By Marco Del Monte
"The stone and the iron" It is written in the Parashah "A land... whose rocks are iron" (Deuteronomy 8:9). What does this mean? What kind of praise is this description? Perhaps a simple geological description? Obviously we know that the Torah always goes far beyond the literal meaning, and behind the rocks and the iron, it conceals a secret of the soul and of our history.
The Rock — even — is also untouched nature, the work of Hashem without human intervention. It is the mountain that rises where the Creator placed it, it is the pure heart that still beats as on the day it was formed, not that heart of stone that some, in their ignorance and bad faith, attribute to us, inappropriately quoting the words of the prophets, incapable of understanding their metaphorical and spiritual meaning. It is the past that generated us: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. It is no coincidence that the word even is composed of the initials of av–ben–neched — father, son, grandson — the chain of blood and faith that runs through the generations. This is why, when we visit a grave, we place a stone: not a flower that withers, but an eternal sign that says that person will never cease to exist, that they will remain the link uniting the past to the future, and that what they did will continue to live forever; it is no coincidence that even has a numerical value of 53 like the word “Gan” referring to the Garden of Eden, but that is already another topic. Iron — barzel — is a completely different story: it is the stone that man has extracted, smelted, and shaped in the fire. It is technology, transformation, modernity. It is the future we build with our hands, just as our fathers did in the desert and as we do today, in a Land that unites the ancient and the new. And “B-A-R-Ze-L”, the Sages say, is an acronym for Bilhah, Rachel, Zilpah, Leah — the mothers of all the tribes, the mothers who protect their children; perhaps, not coincidentally, today our defense instrument is called the Iron Dome, the Iron Kippah, made not of cold metal, but from the warmth of the protection of the Matriarchs who watch over their Children. Yet the Torah imposes a limit that may surprise us in this context: the altar must be of stone, untouched by iron. Because iron is made to shorten life, the altar to lengthen it (Middot 3,4). It is a paradox: stone builds, iron destroys. But not always. There is an ancient and surprising midrash that tells of David and Goliath. The giant was protected by a metal helmet. The pebble from the sling could not penetrate it. Then David “spoke” to the iron: if you open yourself to let the stone pass, you will have a share in holiness, and you will no longer be merely an instrument of death. And thus, the iron was promised to have merit in milah (Prisha on Tur YD 264) and in shechitah: in the knife that cuts the eternal covenant and in the blade that prepares the holy table (compared, not coincidentally, to the altar). Since then, halachah teaches that milah can be performed with anything that cuts, even stone or glass, as with the flint found in sacred texts, but the mitzvah min ha-muvchar is to perform it precisely with iron (Shulchan Arukh YD 264,2). Why? Because iron, submissive to the Torah, has redeemed itself: from a weapon of war to an instrument of alliance. Perhaps this is the secret of the phrase: “whose stones are iron”. The Land of Israel is a place where stone and iron meet and bless one another, the history of the Fathers and Hi-tech. The past and the future, the innate and the constructed, the faith received and the one conquered. It is the science of the soul: what was born within us (even), and what we have forged with discipline and effort (barzel). And it is no coincidence that the initials of “A-vaneha B-arzel U-meharareha T-achtzov” (the opening verse) form the word AVOT — fathers. Because we always live between stone and iron, between tradition and innovation, between what we receive and what we build. Our task is not to choose one or the other, but to keep them united under a single crown: “Elokeinu veEloke Avotenu” — G-d of us and of our fathers. Stone and iron: the one does not move, the other is shaped. The one is eternal, the other is molded. In the stone there is the strength of birth, in the iron the strength of choice. The stone is the voice of the grandfather recounting stories to the grandson, the past speaking to the present; the iron is the hand of the grandson who, listening, takes the tools and builds the future. Becoming stone himself. Perhaps right here lies the solution to the great scientific dilemma between innatism and environmentalism. Here is the heart of the message of Ekev: modernizing without severing the root, growing without forgetting. Being stone and iron together. Thus, we too, like the Promised Land, shall be “a land whose stones are iron”: ancient and solid roots, ready to forge a tomorrow that remains faithful to eternity.
Shabbat Shalom
Translated from the Italian with Google Gemini. The Italian text is the original.