Part I. Learning From the Close Ones
Idols Far and Near
In this week’s sedrah the section of the meisis u’meidiach (one who attempts to persuade a fellow Jew to worship idols) begins like this:
When your brother will try to persuade you, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, from the gods of the nations around you, the nearby ones or those that are far-off (Devarim 13: 7-8).
Now, because the Sages know that every phrase in the Torah is measured they were bothered by what appears to be superfluous words: Why does it specify ‘idols that are nearby or far-off’? (Sanhedrin 61b). What difference does it make whether the instigator wants to persuade you about an idol in the mountains of Tibet or a fortune teller in Bensonhurst? Just say ‘the false gods’ and finished.
A Dark Creation
Now, we’ll get to the answer soon; the significance of those extra words will be our subject for tonight. But first we must examine a Torah principle that will help us understand what we’re going to talk about.
One of the great secrets of creation is that this world is night time; even when it’s day, that’s just a mirage – actually it’s night. That’s what the Torah tell us: You, Hashem make darkness and it becomes night (Tehillim 104:20). And the Gemara says: You make darkness; those words are talking about this world: Hakadosh Baruch Hu made Olam Hazeh a place of darkness (Bava Metzia 83b).
Not only in Africa is it dark. It’s dark in Sweden and Switzerland too. It’s dark in America. It’s dark in the White House and the Congress and in the Department of Education. It’s dark in the libraries and TV stations. Wherever you go, it’s dark.
Nighttime Vision
It means that Hashem intentionally made this world that it should be like the night, a place of deception. He made it so, purposefully. What’s the purpose? So that we can succeed and become great by seeing through the dark. Our function in this world is that despite the darkness, we should exert ourselves to see the truth. That’s our success in Olam Hazeh; that’s how we’ll be zocheh to see the light in Olam Haba.
You know, the Gemara (Shabbos 77b) tells us that’s the reason for an interesting law of the Torah. Among Jews, we have the practice of beginning the day with the night before. We start the day as soon as the sun sets; that’s the system of the Torah. It was evening and it was morning.
Only Jews have that system. To tell a goy that on Saturdays you can’t come to work, so he says, “Alright, stay late on Fridays.” So you tell him, “No, our Saturday starts sundown Friday.” He doesn’t understand that! He thinks you’re trying to get out of doing your work! But it’s true! Our day starts with the night.
Night Comes First
The question is what’s the purpose of this? Why does the Torah follow that system? We think, “It’s a gezeiras hakosuv. That’s how it has to be; the Hebrews begin the day the night before without a reason.”
Oh no! This Torah law that the day begins with the night before has a very great symbolism. The purpose is to be a mashal, a daily reminder that this world starts with darkness; first it’s dark and then the Next World is the place of light! Only that the preparation for the Next World is this world; you can’t get to the day unless you pass through the darkness of this world.
Isn’t it a pity we don’t know that? It’s a halacha that’s supposed to impress upon us our function in this world. Every day starts with the preceding night to remind us that in this world – even at twelve o'clock in the afternoon – we’re feeling our way in the dark. And our function and success in the world is that despite the darkness, despite the false religions and the empty ideals and all the isms, despite the high schools and governments and scientists and libraries and televisions and radios and all the institutions that are spreading darkness in the world our job is to fight back against the darkness.
Get Inoculated
But to ‘fight’ doesn’t mean only to write letters, to make a protest. Sometimes that’s important too but the first thing is to be fortified; you need vitamins to be able to see in the darkness. It means that you have to know that it’s false. You yourself have to know that it’s dark outside!
That’s what the Chachomim tell us: You should know what to reply to an apikoris. And Rav Isaac Sher, the Slabodka Rosh Yeshiva, used to say that it means, “Know how to answer up the apikoris right here, inside here.” (The Rov pointed at himself).
Because inside of everybody there’s a yetzer hara that’s talking. The darkness – the false ideals and isms, the sheker of the religions and all the attitudes of the gentiles – are always whispering in your ear. And therefore you have to answer yourself first.
Don’t think it’s unimportant. The Chovos Halevavos in his Sha’ar Yichud Ha’maaseh warns the reader: “Do not ignore the promptings of the yetzer hara.” Because it’s like a snake bite – you can’t just ignore it and let the poison spread. And if you will turn away your ear from the persuasions that you feel the yetzer hara is generating within you, so it begins to gain a foothold.
No Emunah Peshutah
It happened. I’ve seen it. People came from Europe who learned in yeshivas and they learned well in the yeshivas. They came over in America years ago when on all sides atheism was like a roaring fire. In the 1910s and 1920s, the Jewish street was a street of atheism. And the yeshiva men that came over, very many of them collapsed.
It’s unbelievable but I saw it with my own eyes. A Telzer; a good yeshiva man! How could a good ben Torah like that fall so far? The answer is he knew Gemara. He knew Tosfos. He knew Ketzos HaChoshen! But he had never bothered to learn the Torah advice how to answer the apikorsim, how to fortify his faith.
Now how to be fortified, there’s more than one method. Of course, some will say that our answer to all of the apikorsim, the response to all the false attitudes of the outside world is one: “We the Am Yisroel rely on our rock-solid historic tradition.” That’s it – we don’t have any questions! “I’m loyal to the Torah and that’s it!” And that’s a very valid and very strong answer; it’s the answer that should stand always at the forefront of our minds – because it’s true.
But because one of the functions of a Torah Jew in the world, one of the successes of a Torah Jew, is to strengthen the emunah that we have the truth – that the Torah ideals and principles are the light and everything else is darkness – Hakadosh Baruch Hu provides us with other methods, other supports, as well.
They’re All the Same
And that brings us back to the question that we asked in the beginning of our talk: When the Torah tells us about the persuader, the one trying to introduce into our heads the ideas of the outside world, why does it take the trouble to enumerate that there are “false gods that are nearby and those that are far-off”?
And the Gemara there answers like this: From the nature of the nearby gods, you can learn about the nature of the far-off ones. Just as there is no substance in these, so also is there no substance in those. It means that the Torah inserts these words in order to give us direction for how to refute, in our own minds, all the persuaders of the world: Just as you know that the nearby gods are nothing, so too you can understand that the far-off ones are also worthless; they’re just the same.
So if someone tells you that someplace in a far off country, there’s a shrine that if you go in and pray there to this idol so it works. Let’s say they tell you it’ll give you fertility. Well, people don’t want that today so imagine they say it’ll make you rich.
So the Torah says, “Forget about it! There’s no need to investigate; there’s no reason to think there’s any truth to it.” Because we look at the ones nearby, the ones we’re familiar with that we know are fakerei and from the nature of the near ones we can know about the far-off ones.
Torah Policy
And that’s the policy, the eitzah of the Torah. You want to fortify yourself in this world? You want to see through the darkness? Get into the habit of saying, ‘Just like the near ones are nothing, the far-off ones are also nothing. We know all about it and we know it's baloney.’
Now, don’t say, “Could we do such a thing?! Can we make blanket judgments about whole groups of people, about ideologies that we know nothing about, just because of one thing that we do know”?
And the answer is a resounding yes! Yes and yes! Because that is the intention of Hashem! Hashem is supplying these lessons to us to encourage us, so that we should make these general judgements and dismiss the ideals of the outside world.
It’s a Torah way of rejecting all of the ideals and isms of the darkness. The falsifiers whom we do know are intended by Hashem to serve as examples of the falsifiers who are unfamiliar. The emptiness of even one ideal is intended to demonstrate the emptiness of all of them.
And so we don’t have to study the details in order to disprove it all. We could – we could sit here for hours and talk about the foolishness of their ideas; we could show endless examples – but we don’t have to. The lesson from this week’s parsha tells us to study the few things that are already known to us, and to use those as parallels to understand that everything they have to offer us is mixed with sheker.
