Chosen Because He Was Ashamed

1“Moshe said to Aharon, ‘Approach the altar.’”¹ Rashi explains that Aharon was ashamed and afraid to come near, so Moshe said to him, “Why are you ashamed? For this you were chosen!”² But this is hard to understand. What was Moshe telling him that he did not already know? Aharon surely knew that Hashem had chosen him, and even so he was ashamed and afraid to approach.

2A teaching is quoted in the name of the holy Rebbe R' Yitzchak of Vorka, zt"l. When Moshe said, “For this you were chosen,” he meant: because you feel ashamed, that is the very reason Hashem chose you. We may add a fuller explanation. It is well known that this is the way of a true tzaddik: even while he does a mitzvah or learns Torah, he always thinks, and feels deep within, that he has not fulfilled his duty to Heaven. He may have done this mitzvah many times; he may be old and practiced in it, and have all the proper intentions. Still, he always thinks that he has not yet managed to do this mitzvah completely.

3This lets us explain what the Torah says about the kindling of the lamps: “And Aharon did so.”³ Rashi comments: “This tells the praise of Aharon, that he did not deviate, shelo shinah.” The commentators, the Alshich and the Kli Yakar, raise a well-known question: what is so remarkable about his not deviating?⁴ We may say that although Aharon the Kohen lit the Menorah many times, he always lit it with the same sense of shame, as though he were only now beginning to fulfill this mitzvah. This is the meaning of shelo shinah: he did not deviate from that sense of shame.

4This is also the meaning of Aharon's shame here. He feared that he had not yet reached the level of being fit to perform the holy service, and that he was not ready to offer the korbanos. Moshe said to him, “For this you were chosen”: you must realize that you were chosen only to be the emissary of Bnei Yisrael. It is not by your own merit; Hashem, in His good will, chose you. So you have nothing to be ashamed of, for it all comes through the power of the many and not through your own. This is in the spirit of the well-known teaching of the holy sefarim, among them the Tiferes Shlomo, on the verse “the Kohen who is great from among his brothers.”⁵ The Kohen Gadol, the High Priest, must always know that all his power and holiness come only “from his brothers.” They are the ones who give him strength, for he is the emissary of Bnei Yisrael. If he thinks this way, humility follows naturally, for he knows that everything he accomplishes comes only through the power of Bnei Yisrael.

5This is a cornerstone of avodas Hashem, the service of Hashem: a person must always remember that he acts only through the power of the many. When he serves this way, his Torah and mitzvos are accepted with favor before the Master of all, and this brings the redemption nearer. Amen, may it be His will.