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שבת שלום - פרשת אמור
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Video Shiur
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Click play to watch the video shiur by Rav Yosef Kaminetsky
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News and Notes
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This Shabbat is an
out-Shabbat, and many
of our students will
be traveling to Meron,
the burial site of Rabbi
Shimon bar Yochai, to
join the hundreds of
thousands who congregate
there on Lag Ba'Omer.
For
those who are staying
in Beit Shemesh, Rav
Moshe Lichtman will be
hosting a bonfire and
kumsitz on Motzaei Shabbat
in honor of Lag Ba'Omer.
If you are in the neighborhood,
please come to join us
for singing, hot dogs,
and marshmallows!
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The Living Divine
By Rabbi Scott Kahn
There are two forms of proximity to death: physical proximity and emotional proximity. The Halachah states that physical association with death results in tum'ah, ritual impurity, whereas emotional closeness to death engenders a state of aveilut, mourning. These states of being reflect a fundamental Jewish concept: that G-d is a living G-d, that life is symbolic of our ongoing connection to Him, whereas death represents the experience of His absence from our lives. The experience of the void, the inability to sense His presence, is nowhere more apparent than in the experience of death.
Accordingly, tum'ah and aveilut symbolize the gulf which sometimes appears between man and his experience of the divine.
The Kohen Gadol must always be the antithesis of such experience, for he alone may enter the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur, and he accordingly must always exist as a symbol of G-d's constant presence, even when He is not apparent. For this reason the Torah in Parashat Emor forbids the Kohen Gadol from approaching a dead body - even that of his closest relatives! - and, moreover, allows him to continue his service in the Temple even after the death of any member of his family. The Kohen Gadol represents our awareness that G-d is always near, even when we sense the exact opposite.
The fourteenth of Iyar - which occurred this past Wednesday - is the holiday of Pesach Sheni, the day when those individuals who were in a state of tum'ah on Passover and, accordingly, could not bring the korban Pesach, are offered a second chance to perform this mitzvah. Four days later - this coming Motzaei Shabbat - is the holiday of Lag Ba'Omer, the day that we celebrate the end of the period on which Rabbi Akiva's many students died almost two thousand years ago. These two days are a celebration of the same reality represented by the Kohen Gadol: that the impurity of the past will pass away, that the period of mourning comes to an end, and the People of Israel are afforded a new opportunity to bring G-d into our lives. Death is a temporary state of being; it, too, will one day come to an end, and we will experience true eternal life, filled with the ongoing presence of G-d.
How appropriate, then, that according to the masters of Kabbalah, the week of the Omer on which both Pesach Sheni and Lag Ba'Omer occur is associated with the divine attribute of hod, or splendor, which in turn is personified by Aaron, the first and greatest Kohen Gadol. Just as the Kohen Gadol represents G-d's eternal presence, so, too, do the days of Pesach Sheni and Lag Ba'Omer symbolize the fleeting nature of G-d's absence. May we merit to always experience G-d's presence in our lives, and may we recognize that every feeling of distance from G-d will one day be followed by the revelation that He was, indeed, with us all along.
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