Mashiach's Kippa- Parshat Vaeira 2025/ 5785

 

Insights and Inspiration from the Holy Land from Rabbi Ephraim Schwartz "Your friend in Karmiel" January 24th 2025 -Volume 14 Issue 13 24th of Tevet 5785   Parshat Vaiera Mashiach’s Kippa It’s the old joke/truth/story about Mashiach. That when he finally comes nobody is going to accept him. The chasidim don’t want him because he’s not wearing a shtreimel. The litvaks because he doesn’t have a black hat. The Daati guys because he doesn’t serve in the army. (Although I think that they believe that he really will- while the more chareidi aren’t really that hung up that they believe he will have a shtreimel or black hat). The modern orthodox want him to have a college degree. It’s a problem he will have. But I guess that’s why he’s Mashiach. He’s going to have to convince everyone that he’s one of them. Or perhaps even more significantly and even more challenging, that we are really one of his. That, my friends, is perhaps an even more challenging job then wiping out Chamas, building the Bais Hamikdash or somehow convincing the Jews in the Diaspora that they should make aliya and leave their way too comfortable galus from the country that is on the cusp of finally becoming Made Great Again. If he can pull getting the Jews to all agree upon him to be Mashiach, that is the greatest mofeis/ miracle/ sign that he’s really the right man. Now the truth is if Klal Yisrael paid much attention to our leaders in the Torah, his job really wouldn’t really be that hard. I mean all our greatest leaders were outsiders. The first King of Israel, I pointed out to my tourists the other day, was King Shaul, who was certainly a tall strapping good looking warrior. Yet, at the same time he came from the tribe of Binyamin, that just a few minutes before were pretty much almost wiped out in a civil war by an army of hundreds of thousands of Jews from every tribe (of which Binyamin themselves killed in the first two battles tens of thousands of their brothers of those other tribes) in the worst civil war in our history following the story of the pilegesh/Concubine of Givah. What? You don’t know the story? I guess you need to come on a Rabbi Schwartz tour. But just imagine in America after the civil war of the North against the South, which the North won and got to keep their slaves. Imagine if the first president following that would be Barak Obama. It would be incomprehensible. It took almost 200 years until the racist laws were removed from the books and blacks could even sit next to whites on the bus. Yet, that’s the first King of Israel. The unlikely leader from the tribe of Binyamin that just lost the civil war. The next King, Dovid Ha’Melech, is even worse. A poor shepherd boy that hung out with the sheep all day. His own family pretty much left him behind. There were those that claimed he was a mamzer being born after his father separated from his wife. Others pointed out that his grandmother Rus wasn’t even really Jewish. His own father-in-law tried to take him out numerous times. And then of course you have all of those really bad scandals that one might arguably say makes Donald Trump look like Mother Theresa. There’s no way that Dovid Ha’Melech would’ve ever gotten into Brisk. And it’s highly doubtful his kids would be accepted in any school in Lakewood. Neither, for that matter, would that great anti-religious shepherd Rabbi Akiva who swore that he hated Rabbis so much that he wished he could bite them like a donkey (because a dog doesn’t break enough bones), and who ultimately passed the most draconian Chariedi draft laws in the history of Klal Yisrael, pulling his 24,000 Kollel Rabbis out of the Bais Midrash and forcing them to join that arrogant Israeli army of his student Bar Kochva to fight against the Romans and in which they were all ultimately killed. The Yerushalmi tells us that Rabbi Akiva himself took off his black hat and put on the green army uniform and was the Nosei Keilim- the bearer of arms/ general in that army. I wonder how many demonstrations there were against him in the streets of Jerusalem. And the list goes on and on and on. The origin stories of the greatest leaders of Klal Yisrael’s lives look more like a pathetic Hollywood makeover or critical Bible theory book perhaps,  than one of our Artscroll Gadol biography books. And Chazal as well don’t pull many punches in thus describing them. Although we do find throughout our sage two approaches in their descriptions, with some Rabbis trying to put shtreimels and black hats on all of our biblical great men and others knocking them down to the gutter. Yet both views (which are both obviously true- as paradoxical and mystical as it sounds) all come to the same conclusion. They were great. They were superhuman. They overcame challenges and most importantly they were one of the people and they were there for the people. Parshat Va’eira begins the story of our Exodus. We are told that when Mashiach comes our redemption from Egypt will pale in comparison to what we are hopefully very soon going to experience. Yet, before this whole story begins the Parsha begins with a pause and rude interruption that at first glance doesn’t seem to have much of a point. It’s information that we have all been given before. But even more perplexing is that the Torah really only tells us part of the story. Let’s recap the first chapter of the parsha in a nutshell. It begins with Hashem telling Moshe that He will take us out of Egypt with the four terminologies of redemption that we all know, as we drink the four cups of wine on Pesach each year to remind ourselves of them. It then stops and tells us that Moshe and Aharon speak to Bnai Yisrael as Hashem commanded them, which seemingly we know from last week. Parshat Shemot concluded with the Jews all being angry at Moshe and Aharon because of that, and Moshe complained to Hashem about putting him in this situation. Moshe tells Hashem that there’s no way Pharaoh will listen to him if he can’t even convince the Jews to listen to him. So why is the Torah telling us this again? The next verse is that Hashem is vayitzavem el Bnai Yisrael- he commands them to the children of Israel, which Rashi tells us is to be patient with them. And then to command them and Pharaoh to send the Bnai Yisrael out of Mitzrayim. And just when you thought this was all repetitive and boring enough. After-all we’re all itching to get to the fun part of the parsha with the staffs and snakes and plagues of blood, frogs, lice and wild animals, the Torah then stops and gives a yichus lesson of the lineage of the first three tribes. Reuvein and Shimon are called the “houses of their fathers” and tells us of their children. While for Levi, it gives us their children, their grandchildren, their great grandchildren their great-great-great grandchildren. It also tells us of Moshe’s mother Yocheved. Which fascinatingly enough it never told us any of this beforehand. If you remember back in Shemot, when it tells us about the birth of Moshe it only tells us that an anonymous man of Levi took a woman and had Moshe. It kind of conveniently left out the very messy fact that the woman that Amram, Moshe’s father, married and was Moshe’s mother was in fact his very incestuous older aunt. It seems Hashem left that out of Moshe’s yeshiva school application or shidduch resume. I wonder why. Yet here, davka at this point, it all comes out. Now it’s not only Moshe’s sketchy yichus that comes to the forefront here. It also drops some information about his brother Aharon’s as well. He has a grandson named Korach… Yeah that guy… As well his son Eliezer marries the daughter of Yisro, who was of course a goy that converted but before that was the chief idolator of his time. They have a kid who is a zealot named Pinchas and that lousy reputation of coming from an idolatrous grandfather follows him as well. These, the Torah concludes finally at the end of this dirty laundry list, are the heads of the house of Levi for their families. Finally this really strange chapter concludes with a very seemingly pointless and repetitively and grammatically awkward pasuk. “That’s Aharon and Moshe that Hashem spoke to about taking the Jewish people out of the land of Egypt… They are the ones’ that are speaking to Pharaoh the King of Mitzrayim to send the children of Israel out of Egypt. That is Moshe and Aharon. And it was on the day that Hashem spoke to Moshe in Egypt.” It’s only after that we read all this that the Torah goes back and tells us once again of Moshe’s complaint about Pharaoh. Yet this time if you look carefully his tune changes. The second time, Moshe’s only worry is that Pharaoh won’t listen to him because he’s got speaking problems. It’s got nothing to do anymore with the Children of Israel listening to him. Hashem tells him that it’s not going to be a problem. Aharon will interpret, all will be good. And then, by the way, this is how old Moshe and Aharon are. What’s going on here? What’s with this chapter? This interruption. This repetition. What is the Torah trying to tell us before we get to the big fun story of our redemption? The Shelah Ha’Kodesh, the Chizkuni and other commentaries all seem to suggest that this parsha is really a contrast to the parsha of Shemot in terms of our redemption. Until now Moshe is really an outsider. He has no connection as being part of the Jewish people. It really doesn’t even tell us who his parents are. He’s pulled out of a river. He’s raised like a goy. He only first goes out to them later in life. They turn onat him and call him a goy. He lives in Midyan for 60 years or so and marries some shiktza there, the daughter of a priest. Is it any wonder that he can’t fathom why the Jewish people won’t accept him? Even the tribe that he’s from, the tribe of Levi, isn’t really that hotsy tottsy. After-all they as well really weren’t part of the “people”. They were never enslaved. They weren’t “sharing the burden”. They were sitting in kollel all day, while everyone else wasn’t getting killed. How are they going to make this happen? How are these two going to bring the redemption?  Hu? Who? Aharon and Moshe… They’re both not nogaya- they are “him”. They’re not us. That’s where we left off on last week’s parsha. This week the Parsha called Va’Eira- Hashem shows us right in the beginning how He will show us. He shows us by commanding Aharon and Moshe unto Bnai Yisrael. The word doesn’t only mean I will command but it also means to connect. Hashem shows the Jewish people and us, how our redeemer, how Mashiach, will always come from the one that seems like he’s on the outside. That seems like he’s not from “unzereh” beis avos- father’s house and shtibel. but rather comes from quite the opposite; from rather precarious and messy roots. He might have an Egyptian accent, he might be the product of an incestuous relationship, he might be married to a colored shiktza from Midyan, or the daughter of the Pope of Egypt. But guess what? That’s Aharon and that’s Moshe. They’re Beit Avot. They’re the house of Levi. They’re the ones that you need to connect to and realize that your redemption will only come when you humble yourself enough to recognize that. It’s not just a lesson for Klal Yisrael and us. It’s a message and lesson for Moshe and Aharon. It’s not fun to be alienated and isolated and have your kids not accepted in their schools or red any shidduchim. You just want to throw up your hands, as Moshe does at the end of last week’s parsha and ask if it’s all really worth it. How and why would Pharaoh ever think that he should let the redemption of the Jewish people come and for Mashiach to reveal himself, if the Jews themselves can’t see the spark of Moshe in each of themselves? If they don’t believe in him, that he’s also part of them. That all of us have dirty laundry that perhaps we’ve buried in our father’s house that we’ve forgotten about. How can Mashiach come if we can’t see that even the most unlikely and most unlike us frum bessereh Jews also needs to be pulled out of a tunnel in Gaza. That unless he or she is saved, then we’re all not really in there together. That maybe that guy in the slave pit, or maybe that secular looking intermarried Jew is really not just one of us, but maybe even our redeemer that has a message from Hashem that perhaps we need to listen to. Thus the Torah pauses a moment before the redemption and connects us with this lesson. It’s the prerequisite to the plagues, to the wrath of Hashem falling upon Egypt and the miracles that will happen for our ancestors. The Torah tells us where Moshe and Aharon come from and then tells us that that’s really who Aharon and Moshe are. It is them that Hashem sent to Bnai Yisrael to take them out of Egypt. It is then them who can speak to Pharaoh. They are Moshe and Aharon. They are us. The sefarim note that it doesn’t tell us who Moshe’s children are in this recording, despite the fact that it tells us who Aharon’s are. Because we are all the children of Moshe. It is on “that day that Hashem spoke to Moshe”, the Klei Yakar tells us it tells us, because Moshe’s prophecy unlike all of the other prophets is by daytime. He’s the mouthpiece of Hashem. He speaks to him in Egypt. In the lowest place of the spiritual world. But it’s daytime for Moshe. And we are all connected to him.  From that verse on Moshe changes his tune. He has no doubt anymore about the Jewish people not believing in him in the rest of this process. He’s a beit Av. He as well is from our father’s house. It’s only his stutter that concerns him. Hashem tells him that he need not worry anymore. This is no longer about speaking skills. This is about revelation. It’s about connection. Moshe will speak, Aharon will speak. Pharaoh won’t listen anyways and the world will know that Hashem is one, his nation is one and the miracles and judgements will all take place. For we are all one down here, and thus the Oneness from above can reveal itself. What’s the message for us today? You tell me. Do we feel and relate to the children of Israel back then in Egypt? Can we not even imagine that Mashiach can come out of some secular Kibbutz? Do we believe that there are some Jews that probably don’t deserve to be redeemed? Do we feel that Mashiach can only be someone that looks like us? That he has to be someone that follows the takanon and rule book that my kids school or seminary will only allow you to be part of if he fits in that box. That Mashiach can only be someone who comes from a family that I would allow my child to marry and that I wouldn’t throw a shadchan down a flight of stairs for even suggesting. If we feel that way, then would probably have missed out on Shaul, we certainly would’ve never accepted Dovid Ha’Melech. We would neve have gone to the yeshiva or Rabbi Akiva and would probably still be in Mitrzayim waiting for a redeemer that had a black hat. It took us 210 years in Egypt to finally get the message. It took 86 years of severe persecution to finally just cry out and ask Hashem to send whoever and whatever it takes to redeem us. After 474 days of this war I’m ready. I want out. I want redemption. I don’t care what type of Kippa he’s wearing or if he even wears one at all. I want all of them home. I want all of you home. I want the ending that we have been promised and waiting for so long for. Va’eira- I want to be shown that glory. May this month of Shevat finally bring that awaited day. Have a blessed Chodesh Shevat and an amazing Shabbos! Rabbi Ephraim Schwartz  ************************ YIDDISH PROVERB OF THE WEEK   “A guter yid darf nit kain briv, a shlechten yidden helft nit kain briv” - A good Jew doesn’t need a letter of recommendation; for a bad one, it would do no good.   RABBI SCHWARTZ'S TOUR GUIDE EXAM QUESTION OF THE WEEK answer below at end of Email   5. Solomon’s Pools are located in the area marked in the Oslo Accords with the English letter ______ Which Order of Crusaders settled on the Temple Mount? A. The Templars B. The Hospitallers C. The Teutonics D. The Lazarists RABBI SCHWARTZ’S COOL VIDEO OF THE WEEK   https://soundcloud.com/ephraim-schwartz/vehi-shemada  -  Feeling a Little Pesach with the parsha this week here’s my Vehi She’amda which is amazing Dovid Lowy Arrangements  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOa15INaXvI  – Eitan Katz Latest song Lulay Torascha Kinyan Masechta https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcpdkRLU2Zc – Hayom Kamti Samayach Hanan Ben Ari Latest… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buiNbNUqB2g  – Yechadshau Dudi Kalish RABBI SCHWARTZ'S ERA’S AND THEIR PLACES AND PEOPLE IN ISRAEL OF THE WEEK Megiddo Armegeddon- 609 BC – It’s a problem when you’re too sure Mashiach is on his way sometimes. I’m trying to work on this concept. The downfall of and end of the glory period of Yoshiyahu concludes with this sad story that we recall each Tisha B’av with the Kinna that Yirmiyahu composed on this fallen righteous king. Yoshiyahu after this entire teshuva movement that he had kicked off was on a high. The Temple had been restored. The idolatry had been removed. There has never been an era like this since his great-zaidy King Shlomo. The people were united. And thus he felt that Eretz Yisrael was living in a Messianic time. Yet, he was wrong.   See, despite his best efforts, our sages tell us, the Jews really still were harboring hidden idolatry. It was fake new. They had TV sets behind their sefarim shanks and unfiltered internet that nobody knew about on their other smart phones that they hid away while they only used their Kosher ones in public. But Yoshiyahu that it was all good. And thus when Pharaoh Necho of Egypt decided that he wanted to travel through Israel to attack Bavel and help his ally in Syria/Ashur (or alternatively to attack Ashur- it seems that there’s some debate about this historically although the Navi seems to suggest the latter case). Yoshiyahu told him that he was not going to allow him to do that.   Now, Pharaoh is not someone that you say no to. Not back in Moshe’s day and not in Yoshiyahu’s days either. He however was very polite about it. He splained that he had no intention of invading Israel. It was really just to get across to the North that was the issue. Yet, Yoshiyahu told Pharaoh that the Torah tells us that when the Jews are doing the will of Hashem, “A sword will not pass through your land”. And so he wasn’t going to stand for it. They went out to fight meeting in Meggido, here in the North of Israel in the Jezree’el valley. A great Tanach site by the way.  The terrible tragic battle took place there where Yoshiyahu who stood at the forefront of his army himself was killed with 300 arrows that pierced him.   Yirmiyahu, who was a kohen, held his dying body and buried all the blood out of each wound and cried as his soul left him. It is at that moment that he composed the Kinnos we recite. It is a Kinnos that starts the destruction because its all downhill from here. Our sages tell us that Yoshiyahu who was buried in the city of David’s mistake was that he didn’t ask Yirmiyahu first about what he should do. Had he done so he would’ve realized that it’s not what Hashem wanted. It wasn’t time yet. The Messianic Euphoria wasn’t ready to be realized. It’s this lesson that I have to knock into myself as we sit here and wait for that day finally to come. May it be soon.   RABBI SCHWARTZ'S LINEAGE JOKES OF THE WEEK My bloodline has a history of stomach problems. Runs in the family.   What do you give a dog that graduates from university? A pedigree   I couldn't join the KKK, apparently my bloodline isn't pure enough. Turns out, my parents weren't even related.   Native American run deep in my bloodline. That’s why I can’t grow facial hair. I have Apache beard.   A potato had 3 daughters. When they were all grown up, the first one came to her father and said “daddy, daddy, I’m going to get married!” Father potato asked to whom? “To an Idaho potato!” Said the first daughter potato. Father potato said “Idaho potatoes are very hearty and good lineage. He will be a good provider for you, you have my blessing.” The second daughter went to her father and said, “daddy, daddy, I’m going to get married!” Father potato asked to whom? “To a sweet potato!” Said the second daughter. Father potato said “sweet potatoes are very loving and will care for you forever. He will be a good provider for you, you have my blessing.” The third daughter went to her father and said, “daddy, daddy, I’m going to get married!” Father potato asked to whom? “To Sean Hannity!” Said the third daughter. “Oh no!” Said the father potato, “he’s just a commentator!”   Fred came home from University in tears. "Mum, am I adopted?" "No of course not", replied his mother. Why would you think such a thing? Fred showed her his genealogy DNA test results. No match for any of his relatives, and strong matches for a family who lived the other side of the city. Perturbed, his mother called her husband. "Honey, Fred has done a DNA test, and... and... I don't know how to say this... he may not be our son." "Well, obviously!" he replied. "What do you mean?" "It was your idea in the first place" her husband continued. "You remember, that first night in hospital when the baby did nothing but scream and cry and scream and cry. On and on. And you asked me to change him." "I picked a good one I reckon. Ever so proud of Fred."   I wanted to find out more about my ancestors so I did a little digging and... ...got thrown out of the cemetery.   What do you call a protestor whose ancestors grew weed? A grass roots activist   If you find $60-80 to be too expensive for ancestry DNA kits, I have a cheap alternative...Announce that you won the lottery and you'll quickly find relatives you never knew you had!   An assistant to Donald Trump told him she had a fantastic dream last night. There was a huge parade I sent that ‘Ancestry’ site some information on my Family Tree. They sent me back a pack of Seeds, and suggested that I just start Over..   Took an ancestry test and found out I’m 50% Jewish. But I talked them down to 40.   What do you call someone with no German ancestry? Guten free.   The problem with Trump jokes: Republicans don't think they're funny, and Democrats don't think they're jokes *************************************** The answer to this week”s question is A – A fairly easy question. Solomon’s Pools which are named after Shlomo Ha”Melech as the pasuk tells us that he built pools for his wives near ein eitam and that is the general area. Yet the pools themselves are much more modern built by The Chashmonaim and Herod hundreds of years later. They served as the main source of water for the Temple Mount that Herod constructed. The area that it is in is Area A, which means that its under Palestinian Control and there are big red signs that say it would be dangerous to Israelis lives to enter there. Nice… The second question was even easier. Templars were called that because they watched over the temple. So that was fairly simple So I got them both right this week and the new score is Rabbi Schwartz 3.5 Ministry of Tourism 1.5 on this exam so far.