Category: Overviews

     “Whoever lives in Eretz Yisrael is like one who has a God, and whoever lives outside the Land is like one who has no God (Kesuvos 110b).”

I.  The Perception of Holiness

The universe is full of God’s glory. Everything proclaims it from the mightiest galaxy to the frailest blade of grass to the sub-microscopic organism. Can one even imagine that God is limited to the Temple Mount or the Holy Land? But human beings are trapped in a material world that obscures His existence and they must grope to find traces and rays of the holiness that is everywhere.

So.. where is God? He is everywhere, but some people see and others don’t. And some places more readily provide the spiritual illumination for those who wish to see.

Of all the countries on earth, Eretz Yisrael is uniquely suited to the perception of holiness. Whoever lives outside Eretz Yisrael is ‘like’ one who has no God. Lacking the holy atmosphere of the Land, the conditions created by God to serve as the habitat for His Temple and His prophets, a person may fail to see the Godliness in every aspect of his existence.

This is what our Sages mean when they say that one who lives in Eretz Yisrael is ‘like’ one who has a God, but one who lives outside the Land is ‘like’ one who is Godless. The key word is ‘like’. Both have a God. Every person has a God and He is everywhere. But there is a place where He is easily accessible to all who seek, a place where, because people find Him, He is present. That place is the Land whose very atmosphere conveys the wisdom of fear of God, whose hills and valleys echo with the footsteps of the Patriarchs, the words of the prophets – the handiwork of Him Who said, ‘Let there be a universe.’ One who lives in Eretz Yisrael and allows his spiritual eyes to remain open – sees; one who lives outside the Land denies himself that unique perception. Compared to the one who basks in its holiness and sees the hand of God caressing every blade of grass and infusing every thought, he is ‘like’ one who has no God.

Every huiman being was created with his own set of talents and handcaps, they are the tools give him to carry out his spiritual mission. His measure of potential is uniquely his, it is the measure of holiness which he was created to reveal and thus contribute to the fulfillment of the universe. Since Eretz Yisrael is symbolic of the recognition of God, every Jew has a share in Eretz Yisrael. For, in essence, Eretz Yisrael is not a geographical entity; its mountains and valleys, plains and seas, are but the physical manifestations of its spiritual being. It is a Holy Land because it is a Land of Holiness. Every Jew is charged with bring to fruition his portion of holiness, his own Eretz Yisrael, wherever on earth he lives. Therefore, our Sages taught the legal principle that “There is no man who does not have four cubits in Eretz Yisrael (Bava Basra 44b).

Even the Jew who has never set foot in Eretz Yisrael, much less purchased a lot of its land, is considered the owner of four cubits (the minimum amount of space in which a person can function)(Bava Mezia 10a). The Sages understood that if the Jew can only attain his highest level of spiritual attainment in Eretz Yisrael, then it is inconceivable that part of the Land is not his. This being so, the principle that the Holy Land allows the Jew to develop his spiritual capacities to their maximum dictates that every Jew have his share in Eretz Yisrael. And because each person is an individual with a potential like no other, his own four cubits are his, and none other’s. Exactly where in Eretz Yisrael those particular square inches are does not matter – they are his!

Understood this way, much that the Sages have taught takes on deeper significance and meaning. Over the course of his lifetime, man is presented with many opportunities. Each is a test.

The person raised to a new position enters a new realm of responsibility and judgment. The old standards no longer apply. If he rises to the occasion with a new sense of dedication and the prayer that he not fall short of the challenge presented him, then he indeed merits that his earlier sins be forgiven. His new position was the cause of repentance. His old world disappeared when he was elevated to a new dimension of responsibility. The first accomplishment of the new mantle was to change the person upon whom it fell. He has changed, grown, repented – and so his sins are forgiven.

But if he fails to discharge his new responsibilities properly, he is held responsible for the lack of accomplishment that resulted from his negligence. The emperor who fiddles while his city burns is not judged by the quality of his concerto. He is held responsible for the destruction of homes and the ruin of lives, and for the tragedy of human resources squandered on the clearing of rubble when they could have been building palaces.

He who was granted the privilege of living in Eretz Yisrael has the challenge of utilizing the capacity it provides him for spiritual growth. Being there is a challenge, and like all challenges, it carries with it the possibility of success – or failure. As in all matters of the spirit, God provides an even balance. Opportunity is equal with pitfall. The enormous good that can be done by one who is elevated to greatness – good of such enormity that it can wipe away his sins and set him in a new world – is balanced by the evil that becomes his responsibility if he fails to meet the challenge – or if he misuses his new power.

Rav Saadia Gaon says that Israel without Torah, is like a body without a soul; we may say the same of Eretz Yisrael: without the observance of the commandments, it, too, is like a body without a soul. But when it is host to a people that obeys the word of God, the potential of the Land is unlimited.

The Khuzari goes on to portray the greatness of the Land. Every prophet prophesied either in it or concerning it – otherwise, no matter how great the person, he could not hear the world of God. Cain and Abel contended over Eretz Yisrael; the brother chosen by God would gain the gift of prophesy and possession of the Land, the other would be subservient to him like the shell of a fruit. And when Cain, murderer of his brother, was banished from the Presence of Hashem (4:16), it was from Eretz Yisrael that he was forced to go, for God’s Presence is in His Chosen Land. Ishmael’s strife with Isaac was over the same inheritance, and so was Esau’s with Jacob. In Eretz Yisrael the Patriarchs erected their altars, and there God heard their prayers. Atop its Mount Moriah Abraham bound his son to the altar, the same mountain where David built an altar and where the Holy Temple stood and will stand again. And just as a farmer who finds a lovely tree in the wilderness will tenderly dig it up and transplant it in his finest soil, so too, when God found a treasure in Ur Kasdim and Charan, he brought him to Eretz Yisrael, tested him, found him worthy, sealed a covenant with him, made him father of His chosen nation, and gave him a new name, Abraham. Great though he was, even Abraham could not achieve fulfillment until he was brought to Eretz Yisrael.

II.  The Unforgiving Land

Because Eretz Yisrael is so saturated with holiness, it demands higher standards of behavior than does any other corner of earth. Just as Israel’s nature is unlike that of any other people, so the nature of its Land is unlike that of any other. Ramban deals at length with this phenomenon. The following exposition is taken almost in its entirety from his commentary to Leviticus 18:25.

After citing the full catalog of forbidden immorality (Leviticus 18:1-24), the Torah strongly urged Israel not to defile itself with these offenses, for the Canaanite inhabitants of the Land had done so with the result that “The Land became impure, and I recalled its sin for it and the Land vomited out its inhabitants” (verse 25).

Israel was warned not to imitate the Canaanite abominations lest it too defile the land and be vomited out by it (verses 26-30). The verses are truly striking. Israel is warned against immorality not merely because it defiles Israel’s own holy nature and deviates its mission as the Chosen People of God, it cannot abide immoral inhabitants and because the Land will expel immoral inhabitants just as they body vomits putrid food. The implication is clear – sin is forbidden everywhere, but in the Eretz Yisrael it is worse.

The same is true of Israel, the nation. Israel is judged by a double standard. It is God’s nation and He demands more of it. It cannot complain that it is judged more harshly than the nations for the same sins for its greatness demands that it adhere to higher standards than they. By the same token, its rewards for fulfilling its obligations as the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as the nation that stood at Sinai and accepted the Torah, are higher – no! they are of an entirely different order – than those of any other nation no matter how pious and noble it may be. For the Land and the Nation share one unique characteristic – they are the special province of God.

The Patriarchs recognized this connection. Their souls were so attuned to holiness that they could sense the affect of every deed. They knew that upon arising in the morning, one must accept upon himself the yoke of God’s kingdom, that different species were not to be mixed, that work was not to be done on Sabbath, that certain marriages were incestuous. They complied with the entire Torah before it was given to Israel.

Israel was commanded, exhorted, and warned to be moral in it’s Land. The expulsion of the Canaanites was not in punishment for their immorality. Egypt, too, was immoral, and Israel was instructed to avoid their lack of moral restraints which were no less than those of Canaan (Leviticus 18:3). But no matter how much the immorality of Egypt may have been a factor in the plagues and punishment, its land did not vomit out sinners. Only Eretz Yisrael did that.

The fate of the seven nations of Caanan was sealed long before Joshua’s armies carried out God’s command to decimate them. They had long since been doomed: the Torah says, the Land vomited (past tense) its inhabitants (Leviticus 18:25). Their immorality had condemned them; Israel was but the vehicle to carry out the decree. Had it not been Israel’s time to enter its Promised Land, we may be certain that some other nation would have driven out the Canaanites. It was the Land that could not endure them, just as the Land would expel sinful Israel from its midst in the tragic days of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. For the Land of Israel on earth and Jerusalem on earth are reflections of Eretz Yisrael and Jerusalem on high. They are not geographical points on a map, but physical manifestations of spiritual levels. One does not commit immoral acts in heaven; one does not commit immoral acts on heaven on earth.

The entire story of creation is beyond human comprehension. After reading the story of the first week of human history can we claim even a vague understanding of the process by which a vacuum was transformed into the universe? Nevertheless, God gave us the Torah, including the narrative of creation, and the succeeding story of mankind’s sins, punishments, conquests, migrations, and most importantly, the story of Abraham and his offspring. The entire Book of Genesis and the first eleven chapters of Exodus, fully sisty-one chapters in a Book, where every word, letter, and even the ‘crowns of letters’ are dissected for meaning and interpretation – all of this was transmitted to man only to make unmistakably clear that the Master of the Universe destined a corner of His creation for His nation. In early times it might be occupied by the Canaanites and Emorites. Later it would become the conquest of Babylonians, Romans. Moslems, Christians, Arabs, Turks, Britons. The catalogue of conquerors could be long and varied, but the Owner of the Land remains He Who created it. It was He alone Who could determine its destiny, and in His Torah He made clear that it would be the possession of Israel and none other.

A not insignificant measure of Israel’s tragic history is how much of its existence has been spent exiled from its Land. The nineteen centuries of the current exile alone are longer than the total number of years that Israel was true sovereign of all its Land. But even during the bitterest years of exile, there was no more eloquent testimony to Israel’s eternal ownership of that slim strip of heaven on earth than the Land itself – the very Land that had banished, regurgitated, Israel as unworthy of its sanctity – that very Land testified that Israel is the single nation on earth that can claim title to its hills and valleys. “And I will lay the Land waste, and upon it, your enemies who inhabit it will be desolate” (Leviticus 26:32).

The Land that expelled Israel would welcome none other. Your enemies will inhabit your Land, but they will be desolate upon it. The Land that flowed with milk and honey for Israel would become dry and bitter. Valleys that were lush, plains that were green, would turn to wasteland and desert. No nation would find prosperity there. The grieving Land would wrap itself tight in its mourning shroud and refuse to nurse the children that came to replace her own. She would weep and wait.

No nation has ever succeeded in Eretz Yisrael – except for the Jews. The reason is clearly given by the Torah: the Land is Israel’s. For Israel it will flow with milk and honey. Let Israel fall short of its mandate, and the Land will expel it, but even when that happens, it will withhold its blessings from any other claimant.

Abraham could not even receive God’s blessings and covenant until he was in Eretz Yisrael. While he was still a resident of Charan at the age of seventy, he made a brief trip to Eretz Yisrael where God appeared to him and made the Covenant Between the Pieces. Abraham returned to his father’s home and was not bidden to make the final break with his past until five years later when he was commanded to go to the land which God would show him. Despite his already proven greatness, Abraham could not even receive God’s promise anywhere but in the Holy Land, much less begin the long process of laying the foundation for the Chosen People.

Indeed, the first time Abraham journeyed to Eretz Yisrael, he was not bidden by God to do so. He himself perceived the holiness of the Land and wished to be in it. Later, when God bid him to break with his homeland and family and travel ‘to the land which I will show you’ (12:1), Abraham immediately set out for Eretz Yisrael; he knew that it was God’s country and he believed implicitly that God could have meant no other place.

There is a way, albeit an imperfect one, to experience the exaltation of the Land even though one cannot be within it. The firm resolve to live as holy a life as humanly possible and the strong desire to live it as if one were truly on the sacred soil can be considered in some measure equivalent to being there. May this inspiring thought help elevate our thoughts and deeds until the time when hope and reality merge.

     “Our father Abraham was tested with ten trials and he withstood them all, demonstrated how great was Abraham’s love (for God) (Avos 5:3).”

I.  Purpose of Trials

What is the purpose of a trial?

God knows what a person will and will not do. He knows a person’s capabilities. Further, the Sages teach that a person is never tested beyond his capabilities: the implication is that a divine test is inflicted only upon people of already proven greatness. Clearly, God inflicts trials for a purpose that goes far beyond one’s normal life-experience. The businessman who takes a crushing loss or forgoes a huge profit because he, and no one else, knows that the profitable course of action will violate an obscure clause in the Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law), will surely be rewarded. He is to be admired, respected, and emulated; but his temptation and triumph do not fall within the category of ‘trial’ which was the lot of the Patriarchs. Abraham, for example, was an immensely wealthy man who surely had business dealings of all varieties. He had as much opportunity as the next man for sharp dealing, even dishonesty; yet such matters are not included among his ten trials. The concept of ‘trial’ as used with relation to the Patriarchs goes infinitely deeper than the mere need to cope with the normal twists and challenges of life.

King David was told that he was inferior to the spiritual level of the Patriarchs because they had been tested while he had not been. Yet the agony of David’s life is graphically and poignantly portrayed in the Book of Samuel, the verses of Psalms, the countless heart-rending Aggadic references to his history. We may well pray that we not face even a fraction of David’s trials – yet his challenges were not considered, trials, in the sense of Abraham’s, Isaac’s and Jacob’s. (Sanhedrin 107a). If David’s life was not a series of tests, than the Torah’s definition of ‘trial’ surely involves more than the clichés of normal existence.

Ramban in introducing Abraham’s climactic trial, the Akeidah of Isaac (see commentaries of chapter 22), explains that the trial is not for God’s benefit, in the sense that a teacher may administer a test to evaluate the performances of a student. That sort of test is for the benefit of the teacher, but God’s test is for the benefit of the person being tested. God already knows what he can and will do. A human being’s primary reward is not for good potential and fine intentions. This world was created to serve as the medium for human free-willed performance, and God’s reward and punishment are reserved primarily for deeds. Just as a person is not punished for a sin he was coerced to do since the lack of free will on his part renders the act null and void in terms of transgression, so too, a good but unfulfilled intention is hardly equivalent to a deed performed. Thus, when God puts a great man to the test, it is in order to permit him to translate potential into reality so that he becomes even greater for having overcome obstacles in the service of God and so that he can be rewarded for the performance itself.

• Know that Hashem tests (only) the righteous; when he knows that the Tzaddik will do His will and He wishes to benefit him, He will command him (to undergo) the trial. But He will not test the wicked who will not obey. Behold, therefore, that all trials in the Torah are for the benefit of the one being tested. (Ramban 22:1)

Sforno adds that God wants the righteous to demonstrate in deed their love for and fear of God, for by translating their feelings into action they emulate God Himself Whose merciful deeds are continuing and endless. By realizing their great potential, the righteous fulfill the purpose of creation – which was that man should emulate God as much as possible.

As many commentators note, the word trial, is related to a banner, which was raised up high. The purpose of a trial is not to test in the usual sense of the word – and most assuredly it is not intended as a trap for the inadequate; if it were, the wicked would be tested – rather the trial is meant to ‘raise up’ the righteous by lifting them to new spiritual heights. Every person has observed countless times that someone who successfully survived the crucible of difficult experience emerges a better person. The lecturer, teacher, cook, mechanic, driver – no matter what field, the one who turns theory into practice in difficult situations becomes a superior master of his craft. Great though Abraham already was, he became greater with each triumphant surmounting of a new trial. This, indeed, was the purpose of a trial – not to prove to God what He already knew, but to raise the subject to new heights just as a banner is lifted higher and higher on its pole.

As Abarbanel notes, a banner has other functions as well. It is meant to be an affirmation of identity, to hold the loyalties of its adherents, and to warn enemies to maintain their distance. Who would have known what the Patriarchs were capable of doing had they not been tested? And once they emerged as God’s proven champions, they became ‘banners’ proclaiming to all the world that human beings are capable of attaining heights exalted beyond prior imagination. And if mortals could accomplish so much, then why shouldn’t everyone aspire to reach above his imagined limitations? As our Sages taught, a person should always say, “When will my deeds touch the deeds of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?”

Maharal (Avos 5:3) derives ‘trial’ from ‘miracle The nature of a miracle is that it is supernatural. That the Patriarchs could withstand the trials imposed upon them was entirely miraculous. Human beings should not have succeeded. That is why David failed when at his insistence, he was tested with the temptation of Bathsheba (Sanhedrin 107a). Yet the trials of the Patriarchs, though surely difficult, do not seem to us to be unendurable. Even the climatic trial, the Akiedah, however awesome, has not gone unduplicated. How many Jewish parents have sacrificed everything to sanctify God’s Name? But, as we shall now see, even that awesome degree of devotion is a direct result of Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice even Isaac.

II.  The Nation is Formed

As explained in the Overview of the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were not limited to themselves as individuals. Rather, they set patterns that became part of the national grain. Clearly, the character traits of the Patriarchs were engraved in the national genes, so to speak – this, too, was part of the process of forming a profound and ever lasting influence so that the deeds of the Patriarchs were a sign for the children.

Rabbi Chaim infers this principle from the words of the Mishnah. In telling of the ten failed generations from Noah to Abraham, the Mishnah does not refer to Abraham, our Father (Avos 5:2-3). The inference to be drawn is that the trials endured by Abraham were part of the patrimony he bequeathed to his children. He endured them as the Father of the nation, not as a great and righteous individual.

As King Solomon wrote, “When a tzaddik proceeds in his wholesomeness, praises go to his children after him. (Proverbs 20:7). Many are the traits that a tzaddik acquires only through the hard, unremitting labor of character perfection – by conquering the most unforgiving of enemies: himself! But to his children after him, they are second nature.

When the Sages insist that we take as models the deeds of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they urge an attainable goal. Not, of course, that any of us can actually become even remotely as great as they were, but that our deeds can ‘touch’ theirs, because our deeds grow out of the seeds they planted just as we, ourselves, are their offspring. We need not fear the challenge of greatness because the ground has been broken by the Patriarchs and we are blossoms of their tree.

The trials of the Patriarchs were branded indelibly into Israel’s character that faith comes above life, and that if death must come, it will be accepted with invigorated faith in God because it is but a trial that will raise us like a banner proclaiming that we are children of Abraham. It remains with us and became part of us because God imposed it and the Patriarchs survived it in order to chisel a new trait into the eternity of Israel.

Abraham could have protested. But did not…He did not question or complain. Whatever God willed was good, and if he did not understand why, the deficiency was his. Only the wicked who have earned adversity complain when it comes. The righteous do not complain for they know that human affairs are guided by an Intelligence higher than theirs and by a Compassion unfathomable even to an Abraham.

III. The Cycle of Ten

Chapter five of Avos lists a series of historical phenomena that are numbeed in sets of ten. God created the universe with ten utterances, there were ten generations from Adam to Noah, another ten from Noah to Abraham, the ten trials of Abraham and so on. Ten denotes perfection – represents a development from beginning to completion.

As we have seen in the previous Overview of the Patriarchs, Abraham replaced Adam as the spiritual father of humanity, the one through whom God’s purpose in the universe would be realized and through whom Israel would become the nation selected to receive the Torah. The ideal order of creation began with the realization created by the first utterance: In the Beginning. That utterance was the clear indication that before God began His creative labor there was nothing save for God Himself. Thus, In the Beginning represents the realization that every facet of existence stemmed from His word and will.

From that initial realization, creation went from stage to stage until it reached its culmination with the creation of man whose task it was to bring God’s word into even the minutest aspect of the world. When man was created, however, everything with all its potential of beclouding his senses and obscuring the source of it all was already in place. If mankind knew Who spoke the first utterance, then each succeeding stage represented a further glorification of the One Who could create an universal so multi-faceted. If, however, man saw before him a universe without God, then each succeeding step in creation further obscured the Source. In order for him to comprehend the message of the Ten Utterances, he would have to start from the lowest stage of spiritual recognition and work his way upward. Only after having dismissed each succeeding level of obscurity could he stand at the summit of his spiritual potential and proclaim that God is Master of the universe.

When Abraham began his life of recognizing and proclaiming God, man had fallen from the understanding of creation through two successive ten-generation plunges into the spiritual abyss. The Ten Trials were designed to raise Abraham to ever higher levels of greatness until he stood at the level of ‘In the Beginning’.

The first test was in Ur Kasdim where he defied the institutionalized idolatry of Nimrod’s kingdom and thereby became an enemy of the people. Abraham’s first trial involved a courageous stand – he refused to demean himself by worshipping man’s own handiwork as his god.

Thereby, he proclaimed his humanity, for a man who denies the existence of God forfeits his right to God’s protection and His gifts of life and breath. How can man ever hope to rise above the animal if he fails to acknowledge the sovereignty of his Maker, the source of all spiritual growth? Therefore, Abraham’s first trial established his recognition of the last utterance of creation: ‘Let Us Make Man’. For, indeed, Abraham merited the mantle of Adam.

The eighth trial was circumcision. The surplusage (foreskin) hiding the perfection of man is a barrier to his spiritual advancement. Such barriers must be removed by man and his life must be dedicated to the continued prevention of mundane forces from diluting his spiritual potential. By circumcising himself, Abraham removed from himself the material encumbrance which stood in the way of his spiritual advancement and his attainment of perfection.

The ninth trial was the expulsion of his first-born son Ishmael, together with Hagar. Sarah saw with her superior vision, Ishmael presented a danger to the emergence of Israel, and God instructed Abraham to heed her demand for his expulsion. The second utterance was ‘Let There Be Light’. Ishmael’s presence would have extinguished the merging light of Isaac. By preserving and nurturing that light, Abraham and Sarah attained the level of authentic spiritual light, the light of Torah that illuminates more than do a thousand suns.

The final trial, the AkiedahYitzchak (the Binding of Isaac) brought Abraham to the peak of his fulfillment. He could advance no higher. God said to him, Now I know that you are God-fearing (22:12), for he had been ready to comply with God’s will even if it meant the slaughter of his most cherished possession – the son for whom he had waited so long and who was the guarantor of his future. This recognition that everything was God’s and that nothing stood higher than His will was the living acknowledgment that In the Beginning there was nothing except for Him and that therefore, even after the creation and elaborate development of the universe, there is still nothing except for His will.

IV.  Individual Trials

Everyone’s trial varies according to what he is. For someone to follow his instincts and preferences proves only whether or not his instincts are sound, but it does not prove that his love of God is great enough to lift him above his person desires.

Many of Abraham’s trials involved behavior which ran counter to his generous personality or which would have driven people away from his company. From this perspective we see a new dimension in many of the trials. The command of “Get yourself from your land (12:1), can be seen as a break with family and past, never an easy thing to do for a man of seventy-five. However, it would have been far less difficult for a gevurah-person like Isaac. Abraham had already established a chesed way of life in Charan. He had become a center of spiritual activity; his students numbered in the hundreds and those upon whom he had at least some influence probably ran into the thousands. Now he was to leave the place where he was established and become a stranger in a new land with new customs where he would be forced to begin life anew and develop a network of relationships in order to spread God’s message again. And he was acting cruelly toward his aged father, deserting him at a period in life where he would be needed more rather than less.

The command to dispatch Hagar when she was pregnant, and again later to expel her with Ishmael ran counter to his innermost instincts and the chesed way of service which had become synonymous with his name. How could he drive out people who were part of him, who were dear to him, who were dependent on him and helpless without him?

It is inadequate to see this only in human terms. Abraham had based his service of God on the principle of kindness. How could he reconcile this with cruelty? Circumcision, too, was an act, he feared, that would drive people away from him. The people would consider it bizarre and abnormal. They would sever their relationships with him. The Akiedah, because it was climactic, the greatest of the trials, was also the most complex and difficult of all.   (More of this will be discussed in an overview of the Akeidah)

There is a further aspect of a trial. We know that there are two sides to every story and we have learned, especially in modern times, that an appealing argument can be made for almost any point of view or course of action.

The most ‘irrational’ behavior may be bizarre to the beholder, but the doer may easily consider it proper and even imperative. He may be able to gather up such an overwhelming array of justifications that it may seem useless to engage in discussion much less dispute. Unfortunately, people muster enormous powers of self-deception and rationalization in defense of a course that, once undertaken, must be made to seem logical.

The Patriarchs were not permitted this fallacy. Part of the trial was that Abraham not indulge in the luxury of justifying the required course of action. And Abram went as Hashem told him (12:4): He did not think of the blessings and assurances which God had given him. If Abraham had done that, his obedience would have been selfish. All those thoughts he drove from his mind. He complied with God’s word only because it was God’s will. So it was with every trial, he obeyed because God willed it, not because he understood.

We are part of a tradition. Israel is an old nation whose succeeding generations have laid brick upon brick, but all the bricks are laid atop the foundation that was poured by the Patriarchs. Our reactions to events and sense of national responsibility are predicated upon the lessons of the Torah and the experience of our history. But the Patriarchs had no previously-transmitted Torah and no national experience. They were the originals. They created tradition. They shaped experience. The very title ‘Fathers’, tells what they were. They were our founders and we carry on their mission.

The nature of the trials, and the performance and motives of the Patriarchs in rising to meet them – formed the national character. All the noble strains of intense faith and spiritual exaltation that have ennobled Israel during its almost four thousand years, the determination which has maintained the nation throughout an exile that has far exceeded all its years of national tranquility and independence – these were molded in Ur Kasdim and on Mount Moriah, in Beer Sheba and Hebron, by unquestioning willingness to uproot families and bind children for a slaughter, by readiness to risk unpopularity and provoke hatred, by obeying God’s will even when the obedience seemed to be the direct cause of greater suffering, without doubting for an instant that it was the God of Mercy Who commanded all and a Supreme Intelligence that decreed every event in its minutest detail.

The ‘children’, from David of old to an embattled entrepreneur of today, who follow in those exalted footsteps of old are walking a path that was trodden for them by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Their manifestations of greatness had no precedent. And when they had finished molding Israel’s character, the period of Fathers ended and the period of children began.

The Academy of Eliyahu taught: The world will endure for six thousand years: two thousand (years) of desolation, two thousand of Torah, and two thousand of the Days of Messiah … When did the two thousand of Torah begin? … From (the time of) and the souls whom they (Abraham and Sarah) made (which translates “whom they brought under the yoke of the Torah” (Rashi) in Charan.’ (12:5)

I.  The Emergence

God’s Presence rests upon man to the extent that man permits. If he observes God’s commands only so long as they do not conflict with a particular passion – be it a desire for food, lust, extreme greed for money – then to whatever extent that weakness conflicts with his dedication to the will of God, the Shechinah (the Glory of God) cannot rest upon him. The bearer of God’s Presence is referred to as a ‘chariot’. The Patriarchs are the chariot.

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are God’s chariot on earth, because it was through them that His Presence descended to earth and found a place here. So great were they that they were able to negate their selves entirely, dedicating every feeling and fiber of their being to His service. Never was there a selfish consideration. Their very existence – every moment of it negated themselves as individuals with rights and desire, they could totally absorb Godliness and thus become bearers – the Chariot – of His Shechinah.

They were the forerunners and the embodiment of the future nation of Israel, and therefore they alone are called Fathers. The twelve tribes, too are ancestors of the nation, but they are not called fathers. Moses was the shepherd, teacher, prophet, most faithful of God’s household, but he is not a father. David represents the culmination of all God’s plans of creation, the King Messiah who will fulfill the age-old potential that was dashed with Adam’s failure, but David is not a father. Even Noah, literally the father of humanity, is not called the father of the Jewish People. Fatherhood, in the sense that the Patriarchs are fathers, is not measured in biological terms. All that a person is stems from his parents; whatever he becomes represents the development of the latent potential with which he was born. All that Israel is and will yet become, represents the development of the national character that is the legacy of the Patriarchs.

With Abraham, there began a new birth of the history of mankind. Abraham, in a real sense, was as much the ‘first man’ as were Adam and Noah. The Era of Desolation ended with the year 2000. It was indeed a bleak era in history. The fall of Adam, the murder of Abel, the introduction of idolatry, the failure of the first ten generations, the deluge, the failure of then generations after Noah, the Dispersion. But in the year 1948 Abraham was born. When he was fifty-two years old – the year 2000 – he began gathering people together in Charan and teaching them to serve Hashem. With that, an era began. Desolation was over and a new light began to shine upon humanity, the light of Abraham who embodied the light of Torah.

Abraham was a new phenomenon; there had never been anyone like him and he was completely apart from his birthplace and family, even from his parents.

The Midrash (Bereishis Rabbah 39) relates that when God commanded Abraham to leave Charan and begin a new life in Eretz Yisrael, he feared that by deserting his parents, he would cause a desecration of God’s Name, for people would say, ‘He abandoned his father to old age!’

• The Holy One, Blessed be He, said to Abraham, I absolve you from the obligation to honor your father and mother, but others will not be similarly absolved. What is more, I will relate the story of his death (in the Torah) prior to your leave-taking as it says first, And Terach died in Charan (11:32) and only afterward And Hasham said to Abram ‘Go…from your land’ (12:1).

Maharal explains that Abraham could be absolved from the commandment as was none other, because he was an entirely new and unique entity. In essence, he bore no relationship to Terach because he was the beginning of a new sort of existence on earth. Before him there was desolation and darkness; with him there was Torah and light.

The new birth represented by Abraham was not completed until all three Patriarchs made their combined contribution. That Abraham’s work was insufficient is demonstrated by the fact that he begot an Ishmael; that Isaac went further but did not complete the task his father began is demonstrated by Esau. But of Jacob the sages say, his bed is perfect. Every child of Jacob was a great person in his own right; together they formed the nation, the Tribes of God.

II.  Three Attributes

The three Patriarchs were different, and therein lay their greatness. Isaac and Jacob did not follow Abraham’s well-trodden path to attain their own closeness to God. Each found his own way. In their three ways are the sum total of all possible variations of service to God. Therefore, they are the Fathers: whatever we do was foreshadowed by them; each succeeding generation of Israel with all its great individuals and differing paths to Torah, prayer, kindness and fulfillment of the commandments, is but further growth of their seeds. We are their children.

Each Patriarch had a prime characteristic: Abraham represents the attribute of kindness, grace and compassion; Isaac represents strength or fear; Jacob represents splendor or truth. Let us examine these characteristics, attempt to define them, and see how they manifest themselves in the service of God.

The attribute of the ‘chesed person’ meaning kindness, is the feeling of a person that he must seek to define the needs of other people and fill them. This is an outer-directed trait. The ‘chesed-person’ (pronounced ‘ha said’) acts not out of selfishness nor pity, but out of a genuine desire to help others materially or spiritually, as the case may be.

The attribute of the “gevurah person’ meaning strength, is driven by a fear of transgression and has a powerful drive toward self-perfection. The ‘gevurah person’ (pronounced ja vur rah) examines his deeds and desires, and will tend to refrain from any act that may fall short of the high standards he seeks to attain.

The attribute of the ‘tiferes person) meaning truth seeks to combine chesed and ‘gevurah’, kindness and strength. By exercising a passion for truth, the tiferes-person (pronounced tie fer-ez) finds the middle course between indulgent kindness which can lead to undesirable excess, and self-critical strength which can stifle achievement. By a passion for truth, the tiferes-person combines both extremes into the blend which results in the fulfillment of duty to oneself as well as to others.

The three traits of kindness, fear, and truth are all desirable and, although every person will have them all in varying degrees, each individual will have a character trait that is dominant, one that best expresses his own personality.

Each individual is required also to serve God in accordance with his unique mission by utilizing all the skills, talent, and resources with which he had been endowed by the Creator, for all of them are the tools given him to make possible the performance of his assigned task.

III. Danger and Development

For someone to realize his potential, he must know his own strengths and weaknesses, and understand whether he is primarily motivated by chessed, gevurah, or tiferes. He must recognize the possibilities and dangers of each course, then seek to maximize the former and minimize the latter. And he must create with himself a combination of all three.

Spiritual growth involves the tension of conflicting forces. The chessed-person, by definition, is giving and is humble – not bringing attention to oneself. His goal is to satisfy the need of another. But by giving he receives as well, both in terms of the personal satisfaction and sense of accomplishment, and in terms of the spiritual growth brought on by his generosity. Thus, the recipient earns the gratitude of the giver, for having made possible the act of chesed.

The giver and the receiver fulfill one another. Whether in the have and have-not, the strongest basis of unified, harmonious living is the ability and wish to share with others – and to become enriched through sharing. This brings in its train a growing and intensifying awareness that people are different and that they complement one another; that no individual is perfect, but that the community, by combining diverse outlooks and capabilities into a single unit, can approach a degree of perfection that is beyond the capacity of any of its individual components.

But man can give only what he has. The man with an abundance of Torah knowledge and spiritual insight but a lack of funds cannot fulfill his responsibility of chesed by freely dispensing nickels and pennies while refusing to share his knowledge. In the same respect, the man rich in worldly goods but poor in Torah cannot carry out his obligations by freely dispensing advice and criticism but hoarding his wealth. To act in that manner, obviously, is not generous but deceitful; it displays a zeal not to give but to withhold, for it limits the giving to the inconsequential, to that which is of little use to the giver while clearly demonstrating to the recipient, “What you need of me I shall not give you; what is useless to me, you are free to take.’

The chessed-person must give what he possesses. Only by giving what is of value to the giver does he enrich the receiver and, in turn, become enriched by having contributed to the common store of mutual development. However, those who help others only at minimum cost to themselves can hardly be considered chesed-people.

This does not mean that the help must always be gratis. The person who earns his livelihood by exercising a laboriously cultivated skill cannot be expected to forgo his primary means of providing for himself and his family – nor should he. But there are ways to sell a product or charge for a service, and still be a giver. The grocer who earns a good living, but feels a responsibility to serve his customers honestly and faithfully, is giving even while he rings up this sale. The financial advisor who earns far more than his clients, but who conscientiously extends himself to ensure that their capital is invested where it will best serve their needs rather than his, is providing a service despite his own commission. Of course there is often an obligation to help others without thought of person gain, but the chesed-person does not cease to be a giver even while engaged in the pursuit of profit, as long as his first concern is that he give.

Giving, however, is not enough. For his own perfection, the chesed-person must also develop gevurah instincts: he must look inward as well as outward, and to do so is by no means an exercise in selfishness. People are not stagnant; and even their obligation to others dictates that they facilitate personal growth so that they may be better able to help others. To become a bigger person requires a selfish focus upon oneself. What am I lacking? How can I improve? How can I best absorb a Torah outlook until it is part of my emotional as well as intellectual make-up?

The human being who runs both lanes of this race – neglecting neither chesed nor gevurah, looking both outward and inward – is the most faithful servant of God, himself, and the community. But how is one to navigate his personal course in the human turmoil of constant obstacles, opportunities, temptations, triumphs, and failures?

The trait that provides the power and balance is tiferes, the splendor of truth. The possibility of achieving it was given to man in the form of Torah, God’s own wisdom distilled from the world of the loftiest spheres to provide the formula for life on earth.

IV.  Traits of the Patriarchs

As we have seen, Abraham represents chesed, for the decisive factor in Abraham’s personality was the unceasing urge to help others. Isaac represents gevurah, for his prime trait was the introspective, self-critical fear of God that sought constantly to purify his motives and perfect his deeds. Jacob – the weaver of the triple thread that eternally combined chesed and gevurah with truth as embodied in Torah. Not until Jacob’s work was done was Israel’s ‘Fatherhood’ stage complete, for until then, the national future was not secure. Abraham’s chesed and Isaac’s gevurah both contained the seeds of mortal danger, for although each of them had taken his own primary characteristic and nurtured, guided, chiseled, and polished it into a spiritual masterpiece, it was not yet enough. There is a danger in chesed and a danger in gevurah.

The single-minded determination to help others requires one to ignore his personal needs. It requires total humility, for if one’s own status, dignity, and comfort matter, then he will stand ahead of others. Even if his own desire for fulfillment can be achieved only by winning recognition as the unselfish protector of the weak, then his kindness is tarnished by an inherently selfish need to use the deficiencies of others as stepping stones to the attainment of his own ends.

Such are the dangers of uncontrolled chesed. Nevertheless chesed is good. God created the universe in order to provide the conditions that make His own kindness possible. The election of His chosen people waited twenty generations and two thousand years until the advent of the Patriarch who was, is, and shall always remain the epitome of kindness. Let us not fail to recognize, however, that Abraham’s kindness was not unbounded by principle. When God’s will demanded it, he could set aside his personal inclinations. When necessary, he could take up arms against the abductors of Lot and expel Hagar and Ishmael. He was in control of his chesed and not vice-versa, he said yes not because he was too weak to say no; he took his natural inclination toward kindness and utilized it as a God-serving, not a self-serving vehicle. That was the greatness of Abraham.

It is not incidental that the emergence of the Two Thousand Years of Torah began with Abraham’s initiation of Charanite converts to the teachings of the Torah. Abraham utilized every ounce of his chesed for good, but he also harnessed its potential for excess. He took Torah – the ultimate truth – and allowed it to guide him to gevurah when called for.

He had two sons, both of whom were heirs to his chesed teaching. During the embryonic era in Israel’s development when the seeds of the entire national future were being sown, God wanted Isaac to forge a path all his own. Isaac was endowed with the gevurah personality. But Ishmael broke no new spiritual paths. He saw Abraham’s kindness but he failed to perceive the steel which underlay it, the principle which directed it. His challenge, like Abraham’s was to face the test of chesed and arm himself with the strength within kindness, that would result in the splendor of truth that could be developed within kindness to create the human masterpiece of an Abraham. But Ishmael failed. He perverted kindness into indulgence, eventually to found a nation distinguished for lust, so dedicated to the satisfaction of its passion that it is quite ready to kill and plunder in its service.

Isaac controlled his trait just as Abraham had controlled his. But in gevurah, too, there is a danger. The inward-looking person, dedicated to self-perfection can become obsessed with his own needs with the result that other people become inconsequential, even contemptible, in his eyes. If his own development is paramount, then he can come to regard others as his tools, meant to serve him, to be used by him. The gevurah-person must temper his nature with chesed in order to attain perfection.

Isaac had two sons. Jacob was heir to Isaac’s gevurah and Abraham’s chesed. From his youth he was dweller in the tents of Torah. When he departed from Isaac and Rebecca to found his own home, he secluded himself for fourteen years in the Academy where he immersed himself uncompromisingly into the sea of Torah. With his passion for truth, he formed the perfect blend of attributes and became the final Patriarch, father of the family without blemish.

But Esau was different. He inherited his father’s strength without his grandfather’s compassion and without his brother’s quest for truthful splendor. The result was the viciously selfish person who became the embodiment of callousness and disregard for others. Esau was a murderer because he deemed the lives of others to be too insignificant to stand in the way of his desire. Arrogance, cruelty, plunder, murder – all these are characteristics of Esau the strong, Esau the unbridled. Because Jacob was the ultimate in good, Esau was the ultimate in evil – resulting in his eternal war against all that Israel represents down through the ages.

V.  God is Master

The various Name of God did not come into being with the creation of the universe, and certainly they were not coined by human beings. His Names are eternal just as He is eternal. The universe was created so that even in this mixture of good and evil, spiritual and material, people would come to recognize that Hashem is One and that all emanates from Him and functions in accordance with His will. When Abraham came upon the scene, mankind recognized a multiplicity of gods, one for each aspect of the universe – one for light, one for darkness, one for fertility, one for vegetation and so on.

But Abraham recognized the truth – Hashem is the God, there had to be one Master of the universe and it is He alone Who rules it every moment of every day.

Abraham called Hasham, – Master – and no one had ever done so before. There had been righteous people on earth before him, people who had heard the word of God and served Him, but none had so enthroned Hashem as Master of every aspect of existence as had Abraham.

God Himself was indebted to Abraham because, until he proclaimed Him as Master, the purpose of Creation had been frustrated. God created the universe so that man would perceive Him and serve Him despite the distractions of material existence. Until Abraham’s time, the world had spun in a downward spiral of apathy and sin; creation had failed, lost meaning, serviced no purpose. Then Abraham revealed new vistas of recognition that Hashem was everywhere and controlled everything. What is more, he would be father to a nation that would carry on his mission of standing up to skeptics and enemies until the day when all would acknowledge its message and accept its teaching. Of course, Abraham could be called master of mankind because, whether they realized or not, they owed their existence to him. But that was not all. God called him My Master, because he had presented God with a gift that even He in all His infinite power, could not fashion for Himself. For even God cannot guarantee that man’s mind and heart would choose truth over evil, light over darkness, spirit over flesh, love of God over love of pleasure, recognition that the Master is God and not whatever inexorable force happens to find favor in the eyes of any current generation of non-believers.

Thus Abraham was the one who made God ‘Master,’ and because he accomplished what God had awaited vainly for two thousand years, God called him ‘master.’

It was this new dimension of service to God based on all-embracing recognition that made Abraham the successor to Adam as the father of God’s nation. Before Abraham could become the father of Israel, he had to sanctify himself through circumcision. The sequence of chapter 17 makes it clear that the final gift of the Land and the gift of offspring – the nation and its home – were dependent upon circumcision. From the words of the Sages, we see that circumcision was a critical indication of a loyalty to God that transcended the limitations of the flesh – and even the strictness of natural law.

Circumcision teaches that man must rise above nature. The seven days of the week symbolize the rule of nature forces, for the physical world was created in seven days. Milah, circumcision, is performed on the eighth day of a child’s life to symbolize that it represents the goal of rising above nature. Adam was born circumcised for he was a superior being, but he failed to maintain his lofty standing. By succumbing to sin and g

grasping evil, he fell prey to the natural forces that should have been his servants. He was instrumental in creating a barrier between himself and holiness. Having set his sights downward toward earth, he could no longer look to the heavens as he was created to do. The barrier of the spirit which he had erected was mirrored in his body as the symbol of his closeness to God, his circumcision, was covered by a barrier of flesh.

Abraham tore down the barriers. He saw God everywhere, miracles were natural for him, natural abstractions withered away. He placed himself above the rule of the seven days. God recognized this change in his spiritual essence by giving him the commandment of circumcision.

Perhaps it was in recognition of this overriding symbolism that Abraham refrained from circumcising himself before being specifically commanded to do so, unlike other commandments which he fulfilled voluntarily. Because circumcision represented God’s acknowledgment that the barrier caused by Adam’s sin had been removed, Abraham could not perform it without a specific command. Circumcision with the inner portents of the deed would have no more value than removing some flesh from the elbow or shoulder. Only God could testify that Abraham had become worthy of the deed in all its meaning, that he had become father of the nation that would fulfill the failed hope of Adam.

VI.  Fathers of History

The Patriarchs embodied in their words and deeds the entire, still unfolding course of Jewish history. Even more significant, they set down the moral principles and character traits by which Jews would live and be distinguished.

There are prophecies which are dependent upon the merit of the recipient. The Jews who left Egypt should have entered Eretz Yisrael after receiving the Torah and remain in the wilderness for a relatively brief period. They sinned and as a result the nation remained in the desert for forty years and the adult generation which left Egypt was not granted the privilege of entering the Land. Similarly we find Abraham asking how he can be sure that his descendants will inherit the Land (15:8). As some commentators explain, he was afraid that future generations would not be sufficiently righteous to merit fulfillment of the prophecy on their behalf. Jacob, too, feared that his own righteousness was inadequate to earn God’s help in saving him from Esau’s murderous army (32:11).

But a prophecy accompanied by a symbolic act, cannot be repealed. This doctrine is affirmed by Ramban who goes on to show how events of Abraham’s life must be understood as prophetic symbols guaranteeing future blessings for his descendants (12:6). Other commentators follow Ramban’s lead in searching the story of the Patriarchs for clues to the future of their children.

Abraham’s life began in suffering and pursuit as Nimrod sought to silence his teachings, but from the time God plucked him from Ur Kasdim, his life was serene, secure, and productive. Israel, too, lived in distress during the early years of its national history; it was exiled and enslaved to Pharaohs who sought to bring about its destruction. But from the time God redeemed it from Egypt and pronounced to be His first-born son, it prospered and advanced to the zenith of David’s and Solomon’s reigns, to the Temple, and to the universal respect and acclaim that marked the golden years of the First Commonwealth.

Isaac began life basking in the glow of Abraham’s eminence. But human illness and physical suffering began with Isaac as he became blind in his later years. The eminence of the Abrahamitic family, too declined in Isaac’s time as four hundred years of exile began with the birth of Isaac who was not accorded the reverence shown Abraham (see commentary to 15:13). The middle period of Israel’s history followed the pattern of Isaac’s life: it began with the glory of previous greatness, but it declined in strife and subjugation as nations conquered Eretz Yisrael, extinguished the nation’s ‘light’ – the Holy Temple – and exiled the people.

Jacob, the last Patriarch, embodied the final chapters of Israel’s history. Nearly all of his life was a succession of tribulation and anguish until the last years of his life when he enjoyed peace and serenity in Egypt, his family restored and flourishing as it built toward the future redemption and the gift of Sinai. As the Talmud expounds in Ta’anis 5a, Jacob never died; only his physical shell was removed and interred, but the essential Jacob endures in the highest form of spiritual life. So, too, Israel. Beset by exile and being violently demolished, driven from continent to continent, reviled by foe and pseudo-friend, the nation suffers throughout its life. But the End of Days will bring fulfillment and vindication. The Temple – the eternal Temple – will stand and Israel will be reunited in a spiritual summit that will be vindication of all that has gone before, from which the rays of Torah will light the world, toward which mankind will stream to do His will with a complete and sincere heart.

There were ten generations from Adam to Noah to show how long-suffering God is, since all these generations antagonized Him until He brought the waters of the Flood upon them.

There were ten generations from Noah to Abraham to show how long-suffering He is, since all these generations antagonized Him until our Father Abraham came and took the merit of them all.  (Avon 5:2-3).

I.   Tzaddik – Righteous

Three Words – There are three words formed from the same root, expressing the same concept.  Tzaddik is a righteous person; tzedek is justice in a court of law; tzedakah is ‘charity’.  Three words.  In common expression and understanding they are taken as three widely varying ideals: People think of a tzaddik as a ‘righteous person’ who engages in religious ritual.  Tzedakah, charity and benevolence based on the circumstances of one in need, is far removed from tzedek the strict and scrupulous application of principals of law without regard to the need or circumstances of the accused.

But the Hebrew language teaches us otherwise.  All three words are derived from the word in Hebrew for ‘justice’.  All three concepts are different expressions of the same theme: that God has created the world with a plan and that every human being must see himself as an executor of that plan.  Whether in his personal life, his legal dealings, or his disbursements to the needy, a Jew must see himself as an administrator of justice, apportioning his emotions, time, wisdom, and resources according to the wishes of their ultimate Owner.

Leviticus 19:15 – “Do no wrong in judgment.  Do not favor the poor, and show no honor to the great; with justice shall you judge your neighbor.”

     The verse concludes with the positive command that complements and summarizes the three negative commands with which it begins.  In order to do ‘justice’ properly, the judge must see every person standing before him, rich or poor, as his neighbor, entitled to the same rights and privileges, subject to the same obligations and duties as he is himself.  His judgments are not handed down from on high; they are simply expressions of fairness and right as defined by the Torah (Hirsch).

Deuteronomy 24:13 – “You must return the security to him … that he may bless you, and it shall be for you as a righteous duty (tzedakah) before Hashem, your God.”

Form of Justice – As soon as you perceive that what you are doing is only your duty, your vocation, your task as a human being and as a Jew … (you will) act with no other purpose than to fulfill the will of your Father in Heaven, and to give light and warmth and nourishment just as a ray of sunlight gives light in the service of God.  Why should God give you more than you need unless He intended to make you the administrator of the blessing for the benefit of others, the treasurer of his treasures?  Every penny you can spare is not yours, but should become a tool for bringing blessing to others … That is why our Sages prefer to give the beautiful name of Tzedakah to this act of charity by means of material goods.  For tzedakah is the justice which gives to every creature that which God allots to it. (Horeb).

Tzaddik as Judge – A tzaddik, too, is one who exercises justice.  He knows that he is but the treasurer, not the owner, of the entire store of human and material resources.  The marching orders of his life are contained in the Torah.  For him to do otherwise than to carry them out meticulously would be a lack of justice that is comparable to robbery?  For, indeed, if he were to make use of the breath of life, the spark of intelligence, the potential of wealth in ways opposed to the will of God, is he not misappropriating them from the Owner who has entrusted him with their management?

Man is created with his treasury of potential and, as life goes on, it is filled or depleted.  What he is to have has been decided before his birth; what he does with it is left to him.  Each individual human being is born with a mission all his own.  The child born with the mission of being the teacher of the generation is endowed with the brilliance of intellect, memory, and analytical powers to do so.  The one who is expected to become a supporter of Torah and the poor will be given great wealth.  The mental and material treasures of a human being are the tools he is given to accomplish the goal God set for him, and the tools, can be used well, or they can be wasted.  Money can find its way to worthy causes or it can be invested in a  quest for more wealth; or it can be squandered at roulette wheels.  Man will be called to account for how wisely and righteously he has utilized the gifts placed in his trust.  But one thing must be clear: whatever he needs for his mission will be provided him (Michtav MeEliyahu).

II.  Noah

Genesis 6:9 – “Noah was a righteous man; he was perfect in his generation.”

Perfect Tzaddik – The Torah testifies that Noah was totally righteous, a tzaddik.  By definition he was a man whose life was an unending pattern of justice.  Like the righteous judge who apportions fairly between the claims of those who appear before him, Noah dealt with the conflicting claims that make up every human life, and apportioned his time and patience, his wisdom and knowledge, his wealth and property between himself, his family, and his neighbors.   God’s testimony to Noah’s righteousness is the most eloquent of statements; an unimpeachable guarantee that his every act was measured and considered – and just.

Yet we find declarations about Noah that seem to contradict the lofty characterization of him as a tzaddik.  The Midrash says that Noah was saved from the Flood only because he found grace in the eyes of God – but not because he was deserving!  Noah himself is quoted in the Midrash as saying to God, ‘And as for me, what they have done, I have done equally; what is the difference between me and them?’

What was the sin of the generation that caused the verdict against them to be sealed?  Robbery.  Yet Noah declared himself guilty of their sin, and the Midrash states that his salvation was nothing but an act of mercy because he found grace in God’s eyes.  How are we to understand that ‘righteous’ Noah, the tzaddik who apportioned every aspect of his existence to the proper service of God could be considered on a par with the corrupt?  How can we associate the sin of robbery with Noah?

Zohar says that Noah sinned in not having chastised his fellow men.  Therefore, the destructive, murderous waters of the Flood are called ‘the waters of Noah’ (Isaiah 54:9) – the waters were his responsibility because, had he fulfilled his responsibility fully, the waters might never have come.  Had he chastised and taught, done more than set a towering personal example of righteousness, then mankind might have listened and heeded and survived.  And the mission of Adam might not have ended in torrential failure.

Withholding Speech – Yes, righteous Noah indeed fulfilled his minimum obligations without flaw.  His ‘justice’ could not be faulted.  But he could have done more, and great people can be dealt with as severely for not doing right as for doing wrong.  He was guilty of withholding speech at a time when it could be beneficial to others.  To live amid sin and to have the opportunity to help eradicate it by speaking up, be reasoning, by chastising, by teaching, by pleading – and not to do so, is equally guilty.

What is more, to withhold speech where it is needed is itself considered robbery.  When Sarah accused Abraham of not supporting her against arrogant, rebellious Hagar, she said, ‘my wrong is upon you’ (Genesis 16:5).  Rashi explains that Abraham was to blame for Sarah’s humiliation because he refrained from reprimanding Hagar.  Noah was guilty of ‘robbery’ because he refrained from doing more than the strict dictates of righteousness required him to.

III.  Noah and Abraham

The Difficulty – The verse says that Noah was a righteous man in his generation.  Some of our Sages explain this in praise of Noah: if he was righteous in an evil generation, imagine how much greater he would have been in a time of righteous people.  Other Sages interpret it as an indirect criticism: he was considered righteous in his generation compared to the corruption surrounding him.  Had he lived in Abraham’s time, he would have been insignificant (Rashi; Genesis 6:9).  How are we to understand and resolve these differing views of Noah?

Heavenly scales weigh differently than do ours.  Righteousness in God’s eyes is measured by how well one judges in the universe of his own being.  In the heavenly scale, the great scholar who uses half of his mind’s potential is honored but slightly for the great knowledge gained by using half his capacity; he is dealt with harshly for not having done twice as much.  On the other hand, the laborer whose free moments are spent struggling over a chapter of Mishnah to the limits of his mental capacity, may rightly earn immense reward.  The Holy One, blessed be He, does not count the pages, but the hours.

Noah survived the destruction caused by the failure of the first ten generations, but Abraham did much more: he was so great that he earned for himself all the reward that should have been the lot of the ten generations that preceded him.  Abraham succeeded where all others failed, but how did he become more righteous than Noah?  If we properly understood the term tzaddik as referring to a person who attains the standard set for him by God, then the same pedestal should have borne both Noah and Abraham.

Abram Outgrows His Mission –  Abraham was born Abram (11:26).  His destiny was to be the moral leader of the nation of Aram.  Had he fulfilled that mission and nothing more, he would have been ‘righteous’.  But he did more.  A human has the capacity to rise above his mission.  Through dedication, prayer, love of God – all the attributes of the greatest figures – it is possible for a person to fulfill the mission set forth for him and be granted a new, higher one – just as it is possible for someone to fail so utterly that it becomes impossible for him ever to attain the good for which he was created.

Abram’s name was changed to Abraham because as the Torah says, “I have made you the (moral) father of a multitude of nations (Genesis 17:5).  As Rashi explains, he had outgrown his mission.  No longer was he the ‘Father’ merely of Aram, henceforth he was to become the ‘father’ of all mankind setting a moral standard that would become the goal of the next four millenia of human history and that would bring the Glory of God to earth on Mount Sinai, in the parchment and letters of the Torah, and finally, in the very being of his descendants.  This aspect of Abraham’s greatness overshadowed Noah’s.  Noah fulfilled his mission – he even attempted to rebuke his generations. But Abraham rose above his mission and thereby gained a new one.  Because he sanctified God’s Name far above the extent for which he was created, he earned the merit which would have belonged to all the others had they done what they were created to.

Noah faulted himself for not having done more.  He could have.  Abraham did. That a ‘perfect tzaddik’ is taken to account for not having done much more than he should have been expected to, is in itself an eloquent tribute to his greatness.

Ten Generations – The number ‘ten’ in Scriptures or the Oral Torah, is a reference to the Ten Heavenly Emanations by means of which God’s Presence descends from heaven and makes itself manifest.  Thus we have the ten statements with which God created heaven and earth; Ten Commandments; the ten tests of Abraham; and the ten plagues upon Egypt.  All of these phenomena were aspects of revelation.  Through each, man and the universe were elevated to new perceptions of God’s holiness and presence.

Of the same order were the ten generations from Adam to Noah and the ten from Noah to Abraham.  The number ten was not coincidental; God had a plan of development which was to proceed and develop until it reached its spiritual culmination in ten generations.  The master plan of creation was Torah and it was to enable man to perfect himself through the study of Torah and the performance of its commands that heaven and earth were created.  The divine intention was that God’s Presence be revealed behind the obscurity of earth’s hiddenness through Adam, and that man’s perception of it grow and intensify stage by stage, emanation by emanation, until the tenth generation when it was to reach its climax.  Then, the Torah would be given and all mankind would achieve God’s final purpose and become ‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’ (Exodus 19:6).

     The process was to begin again from righteous Noah who signaled a new and better beginning by bringing offerings of thanksgiving and dedication to God after the deluge.  Once again, God set in motion the chain of development that was to culminate in man’s perfection and the giving of the Torah.  Again, man did not rise to the challenge.  The ten generations sinned increasingly, angering God more and more, even attempting to challenge His mastery of the earth and do battle with Him by erecting their Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9).  But this chain of ten had a different ending than the earlier one.  Had it ended in total failure, then no one can know what sort of misfortune might have been visited upon man.  Instead it ended with Abraham.  By his own greatness, a greatness he proved by elevating himself through a succession of ten tests, he achieved in his person what all ten generations had failed to do.

Until Abraham – ‘Abraham performed the commandments of the Torah before they were given’ (Yoma 28b).  He reached so high a level that his own words and thoughts became Torah; he united himself with the mind of God until his own thoughts and wisdom became identical with God’s.  Thus, in a more symbolic sense, the Divine Plan was fulfilled and Torah was ‘given’ – not to the flawed generation of Babel – it was dispersed; not by giving the Tablets and the Torah in its present form – that was left for Moses and the children of Israel.  But the Torah was given and nurtured in Abraham who, in a real sense, began a new history of the world.

IV.  Crucial Moments

     The Sixth Century – The Divine Plan has decreed that there be times when particular manifestations of holiness are visited upon earth.  Genesis 7:11 “In the six hundredth year of the life of Noah…all the fountains of the great deep and the windows of the heavens were opened.” Zohar comments that the ‘wellsprings of the deep’ refers to the wisdom from below, man’s capability through the Oral Torah to broaden and develop the wisdom of Torah.  The ‘windows of heaven’ refers to the Written Torah, God’s gift from heaven.  From the moment of creation, that year was foreordained to be a time of awesome Godly manifestations.  Had man been worthy, he would have received the Written and Oral Torahs and been worthy of broadening and deepening it through the Oral Torah.

The six hundredth year of Noah’s life was chosen as a year when a flood of wisdom would descend upon earth.  But like all heavenly gifts, man is free to decide how he will use it or whether he will be worthy to receive it.

The generation of Noah should have been beneficiary of this ‘water’ – water as an allegorical reference to Torah.  But they were unworthy.  So unworthy were they that ‘water’ – which in God’s spiritual world refers to wisdom – became the water of the Flood that blotted out man.

The generation of the Dispersion, too, was destined for a blossoming of knowledge.  The gift of Torah was ready for them, but instead they became the subordinates of Nimrod.  They had all the prerequisites of greatness, but they abused them and so, lost the opportunity to become the fulfillment of God’s plan.

A New Potential – But there was one man among them who was not swept along by the tide.  He was forty-eight years old and he knew that his master was Hashem, not Nimrod.  Because he persevered, the blessing of Torah that was destined for his countrymen concentrated upon him.  He recognized at the age of three that there had to be a single God Who created and ruled the universe.  Now, at forty-eight, he experienced a new revelation of Godly wisdom – of Torah – in the year and the place destined for revelation – and recognized his Creator as he never had before.  His name was Abram and the Sages say, at the age of forty-eight, Abram recognized his Creator (Midrash).

Unlearned Lessons – In Babel, Abram recognized his Maker and Nimrod recognized his own sword and bow.  Noah was still alive as were his three sons – four people noble, righteous patriarch of the human race.  Surely Noah cried out against the lunacy of building the pointless tower in an insane effort to ascend to heaven and compete with God.  Surely he told his great grandchildren that a merciful God could turn wrathful in the face of such iniquity.  And Abram who would spend a lifetime of kindness in drawing people close to God’s service was unafraid of Nimrod and his threats of death; Abram, too, surely protested.  But the people didn’t listen.

Noah was perfect and righteous.  He could save his family, but not the world.  Abram, too, was perfect and righteous and he salvaged the sparks of holiness from the madness of Babel.  But then he added a new dimension to his mission by becoming Abraham, leader of all the world.  He was so great that he acquired all the merit that had been trodden underfoot by his own generation and all those before.  In so doing, he realized and fulfilled the purpose of creation and earned for his children the most treasured gift that God could bestow on any of his creatures – The Torah.

V.  The Ark

The Robber:  The Flood was precipitated by robbery.  God can endure patiently all varieties of sin, waiting for repentance, exacting punishment, building for better times in the future.  But robbery represents an unpardonable low in human behavior because it shows man as a selfish being concerned with himself alone even at the expense of others.

God tolerated Israel’s most grievous sins as long as they were loyal to and considerate of one another.  The present exile, the Exile of Edom, was brought about by Rome which, the Sages teach, was descended from Esau.  His dominant characteristic was violence and murder.  That, too, is akin to robbery. The murderer will allow nothing to stand in his way.  And if the life of another human being bars the achievement of his goal – he will shed blood to gain it.  Because Israel in the declining years of the Second Commonwealth sinned in its social life through jealousy, hatred, and failure to extend themselves for the benefit of one another, they were placed under the domination of the nation that exemplified cruel selfishness.

The destruction of the First Temple was caused because Israel sunk into lust.  It was exiled in the hands of Babylonia, a nation that was the leading oriental example of pleasure-seeking self-indulgence.  This exile fit the sin.

The Ark’s Lesson – To save earthly life by means of an ark and miraculous salvation from the ravages of the Flood would hardly have sufficed if the sin that finally caused the Flood had remained totally unredeemed.  Therefore, the ark had to be more than a protection against the raging elements outside it; it had to enclose creatures led and cared for by Noah and his family, forcing them together, imposing upon them an awesome regimen of selflessness that allowed not a free moment for self-indulgence.  Thereby, a human tradition was re-imposed.  Cain asked, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’  Noah answered, ‘Yes, I am the keeper of everyone, from human being to gnat, from docile lamb to voracious lion.’

For Noah personally, this was a vital lesson.  He was taken to task for not having shown sufficient concern for his generation, for not rebuking them, praying for them – saving them.  He had been content to protect his own righteousness.  His labors in the ark demonstrated to him that he must feel a responsibility for all others.

Of course, his task could have been eased, but that would have destroyed a vital function of the ark.  For the ark was an incubator of goodness.  A necessary ingredient of the salvation was God’s command that the conditions for future survival be developed in the ark.  So Noah and his family became caretakers for all surviving animal life, laboring, trudging, serving, so that when the ancestors of humanity emerged from the ark to rebuild the deluged remains of the earth, they would do it with a reborn awareness of the role of man as a caring, unselfish being (Harav Gifter).

VI.  Shem and Japheth

Greece and Israel – The characteristics of Shem and Japheth were different, but they were intended to be complementary.  Japheth was blessed with beauty and sensitivity; Shem with holiness and the Divine Presence.  Of the many nations descending from both, the blessing of Japheth took root in Greece, while the blessing of Shem rested on Israel.

Noah’s blessing (9:27) –  “May God extend the boundaries of Japheth, but he will dwell in the tents of Shem”.  The Talmud teaches: “the beauty of Japheth (the Greek language, the most beautiful of tongues should be in the tents of Shem.” (Megillah 9b)  This interpretation of Noah’s blessing was used by the Sages to permit the translation of the Five Books of Moses into Greek.

Japheth’s Role – Noah used the name ‘Elokim’ in giving his blessing to Japheth.  It is the name of God that represents His dominance over nature for, as the commentators note, has the same numerical value, 86, as the law of nature.  Noah bestowed upon Japheth the blessings of nature, the ability to perceive and create beauty in this world, but he told his open, expressive, perceptive, gifted son that his achievements must ‘dwell in the tents of Shem.’  Otherwise, his gifts would be worse than wasted; they would become a destructive, corrupting force,  Beauty can elevate man and it can corrode him.  It can inspire man and it can degrade him.  For man is more susceptible to his heart and his senses than to his mind and his soul.

The Conflict – The beauty of Japheth and the tents of Shem reached their time of coming together during the period of the Second Temple.  It was begun upon the command of Cyrus, a descendant of Japheth.  His motives were pure at first, but later his respect for God and love for the Jews changed to wickedness (Rosh Hashanah 4a-b).  Had his motives remained pure, the Second Temple might have achieved the holiness and Divine Presence of the First, but because he fell from his grandeur, the Temple that originated with his benevolence could not become worthy of so lofty a stature (Yoma 9b-10a).

Then came the reign of Antiochus and the Syrian-Greeks.  The Syrians, bearers of the blessing of Japheth, imposed their culture upon Israel and attempted to destroy its allegiance to the God Who dwelt in the tents of Shem.  They defiled the Temple and chose three commandments as their prime targets:

The Sabbath: If God was the eternal Creator and continuous resuscitator of the universe and if His Torah formed the blueprint and formula for the existence and purpose of Creation, then Greek culture would have to stand aside and bow humbly before the tents of Shem.  This, Antiochus could not tolerate.

The New Moon:  the symbol of man’s obligation to instill holiness in time.  Time is meaningless until the Sanhedrin hallows it by proclaiming ‘the new moon is sanctified, it is sanctified!’, and when this is done, the festivals – the appointed meeting places in time between God and man – enter the calendar and raise it from a record of material pursuit and struggle to a vehicle of holiness.  Antiochus and his culture were not absolute; they were either servants of holiness or crude intrusions upon the human purpose.

Circumcision: the declaration that the physical and the spiritual must be intertwined.  The physical world is not separate from and independent of the spiritual.  The body must bear the mark of allegiance to God’s covenant, the restraining mark which tell it, ‘You are a servant not a master; you are host to a soul and you must elevate yourself to its exalted level.’  Beauty and pleasure were not the independent virtues Antiochus said they were.  They were confined by Torah or they were nothing.

A world without a Creator, a calendar without holiness, a body without restraint – these were the goals of a culture that had accepted the gifts but not the goals of Noah’s blessing to Japheth.  External grace and splendor covering a corrosive emptiness.  To this had the beauty of Japheth been brought.

Greece should have placed its culture at the service of Shem, used it to help provide a glorious dwelling place for the Divine Presence.  Instead it’s splendor became darkness.

There were ten generations from Adam to Noah to show how long-suffering God is, since all these generations antagonized Him until He brought the waters of the Flood upon them.

There were ten generations from Noah to Abraham to show how long-suffering He is, since all these generations antagonized Him until our Father Abraham came and took the merit of them all.  (Avon 5:2-3).

1.  Tzaddik – Righteous

Three Words – There are three words formed from the same root, expressing the same concept.  Tzaddik is a righteous person; tzedek is justice in a court of law; tzedakah is ‘charity’.  Three words.  In common expression and understanding they are taken as three widely varying ideals: People think of a tzaddik as a ‘righteous person’ who engages in religious ritual.  Tzedakah, charity and benevolence based on the circumstances of one in need, is far removed from tzedek the strict and scrupulous application of principals of law without regard to the need or circumstances of the accused.

But the Hebrew language teaches us otherwise.  All three words are derived from the word in Hebrew for ‘justice’.  All three concepts are different expressions of the same theme: that God has created the world with a plan and that every human being must see himself as an executor of that plan.  Whether in his personal life, his legal dealings, or his disbursements to the needy, a Jew must see himself as an administrator of justice, apportioning his emotions, time, wisdom, and resources according to the wishes of their ultimate Owner.

Leviticus 19:15 – “Do no wrong in judgment.  Do not favor the poor, and show no honor to the great; with justice shall you judge your neighbor.”

     The verse concludes with the positive command that complements and summarizes the three negative commands with which it begins.  In order to do ‘justice’ properly, the judge must see every person standing before him, rich or poor, as his neighbor, entitled to the same rights and privileges, subject to the same obligations and duties as he is himself.  His judgments are not handed down from on high; they are simply expressions of fairness and right as defined by the Torah (Hirsch).

Deuteronomy 24:13 – “You must return the security to him … that he may bless you, and it shall be for you as a righteous duty (tzedakah) before Hashem, your God.”

Form of Justice – As soon as you perceive that what you are doing is only your duty, your vocation, your task as a human being and as a Jew … (you will) act with no other purpose than to fulfill the will of your Father in Heaven, and to give light and warmth and nourishment just as a ray of sunlight gives light in the service of God.  Why should God give you more than you need unless He intended to make you the administrator of the blessing for the benefit of others, the treasurer of his treasures?  Every penny you can spare is not yours, but should become a tool for bringing blessing to others … That is why our Sages prefer to give the beautiful name of Tzedakah to this act of charity by means of material goods.  For tzedakah is the justice which gives to every creature that which God allots to it. (Horeb).

Tzaddik as Judge – A tzaddik, too, is one who exercises justice.  He knows that he is but the treasurer, not the owner, of the entire store of human and material resources.  The marching orders of his life are contained in the Torah.  For him to do otherwise than to carry them out meticulously would be a lack of justice that is comparable to robbery?  For, indeed, if he were to make use of the breath of life, the spark of intelligence, the potential of wealth in ways opposed to the will of God, is he not misappropriating them from the Owner who has entrusted him with their management?

Man is created with his treasury of potential and, as life goes on, it is filled or depleted.  What he is to have has been decided before his birth; what he does with it is left to him.  Each individual human being is born with a mission all his own.  The child born with the mission of being the teacher of the generation is endowed with the brilliance of intellect, memory, and analytical powers to do so.  The one who is expected to become a supporter of Torah and the poor will be given great wealth.  The mental and material treasures of a human being are the tools he is given to accomplish the goal God set for him, and the tools, can be used well, or they can be wasted.  Money can find its way to worthy causes or it can be invested in a  quest for more wealth; or it can be squandered at roulette wheels.  Man will be called to account for how wisely and righteously he has utilized the gifts placed in his trust.  But one thing must be clear: whatever he needs for his mission will be provided him (Michtav MeEliyahu).

1.  Noah

Genesis 6:9 – “Noah was a righteous man; he was perfect in his generation.”

Perfect Tzaddik – The Torah testifies that Noah was totally righteous, a tzaddik.  By definition he was a man whose life was an unending pattern of justice.  Like the righteous judge who apportions fairly between the claims of those who appear before him, Noah dealt with the conflicting claims that make up every human life, and apportioned his time and patience, his wisdom and knowledge, his wealth and property between himself, his family, and his neighbors.   God’s testimony to Noah’s righteousness is the most eloquent of statements; an unimpeachable guarantee that his every act was measured and considered – and just.

Yet we find declarations about Noah that seem to contradict the lofty characterization of him as a tzaddik.  The Midrash says that Noah was saved from the Flood only because he found grace in the eyes of God – but not because he was deserving!  Noah himself is quoted in the Midrash as saying to God, ‘And as for me, what they have done, I have done equally; what is the difference between me and them?’

What was the sin of the generation that caused the verdict against them to be sealed?  Robbery.  Yet Noah declared himself guilty of their sin, and the Midrash states that his salvation was nothing but an act of mercy because he found grace in God’s eyes.  How are we to understand that ‘righteous’ Noah, the tzaddik who apportioned every aspect of his existence to the proper service of God could be considered on a par with the corrupt?  How can we associate the sin of robbery with Noah?

Zohar says that Noah sinned in not having chastised his fellow men.  Therefore, the destructive, murderous waters of the Flood are called ‘the waters of Noah’ (Isaiah 54:9) – the waters were his responsibility because, had he fulfilled his responsibility fully, the waters might never have come.  Had he chastised and taught, done more than set a towering personal example of righteousness, then mankind might have listened and heeded and survived.  And the mission of Adam might not have ended in torrential failure.

Withholding Speech – Yes, righteous Noah indeed fulfilled his minimum obligations without flaw.  His ‘justice’ could not be faulted.  But he could have done more, and great people can be dealt with as severely for not doing right as for doing wrong.  He was guilty of withholding speech at a time when it could be beneficial to others.  To live amid sin and to have the opportunity to help eradicate it by speaking up, be reasoning, by chastising, by teaching, by pleading – and not to do so, is equally guilty.

What is more, to withhold speech where it is needed is itself considered robbery.  When Sarah accused Abraham of not supporting her against arrogant, rebellious Hagar, she said, ‘my wrong is upon you’ (Genesis 16:5).  Rashi explains that Abraham was to blame for Sarah’s humiliation because he refrained from reprimanding Hagar.  Noah was guilty of ‘robbery’ because he refrained from doing more than the strict dictates of righteousness required him to.

III.  Noah and Abraham

The Difficulty – The verse says that Noah was a righteous man in his generation.  Some of our Sages explain this in praise of Noah: if he was righteous in an evil generation, imagine how much greater he would have been in a time of righteous people.  Other Sages interpret it as an indirect criticism: he was considered righteous in his generation compared to the corruption surrounding him.  Had he lived in Abraham’s time, he would have been insignificant (Rashi; Genesis 6:9).  How are we to understand and resolve these differing views of Noah?

Heavenly scales weigh differently than do ours.  Righteousness in God’s eyes is measured by how well one judges in the universe of his own being.  In the heavenly scale, the great scholar who uses half of his mind’s potential is honored but slightly for the great knowledge gained by using half his capacity; he is dealt with harshly for not having done twice as much.  On the other hand, the laborer whose free moments are spent struggling over a chapter of Mishnah to the limits of his mental capacity, may rightly earn immense reward.  The Holy One, blessed be He, does not count the pages, but the hours.

Noah survived the destruction caused by the failure of the first ten generations, but Abraham did much more: he was so great that he earned for himself all the reward that should have been the lot of the ten generations that preceded him.  Abraham succeeded where all others failed, but how did he become more righteous than Noah?  If we properly understood the term tzaddik as referring to a person who attains the standard set for him by God, then the same pedestal should have borne both Noah and Abraham.

Abram Outgrows His Mission –  Abraham was born Abram (11:26).  His destiny was to be the moral leader of the nation of Aram.  Had he fulfilled that mission and nothing more, he would have been ‘righteous’.  But he did more.  A human has the capacity to rise above his mission.  Through dedication, prayer, love of God – all the attributes of the greatest figures – it is possible for a person to fulfill the mission set forth for him and be granted a new, higher one – just as it is possible for someone to fail so utterly that it becomes impossible for him ever to attain the good for which he was created.

Abram’s name was changed to Abraham because as the Torah says, “I have made you the (moral) father of a multitude of nations (Genesis 17:5).  As Rashi explains, he had outgrown his mission.  No longer was he the ‘Father’ merely of Aram, henceforth he was to become the ‘father’ of all mankind setting a moral standard that would become the goal of the next four millenia of human history and that would bring the Glory of God to earth on Mount Sinai, in the parchment and letters of the Torah, and finally, in the very being of his descendants.  This aspect of Abraham’s greatness overshadowed Noah’s.  Noah fulfilled his mission – he even attempted to rebuke his generations. But Abraham rose above his mission and thereby gained a new one.  Because he sanctified God’s Name far above the extent for which he was created, he earned the merit which would have belonged to all the others had they done what they were created to.

Noah faulted himself for not having done more.  He could have.  Abraham did. That a ‘perfect tzaddik’ is taken to account for not having done much more than he should have been expected to, is in itself an eloquent tribute to his greatness.

Ten Generations – The number ‘ten’ in Scriptures or the Oral Torah, is a reference to the Ten Heavenly Emanations by means of which God’s Presence descends from heaven and makes itself manifest.  Thus we have the ten statements with which God created heaven and earth; Ten Commandments; the ten tests of Abraham; and the ten plagues upon Egypt.  All of these phenomena were aspects of revelation.  Through each, man and the universe were elevated to new perceptions of God’s holiness and presence.

Of the same order were the ten generations from Adam to Noah and the ten from Noah to Abraham.  The number ten was not coincidental; God had a plan of development which was to proceed and develop until it reached its spiritual culmination in ten generations.  The master plan of creation was Torah and it was to enable man to perfect himself through the study of Torah and the performance of its commands that heaven and earth were created.  The divine intention was that God’s Presence be revealed behind the obscurity of earth’s hiddenness through Adam, and that man’s perception of it grow and intensify stage by stage, emanation by emanation, until the tenth generation when it was to reach its climax.  Then, the Torah would be given and all mankind would achieve God’s final purpose and become ‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’ (Exodus 19:6).

     The process was to begin again from righteous Noah who signaled a new and better beginning by bringing offerings of thanksgiving and dedication to God after the deluge.  Once again, God set in motion the chain of development that was to culminate in man’s perfection and the giving of the Torah.  Again, man did not rise to the challenge.  The ten generations sinned increasingly, angering God more and more, even attempting to challenge His mastery of the earth and do battle with Him by erecting their Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9).  But this chain of ten had a different ending than the earlier one.  Had it ended in total failure, then no one can know what sort of misfortune might have been visited upon man.  Instead it ended with Abraham.  By his own greatness, a greatness he proved by elevating himself through a succession of ten tests, he achieved in his person what all ten generations had failed to do.

Until Abraham – ‘Abraham performed the commandments of the Torah before they were given’ (Yoma 28b).  He reached so high a level that his own words and thoughts became Torah; he united himself with the mind of God until his own thoughts and wisdom became identical with God’s.  Thus, in a more symbolic sense, the Divine Plan was fulfilled and Torah was ‘given’ – not to the flawed generation of Babel – it was dispersed; not by giving the Tablets and the Torah in its present form – that was left for Moses and the children of Israel.  But the Torah was given and nurtured in Abraham who, in a real sense, began a new history of the world.

1.  Crucial Moments

     The Sixth Century – The Divine Plan has decreed that there be times when particular manifestations of holiness are visited upon earth.  Genesis 7:11 “In the six hundredth year of the life of Noah…all the fountains of the great deep and the windows of the heavens were opened.” Zohar comments that the ‘wellsprings of the deep’ refers to the wisdom from below, man’s capability through the Oral Torah to broaden and develop the wisdom of Torah.  The ‘windows of heaven’ refers to the Written Torah, God’s gift from heaven.  From the moment of creation, that year was foreordained to be a time of awesome Godly manifestations.  Had man been worthy, he would have received the Written and Oral Torahs and been worthy of broadening and deepening it through the Oral Torah.

The six hundredth year of Noah’s life was chosen as a year when a flood of wisdom would descend upon earth.  But like all heavenly gifts, man is free to decide how he will use it or whether he will be worthy to receive it.

The generation of Noah should have been beneficiary of this ‘water’ – water as an allegorical reference to Torah.  But they were unworthy.  So unworthy were they that ‘water’ – which in God’s spiritual world refers to wisdom – became the water of the Flood that blotted out man.

The generation of the Dispersion, too, was destined for a blossoming of knowledge.  The gift of Torah was ready for them, but instead they became the subordinates of Nimrod.  They had all the prerequisites of greatness, but they abused them and so, lost the opportunity to become the fulfillment of God’s plan.

A New Potential – But there was one man among them who was not swept along by the tide.  He was forty-eight years old and he knew that his master was Hashem, not Nimrod.  Because he persevered, the blessing of Torah that was destined for his countrymen concentrated upon him.  He recognized at the age of three that there had to be a single God Who created and ruled the universe.  Now, at forty-eight, he experienced a new revelation of Godly wisdom – of Torah – in the year and the place destined for revelation – and recognized his Creator as he never had before.  His name was Abram and the Sages say, at the age of forty-eight, Abram recognized his Creator (Midrash).

Unlearned Lessons – In Babel, Abram recognized his Maker and Nimrod recognized his own sword and bow.  Noah was still alive as were his three sons – four people noble, righteous patriarch of the human race.  Surely Noah cried out against the lunacy of building the pointless tower in an insane effort to ascend to heaven and compete with God.  Surely he told his great grandchildren that a merciful God could turn wrathful in the face of such iniquity.  And Abram who would spend a lifetime of kindness in drawing people close to God’s service was unafraid of Nimrod and his threats of death; Abram, too, surely protested.  But the people didn’t listen.

Noah was perfect and righteous.  He could save his family, but not the world.  Abram, too, was perfect and righteous and he salvaged the sparks of holiness from the madness of Babel.  But then he added a new dimension to his mission by becoming Abraham, leader of all the world.  He was so great that he acquired all the merit that had been trodden underfoot by his own generation and all those before.  In so doing, he realized and fulfilled the purpose of creation and earned for his children the most treasured gift that God could bestow on any of his creatures – The Torah.

1.  The Ark

The Robber:  The Flood was precipitated by robbery.  God can endure patiently all varieties of sin, waiting for repentance, exacting punishment, building for better times in the future.  But robbery represents an unpardonable low in human behavior because it shows man as a selfish being concerned with himself alone even at the expense of others.

God tolerated Israel’s most grievous sins as long as they were loyal to and considerate of one another.  The present exile, the Exile of Edom, was brought about by Rome which, the Sages teach, was descended from Esau.  His dominant characteristic was violence and murder.  That, too, is akin to robbery. The murderer will allow nothing to stand in his way.  And if the life of another human being bars the achievement of his goal – he will shed blood to gain it.  Because Israel in the declining years of the Second Commonwealth sinned in its social life through jealousy, hatred, and failure to extend themselves for the benefit of one another, they were placed under the domination of the nation that exemplified cruel selfishness.

The destruction of the First Temple was caused because Israel sunk into lust.  It was exiled in the hands of Babylonia, a nation that was the leading oriental example of pleasure-seeking self-indulgence.  This exile fit the sin.

The Ark’s Lesson – To save earthly life by means of an ark and miraculous salvation from the ravages of the Flood would hardly have sufficed if the sin that finally caused the Flood had remained totally unredeemed.  Therefore, the ark had to be more than a protection against the raging elements outside it; it had to enclose creatures led and cared for by Noah and his family, forcing them together, imposing upon them an awesome regimen of selflessness that allowed not a free moment for self-indulgence.  Thereby, a human tradition was re-imposed.  Cain asked, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’  Noah answered, ‘Yes, I am the keeper of everyone, from human being to gnat, from docile lamb to voracious lion.’

For Noah personally, this was a vital lesson.  He was taken to task for not having shown sufficient concern for his generation, for not rebuking them, praying for them – saving them.  He had been content to protect his own righteousness.  His labors in the ark demonstrated to him that he must feel a responsibility for all others.

Of course, his task could have been eased, but that would have destroyed a vital function of the ark.  For the ark was an incubator of goodness.  A necessary ingredient of the salvation was God’s command that the conditions for future survival be developed in the ark.  So Noah and his family became caretakers for all surviving animal life, laboring, trudging, serving, so that when the ancestors of humanity emerged from the ark to rebuild the deluged remains of the earth, they would do it with a reborn awareness of the role of man as a caring, unselfish being (Harav Gifter).

1.  Shem and Japheth

Greece and Israel – The characteristics of Shem and Japheth were different, but they were intended to be complementary.  Japheth was blessed with beauty and sensitivity; Shem with holiness and the Divine Presence.  Of the many nations descending from both, the blessing of Japheth took root in Greece, while the blessing of Shem rested on Israel.

Noah’s blessing (9:27) –  “May God extend the boundaries of Japheth, but he will dwell in the tents of Shem”.  The Talmud teaches: “the beauty of Japheth (the Greek language, the most beautiful of tongues should be in the tents of Shem.” (Megillah 9b)  This interpretation of Noah’s blessing was used by the Sages to permit the translation of the Five Books of Moses into Greek.

Japheth’s Role – Noah used the name ‘Elokim’ in giving his blessing to Japheth.  It is the name of God that represents His dominance over nature for, as the commentators note, has the same numerical value, 86, as the law of nature.  Noah bestowed upon Japheth the blessings of nature, the ability to perceive and create beauty in this world, but he told his open, expressive, perceptive, gifted son that his achievements must ‘dwell in the tents of Shem.’  Otherwise, his gifts would be worse than wasted; they would become a destructive, corrupting force,  Beauty can elevate man and it can corrode him.  It can inspire man and it can degrade him.  For man is more susceptible to his heart and his senses than to his mind and his soul.

The Conflict – The beauty of Japheth and the tents of Shem reached their time of coming together during the period of the Second Temple.  It was begun upon the command of Cyrus, a descendant of Japheth.  His motives were pure at first, but later his respect for God and love for the Jews changed to wickedness (Rosh Hashanah 4a-b).  Had his motives remained pure, the Second Temple might have achieved the holiness and Divine Presence of the First, but because he fell from his grandeur, the Temple that originated with his benevolence could not become worthy of so lofty a stature (Yoma 9b-10a).

Then came the reign of Antiochus and the Syrian-Greeks.  The Syrians, bearers of the blessing of Japheth, imposed their culture upon Israel and attempted to destroy its allegiance to the God Who dwelt in the tents of Shem.  They defiled the Temple and chose three commandments as their prime targets:

The Sabbath: If God was the eternal Creator and continuous resuscitator of the universe and if His Torah formed the blueprint and formula for the existence and purpose of Creation, then Greek culture would have to stand aside and bow humbly before the tents of Shem.  This, Antiochus could not tolerate.

The New Moon:  the symbol of man’s obligation to instill holiness in time.  Time is meaningless until the Sanhedrin hallows it by proclaiming ‘the new moon is sanctified, it is sanctified!’, and when this is done, the festivals – the appointed meeting places in time between God and man – enter the calendar and raise it from a record of material pursuit and struggle to a vehicle of holiness.  Antiochus and his culture were not absolute; they were either servants of holiness or crude intrusions upon the human purpose.

Circumcision: the declaration that the physical and the spiritual must be intertwined.  The physical world is not separate from and independent of the spiritual.  The body must bear the mark of allegiance to God’s covenant, the restraining mark which tell it, ‘You are a servant not a master; you are host to a soul and you must elevate yourself to its exalted level.’  Beauty and pleasure were not the independent virtues Antiochus said they were.  They were confined by Torah or they were nothing.

A world without a Creator, a calendar without holiness, a body without restraint – these were the goals of a culture that had accepted the gifts but not the goals of Noah’s blessing to Japheth.  External grace and splendor covering a corrosive emptiness.  To this had the beauty of Japheth been brought.

Greece should have placed its culture at the service of Shem, used it to help provide a glorious dwelling place for the Divine Presence.  Instead it’s splendor became darkness.

I.  The Greatness of Adam

In order to understand a sin, one must understand the sinner.  Moses – master of all prophets, most trusted in God’s universe, most humble of men – was denied the cherished goal of entering Eretz Israel because he hit the stone and chastised the people (Numbers 20:7-13).   There are many differing explanations of the sin; the commentators themselves find it hard to explain how Moses’ deed and words were serious enough to merit so severe a punishment.  Any understanding of the sin of Moses, as of any of the ancients, requires a realization that they were so great that their actions were measured by standards far above our own.
Who was Adam whose sin played such a pivotal role in the history and destiny of man?
 “When he was created the angels erred (thinking he was a divine being) and wished to sing “Holy’ before him. (Midrash)
The very angels thought that Adam was a deity.  They had no concept of what he really was.  We cannot even imagine how exalted was his greatness – for, if the angels didn’t know, can we mortals hope to know?
Adam extended from the earth to the firmament…..from one end of the earth to the other (Chagigah 12a)
This statement of the Sages has a profound spiritual dimension.  There was no facet of creation, from the most mundane to the most sublime, that Adam did not encompass.  Nothing was hidden from him.  No one ever comprehended better than Adam how each of his actions could determine the course of creation.  The angels knew that, ultimately, it was not they who controlled him, but he who controlled them, for the Divine Will made the functioning of earth dependent upon the deeds of man.
Even after his sin and after death, the holiness of Adam was so awesome that the least significant part of his body, his heel, was as brilliant as the sun.
Having these barest insights into the greatness of Adam, we still know nothing of his awesome nature; it is sufficient to know that the distance between his loftiness and ourselves is like the distance between heaven and earth.  Only in these terms can we hope to have a faint understanding of his sin.  Surely, however, we cannot either understand it or learn from it to perfect our own puny selves unless we banish from our minds the foolish myth of ‘apples in Eden’.
The Talmud says, it is not the poisonous snake that kills, but the sin that kills (Berachos 33a).  The snake, the bullet, the runaway auto, the disease – these are but the messengers that carry out a decree sealed by human misdeed.  They are no more the cause of death than the white sheet pulled over the face of the expired patient.
“Blessed is the man who trusts in God and who makes God the source of his trust (Jeremiah 17:7).
Chidushei HaRim, a Polish Rabbi born in 1799, explains that the two halves of the verse are dependent upon one another: the more one trusts in God, the more God justifies his trust with the result that his trust in God continues to increase.  Our greatest people found no difficulty in casting their lots for service of God without knowing where the next morning’s breakfast would come from.  Indeed, Torah was given only to the generation that ate the manna.  They learned in their everyday lives that they could live in a barren wilderness without fear, in secure confidence that God’s promise was their assurance of the next days sustenance.  Only after developing such faith was Israel worthy of receiving the Torah.
Rabbi Kotzker, born in Poland in 1787, said, Torah greatness can be attained only when there is indifference to need for financial security.  Torah is the wisdom of God; the Torah sage unites his own mind with the intelligence of the Creator.  To the extent that he is concerned with his needs in this world, he cannot escape its snares to ascend to a higher one.
For us, caught up in our work ethic and forty hour week, faith is a fringe benefit we can afford only after having attained bogus ‘security’.  Adam not only knew but saw that his service to God was the determining factor in his success.  And he saw it to a greater extent than any man who ever lived – until he sinned!

II.  Adam’s Sin

What was the difference between Adam before the sin and Adam after the sin?
Each of us is subject to our own temptations – some to money, some to lust, some to glory, some to power.  Whatever our spiritual level, there are some sins that tempt us  greatly, others that have conquered us, and still others that we never even consider.  Which of us, imperfect though we are, would attempt to commit a barbaric atrocity?  We know that human beings have, do, and will commit such acts – even people who love their families, assist helpless old people across the street, and consider themselves civilized.  Nevertheless, we don’t consider ourselves prey to this way of thinking.  There may be gossip on our tongues and larceny (in varying degrees) in our hearts; but some transgressions are so unjustifiably evil that in no way could we conceive of ourselves ever committing them.  They are beyond our thought processes.
This can help us understand, in small measure, the greatness of Adam before his sin.  Ramban explains, that when Adam was created, his nature was to do good.  He was not the mixture of good and evil inclinations that human beings are today.  We have lusts and desires that are part of our very humanity.  The desire for wealth, comfort, and pleasure is not whispered in our ears by some outside outside source seeking to lead us astray.  We want them, our psyche demands them.  We are born as selfish beings who would grow up to be totally selfish and self-indulgent were it not for the strictures of society and the strength of developing conscience.  Adam was different; his innate nature was good and it sought to perform nothing but the will of his Maker.
Of course, he had free will, for, as we have seen above, without man’s free-willed struggle to choose good over evil, the purpose of creation could not be fulfilled  But the temptation to evil was not a part of him; it went against his nature.  When the call to sin came to Adam, it came not from within himself, but from the serpent who served as the embodiment of the Satanic evil inclination.  But after sin, man changed.  The urge to sin was no longer dangled in front of him by a seductive serpent; it had become part of him.  Now the desire for forbidden fruits comes from within man; when we sin, we respond not to the urging of an outside force, but to our own desires.  It is we – not it or they – who urge transgression upon us.
If Adam was so great how could he sin?  If he has so clear a perception of God’s holiness, and was himself a person of such exalted spirituality, how could any outside temptation have swayed him?
Even at his elevated level, there was still a challenge.  Temptation came from outside, but Adam was capable of hearing and understanding it: it was his mission to elevate himself to a level where the urge to sin, was so senseless that it made no more impact on him than the buzzing of a fly.  Holy though he was by virtue of being the handiwork of God and the subject of angelic awe and praise, he was still created in partnership with the earth.  His animal flesh was the agent of Olam-earth to conceal even greater levels of holiness: it was his mission to elevate even the fleshly, the earthly, until the very veils shone with the splendor of their Creator.
To us – intertwined and interlocked as we are in contradiction, doubt, and temptation – Adam’s challenge seems like simplicity itself.  But it was a real challenge, nevertheless.  Had he persevered during the few hours between his creation and the onset of the first Sabbath, the purpose of creation would have been achieved and the rest of history would have been a tale of perfection, and exalted enjoyment of God’s rewards.  His immediate challenge was to resist the inclination to disobey represented by the serpent, and to cleave ever closer to God despite the barrier of flesh that removed him from the ultimate heavenly glory.  That the challenge was indeed worthy of even so great a creature as Adam is plain from the reward in store.  The purpose of creation was God’s wish to bestow well-deserved, hard-earned reward – and that purpose would have been achieved in just a few hours had not Adam succumbed.  In the heavenly school, might rewards are not earned by puny achievements.  No matter how convinced we are that we would have done better had we had the opportunity, we must realize that our lack of comprehension does not minimize Adam’s challenge.  Just as we have no conception of his greatness, we have no conception of the seeds of his failure.
Adam’s mission was to create a Kiddush Hashem, Sanctification of the Name, by overcoming the temptation to sin.  But because the temptation came from without, the Kiddush Hashem could never be as great as it would have been had he been able to overcome an internal urge to do wrong.  Had the falsehood of evil been less plain to him; had he been forced to choose between pleasant and ugly instead of between truth and falsehood, then the potential sanctification would have been much greater.  The businessman sanctifies the Name far more by not cheating his competitors than by not murdering them.  The Torah scholar sanctifies the Name far more by not wasting a precious moment than by not burning his books.  Because it is man’s mission to glorify God’s name, ‘everyone that is called by My Name, and I have created him for My Glory (Isaiah 43:7)’ – Adam hoped to accomplish greater glory for God by subjecting himself to and persevering against a greater challenge.
The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil contained more than luscious, attractive fruit.  It represented the mixture of good and evil, a conflict between desire and conscience. The commentators explain that when he ate of the tree, Adam changed.  No longer was temptation a serpent that sought to attract his interest from a distance.  No longer was sin like a fire beckoning him to jump into its consuming flame.  Temptation entered inside him and became part of him.  Lust was no longer the message of a glib serpent, it was the desire of pleasure-seeking man.  Until then, Adam and Eve wore no clothing – for why should they?  All of their organs were tools in the service of God.  There was no difference between mind and heart, between hands and other parts of the body.  There was no need for shame, for animal lust was not a human attribute.
After eating the fruit of the tree, however, ‘knowledge’ entered man.  It was not a new dimension in the knowledge of good – Adam’s knowledge of the good was intimate and awesome before then.  It was an awareness that good and evil are intertwined and that his limbs and organs, divinely bestowed instruments of good, could also be the tools of lust.  Mating had been exclusively the means of fulfilling God’s injunction to be fruitful and multiply, to produce new bearers of God’s mission, new creatures to whom the angels would sing and pay homage.  After his sin and his attainment of a new ‘knowledge’ of desire, it became a means toward gratifying man’s most powerful urge and transforming human beings into two-legged animals.  Therefore, the immediate product of the forbidden meal was shame and the need for clothing.  Man knew the anguish of his new knowledge, for it was a knowledge that brought lust and impurity inside him and defiled the organs that had once existed only for good.
For a human being to face such a challenge and surmount it is indeed a task of enormous difficulty.  Success constitutes a high degree of Kiddush Hashem.  That was what Adam wanted.  By making his task harder, he was hoping to serve his Maker better.  To find one’s way in darkness is a greater feat than finding it in sunlight.  Adam thought he could please God by plunging into darkness.  The hiddenness of creation itself was not enough for him; he thought he could serve God more if he served Him in new ways.  He was wrong.  He changed his mission, changed his essence, drew more veils of obscurity between himself and God, exchanged Eden for thistles and thorns, diminished his labor from positive and negative commandments to plow and scythe, changed from a target of the serpent to its host.
Had Adam not sinned, his life would have been an upward spiral of spiritual elevation.  But he did.  By doing so he caused a basic change in his make-up, and, therefore, in his mission.  Up to then evil had been an outside temptation, a clear-cut falsehood with no claim on the credence of man; by eating the fruit that held the knowledge of combined good and evil, Adam took evil himself.  It became part of his nature and from then on, his evil inclination became ‘I want, I desire, I need….’
The perfection of newly fallen man required a new, laborious, seemingly endless process.  It would require extensive time and the combined efforts of countless millions of human beings down the generations.  We cannot understand why this particular course was necessary, but so the divine wisdom decreed.  Man’s emergence from evil to good became infinitely more difficult because his perception of good and evil became clouded.  Lust and temptations became part of him and he began to see evil as unpleasant, ugly, ‘not nice’ – or tempting.  Since that day, man’s history has been an unending effort to raise himself out of that swamp and to return to that original realization when good and evil were distinct and clear cut.
In his present form, man cannot return to his original state.  Only through death and resuscitation could he be born once again as man before the sin.  For this reason, the sin brought death upon the human race.  Death became the only road to renewed perfection; by means of it, man left the life and earth that had become imperfect and, when the proper moment in God’s design arrived, his soul would return to a new life in a world of renewed perfection.  During this interval and again in its new life, the soul would reap the reward it had earned by its degree of success in the struggle to seize good from its concealment on earth.
The state of creation following the sin was confusion.  From the state of clear-cut division between good and evil, there emerged desire for evil and revulsion for good, impaired recognition of which was which, and a blurring of values.  Man’s mission on earth became separation.  He had to find the good both within himself and in the world around him, and he had to identify the evil masquerading as good.  The most dangerous result of his sin was confusion.  In a sense, earth returned to its primeval state when light and darkness reigned in an ill-defined mixture until God separated then.  Now man had created a new mixture within himself and it became his mission to define the ingredients once again.
No matter how high man rises in this world, he is still limited by his material nature and by the evil that is internalized with him.  At his best, he recognizes God as the true Judge, but he is inadequate to recognize the ultimate goodness in apparent tragedy.  That will have to wait.
The purpose of creation is man.  It  was made to test him, elevate him and to be the vehicle for bringing God’s mercy upon him.  And only he could fulfill it.  For that reason, the Torah does not say ‘and God saw that it was good’ after the creations of the second day even though the angels were created on that day.  The creation of angels, holy though they were, was not designated with a divine seal of approval because they are not essential to the fulfillment of God’s purpose as is man.  And of man, it does not say it was good, because man is never complete.  After more than fifty-seven centuries, his task still goes on.

III.  The Earth is Man’s

The heavens are the heavens of Hashem, but He has given the earth to the children of man (Psalms 115:16).
     Chidushei HaRim gives us a dazzling insight into this familiar verse.  God needs no assistance from man to make the heavens ‘heavenly’.  They are holy by virtue of His Presence and the hosts that serve and glorify His Name.   But the earth – to make the earth heavenly He gave it to man so that he, by the performance of good and the avoidance of evil can transform the cloak concealing His holiness and even His very existence into a slice of heaven.
At the beginning of creation the earth itself did not carry out God’s will:  God said, ‘Let the earth sprout vegetation: herbage yelling seed, fruit trees yielding fruit each after its kind (Genesis 1:11).
Hashem commanded the earth to produce trees whose bark would taste the same as their fruit.  The earth did not comply.  Therefore, when Adam was cursed for his sin, the earth, too, was cursed.  God commanded that it be ‘a fruit tree’: that the taste of the tree be the same as its fruit.  The earth, however, disobeyed and brought forth ‘tree yielding fruit’, but the tree itself was not a fruit.  Therefore, when Adam was cursed for his sin, the earth, too, was remembered and punished  (Rashi; Midrash)
How did the earth have the audacity to disobey?  The earth, through its controlling angel, knew that God would store away the brilliant ancient light because the wicked people of the future were unworthy of it (Midrash).  It reasoned that if the original plan of creation was altered to prevent the wicked from enjoying a spiritual light that they did not deserve, then the richness of earth’s produce, too, was more than the wicked should be given.  Therefore, earth diminished the pleasures available to them and defied God’s order that it produce trees that would be edible and tasty throughout.  This failure of the earth contributed to Adam’s later sin, because the serpent strengthened his argument by pointing to the earth which had ignored God’s command with impunity.  For contributing to man’s downfall, the earth was cursed along with him.
But the earth’s intention was honorable, its logic faultless.  It intended only to follow the example of God Himself – why was it punished?
Its behavior and future punishment were meant to be lessons to man.  Otherwise earth would not have been given the power to sin and the Torah would not have found it necessary to record the sin for eternity.  The earth had been given a command yet it was presumptuous enough to claim for itself the authority to overrule the word of God.  Its reason? – logical.  Its precedent? – God Himself.  Where had it erred?
A very great man in the future – a man who was deemed worthy of becoming Mashiach – also took it upon himself to break a commandment.  King Hezekiah was shown that wicked people would descend from him, so he decided not to have children.  He thought it would be better to have no children than to have idolatrous children.  But the prophet Isaiah came to him and proclaimed angrily: “Why do you meddle in God’s mysteries?  You must do what you are commanded to do, and the Holy One blessed be He will do what pleases Him (Breaches 10a).”
The earth presumed to meddle in God’s mysteries.  It was forbidden to do so and punished for having dared.  This, too, is Torah and we must learn from it.  No lesson of Torah should ever be lost upon us.  Its every commandment, every incident, every conversation was included to educate and elevate man.
To ignore or forget is to lose a portion of life.  The Sages teach that when Israel accepted the Ten Commandments, it approached the exaltation of Adam before the sin.  Had the Golden Calf not been built, they would have entered Eretz Israel, built an eternal Temple, and the entire world would have received all the prophetic blessings of the world to come.  Like Adam, they sinned and fell from their greatness.  They received the Ten Commandments anew and the Second Tablets of the Law, but it was not the same.  Had they retained the first Tablets they would have learned and never forgotten; with the second Tablets, we learn and do forget (Midrash).  Adam sinned and became subject to death; Israel sinned and became subject to forgetfulness.  When a man studies and learns, he makes Torah a part of himself.  When he forgets his learning, a part of himself has left him – he has suffered a degree of death.
Adam sinned and humanity changed forever.  But the antidote to the serpent’s poison is forever available, even though forgetfulness is our lot.  We can succeed in isolating light from darkness, and holiness from profanity even though confusion is the legacy of that tempting but lethal fruit.
We can control the levers of creation by our study of Torah and performance of its precepts, even though a montage of men and machines blocks our view of the power of our deeds.
With eternal love you have loved the House of Israel, your people, Torah and commandments, statutes and ordinances you have taught us…..for they are our life and the length of our days and upon them we will meditate day and night.
God made the universe and presented us with its blueprint….so we begin our study…..

Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning..”

I.   Before the Beginning

Prior to creation there was nothing but the Glory of God.  Nothing – it is a concept that we, creatures in a physical world, cannot even begin to comprehend, just as the blind cannot comprehend the sunset and the deaf a symphony.  Can we conceive a world without time or space?  We can speak of it, think of it, but the truth is that we cannot really imagine something so foreign to our experience.
Existence prior to creation is unfathomable.  There was no sun nor moon – they were created on the fourth day. There was not even light or darkness – they were created on the first day.  That seems like a contradiction in terms; if there was no light than there was automatically darkness, for is not darkness the absence of light?  No, for even that seemingly basic concept is a product of our earthbound experience.
There is only God, incorporeal – not composed of matter, having no material existence – omnipresent – always in existence – without beginning and without end.  But God wanted to do good to beings apart from Himself, and in order to make it possible for Him to do so, He created a universe of human life.  Because God is absolutely perfect, He wanted the good that He would bestow upon others to be equally perfect.  This could be possible only if the beneficiaries of His goodness would be enabled to share in the perfection of His Glory.
His wisdom decreed that simply to create a being and lavish upon him the blessings of his Maker would not be enough, because the person who has not earned reward feels no satisfaction in underserved gifts – rather than make the recipient feel proud that he has been found deserving, he feels humiliated that he is showered with blessings that are not truly his.  Thus, in order for the intended goodness to be worthy of the Source of all good, it would have to be of a nature that could be earned by the beneficiary and thus be the greatest possible source of satisfaction, fulfillment, and happiness to him.
In order to achieve this goal, God desired these conditions: man had to have free choice; he had to be placed in a setting where he would be required to choose between good and evil; and the choice could not be obvious – if it would be so then it would be absurd to reward man for choosing well.
If the superiority of good over evil were too manifest, the choice would become an automatic, instinctive decision; one unworthy of the sort of reward God wanted to give.  The goal could be achieved only if the holiness of God were so concealed that it would be possible to err.  If man could live in an atmosphere where evil was not only plausible but tempting, not only tempting but rewarding, then the successful struggle against seduction would steadily elevate him.  At every stage of his existence he would face new challenges, always struggling against the desires of the flesh.  If he could then surmount the ‘obvious’ and cling to the way of God, recognizing that the alluring impediments were nothing more than a mirage, his spiritual growth would be constant, and eventually he would be worthy of the reward which God created the universe in order to bestow.

II.  Good and Evil

But if God is everywhere, and nothing can exist unless He makes it so – how then can we associate Him with the existence of evil?
The Torah defines ‘good’ differently.  ‘Good’ is the presence of God; evil is not His absence – for his is everywhere – but His hiddenness, the lack of awareness that He is present.
The cardinal principles of Jewish belief are that God exists and that He is One.  His Oneness implies that there is no place free from Him.  The more one is aware of His Presence, the more that place or situation is good..  A church filled with people singing songs of praise and worship, a synagogue filled with children speaking to their Father, a poor hungry family receiving a box of food – all of these are good, because they are manifestations of His existence in the minds and hearts of people.  But scenes of suffering and tragedy can also be good if we could but realize that all is part of His master plan.  It is when we do not perceive His Presence, when we fail to see purpose and direction in earthly affairs that we live with evil.  In short, evil is a condition where God is not seen.
There are situations in life that seem inherently evil: surely the ugliness of man at his worst cannot be described as good.  But even they can serve as a vehicle for elevating man.  If he surmounts the challenge that they present, then he has become a better, stronger person.  The person who lives in a cruel society as Abraham did and remains kind and compassionate, has grown.  The one who travels through a deceitful land and remains honest and upright as Jacob did, has grown.  Thus, the evil around him served the beneficial purpose of elevating him to further greatness.

III.  Man’s Role

The world was now ready for man.  To see the light through the mists would not be easy, but it could be done if man were honest in seeking the truth rather than satisfying his animal desires.  Because it could be done, man was reqired to do it.  Because it was not an easy task, he would be amply deserving of reward if he achieved it.  Thus, God satisfied the native of creation: He would be able to present good upon man; but it would not be a cheap, undeserved good.  Man could attain it only by elevating the spiritual in himself and by uniting it with the spiritual in creation.  He would see the universe for what it was, a camouflage disguising what was truly meaningful and eternal.  He would realize that in total immersion in Torah even amid poverty, hunger, and thirst, lay a degree of happiness and contentment in this world that was infinitely greater than any to be found in wealth, luxury, and self indulgence. (see Avos 6:1)
To whatever extent he is able to accomplish that, man attains a degree of perfection that is somewhat akin to that of His Maker.  By uniting his intellect with that of God through the study of Torah and by perfecting his deeds through the performance of the commandments, man earns the degree of perfection that it is possible for him  to attain, and the degree of reward that God seeks to give.
In all creation, only man has unlimited freedom of choice.  The forces of nature have no such freedom.  The natural forces are under the control of angels who serve as the intermediaries in carrying out God’s will.  We find references in the words of the Sages to the angels of the sea, the angels of individual nations, even the angels of blades of grass.  These angelic ministers carry out God’s dictates throughout the universe.  The only exceptions are the people of Israel and Eretz Israel, both of which have greater holiness and are, therefore, guided only by God Himself.
The Jewish people began to attain this degree of holiness through the deeds of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Until the time of the Patriarchs, all men were equal both in their calling and in their opportunity to achieve the heavenly goal set for them.  But the ten generations up to Noah, failed to achieve their mission, and the ten generations from Noah to Abraham failed again, until Abraham founded the nation that would become God’s chosen one.  Eretz Israel is the ‘center of creation’ in the material sense, and it is the center of holiness on earth, as well. (Ramban)
Despite the laws of nature and the angels who carry them out, there is a power higher than them – man.  For it was given to him through his free choice, to make nature yield to him.  Throughout the Torah are sprinkled blessings that will come to man if he makes the Torah his love and the commandments his pursuit.
It is not at all surprising that man can sanctify himself and earn the blessings of holiness through immersion in spiritual pursuit.  That souls can cleave to God after they leave their bodies, or that righteous beings can be rewarded with the superhuman height of prophecy is not at all surprising: spiritual attainment is deserving of spiritual reward.  But rain, prosperity, security, triumph over enemies?  Why should the study of Torah or the performance of commandments affect crops, bank accounts, and battles?  This is one of the great miracles of creation: For that reason the Torah declines to promise spiritual rewards instead of material ones; the first are understood, the second could never be fathomed had not the Torah made them plain.
It is clear, therefore, that man’s deeds are not statistics in a personal ledger.  They can split the sea and stop the sun, water the desert and silence a cannon, because the world’s existence is founded in the spirit of God.  It is covered and camouflaged, but without it there is no universe, for without God’s Presence – open or concealed – nothing can exist.  Man can unite himself in thought and deed with that Presence.  When he does so he has fulfilled the purpose of creation, and creation bends to his needs.

IV.  More Worlds Than One

Even in this world of obscurity and hiddenness, there are still many levels of existence – many worlds.  Can one say that the great and holy sage and the most extreme criminal inhabit the same world?  Do the intellectual and the aborigine live in the same world?  A person’s world consists of far more than sand and sea – in essence the physical peculiarities of his existence are no more important than the brown paper bag in which a treasure may be wrapped.
Just as there are parallel lines of existence between righteous and wicked, so, too, there are higher worlds than any we can conceive of.  The Sages tell us that there is a Holy Temple in heaven that awaits the final redemption of Israel when it will descend to earth.  It is not a building of brick and mortar.  There is a spiritual Temple which will one day become clothed in physical form and take shape on earth just as the Torah of black fire on white fire took the form of parchment and ink and earthly commandments.  There is a physical Garden of Eden and there is a heavenly paradise – the first is the physical manifestation of the second.  When Jacob returned to the land of Canaan, he saw a company of angels and named the place Machanaim, twin camps.  Ramban explains that there were two camps – one, a company of angels on high; the other, Jacob’s company below.  The one below was the human complement of the one above – except that it was greater, because creation came into being to serve it and to be influenced by it.
All of this is part of the creation in which we live: limitation upon limitation, level after level.  Each person lives in his own world with the responsibility to climb to a higher one and the danger that he will stumble and fall to a lower one.  Each person can be knocked off course by the angelic enforcers of the laws of nature, or he can rise above them and bend them to his greatness.  He can be one more earthly creature, hardly rising above animal life, or he can become the fulfillment of God’s wish when He created heaven and earth and said “Let Us make man”.

An Overview

I.  Master Plan Of Creation
God created the world from a plan and for a purpose.  His plan was the Torah which preceded the world (Shabbos 88b), and His purpose was that man find the meaning and the goal of creation in the Torah:  “He looked into the Torah and created the world’ (Midrash).
Torah was the blueprint of creation.  It is commonly thought that, following the failure of the human race and the emergence of Abraham and his descendants as people worthy of bearing the privilege of becoming God’s chosen people, God decided upon the commandments which He transmitted to the Jews through Moses.  Nothing could be more wrong.  The Torah and its commandments were not designed in response to the demands and needs of early life.  The Torah pre-existed earth; and the universe as we know it was designed to conform to the requirements of the Torah.

II.  Gates of Understanding (Gates of Wisdom)
Indeed, it is true that Torah is the blueprint of creation, but that is only a small part of the total truth:  Torah remains the key to all the secrets and resources of creation.  When Adam was created, God placed him in the Garden of Eden ‘to work it and guard it’ (Genesis 2:15), upon which the Midrash comments ‘to work it’ through the performance of positive commandments, and to ‘guard it’ through the observance of negative commandments.  Man in his most exalted form can grasp that the true essence of all this earthly life is the extent of his service to God.  Let us attempt to understand – at least imperfectly – how Torah permeates every molecule of the universe.  If we succeed, we will have found the first marker on the road to fulfillment as the Creator intended it.

‘Fifty gates of understanding were created and all were transmitted to Moses except for one (Rosh Hashanah 21b)’

What were these ‘gates of understanding’?  Ramban explains that each order of the universe was created according to a plan, and its contents, growth, function, and all other of its aspects are determined according to it.  To enter into the mysteries of this plan and to comprehend it is to be admitted into its ‘gate of understanding’. The knowledge of man is the forty-ninth gate of understanding, the ability to know the complexities of the human mind and personality.
Above that gate, is the fiftieth – the knowledge of God.  Forty-nine gates were presented to Moses; the fiftieth was denied even him, for no mortal being can attain the understanding of God.  Thus, in the truest sense, Ramban continues, the fiftieth gate was never ‘created’, for the term creation implies that it was part of heaven and earth – part of the handiwork of the Six Days of Creation that is within the realm of human understanding.  But that gate, the ability to comprehend and understand the essence of God, was never created in the normal sense, because it is beyond the scope of man.

• Note: Chidushei HaRim suggests that not only was the fiftieth gate createdbut it was transmitted to Moses!  The very fact that a human being can conceive God’s greatness to the extent that he can say ‘ if all the seas were ink and all the heavens parchment and all the trees quills, I could not begin to write Your greatness’ – this in itself is a glimmer of the glories within the fiftieth gate of understanding.  This barest breath of the last gate was transmitted to man; otherwise how could he ever imagine that the unimaginable exists, how could his soul soar in futile yet fruitful quest of the infinite riches of God’s wisdom and spirituality?

With mastery of the forty-nine gates, Moses could understand the complexities of every aspect of creation and the workings of every human mind.  He could look at a person and perceive his sins and merits, his flaws and virtues.
Thus the wisdom of the forty-nine gates was more than a theory.  It enabled its possessor to know all the secrets of any aspect of creation to whose ‘gate of understanding’ he was privy.  He could unlock the high recesses of the human mind as Moses could, he could even know the workings of animal life and the earth.  The master of terrestrial understanding could know without Geiger counters and divining rods where mineral deposits were located and what veins of land were suited to the production of exotic plants.  He could know the ‘speech’ and behavior of animals and the secrets of human healing.
According to the Sages, King Solomon was the possessor of all wisdom, but the wise king did not request encyclopedic knowledge – he asked only for the wisdom of Torah so that he could judge his people wisely and justly.
For the forty-nine gates of understanding are all in the Torah.  The man who can decipher the depths of the Torah’s wisdom knows the secrets of agriculture, mining, music, mathematics, healing, law – everything! – because nothing was built into heaven and earth unless it was found in the Torah,  The question is not whether Torah is the source of all wisdom, the question is only how one interprets the Torah to unseal its riches.
Every aspect of the wisdom transmitted to Moses and presented to Solomon – and shared by the great figures of ancient Israel – is contained in the Torah.  One need only know how to find it.
We, in our spiritual property, lack the keys to the gates of understanding.  The Torah commands us in laws of agriculture – but does this tell us how to make farms more productive?  We are permitted to seek medical help – but does this teach us to conquer disease?  We are commanded to seek the benefit of our fellow men – but how does this show us the way to peace in a jealous, unruly, selfish world?

III. – Treasures Within Torah

“Uncover my eyes that I may behold wonders from Your Torah” (Psalms 119:18)

The wonders are there, it is we who fail to see them.  The eyes of the ancients were free of the material veils that so cloud our vision today.
The Talmud tells us that when Moses ascended to heaven to be taught the Torah and receive the Tablets of the Law; he saw God writing small crowns on top of the letters in the heavenly Torah.  Moses wondered why they were necessary and God answered, “There is a man named Akiba ben Joseph who will live many generations in the future who will derive mounds and mounds of laws from each crown” (Menachos 29b).
An extra letter here, a missing letter there, an enlarged letter, a miniature letter – all of these seeming aberrations in a Torah scroll are meticulously preserved guideposts to law, nature, and untold mysteries of the universe.  This explains why Jews down the ages have taken scrupulous care that all Torah scrolls remain faithful to the ancient texts.  Ezra the Scribe, who led the Jews back from the Babylonian exile, wrote a Torah scroll which remained the authoritative one for centuries and which was the standard against which all others were checked for accuracy.  Therefore, too, a Torah scroll with an extra letter – even a silent vowel like vav or yud – is halachically unfit for use.
The sum total of human knowledge, therefore, derives from the Torah, for the very universe itself is a product of Torah.  It existed, as the Midrash tell us – “written in black fire upon white fire”.
The black and white fire of Torah became clothed in ink and parchment, and the Godly wisdom which is the essence of Torah, remained hidden in its words and letters.  The very wisdom which dictated the creation remains imbedded in Torah and reveals itself to those chosen few who are capable of peering beneath its material camouflage.
When the ancient Romans apprehended the Mishnaic sage Rabbi Chanina ben Teradion for committing the ‘crime’ of teaching the Torah to his students, they condemned him to death.  They wrapped him in a Torah scroll and set him on fire.  As his agony reached its climax, his students asked him, ‘Rabbi, what do you see?”  He answered, “The parchments are consumed, and the letters fly up (to heaven)” (Avodah Zarah 18a).  The great Rabbi could see what his students could not.  Flames could burn parchment and ink, but the letters of the Torah are eternal, for the scroll is not their essence but their abode.  They find a temporary home in the artistry of the scribe, but hidden in his handiwork is the wisdom of the scribe Who preceded him – Who composed and wrote the first Torah in black fire upon white fire.  Let the earthly scroll be burned and its letters – those eternal letters that preceded earth and define its destiny – rise up to their Author.  The letters are eternal for they are the will of the Eternal!

IV.  The Oral Law

Even a cursory study of the Torah proves that there must be an unwritten law, that there is much more to Torah than the Five Books of Moses, the Chumash; much more even than the entire twenty-four books of Tanach.
 Exodus 17:14 – “Write this as a remembrance in a book and place it in the ears of Joshua…”  It is plain that, in addition to the written verses of the Torah, something else had to be told to Joshua.
Exodus 21:24 – “..eye for an eye..” yet never in Jewish history was physical punishment handed out for an assault.  Instead the verse was always interpreted to require monetary compensation.
Deuteronomy 12:21 – “You may slaughter from your herd and your flock which Hashem has given you as I have commanded you.”  Moses clearly states that he had “commanded” his people concerning Shechitah (the slaughtering of certain animals and birds for food according to Jewish dietary laws), yet we find no where in the written text of the Torah even one of the intricate and demanding rules of kosher slaughter.
Countless similar questions could be raised. The implication of them all is clear beyond a doubt: there is a second Torah, an Oral Law, without which the first Torah is not only a closed book, but without which the written Torah can be twisted and misinterpreted beyond recognition, as indeed it has been down the centuries.
As Rambam says in his introduction, Moses had three primary disciples: Joshua, Eleazer, and Pinchas, but it was to Joshua ‘who was Moses’ disciple’ that he transmitted the Oral Law and whom he commanded in it.
Moses was commanded to designate Joshua as his successor.  He was commanded: instruct him concerning the ‘Talmud’.  This Rambam interprets as a clear reference to the Oral Law.  This would explain why Israel was so incensed when Joshua forgot three hundred laws following the death of Moses, that there were some who threatened to kill him (Temurah 16a)!  Why the wrath against Joshua alone when there were myriad other scholars and elders in the nation who were equally guilty?  Because, as leader of the people, Joshua had been made responsible for the preservation of the Oral Law.
The Oral Law was taught in its entirety to Moses during his forty days and forty nights in heaven.  When one considers the origin of the hundreds of thousands of volumes that constitute only a fraction of the total body of knowledge that we refer to with the all inclusive name Torah, the phenomenon of Moses knowing it all is not surprising.  In essence, Torah is the wisdom of God, His own thought, the ultimate in spiritual greatness.

V.  Survival of Torah

Proverbs 6:23 – “For a commandment is a lamp and the Torah is light”.  Illumination is the last of three important steps taken by God in communicating His Word to us.  The first step was revelation which occurred when God spoke to the bible authors.  The second step was inspiration, that process whereby God guided them in correctly writing or uttering His message.  Now a third step is needed to provide understanding for men and women as they hear God’s revealed and inspired message.  This vital step is illumination, that divine process whereby God causes the written revelation to be understood by the human heart.
The  Person behind the illumination is the Holy Spirit.
God’s wisdom dictated that in our human existence, the way to ascend the spiritual ladder is through – and only through – the commandments of the Torah, just as the lamp is the means to attain light.  Man’s highest privilege and loftiest attainment is in the study of Torah, itself.
After the Torah was given, the Oral Law enabled Jews to properly understand the written Torah, to derive from the laws the principles that should be applied to new situations.  That human intellect is capable of divining a degree of God’s wisdom is one of His greatest gifts to man.  That man can sometimes give a logical explanation of one or another law is no proof whatever of the validity of Torah; the Torah does not need to be legitimized by man’s approval.  Rather it is a tribute to the brilliance of human intellect that it is capable of understanding an aspect of God’s wisdom.
The blossoming of the Oral Law in all its intellectual brilliance and glory – as we find it recorded in the Talmud and other books – did not begin until the period of the Second Temple.  The Shechinah, the Divine Presence, was not to rest upon the Second Temple as it had upon the first, a loss that caused the people enormous distress.  The Men of the Great Assembly, one hundred and twenty great men that included many prophets and leaders such as Ezra, Mordecai, Daniel and others, beseeched God for a divine gift to compensate for the losses.  During the entire period from the Giving of the Law at Sinai until the opening generations of the Second Commonwealth (530 BC – 70 AD), The Oral Law was handed down intact and free of dispute.  During the Second Commonwealth, however, the historic intensity of study began to decline ever so slightly, with the result that disputes began to arise among the Sages.  (Sanhedrin 88b)
In addition, during the long and cruel period of harsh Roman persecution, Torah study became virtually impossible except with the most extreme self-sacrifice.  The result was a further tragic decline in knowledge and an impairment in the transmission of the oral tradition.  Without the totally reliable teacher-to-student chain of Oral Law, ways had to be employed to regain what was being lost.
The principles of Biblical interpretation were taught to Moses at Sinai together with the rest of the Oral Law.  The Talmud teaches us the Thirteen Hermeneutic Principles through which the Torah is interpreted.  The Talmud makes extensive use of these principles, in fact they form it’s heart.  Through their use, it was possible to find within the Torah, laws from the oral tradition which had become forgotten or confused.
Following the death of Moses, a substantial body of orally transmitted law was forgotten as a result of the people’s grief over the loss of their teacher.  The leader and sage, Asniel, applied the principles of Biblical exegesis, a critical explanation or interpretation of a text, and restored the lost knowledge to Israel.  How did he do it?  The laws were not concoctions of Moses.  They were taught him by God as part of the Oral Law which, in turn, is the authentic interpretation of the Torah.  During Moses’ lifetime, the people found no need to derive the laws from Scripture itself, because the oral tradition was intact.
Asniel made use of established principles to regain knowledge that had been forgotten.  In this sense, God promised the men of the Great Assembly that He would reveal to them the secrets of the Torah.  They took the eternal tools of exegesis and used them to reveal the secrets that had always been locked within the words of the Torah, secrets that Moses had taught Israel and that, in turn, had been transmitted orally for over a thousand years until the oral tradition began to crumble due to a lack of diligence and outside persecution.  They did nothing new and certainly made no changes in the Torah; they merely made use of hermeneutic principles that had not been needed while the tradition of study was still at its high point.
The highest levels of spirituality attained by human beings were those of the Patriarchs:  Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  They obeyed the laws of the Torah before it was given.  Who told them the laws?  No one.  Their own spiritual greatness combined with the holy emanations of Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel) to create within them the instincts that dictated which deeds had to be performed and which were forbidden.  God and Torah form one unity; when the Patriarchs attained the lofty heights that brought them as close to God as human beings can become, they simultaneously became human manifestations of Torah and understood how it was to be clothed in human deed (Rambam).
Following the giving of the Torah, the Oral Law enabled the greatest people among Jews to see the total concept of a commandment.
When Moses was told that Rabbi Akiba would derive laws from the crowns of the letters, he was astounded that a human could reach such a level of greatness.

• Moses said before Him, ‘Master of the Universe, show Rabbi Akiba to me.’  He said, ‘Move backwards.’  He went and sat at the end of the eighteenth row of students and he (Moses) did not understand what they were saying.  He grew weak from the realization of his inferior knowledge.  As soon as they came to a particular law, (Rabbi Akiba’s) students said to him, ‘My master, how do you know this?’ He said to them ‘It is a law transmitted to Moses at Sinai.  (Moses’) feelings were set at ease. (Menachos 29b)

Moses understood the root of every commandment.  His depth of understanding was such that he intuitively knew every individual law associated with the commandment.  He did not perceive them as separate parts, but as aspects of one whole.

This incident illustrates the fundamental difference between the vision of a prophet and the wisdom of a sage.  The prophet sees with a dazzling clarity, but he is limited to what God reveals to him.  The sage may lack the clarity of the prophet, but by means of his Torah wisdom he is able to delve more deeply and develop a breadth of knowledge beyond what the prophet has been shown.  The prophet’s knowledge is far clearer and he attains a degree of closeness to God that was lost to the great men of the Second Temple, but the sage’s knowledge can be broader and more embracing.

This ability of man to use his human intellect to add to the store of Torah knowledge is surely one of God’s greatest gifts to man.

VI.  Divisions of the Oral Law Rambam divides the Mishnah into five categories:

1. The traditional explanation of the Torah’s text.  This includes such verses as ‘an eye for an eye’ which, as we have seen refers to monetary compensation only, and not physical multilation.  Countless verses in Tanach cannot be understood properly in the light of the simple translation, but only as our Sages received the interpretation in the chain of tradition extending from Moses.
2. Halacha, laws given to Moses at Sinai which are not specifically rooted in the Written Law.
3. Laws derived through logic.  A compelling logical conclusion has the status of a written law.  (For example, it is forbidden for someone to kill another human being in order to save his own life.  As the Talmud puts it: Why do you think your blood is redder than his? (Sanhedrin 74a) It must be made absolutely clear, however, that ‘logic’ in order to have any validity in Torah terms, must be firmly and unquestionably rooted in the tradition stretching from Sinai.)
4. Rabbinic decrees.  By saying, ‘you shall guard My ordinance’ (Leviticus 18:30), the Torah placed upon the Sages the responsibility to act whenever there appeared to be a danger of lack of strictness in the observance of the Torah’s laws (Yevamos 21a).  In observance of this Scriptural order, the Sages enacted such decrees as prohibitions against the marriage of close relatives who were permitted by the Torah to marry one another.
5. General Laws, ordinances, and customs that are enacted based on a rabbinic judgment of the need for them.

The Rabbinic authority to enact and enforce observance of their laws is conferred by the Torah itself.

Deuteronomy 17:8-11: “If a matter arises for judgment that is too difficult for you….Then you shall come to the priest, the Levites, and the judge that shall be in those days, and you shall inquire; and they shall tell you in the word of judgment.  And you shall do according to the word that they shall tell you…..and you shall observe to do according to all that they shall inform you…..you shall not swerve from the word which they shall tell you to the right or to the left.”

There is a particular type of Rabbinic ordinance, one that is much misunderstood, that provides an enlightening glimpse of the all-embracing nature of the Torah.  It is called asmachta, a Rabbinic law which is supported by a Biblical text.  For example, the Sages decreed that it is forbidden, under normal circumstances to have a non-Jew perform prohibited forms of labor on festivals.  Although the prohibition is Rabbinic is nature, they found support for it in a Scriptural verse: no work may be done.’  The phrase may be done indicates that the act is forbidden even if not done by a Jew.

The written Torah and the Oral Torah are indivisible halves of a sacred whole.

Torah is the beginning of creation – He looked into the Torah and created the world (Midrash) – and its purpose.  Jeremiah 33:25 – “..were it not for My covenant day and night, I would not have appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth”.  The privilege of accepting the Torah from God, for carrying out its precepts, and for finding its sacred sparks in the darkest corners of earthly existence, belongs to Israel.  Torah and Israel – the twin purposes of creation.  The very first verse in the Torah alludes to them: ‘For the sake of Torah and Israel, both of which are called ‘the primary cause and purpose, did God create heaven and earth’. (Midrash)