Kabbalah/Chassidut
Kabbalah/Chassidut | |
"Parshas Pinchas and Brotherly Love"By Yisroel Susskind, Ph.D., Monsey, NY
Dedicated to the memory of my grandfather, Pinkasz
Susskind, of Stropkov, Slovakia.
Tucked away in this week's parsha, Pinchas, is "curious
incident", an omission, that provides a touching lesson on staying
connected lovingly, despite adversity. This failure to explain their absence appears strange. A full 50% of Binyomin's children have disappeared and we are offered no explanation! In contrast, with regard to the sons of Yehudah , the text explains why two of his sons are no longer on the list of households. (3). And it does so, despite the fact that we know why they are missing, based on their story earlier, in Genesis (4). Not only does the text not provide an explanation of the 5 missing Benjaminites, but the major commentaries do not address that issue at the point where the text lists the 5 sons (1). Typically, when I encounter a census in the Torah, listing names and numbers, my eye passes rapidly over the information, which is less appealing to me than is a story. Yet, when I noticed that so many of Binyomin's sons were missing, without any comment in the text or commentaries, my attention was grabbed. As the expression goes: "the verse cries out for an explication." I began to hunt around. What happened to these 5 sons? A mild interpretation is offered by the Daas Zekeinim
(5), who suggests that those five families grew at a very slow rate
and thus became absorbed by the larger families of Binyamin. Rashi returns to the issue of the 5 missing Benjaminites in verse 24, offering an alternative harsh interpretation of their absence, in the name of Rabbi Moshe ha-Darshan . He states essentially that Binyamin's offspring were predestined for tragedy; that is, when he was born to our Matriarch Rachel, and she lay dying in childbirth, Rachel named him "Ben Oni"-- "the child of mourning." According to Rabbi Moshe ha-Darshan, this name was a prophetic reference to two events: (a) the loss of the 5 families; (b) the near-total decimation of the remainder of the tribe at the incident of "the concubine at Giv'ah" (8). Nachmanides, the Ramban, offers a different "gentle" explanation that accounts for 2 of the missing brothers, but still leaves 3 brothers unaccounted for. He asserts that 2 of the sons died childless, or else were actually grandsons (9). So, I am still left with a number of questions as to why the Text did not make explicit what happened to the missing Benjaminite brothers, and what was the cause of their fates. However, the biggest question that emerged for me was
why did my eye catch and attend to the omission? Why did I remember
that in Genesis (2) Binyomin has 10 sons? and why did I invest so much
time investigating the discrepancy? (a) He manages to be cared about by his brothers, at least to the extent that they do not harbor the resentment toward him that they had to Yosef. (b) He is incredibly loved by his father Yaacov. When Yehudah fears that the Viceroy will take Binyomin, he pleads for his father's sake; he explains (Gen. 44:30) that Yaacov's and Binyomin's very souls are tied one to the other. His words are one of the most tender and moving statements of attachment between father and son. (c) When Binyomin is unknowingly re-united with his brother Yosef in Egypt, he totally overwhelms Yosef with his brotherly love. Rashi explains that Binyomin told "the Viceroy" that during the 22 years since Binyomin lost his brother, he named each of his 10 sons after aspects of Yosef's life. "The Viceroy" is so touched that he must excuse himself and go into a separate room to cry (10). The tenderness of this emotional moment so stayed with me, that it ingrained in my memory the fact that Binyomin had 10 sons. That emotional connection is what caused me to notice a "missing detail" in the census. (d) It is through Yeudah's magnificently sacrificing himself for Binyomin in Parshas Vayigash that Yehudah redeems himself from the sin of having sold Yosef, that Yehudah asserts the primacy of his love for Yaacov, and that he merits to be the sire of the kings of Israel and of Moshiach (11). (e) Yaacov did not accept Rachel's naming her baby "Ben Oni", i.e., child of mourning or of suffering". He called the baby Ben-Yamin ( Gen. 35:18) , which Rashi interprets there as "son of my Right hand, i.e., son of the Southerly direction , when I am facing East" . In Chassidus (12), the quality of enraptured mystical love of G-D, "ratzo," is attributed to the "Right hand." Binyomin is thus a symbol of enraptured love of G-D. May it be that we draw upon the loving quality of Binyomin,
to achieve closeness to our families, to our religious leaders, and
to G-D, that we manifest the qualities of "soul attachment"
and of rapture, thereby meriting the ultimate rapture with the coming
of Moshiach, immediately, in the literal meaning of the word. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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