A. ויהי ביום השמיני קרא משה לאהרן ולבניו ולזקנני ישראל
(“And it was on the eighth day; Moshe called to Aharon and his sons and the
elders of Israel....”).
Our parasha opens on the eighth day of the millu’im of
Aharon and his sons in the holy institution of the këhunna (whence its
name, Shëmini, “eighth”). In the previous parasha (VII,37) Rashi
explains this word millu’im, which literally means “fillings”, as a
reference to the necessary hinnuch, “education, training” given
Aharon and his sons on their duties as kohanim in the Mishkan.
From the verse הלא אהרן אחיך הלוי (“Is
not Aharon your brother, the Lévi....”; Exodus IV, 14), Hazal deduce
that Aharon’s intended office was that of the Lëviyyim, and that Moshe was
intended to be the kohén gadol (זבחים ק"ב.); hence, Mosher’s ready know-ledge
concerning the service in the Mishkan, and the necessity for the
seven-day crash-course offered Aharon and his sons before operations began.
But this raises some questions:
(1) Why specifically was the course ordained to
last seven days, with the Divine service commencing on the eighth day?
(2) Rashi explains that Moshe called to the
elders of Israel להשמיעם שעל פי הדבור אהרן נכנס ומשמש
בכהונה גדולה ולא יאמרו מאליו נכנס
(“to inform them that according to [Divine] fiat Aharon entered to serve in the
këhunna gëdola, that they not say that he went in on his own”), i.e.
that no-one believe that Aharon had arrogated to himself and his sons a task
not originally intended for him. Plain enough, but if Aharon and his sons were
already at the entrance to the Mishkan studying the duties of the këhunna,
why was it necessary to call them?
B. We begin with a profound insight of the Hesed
lë-Avraham.
He notes that when the many worlds of Creation
first came into being, there were created no less than fifty heichaloth
tahara, “palaces of metaphysical purity”, in the supernal ‘olam
ha-Yëtzira. At the same time, in parallel, were created fifty heichaloth
tum’a, “palaces of defilement”, apposite the original set and balancing
them.
Now, he continues, Hazal tell us שאין האדם נידון בב"ד של מעלה אלא מבן כ' שנה ומעלה ומי
שנכנס ביום א' של שנת כ"א ואם יבחר בטוב וימאס ברע ומשתדל לעסוק בתור' ומצות
אזי בלילה הראשון כשישן על מטתו מיכאל השר הגדול שולח מלאך א' להוליך נפשו
ולהכניס' בפתח היכל הראשון ומכניסה לפנים עד כדי שיעור זכות נפשו ועד"ז בכל
לילה ולילה מכניסים אותה יותר בפנים כפי שיעור תורתו ומעשיו (“that a human being is
not judged in the Heavenly court until he is 20 years old or more, and one who
has entered upon the first day of his 21st year, chooses good and
disdains bad, and tries to engage in Torah and mitzvoth, then on the
first night as he sleeps in his bed, Micha’él the great prince [of angels]
sends a mal’ach to guide his soul and usher it into the entrance of the
first heichal and bring it inside according to the measure of his soul’s
merit, and in this fashion in each and every night it is brought further and
further inside according to the extent of his Torah and his deeds....”).
He then goes on to point out that if this soul’s
stately progress through the heichaloth continues as auspiciously as it
started, and he ultimately merits to enter the 50th heichal, the
very pinnacle of tahara u-qëdusha, he then becomes free of the
blandishments of the yétzer ha-ra‘, אבל
כל זמן שלא זכ' להיכל הנ' אפי' הוא בהיכל המ"ט יש כח לאדם בבחירתו שיתגבר
היצה"ר עליו להוציא ממ"ט היכלות טהרה ולהכניסו בהיכלות הטומאה (“but so long as he has not merited the 50th heichal,
even if he is in the 49th, a human being has the power through
his freedom of choice [bëhira] that the yétzer ha-ra‘ can
overwhelm him to remove him from the 49 heichaloth tahara and bring him
into the heichaloth ha-tum’a....”).
He then goes on to explain that if, G-d forbid, one
makes the opposite choice on one’s 21st birthday, the reverse
phenomenon ensues: A very different mal’ach escorts him into the first heichal
tum’a, and if he persists in this course his soul moves deeper and deeper, וכשנכנסת להיכל החמשים אין לו תקנ' עולמית ועליו נאמר "מעוות
לא יוכל לתקון" אבל כ"ז שלא נכנס בהיכל הנ' אפי' הוא בהיכל המ"ט יש
לו כח בבחירתו להיות תוהא על הראשונה ולצאת מהיכלות הטומאה וליכנס בהיכלות הקדושה
וז"ס משארז"ל יש קונה עלמו בשעה אחת (“and when it enters the fiftieth it has no possibility of
correction forever, and concerning him it is said, ‘That which is crooked
cannot be fixed’ [Ecclesiastes I,15; ועיי' חגיגה ט. במשנה], but so long as he has not entered the 50th
heichal, even if he is in the 49th, he has the power through his bëhira
to be remorseful about the past and leave the heichaloth ha-tum’a and
enter the heichaloth ha-qëdusha, and this is the secret of what Hazal
say, ‘There are those who acquire their reward in a single moment’ [עבודה זרה י: ועוד]”).
However: היותר רשע מישראל
א"א לו ליכנס בהיכל הנ' של טומאה עד שירשיע ח' יום רצופי' (לפ"ז עברו
בהיכל א' כולו ח' ימים כו') ודע שישראל נתלכלכו במצרים כ"כ עד שבערב פסח נכנס
בהיכל מ"ט שאם ח"ו היו מתעכבים יותר היו נכנסים בהיכל הנ' ושוב לא הי'
להם תקנה וז"ס "רילו לא הוציא כו' הרי אנו ובנינו וגו' (“it is impossible [even] for the worst [ha-yothér
rasha‘] of Israel to enter the 50th heichal of tum’a until
he has acted in an evil fashion eight straight days...and know that Israel had
become soiled in Egypt so badly that on the eve of Passover they entered the 49th
heichal, and if, G-d forbid, they had stayed there longer they would
have been entering the 50th heichal and would no longer have
had any path of correction, and this is the secret of, ‘Had He not brought us
forth from Egypt, we and our sons and our sons’ sons would still be slaves to
Pharaoh in Egypt’ [מתוך ההגדה של פסח]”).
‘Ad kan the Hesed lë-Avraham.
This, then, is what lies behind the Torah’s
assertion: כי בחפזון יצאת מארץ מצרים (“For in great haste you left the land of Egypt”; Deuteronomy
XVI,3).
It will be clear from the above that one of the
consequences of the way in which the Jew-ish calendar is laid, such that the
Torah mandates shabbath with all its attendant mitzvoth after
every six days, is that, in His great mercy, He breaks up the eight-day period;
if our hypothetical rasha‘ is even minimally shomér shabbath, his
descent through the heicha-loth ha-tum’a is impeded at least, and he
gains time in this fashion so that he can exercise his power of bëhira
to feel remorse and begin his ascent.
C. It is this, I believe, which provides the
answers to the questions posed at the beginning. In order for Aharon and his
sons to be prepared on the spiritual, metaphysical level for their sacred
duties in the Mishkan, it was necessary for them to enter the heichal
ha-qëdu-sha appropriate to their station, and it is apparent that this was
one level higher than the one which they had occupied ere now. Hence, the
necessity for an eight-day period of preparation to reach that level (as the Hesed
lë-Avraham noted). On the familiar Torah principle that מקצת היום ככולו (“part
of the day is like the whole of it”; עיי' למשל נזיר
ה:-ו:, ט"ו:, פסחים ד. ומועד קטן כ: בין השאר), as they entered into the eighth day of the millu’im, their
spiritual ascent was completed.
So why did Moshe have to call them? As Rashi points
out in his initial comment on Leviticus I,1, every Divine utterance or command
is preceded by qëri’a, “calling”, which expresses Divine affection,
spiritual elevation, and imparts importance. What we have, then, in Moshe’s qëri’a
to Aharon and his sons is his very declaration that מקצת
היום ככולו, and that, in
consequence, the necessary ascent in the heichaloth ha-qëdusha had been
accomplished and their ‘avoda could commence.
D. When the bënei Yisra’él exited Egypt in
such great haste, the sëfarim ha-qëdoshim tell us, hey were yanked in
one fell swoop out of the heichaloth ha-tum’a into which they had sunk
under the baleful influence of their erstwhile masters, and into the heichaloth
ha-qëdusha – temporarily (עיי' למשל ערבי נחל בענין זה). Temporarily, because there would
otherwise have been no scope for their bëhira, hence no reason
for them to be granted any reward for their Torah-learning and observance and
therefore little point to Mattan Torah in general.
So, they returned to their previous levels the day
after the first Passover. Yet, they were on course for the fateful encounter at
Sinai, though far from anything like the appropriate state of tahara
u-qëdusha for such an event. Therefore, G-d gave them a great tool: וספרתם לכם כו' שבע שבתות תמימת כו' עד ממחרת השבת השביעית תספרו
חמשים יום וגו' (“And you will count for yourselves...seven
complete shabbathoth...until the day after the seventh shabbath
you will count fifty days....”: Leviticus XXXIII,15-16). This mitzva of sëfirath
ha-‘omer, the count-down to the holiday of Mattan Torah, called Shavu‘oth
precisely because of the seven-week count stretching out from the second
day of Passover, has a power greater than any other mitzva, in that each
successive day of counting suffices to raise each nëshama of Israel one
level higher in the heichaloth ha-qëdusha (unlike any combination of
other mitzvoth which, as the Hesed lë-Avraham notes, must
be observed eight consecutive days to achieve the same effect).
With one caveat: Hazal remark in
commenting on the word תמימת in the above passage that the sëfira must take place
each night (מנחות ס"ו.); it would appear that there is some-thing about the first part
of the twenty-four-hour day, the night, which is indicative of this cumulative
effect. That connexion, I believe, is provided by the Hesed
lë-Avraham’s comment cited above that it is at night that the soul’s
spiritual progress is registered, as it departs during the period of sleep to
report to its Maker, and is escorted to the appropriate level in the
appropriate heichal by the attendant mal’ach.
Hence, the common practice is to count sëfira
each night after Ma‘ariv, so that each successive observance will
have its cumulative effect. It is surely no coincidence that Shavu‘oth is
the only holiday for which the Torah gives no date, merely recording that it
occurs at the end of the seven-week, fifty-day count. The count, with its
attendant spiri-tual ‘aliya, is vital to the occasion.
An idea which should serve to incentivise greater
care in keeping an accurate sëfira on our way to Sinai.
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