Tammuz time, and so soon after receiving the Torah, we confront the harsh reality of our inability, as yet, to bring that Torah into the vision of its fullness as testified to by the destruction of Hashem's Bayit twice, sending us into exiles brief and prolonged. Shiv'ah Asar b'Tammuz, one of the four fasts of the destruction, marks the breaching of the walls of Yerushalayim. Now the moment of breaching walls is a moment of ambiguity. It COULD be that the entombing encasement that has stifled the living organism inside is being broken, much as a nautilus, as it grows, leaves the confinment of a chamber grown too small for the expansiveness of one size bigger. OR, it COULD be that it's just the forces of wanton destruction come to lay waste to all that is precious. Which is it? Could it be both? And how would we know? This month's pieces beging to address the question. In the second article, Ariel Shalem discusses the nature of the destruction; Rav Gavriel Goldfeder and Baruch Hershcopf, in the first and third pieces respectively, address the question of how to address the inadequacies of our encounter with Torah and the Other.
One of the forms of melachah forbidden on Shabbat is Hasoter - one who destroys. Now any melachah which "qualifies" for Shabbat prohibitio must be melechet machshevet, an act of skill and intentionality. Destruction is converted to construction when there is machshavah which places it the context of a larger process. So much destruction swirls around us today on every level - may it be Hashem's will that we be endowed with the powers of machshavah that enable us, as they did our ancestors, to convert darkness to brilliant light.
Rav Yehoshua Kahan
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Rav Yehoshua Kahan is a teacher at Yeshivat Bat Ayin. He has held pulpits in Knoxville, Tennessee and Los Angeles, and served as educational director of Livnot U'Lehibanot. He blogs on Parashat Hashavua here |