Aharon and his children were given the tremendous responsibility of the service of the Temple. As much as this service represented the epitome of being involved in holy activities, interestingly however, the first task that Aharon and his children are instructed to perform is the mitzvah of terumat hadeshen—the removal of the ashes that remained from the previous night’s fire on top of the mizbayach. Doesn’t this mitzvah seem antithetical to all the sacred service done in the Bet Hamikdash? It seems very incompatible with the very definition of the idea of serving in the Bet Hamikdash, the holiest place on earth! And it’s seemingly the very first avodah of the day! Chovot Halevavot explains that this was done in order to lower and remove ga’avah, haughtiness from the kohen’s heart (“The Gate of Submission,” chapter 6). Aharon was one of the select few who had the merit of performing the Temple service, and it would be very, very easy for him to feel haughty. Thus, the Torah instructed him that the first thing that he must do every morning is to take out the ashes—“take out the garbage,”—so that Aharon’s ego wouldn’t naturally inflate.
Part of the process of being human is taking out the waste, dealing with the ashes, the garbage in our lives, and that’s what we do every day whether it’s actual garbage or, more importantly, the emotional or spiritual unpleasant residue. As one of my close rebbeim explained, rather than getting unnecessarily consumed with mistakes, the exceptional hallmark of a human being is exactly how well he “cleans himself up.” Take it how you want it. It’s natural, humbling, humanizing and an imperative in spirituality when it comes to serving Hashem. Don’t think you’re too good to deal with that kind of stuff. It’s not beneath you, nor are you above it.
Here’s a fundamental idea in Judaism: Hashem wants you to start to serve Him. Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it? No, Hashem wants you to serve Him. Ideally not what you are not and not what you think you are, but who you really are. That’s the kind of person He wants to serve Him. Built into the way Hashem created us and the world is this dichotomy of the holy/spiritual/Godly, but also the aspect of that which doesn’t look so clean nor seem equivalent to the all bright and lofty concepts that we maintain. Yet, it’s exactly the sum of those parts that encompass the totality of the human being, what he engages with on a daily basis and the one whom Hashem wants to serve Him. One way to understand this is that this means that we bring our entire self—the maalot (our positive aspects) and the chisronot (our limitations, or what we perceive as being our “garbage”) into the way we serve Hashem. Hashem wants us to serve Him in honesty, and that can mean fully accepting the way we are and bringing that entire picture into the spiritual dynamic, including the aspects of us that seem unpleasant in our eyes. However, our goal ideally is to live in a dual state—to fully accept and appreciate what we think is our “waste” while at the same time working to perfect ourselves of them.
A second understanding is that those activities in our daily routine which don’t seem spiritual and contrary to holiness can actually be part and parcel of ruchniut and serving Hashem. This, I think, is the essential lesson from the terumat hadeshen.
Listen to this story that really brings out this second idea (found in Torah Tavlin, p. 226): An aspiring young Torah scholar came to the Steipler (R’ Yaakov Yisrael Kanievsky) with a “major” problem. This young man felt that the Steipler would be able to relate to his grandiose issue given that the Steipler himself was one who persevered in very difficult times in his own life. He wrote in extreme detail the gravity of his problem for the Steipler to grasp its intense severity: “Every Friday I come home from yeshiva, and the scene in my household is hardly clean! And the children are not bathed! What should I do? How can I concentrate on my studies when I have to deal with such problems?” The Steipler looked up from the paper, peered into the face of the young man, and began speaking in his heavy Russian-accented Yiddish: “In parshas Tzav, Rabbeinu Yonah asks why the Torah juxtaposes the mitzvah of terumat hadeshen with that of the korban olah; the two seem to have little in common. He explains, however, that a person must realize that sometimes what is considered menial work in human eyes merits the highest accord in Hashem’s eyes. The mitzvah of terumat hadeshen is prefaced with the word “tzav”—a Divine command, for the seemingly insignificant acts that a person is compelled to do in his daily life also yield great sanctity. In the quest for spirituality one must never demean the simple chores.” The Steipler’s expression then grew stern. “Do you really want to know what to do?” he asked the young man. The young man eagerly nodded in excited anticipation. Said the Steipler, “Get a broom and help out!”
The young man was correct in one aspect, but he was mistaken in another. He was right because his commitment to Torah was faithful and unshakable, as he understood to a high degree the centrality and importance of Torah study, and he deserves unlimited credit for that. But he perhaps was lacking a fundamental understanding of the totality of what it means to serve Hashem in that even in those tasks that seem beneath us and beneath the dignity of a Jew—particularly one who is involved in holy work much like the kohen gadol—even that is an avodah that is cherished and deemed highly valuable in the eyes of Hashem. The lesson of the ashes is one that opens us up to a broader view of the expansiveness of how we can serve Hashem. And so, the next time you’re asked to take out the garbage…
By Binyamin Benji
Binyamin Benji currently learns in Rabbi Shachter’s kollel at Yeshivas Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan, and is a semicha candidate there as well. He holds an MSW from Wurzweiler School of Social Work and is the author of the weekly Torah portion in the Sephardic Congregation of Paramus’ newsletter. He can be reached at [email protected].
