Shabbat-B'Shabbato – Parshat Tazriya (Hachodesh)

No 1518: 27 Adar II 5774 (29 March 2014)

AS SHABBAT APPROACHES

Even though a Jew Sins He Remains a Jew - by Rabbi Mordechai Greenberg, Rosh Yeshiva, Kerem B'Yavne

"If a man has on the skin of his flesh... and on the skin of his flesh it will be an affliction of tzaraat" [Vayikra 13:2]. Or Hachaim writes, "The Torah teaches us that the impurity of tzaraat in an Israelite occurs in the skin of his flesh and not internally." The Maharal often writes the same idea: "Any sin in Yisrael is a chance occurrence, and no sin is related to their essence."

Basically, this is also what Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook wrote: "The true root of the wisdom of Yisrael is to understand the Divine trait of the soul of the nation." If we assume that the actions are what impart the unique traits to a person from Yisrael, we might suppose that a sinner loses this special advantage. But if we know that the uniqueness of Yisrael is not linked to a personal choice but is a Divine creation, as is written, "I have created this nation for Me" [Yeshayhu 43:21], we understand that no sin can revoke this unique advantage. And Rabbi Yehuda Halevi writes the same idea in the Kuzari: "The belief in this fact was established for us, and we must believe it and agree to it with eternal love, with which He loves us... that this begins with Him, and does not go from us to Him." And therefore, the Sefat Emet writes, we parade with the Arava branches around the Altar on Succot, "even though this plant has neither a taste nor a scent, since it symbolizes the clinging of Bnei Yisrael to G-d. Where does the love for these people come from (even though they are not involved in the Torah)? It is due to the fact that Bnei Yisrael are called the sons of the Holy One, Blessed be He, and every person of Yisrael clings to G-d... Even without any deeds, based solely on creation, the people of Bnei Yisrael cling strongly... And Bnei Yisrael are happier about this trait with which they are endowed from their very creation than about the merits that they achieve for their deeds, since, after all, what can be achieved by the accomplishments of a human being?"

One of the strongest indications of this idea appears in Tana D'Bei Eliyahu. "There are two things in the world that I love absolutely, and they are the Torah and Yisrael. But I do not know which one of them is the more important of the two. I said to him, My son, human beings would generally say that the Torah takes precedence... but I say that the holy Yisrael came first, as is written, 'Yisrael is holy to G-d, the first of His grain' [Yirmiyahu 2:3]. Without Yisrael the world would not have been created and it would be destroyed."

And because of the love of the Holy One, Blessed be He, and the appearance of His Shechina even "within their impurities" [Vayikra 16:16], the Divine love encompasses everybody in Yisrael. "And this great spiritual love which stems from the Divine root must rise up within men of spirit who have a compassionate heart, at a time when the trampling of what is holy and the humiliation of religion can be seen in full strength." [Rav Kook, Orot].

And therefore Rav Charlap wrote as follows: "The salvation of Yisrael depends mainly on the will of the pure of heart to expound on the merits of Bnei Yisrael... But if at any time they forget this obligation and view all the people as being guilty, they are thus showing that they do not have a true desire for salvation." And this leads to self-inflicted damage. "Let the pure of heart know the following: If they want all the details of the laws of Yisrael and all their customs to remain with them in all their stringency and with all their love, they must remove from within themselves any ideas of guilt and anger about any individual within Yisrael."

POINT OF VIEW

Protecting the Lives of our Children - by Zevulun Orlev

This week's Torah portion describes the birth of our children, "These are the laws of a woman who gives birth" [Vayikra 12:7]. Together with the sacrifice of thanks for the birth and the joy of a circumcision, the parents begin to encounter the complex challenge of guarding over the lives of their children, including their physical and spiritual wellbeing, and educating them in the traditions of our ancestors. The sages have defined the specific obligations of the parents as follows: "A father is required with respect to his son to circumcise him, to redeem him (if he is a firstborn), to teach him Torah, to find him a wife, and to teach him a profession. And some add that he should teach him how to swim." [Kiddushin 29a].

Children who have been Injured in Accidents

Unfortunately, all too often we feel the pain of the deaths or serious injury of young children, from such sources as gas, choking, poison, flames that came from ovens, drowning in a shallow bathtub, falling from a balcony, injuries while playing in a playground, or from being forgotten in an overheated car. Every year we lose about four full classes of children (about 120 children) as a result of such accidents. Every day about 500 children are brought to emergency rooms as a result of accidents. During a typical year, about 24,000 (!) children are hospitalized for long periods of time as a result of accidents in the home, in the yard outside, in cars, and in kindergartens or educational institutions. The cause almost all of these accidents is related to a lack of proper supervision, attentiveness, or awareness.

Many accidents can be avoided, and the numbers can be drastically reduced. How? First of all, it is important to maintain the awareness and the knowledge of the parents and grandparents and of all those who work with the children. I am sorry to say that until today no single government authority has been established and there is no single entity that is responsible for taking a lead position on this matter, which is distributed among ten different ministries, local authorities, and nongovernmental institutions. A criminal law (which I proposed) that requires first and foremost for the parents to supervise their children until the age of six is not being enforced at all. In the ten years since the law was passed, not a single person was found guilty based on this law, in spite of the deaths of more than 1,200 children! There is no organized lobby taking care of the needs of children, they have no workers' committee looking out for them, and in practice they have been left on their own. And they pay for this failure with a heavy price in life and in their physical and mental wellbeing.

The country treats accidents of children in a very disproportionate way. On one hand, it budgets about 300 million Shekels in order to prevent some 300 fatalities in traffic accidents every year, and about 50 million Shekels to prevent about 50 deaths from work accidents. That is, on average about a million Shekels a year is spent "per person" for adults, and this is a good thing. On the other hand, the government spends only about 20 million Shekels to prevent 120 deaths of children a year in accidents, an average of only about 80,000 Shekels for each child. Thus, the life of a child is worth only 8% of the value of the life of an adult! This is an absurdity that cries out to be fixed. Accidents involving adults are handled by government agencies such as the Israel National Road Safety Authority and the Israel Institute for Occupational Safety and Hygiene. There is no such government agency for children, and they are left to fend for themselves. Worse yet, there is no official government authority which gathers and publicizes data on injuries to children.

The goal of decreasing the number of deaths of children and the time they spend in the hospital is not merely a personal and moral imperative of the highest degree, it also has economic ramifications. The economic loss of curtailing the long life expectancy of a child is much greater than the loss of the much shorter life span of an adult. The benefit from rehabilitating an injured child after an accident during his long life is much greater than an equivalent rehabilitation of an adult.

"Beterem" as a Responsible Adult

The Beterem children's emergency response organization is a voluntary enterprise in the third sector, a non-government organization. It has great success while operating on a very small budget, playing the role of a "responsible adult" (disclosure: I am a member of the managing board of the organization). Beterem promotes awareness and puts pressure on government ministries to set up a formal government authority to take the lead on this subject at a national level, preferably in the Office of the Prime Minister, and to provide an appropriate budget, at least as much as that available for preventing adult traffic and work accidents.

Even though Beterem has a long list of accomplishments, it is not able (and has not been given the job) to replace the government or the parents. I therefore supported together with the Ministry of Health the establishment of an inter-ministerial committee to prepare a comprehensive national plan for safety of the children. Even though the committee finished its work a few months ago, no minister has yet stepped forward to take the initiative in approving and implementing the committee's recommendations. It would be best if the Prime Minister himself would do this, since the proposed plan encompasses many ministries, and high-level authority is needed to move forward.

The acceptance of the judgment of the Holy One, Blessed be He, and our lack of ability to know His ways – "who will live and who will die" – or to explain, understand, or judge His actions – all of this does not relieve us of the obligation to strictly obey the mitzvot to "closely guard our souls" [Devarim 4:15] and to "live by them (the mitzvot)" [Vayikra 18:5] and not to die for them. We are not allowed to lift up our hands and surrender to the accidents, mishaps, and tragedies. Even a lack of action by the government in this matter is not a valid reason for us to remain apathetic. The error of the idea that "it will never happen to me" is definitely relevant to our subject.

Accidents and child injuries are not a result of fate or a natural disaster. There is much that can be done, and we must act to prevent them. The attempt to preserve our children's lives is in our hands.

LET YOUR WELLSPRINGS BURST FORTH

Happiness Depends on Humility - by Rabbi Moshe Shilat, Director of "The Torah of Chabad for Yeshiva Students"

We all want to be happy here and now, but we tend to reach despair very quickly... This is especially true when our plans are not fulfilled exactly as we had anticipated.

In the essay below, the author of the Tanya spreads out before us a picture from the opposite approach. We start out in total darkness and he encourages us to be very happy with any success, with any flash of light. We should concentrate on our proximity to G-d, to be happy and to anticipate our next opportunity to be close to Him.

In this short article, the Elder Rebbe speaks to those who serve G-d at a very high level, and he discusses anticipation and disappointments that not every one of us have experienced. However, everybody can certainly learn to apply the words of the Rebbe to his own situation,

Below is what the Tanya wrote, interspersed with brief comments.

* * * * * *

In order to understand how to be get advice (how to achieve a state) that a person's heart will not fall, when he sees that after being involved in Torah and prayer he has not been transformed into another person. (When a person makes a strenuous attempt to serve G-d he expects a change in essence to take place in him. When no such change occurs, he must know how to cope with the situation without becoming sad.)

The point is that a person's body remains as abominated as before. (The body is not drawn into a state of sanctity.) It remains like a dark and dank house, from which it is impossible to remove and expel the darkness, except by the performance of Torah and the mitzvot. It (the light in the house) lights him up at the moment of action, as was stated by our sages, that the Shechina joins even an individual who sits alone and studies Torah. (In the same way, when a person stops his involvement with Torah, the darkness that enveloped him previously returns and takes control. This is a natural process which is not surprising.)

But when one looks at (how) the Torah brightens him with light at the moment that he is involved with it, the opposite happens. He will have true joy in the Blessed G-d – in the fact that instead of his original darkness he was lit up by the light of G-d. And this happiness specifically stems from the ultimate lowest level (from humility).

On the other hand, the feeling of sadness stems from a feeling of greatness (pride), and that the person is very important (in his own eyes), and he wants to "have" and "to be" (to be prominent and important). Therefore, when he sees at how low a level he is, that he did not change as he had hoped, his heart will fall within him and he will be angry at the Torah and the service which he performed.

On the other hand, when the Torah and the mitzvot are extremely precious in his eyes, the lower he feels the happier he is. (The less a person concentrates on himself, the more he is "surprised" and happy about the fact that he has achieved the merit of the light of G-d). And that is the main purpose of studying the Torah, which is called both light and happiness.

And thus a smart person will look around and see that his heart should not fall to say that he has not finished his task (that he has not succeeded) with respect to the Torah and his service (of G-d), or to say Who am I? (of what value am I?). And certainly if he has some doubts about faith, heaven forbid (not to fear that his Torah and prayers are "not serious"). Let him place on his heart (let him say to himself), what does this have to do with you? Who are you to decide? (Will you decide what is important and what is not?) And even if you do not agree to this, it is still true. (Even if you do not feel that it is so) the Torah and the service themselves are very precious and give a person light when he is involved in the Torah and when he performs good deeds and mitzvot.