This week’s Sidra tells of the first business deal recorded in History. It involves a not-too-complicated affair, but the transaction is nevertheless an interesting one. Sarah had died, and Abraham was looking for a plot of ground where he could bury her. He approached the bnei cheiss, the Hittites, and asked them to sell him the me’oras hamachpelah, that sepulchre which has been so highly revered in Jewish Tradition as the burial ground of the Patriarchs of Israel. Ephron, who was chief of the am ha’aretz, the technical name for the Hittite National Council, was, in fact, very gracious with this dignified stranger, Abraham. Indeed, Ephron sounds anxious to satisfy Abraham and get rid of the real estate. When Abraham offers Ephron 400 silver shekels, Ephron replies: אדני שמעני ארבע מאות שקל כסף ביני ובינך מה היא – “Listen here, sir, a parcel of real estate worth a mere $400 – what is that between people like you and me?” Ephron was certainly noble about the entire deal, and we can rightly expect the Torah – and the Rabbis and Tradition – to give Ephron due credit for his kindness. If anything, the verdict of History should be that Ephron was a “good goy,” a fine fellow.And yet, surprisingly, our Rabbis thought the exact opposite. We are almost inclined to feel that Tradition was unfair to Ephron when the Rabbis bitingly applied to him the verse from Proverbs: נבהל להון איש רע עין – “It is a man who has an evil eye who hastens after riches.” So that our Sages, who usually are blessed with such penetrating insight into human character and personality, suspected Ephron of having an “evil eye” and decided that he was no gentleman after all, but that he was a profiteer, a nivhal la’hon, a man who had no values other than money and profit. And we ask why, why did chazal malign this man Ephron, who was willing to sell to our Father Abraham the meeras hamachpelah without haggling about details, and why did they think him a nivhal lahon, a profiteer, and an ish ra ayin, a m…

This past summer, the N.Y. Times carried a series of articles by one of its astute columnists entitled The Age of Giants. The author, in an attempt to explain the dynamics of the present American political set-up, maintains that our age is what it is primarily because it no longer has with it the giants, the great men of genius or near-genius, who used to lead its affairs. For instance, on the international scene, we no longer have such people like Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill, or De Gaulle who, whether we liked and agreed with them or not, were true giants. Science has lost its Planck and its Einstein. The one-time Rockefellers and Fords who built financial empires from scratch are not to be found. Philosophy has lost its Whitehead and Dewey and James. Few if any of these great spirits remain, and the active control of the affairs of our age, in all fields, has fallen into the hands of lesser men. The AGE OF GIANTS has come to an end.In hearing this estimate of the secular, gentile world, it occurs to us that the same is true to such a large extent of the Jewish world. In the 1920s, we still had with us in the Land of the Living all the illustrious leaders of European Jewry, too numerous to mention by name. Even America had its great ones, such as R. Jacob Joseph of New York. Then, in that decade, the great Chofetz Chaim died. The next two decades saw the murder not only of millions of ordinary Jews, but thousands of Giants of Judaism and Jewry. This past year, there died in Israel one of the last of the great Giants – the Chazon Ish z”tz”l. Alas, the Age of Giants for us Jews seems to have come to a close.Indeed, such an estimate seems to be an open invitation to pessimism and despair. With the gedolim, the Jewish Giants, gone, what can one expect of us ordinary Jews? As the Talmudic eulogizer put it centuries ago, im ba’arazim naflah shalhevess, mah yaasu ezovei ha’kir, if the giant cedar trees have been devoured by the flames, what shall the wall-flowers do? Ca…

Of all the names that have been given to that period of history through which we are currently living, the most appropriate and descriptive is “the age of anxiety.” Indeed, it is the anxiety that most accurately describes the inner life of man in our era, his unceasing tension and the whole range of psychosomatic ills which symbolize that tense inner life. Anxiety has even been incorporated into philosophy by some thinkers of the French Existentialist school. It is the mood which dominates all of modern man and is his most characteristic emotion.What, if anything, does Judaism have to say about this phenomenon? It is true, of course, that Judaism should not be understood as an elaborate prescription for “peace of mind.” We, of course, do not conceive of religion as a “need” to be filled. And yet, I do not doubt for a moment that Judaism has a definite judgment upon this, our problem. First, because Judaism is good for man, even though that is not the reason we ought to accept it. And second, it can be shown that ultimately a good part of the emotional life of man is based upon his ethics, his spiritual character, and his religious conception.The teaching of Judaism that is most relevant to the problem of modern man’s anxiety is expressed in two words: Hishtavut ha-Nefesh – equanimity, stability, keeping upon an even psychological and spiritual keel. This attitude of Hishtavut ha-Nefesh, of the constancy of personality, is eventually based upon a religious conception – that of faith. If a man has faith, he will not be upset either by very good news or by very bad news; he will yield neither to the temptations of affluence nor to the threat of adversity – for the same God is the source of both opposites. If he is a success in his endeavors and receives compliments – he will remain largely unimpressed with his own triumph. And if he is criticized until it hurts, he will remain largely unperturbed and unshaken in his faith.  This Jewish teaching was brilliantly expound…

What is the value of a word? This is a most appropriate question on the first Shabbat after our national elections took place. Elections to the presidency are a wondrous thing to behold and a glory and tribute to a free people. Yet when the elections were done our countrymen across the land heaved a blessed sigh of relief. For many of us believed that the campaigns for the election did not do much to enhance the glory. Many of us suspected that they were largely an exercise in futility. The real issues, such as they were, could have been discussed much more quickly and conclusively. Most of the words that followed were not meant for clarification as much as for tools in the projection of “images.” There has been talk recently of the possible devaluation of the dollar. Much more thought should have been given to a more serious danger: the devaluation of the word. I believe the nation could have survived the election of either candidate. But we may properly doubt whether the nation could have survived another month of endless, repetitive, meaningless torrents of words without seriously compromising its sanity.What then is the Jewish attitude to words? First let us understand that Israel’s greatness can benefit the world only through words. We have never been a numerous people. We have never, except in the most restricted sense, been militarily significant. We have usually been diplomatically weak. Therefore, our message to the world has been transmitted only through the power of the word. Ever since our father Isaac said ha-kol kol Yaakov, ve’ha-yadayim yedei Esav, “the voice is the voice of Jacob and the hands are the hands of Esau,” our tradition has maintained that Yaakov kocho be’feh – that the strength and the might of Israel lies in its mouth, in its words. The message of Torah is referred to as divrei ha-berit, “the words of the covenant.” What the Western world calls the “Ten Commandments,” our tradition refers to as aseret ha-dibrot – the “ten words.”And whe…

Most people have mixed feelings with regard to that uncommon quality called frankness or candor – and that is as it should be. It is something no doubt to be admired, and all too rare in human relations. And yet it can, in the wrong hands, be misused for the wrong purposes and prove dangerous and disruptive. On the one hand, frankness is based on emet, truth, and our tradition teaches that chotamo shel ha-kadosh barukh hu emet, that the very seal and insignia of G-d is truth. Frankness is a prerequisite for clear and uncomplicated human and social relationships. Candor, while it may momentarily be annoying, ultimately proves to be the best guarantee of honorable living. It engenders a greater degree of truthfulness on the part of others as well. “Frankness,” said Emerson, “invites more frankness.” And on the other hand, it can be a tool of the smug, self-certain, and even the malicious who tyrannize friend and foe alike by their disarming bluntness, which goes by the name of frankness. Perhaps, then, in order to view the quality of frankness from a greater perspective, we ought to recall the ethics of Judaism as taught by Maimonides, one in which he gives us a philosophy of character. In general, Maimonides teaches, we should avoid the extremes of character and keep to the derekh ha-shem, the “way of G-d,” which he also calls the shevil ha-zahav, the “way of G-d,” which he also calls the shevil ha-zahav, the “golden path.” In other words, one should generally follow the path of moderation, although in certain specific instances one may veer more towards one extreme than the other. So it is with the quality of truth-telling or frankness. The two extremes are, one, absolute candor even at the expense of another person’s happiness, sensitivity, and peace of mind; and two, so much kindness and deference to the feelings of people that the truth is never spoken in its fullness, and untruth begins to prevail. Following the derekh ha-Shem as explained by Maimonides, we wou…