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Sh'lah on the Torah |
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(3 parshas together) The following translation by Mr. Eliyahu Munk is an excerpt from the book Shney Luchot HaBrit -- the Sh'lah NER MITZVA Commandment 612 enjoins the entire Jewish people to assemble at the end of the Shmittah year on the second day of the festival of Tabernacles. Commandment 613 directs every male Israelite to write a copy of the written Torah for himself. The Torah writes: "V'ata Kitvu lachem et hashira hazot v'lamda et bnei Yisroel…" (31, 19) "Now write down for yourselves this 'song' and teach it to the Children of Israel." This concludes the list of the 613 commandments. According to Nachmanides the commandment to do tshuva is also alluded to in this portion in 30,11: "For this commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for you, etc." In the portion Ha'azinu we find an allusion to the prohibition to drink wine intended as a libation for idolatrous cults. The Torah refers to this in 32,38: "who are the fat of their offerings and drank their libation wine." We have a similar allusion to this commandment in Exodus 34,15: "and he will invite you and you and will partake of his (idolatrous) offerings." The word "from" (his offerings) includes libations. TORAH OR "Yisroel goi echad b'aretz", Israel is a nation unique in this world. It has been crowned (singled out) with a single crown consisting of two facets, i.e. both in a general and in a specific way. The entire nation is considered as if it were one person; this is why the Torah refers to the people as 'nefesh', person (singular) already at the time Jacob descended into Egypt (Genesis 46,26, et al.). The significance of this lies in the fact that "ki cheilek Hashem amo", "that His people Israel are part of G-d Himself" (32,9). The remainder of mankind was divided into 70 nations, each one with a representative in the Celestial Regions, i.e. a horoscope presided over by a 'sar', "minister," as we know from 4, 19: "which the Lord your G-d assigned to all the nations; He took you and removed you from the iron crucible, from Egypt, to be for Him His very own nation, as is now the case" (4,20). The Jewish people's fortunes are not guided by intermediaries such as horoscopes. The 70 nations were divided from one another as we know from 32,8: "When the most High gave nations their homes and set the divisions of man, He fixed the boundaries of peoples in relation to Israel's numbers." The relationship (common denominator) between the "numbers" of Israel and that of the nations of the world is that Israel numbered 70 when they first went down to Egypt. The difference is only that the 70 Israelites that came to Egypt are all described as nefesh, a single person. Any part of the Jewish nation is compared to the entire nation. Because Israel is part of G-d, it has an eternal future, as pointed out in Sanhedrin 90: "Every Israelite has a share in the World to Come." In addition to this common factor which links every Israelite with one another to form part of the whole, each Israelite is a distinct individual as is evident from a statement by our sages (Bamidbar Rabbah 21, 22, based on Isaiah 4,5): "any righteous person is burned or singed by the fire G-d has provided as part of the canopy He grants to every righteous person." This teaches that though every Israelite has his share in the World to Come, everyone is assigned a place of his own. Concerning this state of affairs, Moses said in 32, 12: "The Lord guided him separately, unaccompanied by any alien power." The word "yanchenu" in this verse is a singular, (guided him, not guided us) to stress that every Israelite is an individual unit, personality. When Moses continued that: "He was not accompanied by another power," this refers to the 'sarim' (ministers) and 'mazalot' (constellations) assigned to guide the fates of the Gentiles. None of those forces exercise the slightest control over the Jewish people. |
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