Having What it Takes

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Having What it Takes

Our parasha begins with a detailed discussion of the Kohanim (priesthood). It lays out specific rules and regulations about their family life, eating habits and personal appearance. It outlines who they may marry, how their children must behave and what they may or may not do at the death of a close relative. It all appears very restrictive to us today. Who is G-d to tell me who I can and cannot marry! What about love? If my daughter is rebellious, what am I supposed to do about it, you know teenagers. And I can’t go to my mother’s funeral, who do you think you are! The worst is yet to come...what is this that I can't be a priest if my one arm is longer than the other or my eyebrows are too bushy!

Hasn’t G-d heard of the “American’s with disabilities act”? Where’s my lawyer’s number! It is difficult for us to understand today why being born outside of a particuliar family or having some physical abnormality would disqualify one for serving in the Holy Place, close to G-d. We have grown up with the idea that we are all equal and each one has an opportunity to be anything they want to if they work hard enough. Not in ancient Israel and not in the Kingdom. No amount of work will make one a Kohen if they were not born one.

No amount of plastic surgery will restore the physical perfection that the job demands. No desire or sense of unfairness will allow the Kohen to go to his mother’s funeral. Part of humility is understanding one’s place in life, accepting it and then maximizing it. One of the things these regulations teach us is an important lesson about the fundamental nature of the universe. In the world that G-d created, there is shalom and there is chaos. We can look at it as a continuum. shalom/order-----------chaos/disorder We learned that a dead body is the representation of complete chaos, physically speaking. Haman, Pharaoh or Hitler would represent the same thing in the moral realm. Idolatry is complete chaos while Torah based religion is shalom in the religious spectrum. Michael, guardian angel of Israel is shalom while hasatan is total disorder in the angelic realm. I think you get the picture. What went on the the Mishkan or the temple, where the Glory of G-d resided, was a place of complete shalom/order. Religiously and spiritually.

Nadav and Avihu found out what happens when one brings religious disorder into the presence of G-d. The same holds true for moral and physical disorder. If there is moral disorder in the priest’s family (his daughter is a harlot), he cannot come into the presence of G-d. If he has contacted the dead, a place of complete chaos, he cannot bring that into the presence of G-d. If he has a physical blemish, the physical order that exists in the Mishkan will be disrupted. Every level of reality must be accounted for when in the Mishkan and/or the presence of G-d. This will go for our lives as well because Sha’ul (Paul) said we are temples of G-d. If we want G-d to reside in our temple, we must try have our lives in order-physically, religiously and morally. This means you take care of your body, you follow Torah, and you resist temptation. An ordered life is a life of Shalom and one in which the Glory of G-d will dwell.