A few years ago I came home from shul on Friday night to a rather perplexed wife! She had been learning some Chumash and had stumbled upon part of a Parshah that just made no sense at all. In Sedra Shemos Moshe Rabeinu has been chosen by Hashem to be the leader to take the Jews out of Egypt. Hashem then instructs ‘His man’, “Go, return to Egypt”, and off Moshe goes – after having got permission from his father-in-law. Then comes a short little incident:
“It was on the way, in the lodging, that Hashem encountered him (Moshe) and sought to kill him. So Zipporah (his wife) took a sharp stone and cut off the foreskin of her son and touched it to his (Moshe) feet; and she said, “you caused my bridegroom’s blood shed!” So he released him; then she said, “a Bridegroom’s blood shed was because of circumcision”.
What on earth is going on? Hashem attempts to kill the very man he has just appointed to go and save the entire Jewish Nation! Zipporah saves the day by doing a Bris on her son! The story line makes no sense whatsoever. It’s barely readable. “He released him” – who released who? Zipporah’s closing comments seem no less comprehensible.
For a while we discussed this slightly obscure episode and concluded with two simple points. Firstly we realised how utterly lost and misguided you can be if you learn The Written Law without realising that there is an Oral Law that compliments it. Without realising we had basically proven the existence of the Oral Law. Rav Hirsch [1808-1888] compares the Oral Law to the full version of the notes that were jotted down at a lecture, whereas the Written Law are the shorthand notes.
But secondly we concluded how as a story book the Torah is at times a really bad read! But yet the Bible is the most sold book in the world. Almost every hotel room around the world contains a copy of the St James Bible. Although I did once meet a monk on a flight to Israel who told me that he reads the entire bible weekly, I highly doubt the bibles in hotel rooms round the world are read as bedtime stories! (Perhaps it would put people to sleep pretty fast!). The only reason the bible is so well received is because of its highly acclaimed author! The authenticity of the Torah supersedes any seemingly reason for it not to be so well read. Even the Christians couldn’t do away with it but had to make a sequel to it – The New Testament.
Understanding that although the Torah is presented to us as a story book it is really something much deeper than that, we can now understand an incident in this week’s Parshah. Or better put a non-incident! In this week’s Parshah there is a thirty-eight year gap in the narrative of the Jews in the wilderness. Chapter 20 begins a new era, “The Children of Israel, the whole assembly, arrived at the desert of Zin”. The phrase, “the whole assembly” is a reference to the fact that this assemble was ‘whole and complete’. They were destined to enter Israel – the decree that the entire generation of the spies would die on the wilderness had been fulfilled, the years of wandering in the desert were complete.
But did nothing happen for an entire 38 years? Surely events must have happened, but nothing that was recorded. Ultimately the Torah is not just a story – it may be dressed up as such but that is not the essence of the Torah.
The Gemora tells us a rule “there is no earlier and later in the Torah” – there is no strict chronological order to the Torah. This explains several instances where the story line is actually out of order. What we are being taught is that the Torah is NOT a story book. The Torah is recorded in the order which was Divinely decided.
Rav Chazkal [1895-1974] used to say this very idea on a verse at the end of Megilas Esther. We read, “All his [Achashverosh] might and powerful acts, and a full account of the greatness of Mordechai, whom the King had promoted, are recorded in the book of chronicles of the Kings of Media and Persia”. Our scriptures are not story books – for that go to the Persian archives!
You may have a rough sketch of NaCH, which is made up of the prophecies and writings of the prophets. Forty-eight prophets and eight prophetesses give detailed accounts of their prophecies. But what you may not know is that during the 1000 year time period when prophecy was in the world there was not just the odd prophet who if you were really lucky you could arrange to meet. The Gemora relates that there were 1.2 million prophets. Every generation had hundreds and hundreds of prophets. You went to shul and you could bump into several of them.
What emerges is that what we have recorded in NaCH is but a tiny fraction of the prophetic activity from that time. But the NaCH is not a story book. It is a Divinely orchestrated collection of prophecies that have eternal messages, or events that can be learnt from. May we internalise how deep the Torah is, and with that understanding to say every morning with extra meaning the line in the Siddur, “We are fortunate, how good is our portion, how pleasant our lot, and how beautiful is our heritage”.
Good Shabbos,
Yaakov
