The Weekly Shtikle - Beha'alosecha

The Weekly Shtikle is dedicated le'iluy nishmas my Oma, Chaya Sara bas Zecharia Chaim, a"h.

 

This week's shtikle is dedicated for a refuah sheleimah for my father.

Please include Reuven Pinchas ben Yehudis in your tefillos.

 

This past Thursday, 16 Sivan, was the 19^th yahrtzeit of R' Ephraim Eisenberg, zt"l of Ner Yisroel. The shtikle is dedicated l'iluy nishmaso, Ephraim Zalman ben Chayim HaLevi.

 

Not too long ago the mishna yomis program completed Nega'im. The very last mishna in the second perek discusses which nega'im one may or may not observe for the purpose of determining tzara'as. It begins, of course, with the well-known adage which often takes on a double-interpretation – that one may observe all nega'im except his own. Traditionally, it is also understood homiletically to indicate that one is capable of seeing everyone else's faults but not his own. Rabbi Meir is of the opinion that one may also not observe the nega'im of a close family member. This position begs the question, at the end of this week's parsha, when Miriam became afflicted with tzara'as, who made the declaration?

This question is indeed addressed in a beraysa the gemara (Zevachim, bottom of 101b) where it is asked who was the one who declared that Miriam should be quarantined? Moshe was not a kohein and was therefore not even eligible and Aharon was a close relative. (Indeed, Moshe was too.) Rather, the gemara answers, a great honour was given to Miriam in that HaShem Himself declared her temeiah.

This issue gets a little more interesting with the very next mishnah, the first of the third perek. There it is stated that indeed anyone, not just a kohein, is fit to observe the nega and decide its status. However, the declaration of "tamei" or "tahor" must be made by the kohein. The judge conveys their decision to the kohein to make the declaration.

Minchas Chinuch (end of mitzvah 172) puts these two laws together, in conjunction with the gemara and makes what appears to be an indisputable inference. It is not the judgment and assessment of the nega which cannot be done by a relative but rather, the status declaration, although it does not involve judgment, which may not be made by a relative. Otherwise, what is bothering the beraysa? Any other Israelite could have judged Miriam's tzara'as and conveyed their assessment to Aharon to make the declaration. Rather, it is clear that is the declaration which may not be made by a relative. (He assumes that it is the declaration only and not the assessment but I'm not sure what compels him to understand this way. Perhaps both may not be done by a relative.)

Much of the above is from a shiur I stumbled upon on Kol HaLashon. (It can be played straight from that link. It is in Hebrew.) He goes into further discussion on the position of the Rambam which is perhaps to lengthy for here.  He also quotes Netziv in Emek HaNetziv who asks why Pinechas, not a disqualified relative, couldn't perform the declaration. (Just previous to the above-mentioned gemara, there is a dispute as to exactly when he became a kohein.) He answers that if it were not to be Aharon or Moshe, it would have been beneath Miriam's dignity for another individual to declare her temei'ah. This approach essentially discounts Minchas Chinuch's inference.

Have a good Shabbos.

Eliezer Bulka
WeeklyShtikle@weeklyshtikle.com

 

Shtikle Blog Weekly Roundup:

Al Pi Cheshbon: Piles of Quail 

Dikdukian: The Impure

Dikdukian: In My Humble Opinion

Dikdukian: To Make Travel 

Please visit the new portal for all Shtikle-related sites, www.weeklyshtikle.com

The Weekly Shtikle and related content are now featured on BaltimoreJewishLife.com

 

 

The Weekly Shtikle - Naso

The Weekly Shtikle is dedicated le'iluy nishmas my Oma, Chaya Sara bas Zecharia Chaim, a"h.

 

This week's shtikle is dedicated for a refuah sheleimah for my father.

Please include Reuven Pinchas ben Yehudis in your tefillos.

 

This week's parsha begins with the counting of the descendants of Gershon and the listing of their responsibilities with regard to the carrying of the mishkan as B'nei Yisrael traveled, followed by the same for Merari. With the significant interruption of Shavuos, we might tend to forget where we left off. This is actually a continuation of a process that began at the end of parshas Bemidbar with the counting of the descendants of Kehas. The obvious question is why are the three sons of Levi split up? Why are they not all together in the same parsha?

 

I found the identical answer in the Abarbanel and Ta'ama D'kra. First, it should be noted that Gershon is in fact older than Kehas. Nevertheless, since Aharon and Moshe descended from Kehas, his descendants were given the honour of handling the holiest of the mishkan's vessels - the aron, the shulchan and the menorah. Therefore, it was fitting that they be listed before Gershon. However, the Torah did not want to deny Gershon the honour of the first-born. Therefore, instead of being listed first among Levi's three sons Gershon was given the beginning of a parsha. Obviously, the only way to accomplish that is to split them up.

Have a good Shabbos.

Eliezer Bulka

WeeklyShtikle@weeklyshtikle.com

Shtikle Blog Weekly Roundup:
Dikdukian: Aleph's and Ayin's

Please visit the new portal for all Shtikle-related sites, www.weeklyshtikle.com

The Weekly Shtikle and related content are now featured on BaltimoreJewishLife.com

 

The Weekly Shtikle - Shavuos

The Weekly Shtikle is dedicated le'iluy nishmas my Oma, Chaya Sara bas Zecharia Chaim, a"h.

 

This week's shtikle is dedicated for a refuah sheleimah for my father.

Please include Reuven Pinchas ben Yehudis in your tefillos.

 

Shavuos features the reading of Megilas Rus, detailing the heroic journey of Rus converting to Judaism and ultimately marrying into the royal line and becoming the great grandmother David HaMelech. Na'ami initially attempts to dissuade both Rus and Arpah from joining her. She succeeds in pushing Arpah away but in the end, she brings Rus along with her as she returns home. What was it that she saw in Rus that she ultimately agreed to take her in?

It occurred to me recently that perhaps what Na'ami sensed was the spark of the family matriarch, Tamar. Upon closer inspection, many components of the story that make up Megilas Rus mirror those of the story that led to Tamar and Yehudah's union to spawn the Davidic line.

Both stories begin with a form of self-imposed exile. Yehudah left his brothers (Bereishis 38:1) after their disappointment in his handling of the situation with Yoseif. Elimelech had his own reasons for fleeing Eretz Yisrael during the famine to take refuge in Moav. In both stories we find the deaths of young brothers. Both Tamar and Rus found themselves in a position where they could have, should have and would have let their tragic past fade away and start anew. But both, with a certain sense of destiny, showed unwavering determination in their quest to rejoin the families from which they had been disconnected.

Tamar employed what certainly appears from our perspective to have been questionable means, bordering on promiscuity, in order to come back into Yehudah's life. But Chazal are clear that she was very much the tzenuah and that may very well have been what allowed her to pull of her daring mission.

Rus, as well, proves herself to be a woman of great modesty in the way she collected in the fields (2:5). Ultimately, with Na'ami's guidance, she courts Boaz in a rather unusual way, one which Boaz might have considered completely inappropriate if he had not already gotten to know Rus and appreciate her great modesty.

Both stories conclude with an alternate form of yibum which essentially serves to carry on the lineage that would lead to David haMelech and mashiach tzidkeinu, may he come speedily in our day.

Have a chag samei'ach!

 

Eliezer Bulka
WeeklyShtikle@weeklyshtikle.com

 

Shtikle Blog Weekly Roundup:

Dikdukian: Shavuos takes it on the chin… or under the shin

Dikdukian: Letzeis and On top of Old Smokey

Please visit the new portal for all Shtikle-related sites, www.weeklyshtikle.com

The Weekly Shtikle and related content are now featured on BaltimoreJewishLife.com

 

The Weekly Shtikle - Bemidbar

The Weekly Shtikle is dedicated le'iluy nishmas my Oma, Chaya Sara bas Zecharia Chaim, a"h.

 

This week's shtikle is dedicated for a refuah sheleimah for my father.

Please include Reuven Pinchas ben Yehudis in your tefillos.

 

I would like to resurrect a question that has vexed me for many years: At the beginning of this week's parsha, B'nei Yisrael are split into camps. One of Rashi's explanations of "ish al diglo le'osos" (2:2) is that each tribe's camp had a flag which bore the colour of the stone of that tribe's stone on the choshen. The purpose of this, Rashi explains, was so that everyone would know which camp was theirs. What bothered me about this was that Efrayim and Menasheh, who had separate camps, did not have their own stones on the choshen as the stones were assigned exactly to the sons of Yaakov, not to the tribes as we know them. What then would be the colour of their flag?  Even if you say that they both had Yosef's colours, the objective of this plan is not achieved.

Even more intriguing is the explanation of Targum Yonasan here. He explains that each large camp of three had a flag bearing three colours corresponding to a row of stones on the choshen. For instance, the camp of Yehuda, Yissachar and Zevulun had a flag with the colours of odem, pitda and barekes on them. While this would take care of the problem with Efrayim and Menasheh, the difficulty is that those stones are the stones of Reuven, Shimon and Levi (according to all opinions). What is their connection to that camp?

Back to my original question, this is not the only example where the 12 tribes appear to be assigned to 12 stones, creating the Yosef problem (as well as a Levi problem in the following case.) When the nesi'im come forward and bring the avnei shoham and avnei miluim, (Shemos 35:27) some commentaries indicate that each brought the stone that pertained to their tribe. So who got to bring Yosef's stone? And who brought Levi's stone?

Have a good Shabbos

Eliezer Bulka

WeeklyShtikle@weeklyshtikle.com

 

Shtikle Blog Weekly Roundup:

Dikdukian: Clarification of a Sheva Na rule

Al Pi Cheshbon: No Population Increase

Al Pi Cheshbon: Tens and Ones by Ari Brodsky

Al Pi Cheshbon: Rounded Numbers

Al Pi Cheshbon: Discrepency in Levi's Population

Al Pi Cheshbon: Explaining the Uncounted Levi'im

Al Pi Cheshbon: Pidyon HaBen Probability

Dikdukian: Be or Ba?

Dikdukian: Discussions on Bemidbar by Eliyahu Levin

Please visit the new portal for all Shtikle-related sites, www.weeklyshtikle.com

The Weekly Shtikle and related content are now featured on BaltimoreJewishLife.com

 

 

The Weekly Shtikle - Behar / Bechukosai

This past Wednesday, 23 Iyar, was the 11^th yahrtzeit of my great aunt, Lady Amélie Jakobovits, a"h. The shtikle is dedicated le'iluy nishmasah, Mayla bas Eliyahu.

 

Today, the 25th of Iyar, is the 20^th yahrtzeit of my mother, a"h. The shtikle is dedicated le'iluy nishmasah, Tzirel Nechamah bas Tovia Yehudah.

 

Parshas Behar deals largely with the laws pertaining to the shemitah and yoveil years. The Torah addresses the understandable worry of the farmer who is forced to leave his field fallow for an entire year. "Lest you shall say what will we eat in the seventh year? We will not sow nor gather in our crops!. I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year and it shall bring forth produce for the three years." (25:20-21) This is, indeed, quite a valuable guarantee. [Although the haftarah we read is that of Bechukosai, these two parshios are usually together. It is therefore fitting that the haftarah contains the famous pasuk, (Yirmiyah 17:7) "baruch hagever asher yivtach baShem."

 

My grandfather, Mr. George Jakobovits, a"h, told me of an intriguing insight that he heard from his rebbe, R' Eliyahu Lopian, zt"l, which is pertinent to this passage and especially relevant to the events of our time. He points out that we, as Jews are commanded, as chronicled in the thirteen principles of faith, to believe in the coming of mashiach and the resurrection of the dead. Yet the gemara in the last perek of Sanhedrin struggles to identify a passage that directly and irrefutably refers to this time. Why is it, then, that our Bible contains precious few obscure references to the world to come while containing many more clear, this-worldly promises such as the aforementioned? Conversely, the "testament" of our Christian counterparts is replete with distinct references to the world to come.

 

He answers that a promise for the world to come is one that can never be refuted. No one will ever be able to come back and say that the Bible lied about reward and punishment after death, God forbid. This renders these promises empty and meaningless on their own. The promises that offer us assurance in this world, such as the guarantees of shemitah and yoveil, and the promise that no enemy will covet our land when we leave it to go up to Yerushalayim for the shalosh regalim (Shemos 34:24), are far more "risky" pledges. If they are not fulfilled, God forbid, their falsehood would be revealed for all to see.

 

The world to come is discussed in great length in the gemara and we are required to believe it. However, blind faith is not demanded of us. The very first words of Rambam's Yad HaChazakah state that the foundation of foundations and the pillar of all wisdom, is to know that there is a God who preceded all existence. This is a far greater level than faith. It is unequivocal knowledge. The hypothetically refutable, yet incontrovertibly authentic promises made in the Torah are part of foundation that allows us to know, not believe, that there is a Divine Hand that governs this world. The architects of Christianity, aware of the fraudulence of their treatise, were unable to make such promises and had to resort to empty promises which, although lofty, could never be disproved in this world. This perhaps offers some insight into the diabolic schemes of those who promote heinous, murderous atrocities by means of such empty promises as we have seen in our day. But this perspective allows us to maintain focus on the truth of our Torah.

 

Even in our day and age when we are no longer able to see many of the clear miracles of years gone by, we still observe many wondrous events unfold during the years of shemitah as a fulfillment of this promise. This coming year is once again a shemitah year. May we all merit to see more overt miracles.

!חזק, חזק, ונתחזק

Have a good Shabbos.

Eliezer Bulka
WeeklyShtikle@weeklyshtikle.com

Shtikle Blog Weekly Roundup:
DIkdukian: Hearing Los

Dikdukian: How Lo Can You Go?

Dikdukian: Even Lo-er

Dikdukian: Qualification of the AHOY rule
Al Pi Cheshbon: An Ironic Observation

Please visit the new portal for all Shtikle-related sites, www.weeklyshtikle.com

The Weekly Shtikle and related content are now featured on BaltimoreJewishLife.com