדְגַ֤ת הַיָּם֙
וּבְע֣וֹף הַשָּׁמַ֔יִם
וּבְכׇל־חַיָּ֖ה הָֽרֹמֶ֥שֶׂת עַל־הָאָֽרֶץ

English translation:

And G-d blessed them,
and G-d said to them:

Be fruitful and multiply,
and fill the earth
and conquer it,

and rule over the fish of the sea,
and the birds of the heavens,
and every living thing that moves upon the earth.

Now, notice the parallelism.

On day five, G-d creates first the fish, then the birds.
And then — on day six — the land animals.

In short — the animals that G-d created on days five and six are the animals that He gives man dominion on when He blesses him. Just like He gave as a gift to man the food that He created over the first three days of creatin.

The parallelism is quite noticeable.
So what is going on here?

According to this reading, the Torah is not attempting to explain or catalog every facet of G-d’s creation — nor is it trying to answer some deep or mysterious philosophical questions.

Rather — the narrative focuses on those things which relate to man.
The animals that man will have dominion over.
The food that man (and those very same animals) will eat.

But more than that — in terms of food — the narrative notes that G-d gave us our food:

And more than that, G-d went out of His way to tell us that:

וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֗ים הִנֵּה֩ נָתַ֨תִּי לָכֶ֜ם

English translation:

And G-d said: take note, I have given all of you…

From Creation to the Garden

So we’ve just finished the story of creation. The heavens and the earth, the vegetation and the animals, the gift of food and the blessing of dominion — all of it building toward man, and all of it given to him.

And no sooner do we finish than the Torah seems to start again. A second creation story. The story of Gan Eden.

And here, something shifts.

Creation is about the natural order. Hashem sets up a world that works — sun and rain, seeds and soil, animals and plants — and gives man access to all of it. It’s a gift. And Hashem wants us to know it’s a gift.

Gan Eden is different.

Gan Eden is not about the natural order. It’s about a garden.

What is a garden? A garden is an act of love. Someone plants it, tends it, cultivates it. A garden is not wild nature. It’s nature shaped by care.

And in this garden, Hashem places man. Not to survive. To enjoy.

וַיַּצְמַח יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהִים מִן הָאֲדָמָה כׇּל עֵץ נֶחְמָד לְמַרְאֶה וְטוֹב לְמַאֲכָל

And Hashem G-d caused to grow from the ground every tree that is pleasant to look at and good to eat.

Pleasant to look at. Good to eat. This is not just sustenance. This is beauty. This is pleasure. This is experience.

And then Hashem says to man:

מִכֹּל עֵץ הַגָּן אָכֹל תֹּאכֵל

From every tree of the garden you may surely eat.

Eat. Enjoy. Experience the goodness of My world.

There is, of course, one exception — one tree that is off-limits. We know how that story ends. But for now, let’s just note the setup: Hashem creates a place of beauty and pleasure, fills it with food, places man inside, and invites him to enjoy it.

And more than that — Hashem is there. In the garden. With man.

This is not just provision. This is relationship.

Think about it. When you remember the food your grandmother used to make — the cookies, the soup, whatever it was — what do you remember? The recipe? The ingredients?

No. You remember the love. You remember her. The food was an expression of care, of relationship, of wanting to give you something good. The love was baked into it.

That’s what Gan Eden is. Hashem and man, together in a garden, with food as the medium of relationship. Not just “here are resources, use them as you wish.” But “I made this for you. Enjoy it. I’m here with you.”

Man has a job in the garden, of course. L’ovdah ul’shomrah — to work it and to guard it. There is responsibility. But the responsibility exists within a framework of love and gift.

In the first chapter of Bereishis, the story of creation ends with Hashem telling man: I have given you the food of the natural world.

In the second chapter, the story continues — but now it’s not about all the food in the world. It’s about a special place. A garden. Where enjoyment and responsibility come together. Where Hashem and man dwell together. Where food is not just sustenance, but relationship.

Keep that in mind. We’re going to need it.

The Food Hidden in Shabbos

We might think we’re done with creation and food. After all, once G-d makes His declaration to man, the Chumash lets us know:

G-d saw everything that He had made, and behold — it was very good. And it was evening and it was morning, the sixth day.

And then:

וַיְכֻלּ֛וּ הַשָּׁמַ֥יִם וְהָאָ֖רֶץ וְכׇל־צְבָאָֽם

The heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts.

Creation is over. The story of creation and food must be over as well.

But we have to look a little further.

וַיְכַ֤ל אֱלֹהִים֙ בַּיּ֣וֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִ֔י מְלַאכְתּ֖וֹ אֲשֶׁ֣ר עָשָׂ֑ה וַיִּשְׁבֹּת֙ בַּיּ֣וֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִ֔י מִכׇּל־מְלַאכְתּ֖וֹ אֲשֶׁ֥ר עָשָֽׂה וַיְבָ֤רֶךְ אֱלֹהִים֙ אֶת־י֣וֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִ֔י וַיְקַדֵּ֖שׁ אֹת֑וֹ כִּ֣י ב֤וֹ שָׁבַת֙ מִכׇּל־מְלַאכְתּ֔וֹ אֲשֶׁר־בָּרָ֥א אֱלֹהִ֖ים לַעֲשֽׂוֹת

And G-d completed on the seventh day His work that He had done, and He ceased on the seventh day from all His work that He had done. And G-d blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on it He ceased from all His work that G-d created to do.

Two words stand out: blessing and sanctification. Vayevarech and vayekadesh.

What does it mean to bless a day? What does it mean to sanctify a day? How does one take a period of time and make it blessed? Make it holy?

And what does any of this have to do with food?

To find out, let’s take a look at Rashi.

Rashi picks up on these two words — vayevarech and vayekadesh — and says something striking:

He blessed it with the manna. He sanctified it with the manna.

The manna from our parsha. The manna that is falling right now in the story.

How did He bless it with the manna? Rashi explains: All the days of the week, manna fell in the amount of one omer per person — the same amount for everyone. But on the sixth day, a double portion fell. That is the blessing.

How did He sanctify it with the manna? Because the manna didn’t fall at all on Shabbos. That is the holiness.

And then Rashi adds something important: u’mikra katuv al ha’atid — the verse is written about the future. The pasuk isn’t saying that G-d, at the moment of creation, actually made Shabbos blessed or holy. Rather, Shabbos was prepared from creation for this future purpose — but the actual blessing and sanctification happened later. In our parsha. When the manna fell.

Are you with me so far?

I hope only partially. Because this Rashi, as beautiful as it will turn out to be, right now doesn’t make sense. And I hope you’re noticing that.

If not, let me help.

Before we can see the problems clearly, we need working definitions of bracha and kedusha.

The word bracha, as I understand it, means to give more. And that intuitively makes sense. When we bless someone, we mean more of the good things — health, sustenance, security. More of what makes life stable and allows us to flourish. Adding more of that is a bracha.

Kedusha — holiness — is different. Something is holy when it is set aside entirely for connecting to HaKadosh Baruch Hu.

A Sefer Torah is holy. Its sole purpose is to capture the word of G-d.

A Beis Knesses is holy. You enter that space to think about G-d, to relate to G-d, to speak to Him.

Tefillin and mezuzos are holy. They exist to help you remember and connect to G-d. They are G-d-centered objects.

And there’s one more element. It’s not simply that I decide to make something focused on G-d. It’s that G-d commands it, I respond, and then I create it with the intention that it be entirely for Him. The holiness emerges from that combination.

Now, these are objects. But evidently, G-d can also make time holy — setting aside periods that are designated for thinking about and relating to Him.

With those definitions in mind, let’s go back to Rashi.

Problem one: The blessing.

The Chumash tells us that G-d blessed the seventh day — vayevarech Elokim et yom hashevi’i. And Rashi says He blessed it through the double portion of manna.

That sounds nice. A double portion is more than a single portion. More food, more sustenance — that’s a bracha.

Except for one glaring problem.

The double portion fell on the sixth day. But the Chumash says G-d blessed the seventh day.

The sixth day is not the seventh day.

And it gets worse. Even if you say the extra manna on Friday was for Shabbos — at the end of the week, I have the same total amount I would have had anyway. One omer on Friday and one on Shabbos, or two omers on Friday and none on Shabbos. Either way, the total is identical. I just got paid early.

Where is the extra? Where is the bracha?

Problem two: The sanctification.

Rashi says G-d sanctified Shabbos with the manna — because it didn’t fall on Shabbos.

But how does the absence of manna make Shabbos holy?

If kedusha means something is set aside entirely for G-d, we need to find something here that points to Him. Not having manna fall doesn’t automatically mean I’m connecting to G-d. And Rashi doesn’t even mention not working. He just says the manna didn’t fall.

But I still have manna. It fell double the day before.

So if I’m not lacking food, and I’m not told to refrain from work — where is the holiness? What makes Shabbos about G-d?

We need something here that screams out His presence.

Maybe you have an idea already. But we have to find it. We have to put a finger on it.

And I don’t know if we have it yet.

Back to the Complaint

With all that behind us — creation, the gift of food, the garden — let’s return to our parsha. To the wilderness. To the manna. And to the complaint that preceded it.

We’ve already noted that the complaint about food was dramatically different from the complaint about water. When they lacked water at Marah, they simply asked: Mah nishteh? — “What will we drink?”

A reasonable question. No drama. No accusations. And Hashem answered it.

But when it comes to food, something shifts:

וַיֹּאמְרוּ אֲלֵהֶם בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל מִי יִתֵּן מוּתֵנוּ בְיַד יְהֹוָה בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם בְּשִׁבְתֵּנוּ עַל סִיר הַבָּשָׂר בְּאׇכְלֵנוּ לֶחֶם לָשֹׂבַע כִּי הוֹצֵאתֶם אֹתָנוּ אֶל הַמִּדְבָּר הַזֶּה לְהָמִית אֶת כׇּל הַקָּהָל הַזֶּה בָּרָעָב

Would that we had died by the hand of Hashem in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pot of meat, when we ate bread to fullness — for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this entire assembly with hunger.

What in the world happened here?

Why the death wish? Why the longing for Egypt? Why the accusation against Moshe and Aaron — that they brought us out, as if Hashem had nothing to do with it?

And what does it mean that they wanted to die “by the hand of Hashem”? That’s a strange phrase. It doesn’t sound like dying of old age. It sounds like punishment. Why would anyone want that?

Let’s slow down and try to understand.

Yad Hashem

The phrase Yad Hashem appears elsewhere in Tanakh — and the Malbim points us to a striking example.

In Sefer Shmuel, David is given a choice of punishments: famine, fleeing before enemies, or plague. And David chooses plague. Why? He says: Niplah na b’yad Hashem ki rabim rachamav — “Let us fall into the hand of Hashem, for His mercies are great.”

There are two noticeable points here.

One — that the phrase יד ה׳ (the hand of G-d) is clearly used by Dovid HaMelech in reference to a “plague” (read, dying by some disease that is not at all understood and over which we have no control). As such, it is a reasonable reading to suggest that too is the meaning of the phrase in our verse.

Two — dying via a plague in some way or other is more merciful than dying via starvation.

But how? Why is wasting away via starvation worse than wasting away from some horrible, debilitating disease?

The answer, the Malbim notes, is that when Hashem brings a plague, not everyone dies. There is suffering, yes. Perhaps even greater than dying by starvation (although, not necessarily so). But nonetheless, not everyone dies from the disease. At the very least, a remnant survives.

Starvation, on the other hand, has the potential to be total and absolute. If there is no food, then there is no food. And if that goes on long enough, then death follows. And it follows for everyone. No one ultimately speaking survives starvation.

As such, if you are in the desert and run out of food — then everyone dies. And now the complaint starts to make sense.

They’re not just saying they’d rather die full than hungry. Rather, they’re making a calculation about national survival. They’re saying: If we had stayed in Egypt and refused to leave — and G-d had struck us with a plague, then there is hope that at least some of us would have survived. There would have been a remnant. The Jewish people would have continued.

But you, Moshe and Aaron — you convinced everyone to leave (including those who didn’t want to go — see the Netzviv). And now look where we are. In a wilderness. With no food. And no way to get any.

This isn’t just hunger. This is national extinction.

And indeed, from a purely natural perspective, they had a point. There was no way to sustain an entire nation in the desert. The math didn’t work.

But that, of course, was precisely the point.

The Full Experience of Food

There’s another layer hidden in their words. Look carefully at what they longed for:

B’shivteinu al sir habasar — when we sat by the pot of meat B’ochleinu lechem lasova — when we ate bread to fullness

So we have sitting by the pot of meat.
And we have eating bread and being satiated.

Let’s start with the pot meat — the one we were sitting next to.

At this point — we are pre-eating. But what does it mean to be sitting by the pot? One possibility — it is the smell of the food and the joyful anticipation that comes with that.

That is one aspect of eat. That we don’t just enjoy the food itself, we enjoy the idea of the food. And that is an experience we have when we sit next to the pot.

But, of course, we don’t sit and wait — eventually we eat. And here we need to distinguish between the satiation of bread and the experience of eating meat. If you want to feel satiated, eat bread. If you want to experience some of the deeper pleasures of food — have meat.

And so, in this one verse — we can derive three aspects of the experience of eating food:

1. Anticipation — sitting by the pot, smelling what’s cooking, that joyful expectation of what’s to come

2. Pleasure — the experience of eating itself, the taste, the texture, the enjoyment

3. Satiation — the feeling afterwards, the sense of fullness and well-being

In other words, there is so much more to food than just surviving. There is the experience of food — and part of their complaint relates to that.

But even here, we have not fully explored the gamut of emotions and experiences wrapped up in food. There is more. And some of them are not nearly as positive — as we understood all too well when faced with the challenges of the desert.

The Fourth Element: Freedom from Worry

Rav Hirsch makes a remarkable observation. He writes:

“The threat of hunger — real or imagined — undermines all principles, and rescinds all noble resolves. As long as a man cannot disengage himself — not from the responsibility to provide for his family, but from the overwhelming anxiety resulting from this responsibility — he is unable to fully realize G-d’s Torah.”

There it is. The fourth element.

It’s not enough to have food. It’s not enough to enjoy food. You also need to be free from worry about food.

Think about a child in a healthy home. Does he worry about where dinner is coming from? Does he lie awake at night anxious about tomorrow’s breakfast? Of course not. He just shows up at the table and eats. The worry isn’t his. And because the worry isn’t his, he can more fully enjoy the meal (except, of course, for the vegetables).

That freedom — that trust — is itself part of the experience of eating.

In Egypt, strangely enough, they had this. Not because Egypt was a good place. But because slaves don’t worry about food. Their masters feed them — not out of love, but out of practicality. You feed your workers because you need them to work. It’s a degraded security, a shameful security. But it is security.

In the wilderness, they had none of that. No fields to plant. No masters to provide for them. Just the open desert and the terrifying, consuming question: What will we eat tomorrow?

And here’s the thing about that question. Even if you have food today, if you don’t know where tomorrow’s food will come from, you cannot fully enjoy what’s in front of you. The anxiety eats away at the pleasure. The worry poisons the satiation.

That anxiety — that overwhelming, gnawing worry — is itself a form of starvation. A starvation of the mind, even when the body is fed.

The Answer to Rashi

Now — finally — we can return to Rashi.

Remember what he said? Hashem blessed Shabbos with the manna — because a double portion fell on Friday. And He sanctified Shabbos with the manna — because it didn’t fall on Shabbos.

And we asked two questions:

First: Where is the bracha? The total amount of manna is the same whether it falls one omer per day or two on Friday and none on Shabbos. I’m not getting more. I’m just getting it earlier. Where is the blessing in that?

Second: Where is the kedusha? How does the absence of manna make Shabbos holy? If kedusha means something is set aside for connecting to Hashem, we need to find Hashem somewhere in this picture. And “the manna didn’t fall” doesn’t obviously point to Him.

Here is an answer (I never like talking about the answer).

The bracha of Shabbos is not that you get more manna. It’s that on Shabbos, you get the full experience of food — all four elements — without anything getting in the way.

On the six days of the week, you go out and collect. You grind, you prepare, you cook. You are involved in the work of food. And even as you eat, part of your mind is on tomorrow. Will the manna fall? Will there be enough? The worry doesn’t fully leave.

But on Shabbos?

Everything has already been provided. You wake up, and the food is there. You don’t have to collect it. You don’t have to prepare it. It’s ready. All you have to do is sit down and enjoy.

The anticipation. The pleasure. The satiation. And, crucially, no anxiety about food — not about today’s, not about tomorrow’s . For one, when you live Shabbos, you are in the moment of Shabbos — and therefore free of the anxiety about tomorrow. At the same time, in the desert, Hashem was showing us (week after week) that He provides. That we don’t need to worry — that we can rely on Him.

What’s more, G-d had already taken care of Shabbos. He made sure the day before all the food needs were met.

Without work.
Without effort.
Without concern.

The table was already set.

That is the bracha. The ability to fully experience and enjoy food, without labor, without distraction, without worry.

And the kedusha?

The kedusha comes from recognizing who is behind all of this.

When the manna doesn’t fall on Shabbos, and yet you still have food — because Hashem doubled it the day before — you are forced to see something. This isn’t just nature. This isn’t just your own effort. This is Hashem. He designed it this way. He structured the week so that Shabbos would be different.

And what makes Shabbos different is precisely this: on Shabbos, you see clearly that Hashem is the one providing. Not you. Not the natural order. Him.

That recognition — that awareness of Hashem as the giver — is what makes the day holy.

But there’s something more.

Remember Gan Eden? Remember what made it different from creation?

In creation, Hashem provides through the natural order. He sets up a system, and the system works. It’s a gift, yes — but a gift mediated through nature.

In Gan Eden, Hashem is there. Present. With man. The food isn’t just provision. It’s relationship. It’s love.

Shabbos, in the desert, is Gan Eden again.

On Shabbos, Hashem isn’t just providing through a system. He’s caring for us directly. He’s giving us the full experience of food — not just the sustenance, but the joy, the peace, the freedom from worry. He’s enabling it, arranging it, making it possible.

Like a grandmother placing cookies in front of her grandchild. Not just feeding him. Loving him. Wanting him to enjoy. Being present with him as he eats.

That is what Shabbos is. Hashem with us. Caring for us. Giving us not just food, but the experience of being cared for.

That is the kedusha. That is why the day is holy.

All in all — the bracha provides the experience, and the kedusha shows Who (out of love) gave us that experience.

The Gift, Again

And this brings us back to where we started.

In the creation narrative, Hashem didn’t just create food. He gave it. And more than that — He told us He was giving it: