Rabbi's Corner

In this week’s parashah, Parashat Shelach, we read the following: “And HaShem said to Moshe, saying: ‘Speak to B’Nei Yisrael, and say to them that they shall make for themselves tzitzit [fringes] on the corners of their garments for their generations; and they shall put on the corner of the tzitzit a p’teel teichelet [thread of blue]. And it shall be for you tzitzit, and you shall look at it; and you shall remember all the mitzvot [commandments] of Hashem, and you shall do them; and you shall not wander after your heart and after your eyes because you stray after them. In order that you will remember and you will do all My commandments; and you will be holy to your G-d.’” (BeMidbar 15:37-40)

How powerful is the mitzvah of wearing tzitzit? The fulfillment of this mitzvah literally has the power to change lives. Consider the following story found in Masekhet Menachot 44a of the Talmud Bavli:

There was a certain young student who kept the mitzvah of tzitzit without fail. However, his piety did not extend to every area of his life. In fact, upon hearing about a woman of ill repute who demanded an extremely hefty price for her services, he decided to visit her. He sent her money and set a date to meet her. When he arrived, he found the following extremely opulent setting she had set up for him: seven beds, one on top of the other, six made of silver with the top one made of gold. There were six silver ladders leading to the six silver beds with a golden ladder leading to the top bed made of gold. He proceeded to climb all seven ladders. As he was about to succumb to her temptations, suddenly his tzitzit flew up and slapped him in the face. Immediately, he slid off the top bed down to the floor where he was quickly joined by the woman.

This woman was insulted by his action and she asked him what sort of flaw in her he had discovered. He told her that although he had never seen such a beautiful woman in all his life, he pointed to his tzitzit and explained to her that this was a mitzvah that HaShem had given B’Nei Yisrael. He further told her that HaShem either punished B’nei Yisrael for violating H-s mitzvot or He rewarded them for following H-s mitzvot. He then relayed to her that as he was about to succumb to her wiles, the tzitzit he was wearing appeared to him as four witnesses who would attest to the sin he was about to commit. Therefore, he stopped. After listening to him, the woman told him that she would not allow him to leave without him giving her his name, the name of the city in which he lived, the name of his Rabbi, and the name of the yeshivah in which he studied Torah. The young man did as she asked and then returned to his yeshivah.

After he left, this woman gave 1/3 of her possessions to the Roman government, 1/3 to the poor, and kept the remaining 1/3 for herself. She traveled to Rav Chiya’s Beit Midrash (the yeshivah in which this young man was a student) and asked that he help her to convert. Rav Chiya asked her if her desire to covert was so that she could marry one of his students, a reason which would invalidate her request for conversion. She told him the entire story of what had happened. Convinced of her sincerity to become a Jew, Rav Chiya allowed her to convert. After her conversion, he instructed her to “collect her acquisition’ --- to marry the student who had visited her.

What is the Gemara teaching us by way of this story? Just this: Sometimes a mitzvah simply does not appear to make any sense to us. For example: not cooking a kid in its mother’s milk with the resulting laws of kashrut prohibiting eating meat and dairy at the same meal; observing sha’atnez by not wearing a garment made of both linen and wool; not eating the meat of a pig; wearing tzitzit. None of these mitzvot are based on reason and logic. But it is an incontrovertible fact that they are mitzvot given to us by Hashem meant to keep us from wandering away from living our lives and achieving our destiny as Jews, and that is “to be a light unto the nations and a kingdom of priests.” No matter how hard we may try, we, all of us, like the young student in the story, are B’nei Yisrael, and we owe it not only to Hashem but to ourselves as well, just like the mitzvah of wearing tzitzit, to remain fully attached to each other.