It Begins With Purity
Parsha Topic
We could compare this to someone who bought a brand new, shiny car. He elatedly drives it out of the dealer’s lot, and after a short time, the car stops. He jogs back to the car dealer and complains, “The car doesn’t drive.”
The dealer asks him, “Excuse me for asking, but did you put any gas in the tank?”
The customer says, “What’s gas?”
The dealer replies, “It doesn’t matter right now what it is. Just go to a gas station, any gas station, and fill up the tank. I guarantee you the car will drive after that.”
The customer does as told. He gets himself down to a gas station and they fill up a jerry can for him. But then he catches a whiff of this foul, toxic liquid, and says to himself: It’s bad enough that the car doesn’t drive. Now I am going to put this stinking water in it, and ruin it completely? No way. I’m not going to pour this junk into my new car while there is still hope that it will start driving again.
What do you say to a person like this? You say: You didn’t manufacture the car, right? You didn’t build the engine. There is someone who engineered this automobile, and he probably knows more about car mechanics than you do.
He understands how a combustion engine works, and he says that only this weird liquid will enable the car to drive, and otherwise, it won’t budge an inch. He knows what he is talking about. If you believe him, fine. And if not, good luck.
It’s the same with chinuch. The best educator with the most wonderful ideas never actually created the soul of a child. He doesn’t really know what’s “under the hood.” The only one who really understands the depths of the human soul is the Creator Who made it. Hashem created the soul with certain qualities. One of them is purity. “Neshamah shenasata bi tehorah hi.” Hashem created the neshamah and formed the neshamah and breathed it into us. And Chazal say that breath emanates from a deep place.
מאן דנפח מדיליה נפח.
The neshamah was created from the inner depths of kedushah, and its nature is kedushah and taharah. And the only thing that will get it to work properly is Torah, and especially those Torah subjects having to do with taharah. “Let those who are pure come and engage themselves with that which is pure.” The neshamah can't fulfill its purpose otherwise.
Deep Therapy
The Rambam wrote in Shemoneh Perakim that we need to learn the healing of the soul from the healing of the body.
If a person has a festering wound on his arm, he is likely to go to a doctor and ask for a cream to put on it. But the doctor might tell him that an external cream won’t help. There is an internal infection that is causing this symptom, and the cure is to take antibiotic tablets.
The patient might object that swallowing a pill is an awfully strange way to treat a surface wound on his arm.
But the doctor, who understands how the body works, doesn’t think it’s strange at all. He explains, “The problem is not with the skin. That’s just a symptom of the root problem. The cause of your condition is that your blood has a certain toxin or bacteria that causes a skin outbreak. If you just treat the skin outbreak locally, that spot might get better, but another outbreak will soon appear somewhere else. However, if we treat the problem at its source, if we purify your blood, then your skin will become beautiful and smooth again, and it will stay that way.
It's the same with Torah and mitzvos. People are born wild and unruly, and it’s a universal problem: how do you educate children to proper behavior?
The answer given by Torah sages is for the child to learn Torah and do mitzvos. This raises the question we asked before. How does learning about the creation of heaven and earth teach a person not to steal or act up? How does learning the story of Yosef who was sold by his brothers educate a child not to have envy? How does shofar heal anger, how does matzah straighten out the mind?
The rule of thumb is “Let those who are pure come and engage themselves with that which is pure.” The medicine of Torah gets straight into a person’s “blood,” i.e., into the depths of the neshamah, and performs internal healing.
Let’s say a child is fresh and chutzpadik to his parents and teachers. Some teachers will reprimand him to control his mouth. If he is jumping around, they will reprimand him to stay in his place.
If a child steals, you can tie his hands, but that doesn’t solve the problem at all. It might temporarily deter the external results, but the problem is just as strong as before.
In our age, when there is too much theft, the problem is “solved” by increasing police presence. But that causes a new problem: the policemen themselves steal. We don’t gain anything by adding more policemen. Because the problem is in the soul.
And what is the soul?
“Neshamah shenasata bi tehorah hi.” The soul is pure. And it needs appropriate nourishment – it needs purity.
If Yankeleh jumps around, he has a problem in his soul, in his neshamah. So what should we do? “Let those who are pure come and engage themselves with that which is pure.” Give him Chumash Vayikra, tell him about the creation of the world, tell him about Yosef and his brothers.
It might not make sense, it might not be logical, but Hakadosh Baruch Hu created the neshamah, and He knows how it works. He tells us, “Let those who are pure come and engage themselves with that which is pure.”
