This week’s Haftorah is from Sefer Zechariah (2:14-4:7) and should sound familiar because it is the same Haftorah that we read for the Shabbat of Chanukah (Parshat Vayeshev). In the last chapter of the Haftorah, Zechariah sees a vision of a Menorah which makes for an easy connection to Shabbat Chanukah. But this week, we will focus on the earlier part of the Haftorah in which an angel comes to Yehoshua the High Priest and says (4:9) “Behold the stone which I have given before you has seven eyes on it.” (As a reminder, Yehoshua was the High Priest in the time of Zerubavel, the Governor of Judah under Persian rule. Fifteen years earlier, Cyrus had given the Jews permission to build their second Beit HaMikdash (Temple) but King Achasverous put a stop to it when he came to power. When Darius took over as King of Persia, he gave permission to the Jews to continue building. Zerubavel and Yehoshua felt that the time was not right to build, but the prophets Haggai and Zechariah rebuked their hesitation and repeatedly told them to resume building.) The commentaries say that the stone being referred to in the Haftorah was the foundation stone of the second Beit HaMikdash. According to R. Shimshon Raphael Hirsch however, Zechariah was not only referring to the foundation stone of the second Beit HaMikdash but he was setting his sights on the third Beit HaMikdash by hinting to ITS foundation stone as well. On the day it is laid (2:10) “Every man will invite his neighbor beneath the vine and the fig tree”–i.e. the ultimate vision of peace. Speaking about “vision”, it is interesting that there were seven EYES engraved on the foundation stone of the Temple. As to why this is so, we must remind ourselves that the “eye” in Judaism is considered to be the organ of sight as well as INsight. The sense of sight is considered to reveal more to Man than any of the other four senses, as the Rabbis say in the Midrash Mechilta (Oral Tradtion Shemot, 19:9) “Hearing is not comparable to seeing”. According to the Midrash, all 248 organs in the human body are directed by sight. The Gemarra in Nedarim (64b) goes so far as to say that a person without vision is considered as dead. As mentioned, the eye also represents Man’s insight. When Adam and Chava ate from the Tree of Knowledge the Torah tells us (Genesis 3:7) “The eyes of both of them were opened and they realized they were unclothed.” The Targum Yonasan explains the phrase “their eyes were opened” as “they were enlightened” with an awareness of shame. R. Ovadiah Seforno says that before the sin, Adam and Chava’s eyes aspired ONLY to the spiritual but afterwards, their eyes became agents to follow their physical desires. It is interesting that the Hebrew letter “Ayin” (which is the same word for “eye” in Hebrew) has a Gematria (numerical value) of 70. The number seventy represents spirituality, since it is a multiple of seven which represents Shabbat–the ultimate taste of spirituality in this world. It makes sense that the word for eye is related to spirituality because a person’s vision is clearest when he “sees” Hashem in everything. According to the Kabbalah (Zohar Chadash) Hashem originally created a Divine Light which was completely spiritual in nature and which would have enabled Man to see Hashem clearly. But when Hashem saw that people would abuse that light, He hid it for the righteous people in Olam HaBah (World-to-Come). According to Rav Dov Ber of Mezritch, that Divine Light was hidden in the Torah, which would explain the verse in Mishlei (Proverbs 6:23) “.Torah is the light.” The message here seems to be that Torah is the spiritual light that can help a person see Hashem in this otherwise dark world. That “vision” should enable us to transform this physical world into a more spiritual place. The ultimate example of this is the Beit HaMikdash (where the spiritual world meets the physical world) which brings us back to the seven eyes engraved on the foundation stone. According to the great Sage, Shmuel HaKattan, the eye is a microcosm of the world. The white is the ocean; the iris is the land; the pupil is Jerusalem and the image in the innermost center is the Temple. There is also mention in various places in Psalms of the “eye” of Hashem, which refers to His Providence/supervision in this world. Nowhere is that Providence more concentrated than in the Beit HaMikdash. As far as a connection to Parshat Bahalotcha is concerned, at one point Moshe’s father-in-law, Yitro, decides to go back to his people in Midian. Moshe begs Yitro not to leave saying (10:31) “Do not leave us.and you will be for us as EYES.” As to what Moshe meant, Rashi gives two opinions. One opinion is that whatever the Jews could not see, Yitro would help them see. Perhaps Moshe was referring to the fact that Yitro “saw” (i.e. had the insight) that Moshe’s way of judging the people was not effective, which resulted in Yitor’s idea of setting up courts and judges. Another opinion is that Moshe was saying just as a person’s eye is dear to him and he does everything he can to protect it, so Yitro would be dear to the Jews and they would do everything in their power to make sure he was well taken care of. R. Ovadiah Seforno says that Moshe meant that Yitro’s leaving would look bad in the “eyes” of other nations who would say “If Yitro left, it must mean that the Torah is not true and the Jews are not really G-d’s chosen people.” But Kli Yakar (R. Shlomo Efraim of Luntchitz) says that Moshe’s reference to “eyes” meant that Yitro’s converting and staying with the Jews would be good in the eyes of the Jews. In other words, the Jews would say “If Yitro had it so good in Midian (i.e. a high position, well-respected, etc.) left it all to serve Hashem EVEN THOUGH he had no miracles done for him, how much more so should we, who had miracles done for us, serve Hashem. Thus according to Kli Yakar, Moshe intended for Yitro to make the Jews “SEE” and understand that the only life to lead is that of Torah and serving Hashem. Interestingly, Yitro’s vision is still helping the Jewish nation today. The Israeli army makes a lot of use of trackers. A tracker’s main job is to identify any marks or tracks left by terrorists who have infiltrated into the Land of Israel, so they can be captured before they do harm. As part of his job, a tracker must be able to “see” (i.e. detect) things that a regular soldier cannot. When it comes to having trackers in the Israeli army, the people of choice are the Druse. They can differentiate between tracks made by a man or a woman. They can tell what kind of shoe was worn. They can tell exactly WHEN the tracks were made. They can tell whether the tracks were made by a man with a full stomach or an empty one. They can tell whether the person who made the tracks was carrying another person (as a trick to make it look like there is only one man) or ammunition or nothing at all. They can tell how the tracks were made–i.e. by walking backwards (as a trick) on tip-toes, or frontward. Interestingly, these Druse, whose vision we Jews benefit from today, proclaim as their ultimate prophet (or “SEER”) a man by the name of Yitro, father-in-law to Moshe–the man who was OUR ultimate prophet! Coincidence? I think not. Shabbat Shalom, Shprintz