The Unifying Nature of Talmud Torah
A Message for Parashat Shelah 2017
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Congressman Steve Scalise was shot on early Wednesday
morning, in the midst of a baseball game with his colleagues. The men were
practicing for the annual Congressional Baseball game, a decades-old tradition
that positions Republicans against Democrats on the fields of America’s
favorite pastime. Angered by the political direction of the country, the gunman
violently vented his emotions by shooting at several politicians, beginning a
melee that ended his own life.
Politician Steve Israel noted the tragic
irony regarding the specific setting of this attack. He wrote:
It
wasn’t just an attack on members of Congress and their staff and police
protective details, but one of the few vestiges of bipartisanship left in
Congress: baseball…While both parties fight against one another in
congressional committee rooms and on the House floor, when they compete in this
annual event, it is spirited but civil…The rules of the game are respected.[1]
Israel explained that the gunman’s bullets
struck more than just a few people. They punctured a gaping hole into the sole
venue of appropriate bipartisan engagement and competition.
Baseball has traditionally represented more
than just a relaxing hobby. In his Baseball as a Road to God, John
Sexton wrote:
It
is that baseball has the capacity to elevate and transform, that it has a power
to bring people together in expanding levels of relationship: parent and child,
neighbor and friend, community and city, state and nation. On some majestic
summer days, the many who assemble are one.[2]
Former commissioner of baseball, A. Bartlett
Giamatti wrote about an additional, and very much relevant, philosophical
dimension of baseball:
To
know baseball is to continue to aspire to the condition of freedom,
individually and as a people, for baseball is grounded in America in a way
unique to our games. Baseball is part of America’s plot…Our national plot is to
be free enough to consent to an order that will enhance and compound – as it
restrains – our freedom. That is our grounding, our national story, the tale
America tells the world…[3]
Paradoxical in nature, baseball holds the
keys for the establishment of unity – structured and civilized competition.
* * * *
Immediately
following the pronouncement of Am Yisrael’s punishment for the sin of
the meragelim – death in the wilderness, God instructed Moshe:
Speak to Bnei Yisrael, and you shall say to them: “When you
come to the land of your settlement that I am about to give you, you shall make
a fire offering to God, a burnt offering or a sacrifice to set aside a votive
or a voluntary offering…” (Bemidbar 15:2-3)
A public explanation of specific sacrificial
laws and their accompanying libations – whose relevance was only “when you come
to the land of your settlement” – seems brutally insensitive to a nation that
had just learned that they would never enter that land. What was God’s
rationale for these instructions at this juncture?
Though many of the classical commentators
sought peshat-oriented answers to this vexing question, the Midrash set
forth a truly perplexing rendition of this situation. Tanna Dvei Eliyahu
(ch. 27) described God’s purpose in this instance as an attempt to “console the
people.” The continued description of the Midrash envisioned an ensuing
intellectual battle regarding the application of these laws to a convert – one
that was finally settled by God’s intervening verdict. The Midrash leaves blank
any explanation as to how these now-inapplicable laws could in any way console
the people, nor why the people would conceivably enter a heated debate about
them.
R. Moshe Shemuel Shapira z”l, the
former head of Yeshivat Be’er Yaakov, suggested that the Hakhamim’s
intent in this portrayal was to display the power of Torah study. He suggested
that the rabbis’ explanation and story sought to highlight the positive
feelings of enjoyment inherent in a true debate over words of Torah. The ironic
context of this envisioned debate sharpens the rabbis’ portrayal of the uncanny
ability of talmud Torah to raise the spirits of its learners.[4]
Unclear, however, is the specific dimension of this intellectual analysis and
debate that led to the comforting of the people. What is this “power source” of
talmud Torah?
I imagine the scene of Am Yisrael’s
encampment prior to Moshe’s sacrificial commands as one of separateness and
disparity. They watched a public rift amongst their leaders – as ten spies
warned of the dangers of the Land of Israel, and two others, Moshe and Aharon,
professed otherwise. And they then observed the swift demise of a splinter
group that rose up, against the warnings of Moshe, in an attempt to conquer the
land. Finding themselves in a state of utter confusion, I envision the people
of Am Yisrael engaging in shouting matches and other violent
demonstrations, as each individual and group sought to voice their own view
regarding their shared circumstances.
I believe that it was against the backdrop of
this state of affairs that the Hakhamim then envisioned a national
consolation through talmud Torah.
Much as, le-havdil, baseball has the
ability to bring rise to unity from the midst of opposition, so too does Torah.
Its structured rules of study and interpretation are the source of its power to
unify through disagreement. It is within the broadly defined contours and
specific guidelines of a halakhic debate that the freedom of opinion and
interpretation to all that engage in its study arises.
The perplexing narrative and interpretations
of the Midrash hint at an appropriate remedy to communal disharmony. Following
the schism brought on by the voicing of core issues and opinions, the road to
unity must be painted by the appropriate structure and guidelines of Torah
study.
[1] Steve Israel, “An Attack
on Congress and Baseball,” The New York Times, June 14, 2017. Available
at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/14/opinion/attack-on-congress-and-baseball-steve-israel.html.
[2] John Sexton, Baseball
as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game (New York, NY 2013), pg. 177.
[3] A. Bartlett Giamatti, Take
Time for Paradise: Americans and Their Games (New York, NY, 2011), pg. 73.
[4] R. Moshe Shemuel Shapira,
Zahava MiSheva vol. I (Jerusalem, IS, 2003), pg. 174-5.