Shaarei Shamayim

What a joyous day this is—filled with simcha! At this moment, don’t you feel as if all is good with the world and that life is great? Don’t you wish you could bottle this feeling in your heart right now and save it for the times when life challenges you? As the Rosenthal family knows only too well—as we all know only too well—life has its joys and challenges.  

This thought is reflected in passage in today’s Torah portion where Gd presents to the Jewish people their 1st mitzvah as a people. Gd tells them: Hachodesh hazeh lachem rosh chodashim, “This month shall be for you the 1st of all the months.” It was a command to establish a lunar calendar with Nissan—the month of spring, the month of liberation from Egypt—to be the 1st month of the year. The sages point out that the words, Hachodesh hazeh lachem, “This month shall be for you,” means that this month, this renewal, this phasing of the moon is to you—compared to you, representing what will happen to you. In other words, the moon is to be a symbol of you—you the Jewish people. Just as the moon waxes and wanes, is dark and then is light, is small and then is full, so is our fate. 

Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, unpacks this for us by pointing out that the cycle of the moon completes its rotation in 29 or 30 days. The moon begins as small sliver in the beginning of the month, becomes full in 15 days—decreases in size until it disappears—and then the new moon appears. Using the moon as a metaphor for the Jewish people, Kabbalah counted the generations of Jewish history in the Bible and discovered that there were 15 generations from Abraham—the 1st Jew—to the zenith of Jewish history, the reign of King Solomon. 15—corresponding to the fullness of the moon! Jewish history then begins a decline until 15 generations later in the reign of King Tzidkiyahu, whose eyes were taken out symbolizing darkness, and it was then the Temple was destroyed—corresponding to when the moon seems to disappear and there’s no light. Kabbalah maintains that Jewish history will continue this cycle of waxing and waning until the messiah comes and all will perpetually shine.

Why was establishing a lunar calendar the 1st commandment given to the Jewish people—especially when they were at their lowest point as slaves in Egypt? It was because these slaves, who were beaten and tortured for hundreds of years, whose children were murdered…they needed some hope in order to go on. So Gd tells them with this command: when life gets hard, know that it can cycle and get better! It’s a message for all of us: when life gets hard, know that it can cycle and get better!

Let me read you a story of a little 6-year-old girl—a beautiful red haired, freckle faced image of innocence—who had been shopping with her Mom in Walmart. It was pouring outside—the kind of rain that gushes over the top of rain gutters.
We all stood there under the awning and just inside the door of the Walmart. We waited, some patiently, others irritated because nature messed up their hurried day. The little voice was so sweet as it broke the hypnotic trance of the rain: “Mom, let’s run through the rain,” she said.
            “What?” Mom asked.
            “Let’s run through the rain!”
            “No, honey, we’ll wait until it slows down a bit.”
            The girl waited about another minute and repeated: “Mom, let’s run through the rain,”
“We’ll get soaked if we do,” Mom said.
            “No, we won’t, Mom. That’s not what you said this morning,” the young girl said as she tugged at her Mom’s arm.
“This morning? When did I say we could run through the rain and not get wet?”
“Don’t you remember? When you were talking to Daddy about his cancer, you said, ‘If Gd can get us through this, he can get us through anything!’”
The entire crowd stopped dead silent. I swear you couldn’t hear anything but the rain. Mom paused and thought for a moment about what she would say. Now some would laugh it off or scold her for being silly. Some might even ignore what was said. But this was a moment of affirmation in a young child’s life—a time when innocent trust can be nurtured so that it will bloom into faith.
“Honey, you are absolutely right. Let’s run through the rain. If Gd lets us get wet, well maybe we just needed washing,” Mom said.
Then off they ran. We all stood watching, smiling and laughing as they darted past the cars and yes, through the puddles. They held their shopping bags over their heads just in case. They got soaked. But they were followed by a few who screamed and laughed like children all the way to their cars. And yes, I did. I ran. I got wet. I needed washing.

Life will always have its challenges and its joys; life will always wax and wane. Most of the time we’ll get wet when we walk in the rain; but sometimes it will seem that we’re just walking between the raindrops. The real test of life is what do we learn from life when we get wet? Do we learn that we needed washing? Or do we just numb ourselves in one way or the other just to get by.

After every plague Moses goes to Pharaoh demanding that he let the Jewish people go and after every plague he refuses. 1st Paraoh hardens his heart, but with the later plagues, Gd hardens Pharaoh’s heart because, as Gd tells Moses (Ex. 10:1-2): I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his courtiers, in order that I may display these My signs among them…and so you may relate them in the ears of your children.

Are you comfortable with this passage? Are you puzzled or embarrassed by it? Our sages had a problem because it can sound like Gd purposely makes it impossible for Pharaoh to do the right thing, even if he wanted to. Perhaps Pharaoh wasn’t really such an evil person and only acted the way he did because he was under Gd’s heavy-handed influence.
 
As if we don’t have enough problems with what Gd does to Pharaoh, there’s also the issue of Gd’s justification for making Pharaoh so irresponsible—i.e. that refusing to let the Jews go will permit a display of Gd’s power that will make a big impression on everyone. That hardly corresponds to the selfless love we expect from Gd.

In the Midrash (Sh’mot Rabbah) Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish notes: When Gd warns someone once, twice, and even a 3rd time and that person doesn’t repent, then and only then does Gd close his heart against repentance and exact vengeance from his sins. Thus it was with wicked Pharaoh. Since Gd sent 5 times to him and he sent no notice, Gd then said, “You have stiffened your neck and hardened your heart on your own, well, I will add to your uncleanness”…So it was that the heart of Pharaoh did not receive the words of Gd.

Also, the 2nd word the Torah (Ex. 10:20) uses for the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart is vay’chazeyk, which literally means, “and he strengthened.” Gd strengthening Pharaoh’s heart, suggests the complete opposite of the thought that Gd took away Pharaoh’s freedom of choice—and hence his humanity. Gd just strengthened the resolve of Pharaoh that was already there.

Isn’t that how the human heart works? At 1st, we may be strong enough to say “no” to temptation. The 1st time we give in to an illegitimate urge, we do so only moderately and with great guilt and anxiety. With each succeeding indulgence, our guilt is a little less, and our participation a little more wholehearted. After a few exposures to the lust of the moment, we are soon enjoying it without even recalling our initial discomfort.

In short, our hearts—like Pharaoh’s—become hardened.  Passing a beggar on the street without responding to his need is impossible for children because they aren’t used to it. But for a hardened resident of any American city, we get to a point where we no longer even see the humanity of the hungry person before us—no longer hear the sorrow or despair in the voice that calls out to us. We condition ourselves not to allow our compassionate self to surface and then our hearts, too, become hard. It’s the same with Jewish tradition. We know we should only eat kosher food, observe Shabbos and the holidays, and come to shule more often in order to get closer to Gd. But after 4 or 5 times of ignoring Gd’s laws, we don’t even think about it.
                                       
The Torah teaches us how to be compassionate in the face of suffering. Moses was the great leader that he was because he begged Gd not to erase the people in the wilderness in the wake of the sin of the Golden Calf. “Better to erase my name from your book,” said Moses, “than to erase your people for their sin here in the wilderness.” Moses’ calling on Gd to be true to His merciful and compassionate essence made him the great leader that he was.
 
Pharaoh lost his humanity when he chose to hardened his heart—when he closed his heart to the suffering of the Jews and even to the suffering of his own people. Only when he lost his own son could he feel for the suffering of his nation and could feel their pain and so finally release Israel from bondage.
 
The people of Israel, in contrast to the cruelty of Pharaoh, are known for their open hearts. The State of Israel demonstrated this sense of caring, empathy and mercy, when she responded with alacrity to the tragedy in Haiti. Israel showed to an entire world that was watching, what the essence of her faith boiled down to: showing mercy and kindness to all of Gd’s creatures, to all of humanity, to respond when you feel the pain and suffering of others.

Israel could have reacted with a “proportionate response,” as the world seems so often to demand of Israel. Israel could have said, “We will wait until we see how much aid China, India and the 1.5 billion Muslims in the world gave and send a proportionate response.” But no, Israel did not wait or give a proportionate response because nothing about Israel and the Jewish people is proportionate—not her number of Nobel Prize winners, or number of doctors or scientists or high tech start ups or patents that save lives and make the world better in so many ways. Nothing about Israel is proportionate at all—least of all her heart!

Mati Goldstein—commander of Israel’s Zaka medical mission to Haiti, the only functioning medical facility in Haiti—said that his team had continued to work throughout Shabbat. “We did everything to save lives, despite Shabbat. People asked, ‘Why are you here? There are no Jews here,’ but we are here because the Torah orders us to save lives…We are desecrating Shabbat with pride to save lives.” It’s heartening that the 1st baby to be born in Haiti after the earthquake—born in Israel’s field hospital—was named “Israel” by the family in gratitude.  

Yes, life has its challenges and its joys. Life cycles again and again between darkness and light. But if we harden our hearts to help us get through the dark, we risk the danger of losing ourselves. In the beginning of today’s Torah portion, God tells Moses, Bo el Paro, “Come to Pharaoh.” The Sefas Emes in his commentary (Y’chaheyn P’eyr) brings the wisdom of his wife Feiga, who says the Torah did not use the language, Leych el Paro, “Go to Pharaoh,” because Gd knew how difficult this was going to be for Moses, and in effect, told Moses, “Come with me, and the 2 of us together will go to Pharaoh!”

The message is that if we don’t allow our hearts to harden, to become insensitive to the plight of others, when life will throws a difficult challenge at us, Gd will say to us too, “Come with me, and the 2 of us together will get through this!” May we all be open to walk with Gd through the challenges of life. Amen!

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