In this week’s sedrah we read about the din of malkos; a Jew sinned and was found guilty in beis din and now he’s getting his punishment. ֹילוƒּפƒה¿וּוּנ∆ּכַי יםƒעָּב¿רַ‡ ... יוָנָפ¿לּהוָּכƒה¿ו ט≈פֹּׁ ַ̆ה – And the judge should cast him down and strike him ... forty lashes he should strike him (Ki Seitzei 25:2-3). For certain misdeeds, the Torah prescribes thirty nine lashes and that’s what this man is getting now.
Now, there’s an interesting subject that our Sages discuss and that is the thoughts that we expect of those participating in this story. At the time that the shliach beis din is delivering the blows on behalf of the beis din, what should he be thinking? And what should the recipient think?
Now we know that nobody is happy about this. When it's necessary to hit a Jew, nobody is joyous. As the shliach beis din raises his brawny hand with that strap and he delivers a welt on the body of a kosher ben Yisroel—he's a kosher Jew, only he transgressed one thing—so you could be certain that it hurts everyone’s heart. The beis din that found this man deserving of the malkos as well as the one carrying it out, commiserate with the one being hit. And he surely, as the blows are raining down on him, he’s the last one to be happy. So it’s a sad day; nobody is happy in that courtroom. And yet, we’re going to study now a Gemara in Mesichta Makkos (22b) and see that we’re misunderstanding the episode entirely.
Beaten By Friends
The Gemara there is telling a story, a mashal. We’re walking down the street and we see a man coming our way who is all beaten up; we see his chest is open and it's red or black and blue and on his back also there are black and blue marks and open welts. So we ask him, “יך∆„ָי יןּ≈ב הּ∆ל≈‡ָה ֹ̇וּכַּמַה הָמ – What's the reason for these blows that you received between your arms?”; it means here in the front on your chest and on your back.
So he says, “These are the makkos, the blows, יָבֲהַ‡¿מ ̇יּ≈ב יƒ ̇יּ≈כֻה רׁ∆ ֲ̆‡, that I was beaten in the house of my friends.” My friends beat me up.
Now if he wasn’t a frum Jew we could understand that. He went to his best friend’s wedding and he had to leave in an ambulance. Somebody today gave me a news clipping about a Puerto Rican wedding that took place here in Brooklyn, in Bedford Stuyvesant. So ambulances were racing back and forth taking people to the hospitals from the wedding. What happened? All the cousins were finally meeting each other again after so long, and they were drinking—and they all carry knives of course—and so the old family feuds came to the surface. And there were a lot of stabbings.
Now at a Jewish wedding maybe sometimes there’s a question, a quarrel even, about who gets a bracha; but at a gentile wedding it happens sometimes that you need ambulances. It happens. Much more than you think.
Judgmental Friends
So if this fellow we met in the street was coming from that wedding we’d understand when he tells us that it happened at the home of his friends. But here the Gemara is talking about a frum Jew; he wasn't at that wedding. And still when we ask him what happened he says “I was in the house of my friends and they beat me up good.”
Who are these friends that the Gemara refers to? The friends are the beis din that sentenced him to get malkos. What happened? This man was caught shaving with a razor blade or doing something else that is chayav malkos and so they gave him lashes. And they beat him generously. The shliach beis din is makeh bechol kocho, he strikes with all his power.
And now the man came out beaten up and as he's walking down the street and people say, “הָמ הּ∆ל≈‡ָה ֹ̇וּכַּמַה – What's this that you’re all black and blue?!” And he says “It happened יָבֲהַ‡¿מ ̇יּ≈ב; my good friends did that to me.” And he's saying it earnestly. “These blows were inflicted upon me in the house of those who love me. The shliach of beis din and the beis din who sentenced me they’re all my good friends. The witnesses who testified against me too. Beis meahavai! A house of people who love me!”
Happy Medicine
Now we have to study that because I imagine that it wouldn’t be easy today to find a man who would be happy if beis din whips him; even if he was a big tzaddik and had full confidence in beis din he’d say, “I earned it. It’s my fault.” But to say that ‘my good friends beat me up’, that wouldn't be heard from anybody.
But our Sages are teaching us that they are his good friends! They did him a great favor. Of course there’s sadness all around; regret that it came to such a thing that we have to do this. But there is happiness too, because a benefit is being bestowed on a fellow Jew.
̇∆מ¡‡∆ו „∆ס∆ח 'ה י≈ּכ¿רַּ„ לָּכ – All the ways of Hashem are kindliness. יוָׂ ֲ̆ﬠַמ לָכ¿ּב „יƒסָח¿ו יוָכָר¿ּ„ לָכ¿ּב 'ה ̃יƒּ„ַˆ – Hashem seeks to do kindliness in all of His deeds; and even in the punishments which the Torah specifies for miscreants, for culprits who transgress, the rule still holds good. It's an administration of a medicine that will benefit him.
However, we won't be in a hurry to accept this. Let's understand it a little more carefully.
Introducing the Star
When Hakadosh Baruch Hu created man, He made a hakdamah, a preface that He didn't make when He created anything else: נו≈מ¿לַˆּב םָ„ָ‡ ה∆ׂ ֲ̆ﬠַנ. It was an announcement: “We're going to make man now.” It means that now the most important act of creation is going to take place.
Nothing else that Hashem created had such an introduction. Even ̇≈‡¿ו םƒיַמָּׁ ַ̆ה ̇≈‡ יםƒ ֹ̃ל¡‡ ‡ָרָּב ̇יƒׁ ̆‡≈רּב ı∆רָ‡ָה; that was a very big accomplishment, it was briyas haolam yesh meiayin! The first act of creation was the most stupendous and astonishing act, something unequaled later in history. To create something out of nothing! It’s the most surprising of all events in history; and yet it was not introduced by any statement.
And all the other creations that followed weren’t introduced either. The sun and the moon and the trillions of star worlds. All the planets and oceans and animals and fish and birds and trees; nothing, no announcement. And then suddenly, before Hakadosh Baruch Hu made Adam He made a declaration. “We’re going to make man.”
Now, how He made that declaration, I can't tell you. To whom He made it I'm not going to be able to tell you either. But it's written in the Torah, “We're going to make man!”
And that’s because the introduction is made for the main event, for the star of the show. And that’s man!
More Than A Trillion Stars
One of the most important principles in the Torah is the vast and infinite greatness of mankind. But not only that man is the most important object in creation. That’s understating it. Man is vastly greater, not than any object in creation; he’s vastly greater than the entire creation. One human being is more important than this whole earth; more than a million earths, more than a million huge stars. Not a million; there are trillions of stars, billions of starworlds. And still one person outweighs all of them.
Let that sink in—otherwise you don't begin to understand the Torah. The truth is that this concept is a sine qua non, a condition without which it's impossible to appreciate Torah.
I'll give just one little example to illustrate why. In the Torah we are told of certain requirements that we are expected to fulfill. We're expected, for instance, to have a mezuzah on every door. Now suppose someone wrote a mezuzah, a perfect beautiful mezuzah and every letter was inscribed correctly except one letter; he forgot to put the foot in the hei. It looks like a daled.
Tiny Things
So what's so terrible? After all, most of the letters are there. All of them are there and even this one is mostly there; rubo kekulo. It's such a minor thing. Alright it's not a perfect mezuzah, but still it should be fine. But no, it's not a mezuzah at all! Such a minor imperfection can make it entirely pasul and it's considered like you have no mezuzah on the door.
Why is it that the Torah insists on such things which seem like trivialities? If a man has chametz in his house on Pesach, he transgresses big aveiros. But if he took the trouble before Pesach just to say kol chamira vechamia—“I am mevatel, nullifying all the chametz”—so he doesn’t have any aveirah d’Oraisa anymore. Just by saying these words he is saved from the aveirah?
Or another case: If a man tells a woman, “Harei at mekudeshes li” and he gives her something, she's his wife and if she consorts now with a stranger, they're both put to death. It's called adultery just because he said these words—he didn't even live with her yet. It's a matter of life and death if he said the words harei at mekudeshes li or didn't say the words.
And so we see it again and again all throughout the Torah, the principle that every little act is of the utmost significance. Every little act of a man is of supreme importance. As you read the Torah you begin to see how vastly responsible a man is for the smallest misstep; there's a tremendous retribution for little details, little transgressions.
Nothing Tiny Here
And that’s because there’s nothing little about him. Like a king, a monarch of a huge empire, when he signs a document, a decree, it affects millions of his subjects. It affects their entire lives. So you might say “Well, he only signed a paper. What’s the big deal?” No! It’s the biggest deal! If you’re a very big person then even the smallest act is a matter either of life or death or some other great misfortune.
And so this responsibility that the Torah gives us is in proportion to our greatness. Because every human being is of infinite greatness, everything he does is also infinitely great, and that's why the Torah puts such stress on the smallest acts of man. We’ll never understand that unless we understand the greatness of man, the vastness of the personality of man.
Now this subject has to be spoken about at length and we won't have time to deal with it properly, but that's one of the fundamental foundations of Torah – gadlus ha’adam, the greatness of man.
And it’s not for nothing that man is declared so great. It’s because he actually is great. He has endless greatness inside of him. His soul is endlessly great. His potentialities are endlessly great. He could make out of himself almost anything because he has the materials and it's been prepared by the Creator inside of him. He towers above everything!
