GOOD MORNING! Last week a reader wrote to me asking for help understanding the events of October 7th and the horrors of the Holocaust. He asked, why, for millennia, the Almighty seems to have been in a constant fit of rage toward the Jewish people? He went on to quote some verses in the Bible and passages from the Talmud that describe the Almighty’s fury toward His people when they don’t follow the Torah.

He wanted to understand how this justifies all the horrors that the Jewish people have experienced. Not exactly a softball of a question. Still, I thought that this question, which seems to be on the minds of many, needs to be addressed.

I want to begin by mentioning that we have a general principle that is oft repeated in the Talmud that the “Torah speaks in the language of man.” This means that the Torah is written in such a manner as to be accessible to mankind. Thus, when the Torah speaks of the “hand of God” or “God’s fury,” it is merely meant to be an anthropomorphic illustration – an ascription of human qualities to a deity.

The reason for this can be understood as Maimonides states in the first section of his famous philosophical work known as the Guide to the Perplexed. Maimonides explains that the Torah must be relatable to all of mankind, and many, or perhaps even most, people are unable to conceive of some of the more esoteric elements to understand the philosophical complexities relating to the essence of God.

This can be likened to a child who vaguely becomes aware of the existence of God, and then inevitably asks, “Where is God?” Because a child would have an exceedingly difficult time understanding the true answer (i.e. that God exists outside of time and space, and He is therefore everywhere – and nowhere – at the same time), the answer generally given is that the Almighty resides in heaven. This is, of course, not technically true. As my granddaughter pointed out to my wife when my wife told her that her own grandmother was in heaven: “No Bubby, she’s not. I looked into the sky, and I didn’t see her.”

Because God is both immanent and incorporeal, He cannot “be” anywhere without being everywhere. Of course, God is not a “he” either, but our language is limited to certain constructs with which we can effectively communicate.

In a similar vein, God is absolutely immutable – He therefore cannot get angry or sad – as the great medieval philosopher Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato (known by his acronym Ramchal) points out in his epic work on Jewish philosophy, The Way of God: The Almighty is a single unchanging entity, there is no possible compartmentalization of emotion like getting angry or sad.

Ramchal goes on to explain that the intention of all of creation is for the Almighty to develop a system by which to bestow the ultimate “good” on mankind. That “good” is only realized through a deep bond and connection to the Almighty. Thus, what the Almighty desires for mankind is a relationship with Him. It is the quintessential good because it is this relationship that ultimately allows man to achieve a sense of immortality.

Because of the inherent difficulty – one might even say the impossibility – of comprehending the essence of the Almighty, our interactions with the Almighty are communicated within the context of a relationship. Thus, emotions like love, anger, and even jealousy, are used to describe the effects that our actions have on our relationship with the Almighty. God is also described as using an “outstretched arm” to rescue His nation from the clutches of the Egyptians; not because He has an arm, but rather it’s a term used to describe what’s taking place within the context of His love relationship with His people.

Perhaps a better way to wrap our minds around this concept is to consider the following question: What is worse, deeply disappointing a parent or making a parent really angry? While one would hope that both situations would be considered unacceptable, I think that, to a considerate child, disappointing a parent is much more unsettling.

Anger, according to the Talmud, is akin to idolatry. Why? Because anger, like idolatry, is almost always about “me” – as in a parent thinking, “How could they do this to me?” By contrast, if I disappoint a parent, it’s a reflection of the parent’s deep unhappiness with my life decisions. But it’s generally not about the parent – they are not sad for themselves, rather they are sad for me.

In healthy parenting situations, a parent has to communicate that it’s not about their personal hurt, it’s the pain that comes from watching a child harm himself. This is why in parenting it is extremely important to clarify for a child that the negative actions resulting from their misbehavior isn’t punitive, but rather it’s an unavoidable consequence of their misbehavior.

My wife, who is a whole lot smarter than me, innately understood this from the start. When our children were young and they would do something wrong, the resulting unpleasant consequence was always accompanied with the following mantra from her, “I am so sorry that you did that to yourself.” She was communicating that the punishment wasn’t coming from her hurt feelings or insult that she wasn’t obeyed; rather it was just a consequence of their misbehavior.

But toddlers have a very limited capacity for understanding some of the more esoteric emotions like disappointment. I remember the time when my 1½ year-old son ran giggling into the street and while I lunged to grab him, he playfully tried to avoid my grasp.

He didn't yet possess the intellectual capability for me to have a reasonable conversation about the dangers of running into the street, and his giddiness prevented him from even hearing what I was trying to tell him. Instead, I displayed anger, and smacked his hand. Obviously, I wasn’t intending to hurt him – I just wanted to get his attention to the dangers of running into the street and the seriousness of his actions.

In that situation I felt that I did the right thing; the resulting shock dissipated his giddiness and brought our conversation into sharp focus in his mind. I then hugged him and apologized, and we both learned our lesson – he wasn’t to go running into the street, and I had to pay closer attention to what he was doing.

In a similar vein, misfortunes that befall the Jewish people as a whole are generally brought upon us by our own misbehavior, and they are merely the consequences of our actions. To some it is seen as God being angry with them, and that is how God gets their attention to change their behavior. Others are able to draw a direct line between their misbehaviors and the resulting punishment that comes as a consequence of their actions.

Perhaps this is best understood through the joke about the person who jumped off the Empire State Building. As he passed the observation deck on the 86th floor, a man yelled at him, “Hey! How’s it going?” He replied, “So far, so good!”

Utilizing this perspective one might say that it’s not the jumping off the building that killed him, but rather it was the sudden stop. But that is an awfully superficial way to look at it. In reality, we know it’s not the street below that killed him; he was killed by his decision to jump.

In this week’s Torah portion we have reference to a similar idea. At the very end of this week’s Torah reading, we find God commanding the Jewish people to create a gold altar. This altar was used almost exclusively for the daily incense offering known as ketores.

According to the Talmud (Arachin 16a) the incense was to atone for the sin of loshon hora – gossip. On the surface this is hard to understand, the ketores had some sublime aspects to it; the only time the High Priest was permitted in the Holy of Holies was on Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement; the holiest day on the Jewish calendar) when he brought the special incense offering into it. Why was the ketores connected to the sin of loshon hora?

Amazingly, gossip is considered among the most severe of sins. The very same passage in the Talmud on the previous page (Arachin 15b) states that loshon hora is as severe as the three cardinal sins of Judasim 1) murder 2) idolatry 3) illicit sexual relations – put together! Why?

While it’s true that man’s first sin was disobeying God by eating from the Tree of Knowledge, the first instance of gossip precedes even that! In Genesis (3:1-6) we find that the snake lures Chava (“Eve”) to eat from the Tree of Knowledge by telling her that the reason God prohibited man from eating from the Tree is because God knew that if man ate from it, then man would become God-like.

Thus, the first instance of gossip is from the snake in the Garden of Eden and was the first evil act in the world. Gossip had a casual effect on separating man from the Almighty and served to begin to sever man’s connection to the Almighty. Maimonides adds (Yad Deos 7:3) that a person who engages in gossip kills three people: 1) the one who speaks it 2) the one who accepts it 3) the person who is spoken about (interestingly enough – Maimonides rules that the one who accepted the gossip is worse than the one who spoke it).

Similar to the punishment that came from eating from the Tree of Knowledge (that man became mortal and would eventually die) gossip too severs the connection of these three individuals to the Almighty and inexorably leads to their “deaths” – a total disconnect from the Divine.

That is why the ketores – the incense offering – is the perfect antidote. According to Jewish tradition the sense of smell was the only one of the senses unaffected by the sin of eating from the Tree of Knowledge – thus the sense of smell transcends the physical plane and can be used to restore the soul to its proper place. This is why it is called ketores – in Aramaic the word means to tie together. In other words, the ketores serves to “re-tie” our connection to the Almighty.

Tetzaveh, Exodus 27:20 - 30:10

The Torah continues this week with the command to make for use in the Mishkan – the Portable Sanctuary – oil for the Menorah and clothes for the Cohanim – the Priests. It then gives instruction for the consecration of the Cohanim and the Outer Altar. The portion concludes with instructions for constructing the Incense Altar.