Parshas Acharey Mos/Shabbos Hagadol
April 19, 2008
14 Nisan 5768
Daf Yomi: Nazir 30
Guest Author:
Rabbi Moshe Sosevsky, Ed.D
Council of Young Israel Rabbis in Israel
The Shabbat of the reading of Parshat Acharei Mot coincides this year with Erev Pesach. Additionally, as the Shabbat prior to Pesach, it is also Shabbat HaGadol.
Among the reasons given as to why the Shabbat is called by this name is one which attributes it to the special Haftorah assigned to the Shabbat, where the closing verses speak of the coming of Elijah the Prophet before the ‘great’ and awesome day of the Lord (Yom HaGadol V’HaNorah).
If the central identifying factor of Shabbat HaGadol is the theme of the Haftorah, then it is most intriguing that in the entire Haftorah there is not one reference to Passover. While there is indeed a tradition that the Prophet Elijah participates in our Seder, this is nothing more than a tradition and is at best peripheral to the central themes of enslavement and freedom that is at the core of the holiday. Strangely, the focal theme of the Haftorah is the subject of the Suffering of the Innocent. While this is indeed a central theological issue in Judaism, it certainly would not seem to be anything more than peripheral to Passover’s major themes. Why then, from the entirety of Tanach, was this Haftorah chosen as the Haftorah of Shabbat HaGadol?
The Midrash in Shemoth Rabbah (5:18) tells us that Moshe Rabbeinu was able to negotiate a day of rest for the Jews in Egypt (one would assume Pharoh accepted it because Moshe Rabbeinu convinced him that the Jews would be more productive with a day of rest). Apparently the day of rest chosen was the Sabbath.
According to the Midrash, on that day Moshe studied the Megilloth with them which they had in hand and which they delighted themselves from Shabbat to Shabbat. Yet Pharaoh soon rescinded his permission for a respite day by ordering
(Shemoth 5:9): “let the work be heavier on the people… and let them not delight on false words” which, according to the Midrash, is a reference to the Megilloth which they studied.
Rav Yaakov Kaminetsky, in his work Emet L’Yakov, asks: What Megilloth did Klal Yisrael possibly posses at this juncture, well before the giving of the Torah? He suggests that one of the “Megilloth” they might have had in their possession was Tehillim 92 “A Mizmor for the Sabbath Day” which, according to an opinion in Chazal, was authored by Moshe Rabbeinu (See Baba Batra 14B). Yet strangely, there too, the major theme of the Psalm is not Shabbat, but the Suffering of the Righteous: “When the wicked bloom like grass and all the doers of iniquity blossom, etc.”
Furthermore, Chazal attribute authorship of the Book of Iyov to Moshe Rabbeinu, a work whose theme in its entirety is the Suffering of the Innocent. On the assumption that Moshe was surely “too busy” once the Torah was given to author such a lengthy and difficult philosophical work, we can assume he authored it earlier. Hence, this, too, may have been another of the Megilloth in Klal Yisrael’s possession in which they delighted.
In this suggestion, Rav Kaminetsky intuited the words of the author of ‘Me’or Einayim’, R’ Azaryah of Adumim, who writes in the name of ‘an early scholar from the days of Rabbeinu HaKadosh’ that he found written in an ancient scroll how Moshe Rabbeinu would carry Sefer Iyov back and forth to the elders of Israel during the subjugation in Egypt.” (See “R’ Yaakov Kaminetsky on ‘A Mizmor for the Shabbath Day’ Jewish Thought: A Journal of Torah Scholarship, Vol 3 No.2. Parenthetically, considering the great philosophical complexity of Sefer Iyov, we can intuit the incredible depth of Klal Yisrael even in their period of Egyptian bondage).
By now we must wonder, however, why was Moshe Rabbeinu so taken up with this one topic that he would have placed such efforts in authoring works on it and have been so involved in their dissemination?
The answer lies in the fact that this issue was undoubtedly the major philosophical question facing the Jews in Egypt. What justice is there in the fact that they, the sons of the Avot, would be subjected to such backbreaking bondage? Even more troubling, were they not the descendents of Shem, who in the first post-deluge narrative in Parshat Noach, was blessed for covering his father’s nakedness? Indeed, he was assured that he would lord over the descendents of Cham who were cursed in the aftermath of that incident with eternal enslavement to Shem and Yephet. Yet, the Egyptians — descendents of Cham — were cruelly enslaving them.
Undoubtedly this issue shook the very foundations of their faith and forced Moshe to spend major efforts in addressing this extremely perplexing issue via the works that he authored and by disseminating their teaching among the masses. The problem appears so daunting that we may wonder, what indeed is its solution?
The answer lies in the close of Mizmor Shir L’Yom HaShabbat and in our Haftorah of Shabbat HaGadol. “[Ultimately] the righteous… shall blossom as a date tree ” (Psalm 92) and in Malachi 3:18 “You shall return and see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves G-d and one who does not serve him.”
The Egyptian Bondage, at the time, seemed the ultimate perversion of justice and a reversal of biblical assurances.
Yet seen in retrospect, it was nothing more than the requisite stages of preparation for the eternal freedom which we will celebrate on the holiday of Pesach when we were delivered from “bondage to freedom and from darkness to a great light.”
Hence, the theme of the Suffering of the Innocent becomes a theme most relevant to Pesach. Passover, in a real sense, represents the resolution to the problem as it teaches us that, in order to gain a true glimpse of reality, we must often view history from a far broader perspective than any particular period.
Thus, at any specific moment in our complex history, we can restore our faith in our Redeemer as we await “that great and awesome day when G-d shall turn back the hearts of the fathers to the sons and the hearts of the sons to the fathers.” Just as in Egypt, on that great day, all of history’s injustices shall be permanently resolved and “like the days of Mitzrayim, I shall show you wonders.”
Shabbat Shalom.
-Rabbi Moshe Ch. Sosevsky Ed.D, is a past editor of Jewish Thought; A Journal of Torah Scholarship, published by Ohr Yerushalayim in conjunction with the Orthodox Union.
