From

Parshat Nitsavim

Rav Haim Lifshitz

Essays and Articles:

	Shabat
	Four Sacred Cows of Western Society
	Existence and Destiny
	Ecology
	Glossary
	Library

Translated from Hebrew by S. NAthan

l'ilui nishmat Esther bat Mordechai

Nitsavim - VaYelech

The Double Veil - God's Hidden Face: To What Purpose?

Organized Pandemonium: The Key to Applying Divine Law

In what way does a Jew differ from a non-Jew? In life style and culture only? In inborn character traits? In the Jew's very nature, including the physical as well?

The Torah describes a time when God will hide His face from His people, and the implication is that He will add veil upon veil, to double His "hiddenness" from them. "My wrath will burn against him on that day, and I will leave them and I will hide My Face from them. (31:17) "I shall hide, and I shall surely hide My Face on that day...because he has turned to other gods." (31:18)

The mefarshim point to a second hester panim, "hiddenness of the Face" that comes after a Jew recognizes the first hester panim. "And he will say on that day: 'It is because there is no God within me that these evils have befallen me." Meaning that after he has repented, after he has recognized his wrongdoing, the second hester panim will make its appearance.

Why? What purpose can more "hiddenness" serve, once the Jew has returned to God? Because, the mefarshim point out, idolatry still remains. "...For this reason it says that because of all the great evil they have done, by putting their faith in idolatry, He shall hide His Face even further from them. Not like the first hester panim, where He hid the Face of His mercy and many evils and troubles befell them, but rather they will be in hiddenness from the Face of redemption." (Ramban) Ohr HaChaim adds: "The way they (of blessed memory) put it: (Sifri, Re'eh, 11:25) 'Anyone who acknowledges idolatry is like one who heretically denies the whole entire Torah. 'And for all the evil that he has done': What [evil] is that? 'For he has turned to other gods'".

What is the nature of this idolatry? How can idolatry remain after the Jews have repented of their sins, and have been castigated with so many evils and troubles? "And I shall hide My face from them". Rav comments: Whoever is not experiencing hester panim, is not of 'them' Whoever is not experiencing 'and the Jew shall be for prey', is not of 'them'. (Hagiga 5:1)

The Gemara in Hagiga seems to be describing a permanent feature accompanying all Jews at all times and at every moment of their long exile: It is Pandemonium. Permanent disorder - lack of order and method as a characteristic Jewish feature: Unstable, restless, more often agitated than serene. "Yaakov sought to dwell serenely, but he was pounced upon by the rage of..."

Chazal comment: "Is it not enough for the righteous that serenity is reserved for them in the next world that they seek serenity in this world?" Since "our forefathers' actions are a sign for their descendants", we too rarely attain serenity.

"Among those nations you will never be soothed". Yet on the other hand, "even when they were in the land of their enemies I did not despise them and I was not repelled by them", for "the Shechina dwells with them in their exile."

Jews are unlike the non-Jews who have lived in the same place as their forefathers for many generations, who have upheld their forefathers' beliefs' and who dwell peacefully on land they own. Jews change place, profession and even culture and lifestyle regularly. Jews may not take pride in their professions - in their vocational calling. Doctors may wish they were lawyers and lawyers may wish they were doctors.

Only one profession has managed to instill professional pride in its practitioners, and that is the Torah profession. A Torah scholar is proud of his profession and would not exchange it for any other. After all, Torah is something substantial! Even beyond this, Jews do not put their faith in any natural law whatsoever. Long renowned for hypochondria, Jews are fond of the medical profession. If for some reason you are trying to communicate with a taciturn Jew, then try health, illness, diseases and their possible complications. It is the key to rapport.

Jews do not pursue money as the anti-Semites claim. They pursue a living, because they are themselves pursued by a gut feeling that hunger's peril is ever imminent, since they do not believe in the permanent laws and natural orders that supposedly support the infrastructure of reality.

When something positive happens to Jews, they assume it is a miracle, and everyone knows that miracles do not repeat themselves. When trouble should never come, Jews obediently recite a blessing, and respond quite naturally. After all, what can one expect from natural law if not trouble and disaster? That is to say: If it's good - it's heaven-sent. If it's bad - what else did you expect? And it is heaven-sent.

Hence the disorder and instability that characterizes Jews. Organized disorder does indeed hold a certain hidden blessing. After all, who wants to be the guest at a home that looks more like a pharmacy, where they require you to take your shoes off at the entrance? Please do not stand there, please do not sit here, please do not touch that... On the other hand, a home reminiscent of the overturning of Sodom also does not lend itself to an extended stay. You escape by the skin of your teeth, a glorious stain adorning your pants. The chair you were offered was of questionable stability, and you were never sure you weren�t sharing your bed with creeping crawling creatures, pins and needles, and assorted plagues.

Humorists claim that the sin of the Golden Calf was only due to excessive punctuality. "For Moshe tarried in coming." Tarried is translated from the Hebrew boshesh, and Chazal comment: "beshesh" - at six. The people of Israel looked at their watches: When six o' clock came and Moshe had not, they hurried to make the Calf. It is from here that the people of Israel learn never to rely on reality's law and order. Henceforth, they will view all fixed and rule-governed times and patterns - as distinct from times and patterns determined by human decision - as idolatry.

Like all Jewish humor, this joke too holds its grain of truth. Jews do not build their behavioral processes, their interpretation of things and their expectations, out of what is called immediate reality, when it is divorced from the broader reality of human experience. We are meant to understand from this that existential reality is but a reflection of heaven's law, God's will, and Divine Providence - both public and private. God has not abandoned the earth to the laws of matter; they may not do as they wish with reality.

The belief in the effectiveness of the material laws, in itself, is what constitutes a normal Jew's day-to-day idolatry. This idolatry seduces a Jew into believing in due process: In the procedures of politics, economics, and medicine, and all the other fixed laws and processes that God has established for the management of the created universe.

Yet a Jew is expected to see through these. A Jew is called on to believe that these laws have never been freed from their Creator's grasp, that they have never been granted independence, and that it is only sublime Providence that continues to manage their progress.

This is the message that is communicated in these parashot, Nitsavim and VaYelech: "You are standing here today, all of you.

" When you come to the land, you will be faced with a new temptation: You will be tempted to rely on political structure, and have expectations of the conventional frameworks of professional and social position, and depend upon a division of labor according to professional qualifications, positions, and services. You will set up national leaders, law enforcers, higher prestige occupations and lower prestige occupations - cutters of wood and drawers of water. All will ply their trade and all will know their place, as is the way of the world. All will also be tempted to draw their sense of confidence and well-being, their feeling of security in their own existence from the fact of their professions or from their place in society, for this is the way the world.

Therefore know it clearly, Moshe cautions them: It is not from such as these that you will be saved, and it is not to these that you will bow. All of you stand, rather, held in suspension, drawing your sustenance and your very existence from sublime Providence. It is for this reason that you have come here today, in oath and in vow - as an expression of your absolute commitment to your Creator and your absolute dependency upon Him alone.

However, God knows that there are among you some that "harbor the root of gall and wormwood", the root of false premise that will seduce you into believing in the life of placid complacency based on professional, social or family status. Know, then, that if you believe in these things you are being influenced by non-Jewish perceptions of existence, and "going to serve those peoples' gods...reassuring [your] self in [your] heart, and saying, 'peace will be [all will be well] with me'..."

Never believe it, Moshe tells the Jews. The other nations are subject to the laws of nature, but you are not. It is in this way that you are different. This is the differentness of the Jew from the nations.

Differentness varies according to the individual quality of every Jew. The higher a Jew's quality rises, the less that Jew will be subject to the laws of nature. The same principle applies to the Land of Israel, most sacred and beloved of all the lands: The Land of Israel is not subject to the natural laws that govern physical, economic and military processes. It is subject only to Divine law. To the extent that the Torah is kept, the land will obey as well. The land will serve those who dwell in her to the extent that they obey the laws of the Torah. "The righteous one utters a decree and the Holy Blessed One carries it out".

"And all the peoples will say: 'For what reason did God do this to this land?' And they will say: 'Over their abandoning God's covenant'", meaning that the nations themselves will acknowledge the fact that Torah law determines fate for those people who received the Torah, unlike their own fate which is determined by other factors. Here we can see that persecution of Jews by non-Jews points to the task with which non-Jews are charged: They remind the Jews that Jewish existence runs on different rules, unique to the Jews.

The profound contrast between a Jew's experience and a non-Jew's experience is counted among the "hidden things that are for God". Hidden from non-Jews, inaccessible to their worldview, they are nevertheless blatantly clear, tangibly obvious, and readily accessible to the Jewish personality. For this reason a non-Jew is forbidden to study Torah. Its laws are not meant for the non-Jew, but rather determine the Jew's fate and the Jew's experience.