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The
Challenge of the Land of Israel
The Oral Torah and the Challenge of the Land of
Israel
based
on a talk by
Rabbi Yitzchak Hirshfeld
Print
Version
The sin of the spies teaches us an important lesson
for our avodat Hashem (service of G-d), for our
Torah learning and for building an environment conducive
to spiritual growth.
The Sfat Emet: The Land of Israel & the Oral
Torah
Our starting point is a comment by the Sfat Emet
on Parshat Shelach.
On the words, "Shelach lekha (Send for yourself),"
Rashi comments, "For yourself - according to your
judgement, Moshe." The Sfat Emet (Shelach 5653,
'V'inyan,' p. 103) comments that G-d left it up
to Moshe's initiative because "The essence of the
Land of Israel is related to the Torah Shebaal Peh
(Oral Torah). What does this mean? Just as one only
acquires the Oral Torah through his own efforts,
so one only taps into the Land of Israel through
personal effort.
The Oral and the Written Torahs
G-d gave us two Torahs, Written and Oral. They are
intimately intertwined; we cannot imagine them existing
independently. All the commandments were given through
both. However, they are two very different ways
of defining the relationship between G-d and the
people of Israel.
The Midrash teaches that when the people of Israel
offered the Torah to Israel, G-d held the mountain
over them, forcing them to assent. This seems to
contradict the verse where the people of Israel
willingly say, "Naaseh v'nishma - We will do and
we will listen." Why did G-d have to hold the mountain
over them? The Tanchuma answers that "naaseh venishma"
refers to the Written Torah whereas they had to
be forced to receive the Oral Torah.
The Oral Torah is much more of a challenge than
the Written one. The Written Torah is finite while
the Oral Torah is infinite. The Written Torah can
theoretically be received passively but the Oral
Torah requires active participation. We have no
input regarding the content of the Written Torah;
it is exactly as G-d dictated it to Moshe. What
it looks like has nothing to do with us. For three
thousand years we have been reading the same Written
Torah. The Oral Torah, though, always changes, through
new insights, new understandings and new applications.
Furthermore, one person's Oral Torah - his understanding
and connection - is different from anyone else's.
The Oral is not to merely be received. We are to
take the building bocks and reshape them. The nation
was hesitant to receive the Oral Torah. They wanted
G-d to give it to them, enlighten them, and show
them the truth. They were not ready to put in the
effort themselves.
The First and Second Tablets
Applying the Sfat Emet's terminology, we can make
a similar distinction between the first and the
second tablets given to Moshe. The first, G-d's
handiwork, were more Written Torah than the second,
which were hewn by Moshe. Just a look at the first
tablets would bring Divine clarity. But those tablets
were broken on the Seventeenth of Tamuz. The second
tablets, brought down on Yom Kippur, were more Oral
Torah style. It is not anymore the hand of G-d but
human effort that enables man to plumb the depths
of Torah.
The First and Second Temples
The Divine Providence Israel experienced during
the first and second Temple periods reflects a similar
distinction. During the first Temple period there
was much more open revelation. There was prophecy
among the people and there were open miracles in
the Temple. In the second Temple period the leaders
were sages, not prophets. There were not so many
miracles manifest in the Temple. The first Temple
period was much more like the Written Torah. During
the second, much more Oral Torah like period, if
one wanted to see spirituality he had to look beneath
the surface. A person could theoretically look at
the activities going on in the second Temple and
see nothing more than a group of specially dressed
people slaughtering sheep. Certainly in our period
it is possible to see the Western Wall and not feel
anything. That is because Oral Torah type things
require personal effort to bring out their inner
essence.
Seeing the meaning in the Oral Torah itself requires
toil. In order to see the light hidden within the
Oral Torah we must scratch beneath the surface and
fan the flames. Only then does the Divine revelation
come out.
The Oral Torah Community
There is another distinction between the Written
and the Oral Torahs - how all those involved in
the process relate to each other. The Oral Torah
must be acquired by a cooperative, interacting group
making a common effort. Contrast, for example, a
group of one hundred people receiving tzedaka (charity)
with another hundred hearing a shiur (Torah lesson).
The hundred receiving tzedaka do not need each other,
would probably rather not know each other, and perhaps
might even prefer that the numbers of the group
were much smaller. A hundred students learning from
a Rebbi, though, is presented with a challenge.
They can join together in a common effort, picking
each others' brains, probing, bringing out the Oral
Torah through an interactive Beit Medrash. They
can be like a hundred who join together to form
a charity organization; they must work together.
They can, however, also be one hundred individual
passive receivers, each personally hearing the Rebbi's
talk but not forming a cohesive unit. We are challenged
to learn the Oral Torah in a noisy Beit Medrash
peopled by a dynamic interactive learning community.
The Sfat Emet teaches us that the Land of Israel
also must be acquired through a joint effort. We
cannot get beyond the external layers of the Land
of Israel without a cooperative community and without
serious effort. Otherwise it can become distorted
and defiled.
Repairing the Sin of the Spies
Kalev tried to instill this approach in the people.
If G-d says so, said Kalev, the nation of Israel
can, through their common efforts, acquire the land.
The nation was afraid of an Oral Torah existence
in the land of Israel. They were also afraid of
having Yehoshua as their new leader. They wanted
to remain in a much more passive mode, receiving
Torah from Moshe without having to toil to bring
it out. Their sin, lashon hara, evil speech, was
the divisive force that destroyed the Oral Torah
community that could develop in the Land of Israel.
They sinned on Tisha B'Av. The same sin of lashon
hara, along with the senseless hatred and factionalism
that comes in its wake, also brought down the Jewish
Oral Torah community of the second Temple period,
culminating in the destruction of the second Temple,
also on Tisha B'Av.
Repairing the sin of the spies requires building
a common communty, digging deeply into the spirituality
of the Land of Israel, and putting in the tremendous
effort required to bring out the spirituality of
the Oral Torah.
G-d should help us that we should be able to reverse
this sin and others and bring the Mashiach speedily
in our days. |
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