Many of us have experienced the pleasure at airport security of removing our shoes and belts, emptying out the contents of our pockets, and placing them into bins to be put through an x-ray machine. What would you do if you didn’t find your things on the other side of the machine? Rabbi Yissocher Frand writes about a man from Baltimore that this happened to and how he dealt with it. We’ll get to his story soon.
This week’s parsha discusses the Yomim Tovim, the Jewish holidays. It starts with Pesach , the offering of the Omer, the mitzvah to count the Omer, and then Shavuos. Before continuing with Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot the following verse is interjected.
וּבְקֻצְרְכֶם אֶת־קְצִיר אַרְצְכֶם לא־תְכַלֶּה פְּאַת שָׂדְךָ בְּקֻצְרֶךָ וְלֶקֶט קְצִירְךָ לֹא תְלַקֵּט לֶעָנִי וְלַגֵּר תַּעֲזֹב אֹתָם אֲנִי ה’ אֱ-לֹהֵיכֶם׃
And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger: I the LORD am your God. (23:22)
What is the Torah conveying to us by concluding this mitzvah with “I the LORD am your God”? Also, why does the Torah interject this topic into the middle of the discussion of the Yomim Tovim?
People think, writes the Meshech Chochma, that the Torah we received on Shavuot was mainly for the mitzvot that we would not perform on our own such as the prohibition against eating meat and milk together. Rational human decency , such as extending help to the needy is something that every civil society practices. We don’t really need the Torah to tell us to do this. History, however, shows us how false that presumption is. More than one “cultured” and “civil” society have justified atrocities perpetrated against other human beings.Therefore civility and decency must be based on the word of G-d. Otherwise society can unravel quite quickly and people can be treated worse than animals.
Although we certainly help others with feelings of compassion, this is not the basis for performing them .The underlying basis for doing even these mitzvot , writes Meshech Chochma, must be as the verse concludes, “I the LORD am your God,”- this shall be done because it is My word.
Therefore, after the Torah mentions Shavuot , the holiday of the giving of the Torah, the mitzvah of leaving over from the field for the needy is interjected to stress that our celebration of Shavuot encompasses all the mitzvot -even the humanistic ones- because they are all the word of Hashem.
Let’s get back to the man from Baltimore. After his bins emerged from the machine he realized that his shoes were missing. Someone took his and left a pair too small for him to wear. He approached the TSA agent who contacted a supervisor. They offered him a voucher for a new pair of shoes but he told them that his flight was leaving too soon to go buy a new pair. A woman who witnessed this man’s dilemma offered him a pair of slippers that she had in her carry on. With no other choice he accepted her offer. He walked to his flight in suit, tie and pink (oy vey !) flip-flops.The airplane was a commercial flight that (in those days) you had to walk up stairs to board the plane. As this man was walking up the stairs the flip-flops came flying off and fell to the ground! He had to go down the steps, retrieve the flip flops and climb the steps again. When he finally got to his seat someone leaned over to him and said,” The way you stayed calm through all of this is incredible! You didn’t become angry, you didn’t shout and you didn’t become indignant. Your calmness is amazing!” Then came the grand finale when his fellow traveler said to him,” It’s a credit to your religion.” He understood that the ability for this man to behave the way he did under those circumstances was his religion.
This is the message of the parsha. It’s the Torah that gives us the strength to be a mentch, a decent human being, under all circumstances.
Shabbat Shalom!
Yitzchak