Shalom Friends;
This week, our Parshat HaShevua Breish’t is being sponsored by Benyamin and Barbara Lemkin of Ramat Beit Shemesh dedicated for Jonathan Pollard coming home to Eretz Yisrael, a complete refuah shleima for Esther Yocheved bat Rayzl Bracha (Pollard) and for freedom for all the heroes of Am Yisrael. To Mishpochat Lemkin, many thanks for your sponsorship and your continued kindnesses.
You can celebrate a Simcha — a birth, a Bar/Bat Mitzvah, a Chassuna or other Simcha event in your life, or commemorate a Yahrtzeit of a loved one, or for whatever other reason by sponsoring a Parshat HaShevua.
Please forward to your relatives and friends and encourage them to sponsor a Parshat HaShevua. And please be in contact with me with any questions, or for further details.
Best Regards,
Moshe Burt
olehchadash@yahoo.com
skype: mark.burt3
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The very first posuk of Torah in our Parshat Breish’t, you know, the one; “In the Big Inning”, provides added emphasis in connection with our connection to Eretz Yisrael:
“Breish’t bora Keilokim eit HaShemayim V’eit HaAretz” (Sefer Breish’t, Perek 1, posuk 1)
“In the beginning of Hashem’s Creating the heavens and the earth” (Sefer Breish’t, Perek 1, posuk 1, as rendered to English in The Sapirstein Edition The Torah: with Rashi’s Commentary).
Rabbi Zelig Pliskin, in his Sefer “Growth Through Torah” (page 18) cites Rabbi Yeruchem Levovitz (Daas Torah: Breish’t , page 3) on Sefer Breish’t, Perek 1, posuk 1:
…You become aware that there is a Creator and Ruler of the universe. This first awareness already makes a major change in you for the rest of your life. You realize that there is a reason for everything. The world has meaning and purpose.
While it may not seem politically correct in our current world of oxymoronic Western “political correctness” and “morality(sic)” mixed with both virulent and just-beneath-the-surface anti-semitism, The Sapirstein Edition The Torah: with Rashi’s Commentary explains this first posuk of our Torah (page 2):
[Rashi asks:] “What is the reason that it [Torah] began with Sefer Breish’t?”
It began thus because it wished to convey the message… “The power of His acts He told to His people, in order to give them the estate of the nations.” So that if the nations of the world will say to Israel, “You are bandits, for you conquered the lands of the seven nations who inhabited the Land of Canaan,” [Israel] will say to them, “The whole earth belongs to the Holy One, Blessed be He. He Created it — and He Gave it to the one found proper in His eyes. By His Wish He gave it to them, and by His Wish He Took it from them and Gave it to us.” It is to be understood as the Rabbis of blessed memory expounded it: For the Torah which is called “the beginning of His way,” and for Israel who are called, “the first of His crop.”
That Hashem is the Ultimate Creator of All must be emphasized and reemphasized yet again, particularly in light of the year just past, with Israel’s two apparently inconclusive or borderline election results and the apparent lack of a stable national governance.
Inevitably, the rise, in our generations, of the “new normalcy” — actions, relationships, etc., whether societal or governmental, viewed in previous generations as abhorrent, abominable and contrary, in the extreme, to the Ways of Hashem, give rise to discussion of Hashem’s prohibition against eating from the Eitz Hadas (theTree of Knowledge of Good and Evil) and the violation thereof by Adam and Chava — egged on by the nachash.
Rabbi Shmuel Goldin writes regarding Hashem’s prohibition against eating from the Eitz Hadas in his sefer “Unlocking The Torah Text”, Sefer Breish’t (pages 24-25):
…The whole episode [of the Eitz Hadas] seems to be a recipe for predetermined failure — a set up. Take a child and place him in a room surrounded by an array of attractive toys. Place in that room as well a sealed package with the instructions that all of the toys can be used with the exception of the object in the sealed package. It won’t take long before the child gravitates to that one sealed package.
How could Hashem expect Adam and Chava to ignore the lore of the one prohibited tree in the garden?
Compounding the problem, of course, is the fact of Hashem’s omniscience [infinite knowledge]. Hashem knows from the outset what will occur. Why doom man to predetermined failure?
The relationship between prescience [knowledge of things before they exist or happen; foreknowledge; foresight], pre-ordination and free will has occupied the attention of philosophers and scholars across the centuries….
We believe in three philosophical concepts:
1. Prescience, Hashem’s knowledge of the future.
2. Free will, man’s inherent ability and responsibility to choose the path his life will take.
3. Pre-ordination, the predetermination by Hashem of specific aspects of our lives.The… relationship between these three concepts can be summarized as follows: Hashem’s knowledge of the future does not control our present actions. Each step of the way we choose the path we wish to take. Hashem’s knowledge potentially affects our choice only on the rare occasions when He informs us of the future before it happens. Such exceptional occasions (for example, Hashem’s prediction to Avraham that his children will, centuries later, become strangers in a land not their own) must be examined on a case-by-case basis.
As a rule, free will remains an essential component in our lives. Without personal choice, we can not be held responsible for what we do — for better or for worse.
There are, however, elements of our existence that remain outside of our control and are thus preordained. When we are born, to whom we are born, our personal gene pool, etc. are all elements of our lives that are predetermined by Hashem. Each of us is born into a set of defined circumstances that comprise the box in which we live. Our responsibility is to make the most of those circumstances, to determine the quality of our lives. Our task is to push our personal envelope as far as it can be pushed.
Rabbi Goldin goes on to discuss how society defines good and evil (ibid, page 29):
At the core… lies a simple question: Are good and evil to be determined objectively or subjectively? Or to put it somewhat differently: Does each society have the right to define good and evil for its citizens and within its own parameters?
….Do we have the right, looking in from the outside, to criticize the morals of any civilization?
What if a particular community determines that the elderly should be executed at a specific age, because they will no longer be contributing members of society? Is that decision moral or not?
Once we accept that each society can determine its own morality — define good and evil within the context of its physical and philosophical borders — morality no longer effectively exists. There is no objective standard for good and evil. Everything is subjective.
Judaism maintains that an objective morality was determined and mandated by Hashem at the dawn of human history.
Hashem creates the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil but forbids its fruit to man. By doing so, Hashem reminds Adam and Chava and all of their descendants that the determination of Good and Evil must remain within Divine Control.
The problems emerge, whether in the Garden of Eden or across the face of history, when man attempts to usurp Hashem’s perogative.
How much pain has been perpetrated across the ages, because we have claimed the right to define Good and Evil?
This commentary by Rabbi Goldin should be food for thought for all of us, including our societal and governmental leaders.
We hope and pray for ultimate Ge’ula Shlaima, where our lives may no longer be finite. But in our current finite state, what we do here on earth is critical, for when we are no longer here, our Mitzvot, our kindnesses that we do, because they are needed, whether for family or for the Kehal — they live on, attached to the collective memory of the do’er by his/her friends, family, the Kehal and beyond.
May we, the B’nei Yisrael be zocha that our brethren — the refugee families from Gush Katif be permanently settled and be made totally whole — be totally restituted for all that was stolen from them and that the twice expelled families of Amona be restored to their rebuilt homes, at government expense; both due to alt-leftist-agendized, supreme court legalized Yassamnik gunpoint. May our dear brother Jonathan Pollard be liberated and truly free — which can only occur when he is home to Israel and carrying for his ill wife Esther Yocheved bat Rayzl Bracha, and that the MIAs be liberated alive and returned to us in ways befitting Al Kiddush Hashem — as with the return in April, 2019, via Russia, of the remains of Zachariah Baumel, as should the remains of the two chayalim from the Gaza War of five years ago. May we have the courage and strength to stand up and physically prevent the possibility of Chas V’Challila any future eviction of Jews from their homes and prevent Chas V’Challila the handing of Jewish land over to anyone, let alone to enemies sworn to Israel’s and Judaism’s destruction and eradication. May 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 to see the Moshiach, the Ge’ula Shlaima, as Dov Shurin sings; “Ki Karov Yom Hashem Al’Kol HaGoyim”, the Ultimate Redemption, bimhayrah b’yamainu — speedily, in our time”, — Achshav, Chik Chuk, Miyad, Etmol!!!
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Moshe Burt is an Oleh, writer and commentator on news and events in Eretz Yisrael. He is the founder and director of The Sefer Torah Recycling Network and lives in Ramat Beit Shemesh.
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