In the seventh month, on the first of the month... you shall make yourselves a burnt offering for a pleasant fragrance to Hashem. (Bemidbar 29:1-2)
You are the Korban
This pasuk about the korbanos of Rosh Hashanah is different from all the other ones dealing with this type of korban. The other ones say, “You shall offer,” but this one says, “You shall make.” It is saying that you shall make your own selves into the korban.
So explains the Mishnah Berurah. He writes that one of the reasons Ashkenazim start saying Selichos four days before Rosh Hashanah is because a korban needs to be checked for defects four days before it is offered. And regarding the burnt offering of Rosh Hashanah, it says, “You shall make yourselves a burnt offering.” This teaches that on Rosh Hashanah, a person should make himself as if he is offering his own self. Consequently, he needs to check himself four days earlier for any defects due to sins, and to do teshuvah for them.
So we see that Rosh Hashanah is a time of mesirus nefesh. Every Jew needs to offer himself as a korban olah, in other words, he needs to dedicate and give over his very soul for the sake of Hashem. This is not a type of korban that you partake of its meat. It is a burnt offering. It ascends in smoke to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. This signifies that we need to lovingly give over everything for the sake of Hakadosh Baruch Hu.
Mesirus nefesh.
Parsha Topic
Make Yourself an Olah
The problem is that mesirus nefesh has become a very common term in our circles. Every little thing we do is described as “mesirus nefesh.”
Let’s talk about what mesirus nefesh is, and how it applies to our daily lives.
Change your Life
We all try to keep mitzvos. But the way we keep them and how we relate to them is usually determined by our atmosphere and surroundings.
Not so long ago, there were tzaddikim and talmidei chachamim who had no concept of “going to sleep.” They would learn and learn until they dropped. Nowadays, a masmid in yeshivah is someone who stays on after 11:00 PM to learn an extra hour. Whereas they say about R. Yisrael Salanter that for him there was no such thing as going to sleep. He would just keep learning until he dropped.
If we would ask today’s “masmid” why he doesn’t learn like R. Yisrael Salanter did, he would not understand what we want from him. “Because I’m not R. Yisrael Salanter! For me, 12:00 midnight is an hour after the night seder ends, and that’s enough. I don’t live my life like R. Yisrael.”
And if we would ask a frum working man who comes home at 9:00 PM after his daf hayomi shiur, “Why don’t you learn another hour?” he will answer, “because I am not a kollel yungerman in night seder.”
Everyone has his own idea about what hasmadah means for him. Along the same lines, every Jew has his own idea what lashon hara is, and what breaking one’s taavos entails, and how a Jew should spend his Shabbos. Everyone decides these things according to his own lifestyle.
To illustrate the point, I will tell you a story. Once, a certain American Jew was a guest in the home of R. Yehoshua Dov Soloveitchik, Rosh Yeshivas Brisk, and he remarked, while talking about his family, “No luxuries by us. We only have the bare necessities in our home.”
R. Yehoshua Dov replied: Back in Europe, in the small shtetlach of Russia, there was no cheder for the children, and the wealthy would hire a private tutor, a melamed, for their children. One day, a wealthy family like this held a party in their home, with a lavish menu.
For the first course, a very special fruit compote was served. It looked delicious. The melamed went over to the child he taught, and said to him, “Do you remember what we learned about breaking one’s taavos? Now is the time to do it!”
The child replied, “Yes, I agree to the idea, but not right now. This course is a basic necessity. Next course, I will break my taivos...”
R. Yehoshua Dov remarked: “Everyone agrees that the first course is a basic necessity, and the next course is extras. The whole disagreement is when the first course finishes and the next one begins.”
If we ask a Jew why he doesn’t live on the same madreigah as R. Akiva Eiger or the Chasam Sofer, he will answer: I can’t do that. Those things you want me to give up are all part of the “first course,” as far as I am concerned. This is how I live my life.
The whole question is where to draw the line between the “first course” and the “second course.” Moving that line is real mesirus nefesh.
Examples of Real Mesirus Nefesh
Let’s see how this plays out in real life. Take lashon hara, for example. This is one of our biggest problems. Lashon hara is just too prevalent, and so are words spoken in anger and out of annoyance.
We have a fierce inner urge to speak lashon hara. Where does it come from?
The world that Hakadosh Baruch Hu created is composed of four basic elements: mineral, vegetable, animal and human. The “human” element is characterized by the power of speech, which is a uniquely human trait that sets humans apart from animals. Speech expresses the faculty of intelligence.
People feel that if they can’t speak enough, if they can’t outwardly express their criticism of their friends and neighbors, they are being deprived of the power of speech, and thereby dehumanized. They feel the same way if someone insults them and they don’t answer back. It is as if they were a dumb animal who doesn’t have a mouth. If they can’t say what they think, they feel their innate intelligence is being denied them.
This is why people feel an emotional need to speak lashon hara.
So when a person is asked not to speak lashon hara, he feels like he being asked to die. He feels he is showing everyone that he lacks the faculty of intelligence.
I am not talking about just holding your tongue for a few minutes and then letting it all out half an hour later. Even that is hard work, but it’s not mesirus nefesh. Mesirus nefesh is when there is a certain point, even a small point, where a person makes a fundamental change in how he lives his life. With lashon hara, it means becoming “less intelligent,” “less smart,” in people’s eyes. Making such a change is like undergoing death.
This is mesirus nefesh. This is being a korban olah. A person who does this may not have repented all his sins, but he did sacrifice a piece of his very life, and this is considered a teshuvah that ascends all the way up to the Heavenly Kisei Hakavod.
Here’s another example. There are people that if they go for two hours without hearing the news, it’s tantamount to mesirus nefesh. They feel compelled to know what is happening in the world. Not everyone understands this, but someone for who has such a yetzer hara, refraining from the news is like pikuach nefesh for him. If he doesn’t know what is going on in the world, he feels like he is locked up in a chicken coop – and such a state is against human nature.
Also in previous generations, Jews constantly sucked in what is happening in the world, but they lived in a different world, the world of Torah. One day they spoke with Abaye and Rava, the next day with R. Akiva Eiger, and so on. They lived their lives with Hakadosh Baruch Hu. This is not a matter of one mitzvah more or one mitzvah less; it is a matter of a whole different life.
In order for a Jew of our generation to reach such a madreigah, he needs to make a fundamental change in how he lives his life. He needs to give up his preoccupation with what is happening in the news. To walk past the mailbox and not read the newspaper sticking out of it. Not even to take a quick look at the headlines. To come to the beis midrash like a total idiot who doesn’t know what’s happening in the world, and there to meet only Hashem Yisborach.
It’s true that when a person rectifies one shortcoming, that doesn’t mean he did teshuvah for all his sins, and it doesn’t yet make him into a tzaddik gamur. But if he takes one point, even a little one, and makes a real change in his life, one that gives him a pang in the heart, this is true teshuvah.
Here’s another example, a very common one. Shabbos kodesh. It says in the Shulchan Aruch that your speech on Shabbos should be different from your speech on weekdays. So on Shabbos you should not say that tomorrow, you are going to do such-and-such a job, or to buy such-and-such a thing. It is even forbidden to talk a lot of devarim beteilim, idle talk.
That’s what it says in the Shulchan Aruch. Even if you are not talking about business or melachah, and you are just sitting and chatting about this and that, it is forbidden.
So what’s left? What can you spend Shabbos doing?
Shabbos is so named because it is a time of shevisah, of “cessation” from worldly matters. Just live for twenty-four hours with Hakadosh Baruch Hu.
For a non-observant person to keep Shabbos, it is mesirus nefesh. It is very hard for him to give up the phone, the radio, the car, for twenty-four hours straight. He feels like he is handcuffed.
We might have a similar feeling if we give up mundane talk on Shabbos.
Making such a change is mesirus nefesh. This is our avodah not just on Rosh Hashanah but the rest of the year as well.
ועשיתם עולה – “You shall make yourselves into a burnt offering.” Have mesirus nefesh for Hashem.
