Parshas Behaaloscha
A Second Chance At Pesach
"G-d spoke to Moshe in the Sinai desert, in the second year of the
Exodus from Egypt, in the first month, saying, let the children of Israel
make the Pesach sacrifice at its proper time... And there were men who were
impure due to contact with a dead man, and they could not make the Pesach
[Passover] sacrifice on that day, and they came before Moshe and Aharon on
that day. They said to him, we are impure due to contact with a dead man;
why are we worse, that we should not bring a sacrifice before G-d in its
time, among the children of Israel?" [Bamidbar 9:1-7]
The Medrash says that these were holy individuals. Although we could have
learned these laws directly from Moshe, like all of the others, "a merit
comes at the hands of the meritorious." For this reason, the opportunity
of the second Pesach came to us in conjunction with their story.
How did they become impure? In Tractate Sukkah, the Talmud says that they
were engaged in the burial of a "Mes Mitzvah" -- a dead body with no one
else to bury it. Doing the final act of kindness for such an individual
takes precedence even over the Pesach sacrifice, so they took this task
upon themselves -- knowing full well that it would render them impure and
unable to fulfill the later Mitzvah.
Purification to enter the Temple or Tabernacle was a seven-day process,
and their last day was Erev Pesach. We know this because the Torah says
that "they could not make the Pesach sacrifice on that day." On that day,
says the Talmud, they could not make the sacrifice, but on the morrow they
could.
Why wife's grandfather, Rav Tzvi Elimelech Hertzberg zt"l, says that the
greatness of these individuals lay in their willingness to look at their
obligations today, and not to worry unduly about tomorrow. They certainly
knew that they would be impure on the eve of Pesach, and thus unable to
offer the sacrifice. They also knew, however, that their immediate
obligation was to help the deceased reach his or her final rest. So,
because of their high spiritual level, they refused to shirk the burial of
a "Mes Mitzvah," even though they knew that they would be giving up on
their opportunity to participate in the Pesach offering with everyone
else.
This, says Rav Hertzberg, is why the verses repeat the expression "on that
day:" "they could not make the Pesach sacrifice on that day, and they came
before Moshe and Aharon on that day." These were people who looked at
their obligations "on that day." They came to Moshe and Aharon and said,
"we are people who live 'on that day,' not living in the future, and
that's why we knew that we would become impure and not be able to offer
the Pesach," and yet they performed their obligation anyway.
Think about the self-sacrifice that was involved. The people who performed
the burial knew that they would miss the first-ever sacrifice of the
Pesach offering (for the Exodus had happened just the year before). And
yet they did the burial -- a kindness for an individual who would show no
gratitude, and who had no known relatives who would offer thanks on his
behalf.
They worried about the dead person, and they worried about their Mitzvah
on that day rather than the next. This level of self-sacrifice, and of
interest in others even at their own expense, was one of the merits that
caused their story to be recorded for all eternity.
Good Shabbos,
Rabbi Yaakov Menken
Text Copyright © 2004 by Torah.org.
The author is the Director of Project Genesis - Torah.org.
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