BeHa'alotchah
Reb Shlomo Minyan HarNof
(R. Raphael, email: [email protected])
A Candle Of Light
"When you will light the lamps�"(Bemidbar 8:2) Why is the section dealing with Aharon's lighting of the Menorah positioned next to the parashah dealing with the offerings of the princes? Because when Aharon saw the dedication offerings he became uneasy - neither he nor his tribe had been included. Hashem said to Aharon, "Your task is yet greater, you will kindle and set in order the lamps" (Rashi on the pasuk).
The Shem MiShemuel asks, But how is the commandment to Aharon that he should light the menorah a consolation? He answers that B'nei Yisrael felt wretched when Hashem's presence abandoned them after the sin of the Golden Calf. The dedication offerings of the princes were vessels to hold the love and gratitude that the people felt when the Shechinah returned at the dedication of the Mishkan. These offerings were a way of holding forever the love of Hashem, commemorating it so that it would not grow cold.
But this expression of gratitude by the princes was insufficient for Aharon's level of holiness. His task of preparing and lighting the candles of the Mishkan, was something different. Each time Aharon would build the candles of the Menorah and light them it was as if he were rebuilding the Mishkan from scratch, as if he were completing the creation of the place for Hashem to dwell for the first time. As the Gemara in Brachot says, "Every new lighting is a new holiness."
Because the level of Aharon's service is to draw down new light every day. And the source of that light is from the original light of the first day. This is why Aharon is commanded to light from "the face" of the Menorah, to draw light from the highest source, Hashem's countenance, into the lower vessels.
In order to do this, Aharon had to be mativ (make good) the candles: cleaning the bowls, cutting the new wicks, and finally lighting by holding fire near the wicks without actually touching them. All of this requires the patience of one who builds something, and that implies the ability to withhold and draw limits.
And this relates to the avot, Avraham and Yitzchak. The Shem MiShmuel says that Avraham, the first patriarch, parallels the first saying of Creation, "Bereishit." He is called Hebrew, "Ivri" because he comes from over the river, "mi'ever hanahar." The Ramban says this phrase can also be read as, "before the light." Avraham was the primal, unlimited expression of Hashem's chesed into the world. When the evil dictator of Avraham's day, Nimrod, saw the light that Avraham was bringing down, he realized how it could help him aggrandize his own power and he began to misuse it. And so, parallel to how Hashem hid the light of the first day, it became necessary to hide the light of Avraham so that it would not be misused.
The second patriarch Yitzchak, represents gevurah, the power of withholding, but whose name, paradoxically, is connected with laughter, joy. How can din, holding back the light, be associated with joy? The answer is that din, limitation, is that which enables us to kindle a smaller light in holiness like Aharon, who brought into this world the details of the Mishkan creating holy vessels that could be filled with light. Yitzhak becomes the carrier of joyful holiness and connection through self restraint for the sake of Heaven.
Moshe and Aharon are thus two columns that channel the light to the Jewish people and into the world. Moshe is the prophet who can reach up to access the exalted spiritual form of the Menorah, and Aharon is the one who draws down its blessing. Perhaps this is why the letters of Aharon's name spell out "Hu Ner," He is a candle of light.
Spiritual Boredom And The Intensification Of Desire
Kivrot Hata'avah, the place called "Graves of Desire," is one of the 42 stations in the desert. All the stations of the Midbar were holy and they represent stages of spiritual purification. "Graves of Desire" signifies the falling away and "burial" of the power of appetite by attaching oneself to Hashem through chochmah (Baal Shem Tov on the Torah, BeHa'alotchah, Massei).
"And the people were like mourners for themselves" (Bemidbar 11:1).
"Who will feed us meat?" (Bemidbar 11:4).
"Our souls are dried up, we have nothing but the manna before our eyes" (Bemidbar 11:6).
There is nothing worse than endless predictability and this is how life with the manna struck the Jews in the Midbar. Their relationship to the world of physicality had been boiled down and homogenized, becoming a changeless routine of gathering and eating the manna without the yearning of desire and the pleasure of fulfillment. The inaccessibility of the holy left the common people feeling that their daily existence was flat and boring. Memories of unfettered desire from their former lives began to torture them in their newfound wasteland. "We remember the fish we ate in Mitzrayim for free, the cucumbers and melons, the leeks, the onions and the garlic" (Bemidbar 11:5).
The Klei Yakar says that all of this talk about eating is a euphemistic way of referring to memories of promiscuity. As it says in Mishlei, "She eats and wipes her mouth as if she hadn't sinned." Additionally, it says about the manna that "the people wept with their families" (Bemidbar 11:10) and Rashi explains this, quoting the midrash, that they wept because incestuous relations had been prohibited to them. But why would they weep now when they had already accepted these prohibitions at Sinai? Why only after they had subsisted on the manna would they protest that such restrictions were intolerable?
In his sefer, Derech Mitzvotecha, the Temach Tzedek says that incestuous love actually mirrors the highest levels of spiritual reality. But this spiritual level cannot be translated directly in this world because of the clothing and hiding of the spiritual in creating separate physical reality. There is no way to fulfill the holiness of those relations in a world of falsehood. In order to have clarity and access to the essence of this spiritual reality, physical relationships that confuse the spiritual and physical realms must be set aside.
But the people were used to the physical and psychic gratification of these relations. They were able to set them aside because there was another reality whose effect on them was yet more powerful. The spiritual experience of Sinai was so overpowering that the people let go, at least temporarily, of any competing physical or psychic pleasure. But once the experience of Sinai faded they returned to their memories of the past. And precisely because they had left them so far behind and come to experience their lives in an infinitely deeper way at Sinai, when they tried to fill the emptiness of self in the Midbar, their physical and psychic desires were expressed in the most powerful and insistent form.
And the greatest "affirmation" of the self in this world is narcissistic - seeing our image reflected by the world, as if, in permanence. Enabling us to be absorbed in our essence, and bonding with, another within the confines of the body and ego. And that is the incestuous relation. But, whereas, giving and devoting ourselves to another in holiness is the highest spiritual expression, trying to find eternity in the world of physical desire brings with it the greatest danger of becoming lost in a suffocating and self-destructive narcissism.
And the people cried out because of the pain of their dilemma. And they mourned what they had lost from Mitzrayim. And they mourned because they didn't understand how to sustain themselves in holiness. They blamed Moshe because he was the one who had led them here and now abandoned them.
"Who will feed us meat?" They looked at the holiness of Moshe and realized that he was too high above them to satisfy their needs. "We are starving," they were saying. "How can holiness feed us? You are trying to sustain us on manna whose elevated holiness we cannot digest." And this is why Moshe turned to Hashem, realizing that in his elevated state he could not communicate with the level of the people. He could not find the language of understanding that the people needed in order to make a bridge between their history, their appetites, their lives as they had lived them, and the experience of holiness from Sinai. And Hashem told him, "Go and gather seventy elders." And these are tzaddikim who have not yet purified themselves altogether, who can translate the unfulfilled desires of the people into paths towards the holy. They are the ones who can show the people the way through the maze of the psyche attached to desire so that eventually they can give themselves in holiness.
And when the people complained, Moshe turned to Hashem saying he could not carry the burden of the people: "Kill me!" And the Meor VaShemsh says that Moshe was telling Hashem that he wanted to give up his exalted spiritual level so that he could understand this suffering of the people.
Mitzvot
There are five commandments in the parashah according to Sefer HaChinuch.
At A Glance