Welcome to Daily Bitachon. We're back to our series on Perek Shira/the Song of Creation, and we are up to the Date. תָּמָר אוֹמֵר
צַדִּיק כַּתָּמָר יִפְרָח כְּאֶרֶז בַּלְּבָנוֹן יִשְׂגֶּה/The Sadik/righteous one blossoms like a date-palm tree, like a cedar tree in Lebanon blossoms
The first thing that we see from this pasuk is that the Sadik has two qualities. He's palm tree-like and he's cedar tree-like. The Gemara in Taanit 25 A says that there are qualities that the palm tree has, that the cedar doesn't, and vice versa. The date-palm tree yields beautiful, wonderful, fruit, but it doesn't as good a root system, with the same endurance as the cedar tree. On the other hand, the cedar tree doesn't produce fruit. But the Sadik has both the positive qualities of the date palm tree and the positive qualities of the cedar tree.
Firstly, the Ben Yehoyada in Pesachim 53A says that to pick the dates from the date-palm tree, one must go up very high. They're far from the hands of man, which symbolizes that when a person does good deeds, his reward is high up and protected. This is similar to what the Gemara tells us about King Munbaz in Bava Batra 10. When he gave much money for charity, the people said, "Your forefathers gathered money in their treasure houses and you're spending it?!" His answer was, "My forefathers created treasure houses down here. I'm creating treasure houses above."
That's symbolized by the very tall date tree with the payload high up.
So too, the Sadik should visualize that his reward is primarily in the future. That's one aspect.
The Midrash Raba in Bamidbar 3,1 adds many other factors-
Firstly, the palm tree offers shade, and so too, the sadik protects people.
Additionally, the palm tree has many different varieties of dates. So too, the Jewish people include many different types of people.
Furthermore, it says every part of the date-palm used is for positive things:
We eat the dates, we use the Lulav from the palm tree to praise God and we use the other parts of the date-palm tree for our Scach, wonder of wonders!
**The timing of this lesson is a miracle, because today is Erev Succot-we stopped at the song of pomegranate for Rosh Hashanah- and here we are up to the the date, talking about the Lulav and scach!**
So too, the Jewish people have nothing that goes to waste. All of them are used in the larger picture.
The Midrash adds something very interesting. It says that the date tree has a certain mating interest, which we don't understand. We think trees have no feelings or no emotions. But we know everything has more depth than we can understand today. Science now knows that trees grow better when exposed to music. Plant output varies based on external stimuli, which science does not yet understand. But the Midrash, from way back when, tells us that there's a certain mating interest within a date tree. Rav Tanhuma tells of a certain date tree in one town and wouldn't produce any dates so they grafted it onto a different tree but that wasn't successful. Then, somehow, like Shlomo Hamelech was able to understand the talk of trees, Rav Tanhuma knew that there was a certain tree that this palm tree wanted to be grafted to. So they put it on that tree, and it produced! Again, we don't understand this scientifically, but we trust our midrashim. And so too, the Jewish people, deep down, have a desire for God. Whatever you try to graft onto it, it's not going to accept, it until it gets what it really wants.
Because, deep down, the Jewish person wants to connect to Hashem. That's the symbolism of the date-palm tree, and that's also part of the reason we use a Lulav- it's tall and it's the indicator of the Sadik k'Tamar Yifrach. That's our wonderful song of the Date Palm Tree. Have a wonderful day and have a wonderful Sukkot.