Now, just imagine what it might be like to pilot a 600,000-strong juggernaut lurching through the desert! That is the challenge we confront in this week's parashah - how to guide an entire people gently but firmly enough to reach the promised destination without a crash-landing.
The heart of our guidance system relies upon an internal gyroscope to maintain our bearings. And that is built from three passages which would seem to be better suited to appear elsewhere in the Torah - Sotah, Nazir and Birkat Kohanim.
On the face of it, why shouldn't Sotah - which details the procedure to be followed when a husband suspects his wife of infidelity after having warned her - and Nazir -which instructs us regarding the temple rituals for a Nazir who has fulfilled his vow not to drink wine, cut his hair and become impure by proximity to a corpse - be located in Vayikra, where the vast majority of Temple and Kohen halachot are presented? Even Birkat Kohanim, the priestly blessing, probably belongs there. Why here, when everyone is packing up and getting ready to march?
Our mystical tradition, for obvious reasons for those familiar with Kabbalistic symbolism, associates the male with the act of giving, providing shefa and the female with the act of receiving the same. The male bursts forth, the female contains, and achieving the dynamic balance between the to is in itself a generative act, which brings beauty, harmony and peace into the world. Although we might normally raise an eyebrow at the association of the male with Chesed and the female with Din, when we look at things with a "meta" view, it does make a lot of sense.
But Rav Kook teaches us that nothing can exist more than ephemerally unless it integrates these three basic impulses: Chesed, Din and Tiferet. Any real man or woman who would strive to be the archetypal male or female outline above would evaporate into the emptiness of their one-dimensionality. Rather, it is a question of emphasis.
The Torah presents us with the image of a woman "correcting" for her tendancy toward "self-containedness" by bursting forth with men other than her husband. It presents us with the image of a man, trying desperately to reign in his passions by swearing off the intoxicating brew of physicality.
These two have over-corrected, and they are heading toward a crash. The Torah "scoops" them up, providing a way back in for the suspected adultress, and a framework for the ascetic impulse to expend itself in a constructive way.
And what of the Kohanim? They give us their blessing. Their blessing? This is a question asked by the commentators - whose blessing are they confering - theirs or Hashem's? I would offer that the blessing that flows through the conduit they provide is the blessing that result from the errant attempts of woman and man to redress the imbalance within themselves by themselves. The blessing Hashem provides for us is the blessing he reroutes from Sotah and Nazir - He touches the controls gently like the expert Pilot He is, and the juggernaut of Am Yisrael is once more in lovely balance.
The kohanim are bidden to bless Yisrael with love - strange, which other mitzvah is preceded by a blessing which instructs the one performing it how to perform it? Yet the Kohanim bless, "asher kidshanu bikedushato shel Aharon, v'tzivanu l'varech et amo Yisrael b'ahavah". Now we understand - it was love - misguided love, which poured into the Kohanim funnel, and it is only with a recognition of that holy source that the Kohanim can effect their blessing.
Thus we read: "Ko t'varechu et Bnei Yisrael - Amor lame" - Thus shall you bless the people of
* From Wikipedia: Amor is Latin, Spanish and Portuguese for love. Amor (" love") is an alternate name for Cupid, the Roman god of love. His equivalent is Eros in Greek mythology.
The tefillin worn on the head (henceforth, “ shel rosh ”) differ in a number of respects from the tefillin worn on the arm (henceforth, “ shel yad ”). One of the differences is this: Though both must contain the four passages in the Torah which make mention of the mitzvah of tefillin, the shel yad has all four passages written on a single parchment, in the order they appear in the Torah, rolled up and placed in the single compartment of the shel yad . The shel rosh , however, is constructed such that it has four small compartments side by side. Though these compartments appear to be tightly bound to one another, in fact, they are almost actually completely separate from one another. They only join at a common base, like the fingers of one’s hand. Into each compartment is placed one of the four passages, written on four separate parchments. Here is a list of the passages, in the order they appear in the Torah: 1. Kadesh Li – Shemot 13:1-10 ...
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