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). This year 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 (prince), 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.
