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A Lesson for the RoadShorts AreaFemale LessonParashat HashavuaSeries'LibraryPiskei Din (Hebrew)Test Yourself
The pasuk in Parashat Shoftim says that whichever soldier is fearful and of a soft heart “shall go and return to his house and not melt the hearts of his brothers like his heart” (Devarim 20:8). It seems that it is the same soldier, with the same sword and the same ammunition as the next man, and yet we are confident that he will fail, and not only he, but he will have negative influence on others. From here we see the great importance of belief in what one is fighting for and the confidence that the battle for which they are fighting must succeed. Once people start doubting this, when the confidence is compromised, then the results will be in line with the lack of belief, which turns into helplessness. “Therefore, the storytellers said: ‘Come to Cheshbon’” (Bamidbar 21:27), which also can mean, let us make an accounting. The agricultural settlement is living without an accounting, as is the individual. As for the nation, the enormous tragedy we are living through, the destruction, the mass murder that is befalling our nation, the flood of calamity, the destruction of the main centers of Judaism, is fully shocking us. We see ourselves as utterly helpless, crushed by the wheels of the same machine of destruction by war, without having any ability to influence the process. We are forced to be passive, inactive, as if we are dependent on the actions of others, without any possibility of saving anyone. The feeling that the fate is inevitable, that we are being swept away and crashing without hope or a response, is horrible. When the feeling is that things are out of control and no one can help, people stopped making a cheshbon. What would be the point of an accounting – will the cheshbon of a weak individual make a difference even if he figures out what his problem is? Is a mouse that is hiding in a garbage can able to make an escape route, even if he is aware of his predicament and can continue hiding in a corner in the meantime. The moshav does not have a cheshbon. Here too, there is some feeling of being locked into a fate, that we are not “spinning the wheel,” that each of us personally is incapable of doing something to set the image of the moshav for today or tomorrow. Rather it feels like each of us is playing a role that he did not decide. The situation is that which determines matters, and there is no gain in trying to change them. Therefore, it feels like there is no place for a cheshbon. The individual does not make a cheshbon – he is too afraid to do so. He knows, when looking back, that he is not what he should be. It is not just that the moshav as a unit does not run the way he would want, but he also does not act the way he should. “What is the difference,” he feels! Can his will influence at all the life conditions in which he finds himself. Conditions are that which dictate his daily life, and his desires are side matters that have no influence, but are matters of hallucinations and imagination. And if things anyway will not change, even if he racks his brain to make a cheshbon, it seems better to live without a cheshbon, and simply sink further and further. “Give your brain over to the chicken coop, eggs, milk, vegetables, and hay” – things that should have been means and not ends. It feels like one might as well speak in a lowly manner, to spend Shabbat on nothing more than extra sleep, because even if one toils, nothing deep will come out of it. If one does not feel he has dominion over himself, he does not see the purpose of a cheshbon. On the other hand, one who does not make a cheshbon, will get to a point that it will seem forbidding to even think of one. We continue next time.
Moreshet Shaul (50)
Various Rabbis
41 - MORESHET SHAUL: TWO ELEMENTS TO WORK ON – PART III
42 - MORESHET SHAUL: OVERVIEW OF THE RAMBAM’S APPROACH
43 - MORESHET SHAUL: THE STUDY OF CHUMASH
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Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli zt"l

Rosh Yeshiva of "Mercaz Harav", Rosh Kollel of "Eretz Hemda" and a member of Beit Din Hagadol in Yerushalaim.
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