Gidon and Doubting God (Chapters 6-9)

First, a quick note---I have a draft or two of big ideas covering all of Sefer Shoftim, quoting prooftexts, etc., but I can't quite find the time to ever post them.  That, of course, is not helpful to me or to you, (dear readers).   Dr. Michael Loren suggested I just put out short blog posts more frequently, and get the long ones out when and if I am able.    So here it goes:


I am always struck by Gidon.  Here is a leader who rescued the Jewish people from Midian.  Yet he seems to exemplify the difficulties modern man has with faith:
1) When the angel says to him, "God is with you," Gidon responds "Is God with us?  [If so} why has all this befallen us?   And where are all of His wonders that our fathers told us about, saying, 'didn't God take us out of Egypt', and now God has abandoned us and put us in the hands of Midian." (See Chapter 6, verses 12-15)

Not very frum.  Yet God chooses him.

2)  Gidon asks God for a sign in order to show that God is actually talking to him (contrast with Avraham, for whom God's communication was sufficiently self-evidently from God that he was willing to sacrifice Yitzchak).

3) Perhaps not related to faith, in Chapter 8, he turns down an offer of Kingship from the people. 


Gidon's lack of simple faith is helpful for me personally.  I have a skeptical personality that does not really fit the certainty that seems to be de rigeur in religious circles today.   But Gidon shows that faith is broader and deeper than that, that there is room for me as well.  (Perhaps more on this in a future post-- I think Rabbi Norman Lamm's essay on Faith and Doubt (in the book of the same name) is a must read and perhaps I'll post on it in the future).

On another level, there is Gidon's humility.   In Chapter 6, he states that he is unworthy of the task of leadership because a) he lacks yichus and b) he is not so great himself.   Is this connected to his faith issues?  Is it that he simply lacks confidence generally, (in both himself and others, including God), and therefore his faith is not so certain?

1) Conquering fortified cities and 2) The Sin of Achan

As we approach the end of Sefer Yehoshua, I realize I have not accomplished in blogging on all the things that I should have.

Thus, I will throw the following ideas out, in undeveloped form, which struck me over the course of the book (largely by virtue of listening to Rabbi Menachem Leibtag's excellent shiurim):

1) Logistics

Rabbi Menachem Leibtag notes that in the first part of the book (dealing with conquest of Israel), the big logistical challenge for Joshua is the walled cities.  It is one of the details that 40 years earlier Moshe had asked his spies to look for (are the cities fortified).  A walled city is naturally very hard to conquer, and must be conquered by a long, beleaguering seige, or a bloody storming of the walls with unthinkable losses to the attacking army.   Thus, the whole first part of the book is a pattern about how the Jewish people conquered these fortified cities:

a. with Yericho, God made a breach in the wall.

b. with the Ai, God gave Yehoshua a battle plan where they pretended to retreat, and then drew the army of the Ai out of their city, where they were easier to defeat.

c. The Givonim came and tricked the Jews, claiming to be from far away.   But ultimately Yehoshua and the elders honored the treaty (or modified it by cursing them and making them water drawers and tree cutters).  This treaty led the next set of Canaanites to fear that the Givonim had ceded strategic territory to the Jews.  These 5 kings took their armies to attack the Givonim, and the Givonim called to Yehoshua for help.   Again, 5 kings with their armies outside of their fortified cities.

2) Early on, in Chapter 7, after the victory over the city of Yericho, Achan took from the spoils of war, the cherem, which was to be designated for God.  In later battles, we see that they are allowed to take spoils.   Furthermore, Achan's sin is described as the sin that causes the loss at the hands of the Ai.    What is so bad about Achan's sin that the entire people are punished?

Rabbi Menachem Leibtag points out, in a shiur on the OU website, that the Navi describes the entire people as having sinned against God.  How can this be, if only one person did it?

He suggests that the reason that the people couldn't take from the spoils of the battle of Yericho is because God did most of the work, and they had to learn to acknowledge God's role in helping them.   When the spies, fresh from the victory over Yericho, said that the Ai were easily defeatable, and didn't mention God's help, and indicated they only needed 3,000 soldiers, not the whole army for the job(i.e. it would be purely by the might of their hands, not through God's assistance), they evidenced a failure to properly acknowledge God's providence over them.

This, too, was the sin of Achan.  He took from the spoils (the cherem) because he felt he could--he did not adequately realize that God had really won the battle of Yericho for them.   In fact, the idea is that Achan's sin was just a symptom of the failure to show gratitude and recognition to God that was common throughout the nation.    Thus, the entire people sinned, and they sinned in such a way as to undermine their very purpose of existence in the land of Israel--to be a people representing and serving God.  Thus, they lost to the Ai.

That's all for now.   In the next posts, I hope to deal with: 

1) the moral issues involved in the wars with the Canaanites

2) a textual support for a position of the Rambam which we will look at,

and

3) the cities of refuge.

Equal Rights versus Equal Value

Rabbi Gil Student has an interesting post over here titled Equal Rights.  He quotes from a compilation called Otzar Ma'amarei Chazal, and cites a number of sources indicating that the Torah views as equal various groups: Men, women, children, Jews, non-Jews.

I think his post is very important.   Though it would seem obvious, sometimes, as Mesillat Yesharim points out, the obvious can be forgotten for lack of attention.

Here's why:

The sources, with the exception of the source he quotes from Bereishit Rabbah, do not really speak about rights, they speak about existential value.   In other words, they all seem to say that God views the Jew, the gentile, the man, the woman, as equal in His eyes.    But that doesn't mean everyone is treated the same way.

Now, it has become part of the orthodoxy of American thought to affirm Brown vs. Board of Education's rejection of Plessy v. Ferguson's "Separate but Equal" doctrine, stating that separate is never equal.   And indeed, I think we can all agree that "separate but equal" in American racial relations was never equal.

However, that doesn't mean that the principle must always be true.   Thus, we accept that men and women, Jews and non-Jews, are all equal before God.   But Jewish male Kohanim have a few more mitzvot than non-Kohanim, Jewish men in general have several more mitzvot than Jewish women, and Jewish people in general have more mitzvot than non-Jewish people.    While mitzvot are obligations, not rights, the fact that some groups might be excluded from a particular mitzvah (non-Kohanim from the priestly blessing, women from putting on tefillin or counting in a prayer quorum) can make one feel like he or she does not have equal rights.

In other words, while there isn't really an inequality of rights, it can certainly feel that way, especially when Jewish society adds layers of honor to mitzvot that relate to certain groups.

It is at that point that we need a spiritual redirection to the sources that Rabbi Student collects in his post. If we (men) come to disregard the needs, rights and value of women, if we (Jews) come to disregard the needs, rights and values of non-Jews, then perhaps we have come to confuse differing levels of obligation (approved by the Torah) with different levels of value (disapproved by the Torah).   We have taken the Torah's different obligations (separate but truly equal in value), and turned it, in our small-mindedness, into a "separate but unequal", the kind rightly condemned in American law by Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka.

Since we are learning Sefer Yehoshua, the question arises:  What about the Canaanites?  Are they not equal in value in the eyes of God?  And if so, why did God command their annihilation?

It just so happens that a new edition of the journal Tradition came out (online here, subscription required), featuring a critique by Dr. Alan Jotkowitz of the theology of Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of Britain (who with this mention makes his second appearance on this blog, in almost so many days).  He discusses Rabbi Sacks' universalist theology, quoting Rabbi Sacks' The Dignity of Difference:

"[T]he truth at the beating heart of monotheism is that God is greater than religion: that he is only partially comprehended by any faith.  He is my God, but also your God.  he is on my side but also on your side.  he exists not only in my faith but also in yours."

In the revised edition, this was softened to:

"the truth at the beating heart of monotheism is that God transcends the particularities of culture and the limits of human understanding.  He is my God but also the God of all mankind, even of those whose customs and way of life are unlike mine."

Rabbi Jotkowitz offers this critique:  How did Rabbi Sacks get this idea?   It seems, Rabbi Jotkowitz says, that Rabbi Sacks derives his theology from a close reading of the Bible.  However,  he notes, it's true you can do a close reading of the Bible and get this idea, but you can also derive the opposite from a close reading of other parts of the Bible.  It must be that a Bible-based theology, without regard for the Oral Torah, is methodologically improper, even if its conclusions are correct:

"It is hard to see how reading the story of the divine sanctioned conquest of the land of Israel in Joshua and Judges can lead one to a theology of 'the dignity of difference.'  One can just as easily conclude that the mission of the Jewish People is to destroy those who differ from them.  That this is obviously not the case is demonstrated by reading these narratives through the spectacles of the Oral Law." (Tradition, Vol. 44, No. 3, Fall 2011, p.61).

Thus far, this leaves us with a number of questions:

1.  To what extent is it legitimate to learn texts of the Bible without the insights of Chazal?

2.  Is the structure of Written Torah/Oral Torah such 

A)  that the Written Torah contains a particular set of theological data, {A-L}, for example, and the Oral Torah contains another set of theological data, {M-Z}, for example, and the sum total of Torah can only be seen when they are held together?  (as implied by Dr. Jotkowitz)  OR

B) is it such that the Written Torah and Oral Torah ultimately say the same thing, and each contain the complete set of theological data {A-Z}, but rather complement each other not in terms of message and content, but in terms of the spiritual dynamic between the individual, community and God?

3.  What about the Canaanites?   Dr. Jotkowitz leaves us, along with Rabbi Sacks, with the notion that annihilation of the Canaanites is not the goal of the Jewish people.  What remains to be seen is how the mission of conquering the land of Israel is indeed consistent with the sources brought by Rabbi Gil Student that assert the equal value of all humans before God.     I intend to address this issue in a post in the near future.

Preparation of the People

A quick post to talk about a general outline of the book of Yehoshua.   I was reviewing an audio shiur by Rabbi Menachem Leibtag (whose shiurim I find very, very useful).  He points out that the book of Yehoshua can be divided into three parts.

Chapters 1-5-- Introduction--Preparation of the people
Chapters 6-12-- Conquest of the land (battle of Yericho, conquest of the Ai, etc.)
Chapters 13-end of the book-- Division of the land among the tribes of Israel.

Unfortunately, I lost my ipod, and on my computer's lousy speakers, could not hear every word that Rabbi Leibtag said.  Therefore, in addition to my normal error-filled ways, there is additional reason to say that any errors are my ideas, and any insights are his (or follow naturally from his).

Recall that the conquest of the land of Israel was supposed to happen shortly after the giving of the Torah, but the sin of the spies caused the decree that the generation that left Egypt would have to die in the desert, and only their children could enter Israel.    The original, failed generation underwent a series of miraculous preparations--- the Exodus from Egypt, the splitting of the Red Sea, the giving of the Torah.

In light of this, it seems that the new generation that is entering Israel needed to be prepared anew.  Thus, we see a number of parallels to things that happened to their parents' generation.  For example:

1) The sending of spies in Chapter 2 (perhaps to enable them to pass the test that their parents' generation failed)
2) The spies encounter with a Canaanite prostitute, Rahav (parallel to their parents' generation's encounter with the daughters of Moav, with whom they sinned;  here, they did not).
3) The splitting of the Jordan river in Chapters 3-4 (paralleling the splitting of the Red Sea)
4) The setting up of the stones in Gilgal in Chapter 4 (see Deuteronomy Chapter 27, commanding the writing of the words of the Torah on the stones after they cross the Jordan;  perhaps this is parallel to the giving of the Torah)
5) Circumcision, which was not done during the time of the wandering in the desert, in Chapter 5--- this is parallel to the circumcision their fathers had to do in order to leave Egypt.
6) The celebration of Pesach in Chapter 5 (with obvious connection to Yetziat Mitzrayim)
7) The encounter Yehoshua has with the angel at the end of Chapter 5 is reminiscent of the encounter Moshe had at the burning bush:  "remove your shoes from your feet, because the ground you are standing on is holy"

Tangent: Inspiring speech; I highly recommend

Hi folks,

More on Sefer Yehoshua coming in the next few days;  Today, Tuesday November 29th, was Chapter 6.

In the meantime, someone sent me this fantastic speech by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.  I highly recommend it.  It went by very quickly and was inspiring.




Visit Jewish.TV for more Jewish videos.

Some Questions-- Yehoshua Chapter 2 and Introductory Questions

A few questions to keep in mind when learning any book of Tanach:

1. What is the purpose of this book?

 There were many, many true prophets who spoke in God's name during Jewish history, but most of their words were either not recorded, or their books were not canonized. Chazal tell us that the works that were canonized were those that had a message for future generations, an eternal message (albeit rooted in the historical context in which they were delivered.)

A few years ago, I listened to a number of shiurim of Rabbi Menachem Leibtag (and I highly recommend his shiurim on Tanach--more on that later).   One of his central questions is:  What is the purpose of this book?  What is its prophetic message?

With a book like Yehoshua, we can easily just read it as a narrative, but not work on figuring out the message and themes of the book.

2. Specific to chapter 2:  Why did Yehoshua send spies into Israel?  Did he not remember the debacle of the spies Moshe sent (in which only Yesoshua and Kalev proved honorable)? 

3. More generally, to what extent is Yehoshua guided by God in the details of what he is supposed to do (as opposed to the general mandate to conquer Eretz Yisrael)?

4. On Chapter 2, when the spies go to the house of the prostitute Rachav, Rachav tells them that the Canaanites are struck with fear, because they heard of how God split the sea for the Jewish people.  My wife asked:  But this occurred 40 years earlier, and the Jews have been wandering in the desert, and had an entire generation die since then!   Why are the Canaanites so scared?

             4a)  A related question (and perhaps the beginning of the answer that seems simplest and most cogent):   What did the events of the Jews' experience from Keriat Yam Suf to Har Sinai to wandering 40 years in the desert look like to the non-Jewish nations in Canaan and the surrounding areas?     How did they experience and interpret these events?  (Bear in mind Moshe's concerns about God's reputation in pleading for the survival of the people after the sin of the golden calf).

The implications of "Be Strong"--Joshua, chapter 1

I should probably do my first post on some sweeping, thematic introduction to Navi in general, or to the book of Yehoshua in particular.  But the following thought came to me first.   Introductions and themes will have to wait.

In our chapter, we have two qualified votes of confidence:    First, God says to Yehoshua:  I am with you, so long as you follow the Torah.   Then, the people say:  We'll follow you, Yehoshua, so long as God is with you like He was with Moshe.

What a vote of confidence!  How can they doubt that Moshe's main disciple could even have the possibility of falling away from God and the Torah?

This is actually a fundamental principle of Torah, as we learn in Pirkei Avot:  "Do not believe in yourself until the day you die."  

The Talmud in Berachot 29a illustrates the teaching of Pirkei Avot with the example of Yochanan the Kohen Gadol.   He served as Kohen Gadol for 80 years, but in the end became a Saduccee.  Even he could slip.

Righteousness and holiness are not attained and put in the bank;  they are lived constantly, and require constant attention.

The first time I remember seeing this principle in action in my own life was about 15 years ago.   By nature, I have quite a temper.  When I was in my early twenties, it reached its peak, and I exerted great efforts to bring my anger under control.   And I succeeded.   Things that would have set me off previously would not even bother me.   Things that did bother me, I responded to with calm and self-control.  I finally had conquered my anger!

So, like a dieter whose diet was successful, I let down my guard.  I stopped working on my anger, and many months, or even a year later, I discovered that I was more easily angered, more easily frustrated.

Moshe's great disciple, Joshua, needed the lesson.   So, it seems, do we:

 רַק חֲזַק וֶאֱמַץ מְאֹד, לִשְׁמֹר לַעֲשׂוֹת כְּכָל-הַתּוֹרָה--אֲשֶׁר צִוְּךָ מֹשֶׁה עַבְדִּי, אַל-תָּסוּר מִמֶּנּוּ יָמִין וּשְׂמֹאול:  לְמַעַן תַּשְׂכִּיל, בְּכֹל אֲשֶׁר תֵּלֵךְ.

"Only be strong and extremely courageous, to keep and do according to the Torah that Moshe My servant  enjoined you-- do not turn aside from it to the right or left, in order that you will succeed wherever you go." (Joshua 1:7, Hebrew text from Mechon Mamre, translation mine).

Starting Nach Yomi--Chazak Chazak v'Nitchazeik

On Thursday, Thanksgiving day, we start Nach Yomi again, beginning with Sefer Yehoshua, The book of Joshua, Chapter 1.

A brief thought before we start:

At the end of each book of the Torah that we read in Shul, we say, "Chazak Chazak, v'nitchazeik".   Be strong, be strong, and may we be strengthened.

Why do we say this at the end of the book?  It would seem that we don't need the strength, now that we're finished!

I think we say it not because of the conclusion, but because of the new beginning that follows.  It's easy to finish when you're half way through, and it's even easier when the finish line is in sight.  But when you have a whole new book of Torah to get through, it looks like a tall mountain to climb.  It's daunting. So we say, to each other,  "Be strong!  Be strong!"  And then we pray, "May we be strengthened!"

We start an endeavor of Torah learning with 1) togetherness and 2) prayer to God.

As we start Nach Yomi, it seems like a big, big project.   But I think if we start it right, with blessing each other with strength and praying to God for the strength to do it each day (and catch up immediately if we fall behind), then the mountain will only yield its greatness to us.

So let's start.   Chazak, Chazak, v'nitchazeik!

Like The Seeds of a Pomegranate

"Even the empty in you are full of mitzvot like a pomegranate"
אפילו ריקנין שבך מלאים מצות כרמון Berachot 57a.

Two great, righteous Jewish kings held Passover celebrations as a means of renewing the covenant between the Jewish people and God.    The first was Chizkiyahu, the second, a few generations later, Yoshiahu.

Chizkiyahu's celebration/organization of Passover had a very strange element.  He had sent out invitations to all of the Kingdom of Judah, and also to the Jews in the Northern kingdom, that everybody should come and celebrate Pesach.   Not in the month of Nissan, because everyone was impure (tamei), but rather in the month of Iyar, so people could bring the Korban Pesach on Pesach Sheni in a state of purity.  But lo and behold, the people from the North did not have time to get there in time and purify themselves.  What were they to do?

Well, what they did do is bring the korban Pesach in a state of impurity, which I believe is, halachically, an issur karet (a prohibition bearing the punishment of being cut off from the Jewish people).  Then, Chizkiyahu prayed for them.   Here's his prayer in II Chronicles Chapter 30:

For Hezekiah had prayed for them, saying: 'The good LORD (MM-- The Compassionate One) pardon 19 every one that setteth his heart to seek God, the LORD, the God of his fathers, though [he be] not [cleansed] according to the purification that pertaineth to holy things.' {S} 20 And the LORD hearkened to Hezekiah, and healed the people. {S}  (JPS 1917 translation, bolding is mine)


It seems that Chizkiyahu (Hezekiah) allowed them to do this (after all, they had a whole system set up for the slaughtering of the Korban Pesach for the people who were impure).   But he said, "God, please forgive them, their hearts are in the right place."

This is astounding!   It seems (especially from the balance of the chapter) that two things are happening here:  1) Chizkiyahu asks, and God grants, forgiveness, to the people for their sin; and 2) God considers it as if the people had actually done the mitzvah!    I understand forgiveness, but how can #2 be possible?

To understand the difficulty, look at this counter-example:   Imagine that this afternoon I discovered that my tefillin, which I have been wearing for many years, including this morning, are not kosher.  I did everything correctly--I bought them from a reputable Sofer, I had them checked, I took care of them properly.    Have I fulfilled this mitzvah?

Certainly I have not fulfilled the mitzvah in a technical sense.  If my tefillin, which I wore in the morning, are found to be not kosher, I would be obligated to put on a new pair of tefillin in the afternoon, because I didn't really do the mitzvah today.


If so, how could the people be considered as if they brought the Korban Pesach properly?


Perhaps it is possible to reconcile Chizkiyahu's example and the example of the tefillin.  Perhaps there is no contradiction because from God's perspective,  God is looking at our intent.   God forgave the people because their intent was good.   They did the wrong thing halachically, but they thought they were doing the right thing.   This kind of sin God not only forgives, but considers it as if the person actually did the mitzvah.

Same thing with the tefillin.   Certainly, a person who does everything right and still fails in the performance of the mitzvah has done everything in his power.   Here, presumably God looks at intent and credits us, as it were, for having done the mitzvah.   But if we discover that there was a problem, and we are able to fix the problem, then we must fix it, because from our perspective, we have not yet fulfilled our obligations.   If we were then remiss in fixing it, that would be flaw in the purity of our intentions.

Perhaps this is an application of the verse in the end of Devarim, "The hidden things are for the Lord our God, and the revealed things for us and for our children forever, to do all the words of this Torah"  (Deuteronomy 29:28).

It is for us to "do all the words of this Torah," to the absolute best of our ability.   But the hidden things remain for God, and ashreinu, mah tov chelkeinu, how fortunate are we and how good is our lot that we are in the hands of God, The Compassionate One, who, even when our own best efforts leave us empty, fills us up with mitzvot in abundance, like the seeds of a pomegranate.

"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"

Warning:  I don't have a good answer to the question raised in this post.   I welcome suggestions.

The city of Sedom features prominently in last week's and this week's parshiot.  About Sedom, we read last week:

וְאַנְשֵׁי סְדֹם, רָעִים וְחַטָּאִים, לַיהוָה, מְאֹד.
The men of Sedom were extremely bad and sinful to God. (Genesis 13:13)

It sounds like "bad" and "sinful" are two different things.   What's the difference between them?

Targum Onkelos explains it as having to do with the method of sinning:  

וְאַנְשֵׁי סְדוֹם, בִּישִׁין בְּמָמוֹנְהוֹן וְחַיָּבִין בְּגִוְיָתְהוֹן, קֳדָם יְיָ, לַחְדָּא.
The men of Sedom were extremely bad with their money(property?), and guilty with their bodies to God.

"Ra'im" means bad (in a moral sense) with their money or property.   Chata'im means sinning with their bodies.  What is the rationale for making such a distinction?   Isn't evil just evil, regardless of its mode of implementation?  (Read on, but this is the unanswered question of the post!)

There's another famous passage where we see such a distinction.  In the Shema, we read:

 וְאָהַבְתָּ, אֵת יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, בְּכָל-לְבָבְךָ וּבְכָל-נַפְשְׁךָ, וּבְכָל-מְאֹדֶךָ.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your "meod".

What is your "meod"?   Says Onkelos, "your possessions."  Rashi also cites this explanation:
 בכל ממונך יש לך אדם שממונו חביב עליו מגופו לכך נאמר ובכל מאדך.  
  With all your money;  there is a man whose money is more precious to him than his body, therefore it says "with all your money"




You might ask:  If I love God with all my soul, isn't it obvious I would dedicate all my possessions to Him?  Rashi answers that there is such a person who is so sick, so twisted in his outlook, that his life is not as important as his possessions.  To such a person, the Torah commands to love God as much as he loves his possessions.


So here's a follow-up question:   Why would the Torah give us a mitzvah specifically for someone who is so twisted in his perceptions?   Meaning, love God with all your heart and soul--I get it.   But if you're so messed up that you value your possessions more than your life, how can you even think about loving God?  And why would the Torah command a person like this to love God?  Get your priorities straight, and then love God with all your soul!

Conclusion:
We have the same distinction made between one's self and one's property being made both in the realm of evil and in the realm of good.  On the bad side, the people of Sedom were wicked with their money and their bodies (presumably through which they act out the desires of their souls).    God commands us to love Him with our selves and with our money.

What is the purpose of this distinction?  Does Rashi on the Shema shed light on Onkelos' commentary about Sedom?    Any thoughts?

Chronicles, Cheshvan, Yerushalayim and Dress Rehearsals

"This life is not a dress rehearsal."   Charlie Truitt

Tanach ends with Divrei Hayamim, the Book of Chronicles, and Chronicles is a strange book.   I am no Biblical expert (and that's quite an understatement), but I'll tell you what strikes me:

1) "Been there, done that."
One's first thought when glancing through it, and from having seen it cited in other places, is that it is the book of Melachim, Kings, redux.    Again we meet King David, Shlomo Hamelech, and the line of the Kings of Judah.   It all seems eerily familiar.

2) "Begats"
Okay, I don't have the King James version, but English speaking people, both Jewish and non-Jewish, have a passing familiarity with geneaologies in the Bible.    "So and so begat so and so".    In fact, the first 9 chapters of Divrei Hayamim 1 are just lists of people.


So, in a nutshell, what is going on here?    Divrei Hayamim does indeed cover a lot of the same stories as the book of Kings, and for good reason-- it is during this period of time that the first Beit HaMikdash was planned, built and ultimately destroyed.   And indeed, the Beit Hamikdash looms large in Divrei Hayamim.

And all those mind-numbing lists of people--- where else do we see them?    Well, if you're a good genealogy skipper, you skip over a whole bunch of them in shul this time of year, because Sefer Bereishit is chock full of genealogies.  (We won't touch on their importance and purpose, just on the parallel).

So let's add these together.   A book about the Beit Hamikdash, drawing on the style of the book about God's creation and choice of the descendants of Avraham.

What's the connection Divrei Hayamim is trying to make?   The story didn't just end with Bereishit.:   God didn't just create the world, and He didn't just create Avraham.  He created us, and we can create a spiritual place in the world, in the form of the Beit HaMikdash.

Today we have no Beit HaMikdash, but the truth of the matter still stands:  We can still make a spiritual place in this world, in our homes, in our friendships, in our businesses, in our shuls.

A friend of mine, Matt Eisenfeld, z"l, once told me upon returning from a trip from Israel:  "You know, we might not be able to be in Yerushalayim now, but we have an obligation to make this place, right here and now, into Yerushalyim."

His words echoed for me the other day in the words of Rabbi Bentzion Friedman, talking about this new month of Cheshvan:   "It's called 'MarCheshvan',  'bitter Cheshvan,' because there are no holy days.   But that just means we have to inject the holiness into it ourselves."

And the stakes are high.   Now is the time to build Yerushalayim, now is the time to add the holy days to Cheshvan.   Because, to quote again the (discomfiting) words of my friend Charlie Truitt, "This life is not a dress rehearsal."  It's the real thing.

Mah Nishtana this past Yom Kippur from all other days of Yom Kippur?

"I love it when a plan comes together."  Col. Hannibal Smith, the A-Team

Mah nishtana this past Yom Kippur from all other (past) days of Yom Kippur?

1) For on all other days of Yom Kippur, though I regretted my sins and flaws, I went back to them afterwards, but on this past Yom Kippur, I do not go back.

2) For on all other days of Yom Kippur, though I committed to improving in the future, I failed to do so, but on this past Yom Kippur, my commitment is lasting.

3) For on all other days of Yom Kippur, though I confessed my sins on Yom Kippur, I went back to them afterwards, but on this past Yom Kippur, I do not go back.

4) For on all other days of Yom Kippur, the Knower of the hidden could not testify that I would not return to my old ways, on this past Yom Kippur, I feel more certain that He can so testify.


ANSWER:
I was a slave to the narrow confines (מיצרים)  of the bad habits and outlooks that have slowly overtaken my soul.     But the Lord my God has brought me out with a strong hand and an outstretched arm.

A strong hand, as it says "your hand is open to accept penitents".

An outstretched arm.   To what is this likened?  To a man who falls into a pit and cannot escape.  His friend comes to save him, lies on the ground above, and reaches his hand out to pull him up.   If the man in the pit reaches out and grabs his friend's hand, he is saved.  If he does not, then he will remain trapped in the pit forever.

On all other days of Yom Kippur, your hand was strong to accept me and it was outstretched, but I did not grab it.   I regretted, I committed, I confessed.  But I did not grab Your hand because I had no plan to implement my commitments.   This year, I have a plan.  A simple plan, a basic plan.

Anger?  My plan involves reading 2 minutes of Mussar a day.    My wife is learning "Lights Along the Way", Rabbi Twersky's commentary on Mesillat Yesharim (a recommendation from Rabbi Elchanan Schulgasser), so I started using it, and I highly recommend it.

Lashon Hara?  My plan involves learning the laws of Lashon Hara 2-5 minutes a day.  I am using Ikkarei dinim, but there are a million things, including daily emails, etc., out there.

Increase chesed?   My plan involves putting in my formal schedule when I will next give blood, when I will next write checks to tzedakah.

I hope I was sincere in my regret, my commitment, my confession of Yom Kippur.  But it is the plan--made after the fact, implemented only now that the holidays are behind me--- that will determine my spiritual success.   And I expect success, with God's help.  (I will try for but do not expect 100% success--such an expectation is a recipe for failure).

May God give me the strength to implement and expand these and other good plans.   And may He say about me and about all my brothers and sisters of the House of Israel,  "I love it when a plan comes together."