Consequences - dealing with the consequences of choosing. Choice is a fearful moment, seeing as when I choose, when I agree to an ideal, I am eliminating myriad others. When I choose one person to spend my life with, or spend the next hour with, I am eliminating all the others. We have been writing in recent weeks about knowing who you are, seeing some positive identity in one's self, seeing how one may choose a field of work, or choose friends, or a soulmate. Seeing how Hashem made you specifically to be you, gave you a specific job.
This week, we taste a bit of the consequences - seeing how the designation of one thing eliminates the possibility of others. We see the three sons of Levi being given their jobs. The first, the Kehati, are raised out of the body of Levites for their job, leaving behind the other two families. And then this week, the Gershoni are singled out for their job. Leaving behind the poor Mirari, not having been singled out,
but having been left alone by default. We can make them feel good too, but its after the fact.
Then we see Hashem commanding Israel to have the impure move to outside the camp. Even if you are happy to be among the poor, you watch the impure as they leave. You see how standards of society cause
separation. They must, as ideas come down form the abstract into concrete, there is separation. There is pain. Not everyone can be included in everything all the time. We all stand on both sides of this spectrum. I alienate, and am alienated. After the empowering of the last few chapters, and of Shavuot, we see how empowerment alienates.
More - the Nazirite chooses to strive toward deeper levels of holiness. So he stops drinking wine. He is called Holy unto Hashem. He also can't go to the funeral of his nuclear family. Also, if he comes in contact with a dead body, he has to start the term of his Nazirite vow over again. The consequences of choice, the sadnesses that come with choice, the limitations. How often do we choose, and then immediately look at what we left behind with longing, wishing we could take it back.
The Sotah, the woman whose husband suspects her of being with another man, is a case in which the man is faced with the horrible prospect of finding the truth. If he goes through with his conviction, it could be that he'll find out that he was right, that she was with someone, and she will now die a painful death. But if he does not try to find out, it will nag him for ever.
There is that need, the need to move forward, to assert a feeling, a sense of self which is undeveloped, not yet perfect, but an opportunity to grow deeply. But there will be pain. To commit to a real sense of who you are, to find the indications and go with them, brings the dangerous consequences of then seeing who you aren't, of saying goodbye to who you aren't, to all those things you thought you were, to painfully let go.
In all ways, in all places, may we all be blessed to move even with our fear, to be willing to face hardship for the sake of what we believe to be real and true. Good Shabbes.
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." |