Nasso

פרשת נשא

In this week’s parsha, G-d commands Moshe to kick all the impure people out of the camp. Whether a person contracted tzaraas, needed to recover from the impurity of a nocturnal emission, or touched a dead person, the message is clear: Get out!!! Considering that some forms of impurity are caused by factors not subject to a person’s free choice, this law seems a little tough. What does G-d have against impure people, and why is their removal from the camp so critical? I can understand that people should keep their distance from them in order to avoid becoming impure themselves, but why kick them completely out of the neighborhood? What’s so wrong about being impure?

The Ramban states that holiness cannot tolerate impurity. Just as particular substances chemically repel each other, certain forces cannot coexist in the spiritual realm as well. The essence of holiness is elevation above physicality, and transcending the material darkness of this world to connect to Hashem. Impurity is the exact opposite. It clouds and distorts our relationship with Hashem and doesn’t allow us to achieve the holy goals we aspire to, dragging us down instead. The Jewish camp in the desert housed the Mishkan at its focal point. The Mishkan was the world center of holiness. Therefore, individuals who became infected with spiritual properties antithetical to holiness could not be allowed to remain in the camp. To treat impurity lightly, or to ignore it, would destroy the very atmosphere G-d and the Jewish people were cultivating. If the Shechina was going to dwell in the midst of the Jewish people, impurity could not be allowed to reside with the population.

The Shla HaKadosh writes that we should also think about this principle in terms of ourselves. We should appreciate how delicate every single part of our body is, and the great obligation we have to be pure. G-d gave us a brain, eyes, ears, a mouth, a heart, etc. How can we harm the faculties He gave us? The brain is the center of all human activity. It is therefore understood that we have to give this area major attention. If we want to have “holy brains” and transcend physicality in all other areas of life as well, we have to purify our thoughts completely. According to the Shla, when Hazal teach us in Yoma 29 that thoughts of sin are actually more harmful than sin itself, they are alluding to this very point. It’s true that to make oneself impure through action causes a great degradation of the body. However, to ruin one’s purity of thought, which is the center of all of the body’s activities, causes decadence to pervade one’s entire being. What one sees, hears, eats, and touches has a tremendous effect on a person as well. Tefillah Zaka by the Chayei Adam, which we all say on erev Yom Kippur, bemoans the fact that we mess up the limbs Hashem gave us to serve Him, and through our sins, render them incapable of being holy. Guarding all of one’s senses is clearly of critical importance if one wants to have a real relationship with G-d.

Hashem very much wants us to succeed in purifying ourselves. Rav Gedalia Shorr, the former Rosh Yeshiva of Torah VoDaas, writes that Hashem will even perform miracles to restore purity and holiness. We see this in the laws of sota, in this week’s parsha. A sota is a married woman suspected of having relations with a man other than her husband. Unless the woman confessed, she would be brought to the Beis HaMikdash to participate in a procedure in which a Cohen would write Hashem’s name on a piece of parchment, soak it in water, and then have the suspected woman drink the water the parchment was soaked in. If the woman was innocent, she could go back to her husband, who could know for certain and trust in the Torah’s word that their relationship had not been violated. However, if the woman was guilty, Hashem would cause her eyes to bulge and her stomach to explode, killing her instantaneously. Says Rabbi Shorr, there were no incantations performed on the water to give it this special power. Rather, we see from here how much Hashem desires the removal of impurity from the Jewish people and the renewal of holiness in the relationship between husband and wife. That is the only way to explain why Hashem would cause such a miracle to happen.

Unfortunately, in today’s modern world, impurity is everywhere. Not only does it roam the streets, but it has even come into our homes. Baruch Hashem, most of us don’t watch movies or listen to non-Jewish music. We also don’t hang around areas where people are involved in drugs and prostitution. However, a recent concern that affects everybody is the world of computer technology. Many people have been oblivious to the devastation the internet has wrought. The younger generation has been especially plagued by such technology being so accessible.  Even marriages can be destroyed by the havoc one click of a mouse can cause. Most importantly, such technology poses a threat to the soul of  Torah life itself. As we explained earlier, holiness cannot reside where impurity is present, and there is no greater threat of impurity than that of the internet. At a recent gathering in Citi Fields Stadium in New York , all the gedolim came out and publicly declared that having internet access is absolutely forbidden and that even people who need the internet for their parnassah must install proper filters. Rav Mattisyahu Solomon, the mashgiach of Lakewood, even said that the best thing for every Jew is that he doesn’t even have it in his home at all.  Tens of thousands of  Jews came out to attend the event, making a very big statement about how concerned every Jew should be about falling and getting caught in the “web” that is the internet. The gedolim made it very clear that this is the primary challenge of our generation and anyone who relents and doesn’t resolve to fight it, resigns himself to the very impurity the internet represents.

However, we should be encouraged to know that the more holy we become, the more we become sensitive to impurity. There were many great Jews throughout history who became so great that they even developed a “spiritual 6^th sense.”  Rav Moshe Mendel was a man who could sense impurity just by being in close proximity to it. In fact, he had a hard time being around some people because he had such a vivid sense of the aveiros they did in private. Impurity clung to the person so strongly that he had to struggle to relate to them properly. There is a story of how he once got very sick and had to be treated in a hospital in hutz la’aretz. It was a Catholic hospital and most of the nurses were nuns. Understanding that he was a religious Jew, the nurses allowed his wife to take care of him, and he was scheduled to be treated only by a male doctor. One time, one of the nuns miscalculated which room she was supposed to go to. Just as she placed her hand on the knob outside Rav Moshe’s room, a yell of pain came from inside. “Oyyy!!! Cohos HaTuma!!!!” groaned Rav Moshe Mendel. At that moment, the nurse realized that she wasn’t going into the right room. We too can reach these high levels of sensitivity if we fully apply ourselves to separate from the impurity of this world and attach ourselves to the holiness of G-d.

May we all be zoche to be pure and live with Hashem!!!