Devarim

פרשת דברים וענייני תוכחה

In this week’s Parsha, Moshe Rabenu’s astounding life about to come to a close. After having led the Jewish people faithfully for forty years, with love and dedication, Moshe decided to address them right before his passing, in order to encourage them to continue on the right path, and to rebuke them for the missteps that they had taken since their exodus from Egypt. Rashi comments on this interesting move that Moshe made, and infers from it that one should only rebuke his friend right before he is about to die. Rashi gives four fascinating reasons for why this is true. Firstly, so that the one giving the rebuke will not be in a position where he will ever have to give the same rebuke twice. Secondly, so that the one being rebuked will never have to see the rebuker on the street. Thirdly, so that the one being rebuked shouldn’t hate the rebuker. And fourthly, so that the one receiving the rebuke will not leave in the middle. For these four reasons, Rashi explains that Moshe Rabenu, and indeed all of us, should be careful to only rebuke another Jew when they are on their deathbed.

However there are two points which seem very troubling about this Rashi. Firstly, we know that there is a Mitzvah of rebuke in the Torah, and it is brought down on a practical level by all the commentaries. And nowhere in this Mitzvah is there any indication that one should wait to rebuke the transgressor until right before his death. If you see someone doing an Aveirah, you have to do everything you can from dissuading him to repeat it, even if you have to repeat yourself one hundred times, and if you don’t, you will be held accountable. Granted that a person is obligated to do this in a respectful way, one in which the sinner feels no embarrassment and as little pain as possible, but it certainly must be done. How then can Rashi say that the only commandment of rebuke is on the day of death?! And secondly, Rashi’s comment is simply not true. If one peruses the Chumash, one finds numerous occasions in which Moshe Rabenu does in fact rebuke the Jewish people for their unacceptable behavior. Just to name a few: The golden calf, their constant complaining, their demand for meat, the sending of the spies etc. How then can Rashi learn out from Moshe’s conduct that one should only rebuke his fellow when he is about to expire?

It seems clear from Chazal that there are two different categories of rebuke. The first one is rebuke which is performed during an act of sin. This type of rebuke must be done immediately, and cannot afford to wait until the rebuker is about to meet his maker. The Torah teaches us that each and every Jew is responsible for one another. In fact, the Gemorah in Shabbos (54b) says that R’ Elazar Ben Azariya had a neighbor, whose cow went out with a ribbon on Shabbos, (which is forbidden based on the laws of carrying on Shabbos), and he was blamed for her sin because he had the ability to rebuke her. Imagine our surprise if we get to Heaven, and we are held liable for a wide gamut of sins which we did not actually do, only because we could have had some effect on our fellow Jews who were transgressing those sins. In any event, this was not the rebuke that Rashi is referring to. This type of rebuke must be performed straight away in order to prevent any continuity of sin. And it is this type of rebuke which the Gemorah in Eruchin (16a) says that if a person sees his friend persisting in a sinful behavior, he must continually rebuke him, even 100 times, until that friend ceases his poor behavior. The Gemorah goes on to say that one must do this until his subject begins to hit him or embarrass him, and then he may stop. And even if after all that, he does not change his wayward ways, that rebuke will not have been in vain, but rather will serve as a verbal objection to evil in the world.

However there is another rebuke in the world which is far more subtle, and this is what Rashi is referring to when he said that it could only be performed when a person is about to die. Sometimes, a person is not doing any wrongful action per se, but he has roots left in him from the sin, which can potentially be very harmful toward his spiritual growth. These are the bad or undeveloped character traits which exist within a person. This type of rebuke must be handled very delicately if it is to succeed for two reasons. A) The person himself is often unaware of these roots and will therefore be unwilling or unable to see these faults in himself. And B) these types of faults run so deep in a person that exposing them can be an extremely invasive process which can end in disaster if the one giving this rebuke is not careful. For these two powerful reasons, Moshe Rabenu could only give this type of rebuke on his deathbed. Indeed, Moshe was not the only one who came to this conclusion. He was merely implementing the lessons we all learned from Yaakov Avinu. Yaakov too had the same type of rebuke to give his sons prior to his demise, and waited all those years to say anything to them about their essences, biding his time and waiting for the proper moment during which it could be heard. Yaakov and Moshe were both teaching us the importance of this rebuke, and the equal importance of doing it properly so that it would have the far reaching effect they were both hoping for.

This approach to deal with these types of character flaws is clear from the method which Moshe employed to dispense his rebuke. Moshe only spoke in subtle hints, never actually mentioning any sin in particular. For example, when Moshe wanted to mention the sin of the Golden calf, he didn’t say anything about it other then the fact that the Jews camped in “De Zahav”, which means “Too much gold”. Moshe was hinting to the Jewish people that when a person has a financial surplus, he is likely to come to sin. Moshe didn’t mention the sin itself, because there was no point in rebuking them over something that had happened forty years ago. The first type of rebuke we described is only useful in getting a person to either cease from doing an incorrect action now, or to help him prevent repeating it in the future. But this second one, whose goal is to completely eradicate the origin of the sin, was still very pertinent, and that was Moshe’s goal. In other words, Moshe was not telling them not to do the golden calf again, and indeed such a statement would have been absurd. But Moshe was telling them that the root which caused them to worship the golden calf was still dormant in their hearts, and if they didn’t make a concerted effort to eradicate that root, it could surface again in the form of a different transgression. I don’t think one has to look too far to realize how pertinent Moshe’s warning really was. As we mentioned last week in the name of the Chazon Ish, perhaps the most challenging “idol worship” we have today is the desire for material possession, and the pursuit of wealth.

During the time which we find ourselves, this type of work on core issues is particularly pertinent. The Beis Hamikdash was destroyed not because of any one action, but because of a degeneration of character traits. Even if we could fix the external actions which our ancestors were guilty of, we will not be truly successful in meriting to see the Beis Hamikdash unless we analyze and fix what was wrong in their bases. Each and every Jew has the ability to do this with the help of their Rabbeim, their friends, and the works of Mussar which our giants have left for us.

May we all merit to strengthen our foundations, and to see the Third Temple speedily in our days!