Va'etchanan Vol.30 No.45.qxp_Layout 1 21/06/2018 16:35 Page 1

28 July 2018 16 5778 Shabbat ends 9.53pm Jerusalem 8.19pm

Volume 30 No. 45 Va’etchanan Artscroll p.958 | p.1196 Hertz p.755 | Haftarah p.776 Soncino p.1008 | Haftarah p.1028 Shabbat Nachamu

In loving memory of Yisrael Shmuel ben Yirmaya Yehoshuah

“And these matters that I command you today shall be upon your heart. You shall teach them thoroughly to your children…” (Devarim 6:6-7). 1 Va'etchanan Vol.30 No.45.qxp_Layout 1 21/06/2018 16:35 Page 2

Sidrah Summary: Va’etchanan

1st Aliya (Kohen) – Devarim 3:23-4:4 Point to Consider: What is the link between Moshe recalls that after defeating Sichon and observing Shabbat and from Egypt? in battle (see Devarim 2:31-3:11), he prayed to be (see to 5:15) allowed to enter the Land of Cana’an (see Rashi). 5th Aliya (Chamishi) – 5:19-6:3 God refused Moshe’s request, allowing him only to see the Land from afar. Moshe tells the people Moshe recalls that the heads of the tribes and the to observe the mitzvot, which will allow them to elders asked him to relate God’s commandments inherit the Land and he reminds them of the to them directly; they feared they would die if they punishments they witnessed when the nation continued to hear commandments directly from strayed after the idol of Pe’or (see 25:3). God. God agreed to their request. (Shishi) 2nd Aliya (Levi) – 4:5-40 6th Aliya – 6:4-25 Moshe tells the people that studying The paragraph of Shema Yisrael is stated, in and keeping the mitzvot will raise their stature which the Jewish people are enjoined to believe in in the eyes of the other nations. He warns them the Oneness of God, to love Him, to teach Torah not to forget the historic revelation at Mount to their children, to wear tefilin and to affix Sinai, in which God Himself spoke the Ten mezuzot to their doorposts. Moshe warns the Commandments from the midst of the fire. Moshe people not to allow the material attractions of the adds that they must not fashion any idols, and Land to cause them to neglect their service of warns them against worshipping the sun, the God, nor to test Him like they did in the desert. moon and the stars. He warns them that failure to 7th Aliya (Shevi’i) – 7:1-11 heed this will result in exile from the Land. When the come into the Land of However, God will never abandon His nation; they Cana’an, they will successfully overcome seven will always be able to return to Him. great and mighty nations. Moshe warns them not 3rd Aliya (Shlishi) – 4:41-49 to enter into a covenant with these nations, nor to Moshe sets aside three cities to the east of the intermarry with them. Israel is God’s chosen River. These cities are to provide refuge nation, whom He lovingly brought out of Egypt. for a person who has killed accidentally and is Question: What were the names of the seven fleeing from the relatives of the deceased. nations that occupied Cana’an? (7:1) Answer on 4th Aliya (Revi’i) – 5:1-5:18 bottom of page 6. Moshe again stresses that the people stood Haftarah “face to face” with God at the time of the giving of Taken from the book of Yeshaya, this is the first of the Torah at . Moshe recalls the the seven ‘haftarot of consolation’ read after Ten Commandments: 1. Faith in God’s existence Tisha B’Av. It starts with God’s instruction to 2. Prohibition of idol worship 3. Prohibition of the prophets “Comfort, comfort My people” swearing false oaths 4. Keeping Shabbat (Nachamu, nachamu, ami) and goes on to 5. Honouring one’s parents. Prohibition of: prophesy that God will return to Jerusalem and 6. Murder 7. Committing adultery 8. Stealing bring an end to the exile. 9. Bearing false testimony 10. Coveting what others have.

United Synagogue Daf Hashavua Produced by US Living & Learning together with the Rabbinical Council of the United Synagogue Editor: Chaim Gross Editor-in-Chief: Rabbi Baruch Davis Editorial Team: Daniel Sturgess, Michael Laitner, Sharon Radley Available also via email US website www.theus.org.uk ©United Synagogue To sponsor Daf Hashavua please contact Loraine Young on 020 8343 5653, or [email protected] If you have any comments or questions regarding Daf Hashavua please email [email protected]

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A Natural State by Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet, Mill Hill United Synagogue

Faith, it is said, is not a pill We are all born with faith. It is neither acquired nor that we swallow if we find taught; it is a most natural state. This feeling is ourselves washed in the inside all of us; we only need to know how to of affliction. Actually access it. Moshe teaches us that passive faith is faith is a muscle that we only part of the picture. The greater manifestation can flex when rising to of faith is in not hesitating to speak to God and the challenges of life. By to ask of Him. Even if the answer we seek may definition, it is not something not be forthcoming, we strive to accept, beyond external, something we can reach for ‘from the our own anticipated outcome, that God knows medicine cabinet’ in a time of need. Rather it is what is in our best interest; we need to yield to something deeply engraved in the human heart that reality. This means that we ought to strike a and soul. balance between accepting that we cannot know enough to comprehend God’s answers and the conviction to believe and care enough to ask A wonderful example of this appears in this God the questions. week’s sidrah. Moshe tells the people, “I implored [va’etchanan] God to allow me to enter into the ” (Devarim 3:23). The commentaries In light of our own challenges, as we face our observe that the numerical value of the word own demons – inner and outer – we can attempt vaetchanan is 515 – this is the amount of times to bolster our spirits and vanquish our fears Moshe prayed to enter the Land. by discovering the freedom of the soul as experienced through faith. In a world filled with causes for worry and anxiety, we need the peace Even the fervent believer may be inclined to give of God standing guard over our hearts and minds. up praying after a while. 515 times over and again A sane, wholesome, practical working faith seems like a child who refuses to take ‘no’ for an guides us to do the will of God, knowing that God answer and persists incessantly in the hope that Himself is taking care of us. We therefore ought Mum or Dad will eventually relent. never to be afraid of anything, as we sing at the end of Adon Olam: “God is with me, I shall not However, that is not where the greatness of fear” (green siddur, p. 465). Moshe’s faith lay. It was in the number 516. The verse states: “God says to me [Moshe]; ‘It is too much for you. Do not continue to speak further to me about this matter’” (ibid. 3:26). Some commentaries deduce from this verse that had Moshe indeed ‘spoken further’ – had he beseeched just one more time – his request would have been granted. In all likelihood he was well aware of that. This would have surely made him wonder why God did not yield sooner. Perhaps the answer is that although one can evoke Divine compassion and maybe in the process alter destiny, the true believer also knows when to stop, when the best answer is actually ‘no’.

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Solutions in the Sidrah: The Theory Behind Amazon Go by Rabbi Yoni Birnbaum, Hadley Wood Jewish Community

In January of this year, retail many individual cases as to how to behave. giant Amazon once again What is left out elsewhere in the Torah that needs managed to find a way to to be included in this catch-all command? revolutionise the way we According to the Ramban ( shop. Unusually for Amazon, d. 1270), it would be impossible for the Torah to this venture, named Amazon directly address every single form of human Go, is a physical rather than interaction through specific mitzvot. Instead, it a virtual store. However, takes the approach of addressing many key there are no tills or staff manning the shop. areas individually, such as the prohibitions Instead, people scan their credit cards or phones against slandering others, taking revenge and at the entrance, and every move they make showing respect for the elderly. After that, it relies inside the store is monitored by a complex array upon this general command to always act in a of cameras, which cover every square inch of the correct and upright manner, and to go beyond premises. the strict letter of the law when doing so.

The most important piece of technology is the Amazon relies upon the fact that most people weight-sensors inside the shelves. The system behave honourably, even when they could knows the exact weight of every single item possibly get away with acting otherwise. As one and registers the discrepancy in the overall reviewer put it, a system which, “assumes ill weight of the shelf when something is removed, intent rather than merely detecting discrepancies automatically deducting it from the customer’s is not always a good design choice”. Seen in this account. It will also refund the money if the light, the Torah’s injunction to always do what is customer changes their mind and puts the item “upright in the eyes of God”, is intended to back on the shelf. provide the crucial legal grounds in order to inspire such correct human behaviour.

This part of the system has an interesting reliance upon human behavioural psychology. Theoretically, shoplifting would be possible. Place the right amount of sand in a sack and exchange it quickly for a yoghurt, and you might fool the system. But Amazon have designed these shops on the principle that most people would not go to that amount of effort in order to steal a yoghurt. Even more importantly, they have worked on the basic assumption that most people are honest individuals, rather than determined shoplifters.

This week’s sidrah contains the general commandment to “do what is upright in the eyes of God” (Devarim 6:18). The commentators query, however, what the purpose of this verse is. The Torah provides clear instruction in so

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Arguments for the Sake of Heaven: Part 3 by Rabbi Garry Wayland, Living & Learning Educator

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai inadvertently cause a ditch to be dug in the (c. 2nd century CE) was grass, which is considered a form of ploughing undoubtedly one of the most ( Beitzah 23b). Rabbi Shimon permits this famous of the Talmudic type of action, whereas Rabbi Yehuda forbids it. period. He was perhaps the foremost mystic of his era, Their argument is dependent on whether one from whose teachings the gives primacy to one’s intentions or to one’s , the foundational text of external actions. Rabbi Shimon says that to Jewish mysticism, is based. The celebrations of contravene the laws of Shabbat, one’s intention his life on Lag B’Omer provide inspiration for is a necessary condition, and so if an act is around the world. His own teacher Rabbi unforeseen, then it can be disregarded. Rabbi Akiva had lost 24,000 students, which had been Yehuda argues that although intention plays a a devastating blow for the entire Jewish people; role in the laws of Shabbat, more weight is given yet through the ‘five rabbis of the south’, whom to the actual outcomes, thus leading him to rule Rabbi Akiva taught in his later life, the teaching of strictly in cases like dragging the bench (a full Torah was re-established. Rabbi Shimon bar discussion of how we rule in practice is beyond Yochai was one of those students. the scope of this article).

His persona was so powerful that it is easy to Perhaps this also reflects their argument as to forget that Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai was not whether the Romans were a force for good in singular; throughout the Talmud he often appears their time or not. Rabbi Yehuda said that one alongside Rabbi Yehuda bar Ilai. They argue in should give primacy to deed, and the Jewish hundreds of cases. Perhaps their most famous population benefitted materially from the argument appears in the context of Rabbi Romans’ building of marketplaces and other Shimon’s flight from the Romans, who had infrastructure. Rabbi Shimon rejected this, banned public study of Torah. The two of them looking at thought as well as deed, and thus were sitting together with Rabbi Yosi and spoke out against the Romans. Yehuda ben Geirim: “Rabbi Yehuda (bar Ilai) proclaimed ‘How pleasant are the deeds of this [the Roman] nation: they built marketplaces, bridges and bathhouses’. Rabbi Shimon responded, ‘everything was done for their own benefit…’” (Talmud Shabbat 33b). After this conversation, Yehuda Ben Geirim reported Rabbi Shimon to the authorities; he was forced to flee, and subsequently spent 12 years in a cave with his son Elazar, living a miraculous existence engaged in intellectual and mystical pursuits.

Another of Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Yehuda’s famous arguments revolved around one of the fundamental principles of the laws of Shabbat. Hundreds of thousands of Jews gather near Is it permissible to do an activity that may result the tomb of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in Meron, in an unintended forbidden action, such as Northern Israel, to celebrate his yahrzeit dragging a bench across grass? Albeit the on Lag BaOmer. purpose of the action is moving the bench, it may

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Hope in Despair by Rabbi Chaim Gross, Editor, Daf Hashavua

In 135 CE, after three years Earth, razed to the ground, the Jewish people of resistance and defiance, would have to lower their expectations. Did God’s the Bar Kochba revolt presence really rest with them anymore? was brutally crushed by Hadrian’s Romans, who re-took Jerusalem. Shimon It is the ongoing life force, the neshama, which Bar Kochba (the leader of keeps the human body alive, fresh and functional. the uprising) and his men When a person dies and their neshama departs, retreated to the town of Beitar, but to no avail. The the immediate result is that the body decays. (Ta’anit 4:5) relates that there too the bloodshed was enormous, that the In Beitar, that did not happen, as the neshama Romans “went on killing until their horses were did not depart; the bodies did not decay. submerged in blood up to their nostrils”. The Jews took from this a message of national hope for the future. It indicated to them that the The pain of the bloodshed did not end at that nation was not like an empty body devoid of its point. The Romans refused to let the Jews bury spiritual essence. On the contrary, despite the those who had perished in Beitar. Finally, 17 years painful circumstances, they remained God’s later, on 15 Av, the Romans agreed to the burial. chosen nation, still able to access spirituality. The Babylonian Talmud (Bava Batra 121b) records that receiving this permission to bury Burying the dead was an important in is one of the reasons why yesterday – 15 Av (Tu its own right. However, it was this miraculous B’Av) – is known (along with ) as the indicator that rendered Tu B’Av such a happy happiest day in the Jewish calendar. day. The special neshama of the nation lived on, despite the terrible physical sacrifices. This seems puzzling, as Jewish life remained Hopes for a brighter future could still be in turmoil. The defeat of the rebellion was harboured. comprehensive. Surely the permission to bury was little more than a consolation, a drop of positivity in an ocean of despair?

Perhaps the answer lies in another detail of the burial. The Talmud states that those who came to Beitar to recover the bodies discovered a miracle. The bodies, despite being left for 17 years, had not decayed. What was the significance of this?

The Noda Be’Yehuda (Rabbi Yechezkel Landau d. 1793) explains that after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, there was a feeling that the nation’s spiritual hopes and aspirations had been banished to the annals of history. With the

Beit HaMikdash (Temple), God’s dwelling place on

Chivi, Yevusi Chivi,

irgashi, Emori, Kena'ani, Prizi, Kena'ani, Emori, irgashi, G Chitti, Answer:

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