Shabbat Shalom Weekly
Torah Portion: Shoftim
Connection Between Lego and Mitzvot
by Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein
Constructive play for children involves making things no one has ever seen before. It involves taking basic building blocks or shapes and creating something new, something imaginative and creative. In short, something that is an expression of the children themselves. Constructive play serves to focus the minds of children, leading them to invent and discover new possibilities.
The benefits are extraordinary. Studies show that constructive play enhances spatial awareness, encourages critical thinking and reasoning, improves focus and patience, helps develop maths and science skills, boosts language and literacy, and builds confidence.
Perhaps one reason why the effects of construction toys on young minds is so powerful and far-reaching is that life itself is about building. What we build changes over the years – we go from building toy tractors and robots to building families and friendships, homes and careers, knowledge and understanding, reputation and legacy. And our construction play only ends the day we leave this world.
Interestingly, the Mishna refers to great Torah scholars as “builders”. The Talmud (Shabbat 114a) says this is because Torah scholars are involved in the building of the world. Rav Yerucham Levovitz explains that every mitzvah is a separate building block in perfecting the world, and in constructing the unique masterpiece that is our lives. Each action towards the fulfilment of a mitzvah is another brick in the edifice, which is made up of all of these good deeds created both in this world and the next world. Through mitzvot we are able to build an edifice of spirituality and morality in this world, and an edifice of reward in the next world. Life is a process of building, brick by brick, mitzvah by mitzvah, action by action.
This week’s parsha discusses the mitzvah of building an altar, a mizbeiach, to God. It specifies that this altar cannot be made out of a single rock or slab of stone, in Hebrew a matzeiva. Rather, it must comprise various pieces of stone, constructed together to create the edifice. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch explains that whereas a solid piece of rock represents the natural, God-given state of the world, the altar, assembled piecemeal, is a testament to human effort and ingenuity. He says life is not about what God gives to us, but rather what we give to God. Of course, it is important to recognise God’s hand in nature, to appreciate the balance and beauty of the natural world, and acknowledge all of the tools and opportunities that God has blessed us with. But, the ultimate purpose of life is to use everything that God has given us to serve Him.
The heart and soul of Judaism is the concept of “mitzvah”. A mitzvah isn’t just a good deed; it’s more accurately translated as a “commandment”. The purpose of life as a Jew is to follow the will of Hashem through the mitzvot; to serve Him with everything that we have. Of course, there are many blessings that come from a life dedicated to serving God – hope and faith, peace and tranquillity, purpose and a sense of personal and spiritual fulfilment. But, these are simply the natural by-products. Judaism’s focus is on the service itself, service for its own sake. Rabbi Hirsch says our central mission in life is to build the world in its entirety as an altar to serve God, to dedicate our existence to the One who created us.
It is interesting to note that for the Temple service, we use a mizbeiach, an altar constructed from multiple stones, yet for a tombstone, we use a matzeiva, a solid piece of rock. Why is that? Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, in his commentary on this week’s parsha, explains that the altar built from multiple stones represents a work in progress, while the solid piece of rock represents completed work. While we are alive on this earth, our lives are a work in progress. We are in this world to toil, to accumulate as many mitzvot as possible, to build, brick by brick, a beautiful edifice bearing testament to a productive, fulfilling, meaningful life. Only when we leave this world is our task complete – represented by the complete, fully formed slab of stone that is our tombstone.
The Mishna in Pirkei Avot says: “A single moment of repentance and good deeds in this world is greater than all of the World to Come, and a single moment of bliss in the World to Come is greater than all of this world.” This world is a world of doing. The world of the mizbeach. We need to use our time on this earth to build, to accumulate as many mitzvot as possible, because they are all we will take with us when we leave it. In the next world, the world of the matzeiva, there is no doing, no building, only being. Indeed, the reward and the tranquillity of spirit can only be fully realised in the next world. This world is filled with the turbulence of doing and creating and fulfilling mitzvot. The next is the world of rest and of receiving reward. This is the world of the mizbeach, of the altar, of building brick by brick. The next is the world of the matzeiva, the completed work.
Our work is never complete while we are alive. Our work in this world never ends, there is no concept of spiritual retirement. The Talmud relates how Rabbi Akiva, who, in his old age, lost 24 000 students to a plague, and began again from scratch, rebuilding his yeshiva with five students. There is so much to do, so much we can do – so many opportunities to build. Our lives are always a work in progress.
Only when we leave this world for the next do we finally get to enjoy the fruits of our labour. But, there’s also a sense of loss in not being able to achieve anything else, in no longer having the opportunity to build and do mitzvot. There’s an interesting halacha that a man who visits the cemetery should tuck in his tzitzit so they cannot be seen, out of sensitivity to those who have left this world and no longer have the opportunity to perform mitzvot.
We, on the other hand, have that opportunity. We have mitzvot and we have life. We have the raw materials, and we are expected to do something with them, to build something. Something only we can build, and that enables us to fulfil our sense of purpose. The altar of our lives is waiting to be built.
Every Life is Precious
by Rabbi Yissocher Frand
A murder victim is found in a field out in the open country between two cities. There are no witnesses and no clues to the identity of his assailant. The Torah demands an exact measurement to determine the closest city. The elders of that city have to declare, “We were not derelict in our responsibilities to this traveler. Our hands did not spill this innocent blood.” Then they go through a process of atonement called the eglah arufah, the decapitated calf.
These laws seem to be incongruously wedged in between two chapters that talk about going out to war. What is it doing there?
Rav Yaakov Yitzchak Ruderman, my Rosh Yeshivah, explains that the Torah is teaching us a lesson. In times of war, life becomes incredibly cheap. People are dying left and right, men, women, children, soldiers, civilians. Life somehow loses it value.
Therefore, right in the middle of the discussion of war, the Torah interrupts to present the laws of eglah arufah, laws that underscore the extreme preciousness of each individual life. An entire city must bring atonement for the loss of one unidentified person who may or may not have passed through unnoticed.
The Shemen Hatov suggests that this may be why Yaakov learned the laws of eglah arufah with Yosef on their last day together. Perhaps Yaakov’s soul felt intuitively that Yosef would become the leader of a huge and powerful nation, that he would have the power of life and death over millions and millions of people. Therefore, it was important to teach him about eglah arufah to impress on him the importance of every single human life.
Rav Chaim Soloveitchik, the rav of Brisk, once called a special meeting in the shul. “My dear friends, we have a serious problem. The Czar’s police have arrested a young Jewish boy.”
“What did he do?” asked a congregant.
“He burned the Czar in effigy.”
The man slapped his forehead in frustration.
“Regardless of what he has done,” Rav Chaim continued, “the boy is in danger. We must get him out immediately. It is a question of money. Just money.”
“How much money?”
Rav Chaim mentioned the sum. It was an exorbitant amount, and people gasped audibly.
“We are faced with a great mitzvah,” said Rav Chaim. “This is true pidyon shevuyim, ransoming captives.”
“Who is the boy?” one man wanted to know. “Is he a yeshivah boy?”
“No,” said Rav Chaim.
“Is he a member of our shul? Is he someone we know?”
“No.”
“Is he religious?”
“I’m afraid not. At least not yet.”
One of the men threw up his hands in frustration. “How will we raise money for a boy like that? And such a large sum!”
“I don’t know,” Reb Chaim said, “but somehow it must be done. I am not coming to shul on Yom Kippur until the money is collected.”
Time passed, and only a small amount of money was raised.
Yom Kippur came. It was time for Kol Nidrei, and Rav Chaim still had not come to shul. The elders of the community went to his house.
“I told you,” he said. “I am not coming until you raise the money. It doesn’t matter if the boy is religious or not. A Jewish soul is a Jewish soul!”
The community raised the money to ransom the boy.
Every life is precious.
It’s No Joy To Destroy
by Nesanel Yoel Safran
From this week’s Torah portion:
We shouldn’t destroy, deface, damage or waste things for no good reason. In this week’s Torah portion (Deut. 20:19) we see how even an army in the middle of a war, when there’s destruction all around, should be careful not to wantonly destroy fruit trees that can bring benefit to the world. The Torah way is not to needlessly ruin property – even our own.
In our story, a girl gets a wake-up call on what it is to waste.
Cindy, the assistant counselor, was doing her usual evening rounds when she was startled by some crashing sounds. She turned to see one of the campers flinging things off ‘Peak’s Cliff’ – what the campers had nicknamed the sharp drop-off into the rocky ravine below the hillside campgrounds.
“Hey, stop that!” Cindy shouted.
The kid looked her way.
“You’re destroying camp property!” Cindy went on.
The kid threw her head back and let out a loud, rolling laugh. “That’s what you think,” she said. “All this stuff I’m trashin’ is mine.”
By now Cindy had moved closer and saw that the kid had a big pile of stuff next to her, and craning her head, she could see an almost just-as-big pile on the valley floor. “Okay … even if it is yours, why are just ruining all that stuff?”
“It’s fun to watch it smash — see?” the kid giggled as she flung a couple of CD disks like Frisbees into the stony chasm below.
“But don’t you need your things?” Cindy asked, alarmed.
“Nah!” the kid laughed. “Camp’s over in just two more days and I don’t feel like lugging all my stuff home with me – besides, I’ve got newer, better stuff back at home,” she said, swinging her hair dryer by the cord like a cowboy’s lasso and letting it fly with a whoop.
“Stop … you can’t do that!” Cindy cried out.
“Why not? Like I said ... the stuff is mine.” The kid snapped her bubblegum for emphasis.
“Even so, who says you can pollute like that? Besides, there are a lot of better things to do with things you don’t want.”
“Like what?” the girl asked as she shot a pair of swimming goggles by their rubber head-strap like a slingshot out and over the rocks. Then she grabbed a few more CD disks and, without looking at them, began to swing them back and forth like a discus thrower winding up.
“Well … like give the stuff away to people who could use it,” Cindy said. “I know that camp down the road for underprivileged kids would gladly take most of your stuff — I’ll even bring it there myself if you want me to.”
“I dunno…”
“Or at least sell it or something, but just to waste and destroy perfectly good property is, like wrong, you know?”
“Mmm … maybe,” the girl said, for the first time looking like she was taking Cindy seriously. “I guess you can try to give away the rest of this stuff to those needy kids if you want. But first,” she winked, “I’m just going to give these disks and a couple of other stuff a final fling.”
“But why?” Cindy asked.
“Just ‘cuz,” the kid said. “Besides, who would even want these?” she held the disks up to her face, and blanched. “O’m’gosh! I can’t believe I almost did that. These are all my original software discs — I must have taken them by mistake. If I threw these out, my dad would … oh, boy! Y’know what? I am done trashing things — you’re right, it’s dumb — you need some help carting this stuff to those kids who could use it for something good?”
Discussion Questions
Ages 3-5
Q. How did the camper feel at first about destroying her things?
A. She didn’t feel like there was anything wrong with it.
Q. How did she feel in the end?
A. She felt that wasting things that people could use was wrong.
Ages 6-9
Q. What life-lesson could someone learn from this story?
A. Destroying things for no good reason — especially things that others could benefit from — is wasteful and not right.
Q. If it was the kid’s own property, what was wrong with her destroying it?
A. True, it was hers — and it wasn’t as bad as if she was trashing somebody else’s things — but destroying good, usable things, besides being bad for the environment, shows a lack of appreciation for the good that we have, as well as a callousness to others who could benefit from these things.
Ages 10 and Up
Q. Is it okay to ‘lightly’ vandalize public property, i.e. spraying graffiti, etc.?
A. Even though it is something many people take lightly – it’s still not ethical. Public property is for the benefit of all, and no one person has the right to deface it.
Q. Do you think a person has the right to harm or destroy his or her own body? Why or why not?
A. Our bodies are our own – and they’re not. Our bodies are a gift from God, who gave them to us ‘on loan’ to house our souls and to have the chance to spiritually grow from the experience of physical life. Like any ‘property on loan’ we have to take good care of our bodies and certainly have no more right to harm or destroy our own body than that of anybody else.
Quote of the Week
“Once you have distanced yourself from anger, the quality of humility will enter your heart”
— Nachmanides
Joke of the Week
Chaim Yankel got his first job in the City and was trying his best to blend in with some of his eccentric colleagues. He came into work early one morning to find Jim hanging upside down from the ceiling.
“What are you doing?” Chaim Yankel asked.
“Shh,” Jim said, “I’m a light bulb — I’m acting crazy to get a few days off, as there is an out of town wedding I need to go to until Tuesday.”
A minute later the boss walked by and asked Jim what he was doing.
“I’m a light bulb!” Jim exclaimed.
“You’re going crazy,” he said. “Take a few days off, and come back when you are less stressed.”
With that, Jim jumped down and started walking out. Chaim Yankel started following him whereupon the boss asked where he was going.
Chaim Yankel replied, “I can’t work in the dark.”
Shabbat Shalom!
Staff: Rabbi Yosef David, Rabbi Shmuel Greenwald, Mimi David, Shelley Dean, Caren Goldstein, Orit Kogan
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