vayechi2023

vayechi2023

Wine, Milk and Duchenne – Vayechi

 

חַכְלִילִי עֵינַיִם מִיָּיִן וּלְבֶן שִׁנַּיִם מֵחָלָב (בראשית מט, יב).

In this shiur I want to share with you one of the marvels of the Torah, what makes studying it so exhilarating and why לימוד תורה is essential to understanding the world we live in.

During the writing of sefer Meir Panim I had a revelation (I had more than one, but this was by far the most mind-blowing of them all). Actually, “revelation” is not a totally accurate description. It was more a “corroboration” of something that I had learned previously and already firmly believed, however, to personally experience it first hand and in real time, was truly mind blowing. I am referring to the fact that the תנ"ך is unequivocally a Divine text that could not possibly have been written by man.

We all know that there are two parts to the Torah – תורה שבכתב and תורה שבעל פה.

The תורה שבכתב, on the surface, seems to be a text of “headlines” and missing the gory details. There are numerous examples, but let’s for instance take the mitzva of tzitzit. The תורה שבכתב commands us to attach tzitzit to the corners of our garments (במדבר טו, לז-מא) and included in these “tzitzit” is a blue thread. I call this a “headline” because all the small details seem to be missing. How many corners must the garment have? What are tzitzit? How many threads? How long must they be? How are they tied/wound? How are they attached to the garment? On which edge are they attached, the side or the bottom? What distance from the edge? Which thread in the tzitzit must be blue? What dye must be used to dye it blue?

These and many more minute details make up the halachot of tzitzit and can be found in the תורה שבעל פה (Mishna, Menachot 3, 7, Gemara, Menachot 38a, etc.), which, until Rebi Yehuda Hanasi, was taught verbally and never written down. Fearing that this heritage would be lost, following the destruction of the Beit Mikdash and the galut, the תורה שבעל פה was subsequently immortalized it in print in the Mishna, Talmud, Rishonim, Acharonim etc.

 What most people do not realize, however, is that if, chas veshalom, we lost the תורה שבעל פה for whatever reason, using the תורה שבכתב alone we would be able to reconstruct the תורה שבעל פה again ourselves, using various known rules and methodologies. This already happened in history. In the Gemara (Tmura 17a) it describes what happened after Moshe Rabbeinu died, that 1700 halachot were forgotten and lost, only to be reconstructed by the judge and prophet Otniel ben Knaz, the leader of Am Yisrael following Yehoshua. This “loss of knowledge” recurred again periodically and was restored each time by the various נביאים and chachamim.

Returning to our example of tzitzit – if the psukkim appear to simply be only “headlines”, then that is misleading. Embodied in the original psukkim are all the minute details, they are just not visible to the naked eye. They must be decoded, learned, inferred, deduced etc. by analyzing the psukkim using the various methodologies. One such set of methodologies is the י"ג מידות (we say – or should say - every day before פסוקי דזמרה ) – kal vachomer, klal u’ prat, etc. There are the methodologies of פרדספשט, רמז, דרש, סוד, etc.

Thankfully for us, we do not need to re-decipher the תורה שבכתב in most cases - the work has already been done for us, down to the minutest detail, in our Torah “knowledgebase” over the generations and today in the modern era, in fancy (e)books or online, accompanied by flowcharts, pictures, video clips, etc. that anyone can easily understand.

The problem arises when the תורה שבעל פה is missing, in whole or in part. In that case it is necessary to revert to basic principles as described above and delve into the psukkim and reconstruct it piece by piece.

One such area of study is the Lechem Hapanim. The Gemara goes to great pains (Yoma 38a) to tell us how Beit Garmu refused to divulge their knowledge of the Lechem Hapanim to the חכמים. What the Gemara does not spell out is the aftermath – that most of the knowledge of the Lechem Hapanim was not recorded in print and therefore lost. Our recorded knowledge of the Lechem Hapanim is sketchy at best, contrasted with the subject of tzitzit, for example, where we know every minute detail.

The writing of sefer Meir Panim was part of the reconstruction process, in which I had the privilege to participate in reconstructing and rediscovering much of the knowledge using the various methodologies described above. This revealed to me the awesome depth of the תורה שבכתב and crystallized for me why only those specific volumes of נ"ך were included in the תנ"ך, because, like the Chumash, the Torah, they are Divine and written by prophecy and רוח הקודש and therefore embody the entire Torah, written and oral.

For purposes of comparison, if one were to apply the same set of methodologies above on a different text, say Plato’s The Republic, the New Testament, the Quran, or Tolstoy’s War and Peace, etc. they would not work. The results you would receive would be rubbish or totally unconnected. Contrast this with the תנ"ך, where every letter, every word, every passuk, is Divinely designed, interconnected and embodies a depth, stretching to infinity.

In the Torah world today the trend has unfortunately become to concentrate predominantly on the תורה שבעל פה, quoting the Mishna, the Gemara etc. and the psukkim only when and as they appear in the Mishna/Gemara. It disturbs me no end when I hear shiurim, often by incredible Gedolim and Talmidei Chachamim and they quote psukkim from the תנ"ך with the wrong vowels or pronunciation (because they originally learned them from the Gemara, that has no vowels or טעמי מקרא, and not from the תנ"ך, that does). It greatly bothers me how few resources are allocated in Yeshivas to study תנ"ך, with an overwhelming emphasis placed on the Gemara. Our knowledge of the תנ"ך has declined drastically in the past few decades, not only because the government education system has sought to minimize it or even remove it completely from the curriculum in schools, but even in devout centers of Torah study, in Yeshivot, how little attention is given to studying the wellspring of the Torah, the Divinely written words of the תנ"ך. But that is an aside. Getting back to the issue at hand and this week’s shiur ….

Before discussing the above passuk, I need to tell you a little about Duchenne.

Guillaume Duchenne de Boulogne was a French neurologist that lived in the early 1800’s. He is primarily remembered as being the first scientist to study facial expression.  He set about trying to identify the various muscles responsible for various facial expressions, by stimulating parts of the face with electrodes and noting the contraction of the muscles and the expressions they resulted in. Much of his work involved the study of smiles, and this is how I first encountered him, after my discovery that the shape of the Lechem Hapanim resembles a smiling mouth. He is most famous for identifying a specific type of smile that has since been coined a “Duchenne” smile.

There are two muscles in the face that give rise to a smile. The first (Zygomaticus major) is attached on one end to the cheek bone and on the other to skin of our cheeks. When this muscle is contracted, it raises the sides of our mouths upwards in the typical smile expression. The second muscle (Orbicularis Oculi) surrounds the eyes and when it contracts it stretches the eyes sideways and narrows them slightly into slits, with telltale “crow's-feet” creases in the skin at the side of the eyes.

There are two main types of smiles – voluntary and involuntary. As we get older we learn to control and manipulate our Zygomaticus  major muscle at will to give rise to different types of smiles. This is why not all smiles are equal, some are innocent, some are cynical, some are leering, some are sympathetic, etc. Society and culture to a large degree determines what kind of smiles we smile. These are all voluntary smiles and primarily involve the mouth and not the eyes.

There is a second type of smile, an involuntary smile, that emanates from deep within our neshama and it is this type of smile that is a true smile, a sincere smile and it is a combination of the Zygomaticus major muscle and the Orbicularis Oculi muscle. Duchenne discovered that the Orbicularis Oculi muscle cannot be manipulated by will and contracts only when we smile a sincere smile emanating from within. He described this smile in his textbook (translated from French) as “reflecting the sweet emotions of the soul”. This is a scientist talking. Scientists of today would do well to learn from him. Subsequently this type of smile, a sincere, authentic smile, became known as a Duchenne smile and it involves a combination of the contraction of the muscles of the eyes and the mouth.

Psychologists and sociologists routinely use Duchenne’s science to distinguish when someone is sincere or when they are faking and it has become required knowledge for a wide range of fields - therapists, journalists, police interrogators, amongst others.

In sefer Meir Panim I devote an entire chapter to demonstrating the relationship between the Korban Lechem Hapanim and modern smiling science and how the Lechem Hapanim is intricately connected to simcha and parnasa. This relationship is spelled out in a Mishna (Avot 4, 1) איזהו עשיר השמח בחלקו שנאמר [תהילים קכח, ב] יגיע  כפיך כי תאכל אשריך וטוב לך. Ben Zoma brings a passuk from Tehilim to prove his assertion that the only person who is wealthy, is someone who is happy with their lot. The word כפיך literally means “your hands”, but I prove, bringing numerous examples from the psukkim, that it means “hands” and “smile” in equal measure. The shape of the Lechem Hapanim resembles the Hebrew letter “kaf” כ, the curved shape of a smiling mouth (or rotated 90 degrees U ).

Using various methodologies to analyze the psukkim I prove the connection between this passuk and the Lechem Hapanim and also the components of a smile, the eyes and the mouth. The gematria of the word כפיך  is the same as the word עין. Using the מרובע methodology of the word כפיך (most of you are familiar with this form in the Breslav context נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן), i.e כ כפ כפי כפיך, in gematria is עפעפיים (eyelids) and ………. wait for it, דושן (Duchenne in Hebrew).

This passuk is from Tehillim, written thousands of years before our favorite neurologist was born. Try to run that kind of analysis on verses from Shakespeare (lehavdil) and see if you get similar results. Encoded in the psukkim in the תנ"ך are everything that has ever been and that will ever be. Now if that is not mind blowing, then I don’t know what is!

Why did I choose to discuss this topic specifically in this week’s parsha, simply because one of the psukkim in Vayechi deals with the components of a smile.

One of the psukkim of Yaakov’s blessing to Yehuda is -

חַכְלִילִי עֵינַיִם מִיָּיִן וּלְבֶן שִׁנַּיִם מֵחָלָב (בראשית מט, יב).

The Gemara (Ktuvot 111b) says on this passuk -

אמר רבי יוחנן, גדול המלבין שיניים לחבירו יותר ממשקהו חלב

that the passuk is referring someone who “shows the white of his teeth”, i.e smiles. The passuk contains both a reference to the smiling mouth and also to the eyes חַכְלִילִי עֵינַיִם מִיָּיִן – the very components of a Duchenne smile.

What does it mean חַכְלִילִי ? The מלא methodology of gematria on the word חַכְלִילִי, i.e writing each letter of the word spelled out in full, חית כף למד יוד למד יוד in gematria is של ציפור. What form do the eyes take in a sincere smile? In the textbooks they are referred to as “crow’s feet” (creases around the eyes) - של ציפור.

In other words part of Yehuda’s bracha involves smiling.

Why davka Yehuda, and not any of the other brothers, like Levi for example? We know that Aharon Hakohen (from the tribe of Levi) always used to smile at people and thus created peace between them and spurred them on to do Teshuva, so why not include in Levi’s bracha the subject of smiling, why Yehuda?

And the answer is glaring. From another Mishna (Avot 4, 13) –

רַבִּי שִׁמְעוֹן אוֹמֵר שְׁלֹשָׁה כְּתָרִים הֵם:  כֶּתֶר תּוֹרָה וְכֶתֶר כְּהֻנָּה וְכֶתֶר מַלְכוּת

Chazal say that these three crowns are referring to three keilim in the Mikdash. The crown of Torah that surrounded the Aron Habrit, the crown of Kehuna  that surrounded the Mizbeach (Haketoret) and the crown of royalty that surrounded the Shulchan Lechem Hapanim.

The Rambam (הלכות תלמוד תורה, פרק ג, הלכה א) says –

בשלשה כתרים נכתרו ישראל: כתר תורה, וכתר כהונה, וכתר מלכות.

כתר כהונה זכה בו אהרן שנאמר: והיתה לו ולזרעו אחריו ברית כהנת עולם.

כתר מלכות זכה בו דוד, שנאמר: זרעו לעולם יהיה וכסאו כשמש נגדי.

כתר תורה הרי מונח ועומד ומוכן לכל ישראל, שנאמר: תורה צוה לנו משה מורשה קהלת יעקב.

In other words, which of the crowns did David Hamelech get?  - the crown of royalty, the crown surrounding the Shulchan Lechem Hapanim, which embodies the principle of a smile.

And who is David Hamelech descended from?  ……… Yehuda!

By now I am sure that it will also not surprise you that the gematria of חַכְלִילִי is …… דוד המלך.

Why davka is the concept of a smile, the message of the Lechem Hapanim, part and parcel of David Hamelech, the required character trait of a king and also the Mashiach (ben David)? This is all explained in sefer Meir Panim and I will leave you in suspense  - you will have to read about it there.

:)

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