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18 Shvat, 5779 - January 24, 2019 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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NEWS
A Light Unto the Nations

By Shaul Lerner


3

In this week's parsha which deals with Mattan Torah, we are told that Moshe Rabbenu was commanded to tell the Jews upon their arrival at the Sinai desert of their exalted mission, "And now, if you indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, you shall be for Me select from all the nations since the entire world belongs to Me."

Many of the commentators dwell upon the phrase "since the entire world belongs to Me," asking what connection it has to the previous phrase that the Jews would be a chosen elite nation from all other nations.

HaRav Meir Simcha from Dvinsk explains this in his work "Meshech Chochmah": "See to it that you are bound to Hashem in such manner that you be His segulah, an example for all the nations to acknowledge Hashem, and thus the entire world will realize that I am truly its Master."

No national Jewish-style culture can be the light unto the nations. This was not the object of the novi who designated, "From Zion shall Torah spread forth." Neither is any ethical creed or intellectual prowess unique to the Jewish people what "empowers and obligates us to be the light unto the nations." This is the misconception which the heads of Zionism, deniers of the word of Hashem, tried to implant in Jewry.

However, those who guarded the path of Hashem and His commandments without any interjection of nationalism, knew full well that only the light of the Torah can illuminate the world. It is the only thing which coheres us as a nation and which serves as the light and pathway for the goyim. This is the only `culture' from which the Jewish people were nurtured at Sinai up until the final and complete Redemption, may it come speedily. Any other ethnicity is alien to us; it is benighted and not illuminating.

The mission incumbent upon us and specifically upon bnei Torah is to conduct ourselves in a manner that we be worthy of the designation `Chosen Nation'. This comes about by our "being connected to Hashem Yisborach" and recognized as such. Our culture and conduct should justify that of princes without any negative distinctiveness of alien culture or connection to the decadent street and its undesirable characteristics.

"And all the people of the land will see that the Name of Hashem rests upon you and [they] will fear you."

 

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