You would think after all the pleading Hashem does back and forth with Moshe to get him to accept the role of being the shliach to bring geulah to Klal Yisrael, Hashem would at least let the trip to Egypt go smoothly. Yet the Torah tells us that's not how it worked out right from the get-go . Moshe and wife stopped at a hotel along the way, and because he did the check-in, or maybe unloaded the luggage before giving a milah to Eliezer, a malach came and tried to kill him. It would be like a baseball team that wines and dines a prospect in order to sign him, and then after finally reaching an agreement after some very tense negotiations, on the first day the player shows up at the clubhouse the team gives him a fine for some petty offense. You worked so hard to get this player in order to boost your club -- why risk upsetting the apple cart over some minor infraction?
The lesson, says R' Shlomo Amar, is that we don't cut corners on the road to geulah. The end, no matter how important, does not justify not taking the time to make sure to dot the i's and cross the t's and do all the little things right.
We have the same idea in the story of Yehudah and Tamar. Tamar's children are the progenitors of moshiach. Yet, when Tamar is being taken to be burned, she does not blurt out that Yehudah is the father of her children. She simply says that whoever claims the signet ring and other property left with her is the father. What if Yehudah had not stepped forward to accept responsibility?
Tamar recognized that you can't take the shortcut of being malbin pnei chaveiro b'rabim and get to mashiach. The end, no matter how great, does not justify ignoring "niceties" and treating others poorly.
(of course Hashem, for His part, tends to "the little things" too, physically...
ReplyDeleteif the subatomic bits of Moshe's neuronal glutamate hadn't been divinely arranged and divinely maintained, how could he have remembered his own name, much less the entire oral Torah?
if the otoconia in the inner ear of "mashiach" are even infinitesimally defective, how will he stay upright on a donkey?
{and in our own day, if Hashem does not conscientiously "cross" the T cells of the children of Israel, who once infected could resist the sinister virus?}
and socially...
couldn't Moshe have found Aharon in Egypt's Hebrew encampment* [in the gated Levite suburb]? but what kind of a reception would that be? and where more than at har ha'Elokim could these two brothers synchronize their souls for the challenges ahead?
*rather than they meet >through nevua< in the midbar, 4:27)
Yehuda and Tamar/Malbim Pnei Chaveiro - IMHO, that is way oversimplifying it and not a good comparison for the idea of Moshe and milah here:
ReplyDeletea) Tamar was trying to save her life, so any means necessary would have been pikuach nefesh and had Yehuda not stepped forward, etc. perhaps she would have been mischayev b'nafsha for not protesting more!
b) Yehuda was the one at fault for accusing her, etc.
Chazal learn from Tamar that it is better to jump into a fire rather than be malbin pnei chaveiro, meaning you cannot be mabin onei chaveiro even at the cost of your own life. The poskin discuss why we only count 3 aveirios of arayos, avodah zarah, muder as yei'hareif v'al yaavor when it seems from this gemara that malbin pnei chaveiro should also be on the list.
ReplyDeleteYehudah had no reason not to accuse her based on the evidence before him. Aderaba, the ben noach mitzvah of dinim would have obligated him to see justice done.
-- Why couldn't she have said to everyone, "Listen, I enticed him Lshem Shamayim. Please spare my life AND do not think of him as an Avaryan! This was for Yibum" This way she is explaining the situation from her vantage point to save her life and why he is not at fault - so no Malbin.
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