Speech with Rabbi Akiva Zweig [Sefer Vayikra Launch Event Boca Raton, Florida]

Good morning, everyone. I'm sure we're all happy to invite Elad to move to Florida along with everyone else full time. It's a privilege to be here. A very special thank you to Elad Danino for the incredible work that he's doing at bolstering this very important mitzvah. It's also amazing to see when a Jew takes a calling, a mission seriously, what can be accomplished. Here we are just a week and a half before Pesach and everybody's spending time to celebrate and to dedicate themselves to this mitzvah. And it's amazing what one Jew can accomplish. Really, it's an incredible feat. But it needs to be a lesson for all of us because one thing that we all need now is more Jews doing more great things in order to help our nation achieve the ultimate redemption that we're all trying to achieve. Very special thank you to Rabbi Goldberg and Rabbi Moskowitz. Such an incredible not only a shul, but BRS is a makom Torah and that's an amazing accomplishment for this community. I have a special hakarat hatov for this community. Um I know Rabbi Rabovsky for a very long time and I don't know everyone else as well, but uh baruch Hashem, you all know that you're in great hands and it's a privilege to partner with such great community leaders for such a great initiative. And hopefully we'll all do more great things together. So a couple of questions I would like to share related to Pesach, but for that first about shnayim mikra v'echad targum. I don't know if anybody's thought about it. I imagine Elad has done a lot of thinking about this mitzvah. Maybe he had this question. But a question that's bothered me all the years is why do we do twice the pasuk and only once the translation? Why don't we do three times the pasuk? Why don't we do one time the pasuk? If the idea is to be familiar with the Torah, let's read it once or let's do it twice, or maybe we should do the pasuk twice and the targum twice. It's a very interesting evolution that we specifically do the pasuk twice and we do the translation only once. If we're really supposed to know it, maybe we should do the translation twice. Especially there's a whole question, do you do it with English? Do you do it in in a different language you understand? You do it with the targum? You do it with Rashi? So, let's let's maybe do three translations. What's the idea of twice the pasuk and once the translation? So, I know it's doesn't seem like it relates to Pesach, but I believe it does. So, we call this the holiday of Pesach, and in the Torah it's also called Hag Hamatzot, the holidays of matzos. Now, we know that matza is a big deal, but it's a little bit hard to figure out why matza is such a big deal. Yes, we left quickly. Even that's a little bit hard to understand. They could have done it seemingly a little bit of planning. We could have had more time to prepare bread that would rise. That's hard to understand. But the fact that it's such a major theme of the holiday, especially by the way when you consider that the only mitzvah d'oraita to eat matza that we're obligated to eat matza according to all opinions is only the first night. Everything else is really about don't eat chametz. But the mitzvah is only the first night. There is a shita of the Gaon that if you eat matza the rest of the day, so you fulfill the mitzvah of matza. But really? We call the whole Pesach matzot, and we don't have the mitzvah except for the first night. So, why is matza such an important theme? I mean, after all it's crackers. What's it about? So, another very hard question that I think is overlooked is that what we read on last week when we read Parshat Hachodesh, and what we read about actually on the first day of Pesach is that the Jewish people are told to bring a korban Pesach and they're told to pull back their hands from doing idolatry. Don't do idolatry. Instead, sacrifice the God of the Egyptians, that is a lamb. It's also the constellation of the month. Now, that means that the Jewish people in Egypt at this time were doing avodah zarah. But, this mitzvah in the Torah comes after the ninth plague, after choshech. So, that means everybody seen nine plagues where only the Egyptians are getting obliterated. Nothing's happening to the Jews and they're still doing avodah zarah. They're still worshipping idols? And many of us are familiar with the teaching that 4/5 of the Jews died in the plague of darkness. And they're still doing avodah zarah. We're talking about the 1/5 now, right? We're talking about the chamushim, the 1/5 that left Egypt. They're being told erev Pesach, stop doing avodah zarah. Slaughter the Egyptian God? We're talking about the good Jews are doing avodah zarah after nine plagues? It seems very difficult to understand. And Rashi tells us that they needed as a special reward to do the mitzvah of milah, circumcision, as well as the mitzvah of the carbon Pesach in order to have some merit to get redeemed. That's great that they did that mitzvah, but why were they doing avodah zarah? Rashi also asks one more very interesting question and with this we'll begin. Rashi says that this year in Egypt was the only time that the Jews were commanded to prepare the Pesach by taking a lamb four days before Pesach came, on the 10th of the month. And every day they needed to look at that lamb according to the chazal, they tied it to the bedpost. They examined it every day for four days. I don't know if it was once a day, twice a day, I don't know. But, Rashi asks, why is this the only Pesach in history that they needed a 4-day preparation for the animal? Every other year, you go to the Pesach market on the 14th of Nissan in the morning, you buy your lamb, and you slaughter it, then you do a carbon Pesach. That's Rashi's question. And the truth is, if you read Rashi, he doesn't really answer the question. This is the Rashi that says that they had no merit to get redeemed, so Hashem gave them two mitzvot. But he really does not answer the question why this Pesach is different, even though he asks the question. He doesn't actually answer the question, but I'd like to suggest to you what I think Rashi is answering, and it's very interesting to me that he doesn't answer the question, and I think it goes back to our theme, Mishnayot Mikra. And it is as follows. What idolatry really means at the very basic level is Hashem is not the creator of the world. There are other forces, or there are no forces, there is no creator. That's idolatry at the most basic level. But there's another form of idolatry that the Jews in Egypt were dealing with, the Jews of today are dealing with, and that is the idolatry that says, "We don't have to think about everything. We can accept the status quo." Especially if society says it's true. And we all fall victim to that. We fall victim to thinking that sports are important because it's such a major industry, and the media talks about it in every broadcast. We all have a tendency to wonder, you know, is it really necessary to go to war with Iran? Because look how many people are saying it wasn't necessary. Hopefully, most of us know that it is necessary. But we fall victim to the ideologies of the time, and we don't necessarily examine it. Of course, technology and smartphones, we all fall victim, and well, this is what everybody's doing, so I guess we need to join the crowd. And that is a form of idolatry as well because it interferes in pursuing what is real truth, examining carefully issues, knowing how to deal with psychological issues, not what the society tells us, but what the Torah tells us. Knowing how to raise children, not the way society tells us, but what the Torah tells us. And it's very difficult to get used to always thinking. In fact, people like to make fun of Jews, you know, and all the questions that they have in the Talmud. You know, is this what you spend all day thinking about? And the answer is we actually spend all day learning how to think. Which is why we call it learning how to learn to read a page of the Talmud. Learning how to think is the ultimate rejection of idolatry. Maybe somebody can explain to me why the countries that have been now attacked double, triple, quadruple the amount that Israel has been attacked is not going to war with Iran. Maybe somebody can explain that to me. What are they thinking? The answer is they don't really want to think. They don't want to really confront. So, they're not willing to deal with reality. Not dealing with reality is exactly what idolatry really is about. And even the Jews in Egypt were struggling to deal with idolatry, meaning let's fully disengage from the Egyptian ways of thinking. Let's not think that in order to have the salvation that we need, we need to think about the power of the agriculture because the ram was the agrarian god of the time. It's hard not to think that the stock market is really dictating our future. Everybody agree? It's hard not to think about that. We're worried about that. We also want to know what's going to be with the stock market. All these little ways that we forget to truly look for truth and attribute that back to Hashem is part of idolatry. Even the Jews of Egypt were dealing with that at that time. You know what matzah and chametz says? Chametz says, "If you just let the thing go, it's going to be more delicious. It's going to rise. It's going to taste better. Let me just let it go." And most of the times in life, we're letting it go. We're kicking the can down the road. Matzah says, "No, you need to intervene. Within 18 minutes, it needs to be baked and done." Because you really need to get involved in understanding what's happening in your world. What do you let go and what do you not let go? There are some things to let go, but you have to at least think of that and decide to let it go. You don't just assume it's okay. You have to think very deeply. Is this the right move or is this that not the right move? Say "Chazal" that when we guard the matzot, what we're really doing is guarding the mitzvot. Because that's what a mitzvah is. A mitzvah is our opportunity that Hashem says, "Engage in thinking. Look at the ingredients. Is it really kosher? Is it really good for you?" By the way, you might want to check for health aspects, too. Engage. Mitzvot are Can you do this? Can you not do this? You have to think. And the sign of a person that really recognizes the existence of Hashem is the sign of the person that knows that thinking about life, thinking about what is, thinking about the future is what existence is all about. It's not just a ride that we're on and we let things go and we hope things turn out well and we try to navigate, you know, systems and powers. That's not what Hashem is all about. So, we have this beautiful mitzvah that's called "Shnayim Mikra v'Echad Targum". The most important thing about learning Torah is that you need to know you have to go back to the pasuk all the time. You have to go back to the Rashi, too. Rashi asks the question, "Why four days this time and not other times?" You know what the reason is? Because this was getting the Jews used to examining something. How many Jews would say, "Oh, no, I'll just wait till the 12th. I'll just wait till the I'll just wait till the 14th. Won't be a problem. I'll get a sheep. There are plenty of sheep. And then you wake up on the 14th, you take the sheep and you say, "I don't really have time to check it." And you go slaughter it. That's not Judaism because Jews have to be prepared. We have to think. Whether it's the first day, the 10th, the 11th, the 12th, any of those days, we have to be carefully examining. So, Rashi's telling us that the reason that that year they needed 4 days is because they had to get used to examining. They had to get used to thinking. That's not an easy thing to do. So, the question I then get asked is, "What about the future years?" Well, that's why we have the Torah. See, the first year we didn't have the Torah. After that, we have the Torah. And the law of the Torah is read the pasuk twice, make sure that you at least have an understanding, but read it twice because you have to go back to the pasuk and see what else could it mean. What else is the Torah teaching us? So, we read it twice and we translate it once not only to get familiarity with what the pasuk is saying, but to get used to the process of thinking, understanding, and then re-examining. So, I would argue that this mitzvah is very much in line with what Pesach is all about. And hopefully, by engaging in this process, we'll continue to do the amazing things that Jews do. What's happened in these last 6 months, in these last almost 3 years since October 7th, is astonishing. But it's not astonishing if you understand not only that Hashem exists and that Hashem wants the Jewish people to exist. And Hashem will always help the Jewish people to exist. The whole door of a door, that's all true. But he depends on our thinking, on our creativity, our ingenuity, our commitment to looking for truth, to examining what the Torah has to say, and and applying it. And that's true about the cross-section of all Jews that have the tradition of thinking and that Hashem will unify in what Jews do best. Thinking again about what the Torah says, thinking again about what can we do to innovate in creation, thinking again about what like can we not only celebrate, rededicate, and then become even greater and merit the ultimate redemption. Chag sameach, everyone.