YITRO 5777
BREAD OVER WATER
February 15, 2017
20 Shevat 5777
And Jethro Moses' father-in-law brought a burnt offering and Aaron came with all the elders of Israel to break bread before God with Moses' father-in-law [Exodus 18:12].
Cast your bread over the waters for after many days you will find it [Ecclesiastes 11:1].
The Torah portion this week begins with the arrival of Yitro (Jethro) in the Israelite camp. His mission was to bring Moses' wife and sons to reunite with Moses. It was to be a glorious family reunion. Yet the Torah offers us no description of that dynamic but focuses instead on the royal welcome accorded Yitro by Aaron and the elders. They prepared a great feast where together they broke bread.
The Midrash, in seeking to explain the sequence of events, asks, "Why the great emphasis on the welcome to Yitro?", couches its answer in the understanding of the above quoted verse from Ecclesiastes. The consensus is that it can't mean that we are to cast away our bread in the waters where it will go to waste. It's counter-intuitive to expect people to do that. In addition wasting bread violates the Biblical prohibition of "do not waste." The Rabbis thus interpreted this text as a charge to cast your bread where it will benefit those in need. It's the classic challenge of gemilut chasadim, of performing an act of kindness without expectation of any reward. Yet the verse indicates that there is payoff for performing this mitzva, and the answer is "what goes around comes around." In this case Yitro was rewarded for his act of sustaining a stranger, who happened to be Moses.
The Torah records that Moses fled Egypt to escape the wrath of Pharaoh. He arrives in Midian and finds himself at the community well where the shepherds water their flock. Yitro entrusted this task to his daughters who always returned at a later hour. In this instance, Moses helped the daughters to roll off the boulder covering the well and helped them water the flock, and they returned home earlier than usual. When Yitro was told of the stranger, an Egyptian man, he immediately dispatched them to invite this stranger to break bread with them.
Yitro's willingness to "cast his bread" over the water, i.e., to perform the mitzvah of welcoming a stranger, was repaid by the welcome accorded him by the Israelites.
This Midrashic take on the verse in Ecclesiastes continues to resonate in two traditional Jewish commitments. American Jews dwelling in safety responded to the needs of Jews trapped in Europe. Vast sums of money were sent over the water, i.e., the Atlantic Ocean, to help sustain their co-religionists. At times it was outright funds to help feed friends and relatives; at times it was via contributions to organizations such as HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) that arranged the immigration for many Jews and their families.
As the Zionist movement began to flourish, American Jewry sent significant "bread" over the Atlantic and the Mediterranean initially to support the Jewish presence in Eretz Yisrael. After the State was declared, even more funds were cast over the waters to sustain a fledgling Israel whose resources were woefully limited.
These breads cast over the waters were acts of gemilut chesed performed for their own sake and without any thought of reward. We did however, have the benefit of seeing the successful use of these funds.
Torah has been compared to water; it is referred to as a "well of living waters." Wherever Jews have lived, the first order of business was to provide for the education of their children. In the American experience, this objective was met through the creation of Synagogue Hebrew and Religious Schools that were perennial budget drains.
Following World War II, there has been an amazing increase in the number of Yeshivot and Day Schools. Here too the community has raised and provided funds to erect buildings to enable new generations to drink the living waters of Torah. The willingness to cast these breads toward the waters of Torah to sustain American Jewry, has been a sufficient reward for all who have participated in this project.
These two examples of casting bread over the waters are still with us. There are still endangered Jewish communities needing help, and Israel, while a far cry from the new born State, continues to struggle with the challenge of providing for the many mired in poverty who need aid and support, and providing Jewish education in the United States is still a financial challenge.
May we who are blessed with resources continue to meet the challenge of casting our bread over the waters to aid Jews not only to survive but also to fashion enriched Jewish lives in their new lands. May we strengthen American Jewish life by continuing to cast our bread toward the waters of Torah in the hope that this will assure the emergence of an informed and engaged American Jewry.
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From the holy city of Jerusalem, my best wishes for a Shabbat Shalom u'Mevorach– a Shabbat of peace and of blessing.
Rabbi Arnold M. Goodman
B'SHALACH SHABBAT SHIRA TU B'SHEVAT 5777
THE CHOICE IS OURS
February 9, 2017
13 Shevat 5777
Now when Pharaoh sent forth the People…. [Exodus 13:17]
When Pharaoh sent forth the Israelites? This hardly squares up with God's consistent assurance that He would redeem His enslaved People. The commentators were obviously aware of the disconnect of one view being particularly relevant: the tension between human freedom and Divine omnipotence. As humans are we free to do as we wish or does God have the last word, determining our acts and deeds? In Egypt plague followed plague because God decided to harden Pharaoh's heart thereby rendering him incapable of letting the Israelites go. Nor was he a free agent when God decided the time had come to send them forth. Thus the Pharah who sent the Israelites out of Egypt was little more than a puppet controlled by God.
While it was Moses who raised his staff to initiate the plagues, the confrontation was between God and Pharaoh who was perceived – and perceived himself to be – a Deity. The sequence of plagues demonstrated that Pharaoh was stripped of the freedom to act as he willed. In the final analysis, he was just a human, and humans cannot defy God's will. Fortunately God generally relaxes His grip, thereby freeing us to do as we wish subject to all the consequences of our decisions. Yet even that freedom is circumscribed because of the human forces that can and do, impact upon our freedom to act.
We are who we are in no small part because of our genetic makeup, but there are also human influences that impact upon our lives. It is true that it takes a village to raise a child with the resulting impact upon his/her values and behavior. We are not only influenced by our parents and immediate family but also by a charismatic teacher or an energetic counselor and the many others whose lives intersect with ours. While we rightfully bless the positive forces in our lives, we cannot easily sweep away the negative ones. That can – and does – influence our decisions and impact upon our behavior.
"Gee Officer Krupke!" is perhaps the most memorable song of West Side Story. It focuses on the effort of the delinquent youth to deflect responsibility. The teen delinquents, caught in the act, blame others for their negative behavior. They deflect blame from themselves to the negative forces in their lives: poor parenting, dysfunctional homes; drug riddled community and the overpowering reality of poverty. The final verse says it all:
Gee, Officer Krupke we're very upset
we never had the love that every child oughta get
we ain't no delinquents, we're misunderstood
Deep down inside us there is good
Yet our tradition is clear. If we can distinguish between right and wrong and if we know we are acting immorally, we are expected to transcend the negatives in our lives and take responsibility for our actions.It is the price we pay for being blessed with the power to choose between right and wrong. The "luxury" of deflecting blame upon the negative forces in our lives inevitably results in personal lives and social orders that are mired in chaos and anarchy.
To be human is to choose between virtue and vice and to accept the consequences of our choices. The final words of Officer Krupke remind us that: deep down inside us there is good. The task is to keep this good an energized and positive force in our lives. Talmudic teaching sums up the challenge before each of us: a person is only led upon the path in which he wishes to tread. The choice is ours. May we choose wisely and well.
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From Newton my best wishes for a Shabbat Shalom u'Mevorach– a Shabbat of peace and of blessing.
Rabbi Arnold M. Goodman
