I regret that for some months I have not been able to maintain my usual schedule of classes and articles owing to some medical issues requiring regular treatments, which have been somewha enervating. I put my trust in G-d that all is for good, and as long as my mind works and I keep praying, studying and observing Torah as best as I can, I know that any hardship is in the category of “suffering sent through love”.
I greatly appreciate your support in this difficult period.
Meanwhile, Israel’s war against Iran (and Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis etc.) which we naively hoped would end miraculously very quickly, is now entering its second month with all the signs that it is likely to escalate greatly. Israel has sustained numerous casualties and injuries as well as material damage. However, with thanks to G-d, many of the Iranian and Hezbollah missiles and drones have been intercepted or fallen on empty land.
For non-combatant Israeli citizens the main toll has been on people’s nerves and stamina, as emergency alerts blaring on their phones at any time of day or night followed by wailing sirens send old and young, parents with little children and everyone else running to hopefully secure shelters.
Edom vs Paras
Will this war be the fulfillment of the rabbinic tradition (Bavli Yoma 10a) that at the end of days Edom (USA & allies, brandishing the sword of military might) will bring down Paras? US President Donald Trump boasts that if Iran does not surrender unconditionally, he will order the obliteration of their electric generating plants, oil wells and Khang Island, which controls the Hormuz strait, and possibly all their desalinization plants.
On the other hand, Iran, which has retaliated against daily Israeli bombing attacks by sending missiles into all her neighboring “brotherly” Moslem countries, threatens not only to start a major regional war and cause a bloodbath, but also to occupy Kuwait and other territories and hold them as bargaining chips. She allegedly has terror cells across America and Europe, and even in her feral dying throes she could potentially inflict much damage.
And even if the Iranian monster is incapacitated, this could be only temporary, as countries like Russia, China and N. Korea will be only too happy to help the remaining Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps hardcore rebuild and rearm. It is also likely that a crushing blow to Iran will fan the flames of Islamic extremism across the world, which poses an immediate threat to the lives and property of Jews everywhere as well as of anyone in any way associated with Israel. This has already been seen in the recent shooting attacks against synagogues and the latest arson attack on Hatzalah ambulances in London’s Jewish orthodox Golders Green neighborhood.
Here in Israel, the government and military are gearing themselves and the general public for years of fighting on multiple fronts, and, with all the optimism for quick, total victories, none seem in sight.
So should Jews of faith and our friends and allies across the world despair of complete salvation and final redemption?
The first question we must ask ourselves is: Are we ourselves actually worthy of witnessing the complete salvation in our days? Yet even if we are not (which in all honesty is very likely the case, as each of us knows in our heart of hearts), we may take comfort in a remarkable discussion in the Midrash Sifra 2:1 on Leviticus 26:6, “Ashbeeth, I shall give the land respite from vicious beasts, and no sword shall cross your land”.
Rabbi Yehuda says: “He will eliminate them from the world. But Rabbi Shimon retorts: “When is the Almighty praised? At a time when there are no harmful agents? Or at time when harmful agents exist but they do no harm? Surely at a time when harmful agents exist but they do no harm! And thus it says (Psalms 92:1): ‘A psalm, a song for the day of Shabbat, to the one who causes the harmful agents in the world to “rest” (Heb. maSh’BeeTh) so that they do not harm.
Even if we do not merit to see the complete vanquishing of all our enemies, it will be enough if at least the Almighty keeps them under His full control and beats them down any time they dare raise their heads.
Matza: The Bread of Affliction
For thousands of years the Jews have suffered unending oppression and persecution, yet we have never lost hope that at the very end, G-d will see our affliction and take pity, and deliver us finally even as He redeemed us from Egypt. Our annual Pesach Seder Night, which Jewish people of all kinds, colors and backgrounds celebrate until today, is living testimony to this inextinguishable hope.
But why the “Bread of Affliction”, Lechem Oni (Deuteronomy 16:3)? The festival of Pesach, commemorating the Exodus from Egypt, celebrates the very birth of the Nation of Israel, from which flows all the glorious history of Receiving the Torah at Sinai, Settlement of the Land, Building the Temple and ultimately, the Future Redemption.
In the case of Cinderella Israel’s big ugly rival sisters, events of such primary importance are celebrated with massive feasting, gorging and self-indulgence, as in the Edomite celebration of the birth of their “savior”, or the Ishmaelite festival of breaking the fast” (at the end of 40 days of gorging all night and “fasting” by day”) which features enormous festive meals.
And for Cinderella Israel? The centerpiece of her national feast is a morsel of a kind of dry, semi-scorched cracker together with some bitter herbs – the “Bread of Affliction” and the taste of bitterness. (Yet when the Temple will be rebuilt soon in or times, the crown of the meal will be the taste of at least an olive-size of the juicy meat of the roasted young lamb or goat of the paschal sacrifice, eaten in holiness and purity with the taste of the Hidden Light!)
Humility
The Hebrew word “Oni” in the phrase “the Bread of Affliction” has several overlapping connotations, including “poverty”, “suffering”, “lowliness” and “humility”. Indeed, poverty and suffering may break a person’s pride, arrogance and sense of their own importance and lead them to true humility before the Master of All Creation. It was precisely the humility of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, above all that of Moses who was “more humble than all men” (Numbers 12:3), and that of G-d’s anointed, King David, that enabled them to reveal His kingship to the world. And so it is with Israel, His chosen “nation of priests”, who have this mission forever.
It was Israel’s humility at Mount Sinai that was the foundation of their complete and unquestioning submission to the Will of G-d, the Torah, in the words: Na’aseh Venishma, “We shall [first] do, and [then] we shall understand” (Exodus 24:7). Likewise, throughout our history, it was Jews’ humility in face of an ever-changing succession of oppression and persecution that enabled them to survive from generation to generation and maintain their faith and hope in an ultimately Loving and Compassionate Father.
Arrogance
Cinderella’s two big ugly sisters each vaunt their groveling humility and submission, yet in truth both have historically displayed overweening arrogance until today, as in the case of the Roman Vatican with its elaborate glittering pageantry, costumes and paraphernalia, and likewise in the case of many contemporary brash megabuck Edomite “churches”.
Today, nowhere is this arrogance more visible than in the aggressive, chauvinistic Jihadi “warriors of Islam”, who suppose that prostrating doggy-style daily to a big black cube in Arabia is a virtue, while cruelly torturing and spilling the blood of anyone they deem kfir, a “heretic”, is the greatest (in their eyes) mitzvah.
It was many years ago that I first read Rabbi Nachman of Breslov’s lengthy story of “The Prayer Leader” (twelfth of his thirteen Sippurey Maasiot, “Stories of the Primordial Days”), which tells the tale of a king and his queen, their baby son and the king’s band of ministers (sage, adviser, warrior and more) all of whom were left separated after a devastating whirlwind. Prior to their eventually becoming reunited through the efforts of the king’s Prayer Leader, people of different traits chose a leader who embodied their most vulgar desires, whether for excessive food, drunkenness, immorality or other vices.
I was always puzzled by the group that reasoned that since everything in the world eventually becomes worn out and destroyed, the murderer who kills and destroys people and is full of anger, jealousy and zealotry is actually bringing the world to its ultimate purpose. They agreed that the main goal in life is to kill, and they chose as their leader an angry killer who had murdered his own father and mother.
In the “love-all-people” naivety of my earlier years, I found it hard to believe that any such people could really exist. However, in the recent Hebrew commentary on R’ Nachman’s Sippurey Maasiot, by Rabbi Eliahu Attia, the outstanding present-day Torah Gaon, Mekubal and one of the greatest living experts in Breslover literature, I have found the following enlightening comment on this section of the story (page 910 of his edition):
In order to be a murderer, the person must be full of rage, because when a person is angry he thinks of nothing and is ready to murder. He must also be full of jealousy, and because of his jealousy of others he abandons everything even to the extent of becoming a murderer…
This phenomenon has been seen in all the generations, where every nation that were killers sought out the basest, most contemptible and wicked person, one full of rage and jealousy, as their leader, one who would be a murderer without a trace of compassion, and appointed him their leader.
Rabbi Attia instances leaders like Khmelnytsky, Stalin and Hitler, etc. One might add Torquemada, who instigated the Spanish inquisition, as well as numerous others. Of course the very archetype of cruelty and murder was Haman himself.
Islamic terror
In recent years, as the fad of political correctness has been forcibly pushed aside by the realities of ubiquitous Islamic terror, people who are no longer prepared to deceive themselves now see that among the angriest, most jealous and cruelest of all times was none other than the founder of Big Ugly Sister Ishmael’s religion, who barbarously tortured and killed all who would not bow to him, raping and enslaving their women, and who taught all his followers that there is no higher virtue than doing the same, thereby earning instant paradise. Prime examples in modern times would be the infamous Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husayni and Ayatollah Khomeini and their accursed seed.
In Rabbi Eliahu Attia’s commentary on the Story of the Prayer Leader, he explains how each of the King’s band represents one of the holy attributes of the Ten Sefirot, whereas when they were scattered by the storm wind (alluding to the kabalistic account of the “Breaking of the Vessels”), these very attributes “fell” from their holy level into the clutches of the “husks” of evil. It was the fall of the attribute of Malkhut, “kingship, power and control”, which in its holy state destroys evil, that led to the rise of those control-freaks whose arrogance, jealousy and anger causes them to glorify wholesale destruction and murder.
Matza vs Chameitz
On the Seder night Jews celebrate the birth of our Nation of Priests, after weeks of house cleaning and the scrupulous removal of all chameitz, “leaven” from our homes and other premises. After all this comes the eating of the Matza, the “Bread of Affliction”, the simplest, most basic of all foods made of nothing but flour and water without even a grain of salt, entirely pure and clean of all chameitz, since the latter signifies swollen pride and festering arrogance.
Eating the “Bread of Affliction” signifies the uniqueness of Israel, whose very humility is the foundation of their true greatness as G-d’s chosen.
For the righteous, eating this simple, divinely-ordained “bread”, LeCheM, can be felt as the physical imbibing of G-dliness itself into our very bodies. For the numerical value of the Hebrew word, LeCheM, Lamed-30 plus Chet-8 plus Mem-40, is 78. This is three times 26, which signifies the Essential Name of G-d, the “Tetragrammaton”. Why three times? Signifying the three main columns of the Tree of the Sefirot: Kindness, Might and Harmony in perfect balance. Through Israel’s humility in eating the morsel of the “Bread of Affliction”, we may imbibe G-dliness into our bodies, with our digestion releasing the shining light concealed within the physical Matza into our very souls.
SIMCHAH
To conclude with the words of Rambam (Maimonides) (Shofar, Succah & Lulav 8:15):
The happiness with which a person should rejoice in the fulfillment of the mitzvot and the love of God who commanded them is a great service. Whoever holds himself back from this rejoicing is worthy of retribution, as it states: “…because you did not serve God, your Lord, with happiness and a glad heart” (Deuteronomy 28:47).
Whoever holds himself proud, giving himself honor, and acts haughtily in such situations is a sinner and a fool. Concerning this, Solomon warned: “Do not seek glory before the King” (Proverbs 28:10).
In contrast, anyone who lowers himself and thinks lightly of his person in these situations is truly a great person, worthy of honor, who serves God out of love. Thus, David, King of Israel, declared: “I will hold myself even more lightly esteemed than this and be humble in my eyes” (II Samuel 6:22). Because there is no greatness or honor other than celebrating before God, as it states: “King David was leaping and whirling before God” (II Samuel 6:16).
Dear friend: I wish you a truly inspiring and uplifting Pesach celebration this year together with all Israel and all our true friends and allies across the world.
Shalom and blessings!
Avraham ben Yaakov
