Rabbi
Doniel Staum, LMSW
Rabbi,
Kehillat New Hempstead
Rebbe/Guidance
Counselor – ASHAR
Principal
– Ohr Naftoli- New Windsor
STAM TORAH
PARSHAS BEHA’ALOSCHA 5776
“STERLING CHARACTER”
Michelangelo is renowned for being a great painter,
particularly of the Sistine Chapel. The truth however, is that his true love
was not painting, but in sculpting.
He was once asked how he creates such masterful sculptures
out of slabs of stone. He is purported to have replied:
“In every block of marble I
see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in
attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the
lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.”
In other words, when
Michelangelo looked at a piece of marble, he was able to envision the statue
inside the marble. The only thing left to do was to chisel away the excess
marble which obscured the beautiful sculpture within.
The Torah relates that Miriam contracted tzara’as
after speaking loshon hara about Moshe to their brother, Aharon[1].
Rav Lazer Shach zt’l[2]
noted that the Torah recounts the event in great detail, as it does when it
relates the tragic saga of the spies. In fact, Chazal note that the Torah juxtaposes
the account of the spies with that of Miriam to demonstrate that the spies did
not pay heed to the lesson of Miriam’s punishment. The Torah’s lengthy account
here is in contradistinction with many fundamental laws and prohibitions which
are written concisely and learned exegetically from a mere allusion in the
pausk.
Rav Shach explained that deriving Torah laws from
pesukim does not leave much room for error. The law is the law! When discussing
behaviors and middos (character traits) however, one’s personal inclinations
play a significant role, and there is much greater proclivity for
misunderstanding and misinterpretation.
For example, if the Torah would be more concise in
its account of Miriam’s loshon hara, one could argue that the severity of her
sin was because she spoke negatively against the supreme Torah authority. That
interpretation would negate the Torah’s intention of demonstrating to us the
severity of any loshon hara. Similarly, if the Torah minced words about
Korach’s rebellion, one could argue that its severity was because he challenged
the great Moshe Rabbeinu, and thus fail to realize the Torah’s message about
the detriment of any dispute.
As a general rule, the Torah is far more explicit
and detailed when it discusses the ramifications of negative middos than it is
about its vital laws. That is because we fail to realize how damaging negative
character traits are, and how much we have to invest in order to rectify them.
In parshas Vayetzei[3]
the Torah relates that Reuven picked dudaim[4]
for his mother Leah. Rashi comments that the Torah states that this event
happened during the time of the harvest, a time of year when farmers generally
don’t mind if a passerby snatches a few stalks. Yet Reuven was careful to avoid
any possibility of stealing, by exerting himself to find dudaim that
were ownerless.
Why is it considered so virtuous that Reuven
didn’t steal; wouldn’t we expect nothing less from someone of Reuven’s moral
caliber?
Rabbi Moshe Feinstein zt’l explained that the
Torah is not praising the fact that Reuven did not steal. Rather, the Torah is
noting that Reuven recognized that despite how great he was, he still had to be
wary of his proclivity towards sin. Reuven’s greatness was that, despite his
personal integrity, or perhaps because of it, he was vigilant not to
fall under the influence of his wily evil inclination.
The Torah is teaching us that every person
has to constantly work on himself and can never feel that he is above sin. In
the words of Shlomo Hamelech[5],
“And who can say my heart is meritorious; I have purified myself from my
iniquities?”
Every soul is created and sent to this world
imperfect. It is incumbent upon us to strive for perfection and dedicate our
lives to capitalizing on our strengths and seeking to rectify and channel our
deficiencies.
The greatest parents and educators are able to
recognize the magnificent sculpture that resides within the souls of their
children and students. Then they invest their efforts to guide their children to
bring out their innate greatness by chiseling away at their imperfections.
However, even more important is for us to be able to recognize the greatness
that resides within ourselves and to believe in our own virtues.
The converse is sadly also true. Those who only
see their flaws and deficiencies see only internal ugliness. They therefore
spend their lives trying to mask their essence, further obscuring them from
appreciating themselves for who they are.
The truth is that Michelangelo is not the originator
of the idea of chiseling out greatness by revealing the already present
internal greatness. When Hashem instructed Moshe about the formation of the
Menorah, He commanded Moshe to make the Menorah “miksha” – hammered out
from one piece of gold[6].
The Torah commands two other vessels to be made “miksha”
chiseled out of one chunk of its material – the trumpets used to summon the
nation[7],
and the keruvim which were placed above the Aron[8].
The gemara relates that the keruvim had the faces of children[9].
The symbolism of these vessels needing to be created “miksha” is
poignant: For a leader to unite his charges, and for an educator to build up
his children, he needs to know the secret of “miksha”, i.e. how to
hammer out the excesses in order to reveal latent internal greatness.
This week I went to be menachem avel our wonderful
summer neighbor, Rabbi Hersh Kasirer who was sitting shiva for his late father,
Reb Moshe Kasirer z’l - a legendary mechanech in Queens, NY.
Rabbi Kasirer recounted that his father survived
the Nazi camps and was in the Displaced Persons camps when the war ended. There
he was heavily influenced by Rav Gershon Libman[10],
who was hismelf a student and adherent of the Narvadok Yeshiva.
The approach of Narvadok was unique, stressing the total negation of ego
and the physical world. Through those efforts one strove to achieve complete
and total focus on his soul and intellect side.
It is well-known
that talmidim of Novardok participated in deliberately embarrassing behavior,
such as wearing old patched clothing, or going to a shop and asking for a
product not sold there, such as screws in a bakery. The common understanding is
that this was done to bring out feelings of lowliness in order to negate any
feelings of conceit and hubris.
Rabbi Kasirer
related that the common conception must be a misnomer. His father and his
friends had just survived Nazi brutality and utter degradation. What more
‘shattering of the ego” could be necessary in a DP camp?
Rather it seems
that the purpose of these exercises was to promote the opposite feeling. It was
to inculcate within the students emotional freedom from the shackles of public
approval. They discovered that fear of embarrassment is a terrible hindrance
towards the development of one’s true inner self. By training themselves to be
laughed at by others, they strengthened their resolve to follow their
conscience and to pursue what they knew was correct, completely ignoring what others
said or did.[11] This was in fact part of
what gave his father the resolve to forge on; the feeling that nothing the
Nazis could say or do could have any effect on the greatness within himself.
Every person is
created with greatness. It’s our job to unearth that greatness and utilize it
for the benefit of others.
“Miriam and Aharon
spoke about Moshe…”
“ To tell you the
praise of the shevotim…”
[1] Bamidbar 12:1
[2] Meirosh
Amanah
[3]
Bereishis 30:14
[4] A
certain type of flower known to help a woman be more fertile
[5]
Mishlei 20:9
[6]
Bamidbar 8:4
[7] Also
in Parshas Beha’aloscha – Bamidbar 10:2
[8]
Shemos 25:18;
the “Voice of G-d” resounded from between the two Keruvim, as stated in the
last pasuk of Parshas Naso (Bamidbar 7:89)
[9]
Chagiga 13b
[11] I
have heard this same explanation of the Norvadok approach more than once.
0 comments:
Post a Comment