Zrizus
Command Aharon and his sons, saying.... (Vayikra 7:2)
Tzav is an exhortation to have zrizus. (Rashi)
Doing Deeds
Sefer Mesilas Yesharim speaks about the trait of zrizus, of alacrity:
Zrizus has two parts, the first before one acts, and the second, after one acts. Before one performs an action, zrizus entails not missing out on the opportunity to perform the mitzvah. Rather, when its time comes, or when the opportunity presents itself, or when one thinks of doing it, one should rush to act, to grab hold of it and perform it, and not allow time to pass in between, because this is the greatest danger. Every second that passes, something could come up to hinder a person from performing the good act.
Accordingly, we see that all deeds of tzaddikim are always performed quickly. It says about Avraham, “Avraham hurried to the tent, to Sarah, and said, ‘Hurry....’ he gave to the lad, and hurried...”
It says about Rivkah, “She hurried and poured out her bucket....”
It says similarly in the Midrash [about Manoach’s wife]: “‘The woman hurried....’ This teaches that all the deeds of tzaddikim are performed quickly.” They do not allow time to intervene, neither before starting the mitzvah nor before finishing it.
The Ramchal is teaching us that the first point in zrizus is doing the deed. The moment a person thinks to do a mitzvah, “He should rush to act.” Why? “Because this is the greatest danger. Every second that passes, something could come up to hinder him from performing the good act.” In one second, a person could lose everything, because a lot of things happen in the world. This is the way the world is.
Chazal say:
Every day, a Heavenly voice goes out from Har Chorev and says, “Woe to people, because of the insult to Torah.”
Obviously, not everyone hears this Heavenly voice. This brings the masters of avodah to ask who benefits from this voice, and who even hears it?
The answer is as follows. Sometimes inspiration awakens within a person, and he wants to strengthen his Torah learning or mitzvah observance, and he decides he will finish Shas, or daven with more kavanah, or perform the mitzvah of sukkah more perfectly, and so forth. All these decisions stem from the Heavenly voice that goes out from Har Chorev. So when a person feels this inspiration, when he so to speak hears the Heavenly voice from Har Chorev, he needs to realize how important it is not to miss the moment. He needs to get into action immediately, to start translating his decisions into actual deeds right away.
Moving On
This is the metaphor that the Tanach offers:
The sound of my Beloved, behold, He is coming! He is skipping over the mountains; He is jumping over the hills.
Hakadosh Baruch Hu acts fast. He hurries His world, so to speak. He brings inspiration to it for a mere moment, and whoever catches it while it is there will succeed, and whoever missed it, missed it. That’s it; Hashem already moved on. Hashem “skips” and “jumps” along, so to speak.
We Can Hear a Clear Message from Shir Hashirim
We need to translate our good intentions into good deeds immediately:
The sound of my Beloved knocking: “Open for Me, My sister, My spouse, My dove, My perfect one.”
Hakadosh Baruch Hu is knocking on the door for us, using all loving expressions: “My sister, My spouse, My dove, My perfect one.”
Because My head is full of dew, and My locks of the dampness of night.
Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants to come in. He asks, so to speak, of every Jew: Please let Me into your home, into your life; please learn another daf Gemara.
And what did the Jewish people answer to Hashem when they heard Him knocking and asking to be let in? Did they say that they don’t want to let Him in the door? No, they answered as follows:
I took off my cloak already, how can I put it on again? I washed my feet, how can I get them dirty again?
The Jewish people said, so to speak: Right now, I am tired. Tomorrow morning, first thing, I will open a Gemara and sit down to learn with hasmadah...
But Hakadosh Baruch Hu doesn’t wait for us.
My Beloved put His hand in through the hole.
There is a hole next to the door, and after Hashem put His hand through it, so to speak, and I saw His hand, then I looked through the hole and I saw that He left.
And my innards longed for Him.
When I saw that He left, I longed so much to draw close to Him!
And then, I got up to open for my Beloved.
This signifies that the Jewish people did complete teshuvah.
My hands were dripping with myrrh.
The scent of myrrh and other perfumes spreads far. This expresses the idea that the Jewish people called out to “my Beloved,” to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, to come back to them.
But there was nothing that could be done at that point:
My Beloved left and moved on.
It was too late.
My soul went out when He spoke. I looked for Him but I could not find Him; I called out to Him but He did not answer me.
If you wait a minute too long, you lose everything. Yes, you did it all, you did your hishtadlus and you made your chizuk. But the train left already. Without you.
The Torah says:
If you leave me for one day, I will leave you for two days.
If we don’t grab hold of the Torah for a day, there is already two days’ distance between us and the Torah. The train keeps on going. The world keeps moving forward. This is how Hakadosh Baruch Hu runs His world. Which is why Chazal say:
זריזים מקדימים למצוות – Those who have zrizus, do mitzvos early.
The word מקדימים in the above-quoted teaching could also be interpreted to mean “introduction,” הקדמה. This implies that the trait of zrizus serves as an introduction to keeping mitzvos, since without it, we can’t really do mitzvos, because they simply slip away from us.
A Song
Zrizus is more than just a praiseworthy quality to attain. There is a more fundamental point here. Everything in the world has a message that it speaks to us. For instance, it is written:
The heavens recount the glory of G-d, and the firmaments tell about the work of His hands.
How do “the heavens recount the glory of G-d”? Let’s talk about the sun. One of the amazing things in the natural world is that the sun rises every day in the east and sets in the west. The sun has a certain path. This is one of the facts that scientists brought as proof that the earth revolves on an axis.
There is a message here. The sun moves millions of miles a day, and its illumination travels to us at the speed of 186,000 miles a second. This is the speed of light. This is the speed of the natural world. It’s pretty fast. We don’t usually notice it; what does it teach us?
The ancients explained that this movement, this speed, makes tremendous noise.
If not for the noise of the multitudes in Rome, we would hear the noise of the orbit of the sun.
The sound coming from the great metropolis of Rome drowns out the noise of the orbit of the sun, implying that the movement of the sun would theoretically make a tremendous amount of noise.
This noise, the natural movement of the sun as it orbits at a great speed, is the “song” of the sun. The sun’s very existence stems from its song. When Yehoshua stood in Givon and wished to stop the sun, he did not say עמוד בגבעון שמש – “May the sun in Givon stand in its place,” but rather דום בגבעון שמש – “May the sun in Givon fall silent.”
As long as the sun moves, it praises Hashem, and this is where its power to exist comes from.
In other words, its song makes it move, and its movement is its song. These two things are actually one.
From this we learn that speed, zrizus, is the song of the world.
