From: Netvort@aol.com
Sent: Friday, August 19, 2005 3:26 AM
To: JoshHoff@aol.com
Subject: Netvort : parshas Vaeschanan, 5765




                                               
                                                  No Admittance

              By Rabbi Joshua (subterraneously known as The Hoffer) Hoffman

                  
                   In solidarity and empathy with our brethren in eretz Yisroel.


 In the beginning of this week’s parsha, Moshe pleads with God to let him enter the Holy Land, but God does not grant his request. The Midrash Rabbah notes that not only did Moshe not merit to enter the Holy Land, he did not merit to be buried there, either, in contrast to Yosef, who was buried there. Although the midrash does not mention this, there is a certain irony here, because Moshe, as the Torah tells us in parshas Beshalach, was the one who took Yosef’s bones out of Egypt in order to bury them in the Holy Land, and, still, Yoseph’s remains were buried there while Moshe’s were not. What was the reason for this difference ? The midrash explains that God said, let the bones of Yosef, who admitted to his origins in the Holy Land, be buried there, and let not Moshe, who did not admit to his connection to the land, be buried there. When Yosef was taken from his prison cell and brought before Pharaoh to interpret his dreams, he said that he had been kidnapped from the land of the Ivrim, or Hebrews, whereas when Yisro asked his daughters to identify the man who had saved them from the shepherds, they said that an Egyptian man saved them. Rabbi Mordechai Rogov, in his Ateres Mordechai, explains that Yosef, in arguing his innocence of the charges brought against him by the wife of Potiphar, said that his place of origin and family roots testify that he could not have been involved in the abomination of violating his master’s wife. However, when Moshe  heard Yisro’s daughters say that an Egyptian man saved them, he did not protest and say that only a Hebrew, with roots in the Holy land, and not an Egyptian, could have intervened to save people’s lives.


 Although Rabbi Rogov’s explanation of the midrash carries an important message in Jewish pride, it is somewhat problematic, because Moshe was not present when Yisro’s daughters referred to him as an Egyptian man ! Of course, Yisro may have told Moshe what they said when he did arrive at his tent, and at that time Moshe did not protest what they said, but that is not really what the midrash says. Rather, the midrash seems to be saying that it was the reaction of Yisro’s daughters to Moshe for which he was called to task. When Moshe saved them from their attackers, apparently, they perceived him to be an Egyptian, and that is why they referred to him as an Egyptian in response to their father’s question. We need to understand, then, why, in fact, Moshe appeared this way to them, and why it was the reason for his not being buried in Eretz Yisroel.


 I believe that this midrash needs to be understood as being in accordance with another midrash, which we have mentioned in the past (see Netvort to parshas Emor, 5760, available at Torahheights.com). The midrash I am referring to (discussed at length by Avigdor Shinan in a volume entitled Kedushas HaChaim Ve Cheiruf HaNefesh, edited by Gafni and Ravitzki, Jerusalem, 1993) says that the ultimate reason for God’s refusing Moshe admittance to Eretz Yisroel was the fact that he killed the Egyptian who he saw attacking a Hebrew slave. Although one could argue that this midrash is in conflict with the more popular midrash, which says that Moshe killed the Egyptian through use of the ‘shem hamefurash,’ or God’s name, we have argued (in Netvort to parshas Emor, 5760) that the two midrashim can, in fact, be reconciled. Moreover, although the Torah tells us that God denied Moshe entrance to Eretz Yisroel because of the incident at the waters of Merivah, in which he struck the rock instead of speaking to it, Rambam explained that Moshe’s sin consisted in becoming angry at an inappropriate time. This character fault is arguably the same character fault that was behind what the midrash refers to as Moshe’s inappropriate killing of the Egyptian slavemaster.

 When Moshe fled Egypt because he heard that Pharaoh learned of his killing the Egyptian, he must, in fact, have had the appearance of an Egyptian. When Yisro’s daughters saw him beat back their attackers, they very likely thought that only an Egyptian would have an aggressive-enough nature to take them on in battle. They may have also remembered the reports of someone who was wanted by the authorities for killing a slavemaster. It never occurred to them that someone from the Hebrew nation, with roots in the land of Cana’an, could have had done such an act, and, therefore they assumed that he was an Egyptian. If Moshe did hear Yisro’s daughters refer to him in this way, he could not have protested that only a Hebrew would be involved in saving a life, because he had, in fact, killed someone himself. Although he had killed the Egyptian in order to save his fellow Jew, he could have used different means to do so, as the midrash seems to indicate by saying that God would not forgive him for killing the Egyptian. It was, thus, not simply the lack of national pride that prevented Moshe from being buried in Egypt, but the fact that, by killing the Egyptian he had committed an act that belied the character of his nation.


 Based on our explanation of the midrash, we can, perhaps, understand why Moshe was so eager to set aside the three cities of refuge on the western side of the Jordan, to protect the life of the inadvertant murderer from the ‘goel ha-dam,’ bent on avenging the blood of his deceased relative (Devorim 4:41-43). He designated these cities even though they would not become operative until the three such cities on the eastern side of the Jordan would be designated, after he died and the nation entered the land. Moshe understood, through his punishment for killing the Egyptian, how important the preservation of human life is for the maintenance of society. The Rambam, in his Laws of Murder and the Preservation of Life, 4:9, in fact, writes that although there are worse crimes than bloodshed, none causes such destruction to civilized society as bloodshed. It was, in fact, the assassination of Gedaliah, the governor of Yehudah after the destruction of the first Temple, that, in the Rambam’s words, in his Laws of Fasts, 5: 2, constituted the extinguishing of the last remaining ember of Yisroel’s independence, thus making their exile complete. Perhaps, then, Moshe understood that despite the fact that he had killed the Egyptian in order to save an innocent life, he, as the leader of the nation, had to project the notion of the paramount ideal of the preservation of the human life, and could therefore not lead the nation into the land. By designating the three cities of refuge on the western side of the Jordan, he was teaching this message to the nation before he died.



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

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