Speak to the Children of Israel and say to them, “when a man brings an offering to Hashem from an animal, cattle, or sheep, you shall bring your offering (Vayikra 1:2)

This week, we begin Vayikra. The first section of Vayikra discusses karbonos, offerings we used to bring in the Temple. A person might wonder why we even still learn about karbonos – we don’t bring them anymore, so why even spend time on them. There are numerous answers – one is that there are many lessons we can learn from the karbonos.

The word karbonos comes from the word “karov” which means to come near. The reason for this is because a karbon is a way for a person to come nearer to Hashem. Look closely at how we get closer to Hashem though – it is by bringing an animal, bird, or meal offering. It is by things we find every day on this earth. It is with mundane things. A person may wonder: this makes us closer to Hashem? Shouldn’t it be something more spiritual? The answer is “yes”. If we properly use the mundane things on this earth, we can connect closely to Hashem.

A man once saw his Rebbe eating an apple. He said, “Rebbe, you are just like me. We both eat apples. We both say a bracha before eating. So, why are you the Rebbe and I am the student?” The Rebbe very humbly answered, “The difference is that you want to eat an apple so you need to say a bracha. I want to say a bracha so I eat an apple.” The Rebbe can’t recite a bracha (which is a praise of Hashem) unless he has something to eat. Therefore, he takes a mundane item and uses it to praise Hashem.

This past week, I was at a shiur and learned something very interesting. There is a famous statement from our Sages that if there was a single moment when no Torah was being learned then the whole world would disappear. Therefore, there always must be learning 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I always understood this to mean that the entire world is included and since we live in different time zones, there is always at least one person learning every moment of every day. At this shiur, I learned differently. This applies to each city by itself. This scared me. Let me use my city of North Miami Beach as an example. In my city, I know there are people who learn at 2am (I once received a message from my Rav responding to one of my questions at 2am). I know there are people who open the shuls at 4am and are learning. But what about at 3am. I don’t know of anyone awake at 3am learning in North Miami Beach.

The answer I heard was eye-opening. If a person goes to sleep and the only reason he is going to sleep is because he has no energy left and it is so he has energy for the next day to be able to learn, then his sleep is considered learning. Since he is using a mundane act like sleeping for spiritual reasons, it is no longer a mundane act – it is a spiritual act.

We are all human beings and all of us do mundane acts every day. We all need to do mundane things to be able to survive. But if we use those mundane acts for spiritual reasons then these simple acts become holy acts. They bring us from a normal, everyday act to a super, spiritual act. This is certainly something great to strive for.

Good Shabbos!
-yes
please send any comments or questions to: [email protected]
to see previous Divrei Simcha on the Parsha, please go to www.divreisimcha.com OR www.chesedclub.com > Torah Study