Parsha Tzav 5766: The Consistency and Constancy of A Jew

For seven days, Moshe taught Aaron HaKohen and his sons the laws of their Avodah in the Mishkan. (You might say that they were given, as they term it in the US, OJT from Shemayim.) On the eighth day, Aaron and his sons began their Avodah.

We are taught in our Parsha about the two flames which burn continuously; the flickering light of the Menorah and the powerful flame of the Mizbeiyach (the altar where the various offerings to Hashem were brought). These two flames which burned constantly teach us that a balance must exist between strength and power and modesty and humility. These fires teach us about maintaining a consistency between enthusiasm and constancy. (L’lmod Ul’Lamed, Rabbi Mordechai Katz, Parsha Tzav, page 103-104)

Rabbi Pliskin writes in the Sefer “Growth Through Torah” on our Parsha that one should “view each new day as the first day of your life.” (Growth Through Torah, page 242) We later learn that Aaron HaKohen’s service each day was done with the same level of enthusiasm as was his first day of service in the Mishkan.

Many among our Jewish brethren would deny Hashem’s control of the world and seek to tailor Torah and their Jewishness to fit the ways of the nations rather than accepting Hashem’s reishut (command) over the world. Many others of our Jewish brethren, the so-called “new Jews” make no bones of their disdain for Yiddishkeit, for their Jewishness. They revile the dress and the ways of both their Eastern European predecessors and their brothers who maintain aspects of the Eastern European derech today in Eretz Yisrael, yet they themselves act despicably, based on their sinat chinom for the religious, and anything religious. In their mindless hate of the religious, the “new Jew”, the liberalized Jew who is kind to the cruel (for it’s not their fault that they are poor, live in the refugee camps of Gaza, Judea and Samaria) discredits his own right to live in Eretz Yisrael in the very eyes of the enemy he is kind to by the Chillul Hashem performed before the altar of foreign powers.

For those Jews, it’s an imperative to revisit the Mitzri memory (or lack thereof) of Yosef and to contrast the dialogue between Haman Y’machsh’mo and Ahasuerus — Haman’s top 10 reasons for seeking the annihilation of the Jews as found in Daf Yud Gimmel (page13), amud(side)Bet, with the contemporary Nuremberg Laws of Nazi Germany. Neither Haman nor Hitler Y’machsh’mom, made any distinction between the Religious or Secular Jew. A Jew is a Jew is a Jew, period. You might change your name, or try to adopt some other religion, intermarry or have a liberal outlook toward those seeking your destruction. But, in the end, you can’t run and you can’t hide from from the fact that You are a Jew. So might we as well start being, internalizing and acting Jewish?

May it be in this year and beyond, that our brethren; the refugee families from Gush Katif and the Shomron (may they soon be restored to new homes and neighborhoods, Bati Knesset, Yeshivot in Gush Katif and the Shomron and only happiness and success for all time), as well as our dear brother, Jonathan Pollard (may he soon know freedom and long life in Eretz Yisrael) be central in our thoughts, prayers, chassadim and actions. May this abominable period of history called hitnatkut be as a bad dream.

May we be zocha in this coming year to take giant steps toward fulfilling Hashem’s blueprint of B’nai Yisrael as a Unique people — an Am Segula, not to be reckoned with as with “the nations” and may we be zocha the Moshiach, the Ge’ula Shlaima, “Yom Hashem V’Kol HaGoyim”, the Ultimate Redemption, bim hay v’yameinu — speedily, in our time”, — Achshav, Chik Chuk, Meiyad, Etmol!!!