Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe Podcast Collection is the one-stop shop for the Torah inspiration shared by Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe in one simple feed. The Jewish Inspiration Podcast, Parsha Review Podcast, Thinking Talmudist Podcast, Living Jewishly Podcast and Unboxing Judaism Podcast all in one convenient place. Enjoy!
You're listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe, Director of TORCH, the Torah Outreach Resource Center of Houston. This is the Jewish Inspiration Podcast.
All right, welcome back everybody to the Jewish Inspiration Podcast. We have a little short and sweet inspiration to share. This coming Friday is going to be the 14th day of the month of Iyar. This is a special day. The Torah tells us in Numbers chapter 9 verse 1 through 14, a story where people came to Moshe and said, what do we do? We weren't ritually pure during the
days prior to the day prior to Pesach, and we weren't able to bring offerings, the Paschal Lamb offering, which was the day before Pesach, a special offering. We were ritually impure. What do we do? We missed out on this opportunity. So Moshe says, great question. Let me ask Hashem. What does Hashem respond? Hashem says the following, Speak to the Jewish people as follows. If a person was impure because they came in contact with a corpse, or if they were in a distant land,
they were stuck, they were too far away to make it to the temple on time, and they were unable to come to the temple, they can make a repair for it. They can fix it. How do they fix it? On the 14th day of the month of Iyar, which is 30 days later, they have Pesach Sheni. They have another opportunity to bring that offering, but it's only if you have those two qualifications, one of those two qualifications. Either they were impure
because they became, they came in contact with a corpse, or if they were too far away that they weren't able to make it to the land of Israel, to the temple. So Pesach Sheni occurs on the 14th day of Iyar, and this is exactly one month after the 14th of Nisan, the day before Passover, which was the day prescribed for bringing the Karbon Pesach, the Paschal offering, the Paschal lamb, in anticipation for the holiday. So what happened? The Jewish people leave Egypt.
Prior to leaving Egypt, prior to getting out, God says slaughter the lamb. What day was that? Remember we spoke about Shabbat HaGadol, that was the 10th of Nisan. Four days later, which is the 14th day of Nisan, they bring the Paschal lamb. They have to wait four days to see that the animal is kosher. And then the next day on the 15th is the first night of the Seder. That's the first night that we eat matzos.
So if you remember, what was the first day of the inauguration of the tabernacle? That was the first day of Nisan. So we have the first day of Nisan was the inauguration. Very special day. We did a podcast about that. Unbelievable inauguration. What else happened on that day? A tragedy happened. The two sons of Aaron, out of excitement, out of exuberance, they wanted to bring an offering. They went into the temple unprescribed. They went without an invitation and they were they were killed.
The fire came, it says an alien fire came and took them away. Who went in to get them? It says their cousins, Mishal and El Safan. They took their bodies out, so they came in contact with a dead body. So now comes 13 days later, they want to bring an offering and they can't because they're impure. They were just in contact with the corpse. So they come to Moshe and they ask for what do we do? We also want to bring the Paschal lamb.
That opportunity was taken away. Hashem answers that if you were impure or you were in a distant land, distant land, that isn't part of the question. That wasn't what was asked. Hashem says if you were far away as another option. Guess what? You can have a second chance. Before we get to this, we have to understand that there are some similarities and some differences between these two offerings. The one that was the original Paschal lamb on the 14th of Nisan
and the one that was done a month later. So firstly, it was permitted on the second one, on Pesach Sheni, it was permitted to have hametz, right? Because it wasn't Pesach. So they were allowed to have leavened bread in their house. Additionally, it was permitted to remove the meat of the offering from the group of those gathered together to eat it. In the first one, you weren't allowed to bring it out. Here, you were allowed to bring it out.
Additionally, it was not brought together with the Karbon Chagigah, which was the festive offering. And like on Pesach, it was eaten with matzah and marr, even though it was a month later. And it had to be broiled. No leftovers. And the bones could not be broken from the animal. OK, so these are some of the similarities and or differences between them. So what are some of the, another interesting point, it says, what does someone do if they converted after Pesach, before Pesach Sheni?
So now they became Jewish after Pesach. So now they didn't bring the offering back on Pesach, so they can also bring an offering, Pesach Sheni. OK, so let's learn some lessons about this unbelievable day, this coming Friday. So this is an entire lesson in the Torah, which, by the way, didn't need to be, we didn't need to be this whole story. The Torah could just say, you can have another opportunity, right? The Torah says you can bring it on the 14th or a month later.
I don't know. The Torah is telling you something here, something very, very important. There's a concept of second chances in Judaism. It's never too late. What does being contaminated by death or traveling on a distant road, what does that have to do with us? Our sages tell us that someone who is ritually impure due to contact with a corpse, it's a symbol of a disconnection from God, it's symbolic of a disconnection from God, which is similar to death.
So what it's saying is if you came in contact with a corpse, what it's really saying is that perhaps you were at a state of disconnection from God. You were spiritually dead. You were spiritually disconnected. You know what? There's a second chance for that. And you know what it means when someone is traveling on the way? That means someone who's distant from God, someone who's distant, someone who perhaps doesn't know. You think you lost the opportunity? No, no, no, no, no.
You can like Rabbi Akiva, there's another chance. And what the Torah is teaching us with this very, very special day is that there's always opportunity to turn around. Nobody should ever feel like, oh, look at me, I'm 70 years old. I haven't done this my whole life. Forget it. It's done. No. By the way, everybody heard of Einstein, right? Smart guy. He wrote in one of his books, he said he always denied God.
He says he realizes that he was wrong, but what can I do? I'm so old. No, no, no, no. He didn't learn this part of the Torah where the Torah says you can always start over again. There's always another opportunity to start over again. You know when that opportunity is? Today. Today is that day. Each one of us can learn from Pesach Sheni, how today is a new beginning. God gave you today. That means today's a new opportunity to start all over again.
Oh, but Rabbi, if you only knew what I did, everyone has the opportunity to start over again. So that's lesson number one. Number two is where did Mishael and Eltzafon, where did they get the chutzpah to come to Moshe to ask? Where did they get this, this thought of even coming to Moshe and saying, hey, we missed out on a mitzvah, by the way, how do we do that mitzvah? They just tell us something very, very special. They learned it from Nadav and Aviu.
Why were Nadav and Aviu killed? Because they had too much exuberance, that too much misplaced passion to do a mitzvah. But you know what they learned from them? Mishael and Eltzafon learned they had passion. Ah, let's take that passion and see how we can do it the right way. So what did they do? Now they go to Moshe and they say, look, we learned from Nadav and Aviu that we need to have a passion to do the mitzvahs, here's an unbelievable mitzvah of the Paschal Lamb.
And we missed that opportunity. We have a passion to be close to Hashem. We have a passion to bring this special, special offering, which represents what, that God is the creator of the world, that God controls everything, that God did all these miracles for us in Egypt and that God brought us out. We have a passion to express that love to God. What we learned from this whole idea of Pesach Sheni is that we need to have passion in our Judaism.
To have a fire within us that burns, ah, I want to daven, I want to pray. I want to light the menorah. I want to light the Shabbos candles. I want to do it, to do it with a passion. That doesn't mean that we steamroll others. This doesn't mean that, God forbid, we ever look down at others. On the contrary, we look at everyone as an opportunity to uplift us. We can be inspired from everyone else.
Look how Mishal and Itzaf, two dead people, they learned from their passion. How do we do it the right way? And the last thing is, a thing that we can learn from Pesach Sheni is that the Pesach offering, as we just mentioned, stands as a sign that our destiny is in the hands of Hashem. Everyone saw the miracles Hashem performed in the Exodus. Hashem changed nature to show us these miracles. Suddenly the water stopped. Suddenly the seabed becomes hardened, dry, and the Jewish people walk,
all changing nature, unbelievable miracles. We had very, very clear knowledge. You know, we don't, I don't like the word belief in Hashem. We had knowledge of Hashem. Everybody saw it. Everybody knew it. We knew that Hashem was in control. Hashem, with this special mitzvah, the Paschal Lamb, wants every person to have the opportunity to do this mitzvah so that they, with their own mouths, can declare, here is Hashem. That's what we need to do with this Pesach Sheni.
We need to declare it with our own mouth. That, yeah, yeah, it's a Jewish tradition tells us, no, no, no, no. This is my knowledge of Hashem. Hine elokeinu zeh. This is our God. Not to just blend in. That each person should have their own declaration. And that's why we have the second opportunity of Pesach Sheni, so that now everybody can declare, this is my God. These are the miracles that I declare. I witnessed from Hashem.
So what are the customs we do on this day? So some people have the custom to eat, and it's a common custom, to eat leftover matzah from Pesach, to commemorate the offering that was eaten with the matzah. And as we know, because it's a holiday, we don't recite the tachanun, which is a prayer of supplications, which is normally not said on holidays, as Pesach Sheni was a day of rejoicing for those who did bring the offering on that day. So we also do not recite tachanun on Pesach Sheni.
So my dear friends, Hashem should bless us all that we should have that clarity. We should have that knowledge where we can say, hine elokeinu zeh. This is our God. We have knowledge. We should live our mitzvahs with passion and God willing, we won't need a second chance, but if we do, Hashem is always offering it to us. My dear friends, have an amazing day, an amazing week, and an amazing Shabbos.
You've been listening to the Jewish Inspiration Podcast, a Torch production. Become a supporter at Torchweb.org because your assistance enables more Torah learning around the globe. To find more lessons offered by Torch, please visit Torchpodcasts.com.