The Torah teaches “When a person brings a Korban Todah (Thanksgiving Offering), it shall be brought willingly (l’rtzonchem)” (Vayikra 22:29). There are many types of korbonos. A Korban Todah is brought in certain special circumstances where a person is giving thanks for recovery from illness or escape from a dangerous situation. This is a type of korbon that people want to bring. They are genuinely grateful for being saved from a grave danger and they obviously desire to express gratitude for their salvation. Who does not want to express thanksgiving and express their appreciation to the Almighty under those circumstances?
Why, here, of all the korbonos, does the Torah specify that it must be brought “l’rtzonchem” (willingly)? In truth, Rashi is bothered by this question. Rashi says here that the Torah, in stating “l’rtzonchem,” is referring specifically to the need to eat the korban in the proper time span. This is not the simple reading of the word “l’rtzonchem.”
The Kesav Sofer deals with the same issue. He takes a slightly different approach than Rashi:
Let us say that a person is seriously sick and then recovers from that condition. Let’s ask him “What would have been your preference – to have been sick and recovered or to never have been sick in the first place?” What do we expect his response to be? Most people would say, I would rather not have had the plague and not have needed the remedy for the plague.
The pasuk is teaching us over here that when you bring a Korban Todah, not only must you be thankful for the healing and the salvation that came after your crises, but you even need to be thankful for the crises itself. Why? Anyone who has been through an ordeal from which he has been saved and feels the Hand of G-d in his salvation develops a closeness with the Ribono shel Olam that he would not have developed had it not been for the tzarah that he experienced.
The “willingness” requirement of the Korban Todah is that a person should not only feel “Baruch Hashem, I got through the operation.” Ideally, the appropriate todah is “Baruch Hashem I was deathly ill and I experienced the Yad Hashem of how I got through that crisis.” The Korban Todah is even for the tzarah! That is what the Torah is trying to emphasize here.
I heard from one of my talmidim that Rav Baruch Sortozkin, zt”l, who was one of the Roshei Yeshiva in Telshe – Cleveland in the 1950s, 1960s, and into the 1970s, suffered from cancer. Rav Sortozkin went through the treatment, he went through remission, and for a while he was well. Unfortunately, the cancer came back and he died as a result. He commented that before he went through this experience “if someone would have given me the option of paying him $1,000,000 to avoid this ordeal, I would have raised the million dollars and paid it. However, after I experienced the illness, “if someone would offer me a $1,000,000 so that I would not have had to have that experience, I would turn down the million dollars.” In other words, in hindsight, he felt that he gained immeasurably from having had that experience.
This is a mind-boggling statement. Not everyone is on such a spiritual level. However, that reaction is based on this idea of the Kesav Sofer. After having gone through the ordeal and having felt the Hand of G-d and the intimacy of Hashem who accompanied him through his ordeal, he would not have traded away that experience for a million dollars.
