Chochmas Nashim: Toldos: Eruvin O' Eruvin

Chochmas Nashim: Toldos: Eruvin, O’ Eruvin,

Our Eruvin, Our Heroes

By: Suri Stern

As we wind down Masechet Eruvin in Daf Yomi land, there is a lot to ponder.

So much minutae about eruvs, who knew?

I have been living in the Five Towns long enough to remember a time when there wasn’t an eruv, where people stuck their keys and tissues and, gulp, lipsticks where there was room on their bodies. The eruv is now maintained by the Yeshiva Gedola of the Five Towns, I believe. The website is Fivetownseruv.org. As you read this, please click on the button and donate. They are all volunteers, they go out in all kinds of weather, and take their mission seriously enough that they’ll work until minutes before Shabbos, if the eruv is down, to get it functioning for the convenience of our entire Jewish community. Please donate, here. The website has the eruv map and whether the eruv is functioning.

To get through this masechet, it was necessary/very helpful, to learn the gemara with hundreds of pictures which elucidated the different scenarios set forth in the gemara. One wonders how it was studied without these study guides, and how the gemara itself was drafted with such complexities, about an eruv…

See how important it is for a community to be together, to eat together, to commune together, to be able to bring food and communal wants and needs to a common area. The Eruv permits women to more readily come to shul, with their strollers in tow. We see on my side of town, more children going to shul with scooters. More men shlepping cholent pots to their neighbors for Shabbos. Ahh the community…before the pandemic.

How interesting that we learn about uniting via an eruv, during a period of time where there are strict laws about gatherings. It took over 100 pages of gemara to figure out how we Jews could commune on a Shabbos, and now we have laws that limit us to 10. I keep wondering what the message is for each of us and the community at large. The pandemic has taken our natures as Jews, and flipped it.

So too in this week’s Torah portion together with prior Torah portions, we experience a flip in nature, specifically in our forefathers, Abraham and Jacob. Abraham is known for his chesed, kindness and acts of charity. G-d asks him to flip his nature to show his dedication to G-d. How?

By taking his son Isaac and binding him as a sacrifice for G-d, and act of murder in cold blood, for the sake of G-d.

We learn that it is Jacob’s nature to be truthful/emes. In this torah portion, Rivka understands that it is Jacob who is supposed to continue the Jewish nation and should receive Isaac’s blessing. Rivka insists that Jacob go through machinations to trick his father into thinking that he is Esau, so that he may receive Isaac’s blessings for the future. He did so, to honor his mother, who had prophecy that Jacob would inherit the Jewish heritage.

Yaakov had an אלי it was the perfection of the middah of emes. Yaakov was commanded to give up that middah for the benefit of Klal Yisrael.
There is a story told of Rav Reuven Grozofsky ztl Rosh Yeshiva of Torah Vodaath who when he was older would daven in his room in the yeshiva and varying bachurim would take turns to help him to wash his hands after he put on his tefillin. One time Rav Yisrael Belsky ztl who was very young at the time, begged the hanhalah to give him a chance to serve the Rosh Yeshivah. His day came and he was in the room for an unusual long time and the hanhallah started to knock at the door. He finally came out and they inquired what took him so long? He explained that because of his awe of the Rosh Yeshiva he accidently spilled some water on the Rosh Yeshiva and being as sensitive as he was the Rosh Yeshiva took about fifteen minutes to be machazeik him because the Rosh realized his traumatic embarrassment. They immediately called him a liar. What you are telling us cannot be true because everyone knows that the Rosh Yeshiva from the time of his bar mitzvah never spoke a word while wearing his tefillin. When they verified the story to their astonishment they found it to be true. The Rosh Yeshiva remarked “How can you not comfort someone who became embarrassed because of me”.
The Rosh Yeshiva’s אלי was his prize trophy to Hashem of never talking while wearing tefillin since Bar Mitzvah age. Yet he was willing to sacrifice his impeccable historic record for the sake of relieving another Yid’s pain. I would venture to say that surrendering his trophy brought greater nachas to Hashem than acquiring the trophy over many decades. Rest assured, he did not lose his perfect score by doing so. Rather, he enhanced it by sacrificing his tefillin perfection for another Yid. (Rabbi Shmuel Brazil)

The details of a nature. We have laws which state we cannot carry from our homes to the public domain. The rabbis understood that it was important for Jews to commune together on Shabbos, and went to great lengths to find ways to permit this to happen. Yes, we have wonderful middos/attributes that are important to cultivate in ourselves. It must always be tempered by the question, what does G-d want of us.

Have a good Shabbos.

-Suri