Commentary for Va’eira

This week’s parshah ends with an extremely important and utterly fascinating series of verses. After the seventh plague has been in effect for some time, “Pharaoh sent and summoned Moses and Aaron to him and said to them ‘this time I have sinned; the Lord is the righteous one and my people and I are the wicked ones. Entreat the Lord- there has been too much Godly thunder and hail; I shall send you out and you shall not continue to remain.’ Moses said to him, ‘When I leave the city I shall spread out my hands to the Lord; the thunder will cease and the hail will no longer be, so that you shall know that the Earth is the Lord’s…’ Moses went out from Pharaoh, from the city, and he stretched out his hands to the Lord; the thunder and hail ceased and rain did not reach the land. Pharaoh saw that the rain, the hail, and the thunder ceased, and he continued to sin; and he made his heart stubborn, he and his servants. Pharaoh’s heart became strong and he did not send out the Israelites as the Lord had spoken through Moses (Ex. 9:27-35).”

As anyone familiar with the story of the Exodus knows, this sort of thing is almost formulaic. Pharaoh won’t let the Israelites go so God sends a plague. Pharaoh eventually cracks and promises to free the Israelites if the plague will be lifted, but the moment the plague ends he changes his mind. What most people will be surprised to learn is that here, in 9:34, after we are more than two thirds of the way done with the plagues, is the first time that the narration refers to Pharaoh as one who is committing a “sin,” and even more shockingly, this only occurs after Pharaoh himself uses the word in 9:27 to describe his behavior.

Rashbam explains that this choice of words is no accident. He posits that up until now Pharaoh truly believed himself to be in the right because his stubborn nature would not allow him to believe that Moses was anything more than a skilled magician who had invented a “God” to make himself appear more powerful, but that during this plague Pharaoh finally realized the truth: that the Lord was truly the God with power over all of creation, and Moses was no magician, but rather an emissary of the Lord. Once Pharaoh had come to that realization, vocalized in 9:27, any further refusal on his part ceases to be ignorance and becomes willful sin.

Humans are very smart creatures with very complex brains, but what sets us apart from the animals is the idea of morality- the ability to distinguish between right and wrong; what we should do and what we should not do. When God gave us this gift of morality, God also gave us the accompanying gift of guilt. While often portrayed as a negative emotion, guilt is really a positive force in our lives because it is often guilt that drives us to make the necessary change between what we have done and what we will do; what we are doing and what we know we should be doing. Pharaoh’s downfall is ignoring his guilt. He knows that he has acted wickedly in the eyes of the one true God, whose omnipotence he know understands… and yet he refuses to change his actions and start doing what he now knows that he should be doing. The story of the Exodus is not just a story of our history, but it is a story for our present as well. We should all take heed of Pharaoh’s failure. The next time you get that nagging feeling in the back of your head about what you really should be doing, follow it!

Commentary for Ha’azinu

This week’s parshah is notable for the unusual format in which most of it is written. The first six aliyot are a long poem by Moses, prophesying the future of the Israelites, and as such is written in a special format. What would usually be one column in the Torah is split into two, thinner columns with blank space in the middle, although it is still read as if it were all one column (with the reader continuing from the top line of the first column over to the top line of the second and then to the second line of the first column and so on).

This poetic format also lends itself to making the beginnings and ends of the verses very easy to find, as each verse ends at either the end of the full line, or at the end of the right-hand column, in the middle of the “full” column, causing the next verse to start with the first word of the line in the left hand column, also in the middle of the line. Sefer Tagin notes that this poem can be split up into three sections based on this: 32:1-14, which all start at the beginning of the line, speak of the Israelites obey God’s will and reaping the rewards. 32:14 ends in the middle, and the second section, 32:15-39, all start in the middle of the line, and all talk about the Israelites spurning God and suffering the consequences for it. 32:39 ends at the end of the line, and the third section, 32:40-44, which all talk about God showing mercy to the Israelites and punishing their oppressors, all start at the beginning of the line again.

While 32:39 contains a clear transitional element from punishment to mercy (“I put to death and I bring to life. I struck down and I will heal”), no such transition is obvious in 32:14 at the end of the first section. 32:14 does, however, end with the very unusual phrase “you drink the blood of grapes like delicious wine.” While “the blood of grapes” obviously seems to be a fancy figure of speech to describe wine, it begs the question why the verse adds in the phrase “like delicious wine,” seemingly explaining its own expression in a very dry and un-poetic way. At the same time, the rest of the verse is fairly plain, simply listing the various foods the Israelites will enjoy with God’s favor, with no poetry at all until the penultimate phrase describing “wheat as fat as kidneys” and then the extremely odd final phrase.

Upon closer examination, it becomes clear that these phrases are the transition. Our simple list of foods becomes flowery and poetic, first innocuously, and then in a unusual simile that is almost jarring in its barbaric description of the normal act of drinking, setting the stage for the next verses excoriation of the Israelites for becoming “fat” and “corpulent” and forgetting that God is the source of their sustenance. This veiled transition reflects the way that we ourselves fall into sinful behavior. No one wakes up in the morning and randomly decides to go rob a bank. We start with small, little, things that don’t even feel off the course, and yet we soon find ourselves spiraling further and further until the point where we find ourselves never getting to our intended destination- always stopping in the middle of the line. But if we keep this lesson in mind we can be on the lookout for warning signs and stop ourselves before we wander too far off course.

Commentary for Shlach Lecha

This week’s parshah deals with the theme of sin and punishment. It starts off with the story of the spies, who are sent out to scout the Promised Land. When they return, the spies tell of the beauty of the land and the abundance of food, but all but two of them also report that the inhabitants are so strong that it would be impossible to defeat them. This report spreads through the Israelite camp like wildfire, and soon the people rallied against Moses, Aaron and God, demanding to know why they had been led out of Egypt only to face an impossible task. Angry with this lack of faith, God declares that the Israelites shall wander in the desert until this entire generation that has repeatedly shown a lack of faith in God’s awesome might despite the evidence before them, has died out. Their children will live to see the Promised Land, but they shall not. Only Joshua and Caleb, the two spies who argued that God’s might could easily deliver their enemies into their hands, would be allowed to enter the Promised Land.

The next day, a group of Israelites came to Moses, insisting that they now believed in God’s omnipotence and were ready to enter the Promised Land. Moses ordered them not to do so, warning them that they would not succeed in their attempt to escape God’s decree. The people persisted anyway, and they were soundly defeated, just as they had originally believed would be the case when they doubted God’s power.

In the second half of chapter fifteen, the Torah gives a list of the proscribed sin offerings for various situations. In a case where the entire community has sinned inadvertently, the High Priest offers the sacrifice on behalf of the entire community. If an individual sins inadvertently, he or she brings a sacrifice to the temple, where a priest offers the sacrifice for him or her. If an individual brazenly commits an act of heresy, however, there is no offering to be given. Such a person, who has rejected God’s laws, is to be cut of from God’s people, and forfeits his or her place in the World to Come.

Through these stories, the Torah teaches that we are all responsible for our own actions, and will be held accountable for them. The Israelites who, despite all that they had seen, regularly doubted God’s omnipotence, were punished, while Joshua and Caleb, who never lost their faith and argued for God’s cause, were not punished. If a sin is committed on behalf of the community, the entire community is responsible to help make atonement. An individual that sins, even by accident, is required to make a sin offering, and anyone who knowingly and brazenly commits heresy will be punished severely.

The Torah then follows this up with a brief story about a man who was caught desecrating Shabbat. He was out on trial in front of the whole community, and found guilty. He was then detained while Moses asked God what the proper punishment should be, and God decrees that the whole community should stone the man to death.

The Rabbis determine from the seemingly extraneous word establishing that this event happened “in the wilderness” that this event took place on the second Shabbat after the giving of the Torah. The first Shabbat had gone perfectly, but now, just fourteen days after the Torah had been given, someone was already desecrating Shabbat! The Torah makes certain to mention that this man was tried by “the whole community” and the sentence was carried out by “the whole community.” This story is included here to teach us that being responsible for our own actions does not just mean that we must avoid sinning, but that we are all responsible for helping to create an atmosphere for our society in which sin is heavily discouraged.