From the Rabbi’s Desk
Parashat Ki Tetze
Rabbi Manes Kogan
Shabat Shalom!
Martin Buber, in his famous recompilation of Hassidic Stories, relates a dialogue between a Hasidic Master and a new disciple.
The Rabbi asked the disciple: "Who are you?". The disciple introduced himself: "I am the son of the great Rabbi of Warsaw and the grandson of the great Rabbi of Kiev".
When the Master heard the answer, he replied to his new disciple: "I didn’t ask you who are your father or your grandfather but rather who are you."
Sometimes is very helpful to employ our parents name, or what in Hebrew we call our "Ijus", if our parents are famous or important or powerful. In the Dominican Republic it is very common, if you don’t like to stand in a line, or if you want to get your phone repaired as soon as possible, to mention the name of a relative who has a high position in the government (like: I am the president’s son, the judge nephew or lawyer Johnson’s Sister).
However, to be a famous person’s son or daughter can be very difficult. To be Clinton’s daughter, or John Lenon’s son, doesn’t seem very easy.
Sometimes, the achievements of our parents can be very helpful for us in life and we can take advantage of their economic situation, their reputation or their position in society.
Nevertheless, when we talk about spiritual achievements, about religious sensitivity, about values in life, about common sense, about knowledge or intelligence, our parents’ achievements or position don’t help us very much.
As in the Hassidic story, the people will ask us: "Who are you?" Not your father or your mother, or your grandfather, but you, Who are you?
This is something that everybody needs to work on alone.
How much we’ll achieve in our spiritual life, how much we’ll study and how "Mensh" we’ll be, depends only on us.
Tomorrow we’ll read in our weekly Parasha, Parashat Ki Tetze:
"Parents shall not be put to death for children, nor children be put to death for parents: a person shall be put to death only for his own crime" (Deuteronomy 24: 16)
Even though it’s a simple verse, we need to work a little on it. I am sure that a long time ago, in the ancient cultures, when a person committed a crime, all his family was punished. Also the opposite was very common. If a child committed a crime, it was not unusual to condemn his father or mother for the child’s sin.
3500 years ago, the Torah dealt with a very important issue and introduced a change in the parameters of the cultures that surrounded the people of Israel
: "a person shall be put to death only for his own crime".But what can this verse teach us today, when it’s obvious that we don’t have criminal courts in the Jewish Law? Can we learn something from this lost passage in our Torah?
I think we can, and I want to share with you a message I learned from it:
Every one is responsible for his own life, for his own attitude, for his own behavior, and can not blame his parents for what he or she is today. If you don’t like the way you are, if you think you didn’t receive enough from your parents, if you think you can be more religious, more spiritual, more supportive, more Jewish than your parents, don’t blame them. Change yourself. They did what they were able to do: you need to work harder to grow spiritually and emotionally.
Some people think they are too old, or tired to change. For these people, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov has a powerful message:
"Don’t make the same mistake as all those people who give up trying to change because they feel stuck in their habits. If you truly want to and are willing to work hard enough, you can overcome them" (Likutei Moharan 11:110)
On the other hand, if your parents and grandparents are or were great people, that’s wonderful, but don’t think that you will receive by osmosis their greatness. You will need to establish your own identity.
Some people tell me: "Rabbi, you know, my great-grandfather was a very important Rabbi in Poland, he was a very religious and observant Jew". That is very important, but my question is how religious and observant are you, today? Like the Hassidic story I ask: Who are you?
The responsibility is only ours and we have the key in our hands.
And remember, Roah Hashanah, is a wonderful time for change.
Shabat Shalom!
Beth Israel, September 4, 1998
From the Rabbi’s Desk
Rabbi Manes Kogan
Ki-Tetze
5761
Not long ago, I was talking with a friend of mine on the situation in the Middle East. Do you know what is the solution? – He asked me. No. – I told him- Tell me. It is simple, he answered to me: Arabs and Israelis need to understand that violence won’t lead them anywhere, they need to sit together around the negotiations table and they need to make concessions in order to achieve a long term peace.
As much as my friend’s solution deserves credit for its good intentions, it needs to be left aside as useless.
My friend’s solution, similar to the late statements of the more "civilized" countries in the world (among them the USA), on the Middle East situation, is ideal. The problem seems to be that life is real, not ideal.
Why do seemingly happy couples get divorced after 20 years of living together? Why don’t try they to work out their differences? Apparently it is not so simple. Why do grown children not respect and honor their parents? Don’t they realize that their parents brought them into this world? Apparently they don’t.
Life is complex and so are the situations different people, families and countries get involved.
When our little children fight over a tot we tell them: "now you play with the toy and then you play with it!" With adults things are different. And maybe they should be different, more complex. The paradisiacal life, Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden is lost. The Messiah –may he come soon in our days- may restore it. However, since the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, things stopped being easy for human kind and especially for the Jewish people.
"By the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread" (Genesis 3:19) seems to be a very accurate prediction of what will be the future of humanity. A few verses later, Cain kills his brother Abel. Then, an entire evil generation is destroyed, and people full of arrogance tried to reach God’s dwellings by building the tower of Babel.
The founder of the Jewish people, Abraham, needs to bargain with Ephron when he purchases the first piece of land in Israel, and goes to war in order to secure the Promised Land for himself and for us, his children.
Things were not simple then and they are not simple now. Solutions were not easy 3000 years ago and they won’t be easy today.
Last year, in Israel, I visited the Hartman Institute for Jewish Studies and one of the leading teachers was asked what was opinion was of the Americans. The teacher, an American himself, though many years in Israel, answered: "Americans are very impatient. Since they lived most of their lives in a predictable country, they are not trained to deal with situations of incertitude".
This statement may be true, but not only regarding Americans. Since incertitude is uncomfortable, we tend to believe that is abnormal. However, life shows us that it is not.
Uncertainty and insecurity are inherent to the history of humanity and especially to the history of the Jewish people.
Life is not ideal. It is real, and the Torah, our holy Torah, reflects this reality and accepts the complexity of life.
It would be very nice if the entire world would recognize the right of the Jewish people to have a different set of beliefs and practices. But this is not the case. In the Torah, war is a reality. Not a desirable reality, but a fact, something that may happen, and eventually will happen. Wars are not fun. People die and injustices occur. The Torah recognizes the cruel reality of war and establishes clear rules within the inevitable absurdity of war itself.
"When you will go out to war against your enemies, and Hashem, your God, will deliver them into your hand, and you will capture its captivity: and you will see among its captivity a woman who is beautiful of form, and you will desire her, you may take her to yourself for a wife […] She shall remove the garment of her captivity from upon herself and sit in your house and she shall weep for her father and her mother for a full month; thereafter you may come to her and live with her, and she shall be a wife to you: But it shall be that if you do not desire her, then you shall send her on her own, but you may not sell her for money; you shall not enslave her, because you have afflicted her" (Deuteronomy 21: 10-14)
Idealistic people will say. We don’t want war, and I say I don’t want war either. But if the decision is not in my hands, I would like to know how to deal with it.
If a man has two wives (a situation that the Torah contemplates), he may love one more than the other, or may prefer one over the other. Don’t parents sometimes do the same with their children? The Torah does not deal with ideal situations, but with real ones.
"If a man will have two wives, one beloved and one hated, and they bear him sons, the beloved one and the hated one, and the firstborn son is the hated one's: then it shall be that on the day that he causes his sons to inherit whatever will be his, he cannot give the right of the firstborn to the son of the beloved one ahead of the son of the hated one, the firstborn: Rather, he must recognize the firstborn, the son of the hated one, to give him the double portion in all that is found with him; for he is his initial vigor, to him is the right of the firstborn" (Deuteronomy 21:15-17)
Love is forever, until it is not. Marriage is an ideal situation but some marriages are not. The Torah –3500 years ago- contemplates the divorce:
"If a man marries a woman and lives with her, and it will be that she will not find favor in his eyes, for he found in her a matter of immorality, and he wrote her a bill of divorce and presented it into her hand, and sent her from his house: and she left his house and went and married another man" (Deuteronomy 24:1-2)
Since the Torah is a tree of life, it should be applicable to real situations, not to ideal ones, and therefore, the Torah describes many times, no-win situations.
It seems that the situation in the Middle East is a no-win situation. Whoever tells you that he knows for sure what should be done in the Middle East doesn’t know what he is talking about.
I believe that we should recognize the complexity of the situation and take sides. In real situations in life, the actors don’t sit on a higher chair to dispense impartial justice. I believe that the time for action has arrived, also for us, here, today.
As American Jews, we can not refer to Israel as a faraway land and to the Israelis as poor people who live under stress. The faraway land is also our land, the land we mention three times a day in our prayers, and the Israelis in Israel are our brothers and sisters, and their suffering should be ours.
Let’s don’t get trapped in the complexity of the Middle East situation. Lack of solutions should not mean for us lack of involvement or lack of commitment.
Should my children ask me in the future: "Daddy, where were you in the year 2001 when Israel needed you?" "What did you do to make a difference?" I would like to have something real to answer to them.
A rally to support Israel will take place on September 23 in New York and hopefully the Roanoke Jewish Community will be present. I will try to be there and I hope you will join me!
Shabbat Shalom!
Devar Torah
"Parents shall not be put to death for children, nor children be put to death for parents: a person shall be put to death only for his own crime" (Deuteronomy 24: 16
An Halajic Midrash of the second century -Sifrei Deuteronomy- interprets our verse.
"Parents died for their own crime" – says the Midrash- "but children died for their parents crime" (Sifrei Deuteronomy).
Sifrei Deuteronomy teaches us a wonderful lesson: Since we have free choice and we can determine our own life, God (and the society) will judge us based on our own behavior. At the same time we can’t give up our responsibility with our children. Nobody can certainly know what will happen with our children in the future. However, we are responsible for them, and our attitude toward them today, probably will decide their attitude toward their children in the future. Just to give you an example: the way we live our Judaism every day probably will dictate the way our children will live their Judaism tomorrow.
Devar Torah
You shall not watch your brother's ox or his sheep go astray and hide yourself from them; you shall surely bring them back to your brother (Deuteronomy 22:1)
This is the mitzva of "returning a lost object." If the Torah commands us to return a lost physical object and not pretend we are unaware of the situation, how much more so are we obligated to help a lost Jewish soul and restore it to its rightful place. (The Shaloh)