The following is a brief summary of some of thoughts said over by R' Frand in his shiur this evening as well a vort he said on this week's parsha last Thursday night. I have attempted to reproduce these vorts to the best of my ability. Any perceived inconsistency is the result of my efforts to transcribe the shiur and should not be attributed to R' Frand.
Last week R' Frand concluded his shiur with a vort on Pikudei - specifically Shemos 38:24 - כָּל־הַזָּהָ֗ב הֶֽעָשׂוּי֙ לַמְּלָאכָ֔ה בְּכֹ֖ל מְלֶ֣אכֶת הַקֹּ֑דֶשׁ. R' Frand quoted the Medrash Rabbah on Tehillim in which Resh Lakish said that there was no reason that gold needed to be created? Why do we need it - just to buy our wife jewelry, we could but something else as a present! The Medrash answered that it was created solely for the Beis Hamikdash.
Yet, gold was actually first mentioned in Parshas Bereishis. So why were people aware of it from the beginning if it was only needed for the Beis Hamikdash? Because there are certain things in the world that the world can live without, but it has a purpose for something holy and for that it was worthwhile to be created from the beginning.
R' Frand said that we are all aware of the pitfalls of technologically. Why were these created? So that a person can learn Daf Yomi anywhere in the world. And a person with no background can listen to a shiur on any topic. Technologically was not created for us to waste our time - it was created so that people can learn Torah.
R' Frand closed this vort by telling a story about R' Kalefsky (sp?). His wife did not drive and he would drive his wife to the local supermarket (Giant). R' Frand once bumped into him there and R' Kalefsky said - let me tell you a vort. He proceeded to tell the vort as if they were in the Beis Medrash and not the supermarket. R' Kalefsky then said to him "the whole reason that Giant was created was so that I could tell you that vort."
Tonight's vort related to a "neglected" [my word] element of the Seder table - the Charoses. The Mishna in Pesachim quoted R' Elazar B'Rav Tzadok who states that Charoses is a Mitzva. It then provides two reasons for the Charoses - R' Levi states that it is to remember the apples in Egypt and R' Yochanan states that it is to remember the mortar. Abaye then states that you need to add both apples to provide a tang and it needs to be thick to remember the mortar.
The remembrance of the mortar is to recall the Shibud, as the Maharal states that there was no harder work then making the mortar. On the other hand, the apple is a recollection of how the Jewish women delivered their babies in the orchard under the apple trees - as referred to in the pasuk in Shir HaShirim.
The Rashbam in Sotah discusses how the women would go out to their husbands in the fields and bring them buckets of warm water and fish. They would lie together and the women would become pregnant. They would return home until it was time to deliver, at which point they would return to the fields to deliver. Hashem would send down angels to act as midwives and assist the delivery and then the angels would care for the babies.
R' Frand then quoted R' Yerucham Olshan who asks - how can you have two seemingly contradictory themes represented in the Charoses? He answered by quoting the famous vort on Yosef being taken down to Egypt in a caravan which brought sweet spices. Rashi explains that the reason for this was that Hashem was showing the reward for Tzaddikim. While the merchants usually carried oil, Hashem did not want Yosef to suffer by having that smell with him.
But do you think that Yosef thought that being sold as a slave in Egypt would not be so bad if the trip down the river (literally) had an air freshener? R' Frand compared this to being in prison, but given a great pillow.
R' Frand quoted R' Mordechai Pogromansky who answers that this was a way for Hashem to show that He still loves Yosef, even though Yosef was going down to Egypt as a slave.
R' Olshan states that this is the same reason for the apple and mortar aspects of the Charoses. It may have seemed to them that they had been abandoned during their 210 years in Egypt. But Hashem showed them open miracles to demonstrate that He still cared.
R' Frand closed the vort by saying that we have been seeing this in our time over the last sixteen months. While we have seen the horrible events and how the hostages are still being held. But we are also seeing miracles such as the pagers, the bombs on the buses which did not go off, the downfall of Hezbollah and Syria. The situation seems dire, but we can see the Yad Hashem. This is why R' Elazar states that Charoses is a Mitzva and it is to remember both the mortar and the apples - the sweetness as well as the pain.
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