מוסר אויף בראשית 20:7

The sixteenth principle is the rectification of that which is twisted, in as much as one is able to rectify it - as the matter is stated (Jonah 3:10), "God saw what they did, how they were turning back from their evil ways." And it is stated (Jonah 3:8), "Let everyone turn back from his evil ways and from the extortion that is their hands." For with things that are between a man and his fellow - such as robbery and extortion - his iniquity is not atoned until he returns what was robbed. And likewise, if he pained his fellow, harassed him, whitened his face (from embarrassment) or spoke evil speech about him, he is not given atonement until he requests forgiveness from him. And likewise did our Rabbis, may their memory be blessed, say (Bava Kamma 92a) that even though he gave him the money of the embarrassment and the pain of the strike - the pain and the embarrassment of the strike are not forgiven until he requests forgiveness from him, as it is stated (Genesis 20:7), "Therefore, restore the man’s wife - since he is a prophet, he will intercede for you - to save your life."

The paragraph commencing with וכי יגור אתכם גר, "When a stranger (convert) resides amongst you, etc" (19,33), contains an allusion to Abraham, the first convert to Judaism. He also became the first אזרח, natural born citizen, as we know from Psalms 89,1, which, according to all our sources, is a reference to Abraham. The reason the Torah alludes to Abraham as the first convert is to teach us not to accuse others of shortcomings when we ourselves suffer from the same type of shortcoming. To denigrate a stranger is to forget that we ourselves started our career as a nation as strangers. In the words of Baba Metzia 59b: "If one's family tree contains the name of someone who has been legally hanged, he should not even say to a fellow "hang this fish up for me," for the very mention of hanging is a reminder of a blemish in his own family." The Israelites were guilty of idol worship while in Egypt as well as of many abominable practices. How then could they dare remind a convert of his pagan past? Abraham himself chose exile (Shemot Rabbah 59) for his descendants in preference to their having to linger in purgatory. Purgatory comprises both the dimension of dryness and wetness. The dryness expresses itself in the fire, the wetness in a form of snow. As an allusion to this, the Torah here continues with the prohibition to sacrifice to the fire-god Moloch (20,2-5) a warning of what is in store for Esau and his followers. The Torah speaks only of people who sacrifice some of their offspring to Moloch. The author of Semag writes an explanation as a reply to the heretics; however, the true reason for this is analogous to the statement of our sages on Genesis 21,12 where Abraham did not want to expel Hagar and Ishmael. G–d told him there that his principal heirs would be "part of Isaac." Just as the Torah referred in that case to "part of Isaac," so here too the syntax of the Torah speaks of the likely event, i.e. that someone offers some of his offspring as a sacrifice to that deity. Just as only part of Isaac's descendants turned away from the Abrahamitic tradition, i.e. Esau, so the Torah, by speaking of "some offspring being offered to the Moloch," reassures us that it is inconceivable that a descendant of Isaac would sacrifice all of his offspring to such a deity. The Torah continues in 20,7: והתקדשתם. This is a reference to Jacob. He had succeeded in attaining sanctity of his body.

The Baal HaTurim draws our attention to the opening verse of our פרשה, and compares it with the last verse in the previous פרשה which speaks about performance of the commandments. He arrives at the conclusion that whereas the commandment has to be performed in this life, the reward for its performance, עקב, will have to await the Hereafter. Whereas the Baal HaTurim arrives at the same conclusion as the Talmud in Eruvin 22a where the word היום is stressed as opposed to the מחר, i.e. the Hereafter, when the reward is to be collected, he derives it from a different nuance in the text of the Torah. The reason may be that the Baal HaTurim found some problems with the exegesis of the Talmud. Had the interpretation of the Talmud been correct then all the Torah had to write in 7,11 is the whole verse without the word לעשותם at the end Furthermore, the Torah could simply have written לעשות instead of לעשותם. It seems therefore that the suffix ם is to contrast the difference between לעשותם and לעשותך. The difference between these two wordings is an allusion to the motivation which governs performance of the commandments. The Torah does not want us to perform the commandments for the sake of the eventual reward but לעשותם, for their own sake, i.e. לשמה. The fact that a new פרשה begins with the reference to the reward emphasizes that the reward is a corollary, a consequence of performance, but is not in a relationship of על מנת, "on condition that," to our performance of the מצוה. The humility implied in performance of the commandments on the basis of לעשותם (as we have explained the word) is further underlined by the Torah in 7,7: לא מרובכם מכל העמים .. כי אתם המעט מכל העמים, "It is not because you are the most numerous of all the nations that G–d took a liking to you….indeed you are the smallest of all the nations, etc." There was no need for the Torah to write that we are not the most numerous nation and to follow it up with the statement that we are the smallest nation. The last statement would have sufficed. The Talmud Chulin 89a concludes from this that the Torah's choice of language means that G–d likes us because, even when we are granted importance by G–d, we do not make this a pretext to become haughty, but we deprecate ourselves, behave humbly and modestly, ממעטים את עצמכם. This is reinforced in the lesson that Rabbi Levitas in Avot 4,4 urges us to heed: מאד מאד הוה שפל רוח, "Be exceedingly humble in spirit."