We started off this Shabbos with a siyum to celebrate the finishing of tractate Beitzah, which some of us have been learning as part of the Daf Yomi program. We had this siyum in memory of David’s father HaRav Natan Ben HaRav Shmuel. This tractate deals with the laws of Yom Tov. We learn that on Yom Tov we can prepare food for the day of Yom Tov only. We can slaughter an animal on Yom Tov, however we are not allowed to trap an animal, as this is something we could have done before Yom Tov.
This Shabbos, David Schlesinger led our learning and we discussed parsha Behar, including Rav Yeager’s commentary on the parsha. In the parsha we are instructed to keep a sabbatical year, every 7 years, in which we do not farm the land. This applies in Israel only. Once every 50 years, we have a jubilee year, in which slaves go free and land returns to its original owners. We discussed how many of the mitzvahs associated with these special years have been rabbinical, but once a majority of Jews live in Israel, the mitzvahs become Torah commandments. In fact several organizations in Israel are getting ready for this, and studying what it is going to be like to have these years as Torah level mitzvahs.
If we do not farm the land during the 7th year, how are our needs going to be taken care of? We discussed one of the central themes of this parsha - that everything comes from Hashem. Yaki talked about how the mitzvahs of the sabbatical and jubilee year are specifically mentioned in this week’s parsha as coming from Mt. Sinai. We discussed how we need to have faith that Hashem will provide for us. This is true not only with respect to the sabbatical years, but in general as well.
One of the interesting things we discussed this Shabbos, is what exactly did Moses receive at Mt. Sinai. Why is it that the Torah that we see today contains historical events that occurred after Mt. Sinai, if the Torah was received at Mt. Sinai? We discussed the different parts of Torah. One of these parts is the absolute – which applies regardless of what events are going on around us, or what time period we are in. These fundamentals are what was received at Mt. Sinai. Then, as we go through history we apply Torah to our circumstances, and in doing so, more Torah is revealed to us. For example, Torah concerning the use of electricity on Shabbos, was not specifically revealed to us on Mt. Sinai. However, we did receive enough fundamentals to be able to gain more knowledge of Torah as we reached this point in our history in which electricity was invented.
David relayed a story that his father would tell. There are 3 people sharing a house, a mathematician, physicist, and an engineer. There is a fire in the house. The mathematician calculates how much water needs to be used to put out the fire, but does not do anything else. The engineer does a very rough estimate and uses water, but uses the wrong amount. The physicist does an actual calculation, but fails to take into account the rate of change that the fire is spreading. We receive the Torah at Mt. Sinai, but this is not enough. The mathematician wants to rely solely on what was received at Sinai. We have to actually apply it to whatever situations we find ourselves in. But only using what we want to apply is not good enough either. There are absolutes that come from Hashem, that apply regardless of our circumstances. The engineer and physicist do not apply everything that they need to apply.
This Shabbos we also discussed the upcoming day of Lag B’Omer. We discussed why it is that we would celebrate someone’s passing. What we learn is that we are not actually celebrating our loss of someone in the physical world, but the point of view of the souls in the spiritual world that they are gaining someone. Likewise, we usually celebrate the birth of a human being from our point of view, but from the perspective of those on the other side, they have lost a soul.
This is a summary of what we discussed this past Shabbos. No Halachic rulings are intended or should be inferred.
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