The (New and Improved) Brand Name

At a certain point G-d felt that it’s time to invest some thought into Abraham’s brand name. G-d understood that for Abrham’s message to catch on and change the course of history, a brand name must be carefully crafted.

So G-d changes Abraham’s name from Av-ra-m to Av-ra-HA-m (adding the Hebrew letter Hey). As the verse states:  

"And your name shall no longer be called Av-ra-m, but your name shall be Av-ra-HA-m, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations."

[The Hebrew letter Hey stands for the Hebrew word “Hamon”, which means Multitude.]

As Rashi, the primary commentator of the Torah, explains:

The letter “Resh” that was in it [his name] originally, denoting that he was the father only of Aram, which was his native place, whereas now [with the added letter Hey, he becomes] the father of the whole world.  

G-d tells Avraham that he cannot be satisfied with leading and inspiring only his close circle, that he cannot just dream about creating a haven of Divine morality, rather he is charged with being a father to a multitude of nations. He must change his name, his mission statement, and his goals. He must teach his children that anybody who wishes to carry the torch, to perpetuate Avraham’s legacy, will have to follow the message embedded in the letter Hey that G-d added; that the goal of the movement is to fill all of the earth with the knowledge of G-d.  

Now, too often, those who try to impact the world sometimes forget about those closest to them. Those who are busy solving communal, national, and international problems, sometimes over look the “petty” problem their five year old daughter may be facing. Those who have the passion and ambition to make a significant impact on society are sometimes too busy for the people closest to them.   

G-d wants to prevent Avraham making that mistake.

As the passage of Rashi quoted earlier continues:

“Nevertheless the “Resh” that was there originally was not moved from its place”.  

If the Hebrew letter Resh represents that Avraham was a father only to his native land, and the Hebrew letter Hey represents that he is a father to the entire world (“multitude of nations”), then why can’t we drop the letter Resh? Isn’t Avraham’s native land included in the “multitude of nations”?

The message then is that he should not forget about the “Resh”. That just like in the past, before his mission was expanded to include all the people of the earth, he understood that he must drop everything and risk his life to save his nephew Lot, so too after the broadening of his goals he must still be devoted to those closest to him.

Perhaps that is why in the later portions, the Torah emphasizes that Avraham ultimately does impact all of his family. That even after he is forced, by Sarah and G-d, to expel Hagar he does not forget about her. That eventually he is able to bring Hagar back into his household, and remarry her.  

So, yes, carry the torch of Avraham, go out and make a deep impact on the world around you. But don’t forget about those who need you most.

(Inspired by Leku"s Lech Licha 25, 3. Chayey Sarah 15, 4. Amd the Abarbinel on The battle of the kings).

Judaism and Capitalism

The most important principle to capitalism is private property. The most important principle to Judaism is unity. How can these seemingly opposing ideas co-exist? Private property, by definition, creates separation and division within society. How can Judaism, which at it's core is about the unity of the one G-d, the universe and the unity of all people created in the image of G-d, accept the divisions created by private property?

On the last day of his life, Moses is well aware of this seeming contradiction. His people are about to transition from life in the desert, where there is no ownership of land, to Israel, where for the first time the people become land owners. Moses knows he has one final opportunity to teach his people how to balance these two opposing ideals. That is why, on the last day of life, he commands his beloved people:

"At the end of [every] seven years, at an appointed time, in the Festival of Succoth, [after] the year of release,

When all Israel comes to appear before the Lord, your God, in the place He will choose, you shall read this Torah before all Israel, in their ears.

Assemble the people: the men, the women, and the children, and your stranger in your cities, in order that they hear, and in order that they learn and fear the Lord, your God, and they will observe to do all the words of this Torah.

And their children, who did not know, will hear and learn to fear the Lord, your God, all the days that you live on the land, to which you are crossing the Jordan, to possess.

Moses wants the people to understand that they are not defined, and should therefore not self define, by their material possessions and achievements. He wants to tell each individual: 'although your house may be nicer then your neighbor's, you are still one. You are one, because your soul, the core of your essence, is one with your neighbors soul. The material possessions that divide you are nothing more then an external garment, it is not who you are, and in can therefore not separate you from your friend.'

How can this message be instilled in the hearts of minds of people who will spend most of their time, energy and effort working their land? the only way to do so is through the commandments of "Shmitah" and "Hakhel", the sabbatical (when we are forbidden to work the land for an entire year) and the gathering in the temple after the sabbatical, in the beginning of the first year of the next cycle, when the people are headed back to work for the next six years.

During the seventh year every land owner takes a year long break from working the land, devoting his time to spiritual pursuits. During that year all produce that grows in the field is legally ownerless, and anybody is free to enter any orchard to enjoy it's fruit. This serves as a powerful reminder to the people that there is more two life then amassing wealth, that their true essence is the soul not the body, and they have to devote time to feed the soul, just as they devote tome to feed to body.

And then, at the end of the long sabbatical, just as everyone is anxious to get back to working the land, comes the Mitzvah to gather in the temple to hear the words of Torah. Moses tells the people that if they want to be able to juggle the blessings of private property and the truths of Judaism, then, BEFORE they get back to the field, they have to reenact the giving of the Torah at Sinai. They have to gather men woman and children. Why children? Because the children are crucial to the reenactment of Sinai. Sinai is the time when all our people, men woman and children, stood around the mountain, "as one person with one heart", united around the words and teachings of the Torah.

Moses understood that the future generations also need to experience this powerful feeling. The Feeling of unity that comes from self defining by the teachings of the Torah that unite, instead of by the material blessings we receive that can sometimes divide.

And then there is us.

We who's bodies did not stand at Sinai, and did not stand shoulder to shoulder with the entire nation of Israel at the reading of the Torah in the Temple. We too must mediate on this message each year, when the story of Moshe's last day on this earth is read in the Torah. We must close our eyes and imagine standing with all our brothers and sisters at the foot of Sinai, listening to the words of G-d.

Like one person with one heart.

The Cry of the Shofar

The greatest obstacle in the path of exponential growth is past success.

You are a successful parent, or a loving spouse, or a leader in your industry, or a productive artist. If I ask you to write down what you want to achieve next year, chances are, the achievement you strive for is not exponentially greater than the success you already achieved.

You are not alone. While children and young people, who did not yet enjoy a degree of success, dream about reaching the stars, adults, who are burdened by their success, usually hope to do better in the future. But not exponentially better.

That’s a problem. It’s a problem because intuitively we feel our infinite soul, and our boundless potential. Tell someone that she is so great that you feel she maximized her potential, and you are sure to offend her. Because, at the core of our being, we reject that our essence is confined.

So once a year we have to shatter our carefully constructed comfort zone. Once a year, as we hear the blasts of the Shofar, we have to look ourselves in the eye and ask the dreaded questions: “am I the person I hoped to be? Is this all I can be?”

The way to sense infinity, is by feeling the oppressive constraints of the finite. When we hear the Shofar, we are hearing the purity of the soul within us, and the purity of the person we want to become. And when we hear the Shofar we feel how distant we are from our core, from what we want to become, from what we know we can become.

By facing our faults yet refusing to make peace with them, by refusing to allow our shortcomings to define us, by feeling trapped by the confines of our personality we can escape the limitations and reach our core. And when we reach our core we discover that at the core we are one with the essence of the infinite light of G-d.   

Immediately before we sound the Shofar we recite seven verses of King David’s psalms. The first of them, the one that sets the tone for the blowing of the Shofar, is a deep cry to G-d:

“Out of the straits, I called to You, O G-d; G-d answered me with abounding relief.”

This verse captures the purpose of blowing the Shofar. The Hebrew word for “abounding relief” (Ba’mer’chav) also has the meaning of “wide expanse of space”. The verse is telling us that only when we feel trapped in the “straits” of our limitations, will we be able to break free, and be answered and placed in the expanse of the infinity of G-d.

Justice

This weeks Torah portion begins with Moshe’s eloquent cry to the Jewish people to establish courts and to pursue justice:  

You shall set up judges and law enforcement officials for yourself in all your cities that the Lord, your God, is giving you, for your tribes, and they shall judge the people [with] righteous judgment.

You shall not pervert justice; you shall not show favoritism, and you shall not take a bribe, for bribery blinds the eyes of the wise and perverts just words.

Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may live and possess the land the Lord, your God, is giving you.

All agree that justice is important, but justice is elusive. Even in this great country, in the 21st century, there are serious questions whether are criminal justice system is the best we could do to establish justice, or whether we have a long way to make sure that every individual can expect and can receive a fair trial.  

When writing, it’s effective to save the most  powerful point for last. The last sentence is your chance to emphasize your point and to shape the impression your reader will ‘take away’.

The last section of the Torah reading is where the Torah highlights it’s understanding of the true test of justice: will society protect the most vulnerable, lonely, least respected, and even unknown members of society?

When an unknown victim is found slain, do we ignore him because there is no one to lobby for justice, or, as the Torah demands, do we force the most prominent members of society to come down to the crime scene, to investigate, to declare that they did not ignore the plight of this person, and to force the story into the headlines?

As the Torah puts it:

If a slain person be found in the land which the Lord, your God is giving you to possess, lying in the field, [and] it is not known who slew him.

Then your elders and judges shall go forth, and they shall measure to the cities around the corpse.

And it will be, [that from] the city closer to the corpse, the elders of that city shall take a calf with which work has never been done, [and] that has never drawn a yoke,

And the elders of that city shall bring the calf down to a rugged valley, which was neither tilled nor sown, and there in the valley, they shall decapitate the calf.

.... And they shall announce and say, "Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see [this crime]."

The Torah understands that the test of justice is not “at your gates”, not how we treat the prominent members of society, rather the test of justice is whether the “elders and judges” will leave their ivory tower, leave the city, and search for justice for the unknown stranger.

Speak to the Rock

We all heard the story: the Jews needed water in the desert, G-d tells Moses to speak to the rock and it will give its waters, Moses hit the rock instead of speaking to it and was therefore denied the great merit of entering the land of Israel.

As the Torah states:  

"The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Take the staff and assemble the congregation, you and your brother Aaron, and speak to the rock in their presence so that it will give forth its water. You shall bring forth water for them from the rock and give the congregation and their livestock to drink." Moses took the staff from before the Lord as He had commanded him. Moses and Aaron assembled the congregation in front of the rock, and he said to them, "Now listen, you rebels, can we draw water for you from this rock?" Moses raised his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice, when an abundance of water gushed forth, and the congregation and their livestock drank."

There are many mysteries in this story; let’s start with the basics: if G-d was so upset with Moses, why did he then perform a miracle causing water to gush forth from a rock despite Moses hitting the rock? And why was G-d so offended by the hitting of the rock instead of speaking to it?

If I believe that something is beyond my reach - that I can't master this wisdom, learn to play this instrument, or overcome this challenge - there are two ways you can help me grow. You can force me to do it. You can just throw me into the pool and I'll have no choice but to figure out how to swim. I will be forced to achieve what I thought was impossible. I will, however, achieve this only because of a force outside of myself. The downside is that since the growth is forced upon me by external circumstances, therefore once the circumstances change I will be back to my old self.

The more effective option is for you to show me that deep within me lies abundant potential; you show me that to grow I need not look to a force outside me rather I need to look inward. Only when the growth is not forced upon me, will it last.

You want to teach your child, or your student, yet you feel you hit a wall; he or she just does not get it. You began to think "I am wasting my time, there is no one home". You feel like your only option is to “hit the rock”, to force the growth upon then, by applying pressure from the outside, by the force of your charisma, or by the threat of consequence, or an award of a vacation to Europe. You will probably manage to get some water out of the rock. But you missed the point.  

Or you can “speak” to what to you looks like a rock. You think your child cannot listen, understand and identify with the message, understand that you are misjudging. G-d says: “speak to the rock in their presence so that it will give forth its water”, what appears to you as a rock is a fountain. Speak again and again, dig deeper and deeper, and you’ll discover the water.   

Chesed Shel Emes

I've recently been at a few funerals and I have been thinking about that which we say that the Mitzvah of burying someone is a Chesed Shel Emes because it cannot be repaid.
It seemed to me that extra hasbarah was called for because it is possible for a variety of reasons to gain benefit, e.g. from relatives or onlookers who now respect you more etc.
So the focus is on the deceased, and this applies whether you them or not. How does one truly express friendship and brotherhood? It is a true expression when it is done without calculations and that expresses itself when the fellow is deceased and there is no possibility of give and take and therefore this is the truest expression of friendship. And this is perhaps even better expressed when you didn't know the deceased, it is even a truer expression of Ahavas Yisrael.
We can connect this to Emes made up of the letters Aleph, Mem and Tuv. There is no hefsek.
But like everything in the world there can be corruption mitzad taruvis tov v'ra, So it is upon us to make sure that like everything else we need to make sure we are focused on the right reason for it.

Blood vs. Frogs, Which is worse?

In Lku"s the Rebbe says that kaltkeit is worse then a varemkeit for bad things as it easier co-opted and returned to the good.
I find that many people who have trouble believing in G-d have very heightened sense of wrong and right and are not easily convinced by intellectual answers and their status is really a cry for wanting a perfect world. So too with people who are apathetic, I find with myself it can be a response to being burned in one's hopes and the fear to get hurt once again. But underneath it all is a fire waiting to bust out.
So even though kaltkeit is worse the potential for greater heights is ever present. And this falls in line with the principle of Kol HaGvoah beYoser etc.