Parshat Vayikra
By: Rabbi Moshe Goodman, Kollel Ohr Shlomo, Hebron
בס"ד
לשכנו תדרשו
Seeking the Holy Presence in Our Holy Land
"אדם כי יקריב מכם קרבן לה"
"Be pleased HaShem our God with Your People Israel, and listen to their prayers, and return the service to Your House... Blessed are You HaShem who returns His Holy Presence to Zion."
In this week's parsha the verb-root for "to be pleased", resh tzadi heh, takes a very dominant role. As the offerings in the Mishkan and the Bait HaMikdash come as overtures before HaShem so that the Divine Will (ratzon) be pleased (retze) with us, either the individual or the collective whole. In a similar sense, our prayers, which operate in parallel to the sacrifices, come as overtures before HaShem so that HaShem be pleased with us and answer our prayers.
One of the fascinating laws of Prayer is that the first blessing Avot must be said with proper intent, without which the entire prayer, even if afterwards said with proper intent, is considered invalid, not finding "pleasure" before HaShem. Why is this blessing so crucial to the whole rest of the prayer? One of the explanations for this halacha is that in beseeching God we must first connect to the Godly righteous before us who paved the path in connecting to HaShem.
This idea is echoed in the teaching of our Sages on the commandment "to cleave to God": 'is it possible to cleave to the Holy Presence, alast He is a Consuming Fire! Rather, cleave to the Godly righteous.' This idea is even truer in regard to the Godly Patriarchs who HaShem willed to be the forerunners of Godliness in the world, as it says, "only in your Forefathers did HaShem desire to love them and chose you their offspring after them from all the nations as this day." One who wishes to pave a new path, as he sees fit to serve God outside of the Divine Will delivered to us in the Torah, resembles Nadav and Avihu who were indeed consumed by this 'Consuming Fire', despite their feverish will to connect to God.
By supporting Hebron, we connect with the channels of the Divine Will, thus finding favor before HaShem. This is especially true as we enter the months of Redemption and Divine Will Adar and Nisan, deliberately juxtaposed to connect the redemption of Purim with the redemption of Pesah. Purim is the forerunner of the future redemption, forever lasting even when the rest of the holidays will be (so-to-speak) obsolete in comparison with the redemptive future, while Pesah is the forerunner of the past, the first redemption explicitly linked to our Forefathers in the Torah. This connection of past and future redemptions highlights that the future redemption will come through the redemption of the past, through the remembrance of our Patriarchs in our prayers, through the merits of our Fathers and our efforts to emulate their ways. "And He remembers the kindness of the Avot, and brings a redeemer for their offspring, for His Namesake, with love..."
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Real Stories from the Holy Land #60:
"During a period of about two weeks I took on a hesed/tzedaka project. At that very same time, I was suddenly offered work which pays for all the expenses I just put into the hesed project I had just taken on."
Sources: Ketubot 111b, Deut. 10, 15, Orah Haim 101, 1. Note: Although in p. Ki Tisa we mentioned that 'adding holiness from weekday unto Shabbat' needs to be at least a moment before Shabbat, that is the opinion of Tosfot, but according to many poskim one needs at least 10 minutes or 2 minutes of addition.
