Soft Words for the Humble, Hard Words for the Great

1“So shall you say to the House of Yaakov and tell Bnei Yisrael.”¹ Chazal said in the Mechilta: “‘So shall you say to the House of Yaakov’: these are the women; say it to them in gentle language. ‘And tell Bnei Yisrael’: these are the men.”² Rashi explains that Moshe was to tell Bnei Yisrael words as hard as sinews.³ But how can this be? Of the Torah it is said, “Her ways are ways of pleasantness,” and the Holy One, blessed be He, wants there to be “only good to Israel.”⁴ The holy Rebbe R' Yechezkel of Kuzmir, zt"l, made this very point from a teaching of Chazal. The Rabbis said that there are three things a person must say in his home on Erev Shabbos as darkness falls, and even so he must say them gently.⁵ All the more so, said R' Yechezkel, when Hashem gives the whole Torah to Israel, He says it to them gently and pleasantly. Those are his holy words. Why, then, does the verse use harsh language here, words “hard as sinews”?

2A second question: a little later the verse says, “These are the words that you shall speak to Bnei Yisrael.”⁶ Why does it use tedaber, “speak,” a form of dibbur, which denotes harsh speech?⁷ What Moshe Rabbeinu was to say in this verse was “And you shall be to Me a kingdom of kohanim and a holy nation,” and these are good and gentle words. The verse should rather have said, “that you shall say,” tomar, “to Bnei Yisrael.”

3On “These are the words,” Rashi comments: “No less and no more.”⁸ The holy sefarim, such as the Bnei Yissaschar, ask about this.⁹ Do we not presume that an agent carries out his mission?¹⁰ Moshe Rabbeinu, sent by the Holy One, blessed be He, would certainly carry out his mission properly. Why, then, did Hashem need to give him a special warning not to change anything He had told him?

4aLet us first cite the words of my holy father and teacher, zt"l, on a phrase in the blessing of Hashkiveinu at Ma'ariv: “and remove the Satan from before us and from behind us.” We know the yetzer hara's way. When a person sets out to do mitzvos and good deeds, it comes to cool his ardor. “Who are you to do such great things?” it says. “You know how low you are, and that you have sinned in this and that!” But such humility is out of place and worthless. On the contrary, when a person has the chance to do something good, he must act in the spirit of King Yehoshafat, of whom it says, “his heart was lifted up in the ways of Hashem.”¹¹ That is why we ask, “remove the Satan from before us,” meaning the Satan that comes before a mitzvah is done.

4bOnce a person has been privileged to do Hashem's will, on the other hand, the yetzer hara comes to fill him with pride. “How great and fine your deeds are!” it tells him. At that point he must remember how far his deed falls short of perfection. As the verse says, “There is no righteous man on earth who does good and does not sin,”¹² which the holy sefarim explain to mean that even while a person is doing good, some trace of sin can be present in it as well.¹³ So he has no room to be proud. That is why we ask that the Satan be removed “from behind us,” meaning the yetzer hara that comes after mitzvos are done. Those are his holy words.

5We can explain this more fully. Klal Yisrael, as we know, includes two kinds of people, simple people and people of high standing, and these two kinds correspond to the two ways in which the yetzer hara entices a person. Simple people, even after all the preparations they made to receive the Torah, are broken inside. They know they are not succeeding in doing their Maker's will, and this can lead them to despair. People of high standing, on the other hand, can, Heaven forbid, grow proud of their good deeds. My holy great-grandfather, the Rebbe of Biala, zt"l, wrote that Hashem had these two groups in Israel in mind when He said “no less and no more.”¹⁴ “No less” hints at those who are broken and feel small inside. Hashem was telling them not to be broken, and not to count themselves “less” more than is right. “And no more” hints at the people of high standing, who are meticulous in mitzvos and learn Torah more than the rest of the people. Hashem was telling them to take care not to feel inside that they are “more,” with some advantage or higher standing, and so let their hearts grow proud.

6In this light we can explain that the words “So shall you say to the House of Yaakov” are addressed to the simple people. They are on the level called “Yaakov,”¹⁵ and they think to themselves that they are not ready to receive the Torah and the mitzvos. Such people must be strengthened. Their deeds must be praised and valued, and their hearts drawn to their Father in Heaven with gentle words, so that they will be privileged to serve the Creator. That is why they are told “So shall you say,” with tomar, the gentle word. The verse also uses the word koh, “so,” which hints at an abundance of blessings, as in the verse “So shall you bless Bnei Yisrael.”¹⁶ In other words, they must be told how great the blessing is that will come to them through the Torah and the mitzvos.

7[These wholehearted and upright people¹⁷ know how little they are worth. So when the time comes to do a mitzvah, they can lose heart, saying that people on their level are not worthy of doing mitzvos. It is among such people that the Satan “from before us” is found: before every mitzvah, such a person thinks that someone of his small worth is not fit to do it. But the truth is not as they say. All are equal before the Holy One, blessed be He, and even a small act done by simple people is precious in Heaven and is received with favor before Him. The Baal Shem Tov, zy"a, taught this in words cited in the Magen Avraham [by the Maggid of Trisk].¹⁸ A Jew may be busy all day long earning a living and supporting his family, and when he finishes his work he runs to the beis midrash and says, “Blessed are You, Hashem.” This simple prayer of his has an effect on high and breaks through the heavens. So with people like these, one should praise their deeds to their faces and encourage them, so that they do not grow slack in doing mitzvos.]

8The continuation of the verse, “and tell Bnei Yisrael,” is addressed to the people of high standing, who, as is known, are called by the name “Yisrael.” They are already prepared in their souls to receive the Torah and the mitzvos, but they can, Heaven forbid, grow proud and haughty. To them one must speak words as hard as sinews. That is why the verse uses dibbur, the word for harsh speech, about them [in “These are the words that you shall speak to Bnei Yisrael”]: to show them, as we saw in my holy father's teaching, that they still fall far short of full closeness to the Creator. [It is to these people that the Satan “from behind us” belongs,¹⁹ the self-glorification that comes after a mitzvah is done, and this middah, this character trait, must be uprooted from their hearts. As the holy sefarim teach, uprooting a middah one has grown used to takes extra effort, since it is extremely hard.²⁰ These people must know that they have not yet reached perfection and are still far from it. They must always keep going in their avodah, for they will never finish fulfilling their obligation properly.]

9This is the meaning of a teaching we find in the Gemara.²¹ Chazal instituted the verse “My Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare Your praise” to be said before the Shemoneh Esrei.²² The Gemara asks: the blessing of redemption, which ends “Who redeemed Israel,” must be joined directly to the Shemoneh Esrei, and it is forbidden to interrupt between them! It answers that since the Rabbis fixed the verse as part of the prayer, it counts as a lengthened Shemoneh Esrei. We can explain why Chazal placed the verse right at the point where redemption is joined to prayer.²³ Before praying, a person must think about his own lowliness: “Who am I to stand in prayer before the Master of the worlds?” He can stand in prayer only by the power of Hashem, and that is the meaning of “My Lord, open my lips.” This follows what we saw above: before a mitzvah, a person feels far from Hashem. So Chazal had him say this verse, declaring that he does not truly come to pray by his own power. And after the prayer, when a person may err and grow proud of his service in prayer, we say, “and may my soul be like dust to all,” asking for humility.²⁴

10This lets us explain the verses about Israel's declaration “We will do and we will hear.” First it says, “Moshe came and told the people all the words of Hashem … and all the people answered with one voice and said, ‘All the words that Hashem has spoken we will do.’”²⁵ Here “and we will hear” is not mentioned. Afterward it says, “He built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars for the twelve tribes of Israel … and they said, ‘All that Hashem has spoken we will do and we will hear.’”²⁶ The explanation is that at first Moshe Rabbeinu turned only to the simple people, who are called “the people.” He asked them to strengthen themselves inwardly to actually do the mitzvos, so that they would not fall into a worthless humility, and they answered, “All that Hashem has spoken we will do.” Afterward he turned to all the tribes of Israel. This time they were called by the name “Yisrael,” the great level that hints at the people of high standing [and not “the people,” as at first], and to this they answered, “and we will hear.” They meant: we know that we must always be in a state of “we will hear,” so that even after we receive the Torah, we will know that we still lack much.

11May Hashem help us to be privileged always to serve the Creator wholeheartedly, and in this way to bring the coming of Moshiach closer. Amen, may it be His will.