Rabbi Yisrael Alter zt"l
Grand Rabbi of Gur
Author: Beis Yisrael
2 Adar 5737 (1977)
Sometime after the Second World War a Gerrer Chassid, a survivor of the Holocaust, arrived in Eretz Yisrael. He had lost all of his family and was embittered and disillusioned. He ceased observing Torah and Mitzvos, gave up his Chassidic garb, and conducted himself as a secular Jew. Yet, somehow, one day, he felt such a strong a longing to have contact with the Gerrer Rebbe that he appeared at the back of the synagogue of Gerrer Rebbe, the Beis Yisrael. Not willing to be a hypocrite, he came dressed as a secular person. He was certain that no one would sense his origins and that he would merely have an opportunity to see his Rebbe, without being recognized.
However, the Beis Yisrael would typically scan the people in his Shul, and he had a special ability to remember people he had met. He recognized the man despite all the time and circumstances that had passed, and from his seat in the front of the room, he sent his aide to bring the man to him.
The two sat together and exchanged stories about personal losses of family, friends and community. In response to the Chassid's tears, the Gerrer Rebbe said, "There are no words adequate to comfort you or to explain what we have been through. But let me share with you an observation that has helped me."
In the very last verse of the Torah (Devorim 34:12), the Passuk eulogizes Moshe Rabbeinu for the "awesome deeds that Moshe performed before the eyes of all Yisrael". Why did Hashem choose to end the Torah with the words 'l'einei kol yisrael' - 'before the eyes of all Yisrael'? What is their special significance?
Rashi, explains that the specific deed of Moshe being referred to here was his breaking of the Luchos (the tablets with the ten commandments). Rashi bases this on a Midrash interpretation (Sifrei on Devorim 9:17) which notes that the same phrase occurs in Moshe's description of the breaking of the Luchos when he recounts the story in Vaeschanan 9:17. Speaking in the first person, Moshe said "I grasped the two tablets and threw them from my hands, and I smashed tablets and threw them from my hands, and I smashed them before your eyes".
"Why," asked the Gerrer Rebbe, did Moshe add the words, "before your eyes? The Torah includes no redundant words. Yet, these words appear to be unnecessary and self-understood."
"An answer may be found," continued the Rebbe, "by examining a third Passuk that has the same phrase. In Mikeitz (42:24) we are told that Yosef accused his brothers of being spies in Egypt and that he imprisoned Shimon 'before their eyes'. Rashi cites a Midrash interpretation (Bereishis Rabbah 91:8) for the words 'before their eyes': Yosef's imprisonment of Shimon was only an illusion; as soon as the other brothers left to return to Canaan, he released Shimon and cared for his needs. Yosef gave the appearance of imprisoning Shimon because there was a certain impression that he wanted to create upon his brothers, 'before their eyes.'"
So, reasoned the Gerrer Rebbe, when Moshe said that the Luchos were smashed 'before the eyes' of the Klal Yisrael, he was telling us that these tablets, so precious to Hashem and Moshe, were never really destroyed. The reality was that on some plane of existence those tablets were preserved intact, and that Moshe's destruction of them was only illusory.
"Thus," continued the Gerrer Rebbe, "I comfort myself with the belief that those Jewish individuals, so precious to Hashem, were not really destroyed during the Holocaust, and that on some plane of existence they are preserved intact by Hashem."
And, he concluded, that this principle about the illusory nature of our perceptions is so fundamental that Hashem chose to end the Torah with those meaningful words "before the eyes of all of Yisrael."
