Arukh la-ner

[Commentary to tractate Yevamot]

In this way, in addition, the statement in the Talmudic chapter Ha-ro’eh (Berakhot 56) can be explicated: “There are three types of peace—a river, a bird and a cooking-pot: a river, as it is written: ‘Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river’; a bird, as it is written: ‘Like birds in flight, so shall You, Almighty shield,’ etc., ‘with Your peace!’; a kettle, as it is written: ‘O Lord, may You set peace for us like a cooking-pot set upon a fire.’” Now we need to provide a reason for our utilizing these three entities as symbolic allusions to peace, for, just as we have explained that peace has three beneficial effects for the Jewish nation as a whole insofar as observance of the Torah is concerned, there are similarly three beneficial effects of peace from the human perspective: 1) Man has multiple needs in respect of which he becomes weary and weak while engaged in the process of assembling them together and directing them to himself, and it is only when there is peace between a man and his neighbor, and each individual assists the other, that everyone will succeed in obtaining his full requirements in respect of which he is lacking. 2) Where there is no peace, all human goodness counts for nothing, as our Sages of blessed memory have declared: “If there is no peace, there is nothing, for each man would swallow his fellow man alive; but where peace exists, each individual will dwell alone in security under his vine and under his fig-tree, and will derive satisfaction from the good bestowed upon him.” 3) Because man’s entire life is full of obstacles opposing his desires and involves his being separated from the things he seeks, and as a result of this, enmity and a mutual separation of minds arise; but where there is peace, the various objectives being sought, and different people’s minds, will unite together with a view to their becoming like a single individual, and human beings will thereby find repose for their souls. All this is alluded to by the three entities. In the first place, the river, which was formed from numerous sources and streams, none of which is, on its own, capable of providing human beings with any benefit on account of its puny size and its weakness, but when they unite and turn into a river upon which ships sail, they do indeed provide a benefit to mankind—so it is likewise in regard to peace. In the second place, the bird—for just as birds in flight hover over their nests to protect their fledglings so as to prevent injury befalling them at the hands of birds of prey, so too, in the same manner, does peace protect mankind. In the third place, the cooking-pot, for there are, within nature, no two opposing forces that are as powerful as fire and water, in relation to which our rabbis of blessed memory explained the significance of the biblical verse: “He makes peace in His high places”; but these two forces unite through the cooking-pot, which transmits the heat of the fire into the water contained within it to the point where fire and water become a single entity in the heated water. So too, it is through peace that all the opposing and separatist forces in life merge into a single unity.