Humility at Sinai: The Cure for Strife

1“They journeyed from Refidim and encamped in the Wilderness of Sinai.”¹ We know Chazal's teaching: “What is Refidim? Sherafu yedeihem, they let their hands grow slack from the Torah.”² The holy sefarim, the Yitav Lev and the Shomer Emunim, have already looked closely at the expression “their hands.”³ Surely engaging in Torah is done only with the mind and the heart?

2Let us first cite some sayings of Chazal: “Yerushalayim was destroyed only because they did not rebuke one another”; “Yerushalayim was destroyed only because small and great were made equal”;⁴ and “Yerushalayim was destroyed only because they based their judgments on Torah law and did not go beyond the letter of the law.”⁵ At first glance this is astonishing. We can understand the other sins listed there, such as desecrating Shabbos and neglecting the Shema morning and evening, for they are among the basic foundations of the Torah. But several of the things we cited are not sins under the Torah at all, and in any case they are not among its foundations. How, then, could Yerushalayim have been destroyed because of them?

3We may explain all this on the basis of what the sefer Knesses Yechezkel writes. The expression “they let their hands grow slack” hints at greeting one's fellow, since it is the custom to give him one's hand when asking after his welfare. Chazal were hinting at something that often happens. When a person, Heaven forbid, keeps up a quarrel with his fellow, he will not give him his hand in greeting, and he even claims to have proof from the Torah that he is right to behave this way. This is “they let their hands grow slack from the Torah”: they let their hands go slack and weak rather than offer their fellow peace, and they held on to the quarrel. What is more, they said they had support for this “from the Torah,” for they imagined that the Torah permits such behavior and even calls for it. That is the gist of his words. Admittedly, these words were said as a playful turn of phrase. Even so, this is the very root that gives the yetzer hara a place and a foothold to entrench itself among our people through the great sin of strife and baseless hatred, and that yetzer still runs riot among us.

4The Torah gives the remedy for this here: “and they encamped in the Wilderness of Sinai.” Let a person attain the middah of humility, the trait of character that makes him like the Wilderness of Sinai, which made itself lower than all the mountains.⁶ Then all those “proofs” he imagined, that it is right to rise up, start a quarrel and hold on to the dispute, fall away of themselves, for arrogance is the main cause of all quarrel and strife. In this way he will be privileged to fulfill “they journeyed from Refidim”: every ground and reason for holding on to the quarrel will journey away and depart from his heart. And when the middah of humility dwells in his heart, he will be privileged to truly receive the Torah, as we find at Mount Sinai, and to see what the Torah really wants.

5aWe have seen that the root and source of the whole sin of strife is pride and haughtiness, which make a person see only his own way as right and look down on his fellows. This lets us understand why Chazal blamed the destruction of Yerushalayim on their failure to rebuke one another. That failure shows how great the arrogance in each one's heart was: so great that no one had any bond with his fellow. Not only could they not accept rebuke from one another; they did not even rebuke one another.

5bIt is like the way some sefarim explain the Mishnah: “Two who sit together with no words of Torah between them, this is a session of scoffers.”⁷ Why would two people sit together and say no words of Torah to each other? It can only be because each one scorns and mocks the other, so much that he does not consider him worth speaking to or having any bond with. This is also the meaning of “small and great were made equal.” There was so little bond between them, and each mocked all his companions so much, that they all became equal in his eyes. Even a great man seemed to him no different from a small one, and he could not see that anyone was greater than himself.

6This is also the meaning of “Yerushalayim was destroyed only because they based their judgments on Torah law.” When there was quarrel and strife among them, they rested their words on words of Torah, bringing proofs from the Torah that here it was right to hold on to the dispute, just as we saw with “they let their hands grow slack from the Torah.” Had they had the middah of humility, they would have entered lifnim mishuras hadin, “inside the line of the law,” going beyond its letter. That is, they would have seen into the depth of the Torah's true will. Arrogance would not have blinded them, and all division between their hearts would have vanished.

7Indeed, the truth is the very opposite: as is well known, the Torah can truly be kept only through unity. On “And Israel encamped there,” Rashi, citing the Mechilta, explains: “As one man with one heart.”⁸ And the Ohr HaChaim, the Derech Pikudecha and the Yismach Moshe write that there are many mitzvos that can be fulfilled only when Jews join together and become part of one another.⁹ In this way even the mitzvos that apply only to Kohanim, or only to Yisraelim, Jews who are not Kohanim, are counted for each person as though he had fulfilled them. That is why the tzaddikim instituted the practice of saying, before a mitzvah, “LeShem Yichud … in the name of all Israel.” But if, Heaven forbid, people hate one another, then, Heaven forbid, the keeping of the Torah and mitzvos is undone. That is why the Beis HaMikdash was destroyed, for the whole purpose of entering the Land and building the Beis HaMikdash is only to fulfill the 613 mitzvos.

8May the Holy One, blessed be He, help us keep the Torah within chaburos shel mitzvah, fellowships joined for a mitzvah. And may Chazal's words be fulfilled in us: “Israel will not be redeemed until it forms one band.”¹⁰ Amen, may it be His will.