Is God’s system a just system?
It is a question worth pausing on, because if we live in an unjust system, then nothing we do really matters. That is why the Torah emphasizes so carefully that God does not show favor and does not accept a bribe from anyone. “Ki lo yisa panim v’lo yikach shochad” - God, who shows no favor and takes no bribe (Devarim 10:17). It is a just system. When we do what we are supposed to do, we receive just results. This is one of the basic foundations of any society, and of the justice system we live within.
The trouble is that this rule does not seem to apply all the time.
Consider the blessing that God gives to the nation through the Kohanim, the blessing we receive every single day. “Yisa Hashem panav elecha v’yasem lecha shalom” - God will turn His face toward you and grant you peace(Bamidbar 6:26). The very words the Torah uses to bless Israel, that God lifts His face toward us, are precisely the words the Torah uses to describe what He does not do for anyone. “Lo yisa panim” - He shows no favor. And yet here He turns His face in favor toward the nation of Israel.
On its face, this is not fair. And it is exactly the question the angels themselves put to God.
The Gemara in Brachos 20b records the scene. The ministering angels ask: how is it fair that You show favor to the Jewish people, when Your own Torah says that You show favor to no one? And the answer is remarkable. God responds that the nation of Israel are stringent upon themselves. I wrote in the Torah, He says, that Birkas Hamazon, the blessing after meals, is to be said after satiation. (“You will eat, you will be satisfied, and you will bless” – Devarim 8:10). That describes a full and sizable meal. Yet the nation of Israel are stringent upon themselves to bless even after a k’zayis, an olive’s volume of food, which is not a meal at all, but merely the smallest unit of eating. And so, God says, I show them favor.
That is where the Gemara ends, and at first it does not seem to make sense at all. The answer does not seem to answer the question. The question was that God shows favor to no one, no nation and no group, no matter what they do. And the response amounts to this: Israel does good things, they go the extra mile, so He goes the extra mile for them. But that is bribery. That is precisely what the angels were asking about. Showing no favor means showing no favor to anyone, regardless of what they do.
And if we were going to list the extraordinary things that the nation of Israel does, saying Birkas Hamazon after a k’zayis would hardly be at the top of the list. This is not the first stringency anyone would reach for. What, then, does this entire conversation, recorded so deliberately in Brachos, actually mean?
Rav Zalman Sorotzkin, in his Oznayim LaTorah, offers a remarkable insight into the human psyche, drawn from the blessings themselves.
The final blessing of Birkas Kohanim is the blessing of peace. (“V’yasem lecha shalom”). Think for a moment about peace. What is it that prevents us from arriving at peace? A dispute between two people. A war between two nations. Consider the war between nations. They are fighting over a body of water, over a stretch of desirable land. This nation says the land was truly ours. That nation says it was truly ours. Our ancestors are buried there, each side insists. And so, they go to war. One side wins, the other loses. A few years later the reverse happens, and the loser becomes the victor.
Now consider it from a different angle. Suppose one of the nations were to say: perhaps we are right and perhaps you are right, but it does not really make a difference who is right at this moment. We will take half, you take half, we will split it between us, and that will be peace. In one sense this looks like a failure, because each nation does not recover everything it wanted. But in truth it is the greatest success, because it brings about peace. When people are willing to accept a compromise, to take only a piece of what they believe they are entitled to, that is what generates the peace that allows nations and neighbors to coexist.
It is not receiving what one is entitled to that brings peace. It is the willingness to receive less. Which brings us back to the k’zayis. The Torah’s own standard is satiation. Bless after you are full, after you have received everything you hoped the meal would be. But Israel blesses after a k’zayis, after only the smallest taste, after receiving a fraction of what a full meal would provide. They bless God even when they did not get the whole portion. Even when they got only a piece.
Because most of our lives is half a meal. Most of the time, we are not getting what we expected, what we anticipated, or what we hoped for. Life is full of disappointments, full of portions that fall short of satiation. The greatness of Israel, the quality that draws God’s face toward them, is the capacity to bless anyway. To be satisfied with less than we were entitled to, and to find in that a peace of its own. This peace is a natural consequence of living in a state of consequence.
That is not bribery. That is the blessing.
Photo by Sami Aksu from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/half-of-a-cupcake-with-cream-inside-15813613/