Parshas Korach: Overcoming and Elevating, a Lesson for Humans

 

Parshas Korach: Overcoming and Elevating, a Lesson for Humans

Here is a question on Parshas Korach…

The story of Korach begins like this: “Korach son of Yitzhar son of Kehat son of Levi took himself aside, together with Dathan and Aviram sons of Eli’av, and On son of Pelet, descendants of Reuben. They confronted Moshe together with 250 men from the Israelites, including the princes of the community, summoned for the meeting, and other men of repute. They assembled against Moshe and Aaron. They said to them, ‘You take too much upon yourselves, for the entire community—all of them—are holy, and God is in their midst. Why do you raise yourselves above God’s assembly?’” (Bamidbar 16:1-3)

 

Two hundred and fifty men…That’s not Korach and a few neighbors on the block. That’s not a spontaneous reaction. That’s planning. That’s setting about and shmoozing to encourage and enflame. So why doesn’t the Torah relay Korach’s actions of creating this small mob? Then again, one could also ask: Why doesn’t the Torah straight out say what the Midrash tells us, that Korach was jealous, that he wanted to be elevated the way his cousins (Moshe and Aaron) were?

 

Obviously, these are rhetorical questions because the Torah is full of narratives whose motivations are obscure. Just look at how ambiguously Yaakov’s interactions with Esav are described. But let’s explore one idea… We know from the end actions that Korach was full of negative feelings about the choice of leaders. We know, from the Midrash, that his discontent was stirred and enhanced by his wife. We know, from the first pasuk, that he joined himself with Dasan and Aviram, who were already marked as malcontents. He didn’t, one can assume, speak only to the 250 people who agreed with him; we can assume that there were people he talked to who disagreed … He was probably walking around fuming from within for several days before he steps forth into the parsha.

 

So what? Well, one thing about the Torah is that, in so many ways, it affirms being human. It recognizes that we have negative feelings and it gives room for them. He’s not punished for the before. The question is what do we do with those feelings. Do we find a way to understand the situation from a new angle, find a way to fix a problem, find away to take on a new role and perspective, or do we, ya know, lead a rebellion.

 

The very suddenness of Korach’s rebellion has allusion to its insipient nature. We know Korach was sneaking around because there is no statement of a grumbling started among the people of Israel. There is just Korach and Dasan and Aviram bringing 250 men to confront Moshe and Aaron. All his work was kept in the dark recesses so as not to draw attention. If it feels secretive, it probably isn’t wholesome.

 

Now, you may ask an obvious question. How is one to know if their complaint is legitimate? We see in history that sometimes change is necessary, and that undercurrent gatherings like Korach’s are powerful forces of change. … the fact is that Korach’s choice of bringing a group with complaint to Moshe could be seen as him making a legitimate move.

 

The turnkey phrase is the last line of the third verse  “Why do you raise yourselves above God’s assembly?” Korach wasn’t asking why Moshe and Aaron merited their positions; he is asking why they raised themselves above. He is revealing a lack of bitachon that Hashem runs the world even in minutia, that Hashem structured Klal Yisrael this way. He is making it personal – raise yourselves up, indeed!

 

And perhaps we should address the other side of that coin of humanity, which is Moshe’s initial reaction because, really, if you think about it, it is an incredibly strange reaction. He fell on his face before them and called on Hashem to judge the truth.

 

The most normal reaction would anger… despair… both normal. And really, probably most normal… incredulity. Moshe had every reason to turn around and laugh at what they said, or to sarcastically question their sanity. Moshe would have every right to have gone off on a mad tirade about taking too much upon himself when he faced down Pharoah or led the nation through the sea or was the one who went up to Har Sinai when all the rest of Bnei Yisrael were too afraid. Instead, Moshe took everything that they said to heart, and he took them seriously.

 

Perhaps you are right now thinking that Moshe DID get mad. You’re right.. but only later, only after Dasan and Aviram blatantly and rudely refuse to meet with him and, instead, accused him of bad leadership and even verbally spit at him in Pasuk 16:14 by saying “Even if you gouge out the eyes of those men, we will not go up.” Only then does he get angry.

 

But after the group first comes to him, Moshe really stops and worries and asks Hashem to make a judgement, because unlike their accusations, Moshe assumes that there is a possibility of truth to their accusation.

 

This piece is going to wind down ineloquently… there are lots of lessons one can take from the Parsha of Korach, but perhaps one of the most important one is that in ourselves and in others, we must recognize (as Hashem does throughout the Torah) how utterly human each of us is. You may have feelings of jealousy; you’re human. You may have moments of insecurity; you’re human. When those feelings and moments come, accept your humanity but look to Hashem for guidance, cling to the Torah for a way to overcome and elevate.

 

 

 

Parshas Shelach: The Juxtaposition of Intention

 This week’s parsha, Parshas Shelach, contains one of the most well-known stories of Bnei Yisrael in the desert – the story of the spies. Actually, I prefer the term scouts, so I will use that henceforth because it is more accurate as to what their initial endeavor was meant to be.  They were checking out the land that they were going to conquer…and then it became more of the conceptual idea of spies because from the perception of 10 of the scouts, they were now spying on enemies.

 

The story of the meraglim covers a large portion of the parsha and takes most of the attention. Following the scouting and spying, following the crying of the nation, and following the disastrous decision of a large group of Israelites to try to enter the promised land after all of that, the Torah reverts to laws, and in the sixth aliyah there is an interesting set of pasukim: “If you-all unwittingly fail to observe any one of the commandments that Hashem has declared to Moshe—anything that Hashem has enjoined upon you-all through Moshe—from the day that Hashem gave the commandment and on through the ages. If this was done unwittingly, through the inadvertence of the community, the whole community shall present …. The whole Israelite community and the stranger residing among them shall be forgiven, for it happened to the entire people through error” (Vayikra 15:23-24, 26).

 

When you realize how close this is to the narrative of the scout – separated, really, only by the command to separate challah… food of thought for another time… it makes us look back and think about the significance of unwitting actions.

 

Let’s look back at the meraglim. These men were chosen because of who they were. They were leaders, great men. Surely those men did not go with the intention of creating problems or rejecting Hashem’s plan, THAT would have been mentioned in the Torah, one would surmise. They got to the promised land, panicked, and returned to then publicly mislead Bnei Yisrael about Eretz Canaan.

 

They did something that had terrible consequences, but they, most likely, started off with good intentions. One of the most critical and fascinating aspects of Jewish life is how significant intention is. Not always, but often, one’s intention can shape, on a spiritual level, the effectiveness of one’s actions.  This is important because, if you hadn’t noticed, most of us are pretty darn human. Humans mess up all the time, make mistakes all the time, but Hashem knows that; He expects that.  Most of the time our mistakes are harmless, but sometimes they are massive. And, in truth, even when it comes to mistakes, intention matters.

 

The mefarshim actually explain these verse, 15:23 on, as referring to idolatry – when the whole group goes astray on idolatry. Basically, if you, you know, accidentally start worshiping false gods…which, to you and me of the 21^st century, sounds rather ridiculous. Religious actions, one would think, should be very intentional thing given that they are centered on devotion. Let’s go back to the meraglim…

 

The meraglim were great men. Each man was a leader of his tribe. They were devout. They wanted to serve Hashem -- And they went wrong. Should not this idea have applied to them? Did they really expect to infect all of Bnei Yisrael with doubt? One hopes not, but they also didn’t stop when they were corrected. And they also weren’t the whole community, since Yehoshua and Calev were trying, in vain, to defend Eretz Yisrael. They had warning even as they were leading the klal astray, and they, the 10 leaders, ignored it.

 

The meraglim were not evil men of ill intent. They set out with honest goals, then, unwittingly, took the wrong message from everything they saw and refused to be reminded of the wonders that Hashem does. Had they listened to Yehoshua and Calev…well, the story would be different then, wouldn’t it. For now, let us just take this as a reminder that even with the best intentions one can go astray, but once one goes astray, all is not lost if one realizes the error of his ways.

 

Wishing you a beautiful Shabbas… and really hoping I made sense!

 

 

Parashas Behaaloscha: To Stand at the Front You Need…

 This week’s parsha post will be rather quirky because, alas, I am still working my way through my pile of grading… It’s the raw side of being a teacher. Speaking of teachers, I see a particularly easy segue into this week’s Dvar Torah: How do we know that Moshe Rabbeinu was the first of Klal Yisrael’s teachers? It’s right there in pasuk 16:14 – “I cannot carry all this people by myself, for it is too much for me.” – Every teacher has days when they have just this feeling!

 In all seriousness, however, in the middle of Parshas Behaaloscha, after Bnei Yisrael are led by the eruv rav to want meat over manna, Moshe “heard the people weeping, every clan apart, at the entrance of each tent” (16:10). And he goes to Hashem fed up and frustrated. The people are too much…why? It isn’t their complaints specifically; Moshe knows that Hashem can do what ever is needed. It’s the complaining. It’s that when people get to that level of complaint, they are not able to be talked down – they aren’t able to see that they are being unreasonable.

 But, it’s also more than that. Moshe is an empath…Moshe feels their pain – his deep caring and empathy long proven beginning from the connection to the Israelite slaves even as he lived in the palace and through his days as a shepherd when he worried even after one little lamb. Imagine being an empath and all that feeling of urgent want coming at you. Moshe wants Bnei Yisrael to feel secure, which they expressively do not. He wants them to feel secure not just because it will make his life much easier, but because he KNOWS that there really is no better place to be than where they are at and they just can’t see it as he does. He wants them to understand the world with the Divinely guided senses that he has, and they can’t, and that hurts him.

 Hashem understands. Hashem sees that Moshe’s seeming anger is actually pain. And so Hashem tells Moshe: “Gather for Me seventy men from the elders of Israel of whom you have experience as elders and officers of the people, and bring them to the Tent of Meeting and let them take their place there with you.”

 Now I may be an English teacher, but mathematically speaking 70 doesn’t seem like quite enough to manage the needs of all of Bnei Yisrael. If there are 600,000 men of fighting age, then there are far more than a million in total… and just 70 elders plus Moshe. Also, if you hadn’t noticed, 70 is not divisible by 12, so it wasn’t as if Hashem was setting up a representational system in that every tribe had the same number of elders.

 Since I am an Engllish teacher, I will present a metaphoric idea. Seventy represents the bones of the nation.  In many ways, seventy is a continuum. It’s the multiplication of teva, nature, with infinity. Numerous commentaries bring down the correlation of the 70 elders to 70 descendants of Israel who came down to Egypt with Yaakov. What is important about that correlation? Over and over, Jewish society is built on 70. These were not the first seventy elders (though the first 70 died in Terebitha), and they were not the last (Indeed, did not Napoleon gather 70 rabbis plus one to try to form a new Sanhedrin!) But more than that, human civilization is built on 70. At the tower of Bavel, the Midrash says, Hashem split the people into 70 languages, and throughout the Midrash and aggadata we hear of the 70 nations.

 With Moshe and 70 elders, Hashem was laying down the foundation of building civilization, because a civil society needs a multi-faceted government. Everything cannot depend on one person or they either abuse that power or give up, the way Moshe feels in this perek, because there are so many different needs and different personality types and different ways of finding solutions. And 70 seems the perfect numerical unit for addressing this plurality of needs…an idea aligned with a statement in Bamidbar Rabbah – not connected to this particular perek – that reminds us that shivim panim bTorah, there are 70 faces to the Torah.

 This brings us to another concept brought down by quite a few commentators. Rashi attributes the idea to Sifrei Bamidbar. The commentary stems from the fact that Hashem did not literally say 70 men of the elders of Israel, He says 70 man – eesh – of the elders. He uses the singular. This, along with the description, “of whom you have experience as elders and officers of the people” lead us to understand that the men Hashem specifically had in mind were particularly unique, as Rabbeinu Bahya put it:  “G’d meant that Moses was aware that the people in question had demonstrated empathy for the people in Egypt absorbing physical punishment on their own bodies rather than inflicting it on their charges. The officers were the ones of whom we read in Shemos 5:14 that ‘they were beaten by their Egyptian counterparts’ for having displayed sympathy for the Jews they were in charge of. They had acquired experience in the qualities needed to deal with the people, and they had established a reputation for fair play.”

 Hashem saw that it was Moshe’s empathy that was causing him pain and frustration in dealing with the people, and while that did not feel so good for Moshe, it was exactly what made him a good leader. And Hashem wanted those who would share some of the burden of caring for Bnei Yisrael to have that quality to.

 It was, perhaps, Hashem reminding Moshe  - or the Torah reminding us all – of another fundamental concept. Hashem initially was going to create the world solely through His persona of Elokim – justice, but, before He began, He realized that a world based on justice, rules and laws, would not stand, and so He brought forth His attribute of rachamim, compassion. Moshe wanted help so Hashem sent him the necessary number 70 for setting up a court but made certain that those men were men of empathy, the critical characteristic of a true leader.

 And so, even as I face the chaos at the end of the school year and wonder how we survived the complaints and the challenges, I think back on my students and recognize the special and unique place they hold in my heart, and how I look forward to starting all over again next year… or I will look forward to that, just as soon as I finish these essays.

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An additional thought that came up as I was reading the pasuk: “Gather for Me seventy men from the elders of Israel of whom you have experience as elders and officers of the people, and bring them to the Tent of Meeting and let them take their place there with you.”

 I saw commentaries on the use of “lee” to Me, but as I read I was struck by the incredible compassion within Hashem’s response. He doesn’t say get these elders to help you for your sake. Hashem claims these elders. “Gather for Me.” And at the end of the pasuk, He says: vhityazvu sham eemach – they will take their place WITH you.

 At this moment of vulnerability for Moshe, Hashem doesn’t thrust another layer of leadership on him. He doesn’t say, “Okay, go form a committee to help you.” He tells Moshe to bring Him the men, that these elders will be His and that they will be WITH Moshe.

 It’s a subtle but profound lesson. When someone is overwhelmed, the solution is not to give them an additional level of responsibility…a lesson perhaps in the business world, but in day to day life – When someone is overwhelmed, don’t just tell them an organizational plan that they should implement – don’t add to their pile. Look to help them get out from being overwhelmed first. See the real problem going on.

 

Parshas Emor: Identity in the Unit

In the province of Quebec, when a couple gets married their names remain the same. From one perspective, this is a lot easier than all the paperwork to change one’s legal name after marriage. From a different perspective …it sometimes leads to other bureaucratic conundrums (so what name to I put on this cheque to pay my kid’s friend’s mom back!). While here in Quebec this is actually a legal matter, in other modern Western countries, many women make this choice as a statement of independence (which is different than those who do so because of an already developed career under their maiden name). From this week’s parsha, however, one may be able to extract a bit of perspective on marriage and independence.

 

Before discussing marriage, let us look at the end of Parshas Emor, where there is the story of Shelomith’s son who was stoned to death for blasphemy and cursing God. Put that way, the story sounds appropriately…biblical. Obviously cursing God is a grievous sin, particularly from someone who had lived through all of the miracles in Mitzrayim and the splitting of the Sea. But the story, or the way it is presented in the Torah, is a bit…odd:

“There came out among the Israelites someone who was the son of an Israelite woman and an Egyptian man. And a fight broke out in the camp between that half-Israelite and a certain Israelite man. The son of the Israelite woman pronounced the Name in blasphemy, and he was brought to Moses—now his mother’s name was Shelomith daughter of Dibri of the tribe of Dan—” (Vayikra 23:10-11).

 

The Midrash adds a great deal of important information that helps us understand exactly what the fight was about and why the nameless man was specifically described as the son of Shelomith. Let’s face it, not many people in the Torah are identified by their mother. To recap for those who are not familiar with the Midrash, as the son of an Egyptian, the blasphemer did not have a patrilineal line to connect him to a tribe. His mother, however, was from the tribe of Dan, and so they went to live among them. Some in the tribe felt he didn’t belong…and, well, one thing led to another. (If you’re interested on the Personal Parsha Prose insights on this Midrash… https://cthedawn.blogspot.com/2020/05/blog-post.html)

 

There are many aspects about this small section of Torah that are unexpected and interesting. The history that led to the situation is complex, but at the heart of it all is a critical idea that identity matters on a family level. In building a civilization, which is what the Children of Israel were doing (and which we must continue to do), who you are matters.

 

This is not to say that Bnei Dan were correct in evicting this man from their camp because he had no patrilineal line – that is a far more complex question. It is, however, a recognition of the fact that the Torah wants us to build cohesive units within the greater nation. The great monument to Hashem’s eternity that is Klal Yisrael is make up of units* and tribes and families and, eventually, individuals. But each individual has significance to the units they are part of.

 

This concept also appears earlier in the parsha when the Torah discusses the daughter of a Kohein: “If a priest’s daughter becomes a layman’s wife, she may not eat of the sacred teruma; but if the priest’s daughter is widowed or divorced and without offspring, and is back in her father’s house as in her youth, she may eat of her father’s food. No lay person may eat of it—" (22:11-12).

 

Now it is clear that the daughter of a kohein would be able to eat from the teruma while she was still part of her father’s household; and it makes sense that if she should be widowed or divorced and without children that she would likely return to her father’s household. If she returned to her father’s household, surely, she would have to be able to eat what the rest of her family ate. However, as the commentator Chizkuni points out, these verses teach us that while she is married to or the mother of those who are not kohanim, she does not have that status. She is fully part of the family and tribe of her husband and/or her children.

 

Many people in the modern era would take issue with this idea – that a woman’s “identity” should be absorbed into her husband’s identity. Afterall, women are powerful forces unto themselves, and the idea that a woman should take her place in society based on her husband is almost blasphemy (ok, I couldn’t resist). Sure, they would say, it made sense when a woman needed a husband to survive in the world, when the marriage partnership was divided between provider and nurturer, but today women are often the breadwinners, or at least the equivalent earners to their partners, and being independent is not a survival challenge.

 

The argument makes sense,,, when you are focused on the individual. The Torah, however, is focused on the community. The community is Klal Yisrael, it’s the tribe, and it’s the family. Marriage, from a Torah perspective, is a building of units. When two people get married, they become one unit and that unit must have solidarity in their identity. That concept in no way negates the importance of each woman’s sense of self, but it forms a necessary process in the raising of children, in the fostering of identity within a family unit, and in the recognition that the klal is what we are essentially building.

 

It is easy to get caught up in ideas of rightness when talking about identity. What other topic is so ripe for the argument of self-fulfilment? So much has changed in the last 150 years in the status of women and the socialization of men and women that it is terribly easy to immediately assess the Torah as ignoring a woman’s right to her own identity. That argument misses the larger picture because it leads to a false narrative. Independence and self-fulfillment are important – without question – but, to spin John Donne’s famous quote: no woman is an island.

 

I wish you all a wonderful and beautiful Shabbas and may you all feel yourselves included in the units of the nation.

 

*by units I mean the association of groups of Tribes together in the Midbar.

Parshas Acharei- Mos/Kedoshim – Holy Closed Circuit

You might have heard, here or there, that a big part of Jewish life is to be holy. Are you there? Yeah, me neither. The fact is that most of us must, must think of passages with commandments for being holy as sources of inspiration and aspiration. I am inspired to aspire to holiness. I want it, and, more than that, I want to want it even more. The ever-prevailing question, however, is how do I truly attain it?

 Talking about holiness is not new, and Parshas Acharei- Mos/Kedoshim is particularly well known for the conversation, for the repetitive instruction to be holy for Hashem is holy. The final such statement, in the penultimate pasuk, has, however, a slightly different tone to it: “And you all shall be to me holy-ones, for holy am I, Hashem; and I have set you apart from the nations to be for Me” (Vayikra 20:26).

 This isn’t the typical commandment to be holy. This is an existential statement about the Jewish nation. You are holy and you are separate from the nations and you are claimed. You, as a nation, cannot be any other way – people may fall away from the nation, but the nation will always be a holy core that is irrevocably attached to Hashem. It is almost like a closed circuit in which one thing leads to another that leads back to the beginning so that all must perpetually exist together. Rabbi Shimshon Refael Hirsh says: “God has breathed in us with the breath of life emanating from His holy being. This breath of God's holy nature is the cause of our ability to be holy, and the reason for our duty to be holy is against the holiness of God, to Whom we belong, Who has given us the command to be holy; and who only recognizes us being His as long as we do not deny our belonging to Him, but show it by striving to attain holiness.” 

Being holy isn’t easy. It’s about action, and thought, and motivation. It’s about understanding that being set apart from the nations is because in order to be what Hashem needs us to be, we have to be different. We have to have a unique identity as those who are striving to make the ultimate connection, which is not an easy job – and you’re welcome, nations of the world. We know this is not an easy job because this verse comes after a long string of commandments that show us how striving to be holy, to follow Torah, comes into every walk of life – whether that be eating or hiring employees or etc.

It should be noted that Rav Hirsh does not highlight Jewish exclusivity. In fact, quite the opposite, he says on this pasuk: “It is as one who first picks out the best from the lesser good and then goes on an on picking out the good ones; but one who picks the bad out of the good, throws the bad away, and has nothing more to do with them.” So that in no wise does Jewish thought look on the choice of Israel as a rejection of the rest of humanity. It regards the choice of Israel only as a beginning, only the restarting of the spiritual and moral rebuilding of mankind, only the first step to that future where many nations will attach themselves to God, and become His people, and Israel's sanctuary will not only be the central heart of Israel but the centre of mankind who will have found their way to God.”

 Being holy requires separation, but we can never forget our deeper mission, which is to be a light unto the nations to bring them to see Hashem in the world. They won’t always like us. They might often hate us. But Hashem made a promise, and it has remained true, that there is a Jewish nation that holds fast and strives with all of their might to give themselves to Hashem, to live truly holy lives – mind, body, and soul.

 Right now, in the 21^st century, we have many enemies among the nation longing to pull us away, knock us down, and even make us disappear. They will not succeed, and if we want to be part of the reason why, we must act – inside and out – in the path of Hashem.

 

Parshas Tazria- Metzorah – What is the Contagion?

When most people write about or discuss this week’s parsha, Tazriah/Metzorah, they immediately make it clear that the affliction most-often translated as leprosy is a spiritual affliction and not the unfortunate disease carried by the Mycobacterium leprae bacteria. Because of its sever physical manifestation, leprosy was, for most of history, a disease for which people were shunned – which makes it understandable why the disease symptoms described in parsha for which people were sent out the camp was so named. But everything in our mesorah makes it clear that the various types of tzaraas have nothing to do with bacteria or viruses.

 

One might, however, stop and wonder about Vayikra 13:45: ‘“As for the person with an affliction: their clothes shall be rent, their head shall be left bare, and their upper lip shall be covered over; and they shall call out, ‘Impure! Impure!’” Why is the matzroa covering his upper lip? Many answers are given, but the Ibn Ezra notes “He shall cover his upper lip so that he does not harm anyone with the breath of his mouth.”  Was there some sort of contagion to Tzaraas if it was a spiritual affliction?

 

Furthermore, it is most puzzling that the one who is suffering for having spread loshen hara is now meant to walk about shouting “Impure.” We know that lashon hara, gossip and rumors, are toxic particularly because they end up embarrassing someone and thus, from a theological construct, murdering them. So why does Hashem put the matzora in a position to embarrass himself unless he truly is a danger to someone else?

 

Let us take a step back and contemplate what brings a person to a state of a tzaraas affliction. Lashon hara – and lashon hara is generally the result of jealousy. To get to the point of a matzora, not just one with a suspicion of tzaraas, but truly stricken, one must have had a rather decent amount of ill-will.

 

The discussion of the matzora easily makes it seem that one who discovered themselves in this situation went out from the camp, did teshuva, and returned home. But sometimes it took longer than the set amount of days. Sometimes the Kohain declared that the matzora was not yet cured… It was not just that his physical affliction still remained. It was that the negative energy was still eating away at his soul. He was still jealous.

 

Perhaps when this matzora calls out that he is unclean, he is alerting anyone who nears him that he still has an urge to speak lashon hara. The dangerous element that the Ibn Ezra refers to is not germs as we think of them today, but the miasma of negativity, the inclination to feel that this situation in which he or she finds themselves is, perhaps, not really their fault or their responsibility.

 

Until the matzora does true teshuva, the matzora cannot be healed. True teshuva is not only repenting from the lashon hara and fortifying oneself not to do so again, but really, in one’s heart of heart, recognizing why it was done and letting go of what ever pain led the person down that road in the first place.

 

There is a pithy statement that acknowledging a problem is half the battle. Perhaps in the commandment that the matzora call out that he is unclean is the cure to that fact itself. Hashem understands human nature – obviously – and this is the manner is which a person can learn to face the truth of his/her own doing.

 

We don’t have tzaraas today, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have to work to take responsibility for our thoughts and feelings. In truth, however, it just means that it is a lot harder to do so.

 

Wishing you all a beautiful Shabbas and hatzlacha on the journey of self-improvement that is living Torah.

Parshas Tzav – For the All Nighter

 Parshas Tzav starts out with a seemingly straight-forward instruction: “And Hashem spoke to Moshe, saying: Command Aaron and his sons thus - This is the ritual of the burnt offering: The burnt offering itself shall remain where it is burned upon the altar all night until morning, while the fire on the altar is kept going on it” (Vayikra 6:1-2).

 

Why, one might ask, does the Torah that wastes no words, define the time the oleh is burned as “Kol halaylah ad haboker…all night until the morning”? When else does the night end if not in the morning? Why do these two extra words have to be added?

 

But wait, before that can be answered, one has to realize that the burnt offering was not an exclusively night activity. There were many different times when an “oleh” was brought, and, in fact, just three pasukim later is the instruction that in the morning, “The priest must kindle wood upon it every morning, and he must arrange the cut-up pieces of the morning daily ascent-offering upon it” (6:5).  The question therefore arises as to why Hashem began the laws of the oleh with instructions that it must be minded all night.

 

The evening offering of the oleh is the first of each day – remember: vayehi erev, vayehi boker. It is right that the offering made in the late evening or in the dark of night is explained first, but that does not explain the extra wording.

 

Now some people are what we call “night owls.” They can stay up all night, repeatedly. But they are not morning people. Perhaps Hashem wanted to give those night-owl Kohanim a job well suited to them. In truth, however, even the night owls rarely stay up ALL night, it just feels like they do.

 

Hashem included the term ad haboker because all night means all night. It does not say ad ayelet hashachar, until the crack of dawn, which could easily be assumed to be the start of morning. But that moment of ayelet hashachar actually precedes boker. Boker implies a time by which one can start to discern what things are because there is now light.  

 

Defining boker does not explain why Hashem included it in this pasuk. The Kli Yakar has several interesting thoughts on this pasuk (which I encourage you to go look up ), and he begins his commentary thus:

 

Command Aaron and his sons, saying. The term command [tzav] always implies urging, both immediately and for generations. Rabbi Shimon said: The Scripture needs to especially emphasize urging in situations where there is financial loss. Urging is only needed in places of laziness, and it is written ‘Laziness casts one into a deep sleep’ (Proverbs 19:15), and it is written ‘How long will you lie down, O lazy one?’ (Proverbs 6:9). Here, the commandment involves tending to the fire burning all night until morning, and there is concern that due to the natural laziness in people, one might fall into slumber and ruin the sacrifice (Translation from Sefaria).

 

The financial loss that the Kli Yakar is referring to is that the offering will be incomplete and thus ruined if the fire goes out. But the idea is acknowledging the challenge and risk of a statement of all night. Ad Haboker is a push, a definition that the kohein tending the oleh understands that he himself cannot define when “all night” is over. He must stay up and alert until the morning.

 

How is this relevant to us today? As a schoolteacher, I am often faced with the implied question of why an assigned work is necessary. Sometimes an assignment really isn’t necessary for a particular student to learn the lesson, but they need to do it anyway because they are learning a work ethic. Hereto, Hashem’s very specific command kol halayla ad haboker teaches us an ethic of diligence even when it is difficult.

 

It is particularly relevant as we near the seder, a moment in the Jewish calendar in which night time is highly relevant. There is an encouragement to stretch the seder far into the night  - but to eat the afikomen before halachic midnight – and that isn’t always easy for some people, especially after a very busy day of preparations. And this thought can help us, can inspire us, to stay diligent and alert throughout the seder. (Trust me, that’s a lecture to myself!)

 

I want to wish you all a beautiful shabbas and a chag kasher v’sameach, and may all of you in Eretz Yisrael have only seder night to be up all night. Let peace be upon you and no more horrid nights in bomb shelters.