During the Holocaust, the Klausenberger Rebbe, Rabbi Yekutiel Halberstam, passed through the gates of hell many times. In the Warsaw Ghetto, the work camps and death marches and the final unspeakable horror, Auschwitz, the rebbe lost his wife and their 11 children in less than a year, yet never sat shiva, refusing to take the time to mourn for his own children while so many thousands were being lost daily.
Throughout his harrowing experiences, he vowed that if he survived, he would build a monument to chesed (loving-kindness) as his response to the inhumanity he witnessed. Today, Laniado Hospital in Netanya is that monument.
It took the rebbe 15 years to raise the funds to build Laniado Hospital. He was determined to show the world the light of Judaism’s model for human behavior after so much darkness. At the hospital’s dedication, asked why a rabbi had chosen to build a hospital instead of a Torah institution, his response was that every hospital is and should be a Torah institution.
Determined to imbue the hospital staff with the Torah’s attitude towards healing, in his dedication speech he explained that the most important factor in healing the sick was a “warm Jewish heart.”
One Rosh Hashana, a woman began to hemorrhage during childbirth. She desperately needed a massive transfusion of an extremely rare blood type. An order went out that every student in the adjacent yeshiva should immediately rush to the hospital to have their blood type tested. Prayers were stopped in the middle of Mussaf on Rosh Hashana, and one of the yeshiva students, himself a nurse, labeled the vials of blood to assist the overwhelmed skeleton nursing staff.
The woman’s sister, also a nurse, wondered if her sister would be alive today in any other hospital.
“When you come to a place of darkness,” the rebbe explained, “you do not chase away the darkness with a broom — you light a candle.”
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What does it mean to build a monument? This week’s portion, Shoftim, offers an interesting point: “Ve’lo’ takim lecha’ matzeva asher saneh’ Hashem Elokecha (And you shall not erect for yourselves a monument which Hashem, your G-d, hates).” Vayikra 16:22
Apparently, it is forbidden to erect a matzeva (a monument); for various reasons we can assume that such a monument is forbidden as form of idolatry.
Rashi explains that we are referring to an altar made of one single stone, and that such an altar is unacceptable even if dedicated to offering sacrifices to Hashem, because it was a Canaanite practice, abhorrent to G-d.
What was so terrible about such an altar, or monument, that made it hateful to G-d?
It seems there is a fundamental difference between a mizbeach (altar), which was a mitzvah to build, and a matzevah (which was abhorrent because it was the practice of the Canaanites to offer sacrifices to their gods on a matzeva-monument).
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How could a simple stone become unacceptable as a vehicle to G-d, because some people misused it? And what difference does it make what the altar is made of?
Even more so, our own Patriarchs made offerings on the same type of matzeva-monument! So why is the same altar used by Avraham now unacceptable to the point of being abhorrent?
Ya’acov, in his sojourn in Beit El, takes the stone on which he lay his head that night and sets it up as a matzeva. It was this matzeva (Bereishit 28:18) on which Ya’acov enters his covenant with G-d that leads to the birth of the Jewish people!
So what is the fundamental difference between the unacceptable matzevah and a mizbeach, the vehicle for our relationship with G-d, itself a mitzvah given the right circumstances (Shemot 20:21-22)?
Two insightful points: First, a matzevah is made of one single stone, whereas amizbeach is made of many stones. (Shemot 20:22; an altar is called a “mizbeach avanim” (or stones, the plural form, rather than e’ven, or stone, in the singular).
Indeed, the matzevah Ya’acov erects in Beit El is exactly that: one stone. And not a hewn stone, but a stone or pillar taken as is, directly from the ground, pure and natural, which fits with the ancient pagan practices of idolatry, which worshipped nature in its purest form.
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Thus, it seems we are meant to develop our relationship with G-d through an altar of many stones, and not a single stone monument as was done in days of yore.
Further, the root of the word matzevah is almost diametrically opposed to the root of mizbeach. Matzevah comes from the root yatzev, or standing (stable), as in the ladder Ya’acov dreams of whose head reaches to the sky, but whose base is “mutzav artzah” (set in the earth) (Bereishit 28:12). Indeed, Hashem in that same dream is described as “Nitzav Alav” or “standing over him.”
The matzevah, therefore, is the altar, which is set and stands alone, rooted in the earth and eternally unchanging; the monument meant to stand forever.
The mizbeach on the other hand, is the receptacle for the zevach (sacrifice or slaughtered animal) and may relate to the similar root zov, or flowing, as in: “Oloteichem ve’zivcheichem, le’ratzon al mizbechi (Their [whole-burnt] offerings and sacrifices for desire [desirous] on my altar)” (Yishayahu 55:7), which perhaps represents the offering as an outpouring of desire before G-d.
In life there is no standing still, we are either moving forwards or backwards. The critical question is where we are, and where we want to be headed.
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It often seems easiest to stand still, take no risks, and let life take charge. But that is not what life is meant to be. It takes a lot of work to grow, to seek change and even start again. This ability is one of the greatest secrets of life.
Too often, we prefer the path of the matzevah, the monument that says we have arrived, and would like to stay where we are. But that is regression and loss of any achieved gains.
Compatibility is primary in a loving relationship. Some couples with difficulties in marriage or dating, think they are just “not compatible.” But one person’s “too different” is another’s “complimenting.” The real issue is if people choose to stagnate, or grow together and learn from each other. If two people were exactly the same, what would they have to offer each other?
The issue is how compatible you feel with your spouse. A couple can make a decision to see each other as compatible; they can choose to look at the world differently. And that is the difference between the matzevah, which might represent the world as it is, an unchanging world with no room for change or growth, and no belief in the purpose of growth. It is the world of the pagan idolater who sees nature as the source of all beauty and reality, unchanging and forever.
But Judaism believes in the world of mizbeach, which is full of the motivation to change and grow, to give and to receive, because nothing is random and I am never stuck in my current reality. I always have the ability to change who and what I am.
All this fits with this portion, the first portion read in Elul leading up to Rosh Hashana, the time of year most associated with our ability to change who we are, and reassess our goals and what we hope to give to the world in the coming year.
Maybe this is reflected as well in that the matzevah is one stone, reflective of only one opinion, and the lack of a need to change because I am the center of my universe and my perspective is fine with me.
The mizbeach, however, is many stones because true change and growth comes from seeing the world in many different ways, and the ability to work together to grow and make the world a better place.
May we be privileged in the coming year, to follow the example of the Klausenberger Rebbe, to work together to build altars of light in the world, instead of pillars of darkness.
Rabbi Binny Freedman is Rosh Yeshiva of Orayta in Jerusalem. A version of this column was previously published.