פרשת שמות

This week’s Parsha tells us how Pharaoh decreed that all the male children of Egypt (including the non-Jews) were to be thrown into the Nile River and executed in order to prevent the Jews from being redeemed.  In desperation, Moshe’s parents, Amram and Yocheved, built a little raft for him and sent him off into the Nile River.  Batya, the daughter of Pharaoh happened upon this child’s laden raft while she was bathing one day.  When she reached out her hand to retrieve the raft, she was miraculously able to save little baby Moshe.  But the problem arose when she attempted to have him nursed, he was unwilling to nurse from a non-Jew.  At that point, Miriam, Moshe’s sister approached Batya and asked her if she would like to try having a Jewish woman nurse the baby.  When Batya agreed, Miriam ran excitedly to tell her mother Yocheved that she could come to the palace to nurse her own baby.  The Gemorah in Sotah (12) elaborates on why baby Moshe was unwilling to nurse from a non-Jewish woman.  The Gemora says, “Is it appropriate that the mouth which is going to speak with God should drink impure milk?” 

I believe that this Gemorah requires some explanation.  If Batya saw that Moshe wasn’t nursing, wouldn’t the next logical action be to call a doctor?  Wouldn’t she think that there is something wrong with him and try to help him?  And then Miriam comes and suggests that maybe the problem is in the fact that the proposed wet nurse is not a Jewess.  That seems like a bit of an odd conclusion!  And as if this suggestion is totally normal, Batya immediately agrees to give it a try and have Yocheved come out and nurse the baby.  Why is everybody in this story accepting such strange premises? 

R’ Leib Chasman offers an interesting explanation which will resolve our difficulties.  R’ Leib begins by laying down a foundation in which he asserts that when a person ingests foods which are forbidden, he changes his entire spiritual existence.  This can be seen from the verse, “Do not defile yourself (by eating forbidden foods) for you will become impure”.  From this verse, explains R’ Leib, we find that the change that occurs in a person when he partakes of prohibited foodstuffs is not merely a punishment, but rather a natural change which alters a person’s level of sanctity and degrades him to a lower spiritual level, much the same way that poison effects the body regardless of the eaters intent.  With this concept, we can understand what went on in Pharaoh’s palace.  They all understood this notion clearly and acted accordingly.

There is an interesting Yerushalmi, cited by Tosafos (Chagiga 15) which describes in detail how the famous Tanna Elisha the son of Avuya strayed from the path of observant Judaism and eventually became a complete heretic.  In his prime, Elisha was the teacher of the renowned Tanna R’ Meir and successfully imbued in his students the one true Torah and fear of Heaven.  The Yerushalmi explains that the reason this calamity befell Elisha was because when his mother was pregnant with him, she passed by a place of idol worship during the time when the monks there were burning incense to their gods.  When she inhaled the sweet aroma of the idolatrous smoke, at that minute she planted in her son the seed of heresy which would eventually be his ultimate undoing.  It is important to note that what she did was not forbidden in any way, and there is no way she could have known that they were burning incense at that time, but nonetheless the forbidden smells and foods which enter our body create metaphysical damage which cannot be undone.

We find even further, that not only does sin pollute our spiritual being, but it even alters the physical reality of our world as can be seen regarding Adam Harishon.  We find that when Adam and his wife sinned, they brought death into the world.  This means that before this cardinal sin, death physically did not exist in the world and only afterward was death introduced.  Adam’s sin changed the world so drastically, that not only was he himself affected, but we too are affected by that sin, not because of anything we did wrong, but because the world had been changed forever.  R’ Volbe furthers this concept in the second volume of his magnum opus “Alei Shor”.  R’ Volbe explains that the concept of rot only came down to this world at the same time that grave sins were perpetrated.  As we know, during the time of the Holy Temple, the meat wouldn’t become wormy or rot at all just as it was before Adam sinned.  This is because the Mikdash was a holy area where the powers of sin have no dominion and this area is therefore treated like the rest of the world was before Adam sinned.  Perhaps we could add that we find in the Mishna in Sotah that after the Holy Temple was destroyed even the fruits and the land were no longer of the same caliber.  From these few examples we see to what extent sin can affect the physical world around us.

R’ Chaim Shmuelevitz used to use this foundation that we have laid down to explain the Gemorah in Kidushin which says, “Nobody would sin unless a type of insanity had entered his mind”.  R’ Chaim would explain what this insanity is that the Gemorah is referring to.  Only an insane person who wasn’t thinking rationally would sin even though he is damaging himself so severely.  To bring a parable:  Would a person sin if by committing that sin, his arm would fall off?  Certainly not!  But truthfully, based on what we have said, this is almost exactly what happens.  R’ Chaim would prove his point from the story with Yosef and Potiphar’s wife.  When she was trying very enthusiastically to seduce Yosef, he refused to acquiesce to her by claiming that he might be offered as a sacrifice one day and she accepted this claim and stopped bugging him.  From here we see that even a non-Jew was well aware of the detrimental effects that a sin can have on one’s own existence.

Perhaps we could end on a somewhat positive note by bringing the encouraging words of R’ Leib Chasman.  R’ Leib would say that if all that we have said represents the detrimental effects of a sin, than how much more so is this true regarding the positive effect that a good deed will have on one’s being.  We know that God pays back good 500 times more then bad.  This means that if a person performs any Mitzvah, he will receive 500 times multiplication of goodness and positive effects in contrast to the negative that we have described above and will in fact change himself into a better person!  This is also what Chazal meant when they said that one Mitzvah leads to another Mitzvah.  This happens because when a person performs a good deed, he becomes a fundamentally better person and is in a likely position to do more good deeds.  One should know that when one performs these good deeds, he not only physically alters himself, but he has the power to change all of his progeny and any future generations that might come out of him.  We find that when Avraham Avinu served God in such a wholesome way his entire life, he physically changed himself and all of the children that would come out of him all the way down to our generation.

May we merit to always perform good deeds and thereby change ourselves and our children into the people we want to be!