Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello, my friends, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Practical Parasha podcast.
[00:00:05] It's Wednesday, but it feels like a Monday.
[00:00:08] That's because Sunday night through Tuesday night was Shavuos. I hope you had a beautiful holiday as well, and I didn't want to miss a week of the podcast. So here I am Wednesday evening with some short notice, just trying to jump right into the parsha to give some beautiful ideas over in honor of the weekly parsha. And before we begin, as always, if you have any questions, comments, or just would like to reach out to say hello, feel free to send me an email at Rabbi Shlomokon kohnmail.com I'd love to hear from you. This week's parsha is Parshas Naso. The parsha begins with the responsibilities of Gershon and Merori, the two sons of Levi. Last week, we, the Torah delineated for us the job of Kahas. And the parsha continues this week with the responsibilities of the family of Gershon and the family of Merari. The parsha also tells us about the special mitzvah of the Sotah.
[00:01:11] Now, if a woman is suspected of committing adultery, the Torah delineates for us the process which is to be followed to test the woman to see if she was unfaithful to her husband. Now, this procedure that the Torah commands us to perform was a miraculous, um, ceremony in which a woman who was suspected of committing adultery, meaning she was witnessed being in seclusion with a man other than her husband, and she was warned, and she subsequently was witnessed again in seclusion, uh, with a man that was not her husband, would have to go through this process of the bitter waters in which the name of God would be written on a parchment and would be dissolved in these bitter waters. They're referred to as. But the Torah goes through the whole process of the sota, where the sota, this woman who was suspected of adultery would have to drink these waters. If she didn't, you know, if she was not admitting to her sin, rather she was saying she was innocent, she would have to drink these waters in which the name of God was, you know, mixed into.
[00:02:36] And the waters would miraculously test her if she was guilty of adultery, the curses that would be read from this scroll that was written would come upon her and she would die. But if she was innocent of this sin, she would live through the procedure and would be permitted to her husband. Again, the parasha continues with the, uh, mitzvah of the Nazirite, of the Nazir Now, a Nazir was someone who, in order to achieve a level of holiness or a level of exaltedness, would refrain from drinking wine. And it would be a temporary, um, withdrawal from wine. And there's a procedure. And the Torah talks about the procedure that a Nazir would follow while he takes upon this oath upon himself to be a Nazir, that he wouldn't drink wine, he would not be able to cut his hair. He does not defile himself to a dead person, right? A corpse. He's not allowed to be in the presence of a corpse. And he would do this for a certain amount of time, depending on how long he took upon himself. This Naziros, this oath of Nazirus to be a Nazirite. And the Torah also spells out to us the process of, when he finishes his term of Nazir, what he does in order to come back down into the congregation. In this week's Parasha, Hashem, G D commands Moshe to tell Aaron, the high priest, and his children that they are to be the ones who are going to give this special blessing to the Jewish people. And the parsha says the blessing which Aaron and his children are to bless the Jewish nation. And how Hashem and how G D will bless the nation through the kohanim.
[00:04:34] The parsha concludes with the special offering of the nissiyim that the leaders of each tribe that they, in honor of the dedication of the tabernacle, each brought their own offering of, um, inauguration in honor of the tabernacle being brought into service. And the parasha goes through each one of their offerings. The first idea I want to share with you today takes us to the beginning of the parasha. Now, one of the commandments in this week's parasha talks about theft in general, how you know it's wrong, and specifically in regards to theft from a convert, from someone who joins the Jewish people.
[00:05:20] And the verses over there describe the process and the, um, atonement that a person needs to do. Now. Additionally, the parsha in this paragraph also talks about how when a carbon, the different carbonos that were given, the different offerings that were given, and different portions that were brought, different parts of it had to go to the kohanim, to the priests, and those portions, whether it be of grain or whether it be of animal offerings, the kohen was entitled to different presents, and it was to him and the parash, the psukim, the verses teach us that those portions go to the kohen. It's his. It's legally his. And if you read the verses, it's an interesting Wording in the verse, it says, and every portion from any of the holies that the children of Israel bring to the kohen shall be his. Meaning the kohen has ownership on it. Now, the next verse is very interesting.
[00:06:40] A, uh, man's holy shall be his, and what a man gives to the kohen shall be his.
[00:06:47] Interesting.
[00:06:48] What a man is giving to the kohen. These presents, these portions. The, uh, Torah tells us that they're his, right? So if you look at rashi, Rashi explains this to mean that when a person would give these gifts, the kohen can't force him to give it to him, Meaning he's allowed to choose. The israelite is allowed to choose which koan he wants to give it to. But it's still. It's very interesting, the wording here. Uh, what does it mean? That the holies that he gives to the kohen shall be his. If I give you something, it's not mine anymore. It's yours.
[00:07:25] I don't have it. So why is the Torah telling us here that it's that if I give something to the kohen, it's mine. Or actually, be more correctly, or if you give something to me, I'm a kohen, then it's yours. We have to understand this. So I saw the Chavez chaim brings down that there's a very important lesson we see from this week's parasha when it comes to what is ours and how we should look at our belongings. In general, there's a parable that the chavitz Chaim gives to help us understand this. There once was a man who had, you know, he got a message that the king wanted to see him.
[00:08:06] And first, you know, when he's going to go to the king, he's very nervous. He doesn't want to just go by himself. He wants to go with someone who's going to speak on his behalf, what a good person he is, and hopefully advocate for the best outcome. And first, this man goes to his closest friend, his good, good, close buddy, and says, will you come with me to the king? But this man, even though he's very close with him and very dear to him, he refuses to go with him to the king. He goes to his next friend, who's not as close, but he still has a very good relationship with, and says, will you come with me to the king? He says, you know what? I can't come with you to speak on your behalf to the king, but I'll come with you to, uh, his palace to be with you up until that point, and not wanting to give up, he goes to his third friend, which maybe he wasn't always so close with, but he's still his friend to a certain degree. And he says, will you come with me to the king to speak with me on my behalf, to make sure I have a good outcome when I talk to him? Because you have to do your best whenever you go before the kingship.
[00:09:14] He says, yes, I'll come with you, and I'll speak with you on behalf. And this friend is the most. He's surprised by this fellow that he wasn't even so close to them, but yet he said he would come with him all the way into the palace to speak with him on his behalf. And that's what he does. The Chavez chayyim tells us the parable here, the understanding of it is that in life a person has different sets of friends. Now, the way he's referring to the friends here, the Chavez chayim, is that it doesn't mean friends literally. That the person's closest friends from the story is a person's money.
[00:09:49] That our money is so dear to us that throughout our life, we're always watching it, we're always counting it, we're always making sure we have it. We want to accumulate more and more of it. But when it comes to, you know, the time when we're going to have to go upstairs after 120, the money's not coming with us, so it stays here. It doesn't even accompany us to the king. The king is Hashem, uh, and we go up to the final judgment.
[00:10:14] And similarly, the second set of friends, which a little bit, you know, not as dear to us, is, uh, our family, our friends. Now, sure, they're with us throughout our lives. They support us, they help us, but they only could take us and help us until the point, uh, that we pass on from this world.
[00:10:35] So they go with us until, I guess, the grave.
[00:10:39] And that's where it stops. They can't help us after that point.
[00:10:42] And on the third level, this next level of friends, which can go with us all the way up to the king and advocate, uh, on our behalf, are our teshuvah and maisim. Tevim is the Torah and the mitzvahs that we do in this world, that maybe we don't view it as such. We don't view them as so close to us and as important. But they are the ones who are going to come with us to the next world to advocate on our behalf. That, you know, that get us to make sure that the outcome in front of the king is the best outcome. And I think the connection back to this week's parsha to help us with our original question couldn't be clear.
[00:11:19] Because if we think about it, our money, right, if we have money in a bank account, but it's just sitting in the bank account, you know, it's there, but is it doing any good for us? It's just sitting there.
[00:11:36] But when a person takes that money and gives it to charity, does something good with it, does a mitzvah with it, so then that money is his forever, meaning that action that you did with the money is yours. No one can take it away from you. And, uh, that's what the verse in this week's Parsha is teaching us, that when a person would give these presents to the kohen, he would give these special portions to the kohen that the kohen was entitled to. So even though he was giving it away, it was not in his possession anymore.
[00:12:12] It now was his. Now he owned it. Now it was coming with him forever. Because normally the money we have doesn't come with us. It stays down here after we pass on, doesn't go with us to the grave, stays here. But if we do good things with the money that we have, we give tzedakah, we give charity.
[00:12:32] So that money, that money is really ours. And I think this idea in general is, if we could take it one step further, what's real in our lives?
[00:12:43] Is it the physical things that we have? Is that what's real?
[00:12:47] Sure, we think of it in that sense. But if you look at it a little bit on a deeper level, the things that are real, that's not real. Because those physical things, how long do they last for?
[00:13:00] 30, 40, 50 years? Um, that's a long estimate. Most things we have within a few years, they're worn out and they're not good.
[00:13:10] But the things that stay with us forever, which are the good deeds that we do, which is the Torah that we learn, that is real. So even though we don't see it, maybe we can't feel it in the same sense as the new, Whatever new thing we have, but it's more real in the sense that it's with us forever. And that's what it means in this week's Parasha. That's the lesson we see here in this week's Parasha, that the money we give away for a mitzvah, that's ours.
[00:13:42] And the things that we do, the mitzvahs that we do. And the Torah that we learn, that's real, that's forever. And I think we have to have that mindset when it comes to the world that we live in and the things that we do, what's real, what's ours. And just to take this one step further, when we give, it comes out from this, and we give, we're really gaining because now the money that we have in our possession is becoming ours forever. So we shouldn't look at it as a net negative when we give, um, money away for tzedakah or we give up our time to do a mitzvah. We should look at it as a net positive. Because now that action, that time, is ours forever. Something we should keep in mind, a very powerful idea from this week's Parasha. The second idea I want to share with you today is takes us to the mitzvah, uh, of Naziros, this Nazirite oath.
[00:14:40] So as I mentioned earlier, the Torah, there's a concept in the Torah that if somebody wants to sort of go above and beyond, he doesn't want to just stay in the regular mode of observance. He wants to take a step, you know, a step higher. A person can sanctify himself, uh, with this type of oath of Naziros, where he would sort of withhold certain enjoyments from himself, and from withholding these enjoyments, he guessed it would elevate him to be even higher. Now, the Torah delineates for us how a person is to do this, what's the process he has to take and what he has to do to come back to the congregation.
[00:15:25] Now, in other years, I believe I've discussed this concept of Naziros. But what I wanted to talk about this week and this year's episode is that by a Nazir, one of the prohibitions that this Nazir has is that normally a person can become, you know, can become contaminated through a dead person, right? A person, you know, regular person, who's not a kohen, allowed to have contact with a corpse, but a Nazir, you know, while he's in this state of Naziros, which is a temporary time period, depending how long he makes his oath, he's not allowed to, you know, drink wine or anything that comes from a grape. He's not allowed to cut his hair. He's not allowed to come into contamination with a corpse.
[00:16:16] Now, there is a difference here. A kohen, right, who also has an elevated level of sanctity, because the kohanim were the ones who worked in the tabernacle, who worked in the temple.
[00:16:30] A kohen is not allowed to come into contact with a dead person as well, with a corpse. It's called the impurity of a corpse tuma. Now, even though a koin normally is not allowed to be defiled from this corpse tuma, from the contamination of a dead person, there are exceptions.
[00:16:52] So, for example, if a kohen, one of the seven close relatives of a kohen, passes away, the kohen is obligated to become tame, to have contact with the mace, obviously to bury the dead and to deal with the situation that that's what the kohen has to do.
[00:17:11] But when it comes to a nazir, a Nazir who's in this temporary state of sanctity, so even those seven relatives, he's not allowed to come into contact. He doesn't defile himself for that situation.
[00:17:28] And the verse reads as kol yeme hiziroi la hashem al nephesh meis la yavay law.
[00:17:44] All the days of his abstinence for the sake of hashem, he shall not come near a dead person, to his father, to his mother, to his brother, to his sister. He shall not contaminate himself to them upon their death, for the crown of his God is upon his head.
[00:18:00] Now, this we see from the verse that, uh, this Nazir, he does not come into contact even if during that time his mother or his father passes away. And this is different than the kohen. The kohen, you know, obviously, with the exception of the kohen gadol, the high priest, he does not. He does defile himself if his mother, father, any one of these close relatives pass away. And the question begs to be asked. And Rabbi Fran asked this question is that why is it such. Why is it that the nazir who's only temporary, you, uh, know, temporarily in this state of sanctity, is the one who. Who doesn't defile himself for one of these close relatives. But yet a kohen who is born this way, he is born into this sanctified life. And he's always his whole life, he has to live his life on this higher level of kedusha, of this higher level of holiness, he's allowed to become defiled through a dead person. You should think it should be the opposite way around that the kohen who's born into this. And he always has to live his life in this elevated way. He should never have to become defiled to a dead person, to a corpse, even if it's a family member. But a, uh, Nazir, who's only temporarily. Who chooses to temporarily uplift himself to this higher level of kedusha, to this higher level of holiness. He should be able to, you know, come down, if need be, meaning if to defile himself to come into contact with a dead person, especially his close relatives. If, uh, if the situation arises, it should be the other way around.
[00:19:51] And Rabbi Fran answers based on a sesame that the Svasemus writes. A very powerful idea I think we see from this and I think it's brought out and maybe I could bring it on this way. You know, we all know different people in the world.
[00:20:07] There's a lot of rich people, very wealthy people.
[00:20:10] And I think most people make a difference between somebody who was a rag to riches billionaire and somebody who has inherited it from their father or from their grandfather. That the person who went from nothing to something has uh, greater respect I think, in our eyes and the eyes of people in general, as opposed to somebody who just inherited money. And maybe, maybe they made it bigger and they made it, they became wealthier.
[00:20:42] But you don't look at him in the same way, with the same respect as somebody who had nothing and made it into something.
[00:20:51] Because that person is a self made millionaire. Right? That's the term, a self made millionaire, self made billionaire. And I think the idea here that the Svasemus brings down is that when it comes to holiness, that although the Kohen is somebody who was born into this and he has this extra level of sanctity, it's not something that he necessarily had to work hard to do to acquire, it's something he's born with.
[00:21:23] But the Nazir, who is this fellow who wants to go above and beyond, he's an Israelite who just wants to live his life on a higher level, he's deciding to do this.
[00:21:35] So the holiness that he attains is in a way a higher level than the Kohen because he's self made, he had to do it himself, he wasn't born into it. And thus for his sanctity that he has right now, he's not able to defile himself with the corpse, Tama, with the defilement of coming into contact with a dead person. Because it's a higher level, it's a higher level of kedusha, it's a higher level of holiness. And thus it's inappropriate for him to become defiled in this situation as opposed to the Kohen who was just born into it. So for him it's appropriate for him to, you know, thus that he's born into this situation. So now his father, his mother, where he comes from passed on. So therefore it's appropriate for him to come into contact with a dead person. And I think the lesson here is very, very powerful and clear that in Judaism there is a focus that we all have to realize that we all can be self made people.
[00:22:42] We all have the ability to be self made millionaires. And when I say millionaires, I don't mean millionaires in the literal sense, that we could make tons of money, maybe we could do that. But, but when I say self made millionaires, I mean self made millionaires in the spiritual sense. That, uh, we have the ability within ourselves to make something of ourselves spiritually, to push ourselves to do a little more and to elevate ourselves more than we normally would.
[00:23:12] We don't have to be born into it. We don't have to be look at ourselves and say, I wasn't born with this. I never was taught this in my youth. You know, I wasn't born Orthodox. The point is that we all have the ability to acquire that kedusha, to acquire that holiness in our own way. And that's something we should strive for. And I think we see from the Nazir how, and you know, this is an idea that we see that as people we can be higher than angels because an angel doesn't have a choice, doesn't have free will, it just does the will of God. It has no urge to do evil. But us as human beings, we have this pull between good and bad. And every time we do something good, we're elevating ourselves even higher than the angels because we're choosing to do that, we're choosing to do the act of good, we're holding ourselves back from doing bad. And in a way that makes us elevated higher than anything else and just really to bring this idea home. Rabbi, uh, Fran explains that we know that the Jewish people, that even though the kohanim are the ones who served in the temple, all of the Jewish people are compared to kohanim, that in a sense, meaning they don't work in the temple, but we're a nation of priests, we're a nation of princes. And the point is that we have to realize on one hand that we have the ability to make something of ourselves, that we have the ability to be that self made millionaire in the spiritual sense, to push ourselves even though, you know, we weren't born with it, to grow to do things more than maybe what we're used to. But at the same time we also have to realize where we come from, that, uh, just like the Kohen is born with a spiritual level of sanctity that's elevated.
[00:25:03] We as Jews have to realize that maybe we didn't grow up with it. But where do you come from? You come from Avraham. You come from Yitzchak. You come from Yaakov. You come Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. You come from Moshe, Moses, David.
[00:25:18] These are your grandfathers, right? Your grandmothers are Sarah, Rifka, Rachel. Right? Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel.
[00:25:27] Know where you came from. That's. That's farther back, but even closer down. We come from greatness, and you have to realize that it's on both sides of it. You have one side know where you come from. And number two is to know you could also make something from yourself as well. And I think that's a powerful idea from the Nazir that we see in this week's Parsha, which will, God willing, help us be the best we can be. So with that, I'm going to finish for today's podcast. If you have any questions, comments, or would like to reach out, feel free to send me an email. Atomakonkohnmail.com have a great day.
