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BEGIN WITH A GRIN

An ad in a Gazan newspaper, erev Simchas Torah, read, “For Sale. A five-room apartment in central Gaza.”

The next day: “Actually, only four rooms.”

Two days later: “Correction. Now it’s three rooms.”

By the end of the week: “A bedroom with an open porch.”

Motzoei Shabbos: “No longer relevant.”

UPS AND DOWNS

This week, we read parshas Behar and on Sunday, it is Lag B’Omer, the hilula of Rabi Shimon bar Yochai. There is no happenstance in the Jewish calendar. Every calendar permutation is meaningful and teaches us an important message in our avodas Hashem. What lesson can we learn from the juxtaposition of parshas Behar and Lag B’Omer, and what does this add to the main avoda of our generation, bringing the Geula?

Parshas Behar is paradoxical. On the one hand, the name of the parsha, “Behar,” a mountain, signifies elevation and loftiness. This mountain is Har Sinai on which the Torah was given and through that the Jewish people were raised up to become the chosen people. On the other hand, the content of the parsha is a chronological descent, from one bad thing to another. As Rashi says, “If one covets money and becomes suspect of [unlawfully doing business with produce of] Shemitta… he will eventually [become destitute and] have to sell his personal belongings… he will eventually have to sell his inheritance he will eventually have to sell his home… he will eventually have to borrow money with interest… he will [be forced to sell himself] even to a non-Jew.”

The Torah describes how a Jew who stumbles in sin, falls down, down, loses his possessions, his house, sells himself and reaches rock bottom so that his bitter end is that he is even sold to an idol worshiper!

The haftorah also sounds paradoxical. We read the story of Yirmiyahu HaNavi, shortly before the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash. At the time, Yirmiyahu is in prison, put there by the Jewish king because of his harsh prophecies to the Jewish people. G-d tells Yirmiyahu to purchase a field from his cousin, Chanamael ben Shalum. The field cost seven manah and ten sela of silver (a large sum at that time) and it was the eve of the churban. Yirmiyahu placed the deed in a clay jug, which lasts long, and tells people that the day will come when we will return to the land, and this will be proof that the field belongs to him.

This is so strange that even Yirmiyahu had a hard time believing it. Picture a European millionaire who wants real estate in Eretz Yisrael, specifically in the beleaguered north, near Kiryat Shemone and Metulla. Alternatively, he’s looking for property in Nir Oz or Kibbutz Beeri. Wouldn’t you think he’s crazy?

Yerushalayim, on the eve of the churban, and Yirmiyahu is busy buying land as a future investment. What message is there for us, today?

START LIVING IT UP

In this story, we see that Hashem wants Yirmiyahu to live a life of Geula at the height of exile. He says to him: Rise above your feelings and live with the belief of the future Geula. Do this not only in thought, but with action! G-d commands him to take money and buy property. G-d asks Yirmiyahu, a realistic person who lives in this world, to prophesy about the churban while simultaneously ignoring it all, believing the truth and putting money into it!

How can a person be expected to live like this? From where do we derive the strength to truly believe and overcome what we see around us? The answer lies in… Lag B’Omer! Rashbi also lived a paradoxical life. On the one hand, he suffered terribly. He hid in a cave for thirteen years! Have you ever tried being in a cave for thirteen years with only carobs and water to sustain you, immersing yourself in the sand without clothing, being disconnected from your family and human life?

On the other hand, the Alter Rebbe said that “For lofty souls like that of Rashbi, the Mikdash was not destroyed.” He didn’t feel any of it! He lived as though there was a Beis HaMikdash, the Jewish people were in their country, and all’s well! How does this fit?

Rashbi is the one who revealed Toras HaNistar here in the world and at the same time he was one of the great Tannaim in Nigleh of Torah. There were many Tannaim who studied Nistar and even more who studied Nigleh; what’s novel about Rashbi is that he combined the two, Nigleh and Nistar, Zohar and Mishna. He revealed the Nistar within the Nigleh.

Pnimiyus ha’Torah, Kabbala, that which Rashbi revealed, is what gives a person the strength and the uplift to transcend the difficulties he faces in daily life. When you combine Nistar and Nigleh, the hidden things in life are revealed!

In every exile there is redemption; in every bad there is good; in every difficult situation in life there is a point of positivity. Our problem is that we don’t see the good and don’t feel the positivity. We might believe it, maybe we understand it, but we don’t feel it; we don’t live it. It’s hidden for us, beyond us, heavenly and abstract. Rashbi, through his teachings, brings that which is hidden out into the open, both in Torah and in the world, all the way down to our actual material lives.

True, he was in a cave for a long time and suffered tremendously, but he didn’t feel all that. He lived with the point of good that there was, the redemptive point that exists in every situation. He didn’t only believe and know intellectually that everything is good; he lived and felt it.

Now we can answer the questions and explain the contradictions we found, in the parsha and the haftorah. The parsha is called Behar because through the Torah given on Har Sinai (especially pnimiyus ha’Torah) a Jew has the ability to contend with the challenges in every situation. Even when he loses his property, money and honor, even when he is in the hardest exile of all, he’s a slave of a cursed goy who worships idols, he has the ability to look exile in the eye and say, “Here, I see the Geula!”

In the haftorah, we see how a Jew, with the empowerment of a command from G-d, can behave in a Geula manner even in the most exile-like situation.

None of us is Rashbi, but Rashbi conferred this power to his students and those who perpetuate his way, not just those who sat in his shiur back then but whoever learns his teachings, pnimiyus ha’Torah, today.

TO CONCLUDE WITH A STORY

The above lesson is illustrated by a story from the Medrash which the Rebbe told in that sicha, about Rashbi and his ability to give us the strength to overcome hardships. One of Rabbi Shimon’s students went out of the country and became rich. His students saw him and envied him and they too wanted to leave Eretz Yisrael. Rabbi Shimon brought them to a valley and called out, “Valley, valley, fill up with gold coins,” and it did. He said to them, “If it’s gold that you want, here’s gold; take it! But you should know that whoever takes now, is taking his portion in the World to Come, for the reward for Torah is only in the World to Come.”

The Rebbe explained that the big chiddush in the story is that Rashbi actually drew down the gold coins for his students, even for those students who were more interested in money than in Torah study, something which expresses Rashbi’s ability to connect to his lofty level even people who are still in a place of exile.

The Rebbe concludes: “Rashbi gave this to his students and the generations that follow, and put it into pnimiyus ha’Torah which was revealed with understanding and intellectual grasp through the teachings of Chabad. Especially in this last generation, the generation of Moshiach, which is the time that will be ‘like the generation of Rashbi,’ by learning pnimiyus ha’Torah, all the positive hamshachos will be drawn down into the physical with visible and revealed goodness.”

We will end with a story about Rashbi of our generation, the Rebbe, and how he already sees the Geula at the height of exile. At the beginning of the eighties, the Rebbe asked several of his Chassidim to approach the powers-that-be in the State of Israel and ask them to start preparing cities to absorb thousands of Russian Jews who would start emigrating there soon. At the time, the Soviet Union was one big prison. A Jew who managed to get an exit visa and leave for the west, was considered a walking miracle, and yet, the Rebbe asked for thousands of apartments to be built. The Rebbe’s proposal was regarded as a joke. But in the end, as we all know, the Iron Curtain came down and Israel was flooded with hundreds of thousands of Russian Jews and didn’t know where to put them.

Good Shabbos!

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