When the Warning Turns Toward You

There are moments when a person knows, before anything explicit is said, that the conversation has changed. Someone says his name a little differently. A sentence begins in an ordinary tone, then narrows. He feels it almost at once—not in thought, not yet, but in the body. Something in him braces. By the time the words themselves arrive, he is already preparing an answer, or an explanation, or a way of making what is coming seem less final than it sounds. That is part of what makes rebuke so difficult to receive. The self often begins protecting itself before it has fully heard what is being said -- and that is what this week's Torah reading is all about. Our member Rabbi Steven Ettinger explains.

The tochachah of Bechukotei enters that charged territory. It is easy to read the parashah’s warnings only on the largest scale—as covenant, consequence, history, punishment. But the Torah is also tracing something closer and more unsettling: the psychology of not listening. Again and again the language circles that point. V’im lo tishme’u li—if you will not listen to Me. And later, more sharply still, im telchu imi keri—if you walk with Me in happenstance, in resistance, in a kind of estranged casualness. The problem is not only what a person does. It is what he does in order not to let what he has done become fully knowable.

That shift matters more than it first appears. A person can live with a great deal of contradiction. He can reinterpret. Delay. Rename. He can hear something that should trouble him and convert it, almost instantly, into circumstance. The Mei HaShiloach understands keri in something like that way: not simply disobedience, but the refusal to encounter what happens as if it were speaking to you (Mei HaShiloach I, Bechukotai). If pain comes, it is chance. If a pattern appears, it is coincidence. If something in life begins pressing too closely, it is dismissed as mood, misfortune, bad timing. The self remains undisturbed not because it is innocent, but because it has learned how to keep truth from sounding personal.

That is what makes the tochachah so unnerving. Its force does not feel arbitrary. It feels cumulative. The warnings intensify not only because the failure is severe, but because what was meant to be heard has not been heard yet. The Or HaChaim notes that the language of the parsahah moves with a kind of inner sequence; the distance does not merely exist, it hardens (Or HaChaim, Vayikra 26:14). Something is said, and it does not enter. So it returns in a form less easy to ignore. Then again. And again. Not because God has become erratic, but because a person can remain strangely intact while refusing what should have reached him the first time.

This is one of the less flattering things Torah says about the human being: he may need reality to repeat itself before he will consider that it is speaking. Rav Dessler writes that the deepest obstacle to truth is not lack of intelligence, but negiah—the private stake that bends judgment toward what the self needs to preserve (Michtav MeEliyahu, Vol. I). From the inside, that bending does not usually feel corrupt. It feels fair. Balanced. Even noble. Which is why rebuke is so destabilizing. The difficulty is not only in changing course. It is in allowing oneself to know, without rearranging it, that a change is being asked.

And perhaps there is something almost compassionate in the Torah’s honesty about this. It does not imagine that warning naturally produces insight. It does not flatter a person with the assumption that being told is enough. The Netivot Shalom describes the tochachah not as abandonment, but as a severe form of nearness—a refusal to let a person settle permanently into spiritual sleep (Netivot Shalom, Bechukotai). Left alone, one can become very comfortable there. One can build routines inside it, language inside it, even religious identity inside it. The warning comes not only to accuse, but to interrupt the false peace that sleep can borrow from continuity.

It is difficult not to hear some echo of this in Good Will Hunting (1997), a film that understands how brilliance can become a shelter from being reached. Will Hunting is a janitor at MIT, intellectually gifted far beyond the academic world around him. He can solve mathematics that others can barely read, and he can dismantle another person in conversation almost before they have finished speaking. He comes from South Boston, carries violence and humiliation close to the surface, and survives by staying just ahead of intimacy. When he is arrested after a fight, a professor arranges to keep him out of jail on the condition that he study mathematics and attend therapy. Will accepts the arrangement, but every session becomes a form of combat. He jokes, deflects, humiliates, performs. No one can quite get hold of him.

What makes the film painful is not that Will is rebellious. Rebellion would be easier to understand. It is that he is defended in all directions at once. Concern becomes weakness. Insight becomes condescension. Affection becomes something to mock before it can become something to need. He does not simply resist correction. He transforms it before it can touch him. There is a scene on a park bench in which Sean Maguire, the therapist played by Robin Williams, stops trying to outwit him and simply begins speaking from a place Will cannot control. He tells him, with a kind of exhausted tenderness, that all his intelligence means very little if it remains only commentary on life from a distance. “You’re just a kid,” he says—not to diminish him, but to expose how much of him is still hidden behind the performance of knowing. For one of the first times in the film, Will does not answer quickly. The words have reached a place argument cannot fully protect.

And even that is not the deepest moment. That comes later, when Sean says to him, again and again, “It’s not your fault.” At first Will laughs, then resists, then grows angry. The line is too simple for cleverness. He cannot analyze it usefully. He cannot redirect it. He can only try to keep it outside himself. The scene is powerful precisely because nothing new is being argued. Something is simply being repeated until it becomes harder to escape than to hear. Rebuke does not always come as accusation. Sometimes it comes as the truth that leaves a person with fewer and fewer places to hide.

That, too, belongs to Bechukotei. The tochachah is not merely telling Israel that actions have consequences. It is confronting the human capacity to live as if consequence were impersonal. *Keri* is not only disobedience. It is distance disguised as normal life. A person can continue for a very long time in that mode. Duties are still performed. Words are still said. The external life remains recognizable. Rav Hutner writes, in another context, that one of the great dangers in spiritual decline is not dramatic collapse, but adjustment—the slow accommodation to a diminished inner life until what should feel intolerable begins to feel ordinary (Pachad Yitzchak, Igrot u’Ketavim). That is what rebuke interrupts. Not only behavior, but adaptation itself.

There is a story told of the Kotzker Rebbe that lands in a similarly hard place. A chassid once came to him after a long period of heaviness and began speaking about his failures. His prayer felt distracted. His learning felt dull. He had tried, he said, and still found himself circling the same weaknesses. There was sincerity in the words, or at least enough of it that another person might have mistaken the speaking for the work itself. The Kotzker listened in silence. The room, one imagines, had already grown tense before he answered.

Finally he asked, “And this troubles you?”

The chassid looked up, confused. “Of course it troubles me.”

The Kotzker’s face did not soften. “No,” he said. “What troubles you is that you feel badly. If the truth of what you are saying troubled you, you would not be so calm while saying it.”

It is the kind of answer that stays in the room after the conversation is over. Not because it is harsh for the sake of harshness, but because it removes a refuge the person did not know he was using. What the chassid had brought as honesty may itself have been one more layer of concealment—the comfort of naming one’s failures without yet being altered by them. The Kotzker did not deny that he was suffering. He denied him the comfort of confusing self-description with self-knowledge.

That is part of what makes rebuke so psychologically disruptive. It is not satisfied with what a person is willing to say about himself. It asks whether he has actually been reached by what he is saying. The Baal Shem Tov taught that where a person’s thought is, there he is entirely (Tzava’at HaRivash, §9). But there are moments when the opposite becomes painfully visible: a person can speak words that are perfectly true while holding himself just beyond their reach. He can hear the warning and preserve the self that made the warning necessary.

Bechukotei is unusually lucid about how long that can go on. The tochachah grows more severe because the earlier word was not enough. Then the next was not enough. Then the next. The Torah does not flatter a person with the fantasy that truth, once spoken, will naturally be welcomed. It suggests something both more frightening and more hopeful—that the collapse of one’s defenses may itself be a form of mercy. Not a pleasant one. But mercy nonetheless.

Because there is mercy here. Hard mercy, but mercy. The warnings are not the opposite of relationship; they are what relationship sounds like when gentler forms of address are no longer enough. The covenant has not gone silent. It is still turning toward the one who would rather experience life as accident than as response. That may be the deepest discomfort of rebuke: not that it condemns, but that it refuses to let a person remain incidental to his own life.

And perhaps that is why the parashah does not end in annihilation, but in a remembered covenant. Rebuke is not the last word because rebuke, in Torah, is not finally about destruction. It is about making response possible again. A person who can still be addressed has not yet been abandoned.

The hardest truth is not always the one that accuses us. Sometimes it is the one that refuses to let us remain beyond the reach of our own lives.

The Discipline of Being Seen

 In the lives of every one of us we find ourselves occupying a space in which what we are does not match the image we seek to project or the person we purport to be. Which is the role, which is the reality--and is there a way to bridge or synthesize them? Starting with the position of the kohen in parashat Emor, our member Rabbi Steven Ettinger probes this fascinating topic.

There are moments when a person becomes aware of himself in a way he wasn’t a moment before. He is speaking casually, saying something he would not normally think twice about, when he realizes something: someone else is listening. Not just present, but listening closely. The sentence finishes differently than it would have otherwise. His tone shifts, almost without deciding to. Or he walks into a room, expecting to pass through unnoticed, and sees someone watching him—someone whose opinion matters to him—and suddenly the way he stands, where he looks, even how he moves his hands feels less automatic. Nothing external has changed. But it is no longer entirely his own.

Most of life moves without that kind of awareness. He acts, corrects himself, adjusts quietly. But there are moments when that space narrows, and what he does begins to carry a different weight.

The Torah opens parashat Emor by placing the kohen into that kind of life. “לְנֶפֶשׁ לֹא יִטַּמָּא”—he is not to become impure through contact with the dead. It is a simple instruction, but it draws a line. Not everywhere, not always—but in certain moments, he must hold himself back. And he must do so not because he fully understands why, but because this is now part of the life he carries.

At first, that kind of boundary feels external, something imposed. A rule to follow, a line not to cross. Over time, it begins to work more quietly. It changes how a person moves through the world. He starts to notice things differently, hesitating in places he once would have passed through without thought. What began as restraint becomes part of how he sees.

The kohen lives inside that shift. His life does not disappear into the ordinary flow around him, because the boundaries he carries are not occasional—they shape where he goes, what he enters into, and what he holds back from. There are moments others pass through without thinking that he must pause before, or step away from entirely. Over time, those pauses begin to form a pattern. They do not constantly draw attention, but they are enough to give his life a different contour. The Maharal describes kedushah as a kind of separation that allows something to become defined (Tiferet Yisrael, ch. 2). It is not distance for its own sake, but the kind that gives form. Without it, everything blends together. With it, a life begins to take on clearer lines.

It carries a quiet weight. Most of us move with the ability to adjust quietly, to shift, to correct, to hold contradictions without anyone fully seeing them. The kohen has less of that space. His life leaves less room for that kind of quiet revision. The question for him is not only what is right, but how it appears in practice.

Rav Hirsch writes that the kohen’s role is not to escape the world, but to give form to it—to live in a way that makes certain values visible, almost tangible (Horeb, §467). The discipline is not about distance for its own sake. It is about living in a way that can be recognized without needing explanation. It is possible to learn where to stand, what to avoid, how to carry oneself within clear lines. But that kind of formation does not always move inward at the same pace. Sometimes the pattern settles first, and the person is still catching up to it.

And that is where a quieter tension begins to appear. Form can arrive before alignment. A life can take on the appearance of precision before the inside has settled into it. When that happens, the structure does not collapse—it holds. What begins to thin is something less visible: the sense that the life being lived is actually one’s own.

This tension is not unique to the kohen. It appears whenever a person is asked to live inside a form that carries more than he has yet made his own. Sometimes the structure holds steady, while the person within it is still trying to settle into it. And when that gap widens, it does not always show on the surface right away—but it is there.

Black Swan (2010) follows that movement from the inside. The film centers on Nina, a young ballerina cast in the lead role in Swan Lake, a ballet that demands not only technical precision but emotional transformation. From the outside, her life looks like discipline carried to its highest form—hours of practice, relentless control, exact movement. But as the pressure of the role intensifies, something inside begins to fracture. She can execute every movement flawlessly, but she cannot hold herself together in the same way. The more she perfects what can be seen, the less stable she becomes beneath it. The structure does not fail her. It moves ahead of her.

The kohen is asked to live close to that edge, but not to cross it. Not to become perfect, but to become aligned—to allow the outer form to grow out of something inward that has stopped pulling in different directions. That does not happen all at once. It does not even happen cleanly. It develops unevenly, often in ways that are difficult to measure from the outside.

There is a story told about Yisrael of Ruzhin that captures this in a way explanation does not. His court was known for its refinement—everything deliberate, measured, almost regal. To some it felt elevated; to others, distant. One winter evening, after days of travel over frozen roads, a young man arrived at the edge of the beit midrash. He stood there for a long moment before stepping in, letting his eyes adjust to the light, taking in the stillness of the room.

When he moved forward, his boots left faint traces of slush on the wooden floor. He noticed it immediately and shifted, as though he could erase it by standing differently. The Rebbe was sitting among a small group, speaking quietly. Nothing about the scene called attention to itself. That was part of what unsettled him.

When the room thinned, the young man came closer. “Rebbe,” he said, his voice low, “I don’t know how to be here. Everything feels so…put together. I try to hold myself like this, to be more careful, more exact. But it doesn’t feel real. It feels like I’m copying something that isn’t mine.”

The Ruzhiner looked at him—not quickly, not searchingly, just long enough that the young man felt himself slow down. “You think this begins here,” he said, motioning lightly around the room.

The young man did not answer.

The Rebbe reached out and adjusted the edge of the tablecloth, almost without thinking. “What you see,” he continued, “is what remains when something inside has stopped arguing with itself.”

The words did not resolve anything immediately. The young man stood there, unsure whether he understood. “Don’t try to live like this,” the Rebbe added. “You will only learn how to look like it. Find the place where you are not divided—even if it is small. Stay there. Let that grow. The rest will come when it can.”

Nothing in the room changed. The same order remained. But it no longer felt like something he had to imitate. It felt, instead, like something that could emerge.

The Beit Yaakov of Izbica warns that the danger of visible kedushah is not that it is insincere, but that it can be misunderstood—that a person can begin to live toward the form instead of from the source (Beit Yaakov, Emor). When that happens, the structure holds, but the life inside it becomes increasingly thin.

The Torah seems to anticipate that risk. It does not begin by asking the kohen to feel different. It asks him to live differently—to hold a boundary, to remain within it, to let it shape him slowly until the outer line and the inner life begin to meet. The movement is quiet, almost invisible. Over time, something changes—not only in what is done, but in who is doing it.

At the end of Black Swan, Nina reaches the performance she has been chasing. From the outside, it is flawless. Every movement lands. Every gesture aligns. For a moment, everything holds. “I was perfect,” she says.

But it is not clear who remains to say it.

The Torah asks for something quieter, and in some ways more demanding—not perfection, but wholeness. A life in which what is seen is not ahead of what is lived, and what is lived does not need to hide behind what is seen.

That kind of life does not arrive all at once. It grows slowly, often in ways that are difficult to recognize while they are happening. He begins to find a place where he is a little less divided than before, holds it, returns to it, and gradually allows more of his life to gather there.

The kohen lives inside that process. Not fully resolved, not hidden—just steadily becoming. And perhaps that is the deeper demand—not that the form already be complete, but that it become real enough that, over time, nothing needs to be added to it from the outside.

 

Where the Same Life Begins to Move

 How do we measure change in a lifestyle that appears to consist of nothing but endlessly repeating cycles of action and consequence? Is growth even possible in such a cycle? Perhaps it is not merely possible but essential. Our member Rabbi Steven Ettinger explains.

There are stretches of life that feel settled long before anything has actually settled. Not peaceful—just patterned. A person moves through the same responses, restrains himself where he knows he must, fails where he has failed before, and returns again without anything clearly breaking or resolving. It does not feel like movement. It feels like continuation.

Into that eixtence the Torah speaks without waiting for proof—kedoshim tihyu. Not after change, not once something has shifted, but as if the shift is already underway—and as if it is meant to reach a place where it can remain. This makes the Ramban’s warning harder to ignore: a person can live fully within the framework of Torah and remain essentially unchanged—not because he is doing anything wrong, but because nothing in him is actually moving. The actions may be correct, even consistent, yet they can settle into a kind of spiritual stillness where a person is no longer growing, only subsisting. And that is the danger—not failure, but stagnation; not distance, but sameness. A life that appears complete can quietly lose its sense of becoming.

From the inside, though, that sameness is not experienced as a concept but as repetition. You return to the same impatience, the same lapse in attention, the same quiet compromise. You try again, and it unfolds again. After a while, even effort begins to feel like part of the pattern—movement that does not seem to lead anywhere.

Rabbi Tzadok HaKohen writes that the deepest forms of change often take place beneath the level at which a person expects to recognize them, so that from within they can feel indistinguishable from standing still (Pri Tzadik, Kedoshim). That claim is difficult not because it is abstract, but because it asks a person to take seriously what he cannot yet see.

Still, something begins to give—not in the outcome, which may return as before, but in the experience of it. There are moments, brief and unsettled, in which a person registers what is happening even as it unfolds. He does not stop it. He does not redirect it. But he is no longer entirely carried by it. That does not resolve the pattern. But it alters it. The next time he returns, it is not quite untouched. Something of what was seen remains, and the repetition, though familiar, no longer feels entirely closed.

The Noam Elimelech describes holiness not as leaving the ordinary, but as refusing to disappear completely into it (Noam Elimelech, Kedoshim). Not escape—interruption. And what interrupts does not vanish. It leaves something behind, subtle but persistent, that begins to gather across returns.

In Whiplash (2014), a young drummer is driven back into the same passages again and again, each return stripping away whatever sense of mastery he thought he had achieved. The music itself does not change, but his encounter with it does. With each repetition, he becomes more precisely aware of where control breaks—not once, but in a way that begins to accumulate. The failure remains, but it no longer lands on untouched ground.

That awareness does not protect him. It unsettles him. He is no longer carried by habit, but not yet able to hold something new. And yet the repetitions are no longer empty. Each return sharpens something, builds something, even as it destabilizes him.

Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe once listened to a student describe how he kept returning to the same struggles despite sustained effort—the same lapses, the same inability to hold onto clarity.

“I don’t see that anything is changing,” the student said.

Rav Wolbe was quiet.

“When you return,” he asked, “is it exactly the same place?”

“It feels the same.”

“Does it feel as comfortable as it once did?”

The student paused.

“No. I notice it more.”

Rav Wolbe nodded.

“Then you are not in the same place.”

He did not say the pattern would break. Only that something within it had already begun to shift—and that what shifts, even without stabilizing, is not without direction.

And over time, that direction begins to register. Not as a clear transformation, and not as something that can yet be held, but as a quiet certainty that the effort is not empty. That what once felt like circling has begun, almost without announcement, to move forward. The same struggles remain—but they no longer feel meaningless. There is something in them now that points beyond them.

The Kedushat Levi writes that holiness is not something a person enters and remains within at once, but something he turns toward repeatedly until it can begin to hold (Kedushat Levi, Kedoshim). This means that the repetition is not a failure of change—it is the form that change takes before it becomes strong enough to remain.

At the end of Whiplash, nothing is resolved. The performance does not prove stability or mastery. But it reveals something that cannot be undone: the same act is no longer inhabited in the same way. What has been built—uneven, incomplete—has begun to take form.

And perhaps that is what the Torah is naming—not a holiness that appears all at once, but one that is formed through returns that are never entirely the same, until, at some point that cannot be clearly marked. What once felt like repetition is recognized as progress— and the life that seemed to be circling begins, quietly, to move toward and is now something that can endure eternally.

The Hidden Beginning: Life Before It Is Seen

 In this provocatively original post, our member Rabbi Steven Ettinger ties together superficially diverse strands of thought found in parashat Tazria, several Chasidic masters and The Truman Show. For more, read on.

There are moments in the Torah when something profoundly consequential is introduced almost quietly, as if the text itself is reluctant to draw attention to it too quickly. The opening of parashat Tazria is one of those moments. It speaks of birth—of the emergence of life into the world—but it does so in a way that is both direct and restrained. There is no extended narrative, no dramatic framing. Instead, there is a simple acknowledgment: something has come into being, and with that emergence comes a process.

But the Torah’s concern here is not only the moment of birth itself. It is what surrounds it—the period before and after, the transitions that are not immediately visible but are no less real. The language of impurity that appears in this context can easily be misunderstood if taken superficially. It is not describing something degrading or undesirable. Rather, it is pointing to a state of intensity, of transition, of movement between hidden and revealed life. In those first moments, what has emerged is still not fully settled into the world. There is a kind of distance between existence and recognition, between being and being known. The Torah seems to be asking us to pay attention to that space—not only to the visible arrival of life, but to the quieter process through which it becomes integrated, acknowledged, and understood.

This sensitivity to beginnings—especially those that are not yet fully visible—appears repeatedly in the teachings of the Hasidic masters. The Baal Shem Tov speaks of the significance of the reshit, the beginning, not as a fixed point in time but as a continuous reality. Every moment contains within it the possibility of beginning again, though that beginning may not yet be apparent. It exists first in concealment, as a potential that has not yet taken form.

The Sfat Emet, reflecting on this parashah (Tazria 5643), suggests that what appears in the world is always preceded by something deeper that remains hidden. The visible is only the final stage of a longer process. What we encounter outwardly has already been forming beneath the surface, gathering coherence before it reveals itself. And because of this, the Torah’s attention to these early stages is not incidental. It is essential. If one wishes to understand what is revealed, one must learn to recognize what precedes revelation.

There is something deeply human in this as well. Much of what defines a person does not begin in visible action. It begins in thought, in inclination, in quiet internal movement. These early stages are often overlooked precisely because they are not yet concrete. But they are no less real. And in many ways, they are more formative than what eventually appears.

This dynamic—of something forming beneath the surface before it becomes visible—finds a striking expression in The Truman Show (1998), directed by Peter Weir. The film presents the life of Truman Burbank, a man who appears to be living an ordinary life in a carefully constructed seaside town. What he does not know is that his entire existence has been staged. Every interaction, every relationship, every detail of his environment has been orchestrated for the sake of a global audience.

At first, Truman accepts his world as given. There is no reason, from within his experience, to suspect otherwise. But, gradually, small inconsistencies begin to appear. A light falls from the sky. A radio frequency seems to describe his movements in real time. People repeat patterns that feel slightly off. None of these moments, taken alone, is conclusive. But, put together, they begin to create a sense that something deeper is at work, something not yet fully visible but increasingly difficult to ignore.

What is striking about these moments is their subtlety. The truth does not arrive all at once. It emerges slowly, almost reluctantly, through hints and fragments. Truman does not immediately see the full picture. Instead, he begins to sense that what he sees is not all that there is. There is a growing awareness that precedes understanding—a recognition that something is unfolding beneath the surface of his experience.

One of the most powerful scenes in the film occurs when Truman begins to test the boundaries of his world. He deviates from expected patterns, drives erratically, observes the reactions of those around him. The environment responds, but not seamlessly. There are cracks—small, but revealing. In those moments, Truman is not yet fully aware of the truth, but he is no longer fully contained within the illusion. He stands at the threshold between what is hidden and what is revealed.

This threshold is precisely what the Torah is pointing toward in its discussion of beginnings. Not everything that exists is immediately visible. Not everything that is forming has yet taken shape. But the process is real, and it leaves traces. The question is whether one is attentive enough to notice them.

The Mei HaShiloach teaches that truth often begins as a disturbance—a subtle sense that something is not aligned. It does not present itself as a fully formed conclusion. It appears as a question, a hesitation, a moment of uncertainty. And it is in that moment that one is given a choice: to ignore the disturbance and return to familiarity, or to follow it, even without knowing where it will lead.

There is a story told about Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev that captures this sensitivity to beginnings. A man once approached him, troubled by a persistent feeling that something in his life was not as it should be. There was no clear problem, no identifiable crisis—only a quiet unease that he could not explain. He had tried to dismiss it, to continue as usual, but the feeling remained.

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak listened and then asked a simple question: “When did you first notice this?”

The man thought for a moment and described a seemingly insignificant incident—a conversation, a reaction, something that had unsettled him slightly but that he had not taken seriously at the time.

“That,” Rabbi Levi Yitzchak said gently, “was the beginning.”

The man seemed confused. It had been such a small moment, barely worth noting.

“Beginnings are always small,” the rabbi continued. “If they were not, they would not be beginnings.”

The point was not to magnify the moment, but to recognize it. What had appeared insignificant was, in fact, the first visible trace of something deeper that had already been forming. And if one wished to understand what was now unfolding, one had to return—not to the external event itself, but to the inner movement that had preceded it.

In this sense, the Torah’s attention to the earliest stages of life is not limited to birth. It is a broader invitation to notice what is forming before it becomes fully visible—to pay attention to the beginnings that are easy to overlook precisely because they do not yet demand attention. There is a quiet discipline in this kind of awareness. It requires patience, humility, and a willingness to engage with what is not yet clear.

And perhaps most importantly, it requires trust—that what is forming beneath the surface is not random, not meaningless, but part of a process that, if followed with care, will eventually come into view.

Hearth and Home

Have we already ticked the box, as it were, for building the Beit HaMikdash withour realizing it? Our member Rabbi Steve Ettinger looks behind the Mishkan's construction plans and asks some probing questions.

The Mishkan/Bet Hamikdash is likely the single most holy place in the Jewish religion. It is the focal point for our service of Hashem. In its heyday, it was the resting place of the Shechinah, the Divine presence, and was filled with miracles. Today, millions flock to the site where the first two Temples stood, to pray and to feel a greater connection to God’s “home.” However, if we delve into how Hashem described this structure (the Mishkan) and, more specifically, its special vessels, it could well be that, in fact, none of what many may think and believe about the function of this structure and this place is relevant. Hashem may have had a very different lesson in mind when He commanded us to build the Mishkan.

When you stop and think, Hashem certainly does NOT need or require a home. Before the Chet Ha’egel, according to some opinions, He might not have even commanded that Moshe build it. Maybe it was merely a part of the atonement process or a concession to the fact that the Bnei Yisrael were acculturated in a pagan world. For most of history, our religion has functioned and survived quite well without a Temple and without its service. In fact, His very command to construct it hinted at a spiritual rather than physical dwelling: וְעָ֥שׂוּ לִ֖י מִקְדָּ֑שׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּ֖י בְּתוֹכָֽם (“And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them”). Effectively, He wants to dwell “within” each Jew, not in some structure.

It is possible that the building or place itself is NOT at all important. Perhaps it is NOT intended to be or to represent Hashem’s abode on Earth or where He dwells. Rather, He may be giving an example of how and where the Jewish religion should primarily be observed. He is providing a visual representation so we can create homes where He can live with us and with our families.

This notion may seem radical but, before examining the minutiae of the Mishkan, stop and consider: we might be a nation, but it might be more accurate to characterize the Jewish People as a family. Our foundation is not built on rabbis, kings and priests but on Avot and Imahot, fathers and mothers.

Note that the laws of Mishkan construction are juxtaposed with the command to observe the Shabbat (Shemot Chapter 35). Accordingly, we derive all of the laws of prohibited work on the Shabbat (the 39 categories) from how the Jews built the Mishkan. Thus, it should be no mystery why the command to observe the Shabbat is listed on the tablet with the first five Commandments—those reserved for the relationship between Man and God. This placement illustrates this same connection between the holy day and Hashem’s “place.”

However, the commandment to honor our parents is also on that first Tablet. In fact, THIS is the commandment that is juxtaposed to the Shabbat!   Parents – family on the Luchot – are in the same relative position to the Mishkan and the Mikdash as Shabbat was in the Torah – they are identified as part of the Man-God relationship.

Keeping this in mind, let us examine the Mishkan/Mikdash more closely. Tthe structure itself is a tent (ohel), dwelling (mishkan) or house (bayit). Historically (other than the more affluent “modern” era), most dwellings had two basic areas – a larger main space where all of the daily living activities were conducted and a private sleeping area for the parents (or perhaps one large area with the parents’ beds behind a curtain for privacy). The Mishkan/Mikdash had a similar floorplan – a large outer chamber with multiple vessels and an inner chamber (or a section separated by a curtain).

Homes, of course, require illumination. For centuries the source of this light was candles and oil lamps. The menorah, an oil candelabra, provided this light. Families must also eat. The staples of the human diet have historically been bread and meat. Two of the other primary vessels found in the Mishkan/Mikdash are the shulchan (table) upon which the kohanim placed the lechem hapanim (show bread) every week and the outer mizbe’ach (altar) where animals (meat) were sacrificed. A home, of course, requires sanitary facilities. A large water basin called the kiyor was likewise situated within the confines of the Mishkan/Mikdash complex.

As mentioned above, people sleep in their homes. It certainly would not have been appropriate to situate beds or couches within the structure. In the presence of Hashem, one must be completely alert. However, sleep is the most intangible or ephemeral human state. A person is simply breathing when asleep and he is most closely connected his subconscious. A great metaphor for this could be the burning of the ketoret (incense). It is basically intangible, it is diffuse, one can only breathe it in -- yet it has so many physical components -- and it soars freely heavenward.

Finally, we turn to the Kodesh Kodashim. In the Mishkan and the Mikdash this is the abode of the Aron HaKodesh (the Holy Ark) that contains the two sets of tablets – both the broken ones and the complete ones. The Ark is topped with the two Cheruvim, child-faced angels (asexual), that are turned toward each other.

As noted, historically the second room for most homes (or the space separated by the curtain) was the parents’ bedroom. This is where they become partners with Hashem, where they are required to vigilantly keep the sanctity of the family through the laws of taharat hamishpacha (ritual purity).  The two angels, representing two generic children, are symbolic of their sacred duty of “peru urvu” (”be fruitful and multiply”). Marriage is called kedushin. The Aron has both the complete and broken tablets – some relationships, some families, are whole and some unfortunately can be broken and in His Mishkan/Mikdash Hashem acknowledges this reality as well.

Every time we complete the Amidah (and at other times, as well), we pray for Hashem to rebuild of the Bet HaMikdash speedily and in our days. However, it could be that we have overlooked that He has already built one for each of us and that He already dwells in it. Our homes should be the true Batei Mikdash. Our homes copy the blueprints that He commanded. However, they can either be empty shells (eitzim ve’avanim – wood and stone) or they can be places where the Shechinah resides. The difference is whether we perceive our homes as a Mishkan or Mikdash, or as mere shelter. Hashem does NOT require shelter. He will choose to dwell in a Mikdash that follows his blueprint. There is no need to wait – you can build it!

Undeserved Praise

 Once again our member Rabbi Steven Ettinger takes a close look at the Torah narrative and asks whether its actual words are capable of supporting a popular explanation. This is what he writes:

If one were to survey Rabbinic literature throughout the ages to determine the greatest single action or merit associated with the Jewish people, the result would likely be that they proclaimed “na’aseh venishma” (“we will do and we will (then) listen”) at Sinai. They have been eternally praised for their willingness to blindly accept whatever Hashem might command, even before hearing the scope of or reasons for His commandments. The Talmud (Shabbat 88a) even describes how the angels descended and placed 1.2 million crowns on the heads of the 600,000 Jewish men – one for na’aseh and one for nishma (see also Likutei Moharan 9:22). There is only one problem. If you read the Torah, plainly, simply, with no derash or fancy Biblical exegesis, it seems clear that this never actually happened.

As an aside, but something to keep in mind as we move forward, the people leaving Egypt were a nation of freed slaves. Logically, we would expect their only response to any instruction to be “yes sir.” For a slave there is nothing other than doing. The reason for any command does not matter. Many times, there is no reason for a master’s demand other than to demean, to subjugate or to punish. A slave tolerates.  A slave never needs to understand, just to obey! Thus, they most likely would not have responded “na’aseh venishma,.” They simply were not conditioned to think that way!

After that shocking assertion, one that may have many of you “seeing thunder,” we must explore what really happened. The facts that emerge from the Torah’s narrative and the real meaning, in proper context, will allow us to better understand the mindset of the nation that received the Torah and why Hashem chose Moshe as his vehicle to transmit it.

We begin with parashat Yitro, at the beginning of Shemot Chapter 19, on Rosh Chodesh Sivan when Moshe receives a message from Hashem. Part of the message involves telling Bnei Yisrael that they will be special, and part involves the procedures for receiving the Torah (where to stand, how to dress, sexual conduct, etc.). To these rules and not to any part of the Torah itself, they reply, “whatever Hashem has spoken, we will do.” (Shemot 19:8). Thus, the first time they respond to a set of instructions – something that occurs before they were standing at Har Sinai, they simply respond “na’aseh” – “we will do” -- as one would expect from slaves. They receive these instructions on 3 Sivan.

On the third day after receiving these instructions, on 6 (or perhaps 7) Sivan. Moshe orally delivers the “Aseret Hadibrot” (Shemot Chapter 20). Nowhere from Shemot 19:8 through the end of the recitation of the Dibrot (or in the rest of parashat Yitro) do we find another stated acceptance by the people or the phrase “na’aseh vnishma”. Quite the contrary, chronologically, from this point until Moshe’s first return from Sinai, rather than accepting Hashem and his Torah, a portion of the people forge and worship the golden calf!

After destroying the first luchot, Moshe ascends Sinai two more times, once to beg forgiveness for the Jewish people and once more to re-present the Torah to the people. Parashat Ki Tisah fully narrates these events. Surprisingly, during this entire lengthy narrative of Matan Torah, the nation is not gathered together; nor is it asked to accept the Torah—and it does not declare “Na’aseh venishma.”

 However, there is an interesting aside found earlier in parashat Mishpatim. In Chapter 24, there is an abbreviated version of the second matan Torah. This narrative ignores the golden calf, it ignores the second luchot, it ignores Moshe’s interactions with Hashem. In fact, it most likely happened after all of those events – or it is an expansion, of sorts – where Moshe teaches more than just the Ten Commandments.

Moshe goes up the mountain accompanied partway by Aaron, his sons and the elders. He continues the rest of the way alone. Moshe comes down and teaches the people all of Hashem’s commandments. “Then the people said all that Hashem has commanded “na’aseh” “we will do” (Shemot 24:3). In other words, AFTER Moshe had gone up twice to receive the Torah (four times in total to speak to Hashem on Har Sinai), and AFTER he already taught them the commandments. Even then, all they said—which is what slaves would be expected to reply—was NA’ASEH!

The narrative does not end there.  It seems that Moshe does something that he was not directly commanded to do. He was commanded to fashion the ten commandments (“Carve for yourself two tablets of stone like the first” Shemot 34:1). He goes one step further; he writes down all of the commandments (Shemot 24:4) and “he reads it aloud to the people” (Shemot 24:7). Then, he does something else that seems strange. He builds an altar and sets up twelve pillars (one for each tribe), and has assistants offer animal sacrifices, specifically bulls.

After hearing the commandments, now a second time, from the written text, a text called the “sefer habrit” (book of the covenant), the people FINALLY say “all that Hashem has spoken, na’aseh venishma” (“we will listen and we will do”). Bottom line, this is a far cry from a praiseworthy nation that boldly and faithfully placed their desire to serve Hashem before they had any need to understand what He was asking from them! Instead, this is much more like students that failed an exam twice times and then passed after the teacher sat them down and spoon-fed them the answers.

There may be no good answer here. The sequence of events and the text simply contradict the Rabbinic narrative in a definitive manner. But perhaps an approach can be derived from the actions that Moshe takes, seemingly at his own initiative.He has listened as the people time and time again respond as slaves – blindly accepting commands. He knows their psychology and the nuances of Egyptian culture – their gods and the symbolism well. He knows that they cannot be true servants of Hashem, with free will, unless they break out of their slave mindset.  

He erects pillars for each tribe – the Pharaohs of Egypt had pyramids and monuments – on the basis that the newly freed nation likewise was deserving of monuments of its own. He builds an altar to sacrifice bulls. The bull was one of the Egyptian gods but, more importantly, it represented the strongest, most developed manifestation of a calf! In slaughtering and burning that bull and offering it to Hashem, Moshe was laying waste to the notion of Egyptian power before their eyes.

Finally, and for the last time, Moshe read Hashem’s commandments to them. He read these commandments from a book and they were not the oral commands of a task master. They were however part of a covenant. A covenant is not unilateral – it has two parties. In a sense they are not being commanded or coerced; they are agreeing.  When they heard this, when they understood that this Torah was a code of respect for them. Then they transformed their “na’aseh” their expression of a slave’s blind supplication, to “na’aseh venishma” – we obey and we are willing to listen, to learn, to understand. Perhaps that was why the angels gave them crowns: they had finally evolved from slavery to Hashem’s royalty, “mamlechet kohanim.”

 

 

 

A Nation in Sheep’s Clothing

Sheep are among the most useful of creatures. There is literally no part of them that we cannot use one way or another. But, contrary to popular belief, it seems that the Egyptians didn't worship them at all. So what's the big deal with our forefathers killing them as a prelude to our exit from Egypt? Our member Rabbi Steven Ettinger explains.

The first act of defiance that Hashem requested from Bnei Yisrael was for each household to take a sheep on the 10^th day of the newly designated first month of Nisan. They were to safeguard this animal until the 14^th day of the month and then slaughter it. They would then place some of the blood on their doorways and they would roast and eat the meat that evening  (Shemot 12: 3-8).

Many assume that this ritual, which has became a generational fixture as the korban pesach (Shemot 12:23) was symbolic of a rejection or conquest of the Egyptian gods especially since the process in Egypt began with the four-day period of flaunting the restrained sheep. (See, Rashi on Bereishit 46:34).

There is one problem with this. Examining the “pantheon” of Egyptian deities, one will find many animals and human/animal hybrids. A brief search disclosed more than 20 – ranging from crocodiles and hippopotamuses, lions, baboons, wolves, cows, rams (and even frogs) – but NO sheep!!

Why of all animals did Hashem specify/choose the sheep for this important moment – one that would echo through the ages? What was the message for then and now?

The key to unlocking this message is a strange incident that occurred many years earlier, when Yosef invited his brothers to join him for a meal. Bereishit 43:32 relates that he sat separately from them because it was an abomination for Egyptians to break bread with Hebrews. This is quite perplexing.  At most there were seventy Hebrews in the entire world. How is it possible that there was an Egyptian rule of etiquette, a harshly discriminatory practice directed at such an insignificant family (one could not even call them a nation or a people)?

The answer is revealed a few chapters later. In Bereishit 46:32 the Bnei Yisrael are identified as “ro’ei tzon” – shepherds. Bereishit 46:34 reveals, “ki to’avat Mitzraim kol ro’ei tzon” – shepherds were an abomination to the Egyptians. Thus Yosef could not have seated the brothers with him because they, this family of Hebrews, were known as shepherds – and thus were abominations.

When they first met Pharaoh, he segregated them in the Land of Goshen because they were shepherds. This was Yosef’s plan to slow assimilation, but it was also quite consistent with the core values of Egyptian society – to keep the abominations away.

Fast forward through several hundred years. The Bnei Yisrael have been enslaved. They are at best second-class citizens. They are mistreated and addressed in a most derogatory fashion. In modern times, under similar circumstances, the “N-word” garners an intense level of emotional attention and evokes trauma. Considering that the very notion of being a shepherd or a family/people of shepherds was considered an abomination in Egyptian society, it is not a stretch to think that this was a pejorative label used to diminish and dehumanize them.

Thus, when the time of their liberation arrived and it was time for them to take their first action, what could be more fitting than for them to flaunt their association with the lowly sheep. To stick it in the face of the Egyptians, so to speak.

“Look here mighty Egypt – the abominable shepherds are displaying our sheep freely in our yards.” Next, “now look, we are killing it, painting our door with its blood and eating it – and sitting formally TOGETHER.”  We are not compliant sheep; we are not mere shepherds: we are the masters. We are not passive, meek sheep: we are the wolves who spill the blood and eat. We are not abominable sheep; we are social units, a family, a strong nation.

The generation of Hebrews in Egypt understood the symbolism of the sheep and likewise Hashem understood just how defiant and empowering a message it was for them to incorporate it into process of their redemption. For all future generations this message is, perhaps, even more important. Every culture in every era will find an excuse to separate us, isolate us and to identify us as abominations. But Hashem does not want us to hide from or be ashamed of who we, His people, are. He wants us to place our identity proudly out front and to reject any notion that we are sheep. That is how redemption is earned and that is how it is sustained.  

Moses the Anonymous Egyptian

We have read the story of Moshe Rabbeinu so often that we surely haven't missed anything--have we? But the deeper one digs, more the Torah text reveals, and it is the Torah that sweeps away our preconceptions and misconceptions. Our member Rabbi Steven Ettinger explains:

Moshe Rabbeinu is perhaps the greatest and most influential figure in the history of the Jewish People. He was their redeemer, lawgiver, leader, prophet, defender, sustainer, and teacher.  While the Torah is blueprint for all of creation, it is also named “the Five Books of Moses.” 

Our perceptions of Moshe are of a larger-than-life figure. Midrashim tell tales of his remarkable youthful exploits – being tested by Pharaoh as an infant and travels and conquests in African lands. Popular culture has even created an image of a “Prince of Egypt.”  A careful reading of the parasha however tells a very different story.  Moses was initially a rather anonymous and inconsequential Egyptian man. His birth story was interesting but, until Hashem’s initial revelation to him, he was basically a nobody.

A Levite man went and took a Levite woman and they had a child. At this point all identities are insignificant, anonymous and irrelevant. The narrative is familiar -- so, skipping ahead, Pharoh’s daughter notices the child floating in the Nile and directs an attending maiden to retrieve him. She is compassionate toward what is obviously (to her) a Hebrew child.

The Midrash and most readers of the text interpret Shemot 7:10 in the narrative as Pharaoh’s daughter (i) adopting the child as her own, (ii) naming him Moshe (“because he was drawn from the water”) and agreeing to his care by Jewish nursemaids (not in that order).  However, as one reads these verses and the subsequent text, this is not what happened.

The child was taken by the princess’s retainer from the water, but he certainly could not have been raised by her. Thus, she was put in the care of nursemaids. After a period of time when he grew (Shrmot 2:10), he was brought before her. This implies that there was no previous relationship between them. Linguistically, the Torah creates a Hebrew narrative that, in fact differs from the actual (and the actual is more consistent with all that follows).

To digress for a moment. The Egyptian suffix mss (or mosses) means “son of” or “child”. The best example of this is the line of Egyptian royalty that adopted the name Ramses – Ra was their main deity, the Sun God – thus Ramses was the “son of” the Sun God. In this instance, to Pharoh’s daughter this boy was NOT a son, he was merely moses (with a small m), a child that she had compassion for.

This conclusion is supported by logic, by fact and by the six verses that follow:

1.     In ancient times a princess was currency, a political asset to be married off to rulers of other kingdoms or to important noblemen.   Logic dictates that such a princess could not have had a son identified with her.

2.     In Shemot 2:11, Moshe goes out to see his “brothers” and he sees their burdens (“sivlotam”). This word, sivlotam is used only one other place, in Shemot 1:11 – and it refers to the burdens of the Egyptians (see Rashi on that verse).  This being so, the main burden of the work and taxes was on the Egyptians (as they were the vast majority of the population, the Jews were still a small minority). They were also involved in the harsh labor; It was their burdens that Moshe went out to witness!  He was a compassionate person and reacted to the scene he was witnessing. Had he been a prince, he would have been able to order the taskmaster to stop – but he was merely an “ish” an Egyptian commoner!

3.     In Shemot 2:14 as he witnesses the two Jews fighting, they refer to him simply as an “ish”. Moshe is afraid, again, as we see in the next verse (Shemot 2:15), because he is merely a common Egyptian.  He is not viewed as the son, real or adopted, of Pharaoh’s daughter.  He has no privilege.

4.     Finally. as he flees to exile in Midian, in Shemot. 2:19 Yitro’s daughters identify him as an Egyptian man (“ish Mitzri”).

In summary, until Hashem reached out to Moshe through the sneh (the burning bush), he likely did not know anything about his heritage or of the destiny of the Jewish people. He may not have even known anything of Hashem, only the pagan gods of Egypt. It is quite telling that, when Hashem addresses Moshe, he first explains that he is God of his fathers Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov (Shemot 6:13). In other words, He reveals to Moshe his identity as a Hebrew. Likewise, it is quite telling that, after the shock of this revelation, Moshe’s first words are “mi anochi” – who am I (Shemot 6:11)?

Moshe was no longer an anonymous Egyptian man. He was now the greatest Jew who ever lived, tasked with ending his people’s Exile.  All of his capabilities had lain dormant within him, awaiting the exact moment for them to emerge. May the latent abilities of the anonymous Mashiach who hopefully is walking among us soon be realized.

Postscript

After I developed the thoughts and structure of this devar Torah, I found a very similar analysis in Rabbi Zvi Grument’s new Book, Exodus: The Genesis of God’s People (Maggid Books, Jerusalem, 2025) pp. 15-26.

Calamitous Contentment

Were the experiences of Yaakov Avinu and his descendants in Egypt the prototype of subsequent exiles, going from comfort to suffering? And did our forefather make the wrong choice? Our member Rabbi Steven Ettinger investigates.

Between the years 800 and 1930 various countries, municipalities, principalities, noblemen, Church officials, and angry mobs in Europe expelled the Jews from their homes. This happened more than 130 times. As we know, after that date the strategy devolved to one of extermination. In many instances, the Jews enjoyed periods when they were accepted and welcomed as productive members of their communities. In earlier times, they may have had a second-class status, but they had their niche as merchants and in finance—and even mingled with the upper echelons of the citizenry. After emancipation arrived in various countries, they assimilated into the professions and universities and into the worlds of science, art and culture. In other words, although their situation was often precarious, Jews often lived in a fantasy world, the world of “this time will be different”: their neighbors accepted them, they were protected, they were safe, nothing could happen to them. But it did – time and time again. Their comfort resulted in such a credible illusion that they were unable to believe or accept the inevitable as they were led to their near extinction.

Today we are once again witnessing such denial. Jews and their communities in the diaspora suffer: in South America (Buenos Aries), in India (Mumbai), in Australia (Bondi Beach) in the US (Pittsburgh), in France (Toulouse and Montauban) and in New York (multiple incidents on subways, at synagogues and on the streets). Antisemitism is rampant.  Individual Jews and their communities face threats from the Left and the Right: from college campuses and from social media; from influential political commentators and from political leaders. Then there is the rising number of Moslems that are asserting their brand of aggressive power over polite and civilized society.

Nevertheless, most Jews either remain in denial or are so comfortable with the trappings of the material bounty they enjoy that they cannot accept their predicament and reach for their best alternative – their spiritual legacy and true homeland.

They are not alone: they are simply modeling their behavior after their forefather  Yaakov – the choicest and purest of the Avot insofar as all twelve of his sons,were likewise untainted. After experiencing two difficult exiles, in the house of Lavan and in Egypt, he should have yearned for a return to the Land of Israel. Instead, in parashat Vayigash we find that, once the famine ended, “the Jews remained in the Land of Goshen, and they prospered and became very fruitful” (Bereishit 47:27). Yaakov and his sons were so comfortable. Yet a generation or so later they would be enslaved, initiating the pattern of classic antisemitic tropes (Shemot 1:9-10). How was this possible?

History has shown us time and time again how this was possible. Today, despite the warning signs, we have a front row seat to yet another round in this cycle. However, as regards Yaakov, we perhaps should not be so quick to judge. He at least could justify his choice (although one could ask whether he was required to so choose). Turn back to Yaakov’s first “exile.” As he is escaping the wrath of his brother for having taken the berachah of the first-born, fleeing to Padan Aram, something interesting occurs. Yitzchak’s parting words are: “(He) should give to you and your children with you Avraham’s blessing to inherit the land you reside in, that He gave to Avraham” (Bereishit 28:4). In other words, Yaakov did not take the berachah. Yitzchak always intended to pass to him the legacy of Avraham and that legacy was the berachah of Avraham -- the land.

So when did this berachah—this commitment regarding the land—become effective? In truth Hashem dangled this promise before Avram several times, reaching the point where a frustrated Avram finally asked, “How do I know that I will really inherit it?” (Bereishit 15:8). So, Hashem enters into a covenant with him, the brit ben habetarim. The terms were as follows: The Jews would be exiled to a foreign land for four hundred years; they would be enslaved there and, in the end, they would be redeemed with great wealth and given the land (Bereishit 15:13-14). This is when the right of Avram’s children to the land would be fixed.

Yaakov received both the legacy and the burden of this blessing. When he sojourned to Egypt to reunite the entire family – something he thought would never happen from the time Yosef was lost to him – he recognized that this was the beginning of the process that would result in the fulfillment of the berachah. He thus knew that he must choose to stay in Egypt. He remained with his eyes wide open, knowing that his children and their succeeding four generations would suffer.

Is this really what Hashem wanted for Bnei Yisrael? We cannot know. All we know is that this is the choice Yaakov made. And, as they say, the rest is history.

What we do know, with the advantage of hindsight and now with the wisdom of the ages is that, as successive generations of Jews have made this same choice, it has only resulted in catastrophe. There are no beneficial exiles, there are not even benign ones. Blissful ignorance or, worse, contentment leads only to calamity.