Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily, a project of SIMHA, the Sephardic Initiative for Mental Health Awareness. We mentioned that this year is different from most other years, in that we read the Haftara of Miketz, which is normally overridden by the Haftara of Hanuka.
It talks about Shlomo Hamelech’s wisdom, which is quite interesting. The first story that the Torah reveals of Shlomo Hamelech’s wisdom is about the two ladies who come in arguing over who the baby really belongs to. Shlomo Hamelech famously takes out his sword to split the baby in half, which is where the saying split the baby comes from. The true mother said, “Don't split the baby!” And Shlomo Hamelech thus proved who the true mother was, which was an expression of his great wisdom.
Different commentaries look into exactly what Shlomo Hamelech revealed here- What was his great wisdom? What was this great revelation of human nature? Because that's what he prayed for. He prayed to understand the human nature.
We will share two different approaches. The first is the simpler approach.
There are two strangers, two ladies, who both obviously want to have children. One mother’s child died. This mother, who lost her child, wants a child, so she steals one. Not a nice deed, but why does she do it? Because she wants a child. Why does she want a child? She wants a child because she wants to give to a child. That is a motherly instinct. God put that into a person. It's a wonderful trait of hessed. A mother wants to give, and there's no greater feeling than giving.
We spoke about this once upon a time. “Ahava/Love is the most delicious of delights.” Giving is the most delicious of delights. If you can't give, you can't live. Living is giving. So this mother has this wonderful trait she wants to give- unbelievable! But she's a little corrupt. She takes someone else's baby because she wants to give.
We've heard stories of corruption like this, where in different civilizations, even in more recent history, people take babies from poor people and give them up for adoption to wealthy people. People are corrupt in fulfilling their need to give. Obviously, it's a selfish need to give, but it's a need to give. It's still an altruistic trait.
Let’s go further. It now comes time to decide whose baby it is. The true mother obviously is willing to give up the child, because it's her child. She has true love for the child already, because she gave birth to the child, whereas the fake mother is willing to have the child murdered. Murdered. That is a little scary. How could it be that this lady wants to give so much that she's ready to take a baby, and now only a moment later, she’s ready to let the baby be chopped in half?
Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz says we see from here, a concept of human nature, that, “Light and darkness can be working at the same time.” That was what the world was at the beginning of creation, before God separated the light from the dark. Human beings can have in them this very strange condition- I can have both tremendous light and tremendous, tremendous darkness inside of me at the same time. That's the human being. And that was the wisdom of Shlomo Hamelech, to say that although this lady was so light, that she wanted a baby so much, to give so much, she still possessed that darkness at the same time.
The pasuk says, “Man's soul is like a candle of God that searches the darkness of the inside of a person.”
נֵ֣ר יְ֭הֹוָה נִשְׁמַ֣ת אָדָ֑ם חֹ֝פֵ֗שׂ כׇּל־חַדְרֵי־בָֽטֶן
(Mishleh 20,27) The soul of man is the candle of God. It searches out all of the chambers of the stomach (which means the depths of man, the desires).
The rabbis have two ways to look at this -a positive way and a negative way. The positive way is look how great man is! Look how much light there is in man, that his soul is the candle of God! The other way to look at it is Look at how dark man is, that he needs to have a candle of God to light up that darkness!
The point is, they're both true. Man could be very dark and man could be very light. And our job is to parse through both of them and come out with more light than darkness.