When you think of home, what images come to mind? One fridge magnet reads, “Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to!” Another reads, “Home is an invention on which no one has yet improved.” Here’s a one liner that’s particular apt for some [teenagers!] “Home, nowadays, is a place where part of the family waits till the rest of the family brings the car back”. This week I’d like to discuss the true function of a home.
When the plague of blood arrives in this week’s Parshah we can only imagine the national crisis that occurred in Egypt. However we are told that King Pharaoh “turned away and came to his house. He did not take to his heart this either”. Pharaoh was not shaken by the mobs who were no doubt storming his palace to sort out this ‘natural’ disaster. However we are told that what sealed his attitude was his coming home. Why was being in his house a cue to ignore the plague of blood?
The Meshech Chochmah posits an amazing suggestion. The Medresh tells us that during the plague of blood the only way for Egyptians to drink water was to buy it off the Jews. Suddenly, after years of being slaves, this caused the Jews to have their own acquired money – and lots of it. However the palace of Pharaoh had already ‘paid up’ – it was the home that Moshe had been brought up in. Therefore the plague of blood was actually waivered within the confines of the palace.
There is yet a beautiful point that emerges from this. While outside of the king’s palace there was uproar and an atmosphere of chaos, the moment Pharaoh shut the palace door behind him something changed. Now he was confronted with serenity; the peacefulness that he found in his home cancelled out all feelings that had prevailed outside of the house.
This is the true power of a home. The home possesses the power to protect us from that which often overpowers us outside of the home. In the home we step into a new ‘atmospheric pressure’. The atmosphere at home can annul all the pressures of life outside; with Pharaoh this caused him to forget his people’s troubles, with each and every one of us the home is a safe haven away from the world outside. As one person put it “If you’re not happy at home, you’re not happy anywhere else”. Being happy at home can change the most stressful day!
The mainstay of any true home is the woman of the house. It is she who predominantly sets the tone of the house. In fact many have pointed out that the numerical value of ”דבש“ – honey (306) is the same as ”אשה“ – woman. This may explain why people call their wife, ‘Honey!’
What is unique about honey is that although honey is from a non-kosher animal, and perhaps even contains the odd leg of a bee, nevertheless the strength of honey is such that it completely nullifies that which it came from and that which it contains (bee’s legs!) and is considered halachically a totally new entity. This is the power of the home which the woman controls. All the ‘treif’ and troubles are nullified upon entering a home which she has made a save haven of peace and serenity.
Interestingly the Medresh mentions that both The Land of Israel and the Torah are compared to honey. Torah is described as being ‘sweet as honey’ and Israel is called ‘the land of milk and honey’. Explained the Bluzhever Rebbe, both milk and honey could have been classified as ‘trief’. Honey as we already explained, and milk might have been non-kosher seeing as it is really ‘blood’. We are allowed to eat them only because they are really classified as new entities.
Not just the home, but also Torah and Israel have this power to set a new tone, to completely change a person’s mood or to change a person into something new.
Furthermore added the Bluzhever Rebbe there is a concept in Halachah called ‘bitul’, that is, if a small amount of milk (for example) fell into something meaty by mistake, then if there are more than sixty parts meaty to one part milky then we say that the drop of milk is considered to be annulled as if it no longer exists. There are some exceptions to this rule.
However there is a further type of ‘bitul’ (which is not used in practice) that says that even when the regular ‘bitul of 1 in 60 doesn’t apply, you can do ‘bitul’ if there are 961 parts to one.
The numerical value of בית המדרש – House of Torah study is 961! Learning Torah has the power to annul the bits of ‘trief’ that are in us.
May we all merit to make use of the three safe havens – the home, the Torah and The Land of Israel.
Good Shabbos, Yaakov
