“Mikem”: Bringing Ourselves Near Through Humility

1“Speak to Bnei Yisrael and say to them: When a man of you brings an offering to Hashem.”¹

2Chazal expounded the word mikem, “of you,” as excluding a stolen animal, even after the owner has given up hope of recovering it, which would ordinarily make it the thief's. The reason is that such an offering is a mitzvah haba'ah ba'aveirah, a mitzvah brought about through a transgression.² Chazal say much the same elsewhere: “If a man stole a se'ah of wheat, ground it, kneaded it, baked it and separated challah from it, he is not blessing but blaspheming.”³ But if so, why must this law be learned from the word mikem? Why not learn it from the general rule against a mitzvah brought about through a transgression? [The question holds according to the authorities who rule that this prohibition is Torah law and not only rabbinic. That is how Tosafos explains it there, and so do the Kapos Temarim and the Maharam. Rabbeinu Tam, cited by Tosafos elsewhere, holds the same, and the Aruch LaNer writes that this is the view of most of the poskim, the halachic authorities.⁴]

3We can explain this by first looking at a question the commentators raise: what is the purpose of bringing korbanos, offerings? If a man sinned, what sin did the animal commit, and why should he bring it to be slaughtered? The answer given is that the goal of avodas Hashem, the service of Hashem, is lowliness and humility. Humility makes a person worthy to become a merkavah, a “chariot” on which the Shechinah rests, and so he comes closer to avodas Hashem, as the verse says, “The offerings of God are a broken spirit.”⁵ This is really what the offering is about. When the animal is brought to Hashem, slaughtered, and its blood sprinkled, its owner stands and watches it all, thinking that everything being done to the offering ought to have been done to him. Inevitably his heart breaks within him, and that lowliness is the tikkun, the repair, that the offering brings about.

4A person who brings his offering this way is privileged to increase the glory of Heaven and the glory of Hashem's kingship. With this we can explain why the verse uses the word mikem for the offering: the letters of mikem (מכם) are the initials of Melo Kevod Malchuso, “the fullness of the glory of His kingship.” When a person brings his offering with a lowly spirit, as in “The offerings of God are a broken spirit,” he adds to the fullness of the glory of His kingship and draws near to the Creator. That is why the Torah added the word mikem: to hint that the reason for the mitzvah of the offering is that through it, what is “of you,” your own part, should draw near to the Creator, blessed be He.

5aThe Shabbos before Shabbos HaGadol, the great Shabbos just before Pesach, is called Shabbos Penuyah, the “free” Shabbos, as the books of customs record.⁶ The simple reason is that it has no special Torah reading like the Four Parshiyos, the special readings of the weeks before Pesach, and no yotzros, the poems added to the morning prayers, are said on it. The Yismach Yisrael, by R' Yerachmiel Yisrael Yitzchak of Alexander, gives another reason, and we will present his words with some further explanation. He builds on a well-known teaching of the Ran about kiddushin, the betrothal of a woman. The verse speaks of kiddushin as “When a man takes” a wife, not “when she is taken,”⁷ and the Ran explains why: a woman cannot bring herself into her husband's domain. Rather, once she consents to the man's kiddushin, she sets aside her own mind and will, making herself, as far as her husband is concerned, like something ownerless, and the husband brings her into his domain. That is the gist of his words.

5bIn the same way, on the night when the festival of Pesach is sanctified, we open the Seder with Kadesh, the sanctifying of the day. This hints at kiddushin, for Hashem, as it were, betroths His people Israel. How can we reach Kadesh? From the start of the month of Nissan we make ourselves, as it were, like something ownerless before the Holy One, blessed be He. We set aside all our own wishes before Him in complete self-nullification, out of lowliness and humility of spirit, so as to be like that which “has nothing of its own.”⁸ That is why this Shabbos is called Shabbos Penuyah: it hints that we must clear away all our private concerns and become like a penuyah, an unmarried woman, who is free to receive kiddushin. Then, on the night the festival is sanctified, we will be privileged to reach the level of Kadesh.

6This accomplishes something more: it is considered as though we had been privileged to bring the Pesach offering at its appointed time. For “The offerings of God are a broken spirit,” and so, when we set aside our own minds in humility of spirit, it is credited to us as though we had offered the Pesach offering. [As Chazal teach, when a person is humble in spirit, Scripture credits him as though he had brought all the offerings, and they learn it from this very verse, “The offerings of God are a broken spirit.”⁹]

7May the Holy One, blessed be He, help us to be truly privileged to eat of the offerings and of the Pesach offerings, with the coming of our righteous Moshiach, speedily. Amen.