This also relates to my speech last year sukkos (here) about why sukkos is in tishrei and not in nissan.
I have a simple question: we just had yom kippur 3 days ago. What do you think - did Hashem forgive us, or not forgive us?
People sometimes get so caught up in their personal sins / forgiveness, that they forget that yom kippur is equally (if not more) important as a day of atonement for klal yisrael as a whole. So did Hashem forgive us, klal yisrael? Did he, or did he not, say salachti kidvarecha as we prayed that he would at the very onset of yom kippur?
Well, on the one hand, there are so many midrashim about the confidence klal yisrael has going into din. Lech echol bisimcha lachmecha - rejoice, for surely kvar ratza ha-elokim es maasecha. But lets look again at the ramban from the mishkan piece above:
ואמר לכולם ענין המשכן אשר נצטוה בו מתחלה קודם שבור הלוחות, כי כיון שנתרצה להם הקב"ה ונתן לו הלוחות שניות וכרת עמו ברית חדשה שילך השם בקרבם, הנה חזרו לקדמותם ולאהבת כלולותם, ובידוע שתהיה שכינתו בתוכם כענין שצוהו תחלה, כמו שאמר (לעיל כה ח) ועשו לי מקדש ושכנתי בתוכם, ולכן צוה אותם משה עתה בכל מה שנצטוה מתחלה:
'Once Hashem forgave them, it is clear and obvious that his shechinah will again rest among them as originally intended, and thus Moshe immediately preceded to begin mileches hamishkan.'
If Hashem forgave us, then wouldn't we have a beis hamikdash? After all, we believe that the reason we don't have a beis hamikdash is due to our sins - so if we have no sins, then where is our beis hamikdash?!
I believe this is a tremendous raayah to shittas rashi (again from the mishkan piece). Yes, Hashem forgave us, and wasn't meifer his bris with us. But that doesn't mean we're back to where we were before, with Hashem coming to be mashreh his shechinah amongst us with a beis hamikdash. The fact that bnei yisrael were able to recover from cheit ha-egel to the extent that they were able to build the mishkan was special above and beyond ordinary teshuvah -- as rashi said, it was a special eidus that hashem truly forgave the cheit ha-egel. We, li-daavoneinu, don't seem to be zocheh to this special kapparah.
Thinking in this way really transforms the way I view a large segment of the Jewish calendar. (Just as a hakdamah, there is a machlokes in chazal how many times moshe went up to har sinai. rashi says 3, but the ramban quotes a deah in chazal which the gra accepts as correct that moshe went up two times. it doesn't fundamentally change what I'm about to say, but its definitely easier to assume like the gra. So we will).
On the 17th of tammuz, bnei yisrael do the unthinkable and break the bris they made just a few weeks earlier at har sinai, and worship a golden calf. Every year, shiva assar bitammuz heralds in a bad time for the Jewish people. We go through a three weeks, culminating in tisha b'av, when bnei yisrael did cheit hameraglim (not the same year -but not important for now). This three week period doesn't exist in isolation - it really is (unfortunately) the culmination of a year of sin, a year in which the beis hamikdash has not been rebuilt because of our aveiros. And after such a year of sin, like klal yisrael in the midbar, we may very well (chas vishalom) deserve death.
Rosh Chodesh Elul: Moshe Rabbeinu goes up to har sinai to plead with Hashem for 40 days to spare the Jewish people. And every year, on rosh chodesh elul, we begin with extra davening (and selichos for some) to also plead for our lives. When Moshe goes up to har sinai, the kol shofar is heard: as the rambam writes: עורו ישינים משנתכם ונרדמים הקיצו מתרדמתכם וחפשו במעשיכם וחזרו בתשובה וזכרו בוראכם -the shofar was a wake up call: Moshe is going to daven, but if the people don't do teshuvah, it will all be in vain. We begin blowing the shofar on rosh chodesh elul, culminating in our tekios on rosh hashanah, for the same reason: we need to do teshuvah so that hashem wont destroy us after the year of sin and its culmination in the three weeks.
Yom Kippur: Hashem teaches Moshe the yud gimmel middos harachamim and grants atonement: salachti kidvarecha. Every year, our selichos culminate in the selichos of neilah - kimo shehodata le-anav mikedem... We beg Hashem to remember the yud gimmel middos he taught Moshe Rabbeinu and to forgive us with them.
And here, as we mentioned, the parallel breaks. If we had truly succeeded on yom kippur, we should have been zocheh to a beis hamikdash. But we didn't truly succeed - and that should leave us broken. Is there any consolation, a small ray of light that we can cling to?
Thats where sukkos comes in. The Gra explains that sukkos is in tishrei and not in nissan because it is a zecher to the return of the ananei hakavod after Hashem forgave us on yom kippur. We don't have a mishkan / beis hamikdash. But we do have the ananei hakavod - the sukkah in your backyard.
כֹּה אָמַר יְקֹוָק זָכַרְתִּי לָךְ חֶסֶד נְעוּרַיִךְ אַהֲבַת כְּלוּלֹתָיִךְ לֶכְתֵּךְ אַחֲרַי בַּמִּדְבָּר בְּאֶרֶץ לֹא זְרוּעָה - the mishkan is hashem's way of coming to live with the Jewish people - that we don't have. So instead we say, "fine. If Hashem won't come to live with us, we'll have to follow after him" לֶכְתֵּךְ אַחֲרַי בַּמִּדְבָּר - we build a sukkah to go out and follow Hashem in the desert. The return of the ananei hakavod after the cheit ha-egel is our ray of hope thats left with no beis hamikdash - it's Hashem's hand, beckoning us to follow after him. He's not yet willing to come live with us, but he's not leaving us behind - he gives us the ananei hakavod so that we will follow after him, and one day, catch up with him. That day should come very soon.
Chag kasher visameach!
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