This guest post is from our dear chaver, Rabbi Elchanan Shoff, senior lecturer at Hineni International Programs (H.I.P.) Jerusalem, Israel
If his offering is a bird… and he shall sever its head (with his fingernail)”
Vayikra 1:14-15
When person offers a bird as a sin offering, he severs the head using a process called melika. But when he severs the head of the bird, he should take great care not to sever it entirely, teaches the Torah.1 The birds brought as offerings are doves, and the Jewish people are compared to a dove2, so what is done to the dove hints to what should be happening to the person offering the sacrifice.3 The neck is broken from the back, explains the Sefer Hachinuch,4 to remind us not to be too stiff-necked, and be prepared to change our ways that led us to sin. But the head is not to be entirely removed from the body, for the mind is always meant to lead the heart, explains the Noam Hamitzvos5. It can never be removed from it. We are to remind ourselves that our sins would not have occurred had we let our intellects lead the way, and forced our hearts and emotions to simply follow.
The Torah, when talking about the mind, uses the word lev, heart.6 But why? The great R. Avigdor Miller7 explained that one’s knowledge is only truly called knowledge when it penetrates his heart. We can agree that insulting someone’s mother to his face is usually the wrong thing to do. If someone insults another person’s mother, we know that it is wrong. But when someone insults your own mother, your heart begins to beat faster. Your knowledge has penetrated your heart. It beats faster based upon what you know to be right and wrong. That is true knowledge. As long as the knowledge is only in your brain, and remains separated from your heart, and your actions, it is not truly knowledge. And yet, life is about this very journey from the intellect to the heart. “You have known today, and you shall bring it home to your heart, that Hashem is the Lord, there is no other aside from him.”8
There is a nation that stands for the separation of the head from the heart. They are called Amalek. The very name Amalek is made up of the words am “nation,” and malak, Amalek emerges as “a nation of melika.”9 The gematria of Amalek is 240, as is the gematria of safek, doubt.1 Amalek is about acting as if one is not quite certain. They were a people who knew that they would get scalded if they attacked the Jewish people11 and they knowingly did so anyhow. They are a people of melika, for they refuse to allow what they know in their head to penetrate their hearts. They inherited the essence of their ancestor Esav12 who had a head in the right place,13 and knew right from wrong, but would never allow that wisdom to penetrate his heart. This is what was behind Haman’s Amalkite attack on the Jewish people in the Purim story.
“And they stood at the bottom of the mountain.”14 When the Jews stood at Sinai, our sages teach us that “Hashem held the mountain over them like a barrel15. He said to them, ‘If you accept the Torah, all is well. If not, your graves will be there.’ From then on there was a great16 weakness in the [relationship that the Jewish people had with] the Torah. However, they once again accepted it in the time of Achashverosh, as it says17 ‘the Jewish people fulfilled and accepted upon themselves and their children’ they fulfilled what they had accepted long ago.”18 Rashi19 tells us that it was out of love for the miracle that Hashem preformed for them that they accepted the Torah out of love.
The significance of Hashem raising the mountain2 over the heads of the Jewish people at the time of the Torah’s giving is immense. R. Meir Simcha of Dvinsk21 explains that in fact, the meaning of this bizarre sounding story is that the Jewish people were forced into a relationship with Torah by the clarity that they experienced. There was no doubt at Sinai about what was true and what was not. They saw reality, God, and Torah, and they were forced to accept it. It became clear to them that if they were not to accept the Torah, they would be reduced to corpses, and the world could not continue to exist. And yet there is a great deal of weakness in such an arrangement. A decision of the mind, while firm, lacks the luster of one that perhaps came from lack of clarity but strength of heart. A man who marries his wife because it was a very well thought out plan, and he sees on paper that it ought to work, has a different relationship that the person who makes his choice out of love, when things are less clear. The Purim story was the chance for the Jews to take the relationship that was based upon truth, and inject some passion into it. Out of love for the miracle done for them, they renewed their relationship.22
The Purim story occurred in a time of darkness, in exile when the Jewish people could not clearly see the hand of God. His name is not even mentioned in the Megillah! But in fact, the Purim experience was about a time when intellectually things were not as clear as in the past, but emotionally, the opportunity was there to connect with the heart. And that is the connection that solidifies a relationship. It is the one that lasts, and the one that gives depth. When a person commits to something even in a time of darkness, without knowing what will come, in sickness and in health, that is true commitment.
This is how we beat Amalek, and his descendant Haman, who came to attack us. They are armed with knowledge as we are of what is right and wrong. They disregard it. Our job is to internalize it. When we do that, Haman is hung, and we drink. “One is obligated to inebriate himself on Purim until he can no longer distinguish between how cursed Haman is, and how blessed Mordechai is.”23 When we get that drunk, we are dismissing our minds. Because Purim is not a holiday for the mind, it is one for the heart. Only when we have a little less clarity can we demonstrate how deep our commitment really runs. When all is sunny, and one makes a commitment, he may need to wait for the cloudy times until he discovers the depth of his commitment.
In the Spanish Inquisition, when Jewish people were forced to abandon their lives, or convert to Christianity, one great Rabbi who was witness to this horrible time, R. Yosef Yaavetz,24 in his Or Hachaim,25 records something remarkable. “In the exile from Spain, from where we were exiled due to our many and egregious sins, most of those who were glorified for their wisdom, and remarkable deeds all traded in their religion on that bitter day, while the simple and uneducated people sacrificed their bodies and money to sanctify their Creator.” It is only when something is in our hearts that is it truly real. Sometimes, that is easier to accomplish when our minds are not there.
The path to avoiding sin again is to make sure that the head of that bird is still connected to the body. Our heads can never be disconnected; we must always know that there is little value to all of that knowledge unless it enters our hearts. For in fact, our hearts are what Hashem really wants from us after all.
R. Yisrael Salanter once said, “The greatest distance between any two points in the universe is the distance that separates our minds from our hearts.”
1 See Zohar 2, 65a “Hashem said, ‘you said “is Hashem among us, or not” I will put you into the hands of the dog’ and right then ‘And Amalek arrived,’.”
13 Esav’s head was buried in the Cave of Machpelah, see Targum Yonason to Bereshis 50:13. Arizal wrote that Esav’s head was connected to holiness, see Yaaros Devash 2, 15. See also Derech Sicha of R. Chaim Kanievsky vol. 1, p. 100. See also Mareh Hapanim to Yerushalmi Taanis 4:2, and Ben Yehoyada to Eruvin 53a.
15 Regarding the significance of the barrel, see R. Yosef Yoizel, the Alter of Novhardok’s Madregas Haadam, Tikkun Hamidos p 27. See also Daas Zekenim and Rosh to Dvarim 32:10 who understand that the concept of the mountain being like a barrel was described in the Torah (Dvarim 32:10) as “you surrounded them.”
16 The word great here, is in fact understood by Chida in his Dvash Lifi (Mem, 29) to mean “insignificant.” For we find regarding the Kiddush of Shabbos day, which is less important than the one at night, and is called kiddusha rabba, the great kiddush, for in Rabbinic Aramaic, often something is called by its extreme opposite, a blind person is called sagi nahor, one with much light, and so on. (See Maggid Mishna to Rambam Hil. Shabbos Ch. 29)
2 Regarding why specifically a mountain was put over their heads, and nothing else, see Toras Emes in Kol SIfrei R. Nosson Adler to Yisro.
22 See Alschich in Toras Moshe to Shemos 19, where he explains that this was not a new relationship, for the Gemara clearly says that they once again accepted. It means that the first one was not useless, it was simply renewed.
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