Just at this moment you are probably the world expert on the Hebrew text of three of the most difficult chapters in the book of Exodus [27.20-30.10]. I would like to spend a few minutes today discussing why you have striven over the past few months to achieve this goal, since its value may not be immediately obvious. Yet the question why spend time and effort to learn a difficult technical text in a difficult language is, when properly formulated, one of the most important questions in the world; and this is no exaggeration.
Now we live in a world of activity. Every day, all over the world, people are writing, working, laughing, walking, eating. If you wanted to make a full list of what men and women do in the course of a day, you would probably run out of paper and patience before you ran out of activities. Now these activities are done for many different motives. The most obvious and patent motive is that of supporting one's existence. People work at their jobs because they have to earn a livelihood. They have to support themselves and those who depend on them, and this needs a lot of activity, unless your father happens to be president of General Motors.
There is also the motive of pleasure. People go to a concert or a theater or build model airplanes because they enjoy doing so. This is the second motivation for human activity.
Lastly, we do certain things because we feel we have a duty to do them. We give money to charity, or help an elderly person down some steps, because we feel a call to what we know to be right.
Now the need for a livelihood, the love of pleasure, and the call to duty are not the only motives for human conduct, but they are some of the most important. In many of the things we do, these motives are all mixed together. Let me take an example that is close to you, the activities of a physician. Much that the doctor does is because he has to earn a living, and has chosen this way of doing so. But in addition, if he freely chose his profession, and most people these days can do so, he will act because he derives pleasure from it too. And when he is called out of bed in the middle of the night to attend to someone who cannot afford to pay him anyway, he acts from a sense of duty. For he knows that this action is imposed upon him not by the thought of pleasure or reward, but by his sense of dignity as a human being.
Religion has most to do with this last kind of motivation. Mostly people understand the need to support themselves, and certainly require no persuasion to have a good time. But the call of duty is much less easily understood, and religion has to give it more attention.
Judaism has always seen the most splendid realization of man's sense of duty in the activity of study, and especially in the study of Torah, the revealed word of the Almighty. When you use for study time that might have been spent earning money, or amusing yourself, you follow the path of duty in a most pure form, since you do with your mind and intellect what God intended you to do with it.
You are fortunate in being endowed with a goodly understanding, and it is your duty to use it to the fullest extent. At your age especially, there is no such thing as useless knowledge. Explore the wonders of the world to the full. But remember that everything you discover, whether it be the shape of a snowflake, or the shape of a French irregular verb, bears the stamp of its creator, who made all things in wisdom. Only when you know something about the world, can you know something about God.
Study is not the only activity motivated by a sense of duty. Another important one is the performance of good deeds. Kindness, thoughtfulness, helpfulness, generosity are all forms of ma'asim tovim good deeds. They are at their best when they are done, as the Rabbis say, be'ormah as it were with cunning, so that not even the one who benefits from them is aware of what is happening.
We must feel a sense of duty too to the observance of mitzvot the obligations laid upon us by the Torah, which bring holiness into the everyday habits of our life, especially important being the observance of the Sabbath which sanctifies our week, the observance of kashrut which sanctifies our table, and habit of daily prayer, which sanctifies our entire existence.
Let me not give you the impression that activities such as these give no pleasures or rewards. On the contrary, they give the most lasting pleasures and rewards in the world. But we must beware of doing them on this account alone. As the Rabbis say, we must be like servants who serve their master not for the sake of a reward, but for love alone.
May you tread the path of life in happiness, giving joy and satisfaction to your parents and grandparents who have done so much for you; so long as you follow the guideposts that Judaism sets up for you, you cannot go far wrong. Help those who travel with you, and share your gifts freely, for everything you have and achieve is itself the gift of your creator. May it be his will to confer upon you the blessing promised to those who fear him through Aaron the Priest:
The Lord bless and preserve you. The Lord cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord turn his face towards you and grant you peace.
The medical men present here today will, I hope, consider it no slight on them when I say that I hope that they are able to cope with plagues in their way as efficiently as today you coped with the Ten Plagues in your way. [Exodus 6.2–9.35] Your reading of the entire portion involved much work cheerfully done, and you deserve much credit. This would have been a proud day indeed for your maternal grandfather, had he been spared to see it.
I am going to speak to you today about just one of the plagues which you enumerated. Holy scripture describes first the plague of blood. All the waters of the land of Egypt became blood, that which was in their streams and rivers, their ponds and pools, and even in their vessels. It is a pity that they did not know about blood transfusions in those days, because their physicians would just have had to hook up their patients to the kitchen faucet. Now this incident allowed the rabbis to give free reign to their imagination. In the Midrash, they declare that if an Egyptian and an Israelite were in one house where there was a barrel full of water, and the Egyptian went to fill a pitcher from it, he would discover that it contained blood, but the Israelite would drink water from the same barrel, since he was exempt from the plague. If the Egyptian said: "Give me some water with your own hand," and he gave it to him, it still became blood. Even if he said to him: "Let us both drink from one vessel, the Israelite would drink water, but the Egyptian blood. Only if he purchased it from the Israelite for money, was he able to drink the water.
Now this, of course, is a legend, and like all legends, you can take it or leave it. But the great German scholar Goethe declared that legend often contains more truth than history, and I think this is the case with this legend. Now a barrel cannot contain two liquids at once. What differed was not the contents of the barrel, but the mentality of the drinkers. For the Egyptians, proud, imperious, idolatrous, the liquid was polluted and undrinkable. For the Israelites, down-trodden, despised, yet heirs to greatness, the liquid was a source of life.
Most things in life are this way. Most things are not what they seem, but what we make of them. Some people have everything that life can offer, wealth, family, good health, but their heart is the stony heart of Pharoah, and life tastes to them polluted and bitter. On the other hand, there are those who have in physical terms very little, who are often unkindly treated by fate, yet for them life is sweet and refreshing like a draught of water, preferably not Philadelphia water.
If the water of life tastes bitter rather than sweet, can one change it? Yes, by doing what legend tells us the Egyptians had to do, by paying for it. Not necessarily in cash, although the performance of charity is certainly an important way. One has to pay by giving something of oneself, by doing things without hope of reward, by being kind when the impulse is to be cruel, by obeying the law when the impulse is to flout it, by respecting the rights and dignity of fellow human beings when the temptation is to trample them.
At your age, Steven, you are just beginning to taste the waters of life. Will they be bitter or sweet? This depends on you. The fountain contains neither blood nor water, but a neutral liquid, the nature of which depends on whether you approach it as an Egyptian, hard, worshipping gods of your own invention, or as an Israelite, yielding and God-fearing. Life will, I hope, always be sweet for you. Should it ever cease to be, I have outlined the remedy – give of yourself. You are indeed in a fortunate position. You have parents and grandparents and other relatives who are devoted to you, and will do everything in their power to help you lead the kind of life you should lead. From this point on, more and more, it becomes your responsibility to continue the work they have done. I hope you will continue to show devotion to your studies and your community. In this way, you will surely grow up to be a credit to all your loved ones.
The author of this page is:
Alan D. Corré