Elazar HaKohen and the Reunited Yerushalayim / Rabbi Michael Shtiglitz

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May these words be for the iluy neshama of my father and teacher, R’ Yitzhak David ben Michael Yechiel Michel Stieglitz, zt”l, a man of Jerusalem, who loved with all his soul the streets, alleys, and holiness of the Eternal City.

In the chronicles of Israel, great days have been renewed for us in recent generations that bring the redemption of Israel closer and lift us many degrees in the shared journey toward God and His goodness. One singular day among these is the day of the liberation of Jerusalem, our holy city, from the hand of the enemy by the IDF. Out of faith in the Written Torah and the Oral Torah, we recognize that the date of the return of our control over the Eternal City is not accidental, and we must clarify for ourselves the spiritual and moral foundations of this day and learn our way from these foundations.

Yom Yerushalayim will always fall on a Shabbat in which Parshat Bamidbar is read (on the Shabbat before it or the Shabbat after it). In Midrash Rabbah at the end of the portion, a deep and important principle is brought, from which and with which one can understand the value and place of Jerusalem. On the verse at the end of the portion: “And the charge of Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest shall be the oil for the light, and the sweet incense, and the daily meal offering, and the anointing oil, the oversight of all the tabernacle, and of all that therein is, in the sanctuary, and in the vessels thereof” (Numbers 4:16), it is brought in the Midrash: “‘And the charge of Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest etc.’, this is what is said (Proverbs 25) ‘Glorify not thyself in the presence of the king, and stand not in the place of great men.’ If before a king of flesh and blood a person needs to behave with humility, how much more so before the Almighty. And we have learned: ‘Be bold as a leopard, light as an eagle, swift as a deer, and strong as a lion to do the will of your Father in Heaven,’ to teach you that there is no pride before the Almighty. Elijah says: Anyone who increases the honor of Heaven and diminishes his own honor, the honor of Heaven increases and his honor increases; and anyone who diminishes the honor of Heaven and increases his own honor, the honor of Heaven stays in its place and his honor diminishes…” (Bamidbar Rabbah 4:20).

The verses in the Torah describe the virtue of Elazar and his areas of responsibility in carrying the Tabernacle during the journey in the wilderness, and the Midrash deepens the observation for us with an instruction both simple and difficult—the person who wants to draw near and serve his Creator in a full and complete way must diminish his own honor and increase the honor of Heaven.

The Chatam Sofer in Parshat Vayera reveals that the principle of humility before God is the aim of Avraham our father in his service of God, and his educational work to bequeath this principle to his descendants is what entitles him to his high virtue. We will bring his words with necessary omissions: “‘For I have known him, to the end that he may command his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice’ [‘I have known him’ Rashi explains—an expression of affection]. This teaches that God’s love for Avraham Avinu, was wondrous for having taught knowledge to the people and bringing them close to His service, and it was this that stood for him more than any good deed or merit of the soul which he had for himself. For indeed, even before him there were unique individuals who knew God and desired the knowledge of His ways, and would always err in His love. Who is greater to us than Chanoch, who from the intensity of his desire and his cleaving to God… ceased to be a man and was elevated to be as one of the heavenly host… and we did not find in Avraham Avinu, that his dust was so refined—but it was not from the lowliness or deficiency of his soul that he did not reach this virtue, no. For if Avraham Avinu, had done as Chanoch did—to isolate himself from human society, he too would have been elevated to be among the angels of God. And that he did not do so is because he contemplated in his wisdom that God did not desire these things—that a person should complete his soul alone, and leave the people of his generation behind him, a culture of sinful people who provoke God—as was the case with the generation of Chanoch and the generation of the flood. This trial taught him that it is good for a person to diminish the completion of his soul, for the sake of increasing the honor of God, to diminish His rebels, and to increase His servants and those who know Him. For what will a man give and what will he add if he adds one angel to the thousands of myriads of heavenly angels, does not God create and bring forth such and such new ones every morning…” (Chatam Sofer on Genesis). Avraham, harms his spiritual world and stops himself from advancing toward God and His goodness out of taking responsibility for the whole world and a constant attempt to bring all the world’s inhabitants to the recognition of God’s name. Avraham also brings close the Arabs who bow down to the dust of their feet and opens his home to them out of faith and great humility that an encounter with goodness and morality will lead them to the mission placed upon their shoulders. In the same way, Eleazar receives the mission placed upon his shoulders to carry the innermost vessels of the Tabernacle together with the family of the sons of Kehath out of absolute nullification to God. The Midrash later on brings the conduct of King David in bringing up the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem; David skips and dances with all his might before the Ark, and in the sight of Michal, daughter of Saul, David dishonors himself before all the people in this dance. Michal sees David and remembers her father who lost his kingdom because he did not know how to put the people in their place in the war of Amalek and did not know how to lead the people to the full fulfillment of God’s word, something that led him in the end not to tell the truth to Samuel. Michal is not interested in such a thing happening to David and she reproves him to be careful of it. King David answers her in two words that express for him the whole difference between him and his father-in-law: “Before the Lord.” David says to Michal, the dance before the Ark of the Covenant is not a private matter of this or that person; Jerusalem as a whole is not a private matter—this is the Divine mission placed upon our shoulders and therefore there is no room here to think about private honor.

Later, King David will say: “I rejoiced when they said unto me: ‘Let us go unto the house of the Lord'”—the Gemara in Makkot reveals to our ears the simple truth: after all, the House of the Lord did not exist in David’s time, it was established only in the time of Solomon’s reign, so what did David mean by this statement? Our Sages reveal to us the truth—the mockers of the generation were standing under King David’s window and saying: “When will this old man die and Solomon his son come and build the Temple?” Allegedly we would have expected anger, insult, and perhaps even revenge by David against these rebels who yearn for his death. But King David came before God and says: The Temple is not a private mission, Jerusalem is not a private mission, rather it belongs to the whole of Israel, and even if David is required to pay the heaviest price in order to promote its building—he is ready for it with a whole heart and a willing soul.

Skipping thousands of years, after the Six-Day War, my teacher Rabbi Moshe Zvi Neria was invited to speak at a teachers’ conference of the Mizrachi in honor of Jerusalem and these were his words: “Why did the Holy One, Blessed be He, not give Jerusalem into our hands in the War of Liberation, in 1948, and by what did we merit that Jerusalem returned to us now? Wonderfully, not at all in a natural way, it slipped from our hands then, and again wonderfully, beyond logic, it was given to us now! The answer to this is hinted to us in the words of our Sages in the Jerusalem Talmud (Bava Kamma 7:7): ‘Jerusalem that is built, as a city that is compact together’—a city that connects Israel to one another. In the War of Liberation, the Palmach broke through the Zion Gate, while the Irgun soldiers were about to break through the Damascus Gate. We were divided and separated. Had we succeeded then, there would be ‘two holding’ Jerusalem, and each one would say ‘it is all mine.’ Jerusalem would have become a source of division, a reason for quarrel and strife. Only now, when we all entered through one gate—the Lions’ Gate—when we are all united, when our fighting army is one army, when behind us stand with one heart all our brothers in the diaspora of the exile, only now did we merit the great event: ‘He Who returns His Presence to Zion’ returned Jerusalem to us… as long as we continue to be united and cohesive, Jerusalem will be entirely ours…” (Moadei HaRa’ayah, pp. 480-481). We learned from the Torah of our rabbi that the foundation of Jerusalem and the ability to enter and come within its gates stems from the adoption of the virtue of humility and a deep understanding of the mission placed upon the shoulders of each and every one.

Jerusalem calls to us even in these days—its building, material and spiritual, requires us to walk in the paths of our ancestors Avraham, David, and Elazar Hakohen, and to be full of the will to increase the honor of Heaven and to show to all the ends of the earth that from the light of the world comes the light, the good, and the peace to the whole world when “out of Zion shall go forth the Torah, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”

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