Beha’alotkha: Liar, Liar

Praise ought to be doled out in special cases and for special achievements. For instance, we may tell a friend how happy we are to see them and that they are with us. But we will not praise them for living and breathing, since this is not much of an achievement. Thus, the rather banal praise Aharon receives at the beginning of our Parsha is strange. God tells Moshe to command him to light the Menora and he does so.

א וַיְדַבֵּר ה׳, אֶל-מֹשֶׁה לֵּאמֹר.  ב דַּבֵּר, אֶל-אַהֲרֹן, וְאָמַרְתָּ, אֵלָיו:  בְּהַעֲלֹתְךָ, אֶת-הַנֵּרֹת, אֶל-מוּל פְּנֵי הַמְּנוֹרָה, יָאִירוּ שִׁבְעַת הַנֵּרוֹת.  גוַיַּעַשׂ כֵּן, אַהֲרֹן--אֶל-מוּל פְּנֵי הַמְּנוֹרָה, הֶעֱלָה נֵרֹתֶיהָ:  כַּאֲשֶׁר צִוָּה ה׳, אֶת-מֹשֶׁה.

And God spoke to Moshe, saying: Speak to Aaron and say to him, “When you mount the lamps, let the seven lamps give light facing the middle lamp.”

And Aharon did so. He mounted the lamps facing the middle lamp as God had commanded Moshe.  

Noting the seeming redundancy of singling out Aharon for listening to a mitzva, the Sages (cited by Rashi) comment:

רש׳׳י: ויעש כן אהרן. לְהַגִּיד שִׁבְחוֹ שֶׁל אַהֲרֹן שֶׁלֹּא שִׁנָּה (ספרי):

"And Aharon did so: (this is taught) in order to tell the praise of Aharon, that he did not deviate (from the instructions he received).

Does Aharon deserve special treatment for following basic rules? Aharon was a righteous man, a great tzaddik. No doubt, every one of us would follow the details of a Divine command directly specifically at us; does Aharon deserve to be singled out for this? Truly, what did you expect?

Rabbi Menachem B. Sacks, one of the great American rabbis of the previous century and one of the key architects of Jewish life in Chicago in the mid-20th century, makes a brilliant suggestion in his excellent work of sermons and Torah commentary, Menachem Zion.^[1] 

You see, Aharon is not known for his love of truth. He is known for something else entirely. You may recall the lesson in Pirkei Avot:

אבות א:יב

הִלֵּל אוֹמֵר, הֱוֵי מִתַּלְמִידָיו שֶׁל אַהֲרֹן, אוֹהֵב שָׁלוֹם וְרוֹדֵף שָׁלוֹם, אוֹהֵב אֶת הַבְּרִיּוֹת וּמְקָרְבָן לַתּוֹרָה:

“Be from among the students of Aharon, a lover of peace and a pursuer of peace, one who loves people and brings them close to Torah.”

Avot DeRabbi Natan^[2] explains the meaning of this comment, that Aharon loved and pursued peace, in a well known elaboration on the theme:

כן שני בני אדם שעשו מריבה זה עם זה הלך אהרן וישב אצל אחד מהם אמר לו בני ראה חברך מהו אומר מטרף את לבו וקורע את בגדיו אומר אוי לי היאך אשא את עיני ואראה את חברי בושתי הימנו שאני הוא שסרחתי עליו הוא יושב אצלו עד שמסיר קנאה מלבו. והולך אהרן ויושב אצל האחר וא״ל בני ראה חברך מהו אומר מטרף את לבו וקורע את בגדיו ואומר אוי לי היאך אשא את עיניו ואראה את חברי בושתי הימנו שאני הוא שסרחתי עליו הוא יושב אצלו עד שמסיר קנאה מלבו. וכשנפגשו זה בזה גפפו ונשקו זה לזה לכך נאמר (במדבר כ) ויבכו את אהרן שלשים יום כל בית ישראל:

Similarly, when two people were fighting with one another, Aaron would go and sit next to one of them and say: My son, look at the anguish your friend is going through! His heart is ripped apart and he is tearing at his clothes. He is saying, How can I face my old friend? I am so ashamed, I betrayed his trust. Aaron would sit with him until his rage subsided.

Then Aaron would go to the other person in the fight and say: My son, look at the anguish your friend is going through! His heart is ripped apart and he is tearing at his clothes. He is saying, How can I face my old friend? I am so ashamed, I betrayed his trust. Aaron would sit with him until his rage subsided.

When the two people saw each other, they would embrace and kiss one another.

Aharon loved people and he loved peace among them. And in order to bring peace, he would deviate, שינה, from the truth.

Rabbi Sacks builds on this knowledge:

“Although Aharon was a lover of peace and a pursuer of peace (אוהב שלום ורודף שלום), and he permitted himself to deviate from truth because it was more peaceful, nonetheless, when it came to lighting the lamps…he did not permit himself to make any kind of change.^[3] 

We may indeed have been concerned that Aharon was a man of peace but not necessarily of truth; that he was a man of the people, but not of God; that he was detail oriented and sensitive to the needs and feelings of his friends and community but that, when it came to rituals, he was less so.

This is not an unknown phenomenon. After all, helping others is a difficult and amorphous task, and everyone knows the law, in its rigid and demanding nature, can make our lives more challenging. So we may know of many who excel in one area but not the other. They may be fabulous servants of God in ritual matters, but insensitive and unkind when it comes to helping others, or they may be attuned to the needs and wishes of those around them, but not quite as punctilious when it comes to the observance of every jot and tittle of Jewish Law.

Not so, the Torah tells us, was Aharon. Aharon, who was the greatest lover of God’s creatures, who sought peace and loved peace above any other, did not sacrifice the ritual; he did not cut corners in mitzvot, he did not close his eyes to his halakhic responsibilities, and he did not deviate, even a little, from what he was commanded.

Wonder with me, for a moment, about the inner-experience of such a person. How did he do this? What was it like, to be such a lover of people, yet such a committed servant of God? How did Aharon become so wholesome, so whole, so well rounded and right in character and behavior? How may we traverse the distance from being admirers from afar to being his students in his love of peace and command?

We may draw some insight from a note Rav Kook makes in his Orot HaTeshuva, his Lights of Repentance.^[4] Rav Kook, of course, was one of the great thinkers of the previous century, a towering Torah scholar, halakhist, leader, philosopher, poet, and mystic. He was, actually, quite akin to Aharon HaKohen.

Rav Kook writes as follows (and please forgive my translation; he is a notoriously difficult writer to translate):

ממעמקים באה התשובה, מעומק גדול זה שאין הנפש היחידית האישית לגביה חטיבה בפני עצמה, אלא המשך מהגדולה ההויתית הכללית.

Repentance comes from the depths, from the profound fact that the personal, individual soul is not a  distinct unit unto itself but something that exists on the continuum of all existence.

Whence comes the desire to do right by others? It may come from knowing the rules, from wanting to be good, from practice, even from coincidence. But it can also come from a sense of connection with others. From feeling that we are not a lone and distinct unit, something disconnected and divorced from the many people around us. Given our natural sense of feeling sympathy, connection, attachment, we wish to do well by others. We wish to help them, alleviate their pain, and make them smile. We cannot help feeling this way; it is something natural and good, found even in small children who cry when they hear others cry and comfort adults around them even when they have no idea what it is that hurts them.

And whence comes the desire to serve God? It can come from wanting to follow the rules, from wanting to avoid assimilation, from pure intellectual curiosity, from pride in being a Jew, from intellectual interest, or from nothing more than habit. But it can also come from the same exact place we described earlier, from the feeling that produces the desire to be kind to others. We so often feel so very distant from God, we do not admit Him into our lives, we do not invite Him into our prayers and wishes and hopes, we do not think of Him as a personality demanding kindness, sympathy, loyalty! But Aharon, I think, did. He felt the closeness of God, no less, and perhaps more, than he felt a sense of connection with others.

This is, to my mind, a key point. As we noted earlier, we often think there is some kind of dichotomy between the person who follows the rules and the person who loves people. We may think that these motivations come from two different places. We suggest here, then, that need not be so at all. We may respond to God as a personality, worship and love and relate as much as we do with people, share a unique spiritual dialogue, feel a sense of responsibility towards Him. This responsibility would express itself in a detail oriented performance of the commandments^[5].

I think Aharon must have been such a person, a person who felt a strong connection to people and God, toward the Creator and His creations. He was so right, good, and wholesome because he felt so strongly a connection to those around him. His connection to others did not crowd out a feeling of connection to God. And his connection to God did not- God forbid!- crowd out a sense of connection to others.

אבות דרבי נתן יד

אמר להם צאו וראו איזוהי דרך טובה שידבק בה האדם כדי שיכנס בה לעוה״ב. נכנס רבי אליעזר ואמר עין טובה. נכנס רבי יהושע ואמר חבר טוב. נכנס רבי יוסי ואמר שכן טוב יצר טוב ואשה טובה. רבי שמעון אומר הרואה את הנולד (נ״א כגון מרדכי יהודי שראה את הנולד). נכנס ר׳ אלעזר ואמר לב טוב לשמים ולב טוב לבריות. אמר להם רואה אני את דברי ר״א בן ערך מדבריכם שבכלל דבריו דבריכם.

(Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai) said to them: Go out and see what is the best path that a person should stay on, so that he can follow it into the World to Come.

Rabbi Eliezer came back and said: A good eye.

Rabbi Yehoshua came back and said: A good friend. Rabbi Yosei came back and said: A good neighbor, good desires, and a good wife.

Rabbi Shimon said: One who sees what is coming. (Another version says: Like Mordechai the Jew, who saw what was coming.)

Rabbi Elazar came back and said: A good heart toward Heaven, and a good heart toward others.

[Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai] said to them: I prefer Rabbi Elazar ben Arach’s words, because I see all of your words contained within his words.

So may it be with us.