Every day we have the glorious opportunity to make a very powerful berachah a few times a day; it is birchas asher yatzar, which we conclude with the words ומפליא לעשות, And He wondrously performs.... But what is the meaning behind these words?
The word פלא means wonder, and the simplest meaning is the fact that here we are expressing our great praise of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, because our bodies are an absolute wonder to behold. Nothing inside us is anything less than a miracle and a wonder.
Yet, amazingly, this unique word has a number of different connotations, aside from the simple meaning alone. One is that the fact that the breath of life inside us does not leave us completely, even though we have a number of openings throughout our body; wondrously, Hashem made these two realities coexist.
Another wonder is the fact that the neshamah, which is completely spiritual, is able to exist simultaneously within a physical being — and somehow, the two are not a contradiction to each other. That is another wonder of wonders.
What does this have to do with our parashah? Everything. For our parashah teaches us about the nazir; and the very distinct language used to describe what the nazir does is very telling: אִישׁ אוֹ אִִש ִה כִי יַפְלִא לִנְדֹּר נֶדֶר נ זִיר לְִהִַזִִירִ — a man or woman who shall dissociate himself by taking a Nazirite vow of abstinence ... (Bamidbar 6:2)
It is amazing to note that the word used to describe the expression of the nazir is יַפְלִא, which although it refers to his expression itself, is also still a language of wonder. Why is that?
The Even Ezra explains that it is because when one performs a nezirus, he is doing something that is wondrous to behold; because the whole world is following its physical desires, while the nazir is abstaining from them! A wonder!
That is one understanding. Many years ago, my Rebbi, Rav Moshe Lieber shlita, shared with us in tenth grade something he brings as well in his sefer, Torah Treasury (ArtScroll) on our parashah in the name of Rav Hutner zt’l: The word פלא is used to describe a person’s speech; just as we see in the section about Nedarim in the Rambam, which is called “הפלאה.”
But why is this so? Why is speech called a פלא?
According to the second answer above, it is actually very appropriate: For the פלא that is found within the body is the mixture of ruchniyus and gashmiyus. And where is the place on the body that this wondrous shidduch comes together? In the mouth, with the power of speech. The wonder of speech is such that it can take the most sublime concepts and subjects, of holiness and intellectual depth, and express them in a physical way; by using the tongue that has in it the word לש, which means to knead; for the tongue takes the ruchniyus and kneads it together with the physical to create words that are a wonder to behold. For speech, in a sense, is itself truly one of the biggest wonders.
And although this idea needs more elaboration, for now, there is one more point we must add: According to the understanding above — that the wonder we refer to here is the wonder of the shidduch between the complete opposites of physicality and spirituality — Rav Yosef Elefant shlita shared something amazing: What the nazir is doing here is really strengthening that shidduch, that פלא — by trying to quiet the body a bit, in order to allow the neshamah to shine so much more.
Perhaps, in a sense, it could be likened to someone trying to strengthen a marriage by giving each party a chance to shine and bring out their full kochos.
The neshamah is often overwhelmed and overpowered, R’l, by the body; its counterpart, and when a person refrains ever so slightly from giving the body too much attention, he is truly giving his neshamah a chance to be so much more present and in the forefront — and that really is the end goal itself...and that really is the greatest wonder...
B’Siyata DiShmaya.
