Between parshas Chayei Soroh and parshas Bo,
(until the parsha, "this month is the beginning of the
months for you"), each parshoh affords us
contemplation of the behavior of tzaddikim and,
conversely, of reshoim. This is all part of the
principle that, "He told His people about the power of His
deeds" (Tehillim 111:6), as explained in parshas
Bereishis. In this parshoh, we witness the
greatness of Avrohom Ovinu on the one hand, and the conduct
of Efron on the other.
Be On Your Guard!
Chazal say, "The yetzer hora is like a fly that lives
between the heart's two openings" (Brochos 61). The
commentators explain that a fly's natural habitat is places
where refuse and filth collect. If a person has an oozing
wound, the flies arrive.
In the same way, the yetzer hora, whose aim is to
contaminate a person with sin, dwells between the openings of
the heart, in order to make it filthy with sin. If the heart
becomes unclean R'l, the person's entire body follows.
The way to drive the yetzer hora away and prevent this
from happening is to ensure that it finds no way inside to
take control of the heart.
This is the meaning of Chazal's comment on the posuk
(Bereishis 4:7), " `If you do not improve, sin crouches
in wait at the entrance . . . ': The yetzer hora is a
passerby; then he stands; then he is a visitor; then he
becomes master of the house and casts out the vessels"
(Succah 52).
This means that initially, the yetzer hora
"innocently" passes next to a person's home. If the owner is
vigilant and pushes him away, well and good -- he will be rid
of him. However, if he opens his door to him, even if it only
by a slight crack, the end will be that the yetzer
hora takes control. If a person entertains even a casual
thought in his heart, the yetzer hora ultimately takes
charge and casts the vessels, meaning the person's
spirituality, out.
I heard the following explanation given by the rov of
Yerushalayim, HaRav Y. Z. Dushinsky ztvk'l, on the
posuk (Bamidbor 15:39), "And you shall not stray after
your hearts . . . " If you saw something in the street that
is forbidden to look at, don't think about what you saw.
Remove it from your thoughts and regret having seen it, and
then you will be saved! This is the meaning of "the openings"
of the heart to which Chazal refer. If you open your heart to
what you saw, then "sin is lying in wait" and will spring
upon you and ultimately become the one in control. "The
Merciful One wants the heart. Hakodosh boruch Hu says,
`Give your hearts to Me.' Reshoim are therefore
controlled by their hearts, for they delude themselves and
make peace with the yetzer hora, allowing it to rule
them with all kinds of excuses, "It'll be okay, everything
will be all right . . . " Woe to such excuses!
I'll tell you something that happened in the yard outside my
home in the Sha'arei Chesed neighborhood, where two children
were playing. As they were playing, one of them fell onto a
fence and his forehead was gashed and started bleeding. My
wife o'h, told me that a boy named Meir'ke had
fallen and was bleeding. I immediately took the boy to Doctor
Minnin, z'l. I was running with him in my arms, and my
wife went alongside us holding a damp towel over the cut. The
boy's grandmother lived in the neighborhood. She was a very
righteous woman. She saw us running in shock and thought that
one of our own children had fallen. I knew that it was her
grandson but she didn't recognize him. She came out to us and
reassured us saying, "Never mind, Hashem will help . . . "
She kept repeating this message. I didn't tell her that it
was her grandchild but as she got closer to us, she saw that
it wasn't a child from our family and she lowered her voice,
as she said, "Never mind . . . " When she got even closer
though and saw that it was her own grandson, she started to
shriek, "Meir'ke! My Meir'ke!" Then all the neighbors came
out and said, "Never mind! Never mind, Hashem will help!
Hashem will help!"
I learned a powerful lesson from this. As long as it's not
`My Meir'ke,' we say "Never mind, everything will be okay."
But if it's `My Meir'ke,' if it affects us, then we cry
`Gevald!!' If a person doesn't cry Gevald over
himself, that's a sign that he isn't concerned with how he
acts.
This is the meaning of the posuk (Mishlei 10:22), "A
tzaddik's words are refined silver". A tzaddik
chooses his words and his speech is like purified silver. On
the other hand, "The heart of the reshoim is slight,"
small and easily swayed, for they are proud and think that
they are capable of doing everything. That is why they
fail.
Two Levels: Jealousy and an Evil Eye
Chazal point out that in the posuk, "And Avrohom
weighed out [the money] for Efron," Efron's name is written
without the letter vov, whereas every other time his
name is mentioned in the parshoh his name has a
vov. The medrash (Bereishis Rabba parshoh
58:7), comments that the loss of this vov is
referred to by the posuk (Mishlei 28:22), "The man
with an evil eye becomes flustered over financial gain and he
doesn't know that loss will come to him."
Earlier we mentioned how Efron lost his equanimity when he
saw Avrohom Ovinu's money and was unable to restrain his
impulses. If a horse gets a shock, its rider must pull on the
reins in order to calm it down. Similarly, a person must draw
on his neshomoh in order to rein in his yetzer
hora. This is what Efron could not do. Commenting on the
beginning of the posuk, "The man with an evil eye",
Chazal tell us that Efron wanted to give Avrohom Ovinu's
money the evil eye. The posuk speaks of an ish ra
ayin, indicating that Efron himself was a man but with an
evil eye. However, his whole being was "an evil eye."
The mishnah (Ovos 4:21) says, "Jealousy, desire and
honor take a person out of the world." We also find (Ovos
2:11) that, "an evil eye, the yetzer hora and
hatred of other people remove a person from the world." The
difference between these two statements, both of which refer
to things which take a person out of the world, needs to be
understood.
Let's consider the apparent nature of jealousy. A person is
envious of someone else's wealth, that is he asks himself why
the other person has money instead of him. The focus of his
thoughts is not on what the other person has. He doesn't mind
somebody else having money. What bothers the jealous person
is why he doesn't have just as others do. What does he get
from his jealousy? "Jealousy is the rot of bones."
It is the same with desire and honor. A person wants to
possess money, or to indulge in eating etc. He wants other
people to honor him. He needs them. Without the honor that
others accord him, his life is not worth living. The respect
which he has for himself doesn't count, because that is not
honor at all.
There are however, other forms of jealousy, desire and honor
which are even worse than these ordinary types and it is
these to which the mishnah in the second perek
is referring. The possessor of an evil eye is not merely
jealous for his personal benefit, wanting the same for
himself as others have. He looks with an evil eye upon what
others have and wants them to lose it. He wants the other
person to lack what he himself is lacking.
The plain meaning of yetzer hora is the desires that
are common to everyone, with which people are born. There is
however, another, worse type of yetzer hora, namely,
that which a person manufactures. He inflames and incites his
yetzer hora and actively seeks desires. Hatred of
other people is a more extreme form of honor seeking.
Some want to be honored by people in the same way that they
see others being honored. A desire for another type of honor
is where a person wants everybody else to be underneath his
heel. He wants to trample on people, not just to be a little
higher than them.
Although the mishnah says that jealousy, desire and
honor -- on whatever level -- take a person out of the world,
there is an important difference between them. With the first
type, the person remains a person but he is affected by these
traits. In the second type however, he becomes completely
consumed by his evil eye, his yetzer hora or his
hatred towards others.
How do these traits take a person out of the world? When
someone is jealous of the something that others have and that
he lacks, his jealousy doesn't get that thing for him. All he
gets from it is the "rot of bones." He is liable to succumb
to such conditions as ulcers, gallstones or diabetes
R'l. A person who is mired in indulging his desires is
liable to die an early death R'l. A person who feels a
lack of honor can lose his peace of mind and suffer insomnia,
may Hashem protect us from all these.
This is the meaning of the posuk's words, "and he
doesn't know that loss will come to him." A person who
entertains these traits will suffer a loss of his health and
he will ultimately lose the thing over which he was jealous
or which he desired.
There are people who think to themselves, "It's true that one
has to rid oneself of those three traits but right now I'm
young and ambitious and if it weren't for envy, I wouldn't
compete so hard in business in order to realize my ambitions.
Now is not the time for me to uproot these traits and I don't
have the strength to do so. When I reach old age these traits
naturally weaken and then I'll throw them off entirely."
This is a tremendous mistake. The older one gets, the deeper
rooted one's traits become, while one's strength for fighting
them lessens, may Hashem have mercy. There is no place for
excuses or for rationalizing in matters of avodas
Hashem. The only thing to do is to fortify one's good
traits when one is young, as the posuk (Mishlei 22:6)
says, "Train a youth according to his way; even when he is
old, he will not stray from it."
From This World to the Next
There is another explanation as to how these traits take a
person out of the world, based on the mishna in
Ovos (6:10): "Rabbi Yossi ben Kismo said, `I was once
going along the way when a man met me and greeted me, and I
returned his greeting . . . He said to me, "Rabbi, are you
interested in coming to live with us in our place? I will
give you a million golden dinars, precious stones and
pearls." I said to him, "If you give me all the silver and
gold in the world, I'll only [agree to] live in a place of
Torah . . . furthermore, when a person passes away, he is
accompanied by neither gold nor silver, precious stones nor
pearls but by Torah and good deeds only" ' . . . "
Of course, there are many questions asked and many
interpretations given to this mishnah. However, it
does state clearly that whatever a person has managed to
acquire of Torah and of good traits, will accompany him to
Olom Habo, the everlasting world -- and only Torah and
good traits.
Happy is the person who has such company! If a person did not
chas vesholom have the merit and did not do
teshuvoh, then he will be accompanied by the harmful
mal'ochim which were formed by the aveiros
which he did in Olom Hazeh.
This is the explanation of, "Jealousy, desire and honor take
a person out of the world." They accompany him on his way
from this world to the next. Chazal say, "The aveiroh
wraps itself around him and is attached to him like a dog
[that trails after its master]." It's awesome and dreadful to
contemplate how those traits and desires of his will be with
him in Olom Habo. This itself is his Gehennom.
He wanted these desires and he will be left there, amid all
the corruption of his ways, without the ability to fulfill
them, until he becomes refined and in Gehennom his
neshomoh will be able to receive the light of the
King's face in Olom Habo!
Companions in Life and Death
I will tell you a story that I heard from my master and
teacher, the gaon and tzaddik HaRav Eliyohu
Dushnitzer zt'l. The Chazon Ish remarked that Reb Elya
was one of the thirty-six hidden tzaddikim. I also
heard this story, with several additions, from the
gaon and tzaddik HaRav Eliyohu Lopian
zt'l.
In Kelm there lived a Jew by the name of Reb Natel
z'l. Reb Natel had an only daughter, whom he married
to a talmid chochom whom he supported at his table for
three years.
When three years were up, Reb Natel's daughter asked how they
would live, and she proposed that she open a store. Her
husband would only have to be there for two hours a day and
the rest of the time he could sit and learn. Without a
choice, her husband agreed and they put her plan into action.
However, the two hours did not remain two hours for very
long. He was soon spending six hours a day in the store and
his time there got longer and longer, until he was immersed
in the store all day long and didn't even open a
gemora, for a fixed period of time daily, R'l.
Several years passed in this way.
One day, his wife came in and said that she was having
difficulty in speaking and that she felt a choking sensation
in her throat. They travelled to doctors but nothing helped.
Her family began to say that maybe she was possessed by a
dybbuk. Nowadays such things are unknown, because Rav
Chaim of Volozhin said that in the latter generations there
would be such heavy concealment that even a dybbuk, a
physical phenomenon, whose purpose is to strengthen
emunoh, would not be seen. Then, at any rate, they
began to suspect that it was a dybbuk.
They travelled to Reb Mendel of Stutchin zt'l, who was
known as a tzaddik and a great scholar of
kabboloh. Reb Mendel started to ask the dybbuk
questions and it answered. Reb Elya Lopian told me that one
of the characteristics of a dybbuk is that a voice can
be heard speaking but the person's lips do not move. Although
this was happening here, Reb Mendel said that he was not yet
sure that it was a dybbuk.
He asked, "What was your story?"
The voice answered that he had died sixty years previously,
as an unmarried man who had travelled to Africa and
transgressed all kinds of aveiros, R'l. He had been
riding on a wagon and had fallen off it to his death.
Reb Mendel asked him, "Why didn't you do teshuvoh?"
The dybbuk replied that because of his panic at
falling, he had not managed to do teshuvoh. Of course,
he had not merited doing teshuvoh, and by entering the
body of a human, the destructive mal'ochim were unable
to beat him; this was why he had entered this woman.
Reb Mendel asked what she had done to deserve the suffering
which the dybbuk was inflicting on her and it replied,
that her mother and her mother-in-law were both already in
the world of truth and that they had prostrated themselves
before him, asking him to possess her, so as to atone for her
having taken her husband away from Torah study. "If I
wouldn't have done it," the dybbuk said, "there would
be no hope for her R'l, neither in this world nor the
next."
I heard this from Reb Elya zt'l, who said that he
heard it from the gaon HaRav Eliezer Moshe
zt'l, the av beis din of Pinsk. "You should
know that this story is true," he told me, "and contains no
exaggerations. You can repeat it to whomever you want, for it
contains a tremendous lesson and is awesome."
At any rate, to continue with the story. Reb Mendel asked the
dybbuk, "Who goes with you to make you suffer?" and it
replied, giving the names of five harmful
mal'ochim.
"Yes, it's a dybbuk," Reb Mendel said. "Those are the
names of the five harmful mal'ochim which are brought
in the works of kabboloh."
When the gaon and tzaddik HaRav Eliyohu Lopian
arrived in Eretz Yisroel, we were sitting one motzei
Shabbos, and I told him this story. He said to me, "I
know the exact story because I heard it from Reb Natel
himself," and he added a fearsome addition.
The dybbuk yelled in a awful voice that harmful
mal'ochim were standing there in order to make him
suffer. Immediately following this however, the dybbuk
spoke words of mockery and obscenity R'l, which were
so terrible that those standing there had to block their
ears. They asked the dybbuk, "How can you utter such
obscenities when you can see harmful mal'ochim and cry
out from their torture? How can you behave in such a way?"
The dybbuk replied, "However a person became used to
behaving in Olom Hazeh, that is how he remains, with
his corrupt traits, in Olom Habo, until his
neshomoh becomes purified."
This is awesome and dreadful!
This is the point that we mentioned earlier, that jealousy,
desire and honor accompany a person out of this world,
wrapped around him and trailing after him, and remaining with
him in the next. Now let's conclude the story.
Reb Mendel promised the dybbuk that he would learn
mishnayos in order to afford his neshomoh the
correction that it needed. Reb Mendel called together a
minyan and they said Tehillim. Reb Mendel stood
at the side of the room and they sat the woman in the middle.
They said some yichudim and some other things that
were corrective for the neshomoh and the woman's
husband promised that he would return to learning. The woman
fell off her chair, they heard a voice saying Krias
Shema, and the dybbuk departed from the woman's
finger, as is known. The whole of Stutchin heard the sound of
that Shema Yisroel.
That is the story which I heard from those tzaddikim,
may their merit protect us and all of Klal Yisroel.
(Reb Elya Lopian told me that Reb Natel reached Eretz Yisroel
and that he was living in Tel Aviv and that he had heard the
entire story from him.)
A Good Conclusion
I will conclude with something good, a bon mot which I
heard from the gaon HaRav Zelig Reuven Bengis
zt'l, on the subject of concluding on a good note. In
the past, I've mentioned something of the greatness of HaRav
Bengis. He would make a siyum on the whole Shas
every year and he would invite bochurim to join him at
a seudah in honor of the siyum.
Once, only a few months after he had celebrated his annual
siyum, HaRav Bengis again called a minyan for a
festive meal for a siyum haShas. People asked him,
"But his honor made a siyum haShas two months ago. Why
another one now?"
"This is for a different Shas," he replied, and
explained that as rov of Yerushalayim, he was often given the
honor of arranging kiddushin or acting as
sandek at a bris and many times he had to wait
for the chosson and kallah to arrive. "What can
I do to prevent my time from being wasted chas
vesholom? Seventeen years ago, I took upon myself to
review Shas by heart while the preparations for the
chuppah are being made, and now, I have completed
Shas!"
On the topic of ending on a good note, HaRav Bengis related
the story of a man who was always nervous about ending on a
good note. This applied to speaking and even more so if he
actually saw something untoward. He once went to daven
and he noticed a man who had slipped and fallen and broken
his leg R'l. He was groaning in pain. How could the
nervous gentleman leave without ending on a good note? He
said to the second fellow, "Why are you moaning? Your other
leg is fine!"
The second man started to curse him, "What are you talking to
me about?"
"What would have happened if you would have fallen down and
found three hundred rubles, and not have broken your leg.
Would that have been good?" he asked.
"Yes, of course!" the man replied.
"If so, then good-bye!" he said, and walked away, leaving him
lying on the ground.
The main thing was that he had managed to finish on a good
note. Consider the power of a person's traits, whereby nerves
can lead a person to behave in such a corrupt way
R'l!
To really end on a good note -- "The only good is Torah!"
(Mishlei 4:2, Brochos 5)
May Hashem redeem us from all our nerves and troubles and
send us the complete redemption speedily, in our days,
Omein!
