Acharei Mot-Kedoshim 5785 – Tears and Joy

We are blessed to live in a remarkable period of our history.

Years ago, on a Thursday morning at the kotel, I chose to join a minyan where a bar mitzvah was being celebrated. Beginning with the Torah reading, the family and friends of the young man engaged in the boisterous singing and dancing that is typical of the bar mitzvah festivities occurring there every Monday and Thursday. A grandfather of the young man, an older man with a long white beard, was standing off to the side, observing it all somewhat pensively. I approached him to wish him mazal tov, and he shared his thoughts. “I used to come here decades ago, pre-1948. This was known as the Kotel Hadma’ot, the Wailing Wall, because we came to this sacred place to cry. Now, we come here to sing and dance.”

These exact words could have been expressed as an enthusiastic commentary on the positively transformational events of our time. Instead, the elderly man was sharing them as an expression of concern that the giddy celebration was carrying on as if oblivious to the past, to the long and difficult road traveled to get there. Hazorim b’dima b’rina yiktzoru (Tehillim 126). “Those who plant with tears, joyfully will harvest.” A classic Hasidic commentary suggests that both the planting and the harvesting must be accompanied by a blend of tears and joy. We have the strength to endure the difficult and tearful periods only because we anticipate the joy that will come at the end, while when that joyful end arrives, we must remain mindful of the painful investment that produced it. B’dima b’rina.

This combination of tears and joy is present in the Yom Hazikaron lead-in to Yom HaAtzmaut, that - rather than producing an emotional roller coaster - ensures that the losses of the more than 25,000 young men and women remembered on the first of those days are borne with a deep and mature appreciation of what they gave their lives for, and that the celebration that follows recognizes that Israel is not a gift but an acquisition gained at a very steep price. B’dima b’rina.

This attitude also underlies the opening of Acharei Mot, describing the Temple service on the holiest and happiest of days, Yom Kippur. The presentation is made in the shadow of the deaths of Nadav and Avihu during the celebratory dedication of the mishkan (tabernacle), “acharei mot shnei bnei aharon.” Their deaths at that joyous moment ensured that our delight in the mishkan would never be separated from a mature appreciation of its profound sanctity (v’nikdash b’chvodi: Shemot 29:43, Rashi). Similarly, the incomparable blessings that Hashem grants us on Yom Kippur, both His embrace of forgiveness and the intimate access we are given via the kohein gadol to His presence in the physical holy of holies, are experienced and appreciated not as gifts that arrive out of nowhere but as the product of the investment of the pain and tears of the fasting and prayer that yield those results and opportunities. B’dima b’rina.

So many bitter tears of loss continue to be shed by the families of the gibborei Yisrael who have given everything to bring us the singular privilege of our time, the rebirth of our people in our homeland from the ashes of the Holocaust and from millennia of homelessness. Our mindfulness of those tears will be critical to arriving at a more joyous future. B’dima b’rina.