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The Torah's
Weekly Portions
Within all of this,
there is a unique commandment that can be found at Khav-Hay:yud-zayin
(Chapter 25, verse 17). The
transliterated Hebrew is as follows: V'lo
tonu ish et-ahmito v'ahrit me-ehlohechah ki ani Hashem ehlohekem. The Stone Edition
Chumash translates this as Each
of you shall not aggrieve his fellow, and you shall fear your God; for I
am Hashem, your God: Rav Raphael Samson
Hirsch, in his Chumash, translates this phrase a little differently as: And
ye shall not hurt the feelings of one another but thou shall fear your
Lord, for I, God, am your Lord. Using either
translation, it is easy to perceive this as the most difficult of all
commandments to keep. However,
with a little explanation, the intention behind the commandment becomes
just a little more clear. Rav
Hirsch lists specific examples but begins by saying, "This
prohibition embraces any and every kind of hurting the feeling of others
by words . . ." The examples he lists are: ·
making reference to the
shady past of somebody, or to that of his parents ·
making aggravating
reproaches in times of trouble ·
putting to shame in public ·
calling somebody by jeering
names ·
especially hurting somebody
by words in such a way that only God can see the evil intent Rav Hirsch goes on
to say: The
admonition addresses all members of the nation together and says:
they are not to hurt one another in any way, each one is to fear
his God, is to know that God has His Eye and His Ear directed to each
one of them, and also that He is equally the God of each of his
brethren. Thereby is
described what is to be the direct result of the institution of shmitah
and youvel for the whole social life of the people in the Land.
Inasmuch as these institutions interweave the thought
"God" into all business transactions, and inasmuch as they
bring the thought continually to mind that all are living together on
the same soil of God, in the same Land of God, where He is the Master
and Owner of all possessions, and that in the exercise of this ownership
He demands the tribute of acknowledging Him in the whole of business
[and personal] life. To demonstrate the
importance of these things, Rav Hirsch brings down that a debt can be
repaid but a transgression of hurt can never be undone.
He points out the following: .
. every sinner has a chance to come back up out of Gehenna (a place of
spiritual cleansing and catharsis) except three, one who has committed
adultery with another man's wife, one who has put his neighbor to shame
in public, and one who has attached a jeering name to his neighbor. In other words, it
is clear just how important it is not to cause hurt to others and that
permanent injury, by shaming a neighbor in public or attaching a jeering
name to a neighbor, is considered to be some of the worst possible
transgressions a person can commit.
Most important, it should be noted that each of the three
examples given above are transgressions between man and man and not
between man and God. A final note since I
have brought up Gehenna. The
Talmud's description of Gehenna is not at all similar to Hades of Greek
mythology, the hell of other religions, nor was it the name of the trash
dump in Jerusalem 2000 years ago. Gehenna
is a spiritual place that prepares and purifies the neshamah (the soul)
for entrance into the World to Come. Obviously, after committing one of the transgressions listed above, the neshamah is so badly damaged that it can never be properly purified.
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