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Wisdom for Living
Rabbi Noah Weinberg on the Parashah
7 min read
This week’s Torah portion singles out the meisit – the inciter who entices a Jew to worship idols – with the harshest treatment of any transgressor in the Torah. The verse says: You shall not accede to him [the missionary] and not hearken to him; your eye shall not take pity on him, you shall not be compassionate nor conceal him. Rather, you shall surely kill him.” (Devarim 13:9, 10)
These highly unusual directives comprise five distinct negative commandments, which the Rambam (Hilchos Sanhedrin 11:5) summarizes as follows:
The same Torah whose fundamental principle is “Love your fellow as yourself” obligates us to show no mercy toward the inciter and to aggressively seek his conviction and execution.
Rav Aharon Kotler, in Mishnas Rav Aharon, (Vol. 1, pg. 254) derives the following insight from the unique laws regarding an inciter.
Our sages teach us that God’s desire to bestow reward is 500 times greater than His desire to punish. This is derived from the verse in Exodus (34:7, see Rashi there) that says that punishment can be extended only to the fourth generation, while reward can be extended for 2000 generations.
Consequently, explains Rav Aharon, if an inciter is considered the worst transgressor of all and as a result is treated more severely than even an idolater or murderer, the opposite of an inciter who leads Jews astray – namely a person who strives to bring Jews back to Torah – must be the most righteous person of all, and will be rewarded 500 times more than the inciter is punished.
It is important to note how stringent the Torah’s criteria for an inciter are. If someone would tell the leading rabbi of the generation, “Bow down to a telephone poll because it will answer your prayers,” and the rabbi would dismiss him outright, saying, “You’re crazy, get out of here!” the person is considered an inciter, even though his words had no impact. The mere attempt to draw a person away from Torah categorizes someone as an inciter.
Many people who dedicate their lives to outreach mistakenly believe that their efforts on behalf of their fellow Jews are significant only if the person they are working with becomes shomer Shabbos. That is certainly a great achievement, but it’s not what confers upon a person the lofty and cherished status of a one who dedicates his life to reaching other Jews. If a person is considered an inciter just by virtue of his attempt to draw someone away from Judaism, then a person who attempts to draw someone to Judaism must be considered a successful outreach worker by virtue of the undertaking alone.
Just taking the initiative to try and reconnect a fellow Jew to Judaism is deemed by God to be the greatest good, and worthy of the greatest reward. The actual impact we have on another Jew is secondary.
Someone who tries to lead one Jew astray is attempting to move the world further away from Hashem; he is creating a Chillul Hashem, a desecration of God’s Name. This is in contradistinction to someone who tries to bring one Jew closer to his Father in Heaven. The latter is attempting to increase the awareness of God in the world, and just making the effort creates a Kiddush Hashem. If he actually succeeds, then how much greater is his achievement. This is true for reaching just one Jew; how much more does it apply to someone who is making a genuine effort to impact all of Klal Yisrael, to reach the entire Jewish people!
The Chovos Halevavos writes something incredible:
A person’s good deeds alone do not make him suitable for the reward of the World to Come. God considers him suitable only because of two other factors in addition to his good deeds. The first is that he teaches others about the service of God and guides them in doing good… The second is God’s kindness and beneficence.
(Shaar Habitachon, chapter 4
A person can serve God with all his heart and raise himself to the level of angels – he can be an angel in his spiritual understanding, an angel in his business dealings, an angel in his relationships with other people – yet the Chovos Halevavos states that he cannot enter Olam Haba unless he is involved in teaching other people about God.
Why is this so? Because if you are not actively trying to bring Jews back to Hashem and His Torah, you do not really love Hashem and His children. As the Rambam writes in Sefer HaMitzvos (positive commandment 3), on the mitzvah to love Hashem:
Our Sages said that this mitzvah includes calling out to all mankind to serve God, exalted be He, and to believe in Him. This is because when you love someone, you turn your attention to him and praise him and call out to others to love him. So, too, if you truly love God — through your understanding and realization of His true existence — you will certainly spread this true knowledge that you know to the deniers and the foolish.
Thus, the Sifrei says: “‘You shall love Hashem’ – that is, make Him beloved among people, as your father Avraham did, as it says, ‘The souls that he made in Charan’ (Bereishis 12:5).”
The Sifrei means to tell us that Avraham, as a result of his deep understanding of God, acquired love for God, as the verse testifies, "Avraham, who loved Me" (Yeshayahu 41:8). This powerful love spurred him to call out to all mankind to believe in God. So, too, you shall love Him to the extent that you draw others to Him.
People naturally share the things they love. What will compel us to reach out to our fellow Jews is our genuine love, excitement and appreciation for the Almighty and the wisdom of his Torah. To the extent that we love Hashem and Torah, we will be driven to share this love.
Furthermore, kiruv and learning Torah are inextricably linked. The Talmud (Avodah Zarah 9a) teaches that the world is destined to exist for 6,000 years, which are divided into three eras: 2000 years of desolation, 2000 years of Torah and 2000 years of the days of Mashiach. When did the 2000-year era of Torah begin? The Talmud calculates that it was when Avraham was 52 years old, when he and his wife Sarah started the first kiruv movement and began to reach out to the masses and bring Torah values to the world.
The era of Torah did not begin with Adam, nor with Shem and Eiver, who had their own yeshiva. It began the moment Avraham realized that the reality of God must be shared with the world. That is because the goal of Torah is not only self-perfection, it is to perfect the entire world. The meisis, in trying to lead Jews astray from God, is destroying the world. One who tries to bring the Jewish people back to God is building the world.
