This morning, as I was learning Chumash with Rashi in the bais medrash of Ner Israel, the passage we were studying and the ambiance in the room brought back pleasant memories. Several years ago, Isaac Kinek, a frequent contributor to the Where What When, asked me to learn with him any subject of my choosing. I immediately responded that I would love to learn Chumash and Rashi, without any pressure to finish, and to be able to delve into Rashi’s beautiful words, which have inspired generations of students. Since I first learned a little modern Hebrew in Yeshiva University High School, I have been fascinated with the Hebrew language. Learning Rashi without a translation and without time pressure gives us the opportunity to actually figure out the meanings of words by the way Rashi explains their origin. Rashi is a grammarian and most of the time I enjoy his intricate explanations of the precise meaning of a term. We miss so much when we rush through his commentary or treat it superficially.
Of course, learning with Isaac Kinek is a unique opportunity to be regaled with stories of his teachers “back in the day.” All I can say is that teaching methods have changed over the years. In his day, almost all the teachers were Europeans with minimal knowledge of English, and most of the boys were anxious to be Americans. There was truly a clash of cultures that affected the rebbe’s ability to reach his students and the students’ ability to relate to their rebbe. It was a different world. I never experienced that, because I first encountered a Yiddish-speaking rebbe when I entered Rav Kulefsky’s shiur at an older age. I never experienced corporal punishment, which, along with choice Yiddish words, seems to have been a main source of “motivation” by some of the old time rebbes – at least, so I hear.
That morning, the Ner Israel bais medrash was full of boys for a summer program named Camp NCSY Sports. This program has been around for many years and has enabled both day school and public school teenagers to spend quality time in a yeshiva environment while enjoying a variety of other activities. I am one of the earliest NCSYers in the country. I believe that the national convention I attended in 1960, which was my first exposure to Orthodox Judaism, may have been the second or third year of the organization’s existence. At that NCSY convention, I first saw the enthusiasm and joy that accompanied the observant way of life. I returned home so inspired that I went to Yeshiva University High School one year later. NCSY was in the vanguard of the rebirth of Orthodox Judaism and has contributed beyond measure to the renaissance in which we are all living.
That morning, Mr. Kinek and I were learning parshas Mattos. We delved into the request by the tribes of Reuben and Gad, whose large flocks led them to ask Moshe for permission to settle on the eastern side of the Jordan River. Moshe is concerned that if these tribes do not cross the Jordan and join in the conquest of the land, the other tribes will lose heart and it would spell destruction. The elders of Reuben and Gad reply that they will build pens for their cattle and houses for their children and cross the Jordan with their brethren and fight until all the tribes have inherited their portions. Moshe responds and subtly changes their words. He says that if they will indeed build homes for their children and pens for their cattle and join in the battles, then it will be good for them.
Rashi points out that by their choice of words, they revealed their priorities. They cared more about their possessions than they did about their children. When Moshe subtly rebuked them by reordering their words, they understood, because later they do say, “Our children, wives, and flocks and cattle will stay in the cities of Gilead.” They got the order right this time. Rashi teaches us much more than the translation of the text; he shows us the moral of the story, the lesson that can be applied to our lives.
If you have been privileged to learn in yeshivos your whole life, you may take this comment of Rashi as evident on its face. I didn’t have that experience. The first time I analyzed this particular segment of the Torah was also the one and only time I was privileged to hear a lecture from the renowned teacher, Nechama Lebovitz. I was a student at Yeshiva Kerem B’Yavne, and during a vacation period, we were all gathered in Jerusalem, headquartered at Machon Gold. She came and guided us through the story of Reuben and Gad, and she elicited from us the ability to delve into the lessons under the surface, to analyze the structure of the verses. It was eye opening. What she showed us is really what Rashi shows us on every pasuk.
I guess that I really gained even more insight into Rashi and grew to love learning his commentary when I learned a Hebrew poem in 1964/65, when I was a freshman at Yeshiva University and took a course in Hebrew. This poem, which we memorized in part, is so lovely and so poignant and so relevant to 2013 that I want to share a little of it with you.
A Poem from the Fields
In the year 1940, the 900th anniversary of the birth of Rashi, a young socialist pioneer and poet named Shimshon Meltzer was working on a kibbutz in Mandatory Palestine. There, amid the fields and barns, he wrote an epic ballad to his beloved Rashi, the friend of his youth. He recalled lovingly the times he sat around the table in cheder with his rebbe and how they all learned Chumash and Rashi. Then the innocence of their youth was disrupted by World War I. but immediately after the war, the boys again gathered around their beloved rebbe and continued to learn. He describes Rashi in such glowingly poetic terms that one must read them to appreciate them.
Meltzer describes how the band of boys went their separate ways. They left the shtetl and moved to various places around the globe. Only one boy from his cheder remained frum; only one boy from the whole group continued to keep the ways of their rebbe, and that man died young. He, Shimshon Meltzer, became a socialist pioneer and now spoke Hebrew to the cows on his kibbutz.
The poem concludes with the lament that his little boy, who just turned six, went to school but would not learn Chumash and Rashi there. What a loss! That Rashi would be forgotten after all these years.
Before anyone rushes to judge Shimshon Meltzer harshly, try to understand him as a prototype of his whole generation, the pioneers who built Eretz Yisrael, who were grounded in the holy studies and, though their lives took them far away, sometimes looked back and regretted what they had lost. See the love Meltzer exhibits for Rashi in these excerpts, just small parts of a long ballad.
As soon as he returned from the front,
Rabbeinu Aharon, the teacher,
And we all sat down at the long table
And studied Chumash with Rashi,
Our childhood became pure again,
Our innocence as it was.
We were terrified by God’s majesty,
Who speaks, and His speech is done;
By Adam and his wife, sinners,
Nahash the deceiver, the piercing curse;
By Cain the murderer of his brother,
By the voice of the shed blood and the mark on the forehead.
The words would burn so brightly,
They blinded our eyes.
Something of the light of the seven days was in them,
A distant and alien luminescence,
Too strong and too acute for our tender age
To take in and nourish our souls.
We saw the contents of the great Chumash
Shut and closed as in a fortress,
Two and forty interpreters,
Like hewn stones in the wall of the fort;
With Onkelos guarding like a sentinel on one side,
Jonathan his adjutant on his left;
And hidden behind, the Yerushalmi,
Prepared and tempered for the leap into adventure.
And suddenly, look at the marvel!
From the midst of the sealed stones of the wall
One luminescent stone peers out,
Like the holy stone on the breastplate,
To illumine all gloom and hidden matter,
To turn down the painful, primordial light,
To adapt the eye to the great sight,
To break the ear to the message.
That was your stone, dear old Rashi,
Tour stone, the most precious of stones!...
This is how Meltzer ends the poem:
And my elder son is six already, and knows the stories of
Genesis
From hearing and reading, at second and third hand.
Soon he will move to the second class, and study “the stories
of Genesis”
And my heart says to me, my heart aches in me, my heart
weeps; can it be?
Alas, how can it be! – He will not study the Pentateuch
with Rashi...
Oh, old Rashi, grove of my childhood, flourishing orchard
of my imagination,
Can it be, can it be that the reaper has come and cut
down what you planted? …
Oh, bloom again, great orchard, to delight the children of Israel.
Oh, bear thy fruit, wonderful grove, reviver of Israel’s Diaspora!
â—† â—† â—†
As I sat reflecting on this ode to Rashi and the nostalgia for the lost world of the shtetl, I wondered what Shimshon Meltzer would think if he were alive today. Would he rejoice to know that in his Land of Israel very few talk to the cows on the kibbutz any longer, but tens of thousands of young people learn Chumash and Rashi? Would he be happy that not too many young people are inspired by the poet Bialik’s description of the masmid, but thousands emulate that masmid’s devotion to learning day and night? Would Shimshon Meltzer and his generation acknowledge that their idealism led to a state that will, in due time, look much less socialist and much more Yiddish (in the Jewish sense) than he thought possible?
There is one more pasuk in parshas Mattos that helps put all of this into contemporary perspective: Moshe Rabbeinu, at first, thinks that the two tribes are bowing out of the battle, that they want to settle on the other side of the river and not share in the fate of their brethren. He says the immortal words: “Will your brothers go out to war and you will sit here!” (Bamidbar 32:6) Rashi explains that this is said in wonderment. Moshe says that if they separate themselves from the rest of klal Yisrael, it will be disastrous.
I once heard Rav Moshe Feinstein speak about this very topic. Rav Moshe said that just as one is required to give maaser (tithe) in his tzedaka, one should also give maaser of his career. In his time, he was specifically speaking about being willing to go out and teach in an “out-of-town” day school for a few years, even if that wasn’t your long term plan.
I would like to apply that concept to the conditions of 2013. If each and every frum Jew would be open and willing to interact positively with all the other Jews we encounter, there is no telling how much positive influence we could have. Today, organizations like Project Inspire mobilize the frum community to do just that. Kiruv does not have to be the “job” of “outreach professionals.” My oldest daughters, Chaya Lasson and Estie Fertig, and my daughter-in-law, Bracha Basya Oberstein, have all been involved with the Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project led by Lori Palatnik, which takes large groups of women on missions to Israel, where they are inspired to bring more Yiddishkeit into their lives.
In Israel, today, there is a battle going on for the soul of the nation. As Rabbi Ahron Lopiansky, Rosh Hayeshiva of Yeshiva of Greater Washington, has pointed out, we each have to look at ourselves in the mirror and make sure that we have no blemishes that make it impossible for us to have a positive influence on other Jews. I would add that, beneath the prickly skin of the Sabra, is a sweet and gentle interior. Let’s get beyond the battles and develop a positive approach to ignite the pintele Yid in every Jew.
Sadly, the generation of Shimshon Meltzer did not raise their own children and grandchildren to learn Chumash and Rashi. The age of nostalgia is over. Young Israeli and American Jews know very little and do not have the background on which to base their impressions of Torah. Maybe this gives us an opportunity to reach inquiring minds and show them the beauty of our heritage. For me, Chumash and Rashi is where I would begin. Rashi is our zaidy, holding us by the hand and helping us cross the dangerous street. Rashi gives us the beauty of Yiddishkeit; let’s learn it and pass it on.â—†
