In the minutes before I started writing this piece, I read articles on regenerative braking in electric cars, seating capacity of negro league baseball stadiums, and the difference in ice cream qualities when they use eggs versus no eggs. It was not my standard day of interneting.
We live at a time in which any piece of information is at our finger tips. It’s pretty amazing. Almost everyone knows the feeling of starting on one wikipedia article and then somehow, it’s twenty minutes later, and you’re now reading an article about Grover Cleveland’s childhood.
We may not end up as experts after reading it but we certainly have information that our ancestors could’ve only dreamed of. But maybe there’s also value in that lack of information sometimes.
Judaism, unsurprisingly, has different opinions on this. When it comes to understanding they “why” behind mitzvot-commandments, there are two general schools of thought. One argues that the performance of commandments is meant to cultivate obedience within us, so there’s no real reason to dig for their rationale. The other argues that commandments are meant to refine us, so understanding the reasoning behind them can allow us to more deeply refine ourselves.
The Sefas Emes1, in a profund teaching on the opening of the parshah this week offers a third approach. He begins with an exploration of the opening verses this week from Bamidbar 8:1-2:
And the Lord spoke to Moshe, saying. Speak to Aharon, and say to him, When you light the lamps, the seven lamps shall give light towards the body of the menora. And Aharon did so; he lighted its lamps over against the body of the menora, as the Lord commanded Moshe.
That bolded phrase gives him and plenty of others commentators pause. What exactly do the words toward the body of the menora mean? Is it a directional or spiritual comment? How would it actually work in set up? He takes those questions as an opportunity to move in a different direction.
To begin, he riffs on a Midrash that creates a parable out of this situation. In the Midrash, a king is invited over to this friend’s house for a meal. This ordinary person is frightened by the enormous gap between the king's glory and the simplicity of his own utensils, and therefore hides them so that he not be shamed for setting out his simple utensils before the exalted king. The king, however, prefers the simple utensils of that ordinary person to all the gold and silver utensils in his possession.
On this midrash the Sfas Emes (Beha'alotekha, 5637) teaches as follows:
The matter may be explained as follows: Because of this very shame that he saw and felt that he has to hide his utensils – because of this the king used them. This is what is written: "Toward [the body of the menora]." The ministering kohen must know that all these mitzvot are allusions to supernal lights. And through this, all his actions become effaced in the shame and submission before the Creator.
And through this itself, there is elevation and pleasure through the actions [performed] below. And the Holy One disqualifies, as it were, the upper world out of God’s love for the lower world.
Surely at the source of the mitzva above, there are all these lights and hidden mysteries in all the sections of the Torah that speak of the mitzvot. They belong to that mitzva, though the inabitants of the lower world are unable to understand all this.
In God’s goodness, however, the Holy One gave us the entire Torah and its hidden mysteries, for by fulfilling the mitzva for the sake of heaven, each person in accordance with his ability, so all the lights above are aroused. For thus God arranged that the supernal lights should be dependent upon these mitzvot.
We first must understand that his understanding of “toward the body of the menora” means we’re not talking about one menora here. While we’re dealing with the priests lighting the menora in the tabernacle, the fact that its lights are facing the body of the menora means we’re talking about a second menora, on that exists in the heavens. Every act we do in our realm parallels a heavenly one. “Toward the body of the menora” for the Sfat Emet, means that the menora down “here” is meant to face the menora up there.
This is like the King and the regular person. In this dynamic, the regular person feels shame at not having nice enough stuff to honor the king. In actuality, the the king is overjoyed to enjoy whatever the ordinary person can offer. So when we act down here, we might think it’s not good enough for God. The Sfat Emet argues otherwise.
The Sfat Emet understands this “shame” to be a positive. When a person requires a reason for the commandment or action that she performs, argues the Sefat Emet, she limits and restricts the understanding that accompanies that act with limited human intellectual understanding. We are only human after all.
Yet, in our inability to fully understand the power of the commandment, we can still do it. In that holy act, we signal to God that we don’t need to understand the deepest whys of every act. As Rav Itamar Elder of Yeshivat Gush Etzion argues:
The shame regarding his limitations, and the recognition of his inability to understand the greatness of the act which he in his simplicity is performing, leaves him without knowledge, but with the feeling that something great is transpiring
Unlike our normal human drive to comprehend the rationale of everything, Judaism asks us at times to be willing to forgo that desire. When we do that, we create space for divine encounters. That allows us to do great things, things that go beyond just ourselves and our own understanding. I think there’s immense value in that.
Having information at our fingertips can be such a blessing but it need not be the only way to be. There is something to be said for being willing simply to engage in an act because we feel loyal to something and we trust that entity to have our best interests at heart. The gulf between those two perspectives is sacred.
So go on those wikipedia deep dives. Get lost in the rabbit holes of making your life more efficient. But also remember the power of letting go of the why. When we do that, it can create something luminous that can shine from here to there, wherever it may be.
Shabbat Shalom and Happy Weekend!
3rd Rabbi of the Gerrer Chasidic dynasty