“Everything Is In It”: Ben Bag Bag & Shavuos

Ramban, His Student Avner, & the Secret Hidden In the Torah

May, 2012

A few years ago the supreme court of the United States heard the fascinating case of CAPERTON v. MASSEY COAL CO.  The case revolved around the constitutional right called ‘Due Process’. This clause guarantees, among other things, the right to a fair trial. Here is what happen: a jury in West Virginia awarded one Mr. Caperton, an owner of a coal company, 50 million dollars against the Massey Coal Company. The CEO of Massey coal, Mr. Blankenship, obviously did not like this verdict and began the process of appealing the case through the West Virginia court system. As this was happening there was an election going on in West Virginia for their state supreme court. Mr. Blankenship happened to not like one of the incumbents so he spent three million in advertising dollars to get him voted out. It worked and a new man was elected to replace the incumbent judge. Back to the appeals, his appeal eventually made it, you guessed it, to the West Virginia supreme court and he actually won the appeal by a close 3-2 vote. Who was the deciding vote? You guessed it again, the man who he backhandedly helped elect. Mr. Caperton, the man who was initially awarded fifty million dollars and was now being told that that ruling was overturned, believed that this appeal decision violated his right to a fair trial as that deciding judge had clear bias in favor of Massey Coal and therefore should have recused himself from the case. The problem however is that the law does not define bias or the specifics as to when a judge must step down from a case. This question of what is bias, and the case that surrounded it, made it all the way to the supreme court of the land. Ultimately the United States Supreme Court voted in Mr. Caperton’s favor, agreeing that that judge had clear bias before he even heard that case. Justice Scalia strongly disagreed with this ruling and wrote a dissent where he forcefully argued that not everything is to be found in the United States constitution, including the definition of bias. There is only one book that can claim that all is contained in its pages. Scalia writes, “A Talmudic maxim instructs with respect to the Scripture: “Turn it over, and turn it over, for all is therein.” The Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Aboth, Ch. V, Mishnah 22 (I. Epstein ed. 1935). Divinely inspired text may contain the answers to all earthly questions, but the Due Process Clause most assuredly does not. The Court today continues its quixotic quest to right all wrongs and repair all imperfections through the Constitution. Alas, the quest cannot succeed…The relevant question, however, is whether we do more good than harm by seeking to correct this imperfection through expansion of our constitutional mandate in a manner ungoverned by any discernable rule. The answer is obvious.”

As we head into Shavous it is important to remind ourselves what it is that we are celebrating. It is interesting that the statement from Pirkei Avos that this brilliant and powerful gentile quotes is from Ben Bag Bag, who himself was of non-Jewish origin (he converted, see Tosafos, Chagiga 9. Cf. Avos D’Rebbe Nossan). Sometimes it is they who were not raised with Torah who realize just how special it is and how fortunate we are.

But there is another secret, something so very profound, contained within this famous quote of Ben Bag Bag and its relation to Shavous. The Gemera (Shabbos 31a) teaches us that Hillel once impressed upon a future convert the importance of Torah Sh’bal Peh (oral law) through the Aleph-Beis. Some say that this convert was none other than Ben Bag Bag (see Encyclopida L’chachmei Hatalmud)! Now, why did Hillel choose the Aleph Beis through which to teach this lesson and in what way, if at all, did this affect Ben Bag Bag’s statement in Pirkei Avos? The Misnah in Pirkei Avos teaches (3:23) that “…astronomy and gematrios are the seasonings to wisdom”. Many commentators (see Rashi) understand ‘gematrios’ as referring to the Aleph Beis, its secrets and its numerology. Hillel then was seeking to show this future convert that there is more to Torah than its written form, as shown even by the mysteries contained in its letters.

When I was a bachor I was eating in someone’s home one shabbos afternoon and noticed a guest and the other side of the table. He was quite and happened to look of African decent so I simply assumed that he was a gentile visiting who wanted to observe what a Shabbos meal would be like.

At the end of the suedah a halachic question arose relating to the Zimun. Suddenly this guest pipes up, “I think the Chasam Sofer deals with this…” It turned out that this man was a convert who, like Ben Bag Bag, was first influenced by the Aleph Beis. He was born and raised in, I believe, Swaziland and was the grandson to the king. He had a knack for languages and by the time he reached his teens he could speak more than ten. One day in class he noticed a boy writing letters backward and asked what language that was. Told it was Hebrew he decided to gain a credit through its study. The first indication that this was not just any old language was when he studied Akeidas Yitzchak using the ancient Hebrew text. It was then that he realized that the Aleph Beis themselves, and the words they form are not just arbitrary forms of communication rather they represent fundamental truths and the words that they form are not haphazard human inventions rather they define the essence of the item they are representing.

I once related the above story in shul between Mincha and Maariv knowing that few would believe it when suddenly a guest raised his hand and exclaimed, “I am just coming back from this man’s wedding in Chicago!”

The Ramban was not just one of our greatest leaders and most prolific writers he was also a great mystic (see his introduction to his commentary to Chumash). He once had a student name Avner who eventually left Torah and converted to Christianity. One Yom Kippur he invited his old teacher to meet him. When the Ramban arrived Avner said, “Just in time!” and proceeded to slaughter a pig, roast it, and eat it.

“How many kareis penalties did I just commit?” asked Avner.

“Four”, answered his former teacher.

“Wrong! Its five.” Avner proceeded to explain why the Ramban was wrong.

The Ramban was not impressed. “If you are such a great scholar why did you leave the path of Torah?”

Avner explained that the catalyst for his leaving was something the Ramban once told him. He once taught that not only does the Torah contain every secret but even in Parshas HaAzinu alone every person who has ever or will ever live is contained therein. “This was just too much for me to accept and I figured that if you were wrong about this then there must be more that you are wrong about.”

The Ramban was unmoved. “I still believe that!”

“Well then, show me where I am found in Ha’Azinu!” exclaimed Avner.

“The pasuk (32:26) states “I will scatter them, I will cause their memory to cease from man’ looking at every third letter it spells A’V’Ne’R”!

The Vilna Gaon once said that each Parsha in Sefer Devarim represents a different epoch in the sixth millennium. Rav Hershel Shechter relates further: “In the late 1930’s Rabbi Shmuel Maltzahn published a manuscript written by Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin where he related that on one occasion Reb Chaim asked of the Gra, “Where is there an allusion to the rebbe?” The Gaon immediately opened a Chumash to parshas Ki Tetzei and reviewed it a bit until he noticed that the phrase “even shleima” was an allusion to his name. Rabbi Maltzahn who printed this manuscript of R. Chaim of Volozhin in his sefer “EmmunahV’Hashgachaon” added the following comment: Parshat Ki Tavo is the seventh sedrah, and should contain allusions to things that would occur between the years 1840 – 1940. At the end of the 1930’s the Nazis had already begun their extermination of the Jews, and he suggested that perhaps the bitter “Tochacha” that appears in Ki Tavo was not only an allusion to the many years of suffering of the galut, but also specifically alluding to the Nazi persecutions at the end of the 1930’s. In later years, others pointed out that in the next- the eight sedra, parshat Nitzavim-Vayelech…we read of the return of the Jewish people to Eretz Yisroel, the great teshuvah movement, and the mitzvah of writing a sefer Torah. All of these were witnesses following the year 1940, through the establishment of Medinat Yisrael (modern Israel), the great world-wide baal teshuvah movement…”

But this is only the tip of the iceberg! Wait till you see what else Ben Bag Bag alludes to…stay tuned for next week’s column (“Behind Curtain #2” on this website).