Customs of Israel: The Handles That Guard the Torah

1“And these are the laws that you shall set before them.”¹ Rashi explains: “‘And these’ adds to the earlier ones: just as the earlier ones were from Sinai, so these too are from Sinai.” But why would we have thought that these laws were not said at Sinai, so that the verse had to teach us that they were?

2The Midrash says:² “‘He declares His words to Yaakov.’ This is like a king who had an orchard. He planted all kinds of trees in it, and no one entered it but the king himself, who guarded it. When his sons came of age, he said to them: ‘My sons, I used to guard this orchard myself and let no one enter it. You must guard it as I guarded it.’ So God said to Israel: ‘Before I created the world, I prepared the Torah. I did not give it to any of the nations, only to Israel.’ That is, ‘He declares His words to Yaakov, His statutes and His laws to Israel. He did not do so for any nation.’³ To whom, then, did He give it? ‘To Yaakov,’ whom He chose from all the nations. To the nations He gave only a part: He gave Adam six mitzvos and added one for Noach. But to Israel He gave everything.” What does the Midrash mean? At first glance, the nations too could have kept more mitzvos besides the seven they were given. Why, then, were the mitzvos given only to Israel?

3We can explain this by first citing my holy father and teacher, zt"l, in his introduction to the sefer Tiferes Avos, on the verse “And so that you may relate in the ears of your son and your son's son.”⁴ He wrote: “Why does the verse say ‘in the ears of your son,’ and not simply ‘so that you may relate to your son’? The main thing, as we have explained, is to train the children first of all in the customs of Israel. As the Gemara says, Shlomo HaMelech made ‘ears,’ that is, handles, for the Torah: eruvin and the washing of the hands.⁵ [Rashi explains there that he instituted eruvin and the washing of the hands … and through this Israel takes hold of the mitzvos, since they are kept far from transgression, just as a vessel with a handle is easier to hold than one without.] For just as one can hold a whole vessel by its handle, even when it is very heavy, so the customs of Israel are the root and the starting point of keeping the Torah. This is the meaning of ‘so that you may relate in the ears of your son’: you must train your son in the customs of Israel and in the fine points of the mitzvos.” So far his words.

4Along the same lines, my holy great-grandfather, zt"l, explained the verse “And it will be, because (eikev) you listen” in the holy sefer Divrei Binah.⁶ He wrote: “The word eikev comes from ‘Go out in the footsteps (ikvei) of the flock,’⁷ meaning the custom of your fathers, in the spirit of the saying ‘A custom of Israel is Torah.’⁸ This is also the general rule in ‘you will heed the commandments of Hashem your God’: what brings it about … is walking in the eikev, the footsteps, which are the customs of the earlier generations of Israel. So too, ‘Hear, my son, the instruction of your father, and do not forsake the teaching of your mother,’⁹ the mother being Knesses Yisrael, the community of Israel, with its customs. This is unlike the innovators of this generation, who want to uproot things little by little and in the end will uproot everything, Heaven save us. They begin by changing the customs of Israel. So the verse means: if you walk in the footsteps of your fathers, you will be able to heed the commandments of Hashem your God. And from the positive we can infer the negative: if not, you will not be able to.” Those are his holy words.

5On this basis we can explain the verse. “And these,” with its added “and,” adds to the earlier ones: it takes in everything that Chazal added and decreed beyond what the Torah states explicitly from Sinai, when they made “a guard for the guard”¹⁰ and a fence around the words of the Torah. That is why the verse needed to teach, “Just as the earlier ones were from Sinai, so these too are from Sinai”: even everything that Chazal decreed, forbade and added was said at Sinai. For all of it is included in the mitzvah “You shall not turn aside from the word that they tell you, right or left,” which was said at Sinai.¹¹ This answers our question about Rashi's words.

6That is why the verse says “that you shall set before them,” which Chazal expound: “and not before idol-worshippers.”¹² The nations of the world do not have the understanding to add fences and safeguards to what they were explicitly commanded. Only Bnei Yisrael, who learn Torah lishmah, for its own sake, have this grasp. They compare one thing to another and learn what is unstated from what is explicit, using the rules by which the Torah is expounded. Their Torah is “fruitful and multiplies,”¹³ growing even in matters that the verses do not state explicitly. So there is no comparison at all between the laws of the Torah as the sages of Israel hold them and the laws of the nations of the world.

7This is what the Midrash means: “This is like a king who had an orchard and guarded it himself, and he commanded his sons to guard the orchard,” themselves and not through others. That is, Hashem gives the Torah only to those who make a safeguard for His Torah. That is why “He did not do so for any nation, and His laws they have not known.”¹⁴ The nations of the world do not have the understanding to make a safeguard for the Torah and to add a fence around it in matters not stated explicitly, so the Torah cannot be guarded through them. For it is precisely these fences and additions, which Israel adds to what the Torah states explicitly, that guard the Torah, as we saw with the decrees of Chazal. This answers our question about the Midrash.

8In this light we can explain what the holy Zohar says: “‘And these are the laws’: these are the arrangements of gilgul,” the return of souls to this world.¹⁵ The holy sefarim, the Degel Machaneh Efraim and the Pri Tzaddik, ask what connection there is between Parshas Mishpatim and the gilgul and repair of souls. According to what we have said, we can offer a hint. “And these are the laws” tells us to take great care to guard, do and keep all the laws and judgments of the Torah, including care with the words of Chazal and with the customs of Israel. We know that a soul comes back into this world once more because it was not privileged to keep the Torah in all its details. But a person who guards the customs of Israel is privileged to keep the Torah. Keeping those customs, as we saw, guards the Torah and gives us a grip on it, like Shlomo's “handles for the Torah,” and through them a person is assured of coming to keep the whole Torah. And so, as a matter of course, he is privileged not to have to come into this world yet again.

9May Hashem, blessed be He, help us hold fast to the tradition of our fathers and to the customs, and through this may we bring near the coming of the righteous Redeemer. Amen, may it be His will.