10 Jun BEHAALOSCHA: TWO APPROACHES FOR STAYING ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT MITZVOS

There is a famous
Rashi at the beginning
of Parshas
Beha’alosecha which
we comment on
almost every year.
Aharon was given the
mitzva of lighting the
Menorah every day in the Beis HaMikdash.
The Torah says: “And Aharon did so, toward
the face of the Menorah he kindled its lamps,
as Hashem had commanded Moshe.”
(Bamidbar 8:3) Rashi comments on the
words “And Aharon did so” that “This is
stated to tell the praise of Aharon in that he
did not deviate.”
On a simple level, Rashi is saying that this
pasuk is a testimony to Aharon that he did not
change what he was supposed to do.
Everybody asks on this Rashi, what else
would we expect of Aharon? Of course he did
not deviate!
In past years, we quoted the famous vort of
the Sefas Emes (Rav Yehuda Aryeh Leib
Alter, 1847-1905). Now, we are sharing a
vort from the Ishbitzer Rebbe (Rav Mordechai
Leiner, 1801-1854), which also tries to
understand this Rashi, but has a totally

different take on this question.
The Sefas Emes says that when a person does
something over and over again, by the
thousandth time, it becomes a little
monotonous and the person loses his
enthusiasm. This is the time of year when
schools let out for the summer. If you look at
children coming into school on the first day
of school in September or you look at the
teachers on the first day of school, you can
see an excitement and a passion for learning.
However, in June, you can see the proverbial
“child running away from school.” Why?
Because it has become “Same old, same
old… Day in, day out, same thing.” That is
the way it is with people.
If you ever see a Bar Mitzvah bochur putting
on Tefillin for the first time, you see how
carefully he wraps the straps around his arm
to make sure that they are equidistant from
each other and so on and so forth. After a
person puts on Tefillin for thirty or forty
years, his level of meticulousness is not the
same. That is the way people are. Enthusiasm
wanes.
The Sefas Emes explains that this is what
Rashi is saying. The Torah states the praise of

Aharon that no matter how long or
for how many years he lit the
Menorah, his enthusiasm for the
mitzvah never waned.
The Ishbitzer, on the other hand,
says that the word “sheenah” (in
Rashi’s expression “melamed
shelo sheenah“) can mean
something else. It can mean that
Aharon never did it the same way
twice. He didn’t repeat. Each day
he had a different kavannah
(intent and focus) when he lit the
Menorah. The hadlakas
haMenorah of yesterday was not the same as
the hadlakas haMenorah of today and
tomorrow will yet again be a different
hadlakas haMenorah.
These are two different approaches to Rashi,
but the similarity is that either there was a
tremendous enthusiasm which did not wane,
or there was newness with every single
lighting of the Menorah that introduced a
new kavannah with each new day.
We just finished Parshas Nasso, the longest
parsha in the Torah. It is not, however, the
hardest parsha in the Torah because a good

part of it is just repetition. Everyone asks why
the Torah needs to repeat the offering of each
nasi, even though they were identical to the
offerings of the previous day’s nasi. The
answer is that even though it was the same
offering, each nasi had a special kavannah.
We can relate to that, because we know that
for different folks there are different strokes.
Each person thinks in his own unique way.
But it is perhaps even more noteworthy for
the same person, doing the same thing over
and over again, to have a unique kavannah
each time. That is the praiseworthy attribute
of Aharon haKohen.