Bulletin05.07.2011 - Emor

Inspiration, Insights & Ideas
Bringing Torah lessons to LIFE!
Continued from p. 13 Parsha Messages
kohen. He’d join his “father” on the dais and recite the Priestly
Blessing; he’d get dibs on the first aliyah. He’d hand down a
tradition of priesthood to his own sons . . . But in reality he’s no
kohen, and his DNA and that of his future male descendents would
not bear those crucial markers.
But almost 100% of all men with family tradition of priesthood do
descend from kohanim. Generation after generation of Jewish
women were faithful to their husbands and their tradition. What a
proud record of fidelity. Geneticists describe these results as “the
highest record of paternity-certainty ever recorded,” and there is no
reason to assume that their sisters married to Levites and Israelites
were any less faithful to their spouses and religion.
Geneticists describe these results as “the highest record of
paternity-certainty ever recorded”This devotion to our spouses and
our G‑d has always been the way of the Jew. Even during our slavery
in Egypt, subject to the capricious demands of an evil nation, our
women distinguished themselves. The Book of Leviticus2 records
the only example of illegitimacy, the product of the rape of a Jewess
by an Egyptian overseer. The Torah hints that this woman’s
flirtatious manner may have precipitated the dreadful occurrence,
but the crime was committed by the Egyptian.
This sad exception only demonstrates how refreshingly modest and
chaste were all other Jews. The very worst and most unfortunate
incident of all the time they were in slavery was not a case of
adultery, G‑d forbid, but abuse. It is to the credit of our ancestors
that, no matter the temptations, irrespective of the dangers, they
fought to stay faithful, and almost without exception they
succeeded. This proud heritage they vouchsafed to us.
Jewish marriages throughout history are a model for all humanity,
and the oaths and bonds that unite us with our partners and Creator
will remain firm and unwavering for now and eternity.
A Path and a Choice
Ethics 2:1
By Yanki Tauber
T
he long, sunny Shabbat afternoons of summer are perfect for
Torah study. Which is why our sages instituted a weekly
chapter of Ethics of the Fathers, starting with the Shabbat after
Passover.
This Shabbat, we study Chapter Two of the Ethics, the first lines of
which read:
Rabbi [Judah HaNassi] would say: Which is the right path for man to
choose for himself? Whatever is harmonious for the one who does
it, and harmonious for other people.
Half the people reading these lines will go on reading. The other half
will stop short in their tracks, scratch their heads and say, "Huh?"
I must have read those lines dozens of times without giving them a
second thought. After all, I've been doing the annual Ethics-of-the-
Fathers thing since I was a kid. But the first time that I actually paid
attention to what I was reading, I was shocked. I stopped short,
scratched my head and said, "Huh?"
There's nothing unusual, of course, about Rabbi Judah HaNassi's
14
words per se. They'd fit right into a politician's speech or an
"ethicist"'s advice column. They'd sit very comfortably on the
"Quotable Quotes" page of Reader's Digest. But the Ethics of the
Fathers is none of these things--it's one of the 63 tractates of the
Talmud. And to see a statement like that in the Talmud is not just
amazing--it flies in the face of just about everything else the
Talmud, indeed Torah as whole, says everywhere else.
What is "The Torah"? What does it come to say to us? If the message
of the Torah could be summed up in a few lines, it might be
something like this: "There is an objective, divinely ordained path of
goodness and truth. G-d has revealed this path to us at Sinai, and it
has been handed down through the generations in an unbroken
chain of tradition. It is this path that you should follow--not the
desires of your heart or the conventions of your society. The fact
that 'I want this' or 'it feels right' does not imply that the desire is
moral. The fact that 'everyone says it's ok' doesn't mean that it's the
right thing to do. The Creator of the universe is the arbiter of good
and evil, not the wiles of the human heart or the 'political
correctness' of the current decade."
So it's quite surprising to see Rabbi Judah HaNassi (one of the most
central figures in the Talmud, and in the history of Torah's
transmission through the centuries) advising us to "follow your
bliss." Nor would we think that he, of all people, would make a
statement to the effect that "if it's going to make other people like
you, that's the thing to do." Certainly we wouldn't expect him to
define these guidelines as "the right path for man to choose for
himself"! Unless I've completely misunderstood what the Torah is
and says?
There's a story told about a child who's just starting to learn Talmud
and is experiencing confusion with its new, unfamiliar language.
The Arameic word chamra means "donkey." But chamra also means
"wine." "How do I know," asks the cheder boy, "which is which?"
"Simple," says the teacher. "It depends where it's standing. If it's
standing in the stable, it's a donkey; if it's standing on the table, it's
wine!"1
Context is everything: show me where it's written, and I'll tell you
what it means.
That's how the Lubavitcher Rebbe explains Rabbi Judah HaNassi's
perplexing statement. If we examine more closely where this
statement appears, says the Rebbe, we'll better understand its
meaning.
Rabbi Judah's statement is set as the opening lines of the second
chapter of Ethics of the Fathers. So we need to understand the
relationship between the Ethics' second chapter to its first, as well
as the place that the Ethics occupies in the Talmud.
The teachings contained in the Ethics are described as "matters of
piety" (mili d'chassiduta) or behavior that's "beyond the line of the
law" (lifnim mishurat ha-din). For example: In the other tractates,
you'll find the details of the Torah's laws forbidding one to slander,
insult or curse one's fellow, but you won't find a law that
commands you to smile at a neighbor and wish him good morning;
the Ethics, however, enjoins, "Receive every man with a pleasant
countenance." Torah law obligates us to lend material support to
the needy; the Ethics instructs that "the poor should be members of
your household." The strict letter of the law states that "One who
says, 'I am giving this selah to charity so that my son shall live,' is a
perfectly righteous person." The Ethics, however, admonishes:
"Do not be as slaves who serve their master for the sake of