Parshas Shelach - What's the Real Story?

Thoughts on the parsha
Parshas Shelach

What's the Real Story?

By: Daniel Listhaus

וַיֹּצִיאוּ דִּבַּת הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר תָּרוּ אֹתָהּ אֶל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לֵאמֹר הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר עָבַרְנוּ בָהּ לָתוּר אֹתָהּ אֶרֶץ אֹכֶלֶת יוֹשְׁבֶיהָ הִוא וְכָל הָעָם אֲשֶׁר רָאִינוּ בְתוֹכָהּ אַנְשֵׁי מִדּוֹת

“They brought forth to the B'nei Yisroel an evil report on the land that they had spied out, saying, 'The land through which we have passed, to spy it out, is a land which devours its inhabitants! All the people that we saw in it were men of measures!'”

-Shelach 13:32

Rashi¹ tells us that the B'nei Yisroel approached Moshe and said that they wanted to send spies out before them to check out Eretz Yisroel. Hashem was obviously not happy with this request because if He said that He would bring us to a great land, what further need is there to check it out? Nontheless, Hashem did not stop Moshe from sending the meraglim (spies).²

The Torah describes that Eretz Yisroel was a land filled with beracha (blessings). Eight meraglim were needed to carry one cluster of grapes!³ Additionally, even the people who lived in the land were giants. Also, as promised, it was indeed a land of flowing milk and honey, a land bursting with potential anxiously awaiting B'nei Yisroel's arrival. However, when the meraglim returned from their mission, they focused on all the negatives that they saw during their visit in Eretz Yisroel.

If one pays attention to the parts of the meraglim's reports, the report seems to consist of two basic complaints. The first is that they found everything in Eretz Yisroel to be humongous. As they mentioned, this was problematic for two reasons – one, that gigantic people would surely be impossible to conquer and, two, that huge fortified cities would definitely prove to be impenetrable. The second argument of the meraglim was that Eretz Yisroel was a land that devours its own inhabitants.

Let us think through these two complaints one at a time. The first one is hard for us to imagine why this would even be a problem that would register on the B'nei Yisroel's radar. After all, the B'nei Yisroel were not foreign to experiencing tremendous miracles and overcoming impossible obstacles. No slave ever escaped Mitzrayim, yet the entire Jewish population was rescued. They crossed the Yam Suf which split in front of their eyes. They were supported for months in the desert where they were not affected by the elements at all. Their clothes did not wear out, they always had food to eat and water to drink, and walked in the constant shade of the annanei hakavod (Cloud of Hashem). Yet, the meraglim had the audacity to use this argument and told the people that for some unexplainable reason this time would be different and they would not find the strength to conquer Eretz Yisroel.

The meraglim's error in this part of the report is blatantly obvious, though, when we think about who they were. Although the Torah testifies that they were originally tremendous tzaddikim (righteous people),⁴ which is undoubtedly why they were chosen by Moshe to scout Eretz Yisroel, they were negatively affected by the mission itself, which was instigated by the katnei emunah (those with little trust in Hashem). They were coming from the perspective that even though Hashem had guaranteed a beautiful land to them, that they still must check it out and see if it will indeed be conquerable. As much as their perspective was twisted and misguided, we could at least understand the position of the meraglim who came back complaining about the size of their opponents in Eretz Yisroel and the defense of the cities there, and why they said what they said.

The second aspect of the meraglim's report, however, is much more difficult to understand. They went through Eretz Yisroel and personally witnessed the blessed atmosphere - the fruits were big, and the people were strong and healthy. This information was not something that the meraglim left out, rather, as just mentioned, they used this information to complain how hard they suspected it to be to later conquer Eretz Yisroel. If so, how did they turn around in the same breath and argue that Eretz Yisroel is a land which swallows its inhabitants?

Rashi⁵ writes that indeed while the meraglim were spying in Eretz Yisroel, they passed by many funeral processions. Seeing this they came to the conclusion that Eretz Yisroel was a bad place to live. The meraglim failed to realize, though, that Hashem was killing the Cana'anim in order to distract them from noticing the meraglim. Instead, as the Ramban and S'forno explain, they attributed the rampant deaths to other things.

The S'forno⁶ explains that the meraglim argued that the fact that the people living in Eretz Yisroel were large, strong, and healthy was not because of the good qualities of Eretz Yisroel, but rather just the opposite. They claimed that the air, water, and everything about Eretz Yisroel was all detrimental to people's health and the only reason that there were giants left is because everyone else had died who could not withstand the environment.

The Ramban⁷ explains slightly differently that the meraglim complained that the land of Eretz Yisroel was too good and only those born with exceptional characteristics had the capacity to survive. The meraglim claimed that anyone lacking the extra fitness and strength did not stand a chance in the land of Eretz Yisroel – which favored those with exceptional health.

This was the second category of complaint that the meraglim declared. Either that the explanation as to why there were giants dwelling in Eretz Yisroel was because everyone else had died due to the poor air quality and environment or that the reason was because Eretz Yisroel was so great that only the fittest could survive.

Reading the Torah from an omniscient point of view with an insight as to what was really going on, the flaws of this second argument of the meraglim become obvious as well. Hashem orchestrated the citizens of Eretz Yisroel to die out in order to distract the giants in a natural way so that the spies would be able to complete their mission without any trouble. Yet, the meraglim chose to look at the situation in a twisted way to fit with their mindset. According to the S'forno, they fell into the the trap of the post-hoc fallacy. The post-hoc fallacy refers to one who irrationally sees to juxtaposed events as ones of automatic cause and effect. Such a person hears the crow of the rooster and then sees the sun rise and thinks to himself that the rooster's crow is the cause of the sun going up each morning. There is no need to further describe how ridiculous this is. The meraglim, however, did just this. They had in their minds that Eretz Yisroel had issues. Therefore, when they saw people dying, they automatically associated it with the bad air quality of the land, instead of thinking rationally – as people who were expected to be ones who trusted in Hashem.

According to the Ramban, they literally invented the Theory of Evolution long before Charles Darwin came along. The meraglim were not interested in attributing the fact that Eretz Yisroel was a land of giants based on it being a great atmosphere to live in. Instead they thought of the idea of evolution to explain why only the giants were able to survive in the exceptional land, but anyone more feeble than the strong giants would not stand a chance.

Obviously hindsight is twenty-twenty vision and it is easy to discredit the meraglim knowing what we know from the Torah's perspective. The lesson we must take out from here though is to realize that these are things we fall for every day and, just like the meraglim, we come up with what we think are rational conclusions. For example, we may see something happen to someone and then see that he totally over reacts and therefore we subsequently conclude that that specific cause that we witnessed must be the reason for his over reaction, in which case he must be crazy. What we may fail to realize though is that there may be a completely different event that we are not aware of which is really the underlying cause.

Additionally, we look for ways to rationalize things that occur to us or that we hear about to be completely natural. We like to think everything is normal. Weird temperatures are normal – caused by global warming; earthquakes are normal – caused by global warming; tornadoes are normal – caused by global warming; animals are normal – because of evolution. We feel comfortable with being able to put a finger on an explanation that sits well in our own minds and that does not interfere with our personal ideologies. Such a mentality though is extremely dangerous and causes a three way disruption: It plays with one's emunah in Hashem, it disturbs our ability to fully care about and understand others, and it allows us to keep feeding ourselves with false ideas as long as we are comfortable with them.

The cheit ha'meraglim (sin of the spies) was one fundamentally of lack of emunah in Hashem. They went in with an attitude that they were vulnerable and consequently became unable to see the situation in any other way. Everything they witnessed became skewed to be explainable within the premise that they set off to prove.

May Hashem help us think according to His da'as so that we could get a better understanding of the ourselves and others, and save us from falling for the same traps that brought about the cheit ha'meraglim.

1Bamidbar 13:2

2See Rashi Bamidbar 13:3

3See Rashi Bamidbar 13:23

4Rashi Bamidbar 13:15

5Bamidbar 13:32

6Ibid.

7Ibid.  

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Parshas Nasso - Capitalized Coincidences

Thoughts on The Parsha

Parshas Nasso

Capitalized Coincidences

By: Daniel Listhaus

וַיְדַבֵּר ה' אֶל משֶׁה לֵּאמֹר: דַּבֵּר אֶל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם אִישׁ אוֹ אִשָּׁה כִּי יַפְלִא לִנְדֹּר נֶדֶר נָזִיר לְהַזִּיר לַה': מִיַּיִן וְשֵׁכָר יַזִּיר חֹמֶץ יַיִן וְחֹמֶץ שֵׁכָר לֹא יִשְׁתֶּה וְכָל מִשְׁרַת עֲנָבִים לֹא יִשְׁתֶּה וַעֲנָבִים לַחִים וִיבֵשִׁים לֹא יֹאכֵל

“Hashem spoke to Moshe, saying, “Speak to the B'nei Yisroel and say to them: A man or a woman who shall set apart by taking a nazarite vow to set apart to Hashem; from wine and hard drink shall he abstain, and he shall not drink vinegar or wine or vinegar of hard drink; anything in which grapes have been steeped he shall not drink, and fresh and dried grapes he shall not eat.”

-Nasso 6:1-3

After describing the degrading process that the sotah must go through, the Torah begins to teach the seemingly unrelated topic of one who accepts upon oneself to be a nazir, and proceeds to relate the relevant halachos (laws).

Rashi¹ is bothered with the fact that these two different subjects are taught right next to each other in the Torah. Why is it that the parsha of nazir is discussed immediately after the parsha of sotah? Rashi writes that the reason the Torah put the topic of nazir adjacent to that of sotah was to teach us that anyone who sees a sotah in her state of disgrace should take upon himself to abstain from wine by becoming a nazir.

The question we could ask on this Rashi is why is it that one who saw the sotah should become a nazir? What does the fact that an unfortunate episode happened in someone else's family or life have anything to do with me? Had I happened to live in a different community, or happened not to turn on the news that day, I would not even know of the event with the sotah. The episode is completely independent of me. It would have happened whether I lived nearby or not, it would have happened whether I would have heard about it or not. How could the Torah expect me to see the sotah and as a response limit myself from the pleasures of this world? Let me live my own life with my own worries. Why does a trouble in someone else's life demand a response from those who, by chance, happened to hear of it?

There is no doubt that the logic behind this question is one which drives many people's decisions in life. For example, imagine one day you sleep through your alarm and end up going to the next minyan in shul because you missed the earlier one you usually go to. After the minyan, the president of the shul gets up and asks the congregants present if everyone could please help gather the sefarim (books) laying around the shul and put them back on the shelf. There are some people who in such a situation will think to themselves, “I was not even supposed to be at this minyan, so there is no way that I could be expected to help out. Furthermore, the announcement would have been made whether I came to the minyan or not.” The person then leaves without helping. However, to put this logic into perspective, let us compare it to a situation where a manager finds himself with two meetings scheduled for the same time at work. He looks at his schedule and sees this and decides to go to neither. After all, the people at meeting A will think he went to meeting B, and the members at meeting B will think he joined meeting A. There is no question that such a mentality is crooked and just as this manager will end up knowing nothing, so too the person who allows such irrational logic to make his decisions for him will miss out on the countless lessons of life. This is what I call the “absence fallacy” – falling into the trap of believing that because one chooses to be absent from two events, one could play them off each other and be exempt from both of them. A person who falls into such a trap of thinking that the events that are part of his life – even if only indirectly – are irrelevant, will never grow to one's potential that is obviously expected of him from the fact that he was put into such a situation.

There is no such thing as coincidence. Every single situation we find ourselves in is part of a hashgacha p'ratis (individual providence) design for us to each be put into an environment from which we are meant to grow. Sometimes things occur that seem like gifts, sometimes they come in the form of challenges; sometimes these things happen to us directly, and sometimes indirectly. However the thing we must constantly keep in mind is that the way that something effects our life is the way Hashem intends for us to need to deal with the situation – specific to our level and to what He wants us to be able to learn from it. If we ignore the messages Hashem is constantly sending us in the occurrences that make up our lives, we will never become a greater person. We must learn from everything that happens around us and capitalize on the opportunity to learn.

When something occurs in our circle of life we are indeed expected to take action. Whether it be something in our family, our community, or the world at large, if the message has reached our ears there must be a reason we were meant to hear it. This is the lesson of the nazir. The person who decided to become a nazir had nothing to do with the sotah, perhaps never met her in his life, and might very well think that the nisayon (test) that the sotah's family went through is one that would never occur in his own. All these things may very well be true. However, what we must keep in mind, as this nazir did, is that things that we witness, events that we are involved in – whether directly or indirectly, and even things which occur in our community or the world are all things that by definition become relevant to us because they are things that Hashem caused to be a part of our lives. For some people the message may be louder and closer to home, and to others it may be more distant and the message more through the grape vine, but either way there has to be something that we do to change and learn from what is going on around us.

May Hashem help us better be in-tuned to the constant stream of messages He sends us in the hashgacha p'ratis way that He deals with us – whether it be the events that occur to us directly or indirectly.

1Bamidbar 6:2

Photo Credit: Edited version of http://stickyfaith.org/articles/time-and-place

Parshas Bamidbar - Mind Over Matter

Thoughts on The Parsha

Parshas Bamidbar

Mind Over Matter

By: Daniel Listhaus

זֹאת עֲבֹדַת בְּנֵי קְהָת בְּאֹהֶל מוֹעֵד קֹדֶשׁ הַקֳּדָשִׁים

“This is the work of the sons of Kehas in the Tent of Meeting: the most Holy.”

אַל תַּכְרִיתוּ אֶת שֵׁבֶט מִשְׁפְּחֹת הַקְּהָתִי מִתּוֹךְ הַלְוִיִּם

“Do not cut off the tribe of the Kehas families from among the Levi'im.”

-Bamidbar 4:4;18

After having counted B'nei Yisroel and describing the positioning of the the B'nei Yisroel around the aron (ark) in the midbar (desert), the Torah continues to relate the tasks of the Levi'im. As the cloud and fire representing the shechina of Hashem traveled, the B'nei Yisroel followed. There was no itinerary that they knew of which outlined how their time in the midbar would be spent. The B'nei Yisroel never knew if they would be pitching tent for the night, week, or month. If this itself did not display a true devotion to Hashem, then certainly the fact that every time they moved, the mishkan had to be taken apart and brought with them to reconstruct at their new location, did. The passuk (verse) in our parsha states that the descendents of Kehas from Levi had the greatest responsibility. They were charged with carrying the Holliest keilim (vessels) – the aron, the shulchan (table), the menorah, the two mizbe'achs (alters), the paroches (curtain partition), and the k'lei shareis (utensils of sacrificial service).

The Medrash¹ says that it was known to those carrying the various keilim of the mishkan that the individuals who would be privileged with carrying the aron would be rewarded tremendously. So, they would all fight over who would get to carry the aron. Each person would be standing over the aron shouting, “I called it” like a kid racing for the front seat of a car. This led to kalos rosh (light-headedness) and a big chillul Hashem.

The ironic thing is, however, that of course if you would ask any member of the crowd arguing for the opportunity of carrying the aron why he was doing such a thing, he would without a doubt respond that he is showing kavod haTorah (honoring the Torah) by fighting for the chance of carrying the aron of Hashem containing the luchos. If this is not worth fighting for, what is? Yet, Hashem obviously viewed the situation quite differently. He commanded Moshe and Aharon to secure the position for Kehas by setting rules as to who is in charge of each keili in order to ensure that no one would die as a result of improperly fooling around the aron.

The obvious question on this Medrash is what exactly went wrong. Indeed those who were fighting to carry the aron had only the best intentions in mind. How could so many people make such a big mistake that instead of showing kavod haTorah, exhibit kalos rosh and b'zayon haTorah without even realizing?

In order to understand their psyche, we must be willing to admit to a fault into which many people fall. Often times, we start a project with the right intentions however, as issues come up and others perhaps disagree with the way we want to carry out the project, we could get so carried away trying to back up our side and show that we are right that we lose focus of the bigger picture. We become biased and so emotionally attached to our opinions to even realize that we have ceased to think rationally.

In the 1950's, France, England, the United States and the Soviet Union were each thinking of creating a supersonic airplane. France and England eventually joined together and both governments invested a tremendous amount of money developing what would be later known as the Concorde. The Concorde got its name as being a word which in both French and English means “in agreement”. The interesting thing about the lifespan of the Concorde is that each year proved to be a complete failure. Whether it was unforeseen costs, issue in construction, or unrealistic plans to make a profit, the Concorde project was a constant headache that all around did more harm than good. Yet, both governments were extremely stubborn and had become so emotionally attached to their project that they were unwilling to let it go for a very long time. If one would have asked during the early years of the Concorde's development why they were doing it, the response would have been that they were trying to drive the economy. Jobs were created and the government was investing a lot of money into it, obviously hoping to get back a substantial amount to make it worth the risk. So why is it then when these seemingly rational people were asked this exact question years down the road after putting effort into the project did they say that granted they saw that their cause was failing but they wanted to continue anyway? The answer is that they fell into the trap of what, thanks to them, is now known as the Concorde Fallacy. They became so emotionally attached to what they were doing that their opinions, perspectives, and future projections of the project were all falsified based on their unwillingness to think rationally and keep in mind what the objective purpose was – to generate a profit.

This is something that is part of human nature and effects each of us whether we realize it or not. We often allow our decisions to be emotionally driven and in turn the real purpose of what we were trying to accomplish falls by the wayside. This is exactly what happened with the Levi'im in the midbar. They were so emotionally attached with a desire to carry the aron – a feeling which originally came from the right place but was taken too far – that they lost sight that their real inner desire was and should have continued to be – a desire to bring about kiddush Hashem, not the opposite.

We must train ourselves to form preventative measures which will be able to stop us from making irrational decisions in order that we remain in control with our minds over the matter at hand, and not our emotions. It is just not enough to know what one is doing, one must think and then know what he is doing.

1Bamidbar Rabbah 5:2

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Parshas Behar-Bechukosai - Customized Consequences

Thoughts on The Parsha

Parshas Bechukosai

Customized Consequences

By: Daniel Listhaus

אִם בְּחֻקֹּתַי בחוקותי תֵּלֵכוּ וְאֶת מִצְו‍ֹתַי תִּשְׁמְרוּ וַעֲשִׂיתֶם אֹתָם: וְנָתַתִּי גִשְׁמֵיכֶם בְּעִתָּם וְנָתְנָה הָאָרֶץ יְבוּלָהּ וְעֵץ הַשָּׂדֶה יִתֵּן פִּרְיוֹ

וְהִתְהַלַּכְתִּי בְּתוֹכְכֶם וְהָיִיתִי לָכֶם לֵאלֹהִים וְאַתֶּם תִּהְיוּ לִי לְעָם

“If you will go in My decrees and observe My commandments and perform them; then I will provide your rains in their time, and the land will give its produce and the tree of the field will give its fruit….I will walk among you….”

-Bechukosai 26:3-4;12

After the Torah describes the great rewards which come to those who perform the mitzvos, Hashem tells us, “I will walk among you and will be a G-d to you and you will be a people unto Me.” Rashi¹ explains that this passuk (verse) is in allusion to the reward of Olam Habbah. Hashem is promising here that He will stroll in Gan Eden with those who keep the mitzvos.

The obvious question on the passukim here, which the Kli Yakar² raises, is why is it that the reward of Olam Habbah is not stated explicitly anywhere in the Torah? The Kli Yakar offers seven answers which he compiled by the many earlier meforshim (commentaries) who were bothered by the same question.

The first approach is that of the Rambam³ who writes that the reason that the reward of Olam Habbah is not mentioned is because had the Torah described the incredible pleasures of Olam Habbah, we would be so inclined to do good that it would be impossible for us to do mitzvos l'shma (mitzvos for the sake of listening to Hashem alone) because we would be so focused on trying to attain the unbelievable reward.

The second answer is from the R'av'a⁴, who simply says that Olam Habbah is too great to be put into words that a person could comprehend on earth. Therefore, the Torah chose to only list the various mundane incentives and leave out the ikkur (main) rewards.

Rabbeinu Bechayei and the Ramban have a very different perspective. They are the opinion that it is indeed self evident that there is Olam Habbah because after all, most people in the world are smart enough to realize that there is something spiritual inside our body that is combined with the elements of dirt and water of which we are made. We have personality, ability to think and reason, and have the tremendous power of intelligent speech. There is an inherent sensation that the generator that keeps our bodies running and alive is something literally out of this world. Therefore, anyone who stops to think about this logically could easily come to the conclusion that just as our bodies, comprised of earth, are returned to dirt, so too the spiritual side of us must return to its place at the time of death. Furthermore, Olam Habbah is essentially discussed in Torah because for many serious aveiros (sins) that a person does, the punishment is kareis – which literally means that the person gets cut off. This implies that as long as one does not transgress on those sins that there must be at least a baseline level of a spiritual world for each individual's neshama to return. What is not so obvious, though, is that nature itself is actually fully controlled by Hashem, and is easily taken off its programmed cycles in order to correspond to how we are keeping the mitzvos. This is how Rabbeinu Bechayei and the Ramban reason that it was actually more important for the Torah to state what is the more mundane reward instead of explicitly describing Olam Habbah.

The Kli Yakar proceeds to offer two more answers based on the Kuzari⁵, which was focused on in a previous year's d'var Torah⁶, as well as an answer based on the Rambam's Moreh Nevuchim⁷. However, let us focus on the seventh, final approach he brings. The Kli Yakar writes that the reason that the Torah was not able to mention the rewards of Olam Habbah becomes clear after taking a moment to think about the following. How is it that the Torah could say that if we keep the mitzvos then we will experience blessings but if we do not listen then we will no? What if one person is good and his neighbor is not so good? Will it rain over one of their fields and not the other? Rather, the way to understand the passukim is that whether berachos (blessings) or klalos (curses) come is dependent on what the majority of people are doing. If overall we are doing what we should, Hashem will reward us in many ways in this world as the Torah describes, and if we are generally not doing what is good in the eyes of Hashem, then we will suffer the consequences as a nation. Olam Habbah, however, works on a completely different system. When it comes to one's reward in Olam Habbah, it is completely individual based. Each person experiences a completely different world of Olam Habbah depending on his accomplishments according to his level and life situation.

The Medrash⁸ brings the following story. One time, Rebbe Shimon ben Chalafta realized on erev Shabbos that he had no money to buy food for Shabbos. He went to the outskirts of the city and davened to Hashem to give him what to buy food with for Shabbos. Hashem answered his tefilla and sent him a precious stone from shamayim (heaven). Rebbe Shimon ben Chalafta immediately brought the stone to a jeweler and exchanged it for enough money to buy food. When he brought the money home to his wife, she demanded that he tell her where he got the money from. Rebbe Shimon told over what had occurred. However, she responded that she refuses to derive any benefit from it at all. Rebbe Shimon asked why, and she answered, “Do you want your table to be lacking in Olam Habbah?” In other words, she was telling him that she did not appreciate him giving up some of his reward in the next world for some money in this world. Rebbe Shimon went and told what had happened to Rebbe Yehuda HaNasi, who in turn told him to tell his wife that if indeed anything would be lacking from Rebbe Shimon's “table” in Olam Habbah, that he would personally replenish it from his own. When Rebbe Shimon relayed the message to his wife, she insisted that he go back with her to Rebbe Yehuda HaNasi. When they arrived she said to him, “How can you make such a promise? Does a person necessarily see his fellow in Olam Habbah?” When she made this argument Rebbe Yehuda HaNasi realized she was indeed correct.

The Kochvei Ohr⁹ comments that this response of Rebbe Shimon's wife is very mysterious. What does it mean that a person does not necessarily see his friend in Olam Habbah? He answers that she was saying as follows. The mishna in Avos¹⁰ states that Ben Hey Hey used to say “l'phum tza'ara agra”. This literally means that one's reward is proportional to the amount of exertion required to put in. Unlike any job in the world where it is really irrelevant how much effort one puts in because one will only get paid when the job gets done, one who tries learning Torah will receive reward in proportion to what is expected of him personally and the amount of effort he puts in.

Although the conventional understanding of this mishna is that it is referring to the amount one must toil to learn Torah, the reality is that the concept applies to every mitzva. Each person's reward in Olam Habbbah is completely unique based on how hard it was for each individual to do the mitzvos. This, the Kochvei Ohr explains is exactly what the wife of Rebbe Shimon explained to Rebbe Yehuda HaNasi. Rebbe Yehuda HaNasi was extremely wealthy whereas Rebbe Shimon ben Chalafta was very poor. Therefore, Rebbe Shimon had a constant struggle to spend his time learning and doing mitzvos because of his financial hardship. Therefore, his success as a tremendous Torah scholar was (possibly) worth much more than someone like say, Rebbe Yehuda HaNasi, who was wealthy and did not have to overcome the same problems in life. So, Rebbe Shimon's wife told Rebbe Yehuda HaNasi that he could not be so confident to ensure that nothing will be lacking from the table of Rebbe Shimon in Olam Habbah because it could very well be that Rebbe Yehuda HaNasi will not have the means to make such a commitment in the next world since the value of Rebbe Shimon's mitzvos was so high.

This is precisely what the Kli Yakar is coming to explain as to why it is not possible for the Torah to describe Olam Habbah in our parsha – because it comes in so many different forms. Each person will experience a customized Olam Habbah based on his or her own life situation and what he was able to accomplish, taking into account the amount of exertion necessary for the particular individual.

The Kochvei Ohr continues to explain that the same is true when it comes to aveiros (sins) as well. The Gemara¹¹ mentions one who refuses to wear the white strings of tzitzis (which is an extremely easy and inexpensive mitzva to do) will have more to answer to than the one who wears tzitzis, but without techeiles (the rare, expensive blue dye). As the Gemara explains, imagine a king who commanded one of his servants to fetch him some gold and the other he asks to get a cup of dirt. When they both come back later empty-handed, there is no doubt that the king will be much more upset with the servant he asked to get the cup of dirt. After all, his task was so easy to accomplish, there could be no valid excuse as to why he was unable to accomplish this command. So too when it comes to aveiros, the aveiros which are easiest to stay away from we get punished much more for, whereas for the aveiros with a high level of desire to do them, we are punished less.

The problem with this approach, as the Kochvei Ohr points out, is that it is not true. There are some aveiros such a arayos (illicit relationships) and gezel (theft) which are often very hard for people to stay away from, yet the punishment for these serious aveiros are quite harsh. So how could we understand the reciprocal “l'phum tz'a'ra agra” when it comes to aveiros?

The Kochvei Ohr answers that there is another level to the system when it comes to aveiros. One's punishment for the aveiros he does is measured not only based on how easy it was to stay away from the aveirah, but also how much benefit he received from doing the particular aveirah. The sequence of the axis – how hard it was to control myself along with how much benefit was realized creates a combination with a customized punishment.

Hashem gave us the Torah with its mitzvos to keep. It is our job to learn the Torah and keep these mitzvos and there is really no excuse – some of us may be meizidim (sin purposely), some shogegim (sin based on lack of knowledge – not fully on purpose), and some on'sim (complete accident) but there is a category that each of us fall under and will have to answer to. This is a chesbon (calculation) that each person has to make for himself. The answer to what is expected of any individual is not to look to what the people around you are doing because everyone's situation is completely different and their punishment and reward system is unique to them.

Although the mitzvos in the Torah could often seem daunting and hard, we have an obligation to keep them nonetheless, because being hard is not an excuse to not do a mitzva, rather only a reason to receive more reward. May Hashem help us be honest with ourselves to understand where we are supposed to be so that the quality of our customized consequences could indeed be priceless.

1Vayikra 26:12

2Ibid.

3Hilchos Teshuva 9:5

4R'av'a Devarim 32:39

5Kuzari 1:104-106

6See Thoughts On Parsha, Parshas Bechukosai – Recognizing Real Rewards (2011)

7Moreh Nevuchim 3

8Shemos Rabbah Parshas Pekudei

9Kochvei Ohr 8

10Avos 5:26 (though actual number mishna may vary per edition, it is the last mishna in the 5^th perek)

11Menachos 43b
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