Meshech Chochma Defends Nachmanides

Re'eh includes a command by Moses to settle the land of Israel, Deuteronomy 11:31:

 לא. כי אתם, עוברים את-הירדן, לבוא לרשת את-הארץ, אשר-יהוה אלוהיכם נותן לכם; וירשתם אותה, וישבתם-בה.  לב ושמרתם לעשות, את כל-החוקים ואת-המשפטים, אשר אנוכי נותן לפניכם, היום.

11:31 [You must do this] because you are crossing the Jordan to come to the land which God your Lord is giving you and occupy it. When you have occupied it and you live there,

11:32 you must carefully keep all the rules and laws that I am prescribing to you today.

Nachmanides sees here an actual mitvah to settle the land of Israel, included as one of the 613, which he writes in a commentary to Maimonides' Book of Mitzvot called "The Mitzvot That Maimonides Forgot".

I included the Aryeh Kaplan translation because I think that Rabbi Kaplan did not agree with Nachmanides. The straight translation of the end of verse 31 is "And you shall inherit it, and settle it." Yet, Rabbi Kaplan formulates it as a first clause towards the exhortation to uphold the commandments which follows in the next verse, instead of a command on its own. This indicates he eschewed Nachmanides for other interpretations. Aryeh Kaplan, the anti-zionist? I don't know.

The mid-late 1800's was a tumultuous time for Jews in Europe, with many being swept up with a fervor for nationalism, and very often that translated to a type of pre-Zionist movement. One of the reactions of rabbis of the time was to oppose such change with a passion, for various reasons. Many people don't know that in Rabbi Teichtal's second preface of Em Habanim Semeicha, written during the Holocaust, he blames the greatest sages of his day of only opposing Zionism because they feared their loss of power and prestige in the community, a strong accusation.

Along with that, were defenders of this pre-Zioist movement, such as Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalisher, who used sources such as Nachmanides to support the idea of going back to Israel. It is only natural then, that opponents of the movement would also have to question Nachmanides, and I believe that happened particularly in the 1800's and early 1900's. One such attack on Nachmanides is reported by the Meshech Chochma at the beginning of Re'eh:

וירשתם אותה וישבתם בה. דעת הרמב״ן דישיבת ארץ ישראל בעשה. והרד״מ בחדושיו תמה ממה דדריש ר׳ שמלאי במסכת סוטה מ״מ נתאוה משה לכנוס לא״י כו׳ הרבה מצות כו׳ ואין מתקיים אלא בארץ כו׳. ומאי מקשה הלא ישיבת ארץ ישראל עשה היא בעצמה עיי״ש. ולק״מ׳ דלפי זה בני גד וב״ר לא קיימו מצות ישיבת ארץ ישראל׳ ובודאי אינו כן׳ דקימו גם בארץ סיחון ועוג מצוה זו׳ שזהו האמורי מה שאמר והורשתם את הארץ וישבתם בה׳ וא״כ מדוע היה משה מבקש לכנוס לארץ׳ ודאי כל זמן שלא היה כבוש וחלוק בארץ היו מקיימים בזה ישיבת ארץ ישראל. וזה פשיט:

 Apparently the "Radam", whose last name is perhaps "Meisels" (I have seen a version that says Meisels I believe), questioned how Nachmanides included the mitzva to settle Israel, if there is an agadata in Sotah 14a that might imply that it is not a mitzva. Let's see it inside:

 דרש רבי שמלאי מפני מה נתאוה משה רבינו ליכנס לא"י וכי לאכול מפריה הוא צריך או לשבוע מטובה הוא צריך אלא כך אמר משה הרבה מצות נצטוו ישראל ואין מתקיימין אלא בא"י אכנס אני לארץ כדי שיתקיימו כולן על ידי אמר לו הקב"ה כלום אתה מבקש אלא לקבל שכר מעלה אני עליך כאילו עשיתם שנאמר

R. Simlai expounded: Why did Moses our teacher yearn to enter the land of Israel? Did he want to eat of its fruits or satisfy himself from its bounty? But thus spake Moses, 'Many precepts were commanded to Israel which can only be fulfilled in the land of Israel. I wish to enter the land so that they may all be fulfilled by me'. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to him, 'Is it only to receive the reward [for obeying the commandments] that thou seekest? I ascribe it to thee as if thou didst perform them'; as it is said... 

 According to R. Simlai, the Radam asks, it is curious that Moses wanted to enter the land of Israel, and surely it was not just for the food. The Radam doesn't understand why this is even a question for R. Simlai if there is a mitzva on its own to live in Israel. That would be the obvious reason why Moses wanted to go to Israel!

But Meshech Chochma rejects this question on Nachmanides. Radam implies that the tribes of Gad and Reuben never fulfilled their own commandment to inherit the land of Sichon and Og as part of settling Israel, which is surely not true according to Numbers 33:53.

So, then, why didn't Moses want to go in to Israel specifically because of the mitzva of settling Israel, but because of the many other commandments to perform there? This is the straight translation of the Meshech Chochma's answer:

Certainly so long as they had not yet conquered and divided the land, they had fulfilled the settling of Israel through this. This is obvious.

 I wish I had the edition here that might have explained this line a little better, but my understanding is that all of Israel, including Moses, had fulfilled the mitzva of living in Israel while standing at the Jordan, about to go in, when they conquered the lands of Sichon and Og. Thus, Moses did not desire to go in for that commandment, but for the rest of the commandments.

This interpretation must be wrong, because then R. Simlai's derasha makes no sense. If they fulfilled the commandment of living in Israel on the other side of the Jordan, then why didn't Moses simply perform all the mitzvot he wanted right there? How could that part of land be enough to fulfill the mitzva of living in Israel, but not enough to have the rest of the mitzvot count while standing there? Perhaps the Meshech Chochma thinks that there was no mitzvot for Moses to do on that side of the Jordan, perhaps no food to do tithes on, etc? I don't know. If someone has an idea of how to understand that answer, please let me know. Certainly this author seems to understand it my way.

That said, I have three possible alternative answers that I believe are more obvious than the Meshech Chochma's answer.

Firstly, Moses wasn't commanded to enter Israel, only the people were. In fact, he was commanded not to enter. So he simply did not have the mitzva of settling Israel. The same God that told the people that there is a mitzva to live in Israel (according to Nachmanides), also told Moses not to enter. Not a contradiction. That's why he would never have wanted to go in for the mitzva.

Secondly, the question of R. Simlai is not why he wanted to go into Israel, but why he only wanted to go in for a short time. The line in Vaeschanan, Deuteronomy 3:25, says that Moses asked to go into the land just to "see" it. This indicates he pleaded only for a short viewing of it. Just a short time, to eat its fruits? Obviously not, it must be that he wanted just a bit of time to perform the mitzvot such as making a beracha and wearing sandals on Tisha B'Av (just kidding). But this answer seems to be in the Artscroll Gemara on this piece in Sotah, if I remember correctly.

Lastly, Moses says he pleaded with the Lord to enter into Israel. Just to perform one mitzva, he had a "taava" (as the Talmud put it) to enter Israel, asks R. Simlai? It seems more likely that he wanted more than just one mitzva to perform, he wanted all the mitzvot. That's something worth begging God for, enough so that God responds with "Enough!"

I think my first answer is most correct, but the last two seem possible as well.

The Nature of Midrash and Ben Azzai's Comment on Eichah

I started going through Midrash Eichah Rabbah, in preparation for Tisha B'Av, and I found something very interesting: (Eichah Rabbah 1:1)

שאלו את בן עזאי, אמרו לו: רבנו, דרוש לנו דבר אחד ממגילת קינות, אמר להם: לא גלו ישראל עד שכפרו ביחידו של עולם, ובמילה שניתנה לעשרים דורות, ובעשרת הדברות, ובחמישה ספרי תורה, מנין" איכה". 

They asked Ben Azzai, saying to him: Our teacher, homileticize something for us from the Lamentation Scroll. He said to them: Israel was not exiled until they denied His unity, and of circumcision that had been given for 20 generations, and of the 10 commandments, and of the 5 books of the Torah, the numbers in "Eichah" (Alef - Yud - Chaf - Heh = 1-10-20-5). 

It is worth noting at the outset that Ben Azzai is known as a master darshan. See Genesis Rabbah 5:4, where he is explicitly called a darshan, and see Leviticus Rabbah 10:16. So it is no surprise that he is asked to make a derasha.

But doesn't this one seem so trivial? A play on the first word of Lamentations? They ask him for derasha from anywhere, and he picks the first word, like a lazy rabbis on Friday night who desperately needs a sermon for the next morning? I kid, but the sentiment is real. What's the message here?

For that, there's an interesting suggestion taken from the Jewish Encyclopedia on Wikipedia:

 Ben Azzai's symbolic interpretation of the first word of Lamentations (איכה) is also polemical and probably directed against Pauline Christianity. He holds that in the numerical value of the four letters of this word is indicated that the Israelites did not go into exile until after they had denied the one God (א), the ten commandments (י), the law of circumcision, given to the twentieth generation after Adam (כ), and the five (ה) books of the Torah (Lam. R. i.1).

I'm guessing that this is supposed to match up with Christianity's denial of God's unity through corporealism and the trinity, Christianity's denial of the importance of circumcision, and the replacement of the Old Testament with the New Testament. The ten commandments one has me puzzled, as I'm not sure if there is a denial of the ten commandments in early Christianity... Anyway, if true, Ben Azzai is claiming that Christianity caused Judaism's downfall, a very interesting claim if he was indeed claiming that.

The Eitz Yosef suggests a more compelling answer (in my mind at least) as to what it means. He suggests that Ben Azzai was saying that the writer of Eichah was using the word on two levels - its normal way by asking a question, but also within the question is its own answer. "Eichah does the city lie deserted?" - "By doing Eichah (denying God, the Pentatuech, etc) does the city lie deserted." A lesson to be learned that it is only when we phrase our questions wisely will we find solutions to the problems we have, very often within the questions themselves.

However, I am using this medrash as an example of something that on its own, without some interpretation and wiggling, seems almost "cute", a medrash you teach to kids in school if it weren't summer. It is important that when we come across midrashim like these, we realize that the concept exists according to many medieval sages (although definitely not all, including Rashi and Tosafot, but see here for an interesting list of sources) that homiletics are as the Ramban said, "sermons", nice little message-packed pieces that can be accepted or not, depending whether you like the message or not. What I mean is that we can simply look at this as if Ben Azzai was asked to make a drash, and he made up a cute one. It was not a tradition, or an in-depth analysis of the word "eichah". It was something that he anchored into a word from a verse, to make a statement, a message.

Getting back to what I said about the Ramban: The Ramban literally calls them sermons, like, the actual transliteration of sermons in Hebrew, in his response to Pablo Christiani in Vikuach HaRamban. Pablo asked if he believed in the aggadic statement that the Messiah was born on the day the Temple was destroyed, and the Ramban responded by classifying the different types of books a Jew learns. "האחד הוא הבב"ליה, וכולנו מאמינים בו אמונה שלמה." - "One is the Bible, which we all believe in completely. "והשני הוא נקרא תלמוד, והוא פירוש למצוות התורה, כי בתורה יש תרי"ג מצוות ואין בה אחת שלא נתפרשה בתלמוד, ואנחנו מאמינים בו בפירוש המצות. " - "The second is called Talmud, which explains the mitzvot of the Torah, for the Torah has 613 mitzvot and there is not a single one that isn't explained in the Talmud, and we believe in that in terms of the explanations of the mitzvot." Lastly, there is:

עוד יש לנו ספר שלישי הנקרא מדרש, רוצה לומר שרמ"וניש. כמו שאם יעמוד ההגמון ויעשה שרמון (אחד), ואחד מן השומעים היה טוב בעיניו וכתבו. וזה הספר מי שיאמין בו טוב, ומי שלא יאמין בו לא יזיק

We have a third book, called midrash, meaning "sermons". Just like if a bishop would get up and makes a sermon, and one of the listeners likes it and writes it down. If someone believes in this book, good, but if not, no harm.

This is an important line. It's possible that the Ramban doesn't actually believe it, and was just using it as a debating tactic, but that's difficult because he responds according to those who believe in it anyway. The salient point is that sometimes midrash aggada is making a very profound point about the text. But we are free to reject it, if we prefer. We find this in many places in the gaonim, see also Mavo Letalmud in the back of Gemara Berachot by Rabbi Shmuel Hanagid on "hagaddah", which denied the importance of believing in aggadata that had nothing to do with understanding the mitzvot.

Another source pointed out by my rebbe, Rabbi Jeremy Weider, is found in the Talmud Sanhedrin 106b:

Mar the son of Ravina said to his son: “Regarding all of them (the individuals mentioned in Sanhedrin 10:1), do not try to expound (to place them in a more negative light), except in the case of Bilaam, where whatever you can find (against him), expound."

What we see is that the rabbis understood derasha as, partly, coming up with new ideas and theories on the characters in the Bible, something that we search for in understanding them In Bilaam's case, we should look to pile on him more and more bad character traits. Perhaps, then, the rabbis of the Talmud knew full well the nature of midrash aggada, and somehow that was lost from us.

Ben Azzai may have had very deep and important message here. And it is equally important for us to spend time attempting to unravel it. But we shouldn't think it an attack on Rabbinic Judaism to ignore or dismiss a medrash that we feel is just "cute". And so, to someone like that, Ben Azzai made a nice little drasha, and nothing more.