Total Inner Withdrawal
Beyond the inauguration of the Mishkan, Parshat Shmini also describes the sudden death of Aharon’s two sons. Yet notwithstanding this incredible loss, Aharon is instructed not to adopt the classic mourning rituals of growing his hair or tearing his clothes.
As Rav Soloveitchik explains in his essay ‘Catharsis’, ‘Aharon belonged to no one, not even to himself… Therefore he was not even free to give himself over to the grief precipitated by the loss of his two sons.’
Of course, this was an incredibly tough ask of Aharon during such a difficult moment in his life. Yet the point which Rav Soloveitchik is making here is that there are times when we all need to practically or emotionally restrain ourselves for the sake of adhering to religious rules.
As he writes: ‘Once man enters the service of God, be it as high-priest, be it as an ordinary humble person… he is subject to the divine call for total inner withdrawal. Here the halacha intervenes frequently in the most intimate and personal phases of our lives and makes demands upon us which often impress the uninitiated as overly rigid and formal.’
Overall, what this means is that keeping halacha can be hard and that the observance of halacha can often require significant self-sacrifice. This is why, as we are told in Brachot 32b, so many of the core foundations of Jewish living – such as Torah study, good deeds, prayer and even earning a livelihood – require chizuk (encouragement), because even those already committed to Jewish practice can sometimes find things hard.
As you may know, I provide online spiritual coaching and halachic consultation services as #theVirtualRabbi exclusively through WebYeshiva, and many of the sessions I have with clients touch on topics such as this.
To find out more, and to book a free discovery call, visit https://webyeshiva.org/about-virtual-rabbi/