Join us each week as we journey across the United States and gather words of Torah from rabbanim representing each of the fifty states. This week we are pleased to feature divrei Torah from Rabbi Yisroel Reisman of Brooklyn, New York.
Jodie Maoz
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Many years ago, Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel asked a certain talmid to take a job as a mashgiach in a yeshiva, but Rav Pam felt that this talmid was still young, and not ready for this type of responsibility. Rav Nosson Tzvi called Rav Pam and said, “Mit di achrayos kumin di kochos – with the responsibility comes the ability.” Rav Pam was struck by that insight, and he repeated it to us, his talmidim.
We find a similar phenomenon at the beginning of Parshas Vayigash. At the end of Parshas Miketz, Yehudah speaks very meekly to Yosef, saying: What can we say to my lord? How can we speak? And how can we justify ourselves? G-d has uncovered the sin of your servants. Here we are: We are ready to be slaves to my lord – both we and the one in whose hands the goblet was found (44:16).
Suddenly at the beginning of Parshas Vayigash, Yehudah’s tone changes dramatically: Then Yehudah approached him and said, If you please, my lord, may your servant speak a word in my lord’s ears and let not your anger flare up at your servant – for you are like Pharaoh (44:18). On the words, v’al yichar apcha – do not let your anger flare up, Rashi comments, “From here you learn that he spoke harshly to him.”
What happened? Why the sudden shift from meek to harsh?
Rav Schwab (Maayan Bais Hasho’eivah) explains that when Yehudah reflected that he had guaranteed his father that he would bring back Binyomin – as he says, “for your servant took responsibility for the youth” (44:32) – he suddenly had the strength and the courage to stand up to Yosef. When a person feels a responsibility, then he automatically has the energy to carry out that responsibility, even if he might otherwise not have been able to. Mit di achrayos kumin di kochos.
This is the idea of kabbalas ol. When you accept Torah and mitzvos upon yourself as an obligation, you simultaneously invest yourself with the strength to carry out the obligation. We do this every day when we say Shema: the first section of Krias Shema is Kabbalas Ol Malchus Shamayim, the acceptance of the kingdom of Hashem, and the second section is Kabbalas ol Mitzvos, acceptance of the mitzvos. By reminding ourselves that this is our purpose, our job, we draw forth our energies to do that job.
The baalei mussar make a similar observation regarding Moshe Rabbeinu’s words when Bnei Yisrael asked for meat. Moshe Rabbeinu asks the Ribbono Shel Olam (Bamidbar 11:12): “Did I conceive the entire people or did I give birth to it?” From the way Moshe expresses himself, the baalei mussar derive that as impossible as it would seem for Moshe to be able to suddenly provide meat for so many people, if indeed he had been the parent of these children, and he would have felt the same responsibility that a parent feels toward a child – and if they, in turn, had looked toward Moshe Rabbeinu that way – then it would have happened. Because when there is a sense of achrayos, it happens.
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The first Jews to arrive in North America came to New York from Racife, Brazil, in September 1654. There were 23 of them.
In 1930, better than four in ten of New York City’s Jews resided in Brooklyn.
When eastern European Jewish immigrants began arriving in New York City in the late 19th century, they brought with them the bagel, which had its origin in Poland.
The pedestal of the Statue of Liberty features lines of a sonnet by Emma Lazarus, a poet of Sephardic background born in New York in 1847.
Today, New York City is called home by largest number of Jews anywhere outside Israel.