Friends - when the Mishkan (traveling Temple) is finally complete, and Aharon and his sons are finally initiated into Temple service, and they finally bring each offering, and they do everything completely right, and the entire nation of Israel is gathered to see the fruits of their labors, and the altar is stacked with all the animals that have been properly slaughtered and properly placed and only await the Divine fire to come down and consume these animals. So what's missing? Aharon is inspired to bless the people, so he raises his hands, and blesses them, and…
Nothing. Or apparently nothing. But when Moshe takes him inside the inner chamber of the tabernacle, and teaches him the incense offering, then together they go out and bless the people. And then the Divine fire they have been wanting comes down, and consumes the personal and communal offerings, and everyone rejoices.
So Aharon was right - what was needed was in fact a blessing. So what went wrong? Or did anything go wrong?
The secret of Incense is that it contains 10 sweet-smelling ingredients, and one not-so-sweet smelling ingredient - Helbinah, or Galbanum. It is in the context of these sweet-smelling herbs that the not-so-sweet one is raised up, made to be sweet among them, seen as an integral part of the whole. And that is a very nice piece of Torah, but hard to grasp when you've got a handful of Helbinah, and it stinks.
Aharon must have felt somewhat abandoned - he did everything right, and yet nothing happened. Rebbe Nachman in Torah 115 writes that when a person is trying to come close to Hashem, then his having sinned puts a barrier between him and Hashem. But Hashem really wants that person to come close, so He hides Himself within that barrier. And someone who has knowledge, he looks at the barrier itself and finds Hashem there. Moshe had this knowledge, and therefore it says about him "And the nation stood from afar, and Moshe approached the cloud where Hashem was."
When a person lives in a world of either success or failure, close or far, then he is only with Hashem some of the time. But when he accepts that Hashem is trying to be with him even at the times of "failure", even in the contact with the barrier, the thing which seems to be keeping a person from being with Hashem, that is a true relationship. Then the thing which is keeping him from Hashem becomes an actual conduit for being with Hashem.
Aharon might have thought that his blessing was a failure, that it didn't work. So Moshe takes him inside and shows him the incense service. He shows him the secret that all of the moments are a part of the relationship to Hashem. Even a handful of helbinah.
Rebbe Natan writes that the exodus from Egypt was due to such a realization. He draws from Rebbe Nachman's idea that sadness must not be run away from, but must be converted into joy. Running away from sadness is merely contributing to the polarized mentality - there are joyful things, and sad things, and find the joyful ones. But really even in the sad things, the sad moments and bad days, these are very much a part of the relationship to Hashem. In fact, one may soon realize, they are the essential central aspect of relationship to Hashem, because they allow/force us to deepen our scope of what Hashem is to us.
The gemmara Pesachim on page 109b and 110a enters into a bizarre discussion about how, when the Rabbis instituted the 4 cups of wine on Passover, they put us all in intense danger, because when there are even-numbered things, this is an opening for damaging forces to enter. But, says the gemmara, if a person looks at the market place between cups, then he need not worry. R' Daniel explained a few years ago that looking at the marketplace is looking at life, at interaction and human beings and the full spectrum of expressions of liveliness, and that saves a person from the danger of looking at the world as twos, opposite poles.
In our parsha, it says "And Moshe said, this is the thing that Hashem commanded to do, and the glory of Hashem will be made visible to you." The midrash says that Moshe told Israel, remove that specific yetzer ha'rah (bad inclination) and you will see G-d's glory. It's interesting that seeing Hashem's glory has more to do with removing a block than with seeing something new. Rebbe Nachman writes that the yester ha'rah is what tells us there is such a thing as a bad day, or a moment when Hashem is not present, and therefore it is bad. Remove that yetzer and you can see G-d, everywhere. All the time.
When Moshe taught Aharon this secret about life, he understood. However, Nadav and Avihu, Aharon's two sons, never got it, and they died flying off toward the good, like Icarus. They sought to be in the light, always in the place called close, in the Holy of Holies, where there are no barriers at all. And Hashem made it clear that barriers, helbinah, cloud, they are an essential part of life.
So now as we prepare for Passover, let us notice our exile, and rather than run away from it, let us all have the patience and faith to seek and find G-d within that exile. And when we turn that pain into joy rather than running away from it, we will merit to leave.
Rav Gavriel Goldfeder
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Rav Gavriel Goldfeder is one of the first semicha recipients of the yeshiva. A graduate of Drew University in Religious Studies, he came to Bat Ayin after stints in other yeshivot and found a spiritual and intellectual home. Here he met his wife, Ketriellah, who was a student in our short-lived Women's Yeshiva. Upon graduation, Gavriel took the position of rabbi of the Aish Kodesh Congregation in Boulder, Colorado and together with Ketriellah and their growing family, they are busy creating (in Gavriel's words), "a community infused with Torah values, passion for learning and prayer, consideration of one another, and action, as well as deep celebration of the joys of life." |