Thoughts On Mourning (Matos Masei)

Rosh Chodesh Av, the beginning of the Nine Days, is also the anniversary of the passing of Aaron Hakohen: “Aaron the priest…dies there, in the fortieth year after the Israelites had left the land of Egypt, on the first day of the fifth month” (Numbers 33:38).  When his death is mentioned earlier in the Torah it is noted: “And all the house of Israel bewailed Aaron thirty days” (Numbers 20:29).

The Jewish calendar is filled with correlations, and it is not by chance that the yahrtzeit of Aaron Hakohein marks the beginning of the second stage of this period of mourning. The Nine Days culminate on Tisha B’Av, the day we mourn the destruction of the Holy Temples and the dispersal of the Jewish people. It is also the anniversary of the crying out of the Israelites in reaction to the report of the scouts that the Land of Israel was too fearsome to capture. This act had repercussions of tragedy throughout history… Aaron’s death, on the other hand, did not make a negative impact on our history, but rather, the weeping that followed reverberates through history as a reminder of how we should feel. In some ways, Aaron was the personification of the Holy Temple; He was the first high priest, and he was a man who sought peace and the glory of Hashem. Shalom, peace, is another name for God, and the Beis Hamikdash was the dwelling place of the Shechina. Just as the people mourned for the loss of Aaron, their conduit to Hashem, so should be our level of mourning for the loss of the Temple and all that that loss represents.