From: Netvort@aol.com
Sent: Friday, January 13, 2006 2:25 AM
To: JoshHoff@aol.com
Subject: Netvort : parshas Vayechi, 5766





                                                     Down to Earth

                      By Rabbi Joshua (patriotically known as The Hoffer) Hoffman


  Ya'akov, sensing that his life is nearing its end, calls for Yosef and asks him to take an oath that he will not bury him in Egypt, but, rather, carry his remains back to the land of Cana'an and bury him with his ancestors. Yosef promises to carry out his request, and takes an oath. Why was Ya'akov so insistent that he not be buried in Egypt? The Midrash HaGodol, a medieval compendium, cites the Mishnas Rabbi Eliezer, which says that Ya'akov did not want the tribes to say that since Ya'akov allowed himself to be buried in Egypt, it must have some holiness to it, and, therefore, there is no problem in remaining there, rather than going to the Holy Land.  Rabbi Elie Munk, in his work The Call of the Torah, does not cite this midrash, but gives a similar reason as the primary motivation that Ya'akov had for not being buried in Egypt, but, rather, in the Holy Land. First, he says, he wanted the Egyptians to see that his children did not view Egypt as their homeland, but still retained their connection to the land of their forefathers. Moreover, he wanted to instill in their hearts, and the hearts of their children, the conviction that their true place was in Eretz Yisroel. Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch, in his commentary, says further that Ya'akov was telling his children, who were becoming entrenched in the land, as the Torah tells us at the end of parshas Vayigash, that while they may want to live in Egypt, he does not even want to be buried there.


  Rabbi Munk then mentions a series of reasons mentioned by Rashi, which, he says, are of a different nature altogether. The first of these reasons, taken from a midrash, is that Ya'akov knew that the soil in Egypt would be infested with lice during the third plague, and it was repugnant to Ya'akov to be buried under such conditions. According to Rabbi Munk, Ya'akov, by being concerned about the condition his body would be in even after death, was making known his view that, since the body envelopes the soul, it deserves to be treated with the greatest of respect, even after death. Although this insight of Rabbi Munk seems plausible, I believe that there is another aspect to this reasoning of Ya'akov, which reflects the reasoning mentioned in the Midrash HaGodol which we mentioned earlier. Why, after all, was Ya'akov concerned only about the plague of lice, and not the other plagues that would be brought upon Egypt? Rabbi Zalman Sorotzkin, in his commentary Oznayim LeTorah, explains that this was the only one of the ten plagues that came to the land of Goshen, the section of Egypt in which  the Jews lived. He cites the commentaries of Rambam and Rabbeinu Yonah to Avos, 1:5, who both say that they have a tradition to this effect, and he also brings a proof to this tradition from Psalms, chapter 105, which mentions the various plagues by which the Egyptians were punished. We read, there, in verse 31 : "He spoke and hordes of beasts arrived, and lice throughout their borders." What Rabbi Sorotzkin does not explain is why the lice did, in fact, enter Goshen and infest its soil. I would like to suggest an explanation, based on an idea I once heard from Rabbi Shubert Spero, who was the spiritual leader of Young Israel of Cleveland for over thirty years, and is now a professor of Jewish thought at Bar Ilan University, in Israel.


  The Midrash Rabbah to parshas Va'eyra tells us that the reason the Egyptians were smitten with the plague of locusts is that they made the Hebrew slaves plant crops for them, and now the locusts would come and destroy those crops. Although this midrash is usually understood to be an application of the principle of measure for measure, Rabbi Spero suggested that there is another dimension involved. In parshas Beha'aloscha, when the people complained about the manna, they said, 'we remember the fish that we ate in Egypt free of charge ; the cucumbers, the melons, leeks, onions and garlic" (Bamidbar 11:5). It is remarkable that when referring to the fish, they used only one generic word, but when they referred to vegetables, they enumerated five different kinds. Rabbi Spero explained that there is a psychological insight here. The people, he said, had developed a sense of pride in the vegetable patches they had grown ! In fact, the midrash tells us that four-fifths of the people did not want to leave Egypt, and died during the plague of darkness. One of the reasons for the locusts destroying the crops, therefore, was to remove any reason for the people to want to remain in Egypt. Perhaps, then, we can explain the infestation of the soil of Goshen with lice in a similar way. The reason for this was in order to make that soil unfit for use as a burial ground, so that the people would not want to stay there in deference to their ancestors’ graves being there. Thus, Ya'akov's concern about the soil of Egypt becoming infested with lice, besides reflecting a sense of respect for the body that encased his soul during his lifetime, also reflected a concern for his descendants’ attachment to Eretz Yisroel, their true homeland. He understood that the lice would invade Goshen in order to make its soil unusable for burial, and took that as an indication that he should not be buried in that area and thereby  give his descendants any reason to want to remain there on a permanent basis.


  Following our approach to the midrash cited by Rashi, we can understand why, in the beginning of the parsha, when the Torah relates the number of years that Ya’akov lived, the name it uses for him is his original one, Ya’akov, while when it goes on to relate his conversation with Yosef about where he should be buried, it refers to him by his later name, Yisroel. A number of commentaries, including the Netziv, explain that when the Torah refers to him as Ya’akov, it is dealing with him as an individual, and when it refers to him as Yisroel, it is dealing with him in his role as the father of the nation. If Ya’akov, in petitioning to Yosef, had merely been worried about the fate of his body in its burial ground, the Torah would have used the term Ya’akov. However, following our approach, even the reason of the future lice infestation of Goshen was connected with a fear of the nation becoming attached to the land of Goshen to the extent that they would not want to leave when the time of redemption arrived. From this perspective, it was proper to switch from the name of Ya’akov to the name of Yisroel, reflecting the concern that the patriarch had for his people’s continued devotion to their ancestral home.



  Please address all correspondence to the author (Rabbi Hoffman) with the following address - JoshHoff @ AOL.com.

  To subscribe to Netvort, send a message with subject line subscribe, to Netvort@aol.com. To unsubscribe, send message with subject line unsubscribe, to the same address.