MISHPATIM

"Every illness has a spiritual cause. Therefore, it is possible that a person can be physically cured of some illness by virtue of some merit. However, the spiritual cause of the illness will not be cured. This is called "a cure without salvation." He will likely get sick again because of the spiritual cause.

"Consequently, in our prayer we ask, `Heal us, G-d, and we will be healed; save us, and we will be saved....' In other words, together with the physical cure we also want the spiritual salvation."

In the continuation of the prayer we say, "...Because You are G-d, the King, the faithful and merciful healer."

It could be asked how is this praise distinctive of G-d? A doctor of flesh and blood can also be faithful and merciful.

However, a human doctor cannot be a faithful healer and merciful at the same time. If he needs, for example, to perform surgery upon the patient, then the patient will be afflicted at the time of surgery with great pain and suffering. On the other hand, if the doctor has mercy upon the patient at that time, he would not be performing his job faithfully. If he concentrates upon the benefit of the patient, then he must disregard the suffering and pain of the person who needs the cure.

However, G-d can perform both activities at the same time!

(Tosefet Brachah, by the author of Torah Temimah)

STORIES OF OUR SAGES

One of the students of Rabbi Natan Tzevi Finkel (the Slobodka Zeide) told the following story.

Shortly after I married, Rabbi Natan Tzevi asked me if I was helping my wife in the house on the eve of Shabbat during her preparations for the holy day?

I answered that I certainly was! Even our sages were accustomed to help their wives prepare for the shabbat, as it is recorded in the Talmud (Shabbat 119). If their was an animal head to be cooked, Rav would himself blacken it first. Raba would salt fish, Rav Huna would light candles, Rav Papa would arrange the wicks, Rav Chisda would cut cabbage, Rabbah and Rav Yosef would cut wood.

Rav Natan Tzevi smiled and said, "My tzadik. Is honoring the Shabbat or emulating Chazal the only reason for helping your wife? There is a specific commandment in the Torah: `...Assist him." If the Torah obligates a person to behave in this way regarding an enemy, then certainly it is obligatory to help your wife, and especially since a man has special responsibilities towards his wife. And certainly these responsibilities are obligatory on erev shabbat when she has so much work to do preparing for it, and she is tired, and she must hurry to make it in time for candle lighting. Is there a more important mitzvah between man and man than this?"

Rabbi Natan Tzevi took that opportunity to emphasize that most people mistakenly think the main category of mitzvot are those between man and G-d; and thus they deprecate the mitzvot between man and man.

Heaven is my witness that I was very sorrowful whenever I saw people quarrelling, and I was unable to make peace between them. I have also felt very bad about the troubles of the poor, the destitute and the sick.

I have also had great sorrow upon seeing breaches appear among our people. In many things the eruption is greater than what has remained steadfast, and the great rabbis of Israel do not have the ability to close the breaches because people do not listen to them. This is especially disturbing when it happens in matters pertaining to the highest things in the world.

One of these is the cruelty that many parents adopt towards their children. They cause them evil in this world and in the world of truth by denying their children the gift of free choice, removing them entirely from the study of Torah in order to teach them secular studies alone. Thus, the children become bad, sinners, and they do whatever they want openly as well as secretly.

These foolish parents do not consider what is the purpose for which a person labors all the days of his life. He does not rest day or night, and he forces himself to go without many things -- all for the sake of his children. And now his children go on a way whose end is ashes; all his labor becomes vanity and emptiness.

Did Israel not know, were the people of G-d not given the opportunity to consider? What bitterness these parents will find when they come to the world of truth and the heavenly court asks them if they read the "shema" every day? They will answer, "yes." Then they will be asked, "Did you not read there in the first and second chapters, `Review them with your children...,' and `Teach them to your children....' Why did you not fulfill these words that your mouth was uttering?"

Woe to them for that shame! Woe to them over their embarrassment at that time in the world of truth. It is terrrible and frightening to see thousands and myriads of people who do not consider their end, at which time they will certainly regret it, but it will be a time when regret will not help them, and they will not be able to fix what was deformed.

And woe to the eyes that have seen this, and woe to the ears that have heard about this: how the holy faith has weakened among thousands of people. They do not believe in all this because of the influence of the many false intellectuals, who themselves together with their ideas are built of nothing. Although they and their inquiries are vanity, their words nevertheless enter into the hearts of thousands of people, taking them for a ride, detering them from the holy Torah and G-d's mitzvot. Everybody does whatever he thinks is right in his own mind, and the true sages of the generation do not have the power to stop these breaches.

Concerning this thing, and others like it, the blood of my heart runs out like a river. I have always sought heavenly mercy for it, my limbs trembling, prostrated and bowed with a torn heart. I pour out my heart. May he close the breaches of our people, and send us the righteous redeemer. Then the spirit of G-d will be poured forth upon all flesh, to know Him, from the greatest to the smallest.

(Divrei Emet)