בס"ד
Ki Sisa 5776-Our Own Worst Enemy
In this week’s parsha the Torah chronicles the awful episode of the Eigel - the making of the Golden Calf. The idea to make such an image began when some of the Yidden panicked and became convinced that Moshe had died during his forty-day visit to heaven to receive the Torah. The reason they thought him dead is (as Rashi describes in his commentary to Shmos, 32:1) because the Satan had brought a spirit of confusion into the world together with a semblance of thick darkness, indicating that Moses had surely died. The Satan bolstered this idea by showing the Yidden a vision of a likeness of Moshe’s body being carried around in the heavens, again intimating that he had died. Believing all this, the Yidden felt hopeless without their beloved leader and immediately scrambled for a replacement as the official go-between between themselves and Hashem. They approached Aharon and demanded that he help them make some type of replacement. What is interesting is how they verbalize to Aharon that Moshe had died. They said “Lo yadanu meh haya lo” - “We do not know what has happened to him” (Shmos, 32:1). Why did they not express themselves in a more explicit manner?
To explain, we really have to ask a more basic question. The Satan a.k.a. the Yetzer Hora has been given a job from Hashem which he takes very seriously, and that job is to try and derail us from serving G-D. [By doing so he offsets the efforts of the Yetzer Hatov. This gives us the concept known as bechira-free will, where before each action we have a choice whether to do that action or not. The Yetzer Hatov is guiding us to be good, whereas the Yetzer Hora is seducing us to head in the other direction.] But how much license has he been given in his derailment activities? Carte blanche? Is he allowed to lie to prevent us from doing mitzvos? Can he set up physical barriers? Can he make our alarm clocks malfunction so we miss opportunities of mitzvos? Well, if you look at this episode of the Eigel where he showed the Jewish nation what looked like a dead Moshe, it seems he sure has the ability to tell juicy whoppers. But that isn’t kosher at all! If he has the power to conjure up such vivid visions of defeat, if he has permission to create such an uneven playing surface, then how is a Jew expected to ever succeed in the quest for spiritual perfection?
The answer is that the Yetzer Hora is an apparatus that needs a dynamo to produce its ability to suppress and stymy man’s Avodas Hashem, and that dynamo my friends, is us. As a kid I had a dynamo powered headlamp on by bike. The harder I pedaled the brighter and longer the lamp shone. Similarly, with the Yetzer Hora, the more confused, lazier, frustrated and antagonistic we feel towards spiritual growth, the stronger and brighter are the Yetzer’s abilities. The Kitzur Shulchan Aruch (1:4) makes an amazing statement. He tells us that when it comes to getting up early to begin a day of serving Hashem (and the Yetzer Hora is sweet talking us to sleep in late) one has to only do it 4-5 times until getting out of bed ceases being a challenging event. Whoa! 4-5 times? I don’t know about anyone else, but for yours truly it’s a constant battle. How could The Kitzur make such a general claim? The answer is in the world of bechira without human input 4-5 times is all it would take to defeat the Satan in this particular battle. But we allow him to have a continual say, making most mornings an adventure (did anyone say snooze button?) because we empower him.
At the Eigel, the reason why the Satan was able to project such a big fib showing a dead Moshe was due to the fact that he kept feeding off and being charged by the insecurities of Bnai Yisrael. They started this whole chad gadya when they made a mistake in calculating Moshe’s return. The Satan immediately hooked his claws into that uncertainty, and before you know it he showed the world confusion and darkness claiming Moshe had died. Even at that point though, if Bnai Yisrael would have dismissed this as much ado about nothing that would have been the end of the story. He would not have been able to take it up a notch and show us a vision of a dead Moshe, for he has no power to meddle with our bechira to such a degree. But we can meddle with our own bechira. And that is exactly what happened next. The Yidden panicked, believing his claim of Moshe’s death, powering the Satan to be able to show a vision of what looked like Moshe’s corpse.
Let’s address our original difficulty. The Yidden were pointing to a dead corpse of Moshe, yet they only said to Aharon “We do not know what has happened to him”. Why? Because the “dead Moshe” vision was created and spawned purely by their original “We do not know what has happened to him” confusion. It was the dynamo of that current vision. And deep down they knew that what they were looking at was nothing more than a creation of that uncertainty, and thus articulated his death in such a manner.
The Baal Haturim shares with us an amazing gematria. The Hebrew words for “We do not know what has happened to him” have the same numerical value as the Hebrew words for “The Satan showed them Moshe Rabainu’s deathbed”. His point might well be as we have just explained, that the entire vision of Moshe on his deathbed was created by that initial exclamation of worry. And if they would have never gone down that slippery slope of uncertainty there never would have been the vision, and there never would have been an Eigel.
Rabbi Nosson Greenberg
Rav, Khal Machzikei Torah, Far Rockaway, N.Y. ravgreenbergkmt@gmail.com
Ki Sisa 5776-Our Own Worst Enemy
In this week’s parsha the Torah chronicles the awful episode of the Eigel - the making of the Golden Calf. The idea to make such an image began when some of the Yidden panicked and became convinced that Moshe had died during his forty-day visit to heaven to receive the Torah. The reason they thought him dead is (as Rashi describes in his commentary to Shmos, 32:1) because the Satan had brought a spirit of confusion into the world together with a semblance of thick darkness, indicating that Moses had surely died. The Satan bolstered this idea by showing the Yidden a vision of a likeness of Moshe’s body being carried around in the heavens, again intimating that he had died. Believing all this, the Yidden felt hopeless without their beloved leader and immediately scrambled for a replacement as the official go-between between themselves and Hashem. They approached Aharon and demanded that he help them make some type of replacement. What is interesting is how they verbalize to Aharon that Moshe had died. They said “Lo yadanu meh haya lo” - “We do not know what has happened to him” (Shmos, 32:1). Why did they not express themselves in a more explicit manner?
To explain, we really have to ask a more basic question. The Satan a.k.a. the Yetzer Hora has been given a job from Hashem which he takes very seriously, and that job is to try and derail us from serving G-D. [By doing so he offsets the efforts of the Yetzer Hatov. This gives us the concept known as bechira-free will, where before each action we have a choice whether to do that action or not. The Yetzer Hatov is guiding us to be good, whereas the Yetzer Hora is seducing us to head in the other direction.] But how much license has he been given in his derailment activities? Carte blanche? Is he allowed to lie to prevent us from doing mitzvos? Can he set up physical barriers? Can he make our alarm clocks malfunction so we miss opportunities of mitzvos? Well, if you look at this episode of the Eigel where he showed the Jewish nation what looked like a dead Moshe, it seems he sure has the ability to tell juicy whoppers. But that isn’t kosher at all! If he has the power to conjure up such vivid visions of defeat, if he has permission to create such an uneven playing surface, then how is a Jew expected to ever succeed in the quest for spiritual perfection?
The answer is that the Yetzer Hora is an apparatus that needs a dynamo to produce its ability to suppress and stymy man’s Avodas Hashem, and that dynamo my friends, is us. As a kid I had a dynamo powered headlamp on by bike. The harder I pedaled the brighter and longer the lamp shone. Similarly, with the Yetzer Hora, the more confused, lazier, frustrated and antagonistic we feel towards spiritual growth, the stronger and brighter are the Yetzer’s abilities. The Kitzur Shulchan Aruch (1:4) makes an amazing statement. He tells us that when it comes to getting up early to begin a day of serving Hashem (and the Yetzer Hora is sweet talking us to sleep in late) one has to only do it 4-5 times until getting out of bed ceases being a challenging event. Whoa! 4-5 times? I don’t know about anyone else, but for yours truly it’s a constant battle. How could The Kitzur make such a general claim? The answer is in the world of bechira without human input 4-5 times is all it would take to defeat the Satan in this particular battle. But we allow him to have a continual say, making most mornings an adventure (did anyone say snooze button?) because we empower him.
At the Eigel, the reason why the Satan was able to project such a big fib showing a dead Moshe was due to the fact that he kept feeding off and being charged by the insecurities of Bnai Yisrael. They started this whole chad gadya when they made a mistake in calculating Moshe’s return. The Satan immediately hooked his claws into that uncertainty, and before you know it he showed the world confusion and darkness claiming Moshe had died. Even at that point though, if Bnai Yisrael would have dismissed this as much ado about nothing that would have been the end of the story. He would not have been able to take it up a notch and show us a vision of a dead Moshe, for he has no power to meddle with our bechira to such a degree. But we can meddle with our own bechira. And that is exactly what happened next. The Yidden panicked, believing his claim of Moshe’s death, powering the Satan to be able to show a vision of what looked like Moshe’s corpse.
Let’s address our original difficulty. The Yidden were pointing to a dead corpse of Moshe, yet they only said to Aharon “We do not know what has happened to him”. Why? Because the “dead Moshe” vision was created and spawned purely by their original “We do not know what has happened to him” confusion. It was the dynamo of that current vision. And deep down they knew that what they were looking at was nothing more than a creation of that uncertainty, and thus articulated his death in such a manner.
The Baal Haturim shares with us an amazing gematria. The Hebrew words for “We do not know what has happened to him” have the same numerical value as the Hebrew words for “The Satan showed them Moshe Rabainu’s deathbed”. His point might well be as we have just explained, that the entire vision of Moshe on his deathbed was created by that initial exclamation of worry. And if they would have never gone down that slippery slope of uncertainty there never would have been the vision, and there never would have been an Eigel.
Rabbi Nosson Greenberg
Rav, Khal Machzikei Torah, Far Rockaway, N.Y. ravgreenbergkmt@gmail.com