SHoFaR or SHiPRU?

Whew. It's still hard to believe this blog is UP. It really makes a difference knowing there's a format "out there" for furthering the cause ...

So here's another very deep vort ("word" of insight) that occured to me over Shabbos. I would have normally kept it for Rosh HaShona (the Jewish New Year, in the Fall), but since we're on the momentum of holyday insights, and the nature of the unbelievable is far beyond standard time lines (actually Chanuka and R.H. are quite logically connected), let's toss it out already.

The verse states (Deut. 29:17):

Pen yesh b'chem shoresh porei rosh u'l'ana... 'shalom yehiyeh li... ',

which roughly tranlsates:

"Perhaps there is amongst you a root flourishing wormwood... (thinking) peace will be for me..."

The basic idea is that while the Israelites were nationally at their spiritual highest, perched to enter the Holy land, they were being warned never to presume that every single individual is included. Conceivably there could be a few rotten apples in every barrel, especially the better the rest of the apples seem to be. It's a psycho-spiritual principle: The higher you spiritually fly, the less the quantity but more the quality of destructive thoughts.

Notice the stress on the heretic's desire for "peace." Never does the holy Torah make the pursuit of peace a goal in and of itself. To be sure, it's emphatic about Tsedek, tsedek tirdof (Deut. 16:20), pursuing righteousness. But not peace.

As HaRav Nachman Bulman, zts"l, once drove into his disciples during one Shalosh Seudos (third meal of Sabbath): The Shabbos afternoon prayer requests:

Menuchas Shalom... Menucha shleima sh'Atoh rotzeh ba
"a rest of peace ... a complete rest that You want."

The point of this prayer, he bellowed, in his inimitably volcanic way, is not that we expect to achieve any peace, but that we seek it on Shabbos because we learn it's important to You!

No question. The interest in peace at the expense of the Creator's Will is a powerfully narcissistic mind set that basically says "yeah, Boss, I hear, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna let your rules cramp my style!" It's the undoing of every employee; of every "believer."

The only way out is to UN-believe. As per the mystics about the roshei teivos of our verse (the first letters of the words shoresh porei rosh u'lana) spelling SHoFaR (p and f sounds, as well as o and u sounds, are interchangeable in Hebrew). The Shofar, of course, is the famous Ram's horn which Jews blow around the New Year to stimulate repentance. When one sincerely fulfills that Mitzvah (Divine Command) of Shofar, he's free from all heresy.

Even the subconscious kind.

But now I ask: Why scramble the letters to come up with that vort? If we read the verse straight, it spells out: SHi-P-R-U, which is the third person plural form for "improve." So doesn't that teach our lesson even better? Isn't a Jew's willingness to seek improvement enough for nipping those heretical thoughts in the bud? Isn't the call for world improvement precisely the ethic of tikkun Ha'olam, of "repairing the world," that drives the majority of Jewish organizations today??

Ah. Now listen carefully. This goes real deep. The shoresh, root, of all evil, is the tendency to demand of the other: Shipru!, "Improve!", in place of hearing the Shofar. It might be true that others are in need of refinement, yet who am I to tell them, let alone accuse them?? To respond to those cosmic blasts, on the other hand, is to make room for HIS energy to improve the world.

UNNNNbelievable

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