Parshat Tzav

This week’s Parshah is a triple header. Tzav is about the offerings of the Beit Hamikdash. It provides us with tremendous insights. All these offerings seem so strange, the taking of the ashes, the fire altar, the meal offering, the tamid offering, the sin offering, the guilt offering, the thanksgiving offering. All these illuminate different aspects of the offerings. How do we understand these offerings? The gentile concept is that it is a sacrifice; quite literally, you take money from your own pocket and you are sacrificing it. The Jewish concept is anything but that. The Jewish concept is that this is, in a sense, a love offering. If there is somebody who you love more than anything else in the world and you give them a gift that is well received, isn’t that a happiness? If there is somebody who you love in the world and he gives you a gift far more than you could have ever expected and it is given with love, isn’t that something that you will remember for always? Whenever you look at that gift you will remember that person. That is how it is with Hashem. When his children give him something of His own, Hashem does not need anything from us. Quite literally, Hashem would rather have nothing from us than something that we view as a ‘sacrifice.’ As if we were sacrificing a part of ourselves. The truth of the matter is, that Hashem is sacrificing a part of Himself to give to us what we give back to Him. Hashem’s goodness is unlimited and unending. From the beginning of time until the end of time, everything that Hashem has given us is an act of love. There is nothing that Hashem owes us. We owe everything to Hashem including our very life, our every breath, our every heartbeat, and our every thought. If we can function in this way, then we can begin to comprehend what it is to serve Hashem in all your ways.

What does it mean to serve Hashem in all your ways? Well, of course you can dedicate all your money in offerings to Hashem, the thanksgiving offerings, and the offerings for the chagim… You can learn 24 hours a day, and you can try to be a tzaddik, but the truth of the matter is, it says in the Gemara, if you want to really serve Hashem, deal honestly in business. It seems like a simple thing until somebody puts a thousand dollar wad of cash on the table and says, “Just take it, don’t mention it to anybody, and lets do something under the table.” Where is the Kiddush Hashem? Where does that money come from ultimately? Who is delivering it, that person or Hashem? What does that person expect in place of that? Do they expect that maybe some kind of criminal event should be perpetrated? Do they expect that some transgression should be performed? Do they expect something that is not public domain? What is it that they expect from the money that they are giving under the table? Why is this person giving the money under the table, what is he hiding? What a moment ago appeared kosher now does not seem so kosher.

There is another aspect to this week which happens once a year, Shabbat Hagadol, which is the parshah of the Shabbat before Pesach. So what can we understand about this parshah? Maybe we need to understand that it is all about having a great Shabbat, it being the last Shabbat with chometz before Pesach. Shabbat Hagadol is also the Shabbat where the Rabbi’s give the Drashah Hagadol in the shuls. This is the big mussar parshah which prepares us for the time that there really will be a Korban Pesach in the Beit Hamikdash. Are we ready for that offering? Can we visualize it? Can we actually smell the aroma of the Korban Pesach. Can we feel what we are missing? Can we comprehend what we are missing?

When we reflect on many of the aches and pains in the world today, we have to contemplate that these are pre-Mashiach times. Mashiach has not arrived yet, but according to our behavior and our efforts so will be the reward. When we as a nation will get to the point of one heart and like one body, then we will begin to realize what we have denied ourselves for 2000 to 3000 years. The incredible thing is that when we reflect on these times we can see the truth of what Rav Shternbach has documented; there have not been such miracles happening since the times of the Beit Hamikdash. In the past two wars—the Lebannon war last summer and the Gaza war this winter—12,000 rockets have been launched at us. We are very hard-pressed to contemplate how many people perished. Each of those rockets has the capacity to kill hundreds of people. So if we can contemplate 12,000—chas v’chalila—we can understand the potential catastrophe by way of extrapolation. Yet so few have perished! The last time miracles like these have happened was when there was a Beit Hamikdash. So what we see are miracles of an unprecedented nature, for today there is no Beit Hamikdash.

Apparrently Iran has been supplying Hamas and Hizbollah with all their weapons and their training in the desire to annihilate us from the face of the earth. And we know that those who curse will be cursed, so be prepared for an Iran free world. All those Jihadists will be irradicated by none less than Hashem Himself, when we as a nation do a complete repentance. The great and awesome day is coming. It will come in a blink of the eye. What we have been denying ourselves is nothing less than total redemption. The four corners of world Jewry will come back to Torah and the land of Israel and experience the olam habah in this world. It will be a time when Eliyahu Hanavi will come and we will drink from his cup. We cannot drink from his cup today because we are in the midst of pre-messianic times.

I will give you a parable. One who is particular to drink 4 cups of real wine knows the feeling of drinking the fourth cup. You are holding on to dear life, so to speak. Your head is spinning, you are fighting the fatigue, you have gotten to the end of the seder night and are going for the end. Now imagine if you had to drink a fifth cup that is going to be twice of three times the size. Are you ready for it? What is the joy that people experience from drinking these four cups? The known statement, “there is no joy except with meat and wine,” should not be understood in regards to the lustful nature of the world. Tragically, many people have cashed in their world to come for a taste of the false desires. Rather, in regards to the holiday, this is the real simchah: to be celebrating the holiday with the meat sacrifices and the wine libations. To be celebrating with these is like no other simchah in the world.

It is unfortunate that people trade in the real happiness for a counterfeit happiness, be it excessive indulgence for alcohol, forbidden pleasures, or drugs…Those people become slaves to that false happiness. They become addicted to it. People search for happiness through money, through financial accomplishment. They feel that that is what there pride and joy is; if they can acquire another million, another billion, another trillion... until when will they be happy? It’s a pursuit; it’s a search; it’s a running after golden calves which are running just a little faster than them. What happens is, ultimately, the gold that they acquired becomes the pyramid in which they get buried. A person can either continue to build their golden pyramids and get buried in them in galut, or they can come home to Torah, the land of Israel, the Beit Hamikdash, and experience the true Gan Eden that Hashem had in mind for us from the beginning of time immemorial, where all pain and suffering of the world will be relieved. There will be no more sickness in the world, there will be no more suffering, just the pure joy of Gan Eden.

When we explore this parshah let us not look at it through the gentile perspective, as ‘sacrifices.’ On the contrary, what we are experiencing now is sacrifices, the sacrifice of our potential, the sacrificing of Hashem’s Brachot on the altar of appeasing all the other gods. Be they political gods, be they financial gods, the gods of pleasure, lust, addiction, craving, and ego; all those gods are gods of emptiness. There the race never ends. It is an eternal race to a deep dark hole. The Gemara says, “They run and we run.” They run to a deep dark place. We run to the service of Hashem always in joy.

To further capture the idea that I am trying to convey, in four days time there will be a blessing that is said once in twenty eight years, that is Bircat Hachamah. It is a curiosity that Bicat Halevanah and Bircat Hachamah do not seem to provide insight into what we are blessing. Sure we are blessing Hashem, but what are we blessing Hashem for? Bircat Halevanah should be Bircat Hayareach. Bircat Halevanah literally means the blessing of the white, that white light in the night. Bircat Hachamah is the blessing of the warmth. Why don’t we we call it the blessing of the sun. What is this warmth and what is this white light?

At the beginning of creation Hashem separated between the light and the darkness. On the fourth day Hashem created the sun, the moon, and the stars. The Midrash says that the sun and the moon were of equal size. It says that the sun was bringing the light that it brings today and the moon was bringing the same kind of light. The moon had a claim against the sun. It said, “Why should the sun have the same honor as me?” Hashem, acquiescing, reduced the moon to be a reflection of the sun. The moon can only receive its light from the sun.The moon is the night light. The sun is the planet that brings photosynthesis to the world, vitamin D being synthesized to 125-dihydroxy-cholecalciferol, which means that a person will not suffer from scurvy; they will not suffer from collagen diseases, and a multitude of other things. The sunshine is naturally created for man. Man was not created to be in outer space. The sun there will just fry him. A man was not created to be underground in deep dark dungeons. That would also destroy him. The sun its time is very beneficial, anyone who has been out in the beach too long knows the ill-effects of too much sun. The sun is about a million kilometers in diameter. It is about 1.9 billion kilometers away. Like a pinhead in the ocean is the size of the earth to the size of the sun. When we contemplate this we see that if the earth were a few thousand kilometers closer to the sun it would be fried in an instant. If it were a few thousand kilometers away from the sun it would be worse than the North Pole where man and life cannot exist. The sun, the moon, and all the planets are perfect to a micro-millimeter. By the laws of gravity, everything should either be attracted and pulled together or drift out into the vast universe. But it functions perfectly since time-immemorial.

Through the prophecy and through the generations it was documented in the oral law that once in 28 years, the sun reaches its original position that it occupied at the time of creation. Without tradition, it would be impossible to know on which day the sun reaches its original place. The truth is that the sun reaches its original place every Rosh Hashanah. That was where it was at the beginning of creation; but then it is not in alignment with all the other planets. That happens every twenty eight years after the sabbatical year. Every 28 years is Bircat Hachamah.

Let us contemplate where we were 28 years ago, not just physically—where we were and what—but spiritually. Where are we holding today? Do we have a greater appreciation of Hashem, of His world, of His kindness, of what He is doing with His nation? There are massive miracles, the magnitude of each one revealing to us that it is impossible to go forward without Hashem’s divine intervention. Every generation they stand over us to finish us. Some say that a generation is 10 years, some say 20, some say 40; other commentaries say 70 because those are the days of a regular person’s life. It could also be the days of Moshe Rabbeinu; a man will not live beyond 120 years. That is the period of a man’s life in these years. A person, like Rabbi Akiva, who reaches 120 lives a full life. In fact, having died Al Kiddush Hashem, Rabbi Akiva lived a full life both physically and spiritually.

The question is what do we call a generation? When it says, “these are the generations of Noah,” we have to take into account the fact that Noah lived 600 years and beyond. When we say that in every generation they stand over us to finish us, are we saying that Hashem only does a miracle for us once every 10 or so years? Actually when we look at the history of the state of Israel we see that every 10 years there is a major war. On top of that there are also minor miracles that are even more major than the major miracles, like 28 years ago on erev Shavuot, malchut sheb’malchut in the counting of the omer Israel took out the Ausarack nuclear reactor in Iraq.