Tasting History

By Rabbi Pinchos Lipschutz

This week’s parsha opens with the words, “Ve’aileh hamishpotim asher tosim lifneihem - These are the laws that you shall place before them.”

Rabi Akiva, in the Mechilta, hears in these words not merely a command to teach, but a lesson in how Torah must be transmitted. Tosim lifneihem, he explains, does not mean to present information in the abstract, but to lay it out like a shulchan aruch, a fully prepared table, arranged with care, clarity, and invitation. Torah is not meant to be delivered as raw data, but as nourishment: accessible, enticing, and alive.

Great teachers exhaust themselves in pursuit of this ideal. They labor not only to know Torah, but to serve it, presenting it with flavor, with structure, with an inner music that allows the student not merely to learn, but to taste and appreciate. A good rebbi does not speak at his talmidim. He sets a table before them and invites them into a feast.

One such rebbi was Rav Mendel Kaplan. His shiur was not simply a classroom. It was an atmosphere. We did not merely absorb Torah from him. We breathed it in. He fed us a wide menu of spiritual food, equipping us not only with knowledge, but with the tools to interpret the world beyond the walls of the bais medrash. Headlines became texts, and world events became commentaries, refracted through the prism of Torah until their deeper meanings emerged.

There is a story told of a villager in the legendary town of Chelm who returned home from shul one Shabbos and repeated the rov’s sermon to his wife.

“The rov says that Moshiach may come very soon,” he told her, “and he will take us all to Eretz Yisroel.”

His wife wrung her hands in distress. “But what will be with our chickens? Who will feed them? How will we live?”

The husband stroked his beard thoughtfully. “You know, life here is hard. The goyim harass us, we are poor, the roof leaks, and our feet freeze all winter. Maybe it will be better there.”

She thought for a moment, and then her face lit up. “I have a solution,” she said. “We’ll ask Hashem to send the goyim to Eretz Yisroel - and we’ll stay here with the chickens.”

We smile at the foolishness of Chelm, but too often, we are no different. We live inside history, yet fail to read it. We experience events, but miss their meaning. We mistake warning signs for noise, and blessings for burdens. We assume we understand the world, when in truth we need teachers - living meforshim - to explain to us what is really happening between the lines of the newspaper.

Chazal tell us: “Why was the mountain called Sinai? Because from it descended sinah - hatred.” From the moment the Torah was given and the Jewish people became a nation with a mission, a new force entered the world, a relentless, irrational hostility that would accompany us until the arrival of Moshiach.

This hatred is not merely a historical artifact. It is not confined to ancient exile or medieval blood libels. It is alive. It breathes. It mutates. It adapts to each generation’s language and technology.

The world recently marked the 81^st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Much has changed since those dark years. Entire institutions were built to ensure that such horrors would never return. And yet, the ancient sinah remains intact, resurfacing in new forms, under new banners, with old obsessions. Jews are mocked, judged by double standards, and vilified. The very state created as a refuge from hatred has become a magnet for it.

Anti-Semitism rises not only in Europe, but in America. Digital platforms amplify it, spread it, and normalize it. What once required mobs now needs only algorithms.

Rashi tells us that Yisro came to join the Jewish people after hearing about Krias Yam Suf and Milchemes Amaleik. The meforshim explain that these events conveyed not only how deeply Hashem loves the Jewish people, but how intensely the nations of the world oppose them. Yisro recognized the paradox at the heart of Jewish existence - to be beloved by Hashem and resisted by history. He understood that truth itself provokes opposition, and that the more transformative the truth, the more violently it is resisted.

When Albert Einstein introduced relativity, the scientific world initially mocked him. A book titled One Hundred Scientists Against Einstein appeared. When asked about it, Einstein reportedly shrugged and said, “If I were really wrong, why would one not be enough?” He understood what Jews have always known: Truth does not generate mild disagreement. It generates disproportionate fury.

From Har Sinai onward, the Jewish people have lived inside that fury.

After World War I, the League of Nations was created to ensure peace. After World War II, the United Nations rose from the ashes of Auschwitz, pledging that tyranny would never again be allowed to flourish. After 9/11, world leaders announced a new era with a global war on terror, a united front against evil.

And yet, history keeps repeating itself, not because of a lack of institutions, but because of a surplus of illusion. They did not factor in apathy. They did not factor in corruption. They did not factor in moral exhaustion. They did not factor in hatred.

Everything now moves at a blistering pace. Wars begin, fade, and are replaced before their consequences are understood. Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, China, Iran - each crisis dissolves into the next.

The world feels unstable, yet we continue our routines as though nothing is hanging above us.

The sword is suspended - and we discuss the wallpaper.

As anti-Semitism intensifies and the old sinah resurfaces, we argue over trivialities, chase distractions, and obsess over matters of little weight. We scroll while history groans.

Perhaps, a place to begin is with what we allow into our minds and homes. Since the invention of print, ideas have traveled disguised as information. Newspapers and books have always been vehicles for more than news. They are carriers of values, assumptions, and worldviews. The Maskilim mastered this art, writing heresy in poetic Hebrew, quoting Chazal while emptying their teachings of meaning, as they mocked gedolim, rabbonim, lomdei Torah, and shomrei Torah umitzvos. Generations were torn away not by open rebellion, but by subtle infiltration.

Words are never neutral. They shape taste. They train perception. They define what feels normal.

That is why those who write, teach, and speak bear responsibility under the same command: “Aileh hamishpotim asher tosim lifneihem.” What we place before others must be honest, just, and true - a table that nourishes, not poisons.

The Alter of Kelm taught that tosim lifneihem k’shulchan aruch means that real intelligence emerges only when learning has flavor. Depth is not dryness. Wisdom is not sterile. A melamed who teaches with clarity, elegance, and taste awakens in his students not only understanding, but desire and a hunger for more.

The difference between superficial knowledge and deep understanding is the difference between eating and tasting. One sustains life. The other transforms it.

The task of man, the Alter concludes, is to become truly intelligent - not clever, not informed, but wise.

That wisdom begins with refusing to settle for shallow readings of Torah or of life. It demands that we study more deeply, interpret more honestly, and live more consciously. It requires that we understand not only what is happening around us, but also what it is asking of us.

We must speak more truthfully, treat people more carefully, and live in a way that creates kiddush Hashem rather than its opposite.

The Meshech Chochmah, in one of his classic elucidations, writes in his sefer on last week’s parsha that the Jews merited the many miracles Hakadosh Boruch Hu performed for them upon leaving Mitzrayim even though they were still entangled with avodah zorah because their middos and interpersonal conduct were refined. But in generations whose people speak lashon hora, quarrel, and act without derech eretz and sensitivity, Hashem removes His Shechinah from their midst, as He did at the time of the Second Bais Hamikdosh. Even though the people were engaged in Torah study and observance, nevertheless, because there was sinas chinom - hatred - among them, the Bais Hamikdosh was destroyed.

I saw in a new sefer by Rav Yitzchok Kolodetsky something both amazing and frightening that Rav Chaim Greineman would relate from his father, Rav Shmuel Greineman, brother-in-law of the Chazon Ish. He would say that the Chazon Ish taught that the Holocaust came about as a result of sins bein adam lachaveiro, failures in how Jews treated each other.

When we look around us, when we contemplate what is happening in the world and wonder what we can do, what is demanded of us, and how we can help draw Moshiach closer, it would do us well to ponder the message the Chazon Ish and the Meshech Chochmah sent.

Parshas Yisro, in which the Torah discusses how Klal Yisroel was presented with the gift of the Aseres Hadibros and the Torah, is followed by Parshas Mishpotim, which we study this week. By arranging the parshiyos in this way, the Torah teaches us that to maintain the lofty levels reached at Har Sinai, we must properly follow the laws of Mishpotim, which deal with interpersonal conduct.

It is not sufficient to be on a high spiritual level intellectually and theoretically. We must match that with our actions and conduct. If we cut corners financially, if we are careless with another person’s dignity, and if we are not scrupulous in ensuring that we do not harm others financially, then we are lacking in fulfilling the obligations we accepted upon ourselves at Har Sinai.

In Parshas Mishpotim, Klal Yisroel reaches its highest moment when it declares, “Na’aseh v’nishma - We will do, and later we will hear and understand.” Action before comprehension. Commitment before clarity. A nation stepping into destiny with certainty, armed and motivated by faith.

May we merit to return to that summit, to toil in Torah, taste its depth, refine our character, and hear in the background of all we do the sounds of Sinai, so that we can raise ourselves and our people and bring us closer to the geulah sheleimah bekarov b’yomeinu. Amein.