The Sign You Don’t Notice: Shabbos, Tzitzis, and the Mekoshes

Chulin – Daf 101

Our Gemara on amud beis explains why Shabbos supersedes Yom Kippur in certain halachic situations: “Shabbos is established and permanent, i.e., it always occurs on the seventh day of the week, whereas in the case of Yom Kippur, it is the Court that establishes it, as the Sages determine the New Moon. Consequently, Shabbos is considered to have preceded Yom Kippur, and the prohibition to perform labor on Yom Kippur does not apply, due to the fact that labor is already prohibited because it is Shabbos. Since one brings a sin offering only due to unwitting transgression, he is obligated to bring a sin offering only if he performed labor without realizing it was Shabbos.”

Sefas Emes (Bamidbar, Shlach 3) applies this principle to explain a Midrash about the Mekoshes, the person in the Torah who defied Shabbos by gathering wood (Bamidbar 15:32).

The Midrash (Yalkut Shimoni 750) notices a juxtaposition between the event of the Mekoshes and the giving of the commandment of tzitzis. Moshe argues that the Mekoshes succumbed to temptation because on Shabbos there is no tefillin to remind the person of his obligation to Heaven. In response, G-d provided the commandment of tzitzis, which can be worn on Shabbos and will serve the same purpose.

Sefas Emes asks: We know that Shabbos itself is considered a “sign” or “reminder” just as tefillin is, and this actually is the reason why we don’t wear tefillin on Shabbos. Rabbi Akiva says, “I might have thought that a person should don tefillin on Shabbasos and Festivals. Therefore, the verse states: ‘And it shall be for a sign for you on your arm, and for a remembrance between your eyes, so that G-d’s law shall be in your mouth; for with a strong arm G-d brought you out of Egypt’ (Exodus 13:9). The obligation to don tefillin applies when Jews require a sign to assert their Judaism and their status as the Chosen People, i.e., during the week, excluding Shabbos and Festivals, as they are themselves signs of Israel’s status as the Chosen People and a remembrance of the exodus from Egypt. Consequently, no further sign is required on these days” (Eiruvin 96a). Therefore, why was Shabbos alone not enough of a sign to prevent the Mekoshes from violating Shabbos?

Sefas Emes answers that since Shabbos is enacted by Hashem alone, it has less influence over a person than mitzvos that he partners in. Other mitzvos require an action – the person has to enact and sanctify it. Though he makes kiddush, because Shabbos comes automatically, it is still fundamentally different. This speaks to the pedagogical idea of ownership and participation. The more children feel like they are active participants and partners in their learning, which can be achieved by giving them choices and collaborating on learning goals, the more they are motivated. The mitzvos that require human activation end up being more inspiring.

Another answer occurs to me, based on a different principle: “A prisoner cannot generally free himself from prison, but depends on others to release him from his shackles” (Berachos 5b). In that Gemara, it is noted that someone else’s prayers for a person may be more effective than their own.

If so, perhaps the sign of Shabbos could not effectively remind the Mekoshes about Shabbos – only a sign that came through a different mitzvah could do so. What is the psychology behind this phenomenon?

When one is immersed in something, he might not notice it in the same manner; there is a loss of contrast. The grass is greener on the other side of the fence for a reason. One sees the different qualities from the outside, not the inside. Similarly, Ibn Ezra (Shemos 2:3) suggests that G-d had Moshe grow up in Pharaoh’s palace because if he had grown up with regular Jewish folk, they would not have respected him as much and would have just seen him as “one of them.”

Perhaps it was the Divine will that Moshe be an outsider to both the Egyptians as well as the Jews so both of them would take him more seriously. The lesson is that the familiar is often taken for granted.

Reincarnation, Repetition, and the Weight We Carry

Daf 102

Our Gemara on amud aleph quotes a proof text regarding prohibitions of eating a limb taken from a live animal (Devarim 12:23): “But make sure that you do not partake of the blood; for the blood is the life [of a soul], and you must not consume the life [soul] with the flesh.”

There is a mystical interpretation to this verse, reading it more literally. The Hebrew word used for life is nefesh, which also means soul. From a kabbalistic point of view, some persons’ sins are so severe that they are reincarnated as beasts. Therefore, to use meat after failing to slaughter it properly, and especially to cruelly dispose of it, can hurt a human soul too, not just an animal. (See Nishmas Chaim IV:13, Shalah, Torah Sheb’ksav, R’eh, Torah Ohr and Shevet Musar 14.)

The idea of reincarnation seems outside our experience and not relevant to us. In one sense, that’s true, as it does not have anything to do with core Torah principles of faith, and indeed it is not a universally held belief. For example, see Sefer Ikkarim (4:29) and Rav Saadiah’s Emunos V’deios (6:8). Yet the idea that what we do not resolve or repair will haunt us, not just in life but even in death, feels compelling. It is because in some sense we realize that we carry within us the unresolved psychological and emotional concerns of our ancestors. Psychologically speaking, this is known as a legacy burden.

I myself am not a direct child of a survivor, though my mother was deeply affected by the war, hiding out in England, fearful of the V2 rockets raining down hell and destruction. Yet, at weird times, I feel it in my bones. When I go through security and they ask for my ID, I hear a Germanic sneer, “Papiere?” When I see the ubiquitous traffic cameras all over, all I can think is how easily they could be retooled with a few keystrokes into an oppressive tool of a totalitarian regime enacting lockdowns for “our own protection.” (Oh wait, that actually did happen and it was not a Covid fever dream. Why has no political party sincerely and systematically reflected on or reviewed the civil rights atrocities of those recent dark years? We are all embarrassed and ashamed and want to forget it happened. But it did happen, and without proper reflection and judicial reforms, we are in danger of it – or worse – happening again. What happens if one ethnic group – the Jews? – is identified as more susceptible or more likely to be carriers? Imagine combining the hysteria of Covid with the hysteria of antisemitism. But I digress…)

In psychological development, there is an unconscious tendency to repeat and recreate disturbances and dysfunctions in our current relationships that correspond to past and primary relationships. This is known as the repetition compulsion, and it represents an unconscious effort to revisit and rectify past pain, although it often leads to people recreating their fathers in their bosses, their siblings in their co-workers, and their earlier problematic attachments in their romantic relationships. This is why the idea of reincarnation – whether actually true, metaphorically true, or both – is more relevant than one might think. In the end, we have an urge to revisit our failures until we can turn them into successes.

So modern man may consider reincarnation to be foolish superstition, but you cannot outsmart human nature. Call it what you want – we are in danger of repeating old patterns until we rectify them.