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1) Prison or Palace? A Thought from Rabbi Lamm, z"l
According to R. Yochanan (Yoma 2a), the miluim described at the end of Parshas Tzav are the source for the Kohen Gadol’s preparation for Yom Kippur. So, if you would like to pivot from Tzav to the excitement of Yom Kippur - feel free to use this piece from Rabbi Lamm (on Parshas Tzav!)?
Why was it necessary to place a mezuzah by the lishkas parhedrin, the chamber where the Kohen Gadol was sequestered for seven days before Yom Kippur? The room was part of the Beis HaMikdash, which was totally exempt from mezuzah! Rabbi Yehuda (Yoma 10b) explains: without a mezuzah, the people might’ve thought that the Kohen Gadol was a prisoner. They would see a man who doesn't come or go for a full week, no regular routine, no ordinary comforts, and they would assume he was locked up by some internal political intrigue. The mezuzah re-framed the chamber as a residence, not a cell.
Rabbi Lamm z”l points out how astonishing this concern really is. Here was the Kohen Gadol at the pinnacle of his spiritual career, standing lifnei Hashem, preparing for the holiest avodah of the year – and the uninstructed public sees a man in jail! The gap between the insider and outsider perspective could not be wider. Rabbi Lamm borrows a mashal from the Ba'al Shem Tov: a man peers through a soundproof window into a room full of dancers. He cannot hear the music. All he sees are bizarre, meaningless gesticulations, the convulsions of the demented. But inside, the dancers hear every note and respond with their whole being.
This, says Rabbi Lamm, is the permanent challenge of Torah life. The outsider sees restriction where the insider experiences liberation, even blessing. Where one sees imprisonment, the other feels an intimacy with Hashem. The question is never what it looks like from the outside, but whether we ourselves remember what it feels like from within.
2) Are You Skipping the Most Important Part of Davening?
The Gemara in Menachos (110a) teaches: Kol ha'osek b'toras chatas k'ilu hikriv chatas, whoever engages in the Torah of a chatas is considered as if he actually offered one. Most of us understand this as a comforting aggadic idea, a kind of consolation prize for an era without a Beis HaMikdash. But is it possible that reciting the parsha of korbanos each morning is not merely a nice practice, but an actual mitzvah d'oraisa?
Rav Schachter, citing the Talmidei Rabbeinu Yonah (Berachos 5a in dapei haRif), traces this obligation all the way back to the bris bein habesarim. When Avraham asked Hashem how his descendants would achieve atonement without the Beis HaMikdash, Hashem responded: "I have already established for them the section of korbanos – whenever they read from them, I will consider it as if they brought a korban before Me, and I will forgive them for all their sins" (Megillah 31b). The Talmidei Rabbeinu Yonah understand this as a Torah mandate, a mitzvah d'oraisa embedded in the covenant itself.
The practical irony is hard to miss. The Gemara in Shabbos (118b) classifies Pesukei D'Zimra as merely a middas chassidus. Yet the seder hakorbanos, the same section most people rush through or skip entirely, may carry a chiyuv d’oraisa!. The part of davening we treat as expendable might be the part that matters most. (Rav Schachter on Tefillah, pp. 163–165)
3) Just Yesterday’s Ashes, or the Start of a Brand New Start?
R. Hirsch on the Trumas HaDeshen: is it the last thing done at the end of a long day, or the first thing done at the dawn of a new one? Seeing it as a bridge between today’s avodah and tomorrow’s, Rav Hirsch writes “It would give the idea, as the introduction to the service of the day, that: Today brings no new mission, it has only to carry out, ever afresh, the mission that yesterday too was to accomplish. The very last Jewish grandchild stands there, before God, with the same mission of life that his first ancestors bore, and every day adds to all its predecessors in the whole passing of the centuries, his contribution to the solution of the task given to all generations of the House of Israel. The Jewish ‘To-day’ has to take its mission from the hand of its ‘Yesterday.’”
There is something even countercultural in this idea. We live in an age that worships novelty and reinvention. Trumas hadeshen insists otherwise! With R. Hirsch’s framing, it’s a process that shows faithfulness, not originality, is the avodah. The ashes are so, so much more than waste, waiting to be thrown away, to be cleaned up. They provide the foundation on which today's service is built.
4) See last year's Chomer Here.
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