Shemos-2015-1

· Exodus 2:11 “Moshe saw an Egyptian beating one of his Hebrew brethren.  He looked all around and he saw that no man was there, and he killed the Egyptian and hid his body in the sand.” 

· “He looked all around and saw that no man was there” Rashi: Moshe saw that the Egyptian would not have any descendants who would convert to Judaism. 

· It’s hard to understand how this works.  The Egyptian obviously had no descendants, because Moshe killed him. 

· Is Rashi implying that if the Egyptian would have had a great, great grandson that would decide to convert to Judaism, this would have saved his great, great grandfather’s life?

· If so, this would imply that the future can affect the present. 

· Or from the future’s point of the view, the present (at the time of the hypothetical son’s conversion) would affect the past (Moshe’s killing the Egyptian).

· A similar concept is alluded to in Messechet Avodah Zarah. 

· It describes a situation where a Tzadik is walking in the sun on a hot day, and needs some shade.

· It says that because the Tzadik needs some shade, a civilization rose and fell in the past in order to provide a wall to give the Tzadik shade. 

· This implies that all the people who lived in that civilization owe their existence to the need of this Tzadik for shade that day. 

· Again, the events in the present are affecting events in the past.

· Baba Kamma 38a says that Moshe Rabenu assumed that the Moabites should be wiped out because of their seduction scheme.

· But Hashem said the Moabites must be preserved because of the dove named Ruth that would come out from them in the future.

· So when Ruth, with complete Bechirah, chose to follow Naomi and convert to Judaism, she saved her entire tribe’s lives (and her own) that lived many years before.

· This science fiction type of affect also happens in Hallachah. 

· For example Messechet Kedushin 60a describes a situation where a man gives his wife a Get saying, “This is to take effect today if I die”. 

· Rashi says, “This is obviously a condition, and when he dies, he fulfills the condition, and the get is effective lemafrayah  (retroactively).”

· The moment that he gives the Get, it appears that the women is not yet divorced, and that she has to wait until her husband dies and fulfills the condition of the get. 

· However, since we know that the husband will definitely die, Midoraisa, the woman is free to marry someone else as soon as she receives the get. 

· Rabbinically, however, the woman is prohibited from getting married now, because it appears to most people that she seems to be married until her husband dies. 

· But in actuality a future event is affecting the present right now, and her (former) husband’s death in the future is causing her to be divorced right now.

· We see another example in Messechet Ketubot 72b. 

· The Mishnah describes a situation where a man says to a woman, “I mekadesh you now if you have no Nedarim”.

· The Mishnah says that if she has Nedarim, the marriage does not take place. 

· Midoraisa, the woman is free to marry someone else, although Rabbinically she is prohibited from marrying another man until she receives a get from the first man. 

· Why? We just said that she is not married to the first man. 

· This is because on 74b the Gemorah considers the situation where the woman’s Neder had prevented the marriage from occurring.

· It says that if in the future she goes to a Chocham who Matirs her Neder, then the Neder is uprooted lemafraya (retroactively), as though it never existed. 

· Since the original Kiddushin was conditional on the woman having no Nedarim, and now lemafraya she did not have any Nedarim, thus the original Kiddushin re-appears, and she is married to the first man. 

· Let’s say that after the first Kiddushin (which the Mishnah had said did not work), the woman married someone else and had children and grandchildren.

· Many years later if she has the Neder uprooted by a Chochom, she is reinstating the first marriage, and causing all those children and grandchildren to be mamzerim.

· This is an example where her act – of Matering her Neder – is changing the past.

· We know that our current actions affect the future.

· It is obvious that how we learn, how we spend money, and who we marry affects our future.

· However it seems from these examples, our actions in the present can also affect our past.

· It seems that Hashem – in a way that we don’t understand - maintains an equilibrium between the results of what we do now and what has happened to us in the past.

· We may remember many times in the past when we needed a Nase or a Yehusha. 

· We should be mindful that our present actions may affect whether or not we received those Nisim and Yeshuot that we needed in the past.