Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] 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.
[00:00:07] We're back at it. This week it was a little bit of a break. Last week it was Shavuis. There was no Parsha of the week.
[00:00:14] Hope you didn't miss me too much.
[00:00:16] And we're back for Parshas Naso.
[00:00:20] Before we begin, I don't want to get too emotional over here because maybe we'll have more time to talk next week, but God willing, this episode will conclude four years of the Practical Parsha podcast, meaning it'll conclude the fourth cycle. Don't get nervous. We're not stopping the podcast. We're going to continue it, God willing, because next week is Parsha, as that's when I began.
[00:00:51] So we're concluding this week the fourth cycle, and next week we begin the fifth cycle, and we'll talk about it a little bit next week, you know, a little bit. Some of my thoughts, my feelings and ideas going forward, but just wanted to put that out there for all the Practical Parsha podcast family listeners.
[00:01:11] Very exciting and gratifying moment. Thank God. And before we begin, as always, if you have any questions, comments, would like to reach out to say hello.
[00:01:24] Don't be shy.
[00:01:25] Send me an email at Rabbi Shlomokon kohnmail.com I'd love to hear from you.
[00:01:31] This week's Parsha is Parshas Naso.
[00:01:35] Just to give a quick overview of the parsha. The Parsha delineates the different responsibilities of the different sons of Levi, right? The tribe of Levi had the obligation to transport the Mishkan.
[00:01:51] And Gershon and Merari, they had different responsibilities in regards to transporting the Mishkan and putting it up. The Torah delineates that. This week's parsha, the Parsha continues with a special prohibition against stealing from a convert. A person who converts to Judaism. The person takes advantage of him. It's a specific prohibition, you know, aside from a, uh, regular prohibition of you can't steal, you know, from anybody.
[00:02:18] Torah has an extra prohibition. There's extra warning here about taking advantage of someone who is a convert. The parasha also discusses the mitzvah of the Sota, the wayward woman who is suspected of adultery. And the Torah goes through the specific process that she goes through to get to this point. There's a warning after she secludes herself with a man and it happens again.
[00:02:45] And in order to make her permitted to her husband again in the times of the. Of the Beis Hamikdash, there was a special procedure that would happen. She would drink these special waters, the bitter waters with the name of Hashem, the name of G D was mixed into them. And miraculously, the waters would test her to see if she was faithful to her husband or not, meaning if she was not faithful, it would cause her to die in the most grotesque way. But if she was faithful still, and even though she had made mistakes and should not have been secluded with that man, she would survive. And the Torah actually blesses her to have children afterwards.
[00:03:22] Now, the parsha continues with. After the mitzvah of Sotah, the parasha continues with the mitzvah of the Nazir. Nazir is somebody who took upon himself these extra prohibitions sort of to abstain from the extras in life. And the way that he abstains is not just from, you know, not going on a vacation or not, you know, uh, doing something fun. That's not how he abstains. The Torah gives very specific guidelines on how he becomes elevated. How he becomes this elevated level of sanctity, which is a Nazir. He doesn't drink wine, he doesn't cut his hair, he doesn't, um, contaminate himself to a corpse. And the Torah goes through a specific process of what happens when a person takes upon himself this temporary status of a Nazir, and what happens if he becomes contaminated, the sacrifices he must bring when he completes his term, and so on and so forth. Right after the Torah describes the mitzvah of Nazir, the Torah segues into the priestly blessings that the Kohanim, the priests, have a mitzvah in the Torah to bless the Jewish people. That was a mitzvah which was given to our Nahkoin and his children to give blessings, to give brachos to Kla Yisrael. And Hashem, you know, tells Aaron, hakohen, you're going to bless the people and I'm going to bless you. Meaning the Kohanim are a conduit.
[00:04:51] They are a vessel for the Jewish people to receive the blessings from Hashem, M from G D.
[00:04:58] Finally, the parsha concludes with the offerings of the tribal leaders.
[00:05:03] And that is because the Torah tells us that in this week's Parsha, the Mishkan, the tabernacle was completed and it was built. And after it was built, there was this special ceremony where each one of the leaders of the tribes would bring a set of sacrifices to inaugurate the Mishkan, to inaugurate the tabernacle. When it's starting off that this was going to be the central uniting point for the Jewish people, a place where Hashem's, uh, Shechinah, where, uh, Hashem's divine presence would rest himself, would manifest itself in this world. And that was this week's parsha.
[00:05:44] It was inaugurated and would start to go into use with the service every day. The first idea I want to share with you today takes us to the mitzvah, uh, of Nazir, the Nazirite vow, right? So a person can take upon himself this elevated level of holiness. It's a vow.
[00:06:05] It's a certain status that he's taken upon himself, this commitment.
[00:06:09] And in most situations, it's temporary. A person could do this, tap into this on a temporary basis to acquire a certain level of holiness.
[00:06:17] And really, to begin this parsha, to begin this, uh, idea that the Torah talks about, the first thing is the juxtaposition, the fact that it's next to the story, the mitzvah of the Sotah. We talked about the Sota before, where she's this woman who was suspected of adultery. And the Torah has a process for testing her to see if she's still faithful and if she wasn't. The Torah describes how she passes from the water, this miraculous way of, you know, tests her to see if she's guilty or innocent. If she's guilty, she's going to have to pay the consequences. And the commentators explain to us that the reason why the parsha of Nazir, where a person is abstaining from wine, he's trying to hold back from things, to gain a certain level of sanctity, is because the way I believe it's brought down is that if a person sees a sota in her degradation through if a person saw this whole experience, the lesson that he should take out of it is to remove himself from the wine. Meaning if a person sees himself, sees someone who went through soul experience to have that separation from alcohol. Now, I want to talk about this a little bit more because it really ties into the next slide. I want to cite the Ibn Ezra explains. If you read the Posse, the Posseq reads as follows.
[00:07:43] It says, daber el bani yisrael va martellahem ish oisho kiyafli. Lindor neder Nazir.
[00:07:49] Lindor neder Nazir Lahozir la Hashem Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, a man or woman shall disassociate himself by taking a Nazarite vow of abstinence for the sake of. Of Hashem. So if you look at the actual translation of the word kiyafli lindar, right? A person. A person means he should take a vow that the Torah is telling us about this person. He is about to take a vow. He's about to disassociate himself. That's what it means, kiyafli lindar. The Eben Israel explains that if you work at. Look at the word yafli, right? In Hebrew, different words, the same word can mean different things.
[00:08:28] So even though it means to disassociate, but it could also mean yafli is like a pella. It's a wondrous act, right? So it's an inference to the fact that if a person is becoming a nazir, he's doing something wondrous. So what does that mean? He's doing something wondrous. Person abstains from alcohol.
[00:08:50] A person, uh, decides not to contaminate himself to any corpse. He's not going to cut his hair. He's going to do things that are, you know, not going to do these things which are normal for people that sort of to let loose, right?
[00:09:03] What does it mean? He's doing something wondrous.
[00:09:05] So I think the idea here, which the Ibn Ezra brings down, and it's also brought down Chatzka Levenstein, um, is that when a person decides to take upon himself this extra level of nazirus, this extra. These extra prohibitions, so to say, it's going against his natural urges and inclination.
[00:09:26] A person naturally wants to enjoy.
[00:09:30] We seek pleasure. That's what we do. That's our natural urge. It's our animalistic traits. And us as human beings, we have the ability to make choices. We can decide if we want to give in to our urges, to our pleasures, right? An animal does not have that choice. It just gives in to its pleasure. It doesn't make a choice not to seek pleasure. If it wants it, it takes it. That's it. End of story.
[00:09:59] Only a human being do we have the ability to go against our nature and overpower it.
[00:10:05] So what the Ibn Ezra is explaining here is that a person who is taking a nadir upon himself, he's. He's doing something wondrous, this yafli nether, even when he takes this oath to not drink wine, aside from, you know, distancing himself from alcohol, but he's doing something wondrous. He's going against his natural tendencies.
[00:10:33] He's overpowering his inclinations. And I think this idea fits in really well. Because what did we say before we said that the reason why the parsha of Sotah is next to the parsha of Nazir is because the Talmud tells us if a person sees a sota in her degradation, he has to remove himself from the wine. What does that mean?
[00:10:55] Because if you look at the contrast, the Nazir is the total opposite of what the sota is. The sota, this woman, she gave into her desires, it got the best of her. She gave into her, you know, her pleasure or whatever it is, and she didn't fight it. She let it go.
[00:11:12] But a Nazir is doing the opposite of that. He's holding back. He's doing. When a person sees and act like that, he's doing the total opposite to show that we're here in this world to overpower our inclinations to not just give in to every situation.
[00:11:27] That's why we're here. Any person will tell you that if a person just gives in to his desires or what he feels like, he's not going to get very far in life. And certainly when it comes to spiritual endeavors, you know, we're naturally heavy, we're naturally lazy, we naturally don't want to do, but we have that ability to do. And that's what we have to focus. This is what the Nazir teaches us. Kiyaf li Lindar, that it's a wondrous thing, it's a good thing, it's a healthy thing for us to go against and our nature to go, to fight against it, to accomplish, to get it under control, that animalistic side of ourselves. Because if we don't, you know, the way I like to say it sometimes is that it's very healthy for a person to go a little bit out of his comfort zone.
[00:12:16] What I'm saying is, I'm not. You don't have to be the nuzzier to abstain from the wine. Right? I'm not telling you to do that.
[00:12:24] But what I am saying is that you need to go. Me too. Go out of our comfort zones to push ourselves to where it's a little bit hard because that's going against our nature. Naturally, we don't want to do that. We want to stay where it's comfortable and easy. But we need to do is. We need to learn from the Nazir. We need to go against our nature. We need to do those wondrous things to become the best we can be. And actually, just to bring this idea home a little bit more.
[00:12:50] If you look at the verses a little further, when it talks about Nazir, it says that When a Nazir does these things, it says, you know, the end of the pasach, says Kinezer Alaykav al Raishay, for the crown of his God is upon his head.
[00:13:07] And the way that we become godlike, the way that we become like Hashem, is if we go against our nature.
[00:13:17] That's what it means.
[00:13:20] Only God and his creation, man can make choices. Animals don't do that. So when we, uh, like the Nazir and we make those choices, the crown of G D is upon us. And we fulfill what the Torah says about man, that we were created in the image of Hashem, in the image of God.
[00:13:42] The next idea I want to share today takes us to the mitzvah of Birchas Kohanim, the priestly blessings.
[00:13:50] Now, the Torah tells us that Aaron Hakohein, Aaron the high priest, and his descendants, the Kohanim, have a mitzvah, uh, have a commandment to bless the Jewish people.
[00:14:03] And this blessing is a very beautiful blessing.
[00:14:06] It's.
[00:14:07] That's the only mitzvah in the Torah where the Kohanim are commanded to bless the Jewish people with love, right? The blessing that the Kohanim make before they actually give these blessings, which, if you're outside the land of Israel and you're Ashkenazik, it's on the holidays.
[00:14:25] And if you're Sephardic, it's every day, no matter where you are. And in the land of Israel, in most places, Kohanim, um, they give these blessings every day. It's very special.
[00:14:36] The blessing is with love, that the Kohanim have to give it with love. And in the blessing, it says the commands of the Kohanim to do it with love. And there's a lot to talk about.
[00:14:46] You know, how could there be a commandment that the Kohanim do something with love, with emotion? It's something which is, you know, you can't just pull, uh, it out of, uh, a closet. You can't just take a pill and love, right? So that's what to talk about. The point is, but it's very, very stressed that this is part of the obligation. And in fact, the Zohar brings down, and it's brought down in Halachah that if a Kohen hates somebody in the congregation, he can't go up to do Birchas Kohanim. He can't give the priestly blessings.
[00:15:22] Now, what I want to focus on today is actually the juxtaposition between the parsha of Nazir, the mitzvah of the Nazirite oath, and Birchas Kohanim the mitzvah of the priestly blessings, which Hashem, uh, gives to Aaron, to Aaron and his descendants.
[00:15:42] So in the first idea that we shared, we talked about the connection between, you know, Nazir, why it's located next to the sota, to the mitzvah sotah. Now I'm going to the next step.
[00:15:56] What is the connection between Nazir, the mitzvah of a Nazir, where you're abstaining from wine, you're taking on an elevated status to yourself, and the blessing of birchas kohanim, the priestly blessings, which is right after the Parasha tells us about the Nazirite oath and this whole concept of a Nazir, what's the connection to it? The Sevasemis explains that we learn from the juxtaposition, from the fact that these two seemingly unrelated topics are next to each other. Very important idea. The Nazir, as we said, is an individual, a person who takes upon himself an extra level of holiness.
[00:16:46] He becomes elevated.
[00:16:49] He's kodesh la hashem. He's holy to G D.
[00:16:52] He chose to do that to himself, whether it be for a shorter amount of time, a longer amount of time, and it could even be for a lifetime in some situations. The connection to birchas kohanim is to teach us that if a person finds himself in an elevated position, he's one of the select few. He's the few, the proud, right? He's this Nazir. He's the minority of people. The commandment of taking this oath was only for the select few, the people who are able to be on these lofty levels. So if a person finds himself in the situation where he's exalted above everybody else, he's on a higher level. He finds himself in a position of leadership.
[00:17:36] He has an obligation to channel that ability, that position. He's in the koichas that he has the strengths and abilities that he has towards the Jewish people as a whole.
[00:17:50] And that's something we learn from the Kohanim. Aaron Akohen, Aaron, the high priest, and the Kohanim in general, they were also. They were elevated. They were, you know, they have more mitzvahs, they have more prohibitions than the regular Jewish people. And the Kohanim were the leaders of Klay Yisrael. They were the leaders, the spiritual fathers of the nation. They had an extra level of sanctity.
[00:18:16] But the sanctity that the Kohanim had, it wasn't about them becoming sanctified. Obviously, they did. And I've actually touched upon this in other episodes, the whole idea of the Kohanim is that they were vessels of the Jewish people. They were just. They were not doing it for themselves, but. But rather they were total messengers and, uh, you know, just emissaries of the Jewish nation.
[00:18:42] So, in essence, the holiness that they had was really manifested by the fact that they're giving back to the Jewish nation, that the position that they found themselves in, they used it to give back to Claude Yisrael. They used it to give back to the Jewish nation, to use it not for themselves, but, but to help everyone else as well. And actually, this specifically the Swastamis explains, ties into the mitzvah, uh, of blessing the Jewish people. The blessings Yevorecha hashem v' yeshmarech ha yor shempon avelach av yecunacha yisa hashem pon avelach av yassim chashalom. These are the priestly blessings that the Torah lists.
[00:19:21] May Hashem bless you and safeguard you. May Hashem illuminate his countenance for you and be gracious to you. May Hashem lift his countenance to. To you and establish peace for you.
[00:19:32] And the swasemist explains upon this that this uniquely manifests this idea of the Kohanim giving back to Klal Yisrael, uh, giving back to the Jewish people realizing that the position that they're in is not for themselves. Because Aron Hakohein, he loved Klah Yisrael. He loved the Jewish people so much that it manifested in a way where he said, I want. He raised his hands to bless them back, to give back to them. And that's what it means that he, Hashem, gives him this ability to bless the Jewish people. He was the ultimate person who had this realization that the position that he was in was not for himself. He realized that Hashem had put him there to give back, to use it for the betterment of the nation as a whole, for the betterment of Kla Yisrael, the betterment of society and the betterment of the world.
[00:20:22] And this is the connection between Nazir and Birchas Kohanim, where the Torah tells us about the Nazirite oath, where a person is becoming elevated, and the Kohanim, specifically the blessings, the priestly blessings, it's teaching us a lesson that these individuals, and really, it's each and every one of us who found themselves elevated there on a higher level now it's incumbent upon them to realize that the position that they're in is not for themselves.
[00:20:52] It is for Hashem put you there to help others with those abilities. And I think the lesson for us is very, very clear.
[00:20:59] We all have abilities. We're all in different positions.
[00:21:03] And if we. We're all. And some of us in different leadership positions, and we all are leaders in our own way. But the point is, is that the fact that we're in these positions, Hashem M. Gave us the ability to do the things we do. He didn't give us those abilities to. To do it for ourselves. Sure, we provide for ourselves in these positions, but that's not the point of it. The point of it is to give back, to serve Hashem, to help other people and to bring about a kid, Hashem Shamayim. And that's something we have to realize because many times we think of leadership. It's like, I'm good at leadership. Um, why are you good at leadership? Why are you good at being in the place that you're in?
[00:21:45] Why do you have those abilities to do the things that you do?
[00:21:50] God gave it to you to help bring about a kiddush, Hashem, to bring about a sanctification of God's name. And there's many ways that can manifest itself. That can manifest itself. And how you deal with other people, that can manifest itself. And how you help others with the abilities and skills that you have. It's not about you. It's not about me. It's about us and giving it back and looking. Looking out, not looking in. And that's what the connection here between Nazir and Birchas Kohanim, that these individuals, they're elevated, they're higher up now, but they have to realize they have to be like the Kohanim. They have to realize that they're not. It's not. It's not for them. They have to find a way to channel the, you know, the abilities that they have to give back to. To Kla Yisrael, to use it for the congregation, to help other people with it. So it comes out that anything Hashem has given us that sort of quote, unquote, elevates us above other people, whether it be money, whether it be smarts, whether it be access to certain things, Hashem gave that to you, to me, to help others with it. So what comes out from this is that if a person finds himself to be, quote, unquote, more elevated than somebody else doesn't mean that he's better than somebody else. It doesn't mean that it's making him more separate than another person, but rather, with this understanding, it's a way for him to actually use it to help other people with it, to help other Yidden, to help other Jews with it, and to make it more inclusive. Because if Hashem gave it to you, it was meant to be used to help others. So with that, I'm going to finish for today's podcast. I hope you enjoyed. If you have any questions, comments or would like to reach out, feel free to send me an email at Rabbi Shlomo Kon Kohn at gmail com. Have a great day.
