A few weeks ago, we were standing at the foot of Har Sinai. The all-night learning, the sights, the sounds, the full pyrotechnics, the cheesecake! And as the sefarim teach, Shavuos isn’t merely a remembrance of Kabbalas haTorah. It’s an actual re-experiencing of it. And now? It’s a Tuesday (or Shabbos) afternoon in Sivan. The fire seems to be… gone.
And this isn’t just about Shavuos. This attitude permeates every aspect of our spiritual and physical lives. It’s the chuppah and then year three, or 23, of marriage. It’s the new baby and then the moody adolescent. It’s the chumra you took on with such fire, and three months later, you can’t remember why you cared. That hour was electric. And then it passed.
It is with this awareness that the Torah opens Parshas Beha’aloscha. Aharon is given the mitzvah of lighting the menorah. Vaya’as kain Aharon, “and thus Aharon did” (Bamidbar 8:3). Rashi, citing the Medrash, picks up on the extra word “kain,” lehagid shivcho shel Aharon, to tell the praise of Aharon, shelo shina, that he did not deviate from what Hashem commanded.
What’s the great praise here? Of course he listened to Hashem! If the Ribbono shel Olam tells you personally to light the menorah, you light the menorah.
So the praise has to be something else entirely. Shinui means change. But the same root, ש.נ.ה, also means to repeat. It is the root of the word Mishna, the Torah we learn by chazering it again and again. Lo shina: the reason Aharon never deviated from Hashem’s command was that the avoda never became a repetition for him. Learned. Rehearsed. Automatic. That Aharon showed up was a given. What was unique to him was the ability to approach the menorah every single day as if it were the first time. Because in truth, it always was.
In the mind of the expert, there are few possibilities. In the mind of the beginner: infinite possibilities. A child at the ocean for the first time feels the cool breeze and the pull of the waves. Every wave and every splash is a moment of discovery. But when you have lived beside the ocean your whole life, the wonder fades. Aharon lived his whole life beside the ocean and never stopped seeing it for the first time.
The Mishna teaches ein lecha adam she’ein lo sha’ah (Pirkei Avos 4:3). There is no person who does not have his hour. The hour when something new dawns, when a new avoda enters your life, and there is cheishek, longing, fire. Ein chassidus k’chassidus b’techilasa. There is no chassidus like the chassidus of the beginning. The first and only time we all heard Hashem declare Anochi Hashem Elokecha. The first time you put on tefillin with adult consciousness. The first time you lit Shabbos candles in your new home. The shalosh seudos with the lights out where you finally understood what a taste of Olam Haba could be like. The first time you were zocheh to hold your grandchild. The hour is electric and indescribable; all that can be said is thank You Hashem!
The problem is what happens after the hour passes. The inevitable regression to the mean. Even though we know it’s coming, the pain never seems to get easier.
We return to who we were before the new avoda began, just as bored, just as unstimulated, but to add insult to injury, now we have nowhere to put the entire set of ArtScrolls we just bought.
But Aharon HaKohen is teaching us another possibility. Bnei aliya who refuse the regression by living with hayom. That all we have is this moment. Every hour k’sha’ah rishona, like the first hour. This is why the Yid Hakadosh of Peshischa was called the Yid Hakadosh. Each day his avoda was so fresh, with such hislahavus, that compared to yesterday, he wasn’t even a Yid. Today. Today I’m a Yid.
This was the avodah of Aharon HaKohen’s well-lit heart. Yesterday was yesterday. Today’s lighting is the only lighting.
This isn’t merely a vort. Aharon HaKohen is teaching us a way of being. The truth of living with kabbalas haTorah, of living with a beginner’s mind. Like Aharon HaKohen, this moment can be the only moment we have ever known.
Try it! Tomorrow morning, before you open your eyes, before you reach for your phone (agav, never touch your phone for at least the first hour of the day), you’re going to say Modeh Ani. You’ve said it ten thousand times. Say it like you’ve never said it before. Like you actually just woke up, and you actually have a neshama, and you actually got it back. Because you just did. Rabbah emunasecha.
Just this Modeh Ani. Shelo shina.
Based on the teachings of Rashi (Bamidbar 8:3), the Mei Shiloach on Beha’aloscha, and the Yismach Moshe on Sefer Bereishis.
This article was found in Nekuda Tova Issue 84.
