Rebuke and Blessing: Seeing the Holiness of the Whole

1“Speak to Bnei Yisrael and say to them: You shall be holy, for I, Hashem your God, am holy.”¹ The holy Ohr HaChaim looks closely at the words “speak” and “say.”² Amirah, “saying,” is a gentle word, while dibbur, “speaking,” is a harsh one. How, then, can both be used side by side?

2My holy ancestor, zy"a, explained in his sefer Toldos Adam³ that the tzaddik must have two powers. On the one hand, he must have the quality of vayedaber, “and He spoke,” the harsh dibbur, to rouse the hearts of Bnei Yisrael to avodas Hashem, the service of Hashem. On the other hand, he must have the quality of ve'amarta, “and you shall say,” the gentle amirah, to bring down upon them an abundance of blessing and every good thing. But how can the two go together? When the tzaddik rebukes Bnei Yisrael, his rebuke itself stirs up harsh judgments against them, Heaven forbid. If so, how can an abundance of blessing rest on them and flow to them through him? The remedy is that when the tzaddik blesses Bnei Yisrael, he should look only at the good in them. This is how my holy father and teacher, zt"l, explained the verse “And Aharon lifted up his hands toward the people and blessed them, and he came down from performing the sin offering …”⁴ When Aharon wanted to bless Bnei Yisrael and bring blessing and good upon them, he kept himself from seeing any evil in them. That is the meaning of “and he came down from performing the chatas,” the sin offering, a word that also means “sin”: at the time he blessed them, he did not rebuke them for their sins.

3aTo explain these words more fully, we may say the following. Each individual at times does things that are not good and deserves rebuke for them. But the community as a whole should be seen only as good; the way to rouse it is all together, through the exalted power of its holiness. Indeed, Parshas Kedoshim was said behakhel, before the whole people assembled together.⁵ And Chazal said: “‘You shall be holy.’ Could it be that you are to be holy like Me? The verse says, ‘for I am holy’: My holiness is above your holiness.”⁶

3bThe holy sefer Maor VaShemesh explains this. The Holy One, blessed be He, is set apart, as it were, above in the heavens, which is why He is called holy. One might have thought that Bnei Yisrael too, when they make themselves holy, must keep apart in the same way, each alone in his own room. On this Hashem says, “Could it be that you are to be holy like Me?” That is, could the way to holiness be through living alone? “The verse says, ‘for I am holy’: My holiness is above your holiness.” Holiness through being apart belongs only to Hashem, Who is singular and unique. For Israel, the way to holiness is not living alone, apart from the community, but hakhel, joining together with the community to serve Him “with one shoulder,” in unison.⁷ That is the gist of his holy words.

4On this basis we may say that when the tzaddik is to bestow every kind of good on Bnei Yisrael, he must have the quality of ve'amarta, the gentle “saying” we saw in the Toldos Adam. He does this by looking at Israel as a whole and seeing that it is holy. That is why the verse says “and say to them,” in the plural, [addressing the people as a whole]. Only when the tzaddik needs to rebuke Bnei Yisrael does he speak harshly to them, and of this it says, “Speak to Bnei Yisrael.”

5In these days, as we stand before receiving the Torah on Shavuos and are busy preparing for it, we should remember that the greatest preparation is the one the verse describes: “And Israel encamped there,” which Rashi explains, “As one man with one heart.”⁸ Through unity we draw close to holiness, as the verse says, “And you shall be to Me … a holy nation,”⁹ and through this we can be privileged to receive the Torah.

6May the Holy One, blessed be He, help us, so that love and brotherhood, peace and friendship may dwell among us. Amen, may it be His will.