YISRO 1991

In the Torah portion Yisro we learn about the Ten Commandments.  Immediately after learning about the Ten Commandments the Torah says, "And all the people saw the thunder and the lightning and the voice of the shofar and the mountain smoking and the people saw and they moved and they stood from a distance."  The rabbis are astounded at this sentence because it says the people see the thunder and they hear the lightning.  What is happening here?  Some rabbis comment that this sentence speaks about a time in which there is both judgment and mercy.  The Kotzker rebbe speaks about that.  He says the thunder and the smoking mountain and the voice of the shofar speak about judgmental events, and the lightning speaks about salvation events, about wonderful transforming events that will change the position of the Jewish people.  The Jewish people see all these things and they are moved and they tremble even, but they stand from a distance.  They do not do anything.  Of course, in our own day when we saw the Holocaust and we saw the rebirth of Israel we see these momentous events.  Even during the past year when the Russian Jews were allowed to come out, when we see this huge influx of Russian Jewry into Israel and when we see also the threat of Saddam Hussein to gas Israel and we see mixed up together judgmental events and salvation events.  We see such important things going on in Jewish history.  We cannot stand at a distance.  We have to move.  We have to participate.  We have to be part of it.  We have to give of our time and our of energy and of our means to make sure that this is a time or redemption and not a time of destruction.

In the Talmud there is an argument about the meaning of this verse.  There is an argument between Rabbi Shmuel and Rabbi Akiva.  Rabbi Shmuel says that this is just the way of Hebrew poetry.  It is more hyperbola, but it really means that the people heard the thunder and saw the lightning.  Rabbi Akiva, on the other hand, says the exact opposite.  He says that in this event the people really heard the lightning and they saw the thunder.  There is also another disagreement between Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Shmuel about the Ten Commandments.  Rabbi Shmuel says that when the Jewish people heard the Ten Commandments, all those things that are positive about the Ten Commandments about honoring your parents and keeping the Shabbos, etc., the Jews said yes, they would do it, and when it came to those things like do not kill, do not steal, do not commit adultery, do not be a false witness, the Jews said no, we will not do these things.  We will desist from them.  When it came to the positive things the Jewish people said they would do them and when it came to the negative things the Jewish people said they would not do those bad things, but Rabbi Akiva said no, that when the Jewish people heard the positive things it is true they said, "We will do them," and when it same to the negative things they also said, "Yes, we will not do them."  They did not say, "No, we will not do them," but they said, "Yes, we will not do them."  What is the meaning of this argument?

You know, there is a difference between seeing something and hearing something.  The rabbi say that Smeeah is not like Reeah, that hearing something is not like seeing something.  We all know this from the war that is going on, that when the military spokesmen give their briefings they speak in abstract terms, and they talk about hitting the enemy's assets and destroying this target or that target.  They talk about so many MIA's and so many casualties, etc.  Everything is abstract so that you do not really feel the full force of the war.  You do not realize that people are actually dying there.  There is a big difference in hearing these dry statistics and seeing corpses strewn over a street with blood gushing out and with flies flying about.  When you see something visually it has an altogether different effect on the human being.  That is, of course, why even today Israel is being treated so unfairly.  All of a sudden you have interviews from the West Bank how terrible it is that the people are cooped up in their homes because of the curfew.  Nobody is killed or wounded or being thrown into jail, but yet, how can they be forced to stay home to watch television all day and their children are cooped up?  You feel so sorry for them, while, at this same moment, thousands of people are being killed in Iraq.  When it talks about those B-52 bombs going down on the Republican Guard, this means people are being buried alive.  You are talking about thousands of people being killed.  This is a just war, and it is true we have to use these type of methods to win the war, but seeing something is not like hearing something.  A person cannot understand anything about death unless you have actually washed a dead body.  Unless you have done a tahara, unless you have been involved with a dead body you do not understand anything about death.  Hearing statistics is an intellectual exercise, and usually in life it is the physical things which are immediate which a person feels.  When it comes to spiritual things they are abstract and a person only knows them intellectually, but they do not have that impact upon a person.  That is why so many people can be religious superficially because it is never inculcated into them.  It is never part of their whole system, their whole sensory system.  That is why Judaism insists that we do acts in order to be religious, that we have to feel and smell and see and with all our senses immerse ourselves in religious experiences if it is to have any effect on us.

That is why Rabbi Akiva said they actually saw the thunder and heard the lightning because to see the thunder and here it means the words of the Torah.  They had to see the mitzvahs.  They had to be part of their whole body.  The difference between Rabbi Shmuel and Rabbi Akiva and their opinions is probably based upon their background.  Rabbi Akiva came from a very poor background.  In fact, he was descended originally from Canaanites, and Rabbi Akiva was the lowest of low professions; he was a shepherd.  He was completely illiterate until he was 40 years old.  Then he became the most famous and beloved rabbi in Israel, but he understood that in order to make this quantum leap, in order to make this great spiritual advancement he had to actually see these spiritual concepts.  He had to be part of them.  On the other hand, Rabbi Shmuel came from generations of high priests.  He lived in a rarified atmosphere.  He thought that people always did these things, that people always followed the mitzvahs and commandments.  He, himself, probably could not even conceive of evil, how people could do evil things.  Rabbi Akiva knew that people could not only spiritually grow but that people could also spiritually descend, that people could abstract evil to such an extent that it would inure them to all the effects of evil and they would be able to do all sorts of terribly cruel and vicious things.  There is evil in the world and it has to be confronted.  That is why we have to fight Saddam Hussein.  Saddam Hussein is such a vicious, cruel man who probably has abstracted all his evil to such an extent that he does not even feel it is evil anymore.

When it comes to the Ten Commandments also it is not enough to just say I will not do this and I will not do that.  We have to create the conditions so that a person will not even want to do those things.  That is what Rabbi Akiva is telling us, that unless we create the conditions that a person will not even want to do those things then we will have trouble having people stop doing these things.  We have to say yes, I do not want to kill or steal because I have reached a different level of experience.  I am not only hearing these commandments.  I am seeing these commandments.

This, of course, is one of the problems that we have today.  Many people do not realize that there is evil in the world, that Saddam Hussein is an evil man, and they make all sorts of false comparisons.  That, of course, is why our army brass has basically banned the television.  They do not want to show pictures of the horrors of war because they are afraid that people will turn their stomach, that people will say, "Well, maybe it is not so bad and maybe Saddam Hussein is not so bad."  We all know that we have to do terrible things many times in order to combat evil, that we have to make sacrifices.  Do not fool yourself.  In war people die.  The sacrifices are required.  We learn, "With your blood you are going to live."  Israel today is not so anxious to fight a battle as some people here in America think they are.  In fact, they have such terrible anti-Semitic cartoon depicting Israel as a mad dog and only Hussein being able with all his power to be able to hold them back.  Israel knows that they have to defend themselves, and sometimes that requires retaliation, but everybody knows when there is going to be a retaliation Jewish boys are going to be killed, too.  It requires sacrifice.  You cannot have a clean war.  Unfortunately, people abstract these things to such an extent that they pretend people do not die, but people do die.  When you confront evil you have to confront evil by being willing to sacrifice.  We have to create such an environment in the world, though, that people will not want to do evil.  That is what Rabbi Akiva is telling us.  Rabbi Akiva says the capacity to make in our lives the spiritual things so real that they counteract the physical things which will lead us to do bad things.  We can do it.  On the other hand, we have to be careful that we do not abstract the evil things so much that they will be easier to do.  We have to be careful that even when we confront evil that we know that we have to do terrible things, and we have to accept it.  In this struggle there are going to be losses, and Saddam Hussein is going to lose, but never fear there will be other tyrants who will take his place.  Unfortunately, the world never learns and people think that you do not have to make superhuman efforts to maintain the peace and to inculcate into the human heart the idea that spiritual values, peace and harmony and brotherhood, are so important that they are seen and not just heard.  When it comes to the Ten Commandments we do not just say we will not do those things.  We have to create an environment so we do not even ever want to do these things.  Until we do that tyrants are going to arise.  Saddam will be defeated but another one will come and then another and another and every time in every generation will have to confront them and make sure they are defeated, too, until the world finally is willing to adopt a system of thinking and acting which will create a system, an atmosphere, in which no one will even want to kill or steal or lie because they will say yes to all the commandments in a positive, positive way.  They will be able to see what today we can only hear.

I am reminded of the story they tell about a woman who had twins and she had to give them up.  Many years later she wanted to see how they were doing.  She found out through a detective that one of the twins was adopted and lived in Spain and his name was Juan.  The other one was living in Egypt and his name was Ahmal.  She wrote to Juan and he sent her a picture.  Then she wanted to go to Egypt to try to find Ahmal.  Her husband asked why she wanted to do that because, "If you've seen Juan you've seen them all".  Unfortunately, when you see Saddam Hussein you have seen all the tyrants, the Hitlers, the Hamans of history that have come before.  Let us hope and pray that we will all not only hear the moral values and spiritual values but will see them and we will all work hard to create an atmosphere and environment that will be so penetrated into everyone's consciousness that they would never even want to kill or steal or do evil to another human being so the Mashiach will come.  Amen.