Shiviti, Author at SHIVITI

Parshat Re’eh

By Yehudis Golshevsky

In our parshah, we learn of the issur bamot, the prohibition against making private altars for personal sacrifices once the central focus of Divine service is established in “the place that Hashem, your G-d, will choose”–Yerushalayim. Until we came to our “portion and rest” in the Land, and according to Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, this meant until the building of the first Beis Hamikdash, that private altars were permitted even during the time of the Mishkan in Shiloh.

I was thinking about this relationship between private avodah and the centralization of service in Yerushalayim, and the tensions between the two. While some of our sages maintained that the bamot reinforced the tendency to syncretism and idolatry within the Jewish people, the Netziv touched upon a point that can easily get lost. The place of private Divine service and the availability of offering sacrifices spontaneously, through devotional impulse, is a powerful outlet for love of G-d. That private expression is a force that can’t be discounted within us. The text emphasizes that even Shlomo HaMelech frequently brought offerings on a private altar prior to his building of the Mikdash, and this is not any sort of slight to him–quite the contrary.

Of course, after the contstruction of the Beis Hamikdash, that devotional door was closed and the use of illegitimate bamot later on did become entangled with the people’s involvement with avodah zarah. But if we return to the idea of the Netziv, that private offerings are a means of enhancing, or an expression of a powerful love of G-d, then what is exchanged for that once the bamot are prohibited?

The Beis Hamikdash is the focal point of avodah that transcends the personal. Even though the personal is encompassed within it, the private devotional experience is subsumed inside something greater than any individual could hope to come to on their own.
In Yerushalayim, all of our personal Divine service became encompassed within a totality. Instead of being individual cells, so to speak, living our own individual spiritual lives spread throughout Eretz Yisrael, the Beis Hamikdash drew us all together into a synergistic avodah of a full body, in thriving and organic relationship with all of its individual cell parts. This is what we received in exchange for the loss of the bamot, which did have a place in avodah for us, some say for hundreds of years.

I was thinking how this parallels the private place of Shabbos and the mitzvah of Shemittah, which is explored toward the end of the parshah. Shabbos is a kind of private affair. Shemittah is all of us together. May we all, together, grow in our private space of avodah, while holding strong to the sense of ourselves as part of a single, organic whole, serving G-d with all that we have and are.
Good Shabbos!

Parshat Eikev

The Heart Is Awake

By Rav Micha Golshevsky

In this parsha we find that one should always cleave to Hashem. The Shem M’Shmuel explains how one can always cleave to Hashem. “”In spiritual terms, completion of one’s heart is known as his nachalah, literally inheritance in Eretz Yisrael. Our sages say that one’s portion in the land is eternal. This means always without interruption. This is impossible for the intellect. A human being always has times when he is more focused and times when his intellect is occluded. We find this repeated many times in the Talmud. When a sage said something difficult his companion sometimes says, ‘I think he said that when he was napping.’ Clearly even the greatest people, towering intellects, go through alternating cycles of what the mekubalim, kabbalists call expanded consciousness and constricted consciousness.

“But the heart is different. One can—and should—always direct his heart to Hashem, filled with yearning for closeness to the Source. We see this from the verse in Shir Hashirim: ‘I sleep, but my heart is awake.’

“This is the meaning of the verse in Shema brought in our parshah: ‘When you lie down in your house, and when you go on the road, when you sit and when you rise.’ The Ramban explains this to refer to dveikus, remembering and cleaving one’s heart to Hashem and always filling his emotions with his great love for the Creator. Even when one speaks to his fellow, his heart should be filled with love for Hashem.”

The Ba’al Shem Tov gave an inspiring description of a genuine tzaddik. “The main completion of a tzaddik is his continual dveikus on high. During every instant he must be bound to his Source. Each word intoned will preserve his dveikus, not diminish it. Even when a tzaddik must speak about mundane matters, he will do so with his heart focused on high.

“It is especially difficult to hold on to the dveikus when one must think about acting in this world. Even planning out how to do a mitzvah can easily interrupt the flow of dveikus since one must immerse himself in the world of action. One must be very vigilant to hold onto the dveikus while involved with these matters, as much as possible. He must act with great alacrity in this.”

Good Shabbos

Parshat Masai

By Sarah Goldstein

Chosh tov,

Today is the Yarzheit of Aharon Hakohen. In fact, it is the only Yarzeit mentioned in the Torah, and is mentioned specifically in this week’s parsha.

וַיַּעַל אַהֲרֹן הַכֹּהֵן אֶל־הֹר הָהָר עַל־פִּי יְהֹוָה וַיָּמׇת שָׁם בִּשְׁנַת הָאַרְבָּעִים לְצֵאת בְּנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם בַּחֹדֶשׁ הַחֲמִישִׁי בְּאֶחָד לַחֹדֶשׁ׃

We are told by Rashi in פרשת חקת that all of Klal Yisrael, men and women, cried over Aharon Hakohen’s death because he was the one who brought peace between people and also between husband and wife in any rift taking place This Rashi calls upon us to imagine a world in which any time there was a miscommunication between people and they struggle to truly find peace and connection, any time people were focused on annoyances and judgement to the extent that there was a struggle in connection of an innate peace between them, there was Aharon Hakohen there to bring out the hidden message, the hidden unity, the שלום ביניהם. What gave him this unique strength? Why is it important that we know his yahrzeit, that we are able to take in this lesson to heart specifically on this day of the year? And how is it connected to the dream of Geula that we are all looking for?

The Meor Einayim quotes the famous mishnah in avos:

. הִלֵּל אוֹמֵר, הֱוֵי מִתַּלְמִידָיו שֶׁל אַהֲרֹן, אוֹהֵב שָׁלוֹם וְרוֹדֵף שָׁלוֹם, אוֹהֵב אֶת הַבְּרִיּוֹת וּמְקָרְבָן לַתּוֹרָה:

Hillel would say, be of the students of Aharon, love peace and pursue peace, love the creations and bring them close to Torah.

He then goes on to teach that what Aharon Hakohen succeeded in doing, was not just creating peace between people, but actually creating peace in the initial rift of all time. Between the lower waters and the higher waters. The lower waters, once separated from the higher waters, cried that they too want to stand before the King. Ultimately, the lower waters represent the physical world of action, the mundane world in which we live. This world too, yearns to be incorporated into Divine service, to be connected and attached to Hashem. Everything and everyone in the world that we see holds a piece of G-dliness that years to be seen and reconnected to Hashem, to be part of the bigger purpose of creation. The world that we see doesn’t want to remain in the illusion of being separate from Hashem, it yearns to be seen through the eyes of Aharon Hakohen, through the lens of a bigger picture of unity, to be connected back to its source in Hashem. In fact the Meor Einayim teaches that Aharon reached his high level of bringing peace to the world specifically through his capacity to see everyone and everything through the lens of אוהב את הבריות, as a creation of Hashem. To see through the created to the Creator. And through his capacity to be מקרבן לתורה, to see the Torah hiding with which everything and everyone was created. Being ready to learn the Torah within each encounter. Connecting each person, experience, and thing we encounter in our lives as being created by Hashem, and being open and ready to learn the Torah hiding within it.

This week is פרשת מסעי. The recounting of the story of our people going through 40 years of journeying through the dessert. The Chassidic masters teach that each stop had its own tikkun, its own sparks that needed to be raised, its own struggle to be overcome, its own Torah to be revealed, and thereby another piece of our own unique light to discover. The Degel Machane Efrayim teaches from his Rebbe the Ba’al Shem Tov Hakadosh, that each of these stops, each of these journeys actually unfold in every single one of our lives. We go through each of these 42 journeys, and the 7 where they turned back on themselves, the sheva yipol tzaddik vekam. We each have a story of tikkun unfolding, each is its own creation of the Divine, and each has its own Torah to teach, if we look closer, if we listen deeper and open our hearts to learn and discover its pnimius. To see each stop along the way, each challenge we get caught in, not just as a stumbling block, but rather as a chance to learn a new Torah, to reclaim another piece of Hashem’s world, and bring it back to its source, by remembering Hashem from within it too.

One of the biggest challenges of Galus is living in illusion, living in a world that sometimes seems separate from Hashem, dealing with challenges, or even just mundane life, and seeing it as separate from Avodas Hashem. Often we see or try to perceive ד’ אחד, the Unity of Hashem, the bigger picture, but then when we apply it to this world, the struggles, the seeming chaos, the confusions and doubts in our own minds and hearts, it can be hard to apply the ושמו אחד with a full complete trusting whole heart. We know of and dream for an ideal world where Hashem’s malchus is revealed but often get challenged when we see people or things that to our limited mind seem far away from the Geula we yearn for. We are about to start the 9 days of mourning, we do know what we lost, everything we know intuitively Hashem’s world should look like. But its our job to find that missing secret, the Torah hiding within even the darkest places, to find Hashem even when He’s hiding, through looking: ובקשתם משם את ד’ אלוקיך ומצאת כי תדרשנו בכל לבבך ובכל נפשך. We find Him when we search with our whole heart and soul, maybe not immediately, but when we keep looking, we’ll find Him.

When two people who really love each other are in an argument, in a struggle, a miscommunication, and there is a distance; often that awakens a deeper desire than ever before to be close. And that desire awakens the closeness that can only emerge after the rift, the seeming distance. We learnt last year on Tisha B’av with Yehudis from the Ramad Vali that Eicha is really the book of the closeness that emerges after the rift, closer than the slight tension that was there beforehand. Its through the prophesies of the churban that we access the deepest yearnings and feelings of closeness with Hashem, pessukim such as חסדי ד’ כי לא תמנו כי לא כלו רחמיו, and השיבנו ד’ אליך ונשובה. It is whilst the Beis Hamikdash is going up in flames that the keruvim are facing each other. It’s been a long way through the desert, the stops have been longer than we thought we were capable of. And yet there’s a yearning that is felt, a closeness waiting to be discovered, a light in klal yisrael ready to be awakened, a light that we’ve never seen before when אור חדש על ציון תאיר ונזכה כלנו מהרה לאורו, then we’ll discover how this whole time we were never even far away, we’ve been together the whole time.

There’s a famous story from the Bartenura on the above mishna in Avos which teaches us how Aharon made peace between Am Yisrael. He would go to one party and tell them, you know, the other person is so upset that he hurt you, he asks if you can forgive him. He then went to the second party and tell them the same things. Both sides would come together and make peace. He knew the secret, he knew that under all their thoughts and patterns, this was the truth, no yid in their insides wants to hurt another. The illusion looks confusing, things can be harsh, we get caught up in mistakes and patterns and most of us are far from perfect, but Aharon Hakohen teaches us that ultimately we want closeness, we will get to tikkun, we will learn from our mistakes, and in our hearts we always do want closeness, especially in those moments, the keruvim are still facing each other, maybe more so than ever.

The Alter Rebbe teaches that the healing of שנאת חינם lies in a love that is beyond reason, beyond the illusion of what we confront before our eyes. The capacity to look deeper in another Jew, see the Elokus within them, see the Torah that they are teaching us and to love them beyond what our eyes may see. This is perhaps one of the deepest lessons going into חודש אב, to look deeper, to yearn more for that closeness and to reveal it for and with each other and to bring the Geula one step closer, אמן כן יהי רצון.

Good Chodesh, Good Shabbos

Pinchas

Art by Menachem Halberstadt

By Yehudis golshevsky

There’s a famous story brought down about the Baal Shem Tov hakadosh, that when he once saw a Jew desecrate the Shabbos with his own eyes he tried to consider in what way he was guilty of a similar sin. “It’s not possible that one can see a flaw within another, the sin of another, without it being in some way a reflection of some similar flaw within oneself. When was I mechalel Shabbos?” After much contemplation he remembered that, in the past, he had stood by and failed to protest when he saw a fellow Jew insult a Torah scholar. Since a talmid chochom is compared to the holiness of Shabbos, the Baal Shem Tov realized that this was his personal equivalent of the flaw of Shabbos desecration. It’s only after seeing the parallel sin acted out before him that he was able to do the teshuvah that his own level required. The shock of witnessing chillul Shabbos was the force that pushed him to examine his own behavior that needed correction.

This week’s parshah begins with the Divine reward given to Pinchas for having intervened and “drawn back My fury against the Jewish people,” giving them a new lease on life. The incident that sparked Pinchas’ zealous act occurs at the end of Parshas Balak, and is described very briefly: “Just then one of the children of Israel came and brought a Midianite woman over to his brothers, in the sight of Moses and of the whole community of Israel who were weeping at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting.” (Bamidbar 25:6) Why weeping? The Targum Yonason comments that they were “…crying and reciting Shema…” Did they expect that kriyas Shema would help to stop Zimri’s illicit behavior? Were they trying to turn aside Hashem’s anger at this blatant act of defiance?
The Nesivos Sholom, zt”l, ties this teaching back to our story of the Baal Shem Tov. When a prince among the Jewish people sins publicly, it’s understood that in some way it must be a reflection of a flaw within the Jewish people themselves. When the verse tells us that Zimri brought Kozvi within sight “of Moses and the whole community,” it means that every single witness knew that they were in some way or another implicated in that crime. If we see it as a sin, then it’s a mirror in which we see ourselves—that’s the Baal Shem Tov’s teaching. So the Jewish people who witnessed the incident cried at the Mishkan and recited Shema—they immediately tried to undo the damage that must be within them, which allowed them to be bystanders at such a tragedy. However, only Pinchas realized that kriyas Shema alone would not uproot the problem.

Only Pinchas was aware that a sin of such depravity could only have taken place “within sight of the Jewish people” if those people already carried some trace of the same flaw. Declaring the unity of G-d, while praiseworthy, wasn’t the right remedy to fully uproot the trace of that sin, and the damage caused by witnessing it. For that, a far harsher method was needed—that was the zealous act of Pinchas, destroying the sin together with the sinners. It left the deepest and most indelible impression on every individual within klal Yisrael, that immorality is detestable to Hashem, is intolerable, cannot be borne.

When we open this week’s parshah and find that Pinchas the kanoi, who took the spear in hand and “acted out My kinah,” we shouldn’t be taken aback any longer that he was rewarded with a covenant of peace, with the pact of kehunah. The job description of the kohein is to serve as a means of reconciling the Jewish people to G-d through the avodah, and to follow the path of Aharon, loving peace and pursuing peace. Pinchas isn’t a zealot, Pinchas proved that he was a true kohein—although the means appeared to be the antithesis of peace, their purpose and final result was the restoration of shalom.