Miketz/Chanukah
During Chanukah, what we lain every morning comes from the same Parsha, from Parshat Nasso. More specifically, the laining for Chanukah talks about the twelve Nissi’im’s special contribution to the Mishkan. The strange thing about it is that all the Nissi’im gave the same gift. The even stranger thing though, is that in the Torah, those same five p’sukim describing the gift are written over and over again twelve times, with only the names of the Nissi’im and the Shevatim changed around. In fact, this part of the Torah is so repetitive that I’m sure that any Jew who goes to davening all eight days of Chanukah would know the gift off by heart by the end.
A big question arises from this. If the Torah never wastes p’sukim or says any more than it needs to, and every Nassi gave the same gift, then why does the Torah choose to repeat the same p’sukim over and over again? Moreover, why did every Nassi give the same gift at all? Is it not a little disrespectful for them all to give the same gift? Should they not have put more thought into it?
The Torah was clearly trying to teach us an important lesson. You may look at the situation and say that since the Torah repeats it twelve times and everyone else copied it, the first Nassi gave the best gift. But let’s look at the situation a little deeper. After the first Nassi gave his gift, the second Nassi had a choice. He could have out done the first Nassi’s gift and made him look bad, in which case every Nassi following would give a bigger and bigger gift. On the other hand, it would have been disrespectful for the second Nassi to give a less good gift. The second Nassi made the bold decision to give the exact same gift as the first Nassi. Once everyone saw that it was okay to give the exact same gift without being embarrassed, they all decided to give the same gift too. The reason for the Torah repeating the same p’sukim over and over again was because it was so happy in the second Nassi’s choice, and it wanted to show us that we shouldn’t always be trying to be superior or outdo the guy next to us, but sometimes, it’s even better if we just respect each other and just be the same. May we all be able to reflect upon this story and apply it to our lives every day, so that the Beit HaMikdash can be rebuilt Bimheira Beyameinu, Amen.
Va’era
Parshat Va’era contains 7 out of the 10 plagues. The plagues are all very unique and miraculous, however, there is something quite peculiar about the first 3 of them, Dam, Tzfardea, and Kinim. One would think that Moshe would be the one performing all the plagues, for he is the one that Hash-m chose to take Bnei Yisrael out of Mitzrayim. Yet, Moshe is not the one who executes the first plagues, Aharon is. Why is this so? Is Moshe not the leader? Why should Aharon do them? Rashi tells us it is because the sea saved Moshe’s life when he was a baby in the casket, and the sand saved him when he needed something to bury the Mitzri in that he killed. Moshe did not want to hit them with his staff when they were so good to him, and he wanted to show his gratitude to them, so he got Aharon to do it instead. We can all learn a very important lesson from this. If Moshe didn’t hit the sand and sea, which are inanimate and don’t have feelings, how much more so do we need to show our gratitude to our friends and family, who are real people, and let them know how thankful we are for them? We all need to learn and apply this lesson to our daily lives; thank our friends, our families, and our teachers and Rabbis, and let them know how much we love them and how grateful we are for them.
