Children. How beautiful they are. How they can get away with anything. How much we love them. I do, at least. How much we want them never to leave us even when they leave us. And how often it happens that we can grow so distant from them.
Last week I got a lesson in microphone singing. You'd think it was so simple - just put your mouth to the microphone and sing, right? Well actually it makes a difference if you're singing loud or soft - how close do you sing to the microphone, what tone, etc. So I'm singing this intense niggun, wanting it to sound intense - and my holy teacher of microphone singing says - sing real close, as if you're singing a lullaby to Shira (my daughter). And it was unbelievable. So I realized then that when we are really close to our children we don't yell. Yelling is never an expression of closeness. It may be a desire to be close - but when you are really close, the softest whisper can be the most intense.
The Zohar Hakadosh tells us that "emor" (speak), the opening word of our parasha, really means "whisper." G-d tells Moshe: "whisper to the Cohanim," just like everything they do is in whispering. Why? Because they are the children - the children of my beloved Aharon. Already a few weeks ago we learned that two of Aharon's children, Nadav and Avihu, were so close to G-d, so precious that G-d took them away. I guess G-d needed them there closer.
So G-d whispers: "Do not become impure, children." What is impurity? The Ishbitzer says that anger at G-d is real impurity - those moments of distance where we cannot feel close. And the Cohen, who is makriv korban (bringing close the close-offering), cannot feel that distance. The most unbelievable thing is - this law is even true now when there is no Temple, no offerings - so to speak, no closeness. And still G-d asks: "Do not distance yourself, dearest children of Aharon. Even when you are far away - please do not be far away."
Let's go one step deeper. Reb Tzadok Hachohen tells us what a whisper means. He says it's almost as if you don't even realize it came from outside of you. You know a Cohen is born a Cohen. It's embedded from birth. No matter how far away from G-d a Cohen goes, he's always a Cohen. It's like G-d's whisper to him is: "When you are far away, still I tell you you're close, so I'm asking you not to go far away."
And Reb Tzaddok, himself a Cohen, tells us it's true for everybody. We all really have that whisper from G-d that sometimes awakens from inside of us, that tells us how close we can be.
I could sum up what I'm trying to say very simply - the way you might understand all of Rebbe Nachman's teachings in a nutshell: we all have that place of closeness, for we are all G-d's children. No matter how far we go, there is that whisper of closeness. So G-d asks us, "Don't get angry with me, please don't leave me, please don't go far away." In other words, become conscious of that voice, that Emor. Don't just leave it as a potential. Listen for the whisper, that whisper that comes from parents to children, from G-d to us: "Stay close. Please, even if you go far away, stay close."
And I bless all of us to give that over to our children, and to have the ears to hear it from our parents: "Behold I am sending to you Eliyahu Hanavi…and he will return the hearts of the parents to the children and the hearts of the children to their parents." (Malachi 3)
Rav Raz Hartman
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Rav Raz Hartman, born to Israeli parents, grew up in Southern California. He was attending U.S.C., majoring in Music Peformance, when he met Rav Natan Greenberg. That meeting eventually result in Raz's coming to the Bat Ayin Yeshiva, where he studied for six years and was given Semichah in 2003. He is married to Leah, and they live, with their three children, in Nachla'ot, Jerusalem. Raz serves as Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Simchat Shlomo, and founder of the v'Ani Tefillah minyan. He has produced several albums of Jewish music. |