We learn in this week’s parsha that in order for an animal to be kosher it has to have split hooves and chew its cud. There are three animals that chew their cud yet their hooves are not split and are therefore not kosher. These three animals are a camel, shafan and arneves (rabbit). When the Torah mentions these three animals, the pasuk uses a different tense. By a camel the Torah uses a present tense, that its hooves are not split. When it comes to the shafan, the pasuk uses the future tense, that its hooves will not be split. And by the arneves, the Torah uses the past tense, that thee hooves were not split. The obvious question is why does the Torah use different tenses by each animal instead of being consistent?
The Baalei Mussar point out that from here we learn that when someone is about to be pronounced as tamei – impure, we have to be aware of the entire picture. We have to take into account the past, the present and the future. If you don’t know the whole story, you shouldn’t be so quick to assume that someone is tamei.
There was a frum couple who went through the holocaust and as a result the husband lost his Emunah and gave up on his yiddishkeit. The wife, however, retained her Emunah and very much wished that her husband would lead a frum lifestyle. She told her husband, “I know that every day you read the newspaper from cover to cover. Instead of reading it at home, I want you to read it in back of the shul just to make me happy”. The husband wanted to please his wife, so he agreed and began reading the paper in shul. This went on for a while. Let’s ask ourselves, if we would see a person sitting daily in the back row of shul, never davening, just reading the paper for forty-five minutes, what would our reaction be? Surely we would judge him negatively and let him know that shul is not the place to read a newspaper. But the good people in this shul didn’t rebuke him and on the contrary, they would shmooze with him and make him feel warm and welcome. He went from reading the newspaper to davening three times a day and putting on tefillin. We see from here that before you criticize, you have to know the entire picture. You didn’t know that this person was a holocaust survivor who went through horrors. He didn’t need mussar; he just needed warmth and love. That’s what we learn from our parsha.
