ספר בראשית

When the psalmist, in psalms 111,4 says of G’d: ‎זכר עשה ‏לנפלאותיו‎, “He has made a memory for His wonders,” the question ‎arises why ”wonders” need to be commemorated by a special ‎זכר‎? ‎We would have thought that their very having occurred is their ‎memorial! The psalmist answers this unspoken question in the ‎latter half of the same verse when he says: ‎חנון ורחום ה'‏‎, ‎‎“Hashem is gracious and compassionate.” At the sea of ‎reeds G’d demonstrated that in spite of His being compassionate ‎He deliberately suppressed this attribute by drowning the ‎Egyptians in order to “save” the Israelites. This “canceling” of one ‎of His major attributes on account of the interests of the Jewish ‎people is what are referred to both by the psalmist, and by Moses ‎in the shirat hayam, the song of thanksgiving, as ‎נפלאותיו‎ or ‎פלא‎, “wonderful, amazing.”‎The second type of ‎ישועה‎, “rescue” is when G’d garbs Himself ‎in the “clothing” worn by nature, i.e. makes use of natural law ‎without disturbing its normal function. A well known example of ‎such an event is the “miracle” of Purim, which according to all ‎that we know about it did not contain any elements that could be ‎described as interference with the natural course of events.‎Achashverosh married Esther, and due to his jealousy of ‎Haman who he thought had tried to rape his wife Esther, he ‎hanged Haman. A similar “miracle” resulted in the festival of ‎Chanukah, the king or chief general of the Seleucids lusting after ‎Yehudit and trying to rape her, resulting instead in his being ‎killed by her, and his army becoming demoralized. In both the ‎examples mentioned, many thousands of gentiles, antisemites, ‎were killed in due course.The subject becomes easier to ‎understand by means of a parable. A King built a palace for his ‎son; originally, he had meant for his son to live in that house. ‎After a while, some wicked people expelled the son from this ‎house. It would be appropriate for the house that had served as ‎the protector of its inhabitants to not only protest this action ‎but to take counter measures. However the house, i.e. the stones, ‎are immobile, as pointed put by Chabakuk 2,11. Seeing that the ‎stones of the house are immobile, they are powerless. The world ‎was created for the sake of the Jewish people, i.e. the world is our ‎‎“house,” as G’d has told Pharaoh that the Jewish people are His ‎firstborn son when viewed in terms of the parable. (Exodus 4,22) ‎When the gentile nations dispossess us or kill us, the “world” ‎ought by rights to rise up in our defense. As this is not possible, ‎the owner of the world, G’d, will do this instead. This is why the ‎numerical value of the word ‎טבע‎, nature loosely translated as ‎‎“world,” is the same as the numerical value of the word ‎אלה-ים‎, ‎G’d, i.e. 86. When “nature” smites the gentile nations, it is the ‎same as G’d smiting them. The world is the sum total of the ‎Creator’s creative activity. G’d may be perceived as its father. The ‎expression ‎מעשה בראשית‎, a simile for the 6 days of G’d’s creative ‎activity, contains the word ‎ראשית‎, “beginning,” i.e. that the final ‎product of G’d’s creative activity had been planned from the very ‎beginning, i.e. as a home for the Jewish people, who are the whole ‎purpose of G’d’s beginning the creation of the universe. At the ‎conclusion of this process, ‎אחרית‎, the Creator garbed Himself in ‎what we are fond of calling ‎טבע‎, “nature,” and all that this term ‎entails. When Moses said in Deuteronomy 32,18 ‎צור ילדך תשי‎, “you ‎‎(his people) neglected the Rock that begot you,” his words ‎expressed similar sentiments.‎Before someone opens his mouth to say something, a person ‎considers if the words he is about to utter are the ones ‎appropriate for expressing his wish. If he wishes to make a ‎request, he thinks about how best to phrase such a request in ‎order that it may be granted. By changing his mode of speech, he ‎becomes a totally new person. When G’d issued directives to ‎create the universe, He created the whole world with these oral ‎directives. (Compare psalms 33,6 ‎בדבר ה' שמים נעשו‎, “the heavens ‎came into existence by a single word of the Lord”.) When it comes ‎to “saving” this world from impending destruction, using the ‎טבע‎, “nature,” as His instrument, He deals with something that is ‎established, and therefore employs a different means than the one ‎He had employed when bringing something into existence. ‎According to our author the word ‎טבע‎ is closely related to the ‎word ‎חנוכה‎, completing a training program, consecration, i.e. ‎establishing a kind of order, norms, imprinting a form on ‎something, as in ‎מטבע‎, coin. G’d no longer needs to resort to ‎something brand new, i.e. miracles.‎When Esther is described as ‎אילה‎, a strong animal, (feminine ‎of ‎איל‎, ram) i.e. fully mature, our sages referred to the period of ‎overt miracles in Jewish history having come to an end in her ‎time, so that the salvation of the Jewish people in which she was ‎instrumental did not require G’d’s intervention by upsetting the ‎rules of nature through a miracle.‎[If G’d were forever to have to resort to miracles to ‎achieve His purpose in the universe, this would reflect a basic ‎flaw in that universe. When at the end of the Purim story the ‎Jews are described as voluntarily accepting what they had ‎accepted at Sinai under tremendous pressure, this too is a ‎compliment to G’d, whose children had matured. Ed.]‎The sages (at the beginning of 40,10) are quoted as seeing in ‎one of the branches which the cup bearer saw in his dream, the ‎young priests, the ones who would perform the sacrificial service ‎in the Temple in due course. If we revert to the allegorical ‎approach that the author has adopted, the ‎פרחי כהונה‎ that the ‎Talmud spoke about are the sacrifices offered in the Temple, ‎which are symbolic of how miracles become converted into ‎norms, ‎טבע‎, seeing that most communal offerings are closely tied ‎to certain days, weeks, months, or years, and these in turn ‎symbolise how what had come into existence as an overt miracle ‎at the creation, had been transformed into what we call natural ‎phenomena, i.e. manifestations in nature that are not only ‎predictable but can be calculated thousands of years in advance.‎‎[The author tries again to bring the subject of ‎Chanukah into this portion, as the portion is always read around ‎that time of year, draws on the Talmud Shabbat 21 where the ‎subject is Chanukah. Ed.] The Talmud there stipulates ‎that the best time for lighting the Chanukah candles is the period ‎immediately following sunset until it has become so dark that no ‎more pedestrians are about. (There was no street lighting in those ‎days) Our author sees in this a symbol of the gradual switchover ‎from G’d performing overt miracles to working through letting ‎טבע‎ perform most of His intervention in the affairs of man. The ‎expression for complete darkness, used by the Talmud is ‎עד שכלתה ‏רגל מן השוק‎, usually translated as “until the pedestrians have ‎ceased walking in the public domain.” Seeing that the word ‎רגל‎ ‎does not only mean “foot, but is also directly related to ‎רגילות‎, ‎something habitual, he understands the Talmud as hinting at this ‎‎“getting used to seeing no more brilliant miracles,” as the period ‎following “sunset.” The expression used by the Talmud for sunset ‎is ‎שקיעת החמה‎, the word ‎חמה‎, “sun,” referring to something overt, ‎highly visible.‎ ‎