Haftorah Parashat Behukotai
Yirmiyahu 16;19-17;14
This week’s haftarah has many verses that are justifiably famous and could lead to full-scale discussions of their own. Instead of covering the whole haftarah, then, I am going to here try to take just a couple of themes, and try to discuss ones I have not belabored before.
What Leads Us to Miss Truths Other Nations Might Figure Out First
The first two units of this week’s haftarah, meaning the last three verses of chapter 16 and the first three verses of chapter 17, have different thrusts but combine together to make a surprising point. The first unit consists of Yirmiyahu complaining about the possibility that in the future other nations will come to realize the emptiness of their objects of worship (whether they are actually idols or not), while the Jews will still not fully repent of their sins.
The next unit speaks of how deeply entrenched the Jews are in those sins, but the gemara cites the opinion of R. Yehuda in the name of Rav, that the Jews began worshiping idols only as a cover to allow them to engage in wrongful sexuality. Whether that means that they were willing to commit a worse crime in order to avoid being rebuked for a lesser one- a sad choice that people continue to make, in which the severity of the act doesn’t matter to us, as long as it gets us peace and quiet on the issue that we have decided we care about more—or it means that idol worship provided good opportunities for illicit sex, the gemara is telling us that the original motivation for the idol worship was not the worship itself.
Which makes more surprising the gemara’s note that the verse portrays the Jews as eventually thinking of those idols with deep and honest affection, as if they were close relatives. For me, this suggests that we need to be careful about modes of action we embark upon, since they can easily become a pull of their own, long after the original stimulus has faded. So, for example, psychologists point out that people who eat, smoke, watch TV, or whatever, to escape stress can often find themselves still enmeshed in those activities long after the stress is gone.
Taken together, the two imply that at least one possible future of the world involves the Jewish people getting so caught up in some view of the world—one they originally took on for a subsidiary reason, such as greater access to social interactions they desired—that even after the non-Jews who originally promoted that view have abandoned it for its falsehood, the Jews, having now become attached to it, will stay with it faithfully. Truly a frustrating experience for a prophet to contemplate.
Turning Theory Into Practice and Trust in God
Two of the next four verses are well-known to students of Pirke Avot (which we all should be, especially at this time of year, when custom has decreed that Jews take a chapter of Avot a week to study on Shabbat afternoon), because Avot 3; 18 cites them as the prooftext for its claim that one whose “wisdom outstrips his actions” is like a tree with too many branches for its roots.
Seeing the verse in context puzzles us, since the navi refers to one who puts his trust in people and turns his heart away from Hashem; it is such a person whom Yirmiyahu says will be like a tree living in inimical conditions.
Faced with situations like this, we have two valid choices: separate the two comments, saying that Yirmiyahu made one point and the Mishnah a separate but also legitimate one, or we can find a greater unity between the two. I prefer the second strategy when possible, for its greater elegance.
The person whose wisdom outstrips his actions, I suspect, has misunderstood the value of wisdom. While many people in the world continue to assume that scholarship, intelligence, and knowledge are inherent values, Avot is telling us that the point of wisdom is to apply it to improving the world. One who does has given root to his wisdom, grounded it in the real and important matter of improving this world.
That perspective of wisdom, it seems to me, extends from a faith-based worldview. Those who leave God out of their analysis of life and the world are more likely to be those who see the value of wisdom in what it does for that person; the jump from having wisdom to putting it into practice puzzles philosophers (look, for example, at discussions of the end of Rambam’s Moreh Nevuchim, where most academics cannot understand how or why Rambam would see the highest level of perfection as taking one’s intellectual understanding and putting it into practice).
If linking wisdom to action is a sign of faith, we understand what Yirmiyahu was saying, as well as how Avot applied it. Jews of Yirmiyahu’s time, and ours, did not construct their picture of the future with God centrally in mind. Security, wisdom, wealth were all issues to be taken care of by people, and often for themselves, without any broader picture to consider. Yirmiyahu is urging them and us to do otherwise.
Money and Trust in God
The last Mishnah in Peah cites the verse about trusting in God to support its assertion that one who struggles not to take charity even when he is allowed to (but can, with effort, live without it) will eventually become wealthy and support others. Part of trust in God involves avoiding making others one’s source of sustenance. Verse 11 also speaks of one who gets money wrongly, only this time by misleading others. Taken together with all that we’ve seen here, we see the issue of trust in God, of guiding our actions by our belief in God and by no other standards, as a key to securing the kinds of outcomes we want. Whether it is in attaining money, wisdom, or other, there is a Godly way and a non-Godly way, and it is up to us to choose wisely.
Hashem Will Help If We Ask
The penultimate verse of the haftarah, mikveh Yisrael Hashem, speaks of Hashem as a mikveh, a source of our purification that involves us immersing ourselves in it. I believe the Rov zt”l once suggested that this signifies a self-purification in which the person plays an active role, the kinds of role laid out in the rest of the haftarah. Our theme here, then, is finding the way to get in God’s good graces through our own actions, through trust in Hashem, and focus on Hashem. Shabbat Shalom.
JEREMIAH 16
[19] O LORD, my strength, and my fortress, and my refuge in the day of affliction, the Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ends of the earth, and shall say, Surely our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit.
[20] Shall a man make gods unto himself, and they are no gods?
[21] Therefore, behold, I will this once cause them to know, I will cause them to know mine hand and my might; and they shall know that my name is The LORD.
————————————————————————————————————————
Jer.17
[1] The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond: it is graven upon the table of their heart, and upon the horns of your altars;
[2] Whilst their children remember their altars and their groves by the green trees upon the high hills.
[3] O my mountain in the field, I will give thy substance and all thy treasures to the spoil, and thy high places for sin, throughout all thy borders.
[4] And thou, even thyself, shalt discontinue from thine heritage that I gave thee; and I will cause thee to serve thine enemies in the land which thou knowest not: for ye have kindled a fire in mine anger, which shall burn for ever.
[5] Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD.
[6] For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited.
[7] Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is.
[8] For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.
[9] The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
[10] I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.
[11] As the partridge sitteth on eggs, and hatcheth them not; so he that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool.
[12] A glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary.
[13] O LORD, the hope of Israel, all that forsake thee shall be ashamed, and they that depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the LORD, the fountain of living waters.
[14] Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved: for thou art my praise.