August 21, 2020
We Must Attack
Shoftim, 5780
There is a very powerful story about the Sabba of Navardok, Rabbi Yosef Yozel Horwitz (1847-1919) that relates to our parasha.
First some background about the holy Sabba.
The Sabba of Navardokk, got married at 18 (before he was known as the Sabba of Navardok.) He married the daughter of Rabbi Yaakov Stein who died shortly after the wedding, so the Sabba of Navardok accepted upon himself to support Rabbi Stein’s widow and 8 children. Soon after that the Sabba met Rabbi Yisroel Salanter, the famed rabbi and founder of the mussar movement. Rabbi Salanter had a profound impact on him. The Sabba of Navardok moved with his wife and children to study with Rabbi Salanter in Kovno. Tragically the Sabba’s wife died while giving birth to their second child.
The two little children were temporarily taken into the homes of relatives and the Sabba of Navardok went into a deep seclusion. For the next year his only contact with the outside world was through two windows in his small room through which his meals were passed. One window was for dairy food and the other window was for meat meals.
While the Sabba was in seclusion many enemies rose against him and mocked him for living in seclusion. He was even framed by his enemies as a counterfeiter. The police actually stormed his room while he was in seclusion but found the accusations to be baseless.
After he emerged from seclusion he heard a woman, Chaya Rivka, crying from a window. She was bereft because a man had recently broken his engagement with her. She was wailing aloud that no one would marry her. The Sabba said, “I will marry you!”
The Sabba dedicated his life to spreading Torah and founded a series of yeshivot, including the Yeshiva of Navardok, known for its attachment to the mussar movement—an emphasis on spiritual self-improvement. During World War I, the Sabba moved the yeshiva to Kiev where he also founded a network of yeshivot.
In 1919, on Simchat Torah, there was a terrible pogrom in Kiev. The story is told that rioters surrounded the synagogue and were threatening to burn down the building. The Sabba of Navardok told his students, “We will not run.” He took the Torah scroll and encouraged his students to dance with the Torah scroll in accordance with the custom on Simchat Torah. He then recited the yontif Kiddush in a loud and clear voice (Sofer, D. "Rav Yosef Yoizel Horowitz ZT"L The Alter of Novardok".)
The students who were there later related that it was at that moment they understood the following verse from our portion:
“Before you join battle, the priest shall come forward and address the troops. He shall say to them, “Hear, O Israel! You are about to join battle with your enemy. Let not your courage falter. Do not be in fear, or in panic, or in dread of them” (20:2-3).
The Sabba and his students survived the pogrom but soon after tragedy struck as a plague of Typhoid broke out in the city. The Sabba was aware of the great danger of Typhoid but he felt it was his responsibility to try to help others. He personally cared for the many sick patients and he took hundreds of sick people into his home. Sadly, he eventually also became sick and died from Typhoid.
Our portion contains the biblical commandment of not being afraid, “al yerakh levavchem.” The Torah tells us that when we go into battle we must banish fear from our hearts.
This is how Sefer HaChinukh (13th century) formulates the prohibition:
“That we have been commanded to not be terrified and to not be afraid from the enemies at the time of war and not to run away from them. Rather the obligation upon us is to strengthen ourselves against them and to stand in front of them. And about this is it stated (Deuteronomy 7:21), "You shall not be terrified in front of them." And the prevention was repeated in another place, in its stating (Deuteronomy 3:22), "You shall not dread them." It is from the roots of the commandment that everyone in Israel should place his trust in God, may He be blessed, and not be afraid for his body in a situation that he can give glory to God, blessed be He, and to His people. The laws of the commandment - for example, that which they, may their memory be blessed, said (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings and Wars 7:15) that a man not think at the time of war about his wife, nor his children nor his money, but rather he clear his [mind] from everything, to [focus on] the war. And he should further think that all the blood of Israel is dependent upon him, and [so] if he is afraid and 'he pulls back his right [hand],' it is as if he spilled the blood of all of them - and like the matter that is written (Deuteronomy 20:8), ‘and that the heart of his brothers not melt like his heart’" (Sefer HaChinukh, 525:1-4).
“Not being afraid,” does not mean that we should act recklessly. Gd forbid! Indeed, unlike the Sabba we must sometimes run and act more cautiously. But what we cannot do is be immobilized. We must not allow the danger of our situation to immobilize us. We must recognize that the whole world is our battlefield in service of Hashem and that we are Hashem’s soldiers.
Going into battle does not primarily refer to a physical fight with weapons against mortal enemies. It mostly refers to situations in which we battle the many obstacles we face in our daily lives.
Practically speaking, how can we not allow fear to immobilize us?
First, the Sefer haChinukh tells us that we must channel the teachings of the Torah to empower us to action. The Torah tells us that in the moments where we are most afraid and most anxious, it is precisely then that we must focus our energy and thoughts on helping others. It is at these moments that we must act as though, “all the blood of Israel is dependent upon [our actions.]”
Even though we are mere individuals, the Torah urges us to always act as thought the fate of the entire world depends upon our actions. Through our every day actions we must assume responsibility for the welfare of the world.
We see this in our portion as well through the ritual of the eglah arufah.
“If, in the land that the LORD your God is assigning you to possess, someone slain is found lying in the open, the identity of the slayer not being known, your elders and magistrates shall go out and measure the distances from the corpse to the nearby towns. The elders of the town nearest to the corpse shall then take a heifer which has never been worked, which has never pulled in a yoke; and the elders of that town shall bring the heifer down to an everflowing wadi, which is not tilled or sown. There, in the wadi, they shall break the heifer’s neck. The priests, sons of Levi, shall come forward; for the LORD your God has chosen them to minister to Him and to pronounce blessing in the name of the LORD, and every lawsuit and case of assault is subject to their ruling. Then all the elders of the town nearest to the corpse shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the wadi. And they shall make this declaration: “Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it done” (21:1-7).
A dead body has been found outside the city and as a consequence the Elders of the City are obligated to go through a ritual of expiation proclaiming that they were not directly responsible. The clear implication of the need for such a ritual is because the Elders do indeed bear indirect responsibility.
How so? What did the elders do?
Rashi explains that the Elders did not actively sin, but they did sin by not being aggressive enough in helping the murder victim:
“Would it enter anyone’s mind that the Elders are suspect of murder? But the meaning is: We never saw him and knowingly let him depart without food or escort (if we had seen him we would not have let him depart)” (v.7).
The fundamental message is that it is always our responsibility to try and help others, no matter how tangential we are to the problem.
If we are assuming responsibility then we will not only help others, we will also help ourselves conquer fear.
A second technique to not allow fear to immobilize us is by recognizing that we as individuals are a small part of Hashem’s larger plan. We believe with full faith that Hashem has a plan for our world, which Hashem does not always share with us. Our responsibility is to be willing soldiers in the army of Hashem. We go into battle to help make the prophetic vision a reality. This is not a battle that fights with swords or other physical weapons, but rather with a spiritual purity that desires to bring a new vision to the world—a vision of living for a greater good.
This week our congregation gathered to remember the great, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, of blessed memory. Rabbi Steinsaltz recently passed away and so our congregation has been reading his works and discussing them as a community. This week we read several chapters from his book, A Dear Son to Me.
In this book, he published a speech he gave in Washington, DC, at the Library of Congress in 1999. The speech was on the occasion of the 100th birthday of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson.
Rabbi Steinsaltz writes that the Rebbe did not leave us a legacy. Instead he left us marching orders to bring a complete change and transformation to the world. Through our efforts we can bring about an era in which we stop wasting our energy and efforts on small and insignificant matters. Instead, the Rebbe urged us to create a world in which we are, “genuinely concerned about every segment of society…addressing rifts among ethnic groups, and the growing gap between the rich and poor; making education (not just knowledge) a primary and universal ambition, and bringing the whole country…to an awareness of the Divine” (A Dear Son to Me, 64).
If this is our goal writes Rabbi Steinsaltz then we should not walk into battle, but “we should run. We should attack!”
This then is the Torah’s blueprint to defeat our fear:
We must focus our efforts on helping others in greater need.
We must always assume responsibility for the vulnerable.
We must recognize that we are a small part of Gd’s plan, which commands us to transform the world.
As a consequence of these battle plans we must always attack. Fear is real. But it must not immobilize. It must compel us to make a difference in the world and to strive to bring about a real and positive transformation.
When we are most afraid, we must attack!
