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Whats Going On?

Last week we only had two days of class and this week we will only have one. Last week we continued onto 35b of Keitzad Mevarchin (the chapter of gemara we are studying this year) which continued to focus on the importance of making b'rakhot. There will be no quizzes or homeworks associated with that material--the students are only responsible to maintain their notes. The next few lines of gemara are tangential to the main focus of our chapter and will be skipped. We will continue with the gemara's ongoing analysis of the mishna we learned the first week of school. The gemara will ask why wine is accorded its own special b'rakha. It will take a few weeks to complete this topic and starting after the Chagim we will continue our pattern of having one written homework due every Thursday and one quiz each Friday. Monday and Tuesday nights students are expected to review material learned in class for 10 to 15 minutes and write down any questions they might have on the material. Students receive extra credit for studying with a partner on the phone.

In the gemara we learned last week the gemara called a person who does not make ab'rakha before eating a compatriot of Yeravam ben Nevat. The following (taken from the Dafyomi Advancement Forum) gives some good background information on Yeravam:
(a) Yarav'am Ben Nevat of the tribe of Efrayim was the first king of the ten tribes of Yisrael after their secession from the kingdom of the Davidic dynasty (subsequently known as Yehudah), as recorded in Melachim I 11:2612:20. Upon the death of Shlomo ha'Melech, Rechav'am, his son, took the counsel of his young advisors to increase the high tax and hard labor that Shlomo had instituted (Melachim I 12:14). As a result, the people rebelled under the leadership of Yarav'am ben Nevat. Only the tribes of Yehudah and Binyamin remained faithful to the House of David. (b) Yarav'am was concerned that his subjects should not be drawn back to the Davidic Kingdom of Yehudah when they went to worship in the Beis ha'Mikdash in its capital, Yerushalayim. In order to prevent the people of the ten tribes from returning to the leadership of the Davidic kings, Yarav'am outlawed the Mitzvah of Aliyah l'Regel, forbidding his people to travel to the Beis ha'Mikdash for Pesach, Shavu'os and Sukos. Instead, he built two other "Temples," the main one in Beis El and a secondary one in Dan, where golden calves were worshipped (ibid. I 12:28). He set up guards on the roads leading to Yerushalayim to prevent anyone from serving HaSh-m by going to the Beis ha'Mikdash. His new religion was introduced with a fictitious holiday in the eighth month (a take-off of the Jewish Sukos). On that occasion, we are told that Yarav'am "ascended the altar that he had made in Beis El on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, in the month that he had fabricated with his imagination, inventing a holiday for the Children of Yisrael -he ascended the altar to burn sacrifices" (Melachim I 12:33). (c) HaSh-m was swift in His wrathful reaction to Yarav'am's outrageous sacrilege: "Just then a prophet came to Beis El from Yehudah... while Yarav'am was standing atop the altar to burn the sacrifice. He called out to the altar by the word of HaSh-m and said, 'Altar, altar! Thus said HaSh-m: Behold, a son will be born to the House of David by the name of Yoshiyahu, and he will slaughter upon you the priests of the Bamos, who burn sacrifices upon you; human bones will be burned upon you!'" (ibid. 13:1-2). (d) The prophet died that same day and was buried in Beis El. His prophecy came true -- more than three centuries later -- when Rechav'am's descendant, King Yoshiyahu, came to power and instituted sweeping reforms, during the course of which many idolatrous shrines and temples were destroyed. When he came to Beis El (which was, of course, in the territory of the Northern Kingdom), we are told: "Also the altar that was in Beis El -- the Bamah that Yarav'am son of Nevat built, with which he caused Yisrael to sin -- also that altar and its Bamah he demolished; he burned the Bamah and ground it up into dust and burned the Asherah. Yoshiyahu then turned and saw the graves that were there on the mountain and he sent men to take the bones out of the graves and burn them upon the altar, defiling it, in accordance with the word of HaSh-m which the prophet, who had prophesied about these events, had proclaimed.

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It is noteworthy that Yeravam kicked off his new national religion with his own version of Sukkot. Throughout Jewish history the celebration of Sukkot has been a focus of national pride. Sukkot reminds us of our long journey in the desertwhen the clouds of glory protected us and we sat in sukkot to protect us from the sun. Our experience in the desert is described in Jeremiah (2:2) as idyllic--when the Jewish people were loyal to Hashem: Go and call out in the ears of Jerusalem, saying: so said the Lord: I remember to you the loving kindness of your youth, the love of your nuptials, your following Me in the desert, in a land not sown. Sukkot is the time of our greatest joy, when we gather our crops and marvel at our national prosperity. Yeravam was only concerned about his own glory and what he might lose by having all of the tribes of Israel, both the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah, unified in Jerusalem at the Beit HaMikdash to give glory to Hashem. He sacrificed the unity of the Jewish people to a self-serving policy aimed at controlling the masses. As Jeremiah laments (Jeremiah, 2:5-7) So says the Lord: What wrong did your forefathers find in Me, that they distanced themselves from Me, and they went after futility and themselves became futile? And they did not say, "Where is the Lord, Who brought us up from the land of Egypt, Who led us in the desert, in a land of plains and pits, in a land of waste and darkness, in a land where no man had passed and where no man had dwelt. And I brought you to a forest land to eat of its produce and its goodness, and you came and contaminated My land, and made My heritage an abomination. Yeravam only saw the produce of the land and its goodness. He did not reflect on the source of that good: Hashem. His only concern was his own greatness. Sukkot was a convenient way for him to maintain his power. By making b'rakhot before we benefit from this world we live in line with the true message of Sukkot--the world is not ours for the taking. We are blessed with bountiful harvests and many other goods, but we must not forget the source of those blessings. When we forget the source of our success we become like Yeravam, only concerned with our own power and ability to control our environment. In the case of Yeravam this led to the corruption of the entire Northern Kingdom to idolatry and countless years of civil war and bloodshed with the Southern Kingdom of Judah. As the Rambam explains (MN, III:43): The moral lessons derived from these holidays [Pesach and Sukkot] is this: man ought to remember his bad days in his days of prosperity. He will thereby be inspired to thank Hashem repeatedly, to lead a modest and humble life.

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