Numbers 33:38: Aaron the priest ascended Mount Hor, at the behest of G-d, and died there, in the fortieth year after the Israelites had left the land of Egypt, on the first day of the fifth month.
The Talmud relates that 80,000 young men, who were all given the name “Aaron,” came to eulogize Aaron after his passing. They were the children born to parents who wanted to get divorced, and Aaron saved their marriages. They named their babies Aaron in tribute to the person who saved their marriage, allowing these children to be born.
This means that over forty years in the wilderness, Aaron restored peace and trust among 80,000 Jewish couples. He must have been one busy marriage therapist!
In addition to serving as high priest, doing the service in the Sanctuary, and being a prophet and teacher himself, he was busy teaching Jewish couples how to heal and trust. Following decades of trauma in Egyptian exile, this must have been a grueling task, but his love and empathy managed to save marriages.
His efforts were rewarded in kind, with the appearance of Clouds of Glory that served as a unifying force, molding the entire Israelite encampment into a cohesive unit.
THE REMEDY
Now we can understand, on a homiletical level, why the yartzeit of Aaron is specified in the Torah – on the first day of the fifth month of the year, which is the Hebrew month of Av.
One thousand five hundred years after the death of Aaron, the first of Av would usher in a period known in Jewish law as the “Nine Days,” referring to the first nine days of the Hebrew month of Av, a time dedicated to mourning the destruction of the first and second Holy Temples in Jerusalem, which were both burned down on the 9th day of Av (the first by Babylon in 586 BCE, the second by Rome in 70 CE).
The Talmud states, “Why was the second Temple destroyed? Because the Jews harbored baseless hatred towards each other." This was also true on a political level: The Romans exploited the infighting between the Jewish people to defeat Judea.
During the first Temple era, too, it was the ongoing conflicts between the two kingdoms of Israel that weakened the nation and the violence among Jews that spelled disaster, as the prophets explicitly warn.
“G-d provides the remedy before the disease,” says the Talmud. Before any challenge in life, G-d provides the energy to deal with it. The yartzeit of a person, the day when their life journey is completed, is a day in which their energy and light is manifest in a uniquely potent way in the world. So on the first day of Av, when we usher in the Nine Days of grief over our discord and hatred, the Torah tells us we have the yartzeit of Aaron the great peacemaker and unifier—a day in which we can connect with Aaron’s energy and legacy of love and unity to repair and heal the rifts and mistrust that caused our exile and usher in a new era of redemptive consciousness.
That is why the Torah places the day of the yartzeit in the portion of Maasei, which according to Jewish tradition is always read on or right before the very day of his yartzeit—the first day (Rosh Chodesh) of the month of Av. It is during this time of year that the Torah wants to empower us with the energy of Aaron to restore cohesion, trust, and love among our people.
On the first day of every Av, as one can smell the flames of destruction, Aaron casts upon us his power of love, reminding us that we are capable of transcending our fears and our egos and creating a revolution of love among our eternal but fragmented people. If baseless hatred was the cause of our destruction, baseless love will create our redemption.
RABBI YY JACOBSON
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PLEASE NOTE: Rabbi Jacobson’s Shabbos morning shiur will now begin at 8:40 AM, followed by the Minyan at 10:00 AM.
