I discuss the weekly Torah portion with Rabbi Rabbs Mondays at 7:00 pm PDT on the rabbi’s cam and on YouTube. Facebook Fan Page.
This week we study Parashat Behar (Leviticus 25:1-26:2) and Parashat Bechukotai (Leviticus 26:3-27:34).
* Rabbi Berel Wein writes: “It seems that the breaches of the covenant do not occasion immediate and sudden punishment and tragedy. Jewish history has very few incidents of instantaneous punishment or reward. It is always part of a long process of events…”
This is true in our personal lives as well. You can take up Torah and it won’t necessarily have instantaneous results. I’m on a good path that should lead to marriage and children, but there have been no quick results, no massive immediate pay-offs to my hard work.
* Many of the great things that Judaism has done, we’re not aware of because we take them for granted.
Rabbi Wein writes: “Much of our world has outgrown these forms of idolatry and this is due greatly to the unremitting struggle of Judaism against such practices.”
For most of us, sins such as incest and homo-sex are unthinkable. When people start considering them as normal, society will crash.
* Rabbi Wein writes: “God’s wisdom and judgments are inscrutable and are beyond even elementary comprehension by us mortals. As such we are left wondering as to the tragedies that descended upon the Jewish people and that continue to plague us today. Though there are those amongst us that are prepared to give and accept glib answers to the causes of tragedy, the wise men of Israel warned us against such an approach. Observance of commandments is enormously difficult to fulfill completely and accurately.”
When I meet someone who links bad times in Jewish history to the specific failings of specific Jews (such as that a terror attack on an Israeli town was the result of failing to check mezuzos, or that Reform Judaism caused the Holocaust), I know I’ve met a fool. To speak for God in these instances of extreme Jewish suffering is foolish.
If you want to interpret your own suffering as God’s message to your life, that is beautiful, but if I tell someone in pain, this is because you have not fulfilled such-and-such a mitzva, that’s foolish. It’s not for me reprove someone suffering.
* Rabbi Wein writes: “Though we pray regularly for health and serenity, we must always be cognizant of how precarious situations truly are.”
Judaism is a great recipe for a good life and it is also great preparation for when times turn terrible. On the other hand, meeting hot chicks is great fun but it is not a form of sustenance when your life falls apart. Someone you’ve picked up in a club for a night is not likely to stand by you when you lose your job or your legs or your mommy dearest.
* I don’t think most non-Orthodox Jews understand how little tochachah (reproof) Orthodox Jews give to each other. If you go to shul, you’re not likely to get called on the carpet for your sins. You’re not going to get a going over as to your beliefs. There are no beliefometer operators. Most shuls and most shul rabbis are glad when Jews show up and the amount of reproving they do is small. It’s not the Orthodox way to constantly reprove people for their sins. Orthodox Judaism is not focused on sin in the way that Christians obsess over sin and their sinful human condition.
Where you will get blowback at shul is if you advocate behavior and belief incompatible with Orthodox Judaism or if you are doing things publicly that violate Torah.
* Rabbi Wein writes: “Warning people about what will happen to them centuries later down the road of history rarely affects their current behavior. People do all sorts of things when they are younger that they know will be injurious to their health and even eventually shorten their lifespan.”
Do you know why I did some things risky to my health and to my soul? Because they were exciting (or because I was in thrall to my addictions rather than to God).
*Rabbi Wein writes: “There are two prophecies recorded [in the Bible] regarding the future of the Jewish people. One predicted that a fox would emerge from the ruins of the Temple. The other prediction was that Jewish old men and women would sit in joy and contentment in the streets of Jerusalem and watch children at play.”
When you go to most Orthodox shuls in the world, they are filled with children at play. It’s heartening. I remember when my parents met some Jewish kids for the first time, they said, “They’re very rambunctious, aren’t they?”
The goyish kids I’ve known were generally more restrained and polite than the Jewish ones I’ve known.
* There are many benefits to obeying God’s commandments but that’s not why we observe them. We do it because God said so and God is in a better position than us to know what is best.
Rabbi Wein writes: The opening commandment in this week’s parsha deals with shemitta – the sabbatical year for the Land of Israel when the ground was to be allowed to lie fallow and the farmer abstained from his regular routine of work. The traditional commentators to the Torah emphasized that even though the ground and farmer would benefit in the long run from the year’s inactivity this was not the reason for the commandment.
There are always side benefits from obeying the commandments of the Torah but these are never the reason or the basis for the commandment itself. The underlying lesson of the sabbatical year is its obvious kinship to the weekly Sabbath. Just as every seven days brings with it a holy day of rest, so too does a holy sabbatical year bring with it a rest for the earth itself.
* Torah commandments can be very difficult. Sometimes they can just be an ideal that we can’t reach yet, such as shemitah (Sabbatical year of rest), which Jews have never fully observed. I notice that a lot of people have an all-or-nothing approach. If you can’t fulfill every commandment in every detail then there is no point in keeping anything. I had a secular girlfriend who used this argument to express her contempt for my flawed religiosity. This is stupid.
Rabbi Wein writes: “Shemitta has always been a difficult test of faith for the Jewish people. Even in Temple times it appears that the commandment was never fully fulfilled. There are many reasons for this apparent laxity in observance, the most obvious one being the seeming impracticality of its observance.”
* I understand suicide bombers and arsonists. I understand their despair and their desire for importance. They want to create in the wider world the disharmony they feel inside every day.
* Did the Kings game Sunday night provide Rabbi Rabbs some temporary relief from the misery of his existence?
* Is it true that it is fun to stay at the YMCA?
Rabbs, there’s no need to feel down
I said Rabbs, pick yourself off the ground
I said Rabbs, ’cause your in a new town
There’s no need to be unhappy
Rabbs, there’s a place you can go
I said Rabbs, when you’re short on your dough
You can stay there and I’m sure you will find
Many ways to have a good time
Is a Jew allowed to stay at the YMCA? They have everything for young men to enjoy. You can hang out with all the boys.
* How do you run a modern state according to Torah law? How do you run a modern Jewish community in a Gentile nation according to Torah law?
In his sixth lecture on R. Chaim Ozer Grodzinksi for Torah in Motion, history professor Marc B. Shapiro says: According to Rav Nissim of Girona (aka The RaN) says that in our Jewish system, there are two types of governance — Torah law and the law of the king. Take a look at how difficult it is to convict people in Jewish law. You have to have two witnesses. The perpetrator needs to be warned. How do you run a state like this? How do you put people in jail? Every single person in jail would not be in jail by Torah law. First, there’s no jail in Torah law. None of these people were warned before committing their crime.
According to Wikipedia: “Nissim ben Reuven (1320–1376, Hebrew: נסים בן ראובן) of Girona, Catalonia was an influential talmudist and authority on Jewish law. He was one of the last of the great Spanish medieval talmudic scholars. He is also known as the RaN (ר”ן, the Hebrew acronym of his name).”
Marc: The standard view is that the Beit Din has the authority to do whatever they want to do as an emergency measure. There’s a famous case in the Talmud where the rabbis executed someone for riding a horse on Shabbos even though that’s only a rabbinic prohibition. To establish Torah law, the rabbis are allowed to break with Torah law and to do extra-judicial measures. The Beit Din can do what it needs to do. That’s the way Jewish society worked in medieval time. All sorts of punishments were given to people that were forbidden by Torah law.
The RaN said that Torah law and real law (law of the king) operate in different spheres. According to Torah law, you need two witnesses to convict someone but the law of the king can set up any proof it wants. The king sets up a parallel legal system.
You could conclude that Torah law is only meant as some theoretical law. It is clearly impossible to run any sort of society based on Torah law. It’s almost law for a messianic society and not meant for the real world.
The RaN is not talking about emergency measures. He’s talking about a complete parallel legal system. Many people aren’t aware of this. They think that if you don’t have at least two witnesses warning someone, you can never convict. I think this is a disgrace to the Torah because it makes people think that Jewish law can not function in the real world.
If someone has half a brain and they’re in yeshiva and learning all the laws and that’s all they’re told about how a Jewish system will function, they will have to conclude that Jewish law is not suitable for a real society. How can you have a society where you can’t send criminals to jail?
Obviously Jewish law can function in a real society. It has functioned in a real society. If you want to know how Jewish law has functioned in a real society, look at the responsa literature. There you see what Jewish societies did with criminals. They did what they needed to do. Some punishments were quite barbaric. Cutting off noses. Yitzhak Baer discusses this in his book A history of the Jews in Christian Spain. The Tzitz Eliezer has a great teshuva on how Jewish law functioned and how the courts were able to punish people. Simha Assaf has an entire book, Punishments after the close of the Talmud.
Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog naively believed that Israel’s criminal law could be run according to Jewish law.
R. Chaim Ozer Grodzinksi writes back to Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog that you have to use the RaN’s conception.
If I were to go in to most shuls and to talk to people, even learned Torah scholars, and say that Jewish law was not practical and that if we had a state, we’d have to punish people in non-Torah ways, they’d say I’m a heretic. The amount of ignorance on this issue about how Jewish society has functioned and how leading rabbis have said it should function. I don’t know any area where there is such ignorance.
