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In writing a vort on Purim, this author thinks back to a theme addressed in an earlier Siyum on Mesechta Megillah from three years ago as well as another recurring theme on this blog.
The Jew separates and distinguishes himself from the rest of the nations through the Mitzvah of Bris Milah, even though many of our contemporary Jewish brothers would distance themselves from, or stand in denial of their Yiddishkeit. But many among our Jewish brethren would deny Hashem’s control of the world and seek to tailor Torah and their Jewishness to fit the ways of the nations rather than accepting Hashem’s reishut (command) over the world.
Among our Jewish brethren are the so-called “new Jews”, the Zionists who first created the macho image of the Jew fighting back when bullied, oppressed or brutalized by Arabs or other anti-Semites. However, in truth, they make no bones of their disdain for Yiddishkeit, for their Jewishness and thus have evolved into acceptance of the distorted, hypocritical sense of selective Western
“morality”: taking care for the lives of your enemy while that very enemy draws your blood endlessly.
The “new Jew” reviles the dress and the ways of both his Eastern European predecessors and his brethren who maintain aspects of the Eastern European derech today in Eretz Yisrael. Yet these very “new Jews” themselves act despicably, based on their sinat chinom for the religious, and anything religious. In their mindless hate of the religious, the “new Jew”, the liberalized Jew who is kind to the cruel (for it’s not their fault that they are poor, live in the refugee camps of Gaza, Judea and Samaria) discredits his own right to live in Eretz Yisrael in the eyes of the very enemy he is kind to by the Chillul Hashem performed before the altar of foreign powers. The “new Jew” psychologically projects his own deficiencies onto those he reviles, the religious.
This generation’s secular Israeli, descended from the earlier generation “new Jew” who at least fought back when bullied, has, through lack of rooting and footing in Torah and belief in Hashem therefore, no idea why there is an Israel and no idea why he is here. And so upon reflection, is the mindset, philosophy or “morality” of the “enlightened
‘new Jew’”, “the proud Hebrew” who would void his Jewishness, his heritage, his land indeed something to be proud of?
For those Jews, it’s an imperative to revisit the Mitzri memory (or lack thereof) of Yosef and to contast the dialogue between Haman and Achashveirosh — Haman’s top 10 reasons for seeking the annihilation of the Jews as found in Daf (page)13, amud(side)Bet, 4 (in the Artscroll Schottenstein Edition) with the contemporary Nuremberg Laws of Nazi Germany and then to view Haman/Achashveirosh dialogue next to their own hateful psychological projection of deficiencies onto the religious.
Shem Mishuel cites a Midrash on Bris Milah in the context of the posuk “Avraham took Yismael his son and all of the males born in his household”. (Breish’t 47:7)
Rashi explains that a hidden meaning of the Ketores (the incense) is that it represents all of the Mitzvot of the Torah. The Torah’s numerical value is 613 — the Total number of Torah Mitzvot — 248 positive Mitzvot and 365 prohibitions — encompassing the entire gamut of good and bad in life. And so we learn that the Ketores included the foul-smelling spice called Chelbenah (galbanum) whose absence invalidates the entire compound. This represents the symbolic, all-encompassing purpose of the compound, that Ketores demanded that all elements of Klal Yisrael be represented, even the bad ones. Therefore, the Ketores rose above the mundane, it took both the Tzaddikim and everyone else, including the most wicked person, into Hashem’s spiritual domain. (Shem Mishmuel on Lech Lecha Pg.26)
Shem Mishmuel then quotes Rabbi Ayvu as saying “When Avraham circumcised the males of his household, they made a pile of foreskins. The sun shone upon them and they putrified. Their odor went up to G’d just like the incense and the burnt offering, which is totally consumed by fire. G’d said, ‘When their children sin and perform wicked acts, I will recall this smell for them, and I will be filled with mercy for them, and I will act mercifully.'”
Thus, there seems a spiritual similarity between the foreskins of Bris Milah and the Ketores component of burnt offering which Aaron HaKohen and his sons are being taught by Moshe Rabbeinu in our Parsha Tzav.
May our Ketores — the good, the bad, etc. of our generation, our sanctity, our learning, chessed, midos, etc., with all of the imperfections, be acceptable to Hashem. May we be zocha in this coming year that our brethren — the refugee families from Gush Katif be permanently settled and be made totally whole, that our dear brother Jonathan Pollard and the 3 captive Chayalim and the other MIAs be liberated and returned to us and that we fulfill Hashem’s blueprint of B’nai Yisrael as a Unique people — an Am Segula, not to be reckoned with as with “the nations” and may we be zocha the Moshiach, the Ge’ula Shlaima, as Dov Shurin sings; “Yom Hashem V’Kol HaGoyim”, the Ultimate Redemption, bim hay v’yameinu — speedily, in our time”, — Achshav, Chik Chuk, Miyad, Etmol!!!
Purim Sameach and Good Shabbos!
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Moshe Burt, an Oleh, is a commentator on news and events in Israel and Founder and Director of The Sefer Torah Recycling Network. He lives in Ramat Beit Shemesh.
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