From: Netvort@aol.com
Sent: Friday, February 06, 2004 1:17 AM
To: JoshHoff@aol.com
Subject: Netvort : parshas Beshalach, 5764




                                  Which Side Are You On, Anyway?


                    By Rabbi Joshua (liberally known as The Hoffer) Hoffman

                   With gratitude to the Almighty, beginning our seventh year !


In memory of my mother, Yoninah bas Zevi Hirsh, a'h, whose yohrzeit was on Thursday, the 13th of Shevat. May her memory be a blessing.


At the end of this week's parsha, we read of Amalek's attack on the Jewish people. In preparation for the battle, Moshe ascends a hill and observes the battle. His hands become heavy, so Aharon and Chur bring a rock for him to sit on, and they support his arms, one of them standing to his right and the other standing to his left. One may ask if the problem was that Moshe's arms were weighing heavily on him, why did he need to sit down? Shouldn't it have sufficed for him to have Aharon and Chur support his arms? Rabbi Naphtoli Zevi Yehudah Berlin, the Netziv, in his Ha'amek Davar, answers that, according to the Talmud, Moshe was ten amos (cubits) high (around 20 feet!) and so Aharon and Chur, who were of regular height, could not reach him unless he sat down ! On a different note, the midrash says that Moshe sat on a rock, rather than on a cushion or a pillow, to demonstrate his empathy for the painful battle that his people had to wage at this time. Rabbi Meir Juzint, z'l, who was the assistant dean of students at Hebrew Theological College in Skokie, Illinois, once told me that Moshe sat down as a lesson to future leaders, that they need to lower themselves, on an outward level, and come down to the people, in order to understand their problems and feel part of their suffering.

Rabbi Mordechai Elon, in his Mikdash Mordechai to parshas Beshalach, points out that the two people who supported Moshe's arms had seemingly opposite character traits. While Aharon is characterized by the rabbis as a man who loved peace and pursued peace, Chur is characterized as a kanai, a zealot, who stood up to the Jews as they worshiped the eigel - the golden calf - and paid for that opposition with his life. Aharon, on the other hand, acquiesced to the people's request and actually made the eigel for them. The Talmud in Sanedrin, 7a, says that Aharon did this because the people had already killed Chur, who was a prophet, and if they would now kill him due to his opposition to the eigel, they would have killed both a kohein and a prophet. A dual crime of this nature, he felt, could not be repented for, and, therefore, in order to save them, he built the eigel for them. There is, actually, a difference of opinion between Rashi and the Tosaphists, in their commentaries to that Talmudic passage, whether Aharon acted correctly or not. Interestingly, my teacher, Rav Aharon Soloveitchik, felt that Rashi was more correct in his interpretation of the Talmudic passage and, in effect, of Aharon's behavior. According to Rashi, the Talmud says that what Aharon did constituted an unjustified compromise, while according to Tosafos, he acted properly. R. Aharon felt that Rashi's approach to understanding that passage was the more correct one, and that Aharon acted improperly, albeit with good intentions in mind, when he made the eigel.

R.Aharon's comment on this Talmudic passage is in consonance with an interpretation of a passage in the mishnah at the end of Uktzin that he often quoted from his father, Rav Moshe Soloveitchik. The mishnah tells us that God did not find a vessel that contains blessing as good as peace. Rav Moshe noted that peace is referred to as a vessel, which is a container of something. In order for peace to be a blessing, said Rav Moshe, it enclose emes - truth. Rav Moshe said this after the 'peace in our time' speech made by Chamberlain after he concluded the disastrous Munich pact with Hitler, which proved to be a major factor in bringing about World War Two. Similarly, Aharon's trait of shalom was not appropriate in the face of the idolatry which the Jews wanted to practice.

Rabbi Elon, as we mentioned, makes a similar point. He says that the reason Moshe had Aharon on one side and Chur on the other was precisely because of their differing character traits. While peace is a wonderful thing, there are times when following that course will result in compromising one's beliefs to the point of non- recognition. As the famous literary critic Lionel Trilling once said, some people are so open-minded that their brains fall out! Thus, when Moshe stood on the mountain with his hands uplifted, in an attempt to direct the heart and minds of his people to God as they fought Amalek, he projected the need for both traits, their use determined by the particular circumstance one is facing. Although Rabbi Elon does not mention this, it would appear that the first person mentioned in the verse, Aharon supported Moshe's right arm, while the second person mentioned, Chur, supported his left arm. Perhaps the idea here is that the trait of peace should be the predominant one, used in most instances, just as the right arm is the stronger of the two arms a person has. Chur, representing the trait of zealotry, supported the left arm, which is the weaker arm, because his trait should only be used in special circumstances, when following the path of peace is not possible if one wishes to maintain his fundamental Jewish identity.



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

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