Parshas Tetzaveh (5785) - "Ve'asisa Mizbach Miktar Ketores" - why does the Golden Altar appear at the end of our parsha?

00:00 As is well known, the Tzemach Tzedek writes in Derech Mitzvosecha, in “Shoresh Mitzvas Hatefillah,” that he heard the Alter Rebbe during a moment of deep attachment to Hashem in prayer. From time to time, when the Alter Rebbe entered that state, people would hear him say something distinctive. What did he say? “Whom have I in heaven?” He would say, to a special tune, “Whom have I in heaven? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth.” In other words: I want nothing. I do not want Your Gan Eden; I do not want Your World to Come. I want only You Yourself. That is what he would say to Hashem while immersed in an immense love of Hashem. He would use this verse from Tehillim: “Whom have I in heaven? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth.” What do I want from heaven? What do I want from earth? I want nothing. And he would say: Not the World to Come and not Gan Eden. What do I want? I want only You Yourself, to be one with Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself. Among chassidim, the details of the stories about this are well known—how, even in the middle of a maamar, he could [unclear]. The Rebbe related several times in the name of the Frierdiker Rebbe that in old maamarim of the Alter Rebbe, one finds places where the flow of the discussion is hard to understand; one cannot grasp the connection between the points. An example is given from a passage that says, “His left hand is under my head,” where the discussion that follows is difficult to understand. And there is a story about Reb Pinchas Reizes. Pinchas Reizes was one of the great

01:34 chassidim of the Alter Rebbe, and he was one of the chozrim, who would write down and reconstruct, word for word, what they heard from the Alter Rebbe. Reb Pinchas Reizes would roll on the floor, because the Alter Rebbe would regularly become utterly absorbed when speaking Chassidus, and in that state he would sink to the floor, make sounds of prayer, and become profoundly stirred. One had to run after him and crawl on one’s knees to hear what he was saying. That is why there were places where they could not understand how the discussion continued. Elsewhere, further details are told by a chossid who described what he saw while visiting the Alter Rebbe. He said it was an ordinary morning, and the Alter Rebbe was preparing to pray. The attendant brought in a glass of water or a glass of milk, and the Alter Rebbe was getting ready to pray. Then he saw the Alter Rebbe become deeply absorbed, close his holy eyes for some time, lower his head, and sit that way for quite a while. Suddenly he heard him call out in a tune and say: “Master of the Universe, I want nothing. I do not want Your Gan Eden; I do not want Your World to Come. I want only You Yourself.” And that was

02:57 the expression the Alter Rebbe used when he entered a state of intense love of Hashem and reached the highest levels of that love: “I want only You Yourself.” It is well known that the Rebbe repeated these words a number of times; we heard them in maamarim several times. I heard them at a farbrengen too. When people heard the Rebbe say them, they saw again and again that as he repeated the verse, he became emotional. At times he was visibly moved simply by repeating the Alter Rebbe’s words of Torah. The Frierdiker Rebbe relates in Likkutei Dibburim that the Tzemach Tzedek said: Alongside all the accounts of the Alter Rebbe’s deep attachment to Hashem and his love of Hashem, of “Whom have I in heaven? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth”—the highest stage, the highest level of love of Hashem—the Alter Rebbe said that none of this reaches the self-sacrifice involved in eagerly doing a favor for a Jew. With all that richness, with that entire path of love of Hashem and the deepest attachment to Him, there is something still higher: to set all of it aside and go looking for Jews to help, materially and spiritually. And among the stories told about this is the well-known story that

04:25 the Rebbe brings in his first maamar, “Basi Legani” 5711: It was on the festival of Purim—a festival, sorry, it was on Yom Kippur. As is well known, on Yom Kippur, while the Alter Rebbe was in the middle of prayer, he took off his tallis and left the shul. He went to the edge of town, to a small house where a woman who had just given birth lived, and there was no one to help her heat the house. The Alter Rebbe went himself, and [unclear]. He chopped the wood himself and made the soup himself, so that she would have something to eat. This was on Yom Kippur, during prayers. How does this relate to our subject? At the loftiest time of the year, the time when the yechidah is revealed, the Alter Rebbe left everything to do a favor for a Jew. And in our parsha, we find its beginning and its end. The parsha begins with the lamps: “And you shall command the Children of Israel to bring you pure olive oil, crushed for illumination.” The parsha ends with the golden altar, the incense altar. And as indicated by the initials of the verse, the two are connected: the parsha begins with oil and ends with incense. Parshas

06:01 Tetzaveh, after all, is entirely about the priestly garments. So it begins with oil for the lamps, which seemingly has nothing to do with that subject. Rashi himself says that this passage did not need to be here at all. He brought it in [unclear], but that subject begins only later, and the Torah also brings these verses later in the Chumash, in Parshas Emor. So the parsha says it here to tell [unclear] what the Mishkan’s purpose would be and what it needed to be, and so on. But that is a subject in its own right. Then comes the second question, which all the commentators ask about the end of the parsha: After the entire discussion of the priestly garments, when the Torah tells us how to make them and describes the kohen’s service and all these things, it is here that the Torah tells us about the golden altar. Parshas Terumah is where all the vessels of the Mishkan are listed. The altar for sacrifices appears there too, and the Torah describes its purpose there. It lists all the vessels, but when it comes to the golden altar, the incense altar, it does not include it there. Only at the end of Parshas Tetzaveh does the Torah tell us that, in addition to the vessels already mentioned, there is also an altar for burning incense. And all the commentators—the Ramban and the Chizkuni, all the commentators and great Torah scholars—address

07:33 this. The holy Ohr Hachaim and others ask: Why does the Torah mention the altar specifically now, at the end of Parshas Tetzaveh? And why does it not appear among the vessels in Parshas Terumah, where all the vessels of the Mishkan appear? The point is in the verse, “Oil and incense gladden the heart.” The menorah’s oil and the incense of the incense altar—“gladden the heart”; this is a special kind of joy. What is its significance? When we look at the incense altar, we come to the commentators’ explanations. For example, one commentator argues that the reason the altar appears at the end of [unclear], after all these subjects, is to say that it was a matter of [unclear] to Hashem. And here is an interesting point: he says that everything listed there consisted of things the Jewish people needed to bring to atone for their transgressions and sins. That was the service of the Jewish people—to bring offerings to Hakadosh Boruch Hu and ask forgiveness for their sins and wrongdoings. All the vessels of the Mishkan were concerned with that. But incense, he argues, has no connection to sacrifices, sins, or wrongdoing. It is an expression of thanks. After everything Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave the Jewish people—and especially the great privilege that even after all their sins and wrongdoing, they can bring sacrifices and Hakadosh Boruch Hu atones for them, and there are kohanim whose service helps the Jewish people attain atonement, “to atone before Hashem”—after

09:06 all these things, a Jew brings incense to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. It is a gift brought to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, an expression of thanks for the great privilege He has granted us and for giving us this opportunity. That is his explanation of why the incense appears specifically at the end. There are other explanations by earlier commentators, each explaining the matter in his own way. And the Rebbe explains it. The Rebbe spoke about this at length in the last year as well, in 5752, at a Shabbos Tetzaveh farbrengen, one of the last farbrengens we merited to hear from the Rebbe. I do not remember whether it was here on Motzaei Shabbos, but it was in 5752. On Shabbos Tetzaveh 5752, the Rebbe spoke at a very interesting farbrengen about this subject and explained that the reason incense is mentioned at the end of Tetzaveh is that it is, in fact, the ultimate purpose and goal of all the service. Incense is about connection; the word for incense, ketores, is related to a word meaning “connection.” Through the incense, a Jew’s deepest bond with Hakadosh Boruch Hu is revealed. There is an even deeper dimension to this. The Rebbe explains that there is an outer altar and an inner altar. The outer altar is connected with all the sacrifices, and all the sacrifices involve taking an animal and offering it to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The Rebbe explains this in terms of our own service: it means offering up the animal soul in all its aspects, and all these matters

10:46 One must bring it to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. This is the inner work of refining the body and the animal soul, refining the world and making it a dwelling place for Him, and atoning for sins that were committed—through the sin offering, the guilt offering, and all the offerings. When we come to the ketores, its name is related to the word for connection, and it represents the deepest connection of a Jew with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That is why we find several distinctive features about it. The incense altar stood in the Sanctuary, and within the Sanctuary itself it stood in the center, directly opposite the Holy of Holies, opposite the Ark. In other words, where did the incense altar stand? In the innermost, deepest place of face-to-face encounter, the place where one stands face to face with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. In our spiritual service, this is the service of the yechidah of the soul, the work of a Jew’s innermost connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And so he points out something else: it had the quality of being one cubit by one cubit—one cubit wide, one cubit high, one cubit [unclear]. The only vessel that was one cubit by one cubit was the altar in this parsha. One cubit by one cubit signifies the yechidah of the soul. All the other vessels had various measurements—cubits and half-cubits—and various details. This altar, for example, was three cubits high. Three cubits correspond, in general, to the height of a person, indicating a connection to the human form—head, body, feet, and so on—because the service involves many details.

12:17 By contrast, the inner altar, the incense altar, was one cubit by one cubit. The significance of a single cubit is the yechidah: one sole cubit. This is the yechidah of the soul, connected to the One and Only of the world. That is also why the ketores had eleven ingredients. In Chassidus, the number eleven is described as being above ten. Eleven—“eleven days from Chorev”—is the one above ten; it is the yechidah of the soul, which connects a Jew to “I am Hashem your G-d.” That is also why we find that this, in particular, is the service of Yom Kippur. At the end of the parsha it says: “Aharon shall make atonement upon its horns once a year; with the blood of the sin offering of atonement he shall make atonement upon it once a year.” The end of the parsha presents the ketores and the idea of “once a year.” And the central service of “once a year,” as is known, is the service of the ketores. The Kohen Gadol enters the innermost chamber, “and the cloud of ketores shall cover,” and there the loftiest things are revealed. The Kohen Gadol’s prayer—everything revolved around the ketores. The ketores is the deepest connection: “Whom have I in heaven? And besides You I desire nothing.” The Kohen Gadol stands there, the one person, the one among the Jewish people, on the one day of the year, “once a year”—Yom Kippur, mentioned at the end of the parsha—in the one place, the Holy of Holies. All of this is connected to the ketores. There the yechidah of the soul is revealed, the yechidah of every Jew, which is revealed on Yom Kippur. That is why it appears at the end of the Torah’s account here: because this is the ultimate purpose. It is the highest level, the culmination of all the levels. In other words, after all the work and all the aspects of the service in the Mishkan—which are all aspects of serving Hashem and making the world a dwelling place for Him—we are told that the ultimate purpose of it all is the ketores: “Whom have I in heaven? And besides You I desire nothing.”

14:13 Once a year. This also connects the individual with the One and Only of the world. And at that time, no other person may be in the Tent of Meeting, as the Torah says: “No person shall be in the Tent of Meeting when he enters to make atonement in the holy place.” When the Kohen Gadol entered the Holy of Holies, there was no place there for anything physical; only the Kohen Gadol, face to face—“no person shall be there.” Chassidus explains that this is the revelation of the yechidah of the soul, when the Jew and Hakadosh Boruch Hu are alone, with no one and nothing else. But this raises a great question. In which parsha do the ketores and the incense altar appear? In Parshas Tetzaveh. In which parsha? The parsha that tells us about the lamps. And not only that: what does the parsha say at its end? “When Aharon lights the lamps toward evening, he shall burn it.” In other words, the Torah says that the time for burning the ketores is the time when the lamps are lit. And we say this every day in the baraisa that details the order of the service: first five lamps, then the ketores, and then the other two lamps. This was the daily order of service in the Beis Hamikdash. It connects the two things. When the Torah says, “When Aharon lights the lamps toward evening, he shall burn it,” it links the lamps with the burning of the ketores and speaks of them together. What is the message here? What is the lesson? The lesson is what the Rebbe said: together with all the fervor of “Whom have I in heaven? And besides You I desire nothing on earth”—I want nothing, only You Yourself—a Jew’s deepest connection to Hakadosh Boruch Hu must find expression in his work. That is the lighting of the lamps. What does lighting lamps mean? It means illuminating the world. I need light not only for myself,

16:14 but for the entire world. The goal is not just myself. The goal is to illuminate my surroundings. In the Beis Hamikdash they made “windows wide on the outside and narrow on the inside,” as it says in Tanach: the windows opened outward, and the light went from inside to outside. This showed that the purpose of Jews is to bring light into the world. A person must be a lamp that gives light. He must illuminate his surroundings, help other Jews materially and spiritually, and illuminate the world with the light of Torah and mitzvos. That is why the Torah begins the parsha with oil for the lamps and ends it with the ketores. “Oil and ketores gladden the heart.” This brings joy to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. It gives Hakadosh Boruch Hu pleasure and joy. And the joy comes when the oil and the ketores are together. On the one hand, a Jew has a connection to Hakadosh Boruch Hu: I do not want to remain only with myself. At the same time, he has the oil, the light of the lamps, with which to illuminate. This is the connection, this is the yechidah, and through it he illuminates the world. Through it he spreads the wellsprings outward—the inner dimension of the Torah, the inner dimension of G-dliness. Through it he illuminates the world; he brings the light of Torah and mitzvos into the world. This is the work Jews must do, especially when we are in the final days of exile. This is what the order of these things teaches us at this time. At the same time, today is 7 Adar, the day of Moshe Rabbeinu. And this is the light the Torah tells us about. We must know what a Jew’s purpose is. A Jew must

18:02 understand his connection to Hakadosh Boruch Hu: I do not want to remain only with myself, I do not want to remain only with myself. At the same time, he must bring that connection into the world, illuminating the world with the light of the inner dimension of the Torah. And this is the inner dimension of the Torah, Chassidus, which must be brought to others: bringing the light of the Baal Shem Tov’s wellsprings to the farthest reaches. Through this we will merit the complete Geulah. And may this day in the month of Adar bring us the complete Geulah through Moshiach Tzidkeinu. This will wipe out Amalek. And the verse will be fulfilled: “Amalek is the first of nations, but his end shall be utter destruction,” and the throne will be complete and the Name will be complete. Through joy. [unclear]. Amen, may it be His will.