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HaRav Zvi Drabkin shlita On the Fall of Syria
"A spark from Yosef can consume all of Esav, who is likened to flax." According to a parable, a camel with a huge load of flax was passing through. When someone wondered how that huge load would pass through, someone just suggested that the load could be burned to ashes by a single spark.
Is it not simpler to torch the entire volume of flax if it causes trouble asked a wise man. This is what the wise man in the parable said. But why the need to torch it? Is it not enough for the smithy can merely stand with his torch in front of his shop and when the camels bearing the huge bales of flax see him, they themselves will be afraid to advance.
The explanation of the parable is that Hashem reveals to Yaakov that he need not worry. The fire will save him. "All you need do is enter the beis medrash and delve in Torah, which is fire!"
Torah study with bren, fiery enthusiasm which produces sparks, will be enough to chase Eisov away with fear.
We are dealing with prosecutors who hasten to imprison suspects of leaking various secret information and deals with them like the lowest of criminals (A Rosenfeld) and then just stands aside when one of the most destructive and dangerous cases of leaking top secret data of the government in the past year comes to light.
We are referring to the leakage in the detention camp of the Nachba murderers of Sdeh Teiman, when the clip released to the media purported to show local soldiers cruelly molesting one of the Nachba murderers. The army itself placed the blame on the soldiers for the harsh action and the military advocacy sent masked Matzach interrogators to arrest the army reserve soldiers in the camp, after the terrorist himself complained about the violent treatment to which he had supposedly been subjected.
However, slowly after several accusations of the worst kind, after the world was exposed to a clip that claimed to show IDF soldiers acting like the lowest of criminals, the terrible truth came to light.
Part Three: The Issues He Faced
The Oruch Le'ner's recognition as the foremost halachic authority in Germany brought many contemporary issues to his attention. He and other German rabbinical leaders were faced with the dual responsibility of guarding and guiding German Orthodoxy during the decades that saw the insidious growth of reform from an informal circle of Jews who had fallen under the spell of European culture, to a full-fledged movement that introduced far-reaching changes into a Torah to whose perfection they had been blinded by the dazzle of modern European civilization. They arrogated to themselves an imagined right to effect such changes and inflicted untold damage upon the German communities. The dual responsibility of Torah leadership thus comprised, on the one hand, protesting the spurious reform ideology and the reformers' scandalous actions, and on the other, providing the faithful remnant with halachic guidance for the new times that were being encountered.
The Oruch Le'ner's leadership during these times provides the classic example of a Torah giant's vision and his perception of the present and future needs of the community in the country he lived. His diagnosis of the deeper motivations of the reformers and his response to them, his heartbreak over the spread of the plague to yet faithful Jews and his desire for peace and unity, which did not blind him to the direction in which things were moving, are all apparent from the letters he wrote during the Reform movement's series of departures from Judaism.
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Opinion & Comment
In response to the most recent effort to draft yeshiva students, a High Court decision in response to suits filed by established enemies of all things religious declaring that the current arrangements allowing all those whose exclusive occupation is Torah learning may defer all military service while they are thus occupied, an extraordinarily broad array of leading rabbonim issued the following declaration, including many who are not at all involved with political issues.
The special proclamation of maranan verabonon, the gedolei Yisroel, under the heading: "Eis Tzoro hi leYaakov" reads:
Due to the harsh determinations recently accepted by the High Court, which undermine, Rachmono litzlan, the substance of the Torah and the uniqueness of the Jewish Nation, and due to the talk and threats to cholila hurt the yeshivos hakedoshos and to blot out Torah from their students' minds, from the aspect of lehashkichom Torasecho, we call this period "eis tzoro leYaakov," and believe that yeshu'as Hashem comes swiftly, and that we will be spared from this calamity.
In-Depth Features
Part II
The first part of this review of the laws of tzedokoh and ma'aseir kesofim, which appeared last year in the edition of Parshas Terumah, discussed the general benefits of giving tzedokoh, and the source of the obligation to give a yearly tithe of our income.
In this article we will start by discussing how to compute one's income for purposes of ma'aseir. We will continue with a section describing how one may use his ma'aseir money.
Computing Income
The basic halacha is spelled out by the Yerushalmi in the beginning of Maseches Pei'o. The gemora asks how one can be required to give one fifth (the Yerushalmi's equivalent to our ma'aseir) since after five years he will be left with nothing.
The gemora answers that although one always gives a fifth, the basis for computing the fifth changes. At the outset one must separate one fifth of the principle, in the ensuing years he gives one fifth only from the income or profit he earns in that year from use of the principle.
In practice, this means that when one receives new capital he should begin by giving ma'aseir from the amount received. In each of the following years he need give ma'aseir only from the profit earned that year. This is the halacha in the Shulchan Oruch (249,1).
As a result of the Yerushalmi, we must study which types of principle and which profits require ma'aseir.
Which Principle
Principle which is obtained by receiving a present or finding a lost object requires ma'aseiring.
Likewise, an inheritance is subject to ma'aseir (Elya Rabbo 156). This is true even if the deceased already separated ma'aseir when he originally acquired the money.
Opinion & Comment
1) "And as for me, when I came from Paddan, Rochel died on me in the land of Canaan along the way, when yet there was but a little way to come to Efrat, and I buried her there on the road of Efrat, that is Beis Lechem" (Bereishis 48:7). Rashi (ibid.) explains, "`When I came from Paddan' -- although I am troubling you to bring me to be buried in the land of Canaan, and this is something I did not do for your mother. Since she died near Beis Lechem I buried her there, and did not bring her even to Beis Lechem. I knew you were offended by my doing that, but I want you to know that Hashem had told me to do it, so that she will be [on the way to Beis Lechem] to help her children . . .."
This needs to be explained. Why did Yaakov Ovinu a'h, when requesting his son Yosef to bury him in Eretz Yisroel, find it appropriate to apologize for burying his mother Rochel on the way to Beis Lechem and not in the city itself? Did Yaakov Ovinu think that because he did not bury Yosef's mother in the city, Yosef would not fulfill his request?
Furthermore, Yosef's resentment at his father's not bringing his mother Rochel to the city is irrelevant altogether to Yaakov's request to be buried in Eretz Yisroel and not in Egypt. Even if he did not have to bury Yaakov in Eretz Yisroel, Yosef would anyway have had complaints because of Yaakov's burying his mother on the way.
Let us study the continuation of the parsha: "Moreover, I have given to you one portion more than your brother, which I took from the hand of the Emori with my sword and with my bow" (v. 22). Rashi (ibid.) explains, "since you troubled yourself to see to my burial, I too gave you an inheritance: to be buried there. And what is it? Shechem. This is as is written, `And the bones of Yosef, which the children of Yisroel brought up out of Egypt, they buried in Shechem" (Yehoshua 24:32).
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