Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello, my friends, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Practical Parsha Podcast. This is Rabbi Shlomo Cohen, and I hope you are well.
For this week it's Parshas Emor, and also tomorrow night, Thursday night, and Friday will be Lag B' Omer, which is the 33rd day of the Omer, which is a joyous occasion in its own right. And this week I wanted to talk about a little bit Lag B' Omer and its significance, as well as a few beautiful ideas on this week's Parasha.
And before we begin, as always, if you have any questions, comments, would like to reach out, say hello, introduce yourself, don't be shy. My email address is rabbi shlomo kon kohenmail.com I'd love to hear from you.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: This week's parsha is Parshas Amor.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Just to give a quick overview of.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: The parsha, Parsha's Emor starts off with the laws of the Kohanim, the priests who worked in the tabernacle and the temple, the Mishkan and the Beis Hamikdash, and in general, the priest. The Kohanim had certain prohibitions that they weren't allowed to become tame, to defile themselves to a dead person, obviously, except for close relatives, the seven close relatives, to be specific. And the parsha starts off with the laws of the kohanim. The parsha continues with the laws of the kohen gadol, the high priest, which was more stringent than a regular kohen, that a, uh, kohen gadol, a high priest is not allowed to be metame himself is not allowed to become impure to anybody, only to a mace mitzvah, somebody, a corpse that's found on the side of the road, then he has obligation to, to bury him. But other than that, he does not become tamey, does not become impure. The parsha continues with the, uh, mitzvah, to safeguard the sanctity of the offerings in the truma. That they also as well cannot become tameh to be treated properly, tells us about the truma, about blemished animals which cannot be offered on the mizbeach on the altar. And we have the mitzvah on this week's parsha of Kiddush Hashem and Hillel Hashem, sanctifying God's name and the prohibition of desecrating God's name. The parsha continues with the festivals, Pesach, the Omer, which we're in the middle of right now, counting the Omer Shavuis, the holiday of Shavuis, Rosh, Hashanah, sukkis, shmini atzeres. And finally, the parsha finishes off with the menorah, talking about the showbread, the lechem upon him, and the story about the blasphemer, the story where a person cursed G D. And how G D commanded Moshe Rabbeinu to deal with him.
[00:02:52] Speaker A: The first idea I want to share with you today takes us to the beginning of the parasha, where the Torah delineates for us the special mitzvos and prohibitions that kohanim have. So the kohanim, the priests, they were not allowed to become contaminated, to come tame through the tuma, the contamination of corpse tama from a dead person only in select situations, such as a close relative.
Additionally, a kohen is not allowed to marry a divorcee, and a kohen, gadol, a high priest, he has additional mitzvos that he can't even marry someone who is a widow. And he even cannot contaminate himself. He cannot even defile himself for the seven close relatives only. The only time a kohengadl, a high priest, can become tameh, is in the case of a mais mitzvah, which is an abandoned corpse. And then, and only then, could he become tamey to bury this, um, Jew who was found on the side of the road or abandoned. When the Torah is describing to us the special commandments that the Kohanim have, the verse reads as Kidoshim yule lohehem velo yechal lushem eloheihem ki es y ishe hashem, uh, lechem elohehem heym makrivim vodesh.
They shall be holy to their God, and they shall not desecrate the name of their God. For the fire offerings of hashem, the food of their God, they offer, so they must remain holy.
Now, the question that's asked is that if the kohanim have, um, all these special commandments, and we know they're elevated, they have this elevated level of holiness than the rest of the Jewish people.
And they're designated, they're separated to a certain degree, they're serving in the temple.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: Only they could do it.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: Why is it necessary for the verse to first say kedoishim yu lelohem, um, that they're sanctified. And then further on in the same verse, it says, you shouldn't desecrate my name, right?
If the psukim and the verses, the Torah tells us how special they are and how elevated they are from among the rest of the nation, so why is it necessary for the same verse to tell us, do not desecrate, Right. If people have these special commandments and they're already sanctified and they're already separated, so why is it necessary for the Torah to sort of go in the negative direction on the other side to say, do not desecrate the name of their God?
Right? What's the teaching here? And similarly, when it comes to the shema, the verses in the Torah that we say every day, twice a day, it begins, vayem shama tishmu el mitzoysay asher ha' aranoichimitzava es cham hayoim la avo esa ah Hashem, Eloke says, and it will come to pass that if you continue listening to my command, that I command you today to love Hashem, your g D and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, then I will. Then the verses continue to tell us all the good things that Hashem will give to us when we follow his decrees and we follow his will. And then suddenly it switches the verses. It says, m.
It says, beware lest your heart be seduced, and you turn astray and serve gods of others and bow to them. And the verses continue with all the bad things that will happen if we go astray from serving Hashem.
Now, the question that's asked, and I think we can base it from this week's Parasha and also from the Shema as well, is that, what's the necessity over here of the both sides of the coin? Why is it by the Kohanima, right, we have to say both sides of the coin? And the answer to this is that when it comes to service of God, there's no middle ground, right? There's a famous saying that after 9, 11, President Bush, everyone was galvanized. The country was galvanized with patriotism, and everyone wanted to destroy the Taliban for taking down the Twin towers and attacking the United States.
And he made a statement. Either you're with us or you're against us.
Either you're going to help us destroy the terrorists, or you're against us and in service of Hashem, Uh, when it comes to service of G D, we're working to become better people, to become closer to Hashem, Um, to do the right thing. Either we're getting closer to Hashem or we're going further away from him. There's no middle ground. There's no plateauing. And similarly, in life, you either we're going up or we're going down, right? Life is like a ladder. Either we're going up the ladder or down the ladder. You know, maybe you could say you're staying in the same place. It doesn't work like that. We're always moving. Life is about movement. And either the movement that we have is going up or it's going down. And that's the message, uh, that the Torah is telling us regarding the Kohanim, that Hashem is giving the commandment to the Kohanim. They have to make yourself holy, right? And it's not enough that they're already special and they're elevated from the rest of the nation. Because he's saying, if you're not going to actively make yourself holy, then you're going to. It's going to lead to. If you're not going to do that, it's going to lead to a desecration.
Don't, meaning don't. There's no middle ground here. Either you're making yourself holy or you're desecrating the name of God. And similarly, in the Shema, it's either we're doing the will of God, right?
It's either we're listening to G D and we're doing the Mitzvos and we're doing what we're supposed to do, or we're not, and we're going away from him, right? We might say to ourselves, maybe I can't be the most pious person in the world, but I'm not the worst person in the world either. Maybe I could say to myself, there's some middle ground. But the answer is that there's no middle ground. We're always in movement.
And this is a very important concept in Judaism, that there's no plateauing.
You think of a plateau. Masada, for those of you who have been there, you climb a mountain, climbing, climbing, climbing. Then you get to a flat area, totally flat.
But in life, there's no plateauing. Either you're going up or you're going down. Granted, there are moments when we go down to go up, right? Sometimes in order to jump, you need to bend your knees. But the point is, it's either we're up or down. It's something we need to remember. And I think we see that from this week's parsha, from the fact that the Torah delineates for us clearly, uh, regarding the Kohanima, that they either are sanctifying the name of God or they're desecrating the name of God, right? And similarly with the Shema as well. Either we're doing the will of God, or we're going against the will of God and in our own lives as well. Either we're doing the right thing or not doing the wrong. The right thing. Sure. There are things at times which maybe are a gray zone which could be correct for one person and not correct for another person. We have black and white. The Torah tells us what to do, what, uh, not to do. But there are situations which are gray. And we have to know, is it correct for us? Is it not correct for us? And if you break it down to the most minute things that we do in our lives, everything we do is either getting us closer to God or taking us further from Him. And that's how we really need to look at things in general, that it's either making us better or making us worse. There's no middle ground, there's no plateauing. And that's a message we see from this week's Parasha. The next idea I want to share with you today takes us to the Torah's commandment regarding a thanksgiving offering. The verse reads, ashem ler tseyne tis bachu. When you slaughter a feast, thanksgiving offering to Hashem, you shall slaughter it to gain favor for yourselves.
And this is a very interesting verse here that if a person slaughters, brings a carbon, a sacrifice, right? An offering, as a thanksgiving offering. The Ksav Sofer tells us and explains to us that this verse, aside from being translated the way that I just mentioned, that it is to gain favor for yourselves, that when you slaughter this toda, this thanksgiving offering to Hashem, you're slaughtering it to gain favor for yourselves.
The actual translation of the Hebrew can also be translated, that when you slaughter a thanksgiving offering to God, you shall slaughter it with your full will. This is the understanding of the Ksav Sofer that the verse is telling us that when he brings this special carbon, which is brought as an offering to give thanks to Hashem, he's doing it with his full will. Now, we know that when a person would bring a carbon toda, a thanksgiving offering, there were four conditions which would obligate a person to express his gratitude to God.
That if a person survived a dangerous situation, Sho, it says, being delivered from imprisonment, from illness, traveling through the wilderness, or just from a dangerous situation, right?
A person has an obligation to bring this type of sacrifice.
Now, when a person goes through situations, when we go through traumatic situations, from suffering, when the situation passes, when we come out of the situation, there is a certain sense of relief and a tremendous gratitude.
But at the same time, Rabbi Twersky brings down that there's also this certain sense of, why did this have to happen to me in the first place?
You know, there's a famous story that there was once this big, burly biker came to Eish Ha Torah, which is a famous yeshiva in Jerusalem. And he came to the yeshiva and he said, I want to see Rabbi Weinberg, who was the Rosh Hashiva, who was the head of the yeshiva.
And he said, rabbi, me and God are like this. And he puts his two fingers together, and he says, really? You and God are so close like this with their fingers together?
He says, you know why me and God are so close?
Because I was on my bike and I was riding down the highway by the shore, and all of a sudden, the tractor trailer came out of nowhere, and I had to swerve my bike. I flew off the cliff, and I got caught on a tree branch.
Because, you see, God loves me so much. He saved me on the tree branch. So Rabbi Weinberg turned to him and said, true, he saved you on the tree branch, but who sent the tractor trailer?
The idea is that suffering, although suffering is hard, is challenging, makes us numb at times.
There are many benefits to going through a challenging situation.
Now, we obviously pray every day. We don't want to face with suffering. We say, shalay lav eli DEI ni seyon. We pray to God that he shouldn't give us challenges, he shouldn't give us suffering. We don't want it. But we have to realize that if we do get it, if we do have challenge in front of us, if we are in a painful situation, there are a lot of things that can come out of this for the benefit of others. You know, think about all the challenging situations the Jewish people as a nation have gone through and all the amazing things that have come out of that, right? And even think of it, not even the Jewish people think, in the United States, whenever there's a disaster, people start coming out of the woodwork to help their neighbors and donations and helping this country. The United States is a very giving country, and people want to help each other from a disaster, a flood, earthquake.
But where were these people 20 minutes ago before the disaster?
How come they weren't there to help then?
And the answer to that is that suffering brings people together.
It brings out the best in each other. You know, thinking about October 7th in Israel, when the Jewish people, especially we thrive on this, is that, you know, when we're squeezed, that's when the best of us come out. You know, all the. Obviously, there's tons of suffering. And I'm not trying to take away from people's pain. And there's things that people are still going through, but so many positive things of people, you know, coming closer to Hashem, People getting, you know, getting reconnected, people doing things that they never thought they would do. All the amazing goodness and kindness that has come out from society because of a certain situation, because of suffering, right? How many amazing organizations that are here to help other people because of one person suffered, you know, uh, one person went through something challenging, and because of their experience, they're able to use that as a springboard to help other people, you know, so the lesson here from this week's Parasha, and I think there's many levels to this, is that when it says a person has to give a Thanksgiving offering, right? Which was for a situation that they went through, they came out on the other side. They came out of a dangerous situation, they survived. They have to thank God for it.
Because deep down, even though there's gratitude and there's relief, there's still this sense of, why did I have to go through this to begin with?
And that's why the Torah is telling us that when you slaughter the Thanksgiving offering, you shall slaughter it to gain favor, right? That it should be with your full will. Says with your full will that you should know that you're thanking God for the experience.
You're not just thanking him for coming out of this hard situation.
You're thanking him for everything that comes along with it. That you're realizing you're a better person, the world is a better place, and you're gonna be stronger from it. And I always say this, and I could say this for myself as well, that when you go through a challenging situation, it's not fun to be in that situation. It's really hard. But when you come out of it, the experience that you've gained as a person is, on a personal level, you would never trade that, what you have gained for all the money in the world. You know, I know a close friend of mine is a doctor, and he himself has a certain heart condition.
And he's told me that because he himself had certain heart issues, he's able to be a better cardiologist. He's able to empathize with his patients better than other doctors because he understands. So it's come out that the suffering that he endured has made him a better person, has made him a better doctor, and has enabled him to help people even more than he could have before.
So that's on the. On the personal level and on a general level, we see the society, the best of society comes out at times when there's suffering. Now, again, we don't wish for suffering. We don't. We don't, you know, we don't want it necessarily. We want Hashem to. We don't want the challenge. But we have to realize that sometimes this is the tool that Hashem uses to help bring out the best in people, to help that people should remember who he is, to reconnect. And I say this all the time, that Hashem doesn't give the challenges to the ones that he doesn't care about. He gives it to the people that he wants to hear from, the ones that he loves the most. Right? So if you have a challenge, that means that God loves you and he wants to hear from you. So therefore, he has to just sometimes give you a little push. I want to hear from you. Because we know that when a person's in a place of pain and challenge, he turns to Hashem. Hashem made the system g d set up the world in such a way that if things are just good for us all the time, we're going to forget about him. We're not going to remember. So, therefore, sometimes it's necessary, um, for us to squeeze us a little bit, to help us remember who we are, who we need, and to help us be better people and a better world.
And that's this idea from this week's Parasha. And in fact, we know that a person that when Mashiach comes, when the Messiah comes, we're going to make a bracha hatayv vahmatev on the good and the bad. This world right now, in the situation that we're in right now, we still make a blessing. We say on the good things, we say, on the bad things, we say dayana emes that the true judge, meaning we don't see it all now, we don't understand it now. But when the time comes in the next world, when Mashiach comes, when the Messiah arrives, we'll have a clarity of why things happen as they do. And I think even in our own personal lives, as we go through it, we realize that a lot of the challenging situations that we've gone through have made us better people and have helped us get to where we are. And that's a very powerful lesson for this week's Parasha. The last idea I want to share with you is regarding the day of lag baomer. So lag b' omer is the 33rd day of the Omer.
And we're counting right now from Pesach to Shavuos, which is the holiday of the giving of the Torah.
And every day we count another day closer. And maybe as we get closer to Shavuos, we'll talk about this idea of counting the Omer, of counting to the day that we receive the Torah.
But today I want to focus on Lag B. Omer, the 33rd day of the Omer, which is the 33rd day of counting. And we know that the Omer is also a day of. It's a little bit of a morning time as well for part of the Omer. Because the students of Rabbi Akiva, who was the leader of the Jewish nation during the times of the. Of the Mishnah, his students died.
24,000 students died with an epidemic. And the Talmud goes through the reasons that they were giants of Torah learning. They were leaders in their own right. And the question is, why did they pass away so, you know, in such a horrible way?
And the Talmud tells us the reason why is because Shalay Nahogu covered Zelaza. He didn't give, um, honor the proper way to each other. That on their level where they were, that they should have had the proper respect for each other. And because they didn't have the proper respect, therefore, they passed on. That's. And alagbaomer, the students are be Akiva, they stopped dying. That's one level of why it's a joyous day. Because the day the epidemic stopped, and we'll have to look into that a little bit more of what that means, why was that the joyous day?
And on a secondary level, it was also the day that Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai passed away. And the day is, you, uh, know, Rab Shimon's yard site, who he was also a great, um Tana leader. And, you know, there's a whole other aspect to lag baomer. But what I wanted to focus on right now is from Rabbi Akiva and his students that why is it that Rabbi Akiva students he stopped dying. Why is that such a special thing? Right? The epidemic stopped. You still think it should be sad.
And the answer to that, on a very basic understanding of Lagba mer, is that it's not just that the students stopped dying. It's that Rabbi Akiva, he right away started again with the next his five more students. Meaning after being the leader of an Academy of 24,000 students and all of his students died, he restarted. He didn't give up. He was an old man, and he restarted his yeshiva with five students. He didn't give up. And it's from those five students that our transmission of the Oral Torah is continued. And that's on one level, the celebration of Lagba Omer, this idea of continuation of the Torah, especially the Torah Sheba Peh the. The Oral Torah, that we never could give up. We always have to push on. And you never know where that big moment or that action, that big action is going to be. It might be at the end of someone's life. It might be the small thing that's going to cause the continuation of the chain from generation to generation. And that's one of the reasons why lagba Omer, the 33rd day of the Omer, is a joyous time, because it shows this idea of. Of continuity, that even though Rabbi Akiva could have retired, he was a great sage in his own right. He could have sat back and relaxed. He was an old man. No, he didn't. He got up and started again with five students.
And from those five students is the chain of transmission of the Oral Torah that we have today.
And that's to not give up, to never know where that action, small or big, can have that infinite effect. So with that, I'm going to finish. For today's podcast, I hope you enjoyed. If you have any questions, comments you'd like to reach out, feel free to send me an email at Rabbi Shlomo konkohnmail.com have a great day.
