Acherei Mot-Kedoshim 5773
by Marc Mangel
What do we learn from the deaths of Aaron’s sons?
• (Sachs Great Partnership) Note to the Rebbe: ‘I need the Rebbe’s help. I am deeply depressed. I pray and find no comfort. I perform the commands but feel nothing. I find it hard to carry on’. Rebbe circled the I’s and sent it back
• Viktor Frankl in the name of Kierkegaard “The door to happiness opens outwards”
• Sprituality is not about us.
• What happens when we face a death?
• Rav Solevetchik (via Pinchas Peli): Facing death, we must not be shocked into brooding self-pity or futile anger but ask the Halakhic question “Now that this has happened, that it is a fact, as gloomy a fact as it is now, where do I go from here? What am I supposed to do now?”
• Lev 18:4 gives an answer “You shall observe my rule, keep my laws, to walk in them, I am YHVH”
• Last Tues (April 16) was the 50th anniversary of MLK’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, which galvanized the civil rights movement.
• Two years later (March 1965) in the Selma to Montgomery March, Abrahah Joshua Heschel walked with MLK and laer said “I felt my feet were praying”
• The door to spirituality opens outwards. All we have to do is walk through it.