Faith through the Tzaddik: Shabbos Shirah and Tu BiShvat

1“And it was, when Pharaoh sent out the people …”¹ Why does the verse open with the word vayehi, “and it was”? Chazal teach that vayehi is an expression of sorrow,² yet at first glance this was a time of great joy, as Israel went out of Egypt. Notice, too, that the verse speaks here of “the people,” a term that, as is well known, describes Israel on a low level; the Zohar raises a similar question.³ Further on, by contrast, the Torah says, “And Bnei Yisrael went up chamushim, armed,”⁴ and the name “Yisrael” describes people of stature, on high spiritual levels.

2This holy Shabbos is known as “Shabbos Shirah,” the Shabbos of Song.⁵ The holy sefarim, the Zera Kodesh, the Ramasayim Tzofim and the Pri Tzaddik, have asked why this Shabbos is named after its Torah reading.⁶ We find no such thing anywhere else. Shabbos Parshas Yisro, for example, is not called “the Shabbos of the Giving of the Torah,” and no other Shabbos is named after its reading either.

3The fifteenth of Shevat is, as Chazal say, the New Year for trees,⁷ and on that day Israel has the custom of adding to its joy. Tachanun, the prayer of supplication, is not said, as the Shulchan Aruch records; the Beis Yosef and the Shulchan Aruch rule that no fast is set on that day; and the Magen Avraham writes that the custom is to eat many fruits.⁸ But why do we make so much of the New Year for trees and celebrate it?

4aAll this will become clear from the words of my holy father and teacher, zt"l, on the verse “And Bnei Yisrael were going out beyad ramah, with an uplifted hand.”⁹ He cited the holy Rebbe R' Yechezkel of Kuzmir, zt"l, who said that the verse means that Bnei Yisrael raised their hands to Hashem. My father then explained what the Rebbe of Kuzmir meant. A Jew must always remember and know that everything comes to him from Hashem's power alone. Even in what he himself accomplishes and does, such as business, buying and selling and other material matters, he must remember that it was not his own hands that made him this wealth:¹⁰ everything is from Hashem.

4bIn the same way my father explained the verse “And his hands were emunah”:¹¹ a person must remember that everything he accomplishes and does with his hands comes from Hashem. Of this the Torah says, “And it was, when Moshe raised his hand, Israel prevailed, and when he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed.”¹² Raising the hands upward stands for faith: remembering that even what seems to be done by our own hands all comes from Hashem. But if this faith is lacking, Heaven forbid, the power of Amalek grows strong, for Amalek is the one who plants doubts in the hearts of Israel. Chazal spoke of this when they said that because the people let their hands grow slack, the words “And Amalek came” came true for them.¹³

5aWe can explain this more fully as follows. We know that the purpose of the Exodus was to receive the Torah, as the verse says, “When you take the people out of Egypt, you will serve God on this mountain.”¹⁴ To be worthy of receiving the Torah, Bnei Yisrael had to reach faith and trust in Hashem. This included faith in the tzaddikim as well: believing in Hashem and in Moshe His servant. This faith means knowing that the entire Torah in our hands is the Torah given to Moshe Rabbeinu at Sinai. As Chazal said, whatever a seasoned student will one day bring forth as a new insight was all already told to Moshe at Sinai.¹⁵ This was the goal of Bnei Yisrael's avodah, their service of Hashem, at the time of the Exodus: to attain faith.

5bYet faith, as is well known, can be attained only through the tzaddik, who imparts faith to all Israel. Chazal said on the verse “And they believed in Hashem and in Moshe His servant”: “If they believed in Moshe, all the more so in Hashem! Why, then, does it need to say ‘in Hashem’? To teach you that whoever believes in the shepherd of Israel is as though he believes in the One Who spoke and the world came into being.”¹⁶ That is why the splitting of the Red Sea had to come before the giving of the Torah. Through it Bnei Yisrael reached the level of “And they believed in Hashem and in Moshe His servant.” Their faith grew so great that a maidservant at the sea saw what the prophet Yechezkel ben Buzi did not see in his prophecy.¹⁷ And this was the preparation for receiving the Torah.

6aThis is the meaning of what Chazal said in the Midrash: “R' Yochanan said: The Holy One, blessed be He, made a condition with the sea that it would split before Israel. This is what is written, ‘And the sea returned le'eisano, to its strength’: lisna'o, to the condition He had made with it. R' Yirmiyah ben Elazar said: Not with the sea alone did He make a condition, but with everything created in the six days of creation. This is what is written, ‘I, My hands stretched out the heavens, and I commanded all their host’: by My own hands the heavens were stretched out, and I commanded all their host.”¹⁸

6bThe holy sefarim, among them the Akeidas Yitzchak, the Rema MiPano and the Maharal, ask:¹⁹ why did the Holy One, blessed be He, need to make a condition with the sea when He formed creation? Was it beyond Him, Heaven forbid, to split the sea when the time came? We may say that the intent was this. All the works of creation were made on condition that Israel would receive the Torah, as the verse says, “If not for My covenant day and night, I would not have set the laws of heaven and earth.”²⁰ So if Bnei Yisrael had not received the Torah, the whole world would have ceased to exist.

6cWe have already explained that through the splitting of the sea Bnei Yisrael came to faith in Hashem and in Moshe His servant, and that this faith was the preparation for receiving the Torah. That is what the Midrash means when it says that the Holy One, blessed be He, made a condition with all of creation that the sea would split. He told the works of creation that they were formed, and continue to exist, on condition that they serve Israel and help it receive the Torah, so that they and all of creation would endure. And the way to reach this was the splitting of the Red Sea, which, as we have seen, prepared Israel to receive the Torah. All this came about through Moshe Rabbeinu, as the verse says, “Moshe stretched out his hand over the sea … and the waters split.”²¹

7This explains the verse “And it was, when Pharaoh sent out the people.” Vayehi always expresses sorrow, and “the people” here means the eirev rav, the mixed multitude of non-Jews who left Egypt together with Israel.²² Their leaving Egypt was a cause of sorrow, because they planted doubts in the hearts of Israel. But afterward Moshe Rabbeinu and the elders labored to root faith in the hearts of Bnei Yisrael, and through this Bnei Yisrael were privileged to receive the Torah. This is the meaning of “And Bnei Yisrael went up chamushim from the land of Egypt.” Here “Bnei Yisrael” means the people of stature, Moshe Rabbeinu and the elders. Through them the nation reached the level of chamushim, which, the Kli Yakar writes, alludes to the five books of the Torah: chamushim means armed with five weapons, the five books of the Torah, for the Torah is Israel's weapon. Once they had received the Torah in this way, as chamushim, they were worthy of being called “Bnei Yisrael.”

8aThis lets us give a reason for a custom of Israel, and a custom of Israel is Torah: on Shabbos Shirah we put out food for the birds.²³ The custom displays the level of faith that Bnei Yisrael reached at the time of the Song of the Sea. Birds wander from place to place without knowing where they will find food. They look to Hashem's mercy to find it out in the open, and Hashem does indeed supply all they need. So too, through the Song of the Sea, Bnei Yisrael came to faith in Hashem and relied on Him alone.

8bThe holy sefarim explain a saying of Chazal in the same way, citing the holy Rebbe of Lentshna and the holy Rebbe R' Simcha Bunim of Peshischa.²⁴ Chazal said: “A person's livelihood is as difficult as the splitting of the Red Sea, as it is written, ‘Who gives bread to all flesh,’ and alongside it, ‘To Him Who split the Red Sea into parts, for His kindness is forever.’”²⁵ The idea is this: just as at the splitting of the Red Sea they did not know where their help would come from, so a person's livelihood reaches him in a way he never imagined. It comes through his faith in Hashem that He will send him help from the holy place.²⁶ That is why we give food to the birds on Shabbos Shirah: as a reward for their faith in Hashem, we provide them with their food.

9Holy Shabbos is yoma dimheimnusa, “the day of faith.” On Shabbos we rest from work and make no effort at all for our livelihood and the like. Instead we trust faithfully in Hashem, Who has fed and sustained everyone who comes into the world ever since the six days of creation. On the contrary, we believe that all the flow of blessing comes from Shabbos, as Chazal teach in the Zohar: “All six days are blessed from it.”²⁷ So Shabbos stands for faith. Now we can well understand why this Shabbos is called “Shabbos Shirah.” Shabbos and the Song belong together, for both stand for faith. As we explained, at the splitting of the Red Sea Bnei Yisrael reached complete faith, and the essence of Shabbos, too, is faith.

10aThe fifteenth of Shevat carries the same meaning. The holy sefer Divrei Binah writes that the word ilan, “tree” (אילן), has the numerical value 91, equal to the Names Havayah and Adnus together.²⁸ For a person's avodah to be complete, all his deeds must have the quality of ilan. In everything he does he should see to it that these two Names are united. He should draw the power of Hashem's Lordship into all his deeds, so that they reveal that Hashem is the Master of the world. This was the greatness of Avraham Avinu, who, as Chazal said, was the first to call the Holy One, blessed be He, “Master.” Through his great holiness he revealed before the eyes of everyone in the world that Hashem is the Master of the world, and that there is no other power in the world at all.²⁹

10bThis explains why this day is called “the New Year for trees.” Just as the service of Rosh Hashanah is to crown the Holy One, blessed be He, as King over the whole world, so the service of the fifteenth of Shevat is to draw the power of His Lordship into the world. This is along the lines of Chazal's saying, “‘Faith’: this is the Order of Zera'im,”³⁰ the order of the Mishnah that deals with agriculture. Tosafos, the classic commentators on the Gemara, cite there another saying of Chazal, that a farmer “believes in the Life of the worlds and sows.”³¹ This shows that through trees one can attain faith. [This is the reason for the joy on this day: we are privileged to reveal the light of faith in this world.]

11From all we have explained, it follows that all simple faith, the faith that everything is directed by Hashem, flows to us through the tzaddik. And we all know how hard that tzaddik, my holy father, toiled to instill in us simple, wholehearted faith.

12aThe holy sefer Divrei Yechezkel, by R' Yechezkel of Shinova, has written that the tzaddik of the generation is the one with the power to bind Bnei Yisrael to the Holy One, blessed be He.³² Ever since the exile began, Hashem has raised up tzaddikim for Israel in every generation. As Chazal said: “‘I did not despise them’: in the days of the Chaldeans, when I set up for them Chananyah, Mishael and Azaryah. ‘And I did not abhor them’: in the days of the Greeks, when I set up for them Shimon HaTzaddik …”³³ So too, close to our generation, there were great tzaddikim: the holy Baal Shem Tov and his disciple R' Ber, the Maggid of Mezritch, zt"l. After them came the Maggid's holy disciples, R' Elimelech of Lizhensk, zt"l, and R' Menachem Mendel of Rimanov, zt"l, and so on down to R' Yechezkel's own holy father, the Rebbe of Sanz, zt"l.

12bThe Divrei Yechezkel continues: “But now, because of our sins, we are left an orphaned generation, a widowed generation, and to which of the holy ones shall we turn? One might think, Heaven forbid, that Israel's children have been left without counsel and without help, since they have no one who can raise them up and bind them to their source above. To this, we find, the verse hints: ‘Who will ascend the mountain of Hashem, and who will stand in His holy place?’³⁴ In other words, who can raise up the souls of Israel and bind them to the upper worlds? ‘One with clean hands and a pure heart, who has not taken My soul in vain and has not sworn deceitfully’: this is the true tzaddik of the generation. Before he came into this world he was made to swear, ‘Be righteous and do not be wicked,’ as Chazal said,³⁵ and that oath was not, Heaven forbid, sworn deceitfully. ‘He will receive blessing from Hashem and righteousness from the God of his salvation’: he is the one truly fit to receive the flow of holiness, to bring it down to Bnei Yisrael, and to raise the holy people up to the source of holiness.

12c“But all this applies while such a tzaddik of the generation is in the world. When the true tzaddikim of the generation have gone to their rest and left us sighing, and we are left poor and empty, who will bind the holy Bnei Yisrael to their root, the source from which they were hewn? To this the verse answers, ‘This is the generation of those who seek Him, who seek Your face, Yaakov, selah.’ What the holy tzaddikim accomplished through their great holiness will itself be accomplished by a generation whose seekers ‘seek Your face, Yaakov.’ They will cry out with bitter hearts before the Holy One, blessed be He, each one saying: ‘Master of the world, I know that I am not worthy. But what can I do? Your children have turned to me to be their head and leader. Please help me, so that Bnei Yisrael will be saved through me, as You saved them through the holy tzaddikim.’ And the verse promises that Hashem, in His great mercy and kindness, will help them with a holy flow of blessing in spiritual and material things.” Those are the holy words of the Divrei Yechezkel.

13This is in the spirit of Chazal's sayings “Yaakov Avinu did not die”³⁶ and “Tzaddikim are greater in their death than in their lifetime.”³⁷ Through this we can be saved in spiritual and material things, and may we be privileged to see the coming of the Redeemer. Amen, may it be His will.