Illustration Credit: Elad Lifshitz, Dov Abramson Studio
Halakhah הֲלָכָה
At first, Yosef spoke to his brothers in Egyptian with a translator (Bereishit 42:23). Rashi (drawing on a midrash), says that once Yosef switched to speaking לְשׁוֹן הַקֹּדֶשׁ (leshon ha-kodesh, the holy language, aka Hebrew), his brothers believed that he was who he said he was (comment on Bereishit 45:12).
For Yosef, speaking Hebrew did the trick!
In our lives, it’s exciting to learn to understand and speak Hebrew. But did you ever think of learning Hebrew as a mitzvah?
A tosefta (Hagigah 1) teaches that as soon as a child learns how to speak, their parents should teach them the Shema, and some Torah, and Hebrew language.
A mishnah in Pirkei Avot (2:1) says that we should give equal treatment to מִצְווֹת קַלּוֹת (mitzvot kalot, “light” mitzvot) and מִצְווֹת חֲמוּרוֹת (mitzvot hamurot, “serious” mitzvot). Rambam says that learning Hebrew is an example of one of these mitzvah categories. Can you predict which?
אָמַר שֶׁצָּרִיךְ לִזָּהֵר בְּמִצְוָה שֶׁיֵּחָשֵׁב בָּהּ שֶׁהִיא קַלָּה - כְּשִׂמְחַת הָרֶגֶל וּלְמִדַּת לְשׁוֹן הַקֹּדֶשׁ, כְּמִצְוָה שֶׁהִתְבָּאֵר לְךָ חֻמְרָתָהּ שֶׁהִיא גְּדוֹלָה - כְּמִילָה וְצִיצִית וּשְׁחִיטַת הַפֶּסַח.
The mishnah says that we need to be careful with mitzvot that are thought of as light - like rejoicing on a holiday, and studying Hebrew - just as we are careful with mitzvot whose seriousness is more obvious - like berit milah (circumcision) and tzitzit and the Pesah sacrifice.
- Are you surprised to think of learning Hebrew as a mitzvah kallah? Why or why not?
- In Rambam, “light” might connect to the mitzvah’s reward, or the amount of effort the mitzvah takes, or the monetary cost of doing the mitzvah–or something else! How do you understand “light” here?
- When you learn Hebrew, you can become better at noticing and understanding things in the Torah. Can you think of other reasons that learning Hebrew is important enough to be called a mitzvah?
- Remember to check out Devash’s רֶגַע שֶׁל עִבְרִית / A Moment of Hebrew—it just might be a mitzvah!
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