Rosh Chodesh Iyar

Posted on by Rebecca

This learning is l'ilui nishmat our dear friend Albert Naggar, Avraham ben Latifa z”l, whose impact continues to echo through our lives.

Rosh Chodesh Iyar Part I: Echo of the Future

Like many people this year, I’ve been thinking a lot about time. Time is weird when you’re living through a pandemic. To me it seems to have lost a bit of its structure and become both fast and slow simultaneously. I feel as if I’m continuously looking for ways to anchor myself, and for this reason Rav Shorr’s insightful comments on the nature of time in general, and Rosh Chodesh Iyar in specific, seemed particularly fascinating to me.

Our normal experience of time is linear. We live each moment in succession, letting go of one moment in order to experience the next. But this is not the full picture of reality. Time was the first and most fundamental creation, but it only exists for us, created beings. At the highest level of spiritual reality, all moments are unified. And that unity has an effect on us. Because of that unity, there are aspects of time that echo both forwards and backwards.

One way that time echoes forwards is through the holidays. Rav Shorr explains that the shalosh regalim are connected spiritually to the avot. Through their covenant, brit, with Hashem they carved spiritual impressions into certain aspects of time that echo into the future, opening gates for us to walk through, year after year. Avraham opened the gate to Pesach, Yitzchak to Shavout and Yaacov to Sukkot. They created gates wide enough and strong enough to be eternal. The spiritual outpouring is strong, and if we open ourselves up to it, very available. We walk into Pesach, and we feel it.

There was a moment in time when the same was true about Rosh Chodesh, but it was a very short moment in time. The gates of Rosh Chodesh that allow us to access spirituality were opened originally by the shevatim, and by the brit they made with Hashem (see Rashi to Vayikra 26:45). Each month reflected the unique spiritual path of a different shevet. But with the sin of chet haegel, there was a veil placed between us and the opening for Rosh Chodesh. Although it was originally meant to be a holiday celebrated nationally in the Beit Hamikdash, that aspect of Rosh Chodesh was reserved for the future, and its spirituality was handed over to the women, who did not sin in chet haegel.

At the moment Rosh Chodesh is a national holiday of the future. However, that does not mean it is completely lost to us. While it is true that we live with a separation between past and future, Rav Schorr tells us that just as the past echoes into our lives, the future spiritual purpose of the world is engraved on our soul. It leaves an imprint on our lives.

As we mentioned in the essays on Pesach, time, zman, is a creation that is connected to the Hebrew word hazmanah. It is an invitation into a meaningful future. When we live in a state of preparing for a purpose, we consecrate our time for that purpose. This has an immediate effect. Halacha tells us that at the moment we designate something for a specific purpose, it takes on the spiritual reality of that purpose. When we are reaching towards a spiritual goal, the process of living in the world takes on a new flavor. The present time that we designate to reach future spiritual heights takes on the immediate impression of that future reality, even before we reach our goal. We get to experience some part of the end game, even in the midst of the process.

This is what Rosh Chodesh is all about. We say Hallel on Rosh Chodesh, but we say it “b’dilug, skipping.” Generally, we understand this to mean that because Rosh Chodesh is not currently a full-fledged holiday, we don’t say the full Hallel. We skip part of it. Rav Schorr adds another dimension. On Rosh Chodesh we skip forward in time, pulling part of the kedusha of the future holiday into our lives, and experiencing the impression it makes on us now.  

Rosh Chodesh Iyar Part II: Absorbing the Details

 

Rav Schorr describes the general landscape of this time of the year, spanning from Pesach to Shavout, as following the halachic principle of Klal, U’Prat, U’Klal. It begins with the general, continues with the specific, and then wraps up in the general again, but in a new place and with a new understanding.

The Chachamim tell us that Nissan is the month of chesed, spiritual outpouring, as well as the month of seeing. In Nissan the veil was lifted for a moment, and we got a glimpse of spiritual reality. Seeing is both extremely powerful and somewhat external. We can see so much at once, much more than we can absorb. Seeing is also something we can experience in a group. In Nissan we were born as a nation. We experienced an unprecedented level of spiritual influence together. We offered our first national korban. We walked together out of Egypt and became free. We had a national experience of prophecy at the splitting of the sea.

This was the vision. The Klal. But this level of spiritual revelation is not sustainable long term. Hashem guides us spiritually through chesed. He gives us visions of what we are able to become even though we haven’t quite grown into it yet. However, that chesed has to be defined by us, so that it can be realized and sustainable in reality. And so Nissan is followed by Iyar.

Iyar is the month of Din, which means not judgement but definition. In Iyar we deal with the specifics. It is the month of listening, not looking, and we can only really listen to one thing at a time (see Rosh Hashana 27a). The mission of Iyar is to respond to what we experienced in Nissan. We cannot allow the moment to leave us unchanged. The way we respond to something too big to absorb is to take the time to listen to all the details.

The work of the sefirah is the work of the details. The work of preparation. It is a personal time. The Torah tells us, “count for yourselves.” This is the time to notice, to detail, and to treasure all the different spiritual pieces that make up who we are. Each person counts themselves, for themselves, clarifying all the pieces of themselves, and then joining them back together to make a new whole.

The letter of the month of Iyar is the letter “vav,” the letter that means “and,” the letter of connection. In Iyar we connect the revelations of Nissan to the revelations of Matan Torah. This is something we have to do personally. In Iyar we have Pesach Sheni, when we revisit Pesach but from the perspective of personal needs. The Korban Pesach Sheni is an individual korban, a piece of Torah which was brought into existence through individuals who took their own spiritual needs and desires seriously.

In Iyar, we began to eat Manna, which prepared our bodies to receive the Torah. We arrived in Refidim, our place of weakness, and from there we were forced to fight against Amalek. In Iyar we came out victorious in that fight, and we traveled from Refidim towards Sinai and into the month of Sivan.

The month of Sivan is the month of the twins. It is when we bring these two aspects, of personal and universal, of klal and prat, back together into a unified whole. With full knowledge of self we can find our place in the whole. In Sivan we stood at the foot of Har Sinai, “as one man with one heart (Rashi Shemot 19:2),” external and internal unified. And when we heard the revelation at Har Sinai, we were able to see the voices. We were able to connect in a unified way, personally and nationally.

This is our month to lay the groundwork for spiritual success, and I want to wish everyone tremendous success in all their endeavors!

Parshat Vayikra

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The Paradox of Freedom

It was fascinating to me this year to realize that just as we are getting full swing into the Pesach preparations, and just at the moment in the calendar when Bnei Yisrael in Egypt were preparing their lamb for the first national korban ever, we begin Parshat Vayikra. I never really paid attention to how it all fit together before, but this year I found the confluence of events very meaningful and relevant to my Pesach preparations.

To understand the message of the korbanot, we can start with the first word in the parsha. We generally translate “vayikra” as “and he called.” However, Rav Schorr points out that on the first daf in Pesachim the word is given a more precise meaning. The word “vayikra” appears in the fifth pasuk in the Torah: “And G-d called to the light.” The Gemara explains that this means that Hashem called for the light to come to Him, for the purpose of giving it the task of creating the day. It was a calling to a task, and it is in this same manner that Hashem called Moshe to Him at the beginning of Vayikra. He was calling Moshe to come close to Him and to prepare to hear from Him the commandments of the korbanot.

The korbanot are an expression of kirvah, of giving ourselves over to Hashem. The hakdama, the introduction to the korbanot, uses this language of calling to a task. It is the recognition that we have been called upon to act. Just as we are preparing for Pesach, the holiday of freedom, we hear this message from Hashem that creating and nurturing a loving relationship with Hashem involves obligations and responsibilities.

It is this point exactly that forms the main paradox of Pesach. We are meant to ask what real freedom is. The matza, the main symbol of Pesach, is ambiguous. Does it symbolize our slavery or our freedom? How many of us ask ourselves, as we are scrubbing and cleaning, “Is this freedom? This is much more reminiscent of the slavery in Egypt!”

Rabbi Tatz points out something amazing about the nature of true freedom. It is often the exact opposite of what we think it should be. Because true freedom is the freedom from falsehood, it often involves constraint. He explains by way of a mashal. If we want to solve a simple mathematical question, generally there is only one correct solution. But how many wrong answers are there? Infinity. If we do not care whether the answer is right or wrong, then we are free to answer the question in many different ways. We can say 5 + 5 = 8, or we can say 5 + 5 = elephant. But not if we are concerned with answering correctly.

Truth is a tremendous constraint. The true way to behave in any situation may be very limited. At times there may only be one right thing to do. On the other hand, the wrong way to behave is unlimited. This was the cultural situation in Egypt. Although we were slaves, Chazal tell us it was a society in which all sorts of immorality was tolerated. Leaving Egypt meant going from slavery to freedom. It also meant that we went from the potential freedom of Egyptian society, to the constraints of the truth.

In many ways, Judaism is a religion of obligations. Every society has rules, and every rule can be looked at in two ways. Each right that one person claims is also another person’s obligation. For example, my right to property is your obligation not to steal. The question is, how does a society frame this? The constitutions of modern Western Democracies have a Bill of Rights. However, the Torah frames each of our rights as an obligation. We do not have a right to property, instead we are commanded not to steal.

On the surface we may find this to be restricting, but the Torah is deep. Its goal is to make us into givers instead of takers. For that, our concern has to be our obligations and not our rights. Although it may not be obvious, this is the real key to happiness in life. Rav Dessler used to express this point at every wedding he officiated, saying: “Filling your hearts at this moment is a wonderous desire to give pleasure and happiness to each other. Take care, my dear ones, that you strive to keep this desire to give pleasure and happiness to each other. Take care, my dear ones, that you strive to keep this desire always as fresh and strong as it is at the present time. You should know that the moment you find yourselves beginning, instead, to make demands upon each other, your happiness is at an end.” A marriage where each spouse is always trying to give to the other is a marriage filled with joy. Giving builds joy and love throughout the home.

Pesach is our time of freedom to be in a relationship with Hashem and to live in the truth. However, having everything comes through giving everything, and freedom comes through constraint. Judaism is the religion of obligations, but it also the religion of true joy. Hopefully, we can remember this as we clean and enjoy our preparations for chag.

Parshat Vayakel – Pekudei

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Putting Together the Pieces

The parshiot of Vayakel and Pekudei are the parshiot of resolution. The Midrash tells us that “Vayakel Moshe, Moshe gathered the people,” is a tikkun for “Vayakel Ha’am, the people gathered to build the egel.” Similarly, we sinned as a nation with the words “eileh elohecha Yisrael, this is your god, Israel,” and we atoned with the words, “eileh pikudei, these are the accounts of the Mishkan.” These are the parshiot in which we get back a bit of what we lost at chet ha’egel. Which also means, these are the parshiot that give us insight into how to regain our spirituality when we feel disconnected.

Our moment of connection at Har Sinai was an echo of the first moment of creation.  The world was created with ten ma’amarot. During the first ma’amar, Bereisheit, which brought everything into existence in potential, the unity of Hashem was still perfectly clear. Then, through the next nine ma’amarim, the details of creation came into focus and the unity of Hashem was more hidden. By the time Adam was created in Gan Eden, he was standing in a world of details and differentiation. His avodah was to look out at all those forces and find the unity of Hashem .

We achieved this avodah at the foot of Har Sinai, when we stood as a nation, completely unified in our desire to serve Hashem. At that moment, when Hashem communicated the first of the Ten Commandments, the unity behind creation was revealed with clarity. “Now you see and know that Hashem (YKVK) is Elokim, there is no other.” (Devarim 4:35) The name Elokim reflects Hashem’s mastery over all the various forces of creation.  The name YKVK expresses Hashem’s unified essence, which is beyond the confines of this world.  At Har Sinai we could see clearly how all the forces of nature are only expressions of the unity of Hashem. We became eidim, witnesses, to the unity of Hashem, and in that way unified all of creation.

Unfortunately, we did not stay in that spiritual state of unity. We moved into a state of separation. And that, explains the Maharal, is the root of evil in this world. Chazal compare the four rivers that branch out from the one river in Gan Eden to the four kingdoms of our galut. The farther we are from unity, the farther we are from Hashem. Chazal tell us that Eisav lived in a state of separation, worshiping many gods, and that the antidote to Eisav is Yosef, whose name means to gather, and who has the ability to gather all those many forces into one.

As a nation we gathered together to build the egel, but it was not for the purpose of real unity. We fixed this by gathering together for the purpose of creating the Mishkan, a place where Hashem’s unity could be perceived in the world.

After chet ha’egel, we could no longer understand the Torah in the same way. At Har Sinai we understood the mitzvot from their highest level, from their source, and all the details of the mitzvot followed naturally from that understanding. After chet ha’egel the path was inverted. We see the details, and from the details we recreate the unity. And so, the parshiot after the egel are filled with detail after detail. As a nation, we put all those details together to create the Mishkan. In this way we transformed the path of separation we created with the words “eilah elohecha Yisrael, this is your god, Israel,” into a path toward unity and closeness with Hashem, the path of “eileh pikudei, these are the accounts of the Mishkan.”

Yosef is our guide for this path. He is the force that overcomes Eisav. His name has two meanings, and they work together. The first is asifa, to gather. Yosef’s strength comes from his ability to gather within himself all of his own various strengths, and to focus on the source of those strengths. The other meaning of Yosef’s name is “hosafa,” to add. The result of gathering together our strengths within ourselves, and focusing on the Source, is that we draw forth vitality and siyata dishmaya. When we focus on our connection to Hashem, we have more than what we started with.

This struck me as a particularly powerful message as we are approaching Rosh Chodesh Nissan, and all the preparations that come with preparing for Pesach. There are so many scattered details, so many scattered crumbs. The result is that we ourselves start to feel scattered. This piece of Torah reminded me of the strength we can give ourselves when we take a few moments, perhaps over a cup of tea, to gather together the parts of ourselves that feel scattered when we are stressed. We can gift ourselves with tremendous vitality just by taking a few moments of quiet relaxation and gathering our strengths. Whether we are beginning to prepare for Pesach this week or not, may we all be blessed with a joyous, relaxed, and productive week.

Parshat Ki Tisa

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The Broken-Up Path

At the moment that Bnei Yisrael were building the Golden Calf, Moshe was on Har Sinai in the process of receiving the first set of luchot. The Talmud Yerushalmi (Taanit 4:5) describes the moment with the following, fascinating description. Hashem was holding onto two tefachim of the luchot. Moshe was holding onto two tefachim of the luchot, and there was a space of two tefachim in the middle. As Bnei Yisrael began to worship the golden calf, Hashem began to pull the luchot out of Moshe’s hands. But Moshe refused to let go. He grabbed them back from Hashem, as is described in the last pasuk of the Torah, “And by and the strong hand and awesome power that Moshe performed.” Clearly, this Gemara makes no sense if we understand it to be describing a battle of strength between Moshe and Hashem.

Rav Schorr explains that the Gemara is actually describing how Moshe’s tremendously strong will and  desire to receive the luchot on behalf of Klal Yisrael is what overcame the natural results of their sin.  But that is not the end of the story. Moshe brings the luchot down to Klal Yisrael, and promptly shatters them. Again, Hashem is in full agreement with Moshe’s actions. What was the point of fighting to get the luchot, only to break them?

The first luchot, the ones Moshe fought so hard for, reflected the spiritual level we were on at Har Sinai. The writing on the luchot was the writing of Hashem, and it infused the stones completely, the same way our souls infused and uplifted our bodies completely. After the giving of the Torah, we were charged with the task of waiting for Moshe to come back down, so that we could solidify our spiritual gains.  When we sinned with the golden calf, our neshama, as always, remained pure. But our bodies were no longer on the same spiritual level.

The stones of the first luchot, crafted by Hashem, represented the way our bodies were spiritually uplifted at Har Sinai. However, we were no longer on the level where we could receive them.  Moshe had to break them. At that moment the letters on the luchot, the indestructible words of Hashem, flew into the air. Those same letters would later engrave themselves on the second set of luchot. Nevertheless, Moshe did not get rid of those first stones. The stones he broke he placed in the Aron, next to the second set of luchot.

The message is that we still have a path back to where we started. That path is described at the end of the parsha. After Moshe confronts Bnei Yisrael over the sin, he asks Hashem to reveal Himself to him. Hashem replies, “You will see My Back, and My Face will not be seen.” The Chidushei HaRim points out that the order of the words in this pasuk allow us to read it in a few ways. We can read it, “You will see my back and my face,” and we can read it, “my back and my face will not be seen.” This is a description of the broken-up path to spirituality that we experience today. Each time we get to a place of greater closeness, it opens up a new level of comparative darkness.  We oscillate back and forth between times of closeness and times of distance. If we ride the waves, we move closer to Hashem over the course of our life. What we experience now, after chet ha’egel, is a longer, more broken path. But we did not completely loose that which Moshe fought so hard to keep for us. The broken luchot are still resting in the Aron.

Parshat Tetzaveh

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smoke and light

Smoke and Light

Parshat Tetzavah is the parsha of the kohanim, and it is therefore also the parsha that speaks to the importance of what we do in this world. Let me explain what I mean by that. The creation of the world culminated with the placing of man into Gan Eden, a place where there was room for Hashem’s Presence to be felt. In Gan Eden, Adam was given the job of working on and guarding his surroundings. The Mishkan, like Gan Eden, was also a place where there was room for Hashem’s Presence to be felt, and the Kohen Gadol, like Adam, was given avodah to do within it.

The specific avodah the parsha opens up with is lighting the menorah. The Midrash asks a question about this avodah, which it places in the mouth of Klal Yisrael. “Hashem, we are happy to do whatever you ask of us. But we know that you created the entire world and filled it with light. Do you really need us to light a candle in your Mishkan?” To which Hashem replies that our avodah is precious. He desires the things that we do ourselves. Anyone who has treasured a messy piece of artwork or a misspelled card given to them by a child understands this idea intrinsically.

The Mishkan is an expression of two connected spiritual realities. It expresses how Hashem draws His Presence down to us, to create a relationship with us. It also expresses the way in which we shape our relationship with Hashem by actively responding to Hashem’s presence in the world. This is reflected in the two modes of Torah that we received through the Mishkan, the Written Torah and the Oral Torah. The Written Torah we received as a gift from Hashem, through the nevuah that emanated from the Kodesh HaKedoshim. Moshe was its emissary, and it was represented by the luchot, which were literally the writing of Hashem.

The emissary of the Oral Torah was Aharon. From the beginning of Moshe’s mission to bring us out of Mitzrayim, Aaron served as Moshe’s “peh,” his interpreter. And it is through Aharon that we see the first instance of a s’vara, where human intellect is used to determine halacha (see Vayikra 10:16-20). The menorah, lit by Aharon daily, was the reflection of the Oral Torah in the Mishkan.

When the Gemara (Shabbat 22b) asks, “Why did we need to light the menorah at all? Didn’t we travel by the light of Hashem for all 40 years in the desert?” Rav Schorr understands the question to be, “For 40 years in the desert we were traveling through life according to the direct word of Hashem. Is there room in this scenario for the independent thoughts of man?” And the answer, given to us through Hashem’s command to light the menorah, is yes. Even in a world with 24/7 direct access to Hashem, our response to that revelation, our avodah, is still precious.

And so the parsha begins with Aharon creating light from pure oil in an indescribable golden menorah. This avodah expresses how beautiful our actions, when done properly, can be. But that is only the beginning of the parsha. At the end of the Parsha is the description of the mizbeach hazahav, which seems to be out of place, as it is not with the other keilim of the Mishkan mentioned in Parshat Terumah. We can understand its place here, at the end of the parsha, as giving us insight into the specific avodah of the Kohanim.

The Kohanim have a different avodah than Moshe. The Torah describes Moshe as judging the nation “from morning until evening (Shemot 18:13).” The essence of Moshe’s avodah was to bring the Torah from the clarity and light of the spiritual realm into the comparative darkness of this world. In contrast, the Torah describes Aharon as lighting the candles of the menorah “from evening until morning.” (Shemot 27:21). His avodah is the inverse of Moshe’s. He takes the complexity of this world and draws it close to Hashem. He starts in darkness but ends in light.

This avodah is expressed through the mizbeach hazahav, on which we offer the ketoret. The ketoret has a very interesting feature. One of its 11 mandated ingredients is the chelbanah, which is pungent and not particularly good smelling. The chelbanah is an illusion to the sinners of Israel, and the ketoret can not be made without it.

Aharon is the one who lights the menorah, but he is also the one who offers the ketoret. He is the man of peace, who brings resolution to arguments, and who loves everyone, tzaddik and sinner alike. He is a representation of the nation as a whole, in all our various spiritual levels. His avodah is also a message to us about the value of everything that we do as a response to Hashem’s Presence in the world. All of our avodah, even when it begins in a place of darkness is precious.