The Open Secret
Now here, with this story, we come to one of the great secrets of the Torah and of living successfully in this world.
You’ll say if it's a great secret how do I know it? The answer is I was told – I had great rebbis in Slabodka and they told it to me. Not to me alone; they were saying it to everybody, and I was there listening. And I’m going to share the secret with you now so listen prayerfully.
They were quoting the Alter of Slabodka and he was talking about the movements that were taking the world by storm in his days. And he said that we think that all the movements that began in the world were started because of an idea, an inspired ideal. Somebody sat down and thought out a new idea and he thought the idea was so righteous and so correct – ‘so righteous’ means it was decent and yashar and ‘so correct’ means it was mathematically perfect – and he decided that's the way things should be and therefore he started a movement.
The Alter’s Jest
So the Alter zichrono l’vrachah said no. “All the movements that were started in the world,” he said, “were started because of middos, because of some character flaw.” And just as a jest to bring out the point he said the one who started the vegetarian movement, to avoid eating any living things, was a man who owned a milchige restaurant. He had a dairy restaurant and in order to drum up business he started a movement that it's wicked to slaughter animals and eat their flesh.
But the chiddush of the Alter is more than that. What’s even more is that the milchige man didn’t even know that was his reason! He didn’t know he was doing it for business, for money. He sincerely believed that he was doing it l’shem Shomayim, on principle.
Now, you should listen with great derech eretz to that jest because it sums up one of the great secrets of history – not only the history of the world but the history of our private lives. Nothing is done with pure seichel. Nothing is done with pure rationale. There is always some motivation of character that is a catalyst. It's either anger or retaliation or it's envy or a desire for glory or a desire for power or laziness or some other inclination.
Character Catalysts
Now, among the umos haolam there’s nothing to talk about. Even the biggest events, the biggest decisions, are made because of character flaws. If there was a war to be free of England – I'm speaking, not the Alter; I’m adding to his words – if there was a war to be free of King George and his taxes, don't believe it that was the only reason. That’s just something to tell the children, something to put in the history books after the fact. But actually entirely different motivations caused the war; traits of character, flaws in character.
When George Washington mustered his troops to cross the Delaware I don't know if he spent hours studying his motivations. They were hotheads, people who were looking for glory and other things. Now, I’m not saying you have to tell this outside, to good American gentiles, but there's no question the entire Revolutionary War was not caused by idealism.
Now I'm not blaming our country here for going into war because sometimes wars must be fought. I'm not saying pacifism is a principle – even pacifism you have to know is a result of character flaws. And it could be that there were very good motivations too to fight the Revolutionary War; mixed in among the hidden motivations and character flaws, could there were good motivations too. Why not? But that’s the great secret however – everything is done because of some submerged character motivation, some hidden character flaw.
Everyone Has Character Flaws
And what we’re learning from this week’s parsha is that this secret is such a truism, such an axiom of life, that no one is immune from this sickness. Not only Paul Revere and George Washington; everyone, even the best ones, are making errors because of character flaws. The shivtei Kah after all were tzaddikim gemurim; they were very great people. We, not so much. And so, this story is told by the Torah – it’s an interesting story too but there’s something more important than that – the Torah is teaching us this story as a model of how man thinks, the justifications that are always creeping into his mind.
Because even when it began to enter their mind that maybe something is wrong – this was before Yosef revealed himself but they saw that trouble was brewing; the mishneh lamelech was acting very harshly with them; they saw how he was making chumros on them, all kinds of demands on them and they began to suspect that Hashem was punishing them – and they said, הָאֱלֹ קִים מָ צָא אֶת עֲ וֹן עֲ בָדֶ יךָ – “Hashem has discovered our crime, מַ ה נִּ צְ טַ דֵּ ק – How can we justify ourselves?” (ibid. 44:16), even then they didn’t recognize the truth about themselves.
The Right Explanation
I’ll tell you an interesting Gemara – now I don’t know if my explanation is right or not but for thirty years I’ve been teaching this explanation so I’ll keep on until someone tells me it’s wrong. They said, מַ ה נִּ צְ טַ דֵּ ק – “How can we justify ourselves?” They were speaking to Hakadosh Baruch Hu in these words to Yosef and so it seems that they were now confessing that they were wrong: “We have no way of justifying what we did!” But here’s what the Gemara in Mesichta Shabbos (105a) says about that. נִּ צְ טַ דֵּ ק is notrikon; it means that every letter stands for a word. The nun means נְכוֹנִים אֲ נַחְ נו – we are the right ones. The tzaddik means צַדִ יקִ ים אֲ נַחְ נו – we are righteous. The tes means טְהוֹרִים אֲנַחְנו – we are pure. The daled means דָ כִ י ם אֲ נַ חְ נ ו – we are innocent. And kuf means קְ דוֹשִׁ ים אֲ נַחְנו – we are holy.
Now what does that mean? If you’re saying a viduy, if you’re confessing, so where do all these things come in?
But the Gemara – I think – is telling us that even when they said, “Hashem, how can we justify ourselves before You?”, they were justifying themselves!
Pious Confession
It’s like a Jew on Yom Kippur. He’s a pious Jew and he’s standing up to say the Al Cheits. So he begins with the whole list of sins. He admits he committed adultery and he worked on Shabbos and he killed people; all the things it said there. He knows he didn’t do it. I’m sure he feels good about it too. He didn’t do these things; a whole list of things that he’s innocent of.
So they’re saying, “We sinned, v’nechonim anachnu, and we’re pretty good. We sinned and u’tehorim anachnu, we’re pretty pure. After all, we did a mitzvah, we wanted to get rid of him. How can we justify what we did but dakim anachnu, we are innocent.”
So the Gemara is telling us, don’t think that they made such a plain straightforward admission. Everything they said, they didn’t really confess that they did something wrong. They went through the motions; a Jew has to blame himself, absolutely. So they did. But deep down in their heart, they still felt they were right. We’re nechonim, tzaddikim, tehorim, dakim, kedoshim, everything.
Until finally the great moment came when the mishneh lamelech opened his mouth and said, “אֲ נִ י י וֹ סֵ ף,” and then the whole thing exploded. All the justifications, in one second, crumbled into nothing.
A Model for Us
It’s a model for the behavior of everybody in this world. If these great men deceived themselves then we surely are deceiving ourselves! And we should all be afraid, terrified, of the day when it’ll be revealed to us like it was revealed to the brothers – only then, once we’re in the Next World already, it will be chas v’shalom too late to make ourselves better.
That’s what the Chachomim tells us, that the same thing is going to be with all of us. Because when the great chochom, Abba Cohen Bardala, read this parshah what was his reaction? אוֹ י לָ נו מִיּוֹם הַדִּין אוֹי לָנוּ מִיּוֹם הַתּוֹכָחָה – “Woe is to us on the Great Day of Judgment in the Next World! Alas to us on the Great Day of Rebuke!” (Bereishis Rabbah 93:10).
Abba Cohen is telling us that we’re going to be much more surprised than the brothers. כָּבוֹא הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא וְיוֹכִיחַ כָּל אֶחָד וְאֶחָד עַל אַחַת כַּמָּה וְכַמָּה – All the more so, much more than Yosef’s brothers were, are we going to be dumbstruck, shocked into terrified silence, when Hashem comes to rebuke each one on the Day of Judgement.
Because all our lives we’re saying, “We’re right, we’re right and we’re right” – in every area of life; our relationship with others, our avodas Hashem, our learning, our mitzvos, in business – and we’re building up skyscrapers of justifications. And even when we say we’re wrong and we’re wrong and we’re wrong, we’re thinking we’re right and we’re right and we’re right. But one day, after they put us into the back of the hearse and we’ll hear those words, “Ani Hashem!”, the whole building will collapse into nothing.
Visualize the Shock
And that’s why the whole story is written in our parsha. It’s not only for itself – it’s also a prelude to the Next World, a picture of the Yom Hadin that’s waiting for all of us. When a man passes out of this world, there’ll be a final accounting for the way he spent his life and when Hakadosh Baruch Hu tells you, “Chaim, or Dovid, you were this and this”, and you’ll understand what He means, you’ll be so overwhelmed, so shocked. All your life you have been deceiving yourself and patting yourself on the shoulder and blaming other people, not yourself. אוֹי לָנוּ מִיּוֹם הַדִּין – What will we answer?
And that’s why the seforim say that it’s good from time to time to visualize the picture of the Maamad Hadin, the moment that you’ll come in
