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Parshat Tzav
By: Rabbi Moshe Goodman, Kollel Ohr Shlomo, Hebron

בס"ד

לשכנו תדרשו 

Bonding with the Holy Presence in Our Holy Land

והנותרת ממנה יאכלו אהרן ובניו

"If God be with me and give me bread to eat and clothing to wear and HaShem shall be my God, and then this rock shall be a house of God and all that You shall give me I shall tithe.” (Yakov's prayer)

In numbers of places, we see how the Torah sees not only food, but also clothing as an essential part of living. We can see this in mitzvot between man and God such as tzitzit on clothing, in mitzvot between people such as a husband's obligation to clothe his wife, and also in para-Divine-human mitzot such as the obligation to give the first shearing of wool, used for clothing, to the Kohen, the servant of God in the Mikdash. In the instance of the Kohanim we find that Kohanic garments used in the service of the Bais HaMikdash also take high importance. Studying this matter more in depth we find that clothes are called by the great Amoreaic master “my honor”. Simply, this means that one's clothing reflects one's honor, position, and status. Delving deeper we find that honor itself is, in a sense, a type of 'clothing', the reception of one's essence in an external atmosphere. In this way, we can gain a slightly greater comprehension in the meaning of 'HaShem's Honor', which is translated by the Aramaic translations of the Torah as none other than the Holy Presence. We cannot have any comprehension of HaShem's Essence, as Rambam puts it: 'if I knew Him (His Essence), I would be Him”. Rather, what we aspire to is to cleave to His Holy Presence, i.e the Honor of God, unseparated from His Essence, somewhat similar to a soul in a body or a body in clothing (as we just described), with our intent always only towards the One Essence (serving the 'Presence' alone is idolatry, God forbid).

In our title quote of this week's parsha is the command to give the remaining parts of the sacrifice, not put on the altar, to the Kohanim. This is one of the 24 gifts given to the Kohanim, this one being unique to the Bais HaMikdash. We have discussed in the past gifts given to the Kohen in the Land of Israel in general such as truma and halla. Another example of such a gift in the Land in general is the first shearing of wool. After what we just explained, we can gain greater understanding of this mitzva. As explained before, giving the first of something represents 'putting them first on the list', and shows a sign of superiority befitting something given to a Divine purpose. 'Shearing wool' represents the concept of clothing/honor we explained here, as from a Biblical perspective 'clothing' is either from flax or wool only (perhaps flax is not included here because it is already a vegetable and vegetables already have laws of truma and maaser). Thus, by 'enclothing' the Kohen, one is giving honor to God's priests. This is tantamount to 'cleaving to HaShem', for our Sages teach that when one cleaves to the righteous, I.e those connected to God, one cleaves to His Holy Presence.

Similarly, by giving honor to Hebron- 'City of the Patriarchs'- we give honor to our Godly Patriarchs, which ultimately means giving honor to the Holy Presence.

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Real Stories from the Holy Land #113:

"One day, one person suddenly jokingly remarked (about a Torah-computer program), 'this might be a nice gift your wife could give you for your birthday', which seems to be the first time I have received such a remark. Little did he know that my birthday was indeed just about 3-4 days later..." 

Sources: Rambam Bikurim 1, 6

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