How to portray Gedolim

In this weeks Torah portion, Lech L'cha, we are told of Avroham leaving the land of Cna'an because of a famine. His plan was to head to Mitzrayim. There was, however one small problem with his idea. Sara, his wife, was a uniquely beautiful woman and Avroham's life would be in danger as the husband of this woman. Apparently, the Mitzriyim who would not think of taking a married woman, would have no compunctions with bumping off the husband of this beautiful woman and thus rendering her, a permissible widow. Avroham came up with a plan of action. If Sara would identify herself as his sister and not as his wife, he would not be in any danger. The Mitzriyim would be able to take Sara and Avroham's life would be spared.

The Ramban famously takes issue with Avroham's actions. According to Ramban, Avroham sinned by putting Sara in danger in order to save himself.

"And know that our father Avroham sinned a grave sin, unintentionally."

R. Shamshon Rephael Hirsch disagrees with Ramban's criticism of Avroham. However, he goes to great length to clarify that his objective in disagreeing with the Ramban is NOT to 'defend' Avroham from being criticized:

The Torah does not seek to portray our great men as perfectly ideal figures; it deifies no man. It says of no one: Here you have the ideal; in this man the divine assumes human form. It does not set before us the life of any one person as the model from which we might learn what is good and right, what we must do and what we must refrain from doing.

When the Torah wishes to put before us a model to emulate, it does not present a man who is born of dust. Rather, G-d presents Himself as the model, saying, ”look upon me! Emulate me! Walk in my ways!”. We are never to say, “This must be good and right, because so-and-so id it.” The Torah is not an ‘anthology of good deeds’. It relates events, not because they are necessarily worthy of emulation but because they took place.

The Torah does not hide from us the faults, errors and weaknesses of our great men, and this is precisely what gives its stories credibility. The knowledge of their faults and weaknesses does not detract from the stature of our great men; on the contrary, it adds to their stature and makes their life stories even more instructive. Had they been portrayed to us as shining models of perfection, faultless and unblemished, we would have assumed that they had been endowed wit ha higher nature, not given to us to attain. Had they been portrayed free of passions and personal conflict, their virtues would have seemed to us as merely the consequence of their loftier nature not acquired by personal merit and certainly no model we could hope to emulate.

Take, for example, the humility of Moshe. Had we not known that he was capable also of flying into a rage, we would have assumed that his humility was an inborn trait, not within our capacity to emulate. It is precisely his outburst of שִׁמְעוּ-נָא הַמֹּרִים that lends his humility its true greatness. We thus infer that he acquired humility through hard work, self control and self refinement, and that we are required to emulate him since it is within our capacity to do so.

Let us learn from our great teachers of Torah, of which Ramban is surely one of the greatest, that we must never attempt to whitewash the spiritual and moral heroes of our past. They do not need our apologetics , nor would they tolerate such attempts on our part. Emes, truth is the seal of our Torah and truthfulness is the guiding principle of the Torah's great teachers and commentators

Rav Hirsch then goes on to explain why in his opinion Avroham did not sin.

Bumped!

Travelling from Israel to the US post-sukkos is not always fun. The flights are usually jammed-packed, and that's what I was counting on. I volunteered to get bumped.

It worked. I got bumped.

Had to wait in Ben Gurion for 5 hours or so, then take an ElAl flight to Rome. From there I got on an Alitalia flight to the US. I was on the ground in Italy for a total of 40 minutes.

No, it wasn't fun. But it was worth it for a free round-trip ticket on ElAl.

I tried getting bumped on the way there (from Newark) as well. The differences between the bumping procedure at Newark and at Ben Gurion are vast.

At Newark, after I volunteered I was told that since I may get bumped they could not check in my luggage and I would have to return in a couple of hours to a certain desk with my luggage. So I spent the next few hours lugging my luggage around the airport. Not fun.

At Ben Gurion they have a person whose sole job is to sit and keep an eye on the luggage of the potential bumpees. No need to drag it all around. So I was free to move around the terminal and look for the resturants and kiosks that were listed on the FREE MEAL VOUCHER that they gave me for being so kind as to request a free flight. It was a very nice (and kind of suprising) experience. Kudos to ElAl for getting it done the right way.

Mikvah Hygiene

On Erev Rosh Hashanah and Erev Yom Kipper, there is a minhag that men immerse themselves in a mikvah. Common sense, as well as mikvah regulations require one to shower before using the mikvah. My personal custom, based on hygienic concerns is to shower following the immersion as well. This past Erev Yom Kippur, someone (who apparently was keeping tabs on me) commented to me that there is "an inyan" not to wash off the holy mikvah waters. I resisted the urge to say any of the many things that came to mind (it was Erev Yom Kippur after all) and thanked him for informing me of this.

Last night, I was reading a compilation of psakim and hadrachos of Rav Shlomo Zalman Aurbach and came across the following:

Rav Shlomo Zalman would shower both before and after using the mikvah. When he was questioned as to why he wasn't concerned with the inyan of keeping the mikvah waters on, he responded "I shower before the mikvah out of concerns of viahavta l'raiacha kamocha. I shower after the mikvah because of those who are not concerned with viahavta l'raiacha kamocha".

Chag Sameach!

Shtender meets Hezbolla

No joke.

Well, we didn't exactly 'meet', but we were within shouting (or rock-throwing) distance of each other. Here's what happened.

We (me and several other like-minded people) decided to head north to Metula. For those that don't know, Metula is like a little finger jutting out of the North of Israel into Lebanon.

So we headed north.

Past the Kinneret.




Farther North, through Katyusha-scarred Kiryat Shemona:




Finally we got to the absolutely gorgeous town of Metula.


Driving around in Metula, it's almost impossible not to bang smack into the border fence. We came upon a border fence which was opened and apparently unguarded. It was not a gate directly into Lebanon, but it opens onto the security road which runs betweeen the two border fences.


While standing around checking out the area, we saw a vintage SUV-type truck drive up on the Lebanese side near the fence. Two goons got out and started walking towards us.


We drove to the army base in the town and told them what we saw. They basically told us that they can't do anything as long as they remain on the other side of the fence and don't shoot or anything.

Not willing to leave Israel unprotected, we returned to the fence.
More cars and trucks had joined them, it was almost like a caravan.

More goons got out and started walking towards us.



They got closer...



and closer...



until they were just a few feet from us.



One member of our group apparently got carried away with his vocal excercises in their direction, and a soldier materialized and shouted at us to get away.

So we did.

Please Help

Dear readers,


Please take a look at this picture.

Three adorable little kids and their teddy bears.

Pigtails and ear to ear smiles.

The father of these three children has been missing after a boating accident over a month ago and is presumed dead.

His remains have not yet been recovered.

He was Eli Horowitz.

He was a classmate of mine many years ago.

Please help these children and their mother.

A fund has been established to help care for this fatherless family.

For more information read this.

One thousand dollars.

One hundred dollars.

Fifty dollars.

Ten dollar.

Whatever you can do.

To make a donation click here.



Tizku L'mitzvos.