Parasha: Reeh · Aliyah: Second (Gevurah)

אשר יבחר באחד שבטיך, "which He will choose amongst one of your tribes, etc." Moses counters the argument of those who want to belittle the idea that G'd's residence should be limited to the territory of a single tribe and who would therefore assign additional sites for the offering of sacrifices. The Torah says that this is out of the question.

כי ירחיב…את גבולך, "When G'd expands your borders etc." Seeing G'd had objected to the excessive craving for a meat-diet displayed by the Israelites in Numbers chapter 11 where we were told about thousands dying on that account, such a craving had been taboo ever since. Only meat which had first been hallowed as a sacrifice had been permitted to be eaten by the average Israelite during the last 38 years. At this point Moses justifies the new legislation which sanctions the desire to have a meat-diet by referring to the difficulty of making the meat first a sacrifice and having to travel to Jerusalem to do so. It is assumed that the craving will re-surface as a result of most people living a long way from Jerusalem. G'd specifically sanctions the desire to eat meat with the words: "you may eat meat in accordance with all the desire of your soul."

כי ירחק ממך המקום, When the place will be too far from you, etc." The words: "you may eat within your gates" mean that such meat does not have to be sacrificial meat. Our sages differ as to the precise meaning of the word "distant" in our verse (compare Pessachim 93). The Talmud there speaks of the verse in Numbers 9,10 and determines that anyone living as far from Jerusalem as Modin falls under this category. Other opinions hold that even living inside the city of Jerusalem but outside the courtyard of the Hoy Temple is already considered as "distant." We can only wish that the time will soon arrive when this halachah will assume practical significance, i.e. after the arrival of the משיח.

שמר ושמעת את כל הדברים האלה, "Observe and hearken to all these words, etc." The sequence of the words "observe and hearken" appears to be reversed. The Torah should have written "hearken and observe." Besides, what are the words את and כל meant to include? Furthermore, why is this the only verse in which Moses speaks about the wellbeing of the children due to their parents' observance of the commandments? What is the meaning of the words כי תעשה הטוב which appears to be the result underlying the commandment "so that you and your children will be well off?" Moses had already given the reason for this when he said: "observe, etc." He had added למען, i.e. "in order that as a result of this observance, etc." Clearly the wellbeing was decribed as a result of מצוה-observance.

I believe that Moses gives two separate instructions here. 1) To observe and to listen to the Torah and the various commandments, i.e. the ones with which the Israelites were already familiar; 2) the various decrees our rabbis have formulated throughout our history known as "fences." Concerning the Torah and the commandments written therein Moses said שמר, "observe," seeing these were already known; concerning the rabbinic decrees which were not yet known he said ושמעת, "be sure to hearken." Moses said את כל to warn the people to be sure that they include all the various decrees and ordinances that would be enacted by the Rabbis in the future. He said the words כל הדברים, "the whole words," to remind us that unless one fulfils both the biblical and the rabbinic part of the commandments one has not truly fulfilled them. Moses concludes this thought with the words למען ייטב לך ולבניך to remind us that it is the performance of all these rabbinic decrees which will enable the Jewish people to raise Torah-true generations of children and grandchildren. This is what would separate us from the people who indulge in a way of life that is abhorrent to G'd.

כי תעשה הטוב, "so that you will do what is good, etc." Moses explains that the purpose of rabbinic decrees and ordinances is designed only to enable you to do what is good and correct in the eyes of the Lord. Accordingly, this part of the verse is also part of the reason why Moses commands us to "observe and hearken." The good which G'd has in mind for us will be the result of our relating with equal seriousness to rabbinic decrees as we relate to biblical injunctions. All of this is additional to the good that will devolve on future generations as a result of the interpretations of Torah left to us by the scholars. The words כי תעשה are an addition to the words שמר ושמעת.

Our verse may also remind a person who is in the habit of fulfilling a particular commandment and is fully aware of what it entails not to say that he does not need to study this commandment. Moses tells us that study even of commandments which we fulfil as a matter of routine is a separate מצוה, and is not to be neglected.

Still another way of understanding the order in which Moses phrases this exhortation is that it is a reference to Hoseah 14,3: ונשלמה פרים שפתינו, "let our lips substitute for the bullocks." Our sages have taught us that when it is physically impossible to observe certain commandments, the way to make up for it is to study these commandments. The classic example is the entire animal-sacrifice legislation which the Jewish people have been unable to fulfil ever since the destruction of the Holy Temple. Just as it is impossible to keep all the "words," Moses contents himself with asking for an effort, i.e. שמר. He uses the word ושמעת as the parallel for the positive commandments. These too are impossible for one individual to perform totally. Moses suggests that studying positive commandments will compensate for the ones a person cannot fulfil physically. In view of the aforesaid it is not possible to observe all the commandments satisfactorily.

Moses may also have paraphrased something we have been taught in Avodah Zarah 19 that one should first read (commit to memory) the text before explaining it, i.e. trying to understand it. [In my edition of the Talmud the quotation is slightly different. The wording is: לעולם יגריס איניש ואף על גב דלא ידע ואף על גב דמשכת Ed.] This is what Moses had in mind that one should observe the commandments even before one has understood them. He implies that faithful performance will ensure that one remembers the commandment which will lead to ושמעת, that you will study and understand its meaning.

Moses may also have phrased this verse to reflect a statement in the Zohar volume three page 193 that the sins a person has committed act as a lock, precluding him from unraveling the secrets of the Torah. You find a similar comment in the Shulchan Aruch of the Ari zal in the section on Torah study. He wrote that the gates of understanding to the words of Torah are the questions which trouble normal human beings. This is the mystical dimension of the קליפות, the spiritually negative forces which have beeen created by man's own sins. Moses tells us that if you truly wish to understand that there are answers to these questions which trouble you in your faith you must first שמר, observe the commandments whose meaning bothers you and subsequently ושמעת, you will be able to understand the answer to the question which previously troubled you.

The verse may also be understood in light of what we learned in Chagiga 15 that "if the Rabbi appears to be of the stature of an angel one should request to hear words of Torah from his lips." Thus far the Talmud. Moses simply says that if the teacher is truly Torah-observant, שמר, you should listen to what he has to teach, ושמעת. When Moses added the words: את כל הדברים, this may be understood in light of the question directed against Rabbi Meir on that same folio in the Talmud how he could learn Torah from an heretic such as Elisha ben Avuyah? The question is reinforced by a quotation from Maleachi 2,7: "for the lips of a priest guard knowledge, and men seek rulings from his mouth; for he is the messenger of the Lord of Hosts." Surely Elisha ben Avuyah did not fit the prophet's description of who should dispense Torah knowledge? The Talmud answers that Rabbi Meir had also based himself on Scripture as it is written in Proverbs 22,17: "incline your ear and listen to the words of the wise, and your heart to My wisdom." Solomon does not say that one should listen to "their wisdom," i.e. the teacher's wisdom, but he said לדעתי, "to My wisdom," i.e. to G'd's wisdom. This appears to leave us with two contradictory verses from Scripture! The Talmud resolves this problem by saying one verse refers to what ordinary people should do whereas the verse in Proverbs refers to what eminent scholars may do. Rabbi Meir was eminent enough to be able to distinguish which of Elisha's words reflected genuine Torah outlook, something most ordinary people are unable to do. The Talmud there raises another problem. Rava explained the verse in Song of Songs 6,11: "I descended to the nut garden to have a look at the green plants of the vale." He asked: "why are the Torah scholars compared to a walnut? Answer: Just as the walnut is dirty on the outside without its interior becoming defiled by this, so the Torah scholar. Even though he may have sinned, his Torah has not become discredited." Rabbah bar Shiloh encountered the prophet Elijah. He asked him what G'd was currently preoccupied with? Elijah replied that G'd was telling the angels about the teachings of all the Torah scholars except that of Rabbi Meir The reason He did not quote Rabbi Meir was because the latter had quoted what he had learned from the heretic Elisha ben Avuyah. Rabbah bar Shilo wanted to know what Rabbi Meir had been guilty of that he was so discriminated against in heaven? He added that Rabbi Meir had found a pomegranate and eaten it while discarding its outer shell. [a hyperbole for not being infected with the harmful part of the source. Ed.] Thereupon Elijah answered that as of that moment G'd also quoted the sayings of Rabbi Meir. In fact G'd prefaced Rabbi Meir's sayings by referring to him as "My son Meir." Thus far the Talmud. According to our sages then an eminent scholar may listen to words of Torah even from the lips of an heretic. Maimonides does not accept this and rules in Hilchot Talmud Torah chapter 4 that unless the teacher is comparable in personal belief and conduct to an angel of the Lord one should not learn Torah from him.

According to the opinion of the Shach on Yore Deyah 246,8 only Rabbi Meir makes the distinction between who may study from the lips of a scholar who is a heretic and who may not. The concensus of the scholars in the Talmud is that we do not make such a distinction. He deduces this from the fact that the Talmud quoted Rabbi Meir as defending his attitude based on a verse from Scripture in Proverbs.

I do not agree with the words of the Shach. First of all we have no evidence in the Talmud that what Rabbi Meir did was subject to disagreement by the scholars in the Talmud. We accept the existence of controversies between the scholars only when there is no other way to reconcile what appear to be conflicting opinions. [the author means that it is an accepted principle not to invent a disagreement between scholars unless the evidence of such a disagreement is incontrovertible. Ed.] Secondly, the fact that the Talmud quoted the verse from Maleachi querying Rabbi Meir's conduct indicates that this very verse formed the basis of a general concensus, i.e. that one does not learn from the lips of an heretic, and that obviously Rabbi Meir agreed with this. Had the Talmud thought that Rabbi Meir did not accept the interpretation of the verse in Maleachi it should simply have said that Rabbi Meir disagreed. The question was only why Rabbi Meir ignored that verse and the concensus? If you were to argue that this is precisely what the scholar had in mind who said that Rabbi Meir based his conduct on the verse in Proverbs, i.e. that he did not accept the interpretation of the verse in Maleachi by the other scholars, why did he phrase it by saying that the verses appear to contradict themselves? Besides, Rava, who was a scholar of a later generation, quoted the verse from Song of Songs in defense of Rabbi Meir. We decide the halachah in accordance with more recent scholars, i.e. although the opinion of Rabbi Meir as to whether exceptions are allowed such as when the student is himself an eminent scholar is subject to dispute, the general principle that one does not learn from an heretic is accepted based on the verse in Maleachi, a principle which Rabbi Meir agrees with. What greater proof could there be that Rabbi Meir was not out of line than that G'd Himself quoted halachic sayings of Rabbi Meir after Rabbi Shiloh's conversation with the prophet Elijah? Let us assume for the moment that the principle espoused in Maleachi applies regardless of whether the student is himself an eminent scholar or not, and that only Rabbi Meir disagreed as to the exception for such scholars. Why did Rabbi Shiloh answer the prophet Elijah that Rabbi Meir found a pomegranate, ate its interior and discarded its shell? Clearly, he must have thought that in general Rabbi Meir shared the view of the other scholars otherwise what kind of a defence was this? After all this you may ask what did G'd think before He heard Rabbi Shilo's defence of Rabbi Meir and what did He think afterwards? Surely G'd did not need Rabbi Shiloh to enlighten Him! Did He not know what Rabbi Meir thought all along without the help of Rabbi Shiloh? Remember that G'd is concerned that man's actions be not only above board in His eyes but that they be approved and seen as meritorious in the eyes of his peers. Otherwise even halachically correct conduct may be accounted sinful in the eyes of G'd. When Rabbi Meir had studied from the mouth of Elisha ben Avuyah he had been guilt-free in the eyes of G'd but had not proven that his conduct was beyond reproach in the eyes of his peers. Now that Rabbi Shiloh had challenged Elijah it had become clear to G'd that Rabbi Meir's conduct was approved even by his peers. This is why G'd could begin to quote Rabbi Meir's Torah at this juncture. From all this it follows that Rabbi Meir's reasoning concerning the whole subject was correct.

This brings us to the ruling of Maimonides [and the Shulchan Aruch Ed.] in which the distinction made in the Talmud as to who may or may not learn from an heretic is totally ignored. Maimonides simply felt that in his generation there were no people of stature such as Rabbi Meir so that one could proclaim that if they studied Torah from the mouths of heretics this posed no danger to their continued intellectual and spiritual integrity. Perhaps Maimonides understood all the emphasis in the discourse on the subject in the Talmud on the person of Rabbi Meir as singling him out as an exception. This is why he ignored the concensus in the Talmud and applied the principle from Shabbat 112 that "if earlier generations could be compared to angels our generations are like ordinary mortals, whereas if even earlier generations were only ordinary mortals then we are comparable to donkeys." In view of this consideration, Maimonides did not feel he had to even mention the exception to the rule that one's Torah teacher must be like an angel of G'd in piety, etc., in order for us to accept what he is teaching.

In light of the foregoing we can understand the meaning of Moses saying שמר ושמעת, "be careful when you listen," in that order. He said: "under what circumstances do I tell you to be careful before you listen? Only if you are a relative ignoramus and might easily be misled by what the Torah scholar turned heretic has to say. In such an event you must only listen to teachers whose personal Torah-true conduct is above reproach. However, if you yourself happen to be an outstanding scholar and you therefore need to listen only to a very small part of what such a scholar turned heretic has to say [seeing you know most of it Ed.], you may go ahead and listen to discourses by such people just as Rabbi Meir did when he learned some Torah from Elisha ben Avuyah. You may do so because you are intelligent enough to discard what is worthless."