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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