Year: 5771 - Tezaveh - audio

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Episode Synopsis

Fraternal Creation - Terumah and Tetzaveh represent a new relationship, expressing the interaction of two fundamental aspects of creation (“bereishit barah elokim”, “aleh toledot”) as they’re manifested in משה and אהרון. In illuminating the amazing saga that runs throughout all of תורה, where אהרון is built on rejection of משה and vice versa, we find that there are, in a sense, two mutually exclusive elements in Bereishit—netzach and hod. Those elements are conveyed through the difference between an “elokim” and a “navi”; the difference between Purim and Chanuka; and the difference between making the space of the משכן, and the consciousness of the Kohen within that משכן.
Because of this interplay, Tetzaveh is not only representative of אהרון himself, functioning outside of the rest of space (just as the creation of Adam is outside the rest of the story), and does not simply introduce evil (and its atonement through ketoret). Tetzaveh is also coupled to the original rejection of משה, and the anger of H”, which in the end explains why משה (and only משה) can create the potential for specificity (as basar), and yet, at the same time, has to remain “אתה פה עמוד עמדי” (leaving “family life” for H”). Ramban’s explanation for this seeming contradiction is based on the sensitivity of משה, who understood the vulnerability of his position, and how easily it could be destroyed by the simple perception (“in the eyes of”) Mitzrayim. His “בשגם הוא בשר” becomes linked to the “בשר מבשרי” of Adam, who lacked that בושה, and therefore offered no options but the reduction of all existence into randomness and lust. Adam’s inability to acknowledge the vulnerability of relationship broke k’taam haetz—reconstructed in the aron only through the “shnei shadaich”, “toemei tzviah”, the two badim—משה and אהרון.
Joy in another’s achievement is a function of the involvement in מעשה בראשית as a whole in all its potential and possibilities. That is also the linkage of נצח והוד which is משה ואהרון: the understanding of ומי יודע אם לעת כזאת with רוח והצלה יעמוד ממקום אחר, and that leads to the new מעמד הר סיני of Purim. The חכמת לב and the שמחת לב and the אורים ותומים על הלב is indeed part of אותיות שנבראו בהם שמים וארץ and grows from within בריאה. In the synthesis achieved by אהרון, he restores the הר סיני of משה. But without the breadth of משה, the acceptance of what has evolved as ביד תשלח can just as easily become the עגל הזהב. It was משה who allowed the עגל to form at the moment that he said שלח נא ביד תשלח for then in his absence there was no recourse – he had not succeeded in being כהן and the תורה remained only לויה locked in the משכן that is מתהלך.
Thus an important new and more fundamental explanation for the exclusion of the מזבח הזהב from the earlier כלים: Just as in מעשה בראשית the מכיר-עובד-מיחד needed to be “outside” the original story of בריאה that had ended with a not-completely-true ויכולו השמים וארץ and then had to come the “we left out the one thing that makes it all work” and actually there was no שיח השדה without the מכיר (בטובתן של גשמים) and the עובד (לעבדו) and the מיחד (לשמרו זה משנה), in the next parasha, so too does the עובד ומיחד appear here after the ונועדתי וקדשתי ושכנתי which is not-completely-true as the שכינה can only be שורה with the קטורת and this is indeed the ונקדש בכבודי mentioned earlier.