Shalom Zachor

This past Shabbos I had a shalom zachor for my new son who was born last Monday. Below are the 2 divrei torah I said over.

1) The Chasam Sofer (Chukas) brings a medrash that when the"mem" of the mateh aharon v'moshe was nifgam then the "mem" of the bris mila was nifgam.

The Chasam Sofer explains that HKBH told Moshe to talk to the rock ancd instead Moshe hit it. Moshe's kavanah was that he felt bad for Miriam. Originally the rock produced water b'zechus Miriam. However, in order to produce the water Moshe had to hit the rock. Now that the rock was producing water b'zechus Moshe all Moshe had to do was talk to it. This would indicate that Moshe was on a higher madreigah than Miriam. In order to protect the kovod of Miriam, Moshe hit the rock.

The Chasam Sofer explains that Moshe's cheshbon was wrong. The Medrash says that if you have a man and woman with equal level of tziddkus and on the same madreigah the man could accomplish more because of his bris mila. The reason Moshe only needed to speak to the rock while for Miriam, Moshe needed to hit the rock was because of Moshe's bris mila and not because Moshe was on a higher madreigah.

The Chasam Sofer then says that maybe Moshe understood this, but he felt if he used the ma'aleh of bris mila it would look bad for Klal Yisroel who didn't have a bris in the midbar. Therefore he chose to hit the rock.



2)  Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky in Emes L'Yaakov writes that the chok of para aduma is m'galeh on the whole torah that we only keep mitzvos because of gezeiras hashem.
We find that one of the mitzvos given at Marah was Para Aduma. Rav Yaakov explains para aduma at that time had no purpose-it wasn't a practical mitzvah. Yet it was given to teach klal yisroel the ikar of learning is l'shma even if it is only theortetical.

We know that a baby is taught kol hatorah in the mother. Why? In reality all the Torah it learns is impractical and not l'ma'aseh. There is no Shabbos or Kashrus inside the mother.
But maybe that is gufa the idea-to teach the baby the ikkar is torah lishma just like we learn from para aduma.