Rav Ruderman, zt”l, (founding Rosh Yeshiva of Ner Israel) used to cite an incident from Vilna that gives insight to a pasuk in this week’s parsha.
There was a beautiful place in Vilna where all the wealthy people made their weddings. It happened that a poor shoemaker suddenly obtained a large sum of money. He decided that he too wanted to make the wedding of his daughter in this fancy place. One of the old-time wealthy individuals took great umbrage at the fact that this newly rich individual was making a wedding in the place classically reserved for Vilna’s financially elite Jews. (“This schnorer is going to make a wedding in the same place where I married off my daughter? The nerve of him!”)
At the wedding, as the shoemaker was walking his daughter down the aisle to the Chuppah, this wealthy person took off his shoe and showed the shoemaker the hole in the bottom of the sole of the shoe. He asked, “How much does it cost to patch this hole?” (He wanted to rub it into the shoemaker’s face that he was still only a shoemaker and that he should not act like he was equal to the wealthy people in town.)
When Rav Yisrael Salanter (founder of the Mussar movement) heard about this incident, he said that the teachers of this Jew who humiliated the shoemaker – even if they were in the Garden of Eden already – would now have to atone for the fact that they had such a despicable student and give full accounting in Heaven for the inferior Torah education they gave this uncouth Jew.
Rav Ruderman used to say that this comment of Rav Yisrael Salanter is alluded to in what Moshe Rabbeinu is saying in this week’s parsha: “For I know that after my death you will deal corruptly and turn aside from the way which I have commanded you...” [Devorim 31:29] What is the point of Moshe making this comment?
Moshe is saying this to proclaim ahead of time: Although they will stray from the correct path, it is not my fault! I tried to teach them better than they are acting. I did everything I could do for forty years. I tried to chastise them and teach them not to behave like this. Master of the Universe, do not hold me accountable for their actions. What more could I have done?
