​Friends:
 “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your seed may live.” (Deuteronomy 30:19)

Other traditions celebrate death. The ancient Egyptians used their priests to prepare bodies for deaths, building the elaborate pyramids as ancient tombs. Creating mummies to preserve dead bodies was a science for the Egyptians. Among the Greeks, Socrates willingly drank the hemlock to enter what he considered a better world. In contrast, Jewish tradition does not even allow its priests (kohanim) to go into a cemetery. 

One of the central features of Judaism is this absolute separation between life and death. Jewish tradition forbids the eating of milk and meat together, or even eating them off the same dishes. Milk is a symbol of life, it gives life to the baby animal. Meat is the symbol of death, the flesh of an animal properly slaughtered. The two realms should never meet. 

Our thoughts are on the High Holidays which begins in days. We speak about sefer hayim, the Book of Life. We ask God to write us in the Book of Life. Our tradition holds that God has a Book of Life and on Rosh Hashana our fate is written, on Yom Kippur it is sealed. But proper behavior can reverse the severe decree. Over and over as we pray on these holidays, we declare that God is a God of Life. How do we understand these ideas?

Death is the fate of everything that exists. All living things will one day die, the earth and the sun will die. The universe itself will die one day. Scientists have a name for it – entropy. Entropy is the natural tendency of all things to wear down, become more chaotic, to eventually break down. When your cell phone or your car begins to break down and stop working, that is entropy. When our bodies begin to break down, no matter how healthy we eat or how often we go to the gym, that is entropy. As W.B. Yeats wrote in his famous poem The Second Coming, “Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold.” Entropy is the way of the world.

But there is an anti-entropy force at work in the world. It is the force that goes from chaos to order, from death to life. It is the force in the universe that went from hydrogen atoms to carbon atoms, then to organic molecules, then to proteins and D.N.A., then to metabolism and to life. We live in a world where there is a force for life at work. Evolution points towards the fact that over time higher and higher, more complex forms of life develop. Evolution is the greatest proof for the existence of God. Whenever entropy is overcome, when chaos moves towards order and randomness moves towards organization, that is the hand of God at work in the world. That is the God of life, as God created the universe from Tohu VaVohu, chaos. 

A major theme of the High Holidays is that we can choose between death and life, between bringing more chaos and entropy into the world, or bringing order and enhancing life. God is a God of life. We humans are called to reaffirm life. Whenever we work to reaffirm life, we become God’s partners in the creation of this world.


Shabbat Shalom שבת שלום.
Rabbi David Grossman

Friends:
​Our Parsha’s final Aliyot describe the assembly of the entire nation on one mountain or another as a series of blessings and then curses are enunciated. Before this took place, the Torah describes the division of the tribes between Mount Gerizim and Mount Eival. The tribe of Levi, the group supplying our Leviim for ministrations in the Mishkan and later the Beis HaMikdash, as well the Kohanim, the Priests, was told to stand in the valley between the two mountains and pronounce a series of blessings and curses that would befall those who obey/disobey the Torah. It is in the form of curses in the Torah, but the implication is that these are preceded by a declaration of blessings corresponding to each line. When you go through the list of statements: people who honor or dishonor parents, or remove a neighbor’s landmark, or make the blind go astray, or pervert justice due the stranger, orphan or widow, one begins to search for the connection between all these statements. The Ibn Ezra, among others, connects them by the simple statement that these verses mention 11 sins that can be committed in secret. When a person does something in public the community and the courts have to respond. But the court cannot actually involve itself with crimes or sins committed in private. Behind closed doors, in the shadow of secrecy, people do commit the worst of offenses. They are not only harming the other person, but they are harming themselves and they can bestow great injury to the welfare of the Jewish nation. This entire chapter is involving itself with what people do in private. One should never think that closing the door and doing what you wish, and thinking you are not harming anyone else, is therefore okay. The sin is deeply ingrained within the individual’s personality, and taken within the fabric of Klal Yisrael the harm might not be easily noticed, but this is something that has to be addressed by every individual. We have to be aware, of course, that Hashem watches everything we do, in public and in private. There is no escaping Hashem. The realization of this fact is perhaps the ultimate upshot of this chapter. We should try to make sure that our dedication and honesty to the Torah commitment is consistent and constant. Just as we should not take a vacation from mitzvah obligations, so, too, we hope and pray that Hashem never takes a vacation from protecting us.
Shabbat Shalom שבת שלום.
Rabbi David Grossman

Friends:

This parsha has the most mitzvot in it than any other Parsha in the Torah. The first law is the law of the captured beautiful woman who is not Jewish and is forced to convert if the Jewish soldier desires her.  She is required to make herself not so beautiful and to cry for her father and mother for a full month. This denotes her separation from her parents. The Ramban emphasizes that the separation is really more than just from her parents, it is from her former religion and homeland, which she will be leaving forever.  The difficulty in conversion is not just embracing the new religion and all its laws and restrictions; it is also the strength necessary to cut ties to a former religion and reject a non-Jewish culture. 

In the story about the expulsion of Yishmael from the house of Avraham, Hagar and the lad were in the desert and Yishmael was in a serious compromised state of health. Hashem saves the boy by presenting a well to give them water. Rashi (on Breishit 21:17) states that Hashem is judging Yishmael on his current state and not based on what was going to happen in the future. The Midrash presents the dialogue between the angels who question God’s merciful judgement. The angels: How can You (Hashem) be merciful toward this child whose descendants will kill Your children? Hashem: What is he now, a righteous or evil person? Angels: Righteous. Hashem then decides on judgement on a person’s current state. Yet in our Parsha, the Torah tells us the story of the Wayward Child (21:18-21) whereby the Torah states this Wayward Child should be executed. Rashi comments that he is going to be judged for his future actions because the indication now is that he will be thoroughly evil in the future. These two cases, the one of Yishmael, and the one of the Wayward Child, seem to contradict each other. Some of the factors to bring out: one is that in Yishmael’s case it is his descendants who will be evil toward the Jewish people, not Yishmael himself. Secondly, in the case of the Wayward Child, his current activities create a seemingly inevitable future of evil activity. 

In our parsha (22:8) the Torah states that we are required to make a fence around the flat roof of one’s house; otherwise you will be placing blood in your house when a person falls from it. The structure of the sentence almost states that the inevitable has occurred and we can draw the conclusion of the transgression’s terrible ending. Hence there is a distinction between the Wayward Child and Yishmael. 

The Torah states that when it comes to harvesting olives, a person is not required to go on a ladder; he will have such an abundance of produce (with God’s blessing) that he will just have to stand on the ground and beat the branches with a stick and the olives will fall to the ground. “Do not remove all the splendor behind you.” The literal interpretation means: do not take off all the olives – leave some of them on the tree so that poor people can have some. Rabbeinu Bachya expounds on the Midrashic idea of not being over glorified and boasting of your financial status. When you give charity and help poor people, do not look for credit. Instead you should have an overwhelming feeling of thankfulness to Hashem that He has provided for you and you are able to be a giver and not a taker. Do not look for credit should be a message for many other mitzvot that we perform as well. 

Shabbat Shalom שבת שלום.
Rabbi David Grossman

Friends:

The Torah discusses the Cities of Refuge again. It was already discussed at the end of Chumash Bamidbar but each time it adds a certain dimension that was not brought up before. It says in the beginning of Chapter 19, “When Hashem your God will cut down the nations whose land Hashem Your God gives to you, and you will possess them, and you will settle in their cities and in their houses….” (19:1). Even though this chapter is dealing with Cities of Refuge, it has stipulated something else in the first verse. It is a brachah that in settling the land of Canaan and possessing it and creating the Land of Israel, Hashem grants the Jewish people the opportunity not to have to build the cities from scratch. You will drive out the non-Jewish element and take over their cities and their homes. You will live in homes that were built by non-Jewish people and you will possess them. This is a major brachah. 

The Torah describes to us the role of the judges, the Kohanim, the king, and all religious leaders and political figures in this Sedrah, and then later we will see it in the course of the narrative throughout the Books of Yehoshua and Judges, and the Books of Samuel and the Books of Kings. Each segment of Jewish leadership in the nation is granted authority and powers as well as importance of government-ordained institutions. This does not negate the sanctity of life given to each individual. It is difficult sometimes for all the pieces of the national puzzle to blend together properly. There is always a ruling party, a new government, and an opposition party as well. It is proper for national leaders to contend for leadership roles but then it is even more important that the roles complement each other and they begin to learn to work together for the benefit of the nation as a whole. We saw this in ancient times through the narrative in TaNaCH. We also see it post-TaNaCH period again and again in Jewish history in the Land of Israel. Society today also has certain divisions of leadership and they still have to work together for the benefit of the people. 

The law of the accidental killer is subject to analysis by the court. Was it really accidental? If the two individuals have a history of hate between them, that mars the possibility of accepting the death as an accidental killing. This is what the Torah is talking about when it mentions that the killer “hates his neighbor and lies in wait for him and rises up against him…” (19:4). The Midrash explains that the question of a relationship of hatred in essence refers to anyone who did not speak with his fellow man for three days out of hatred. This is a potent statement because we are now defining the “accidental” killing as being intentional because of a past behavior and the sense of enmity that exists between the two parties. So, if a person ends up injuring or killing another individual whom it is known that he hates, the court will assume that there was some malice in this incident. We see this over and over again and it makes relationships very difficult if two parties are living in hatred. 
There is a cogent example in “The Godfather.” The godfather is making peace with the other Mafia families after his son Michael had killed one of them and is now returning. The godfather says to his compatriots that if anything happens to his son, even an accident, or if he is hit by lightning, the other members will be faulted because there was a previous sense of hatred towards his son. It is the same premise we see here in the Parsha. 

Shabbat Shalom שבת שלום.
Rabbi David Grossman