Parshas Achrei Mot: Improving Every Day

 We are in the home stretch now of our Passover preparations.  The house is nearly ready and we are working on switching our kitchen over even as we write this.  If you need somewhere to go for a meal over Pesach, whether for a seder or for a daytime meal during the Yom Tov, please call the Shul office.

In this week’s parsha, we read about how the kohen gadol (high priest) has to immerse himself in a mikveh when he changes into his special white garments for Yom Kippur and again when he changes back into his regular priestly clothing.  But there is something unusual about this: We usually only immerse in the mikveh when we are ascending to a higher spiritual level.  It makes sense for the kohen gadol to immerse before putting on his special Yom Kippur clothes.  On the other hand, it seems odd for him to immerse in a mikvah when he is putting on his regular clothes.  It seems like he is going down a spiritual level, not going up!

From this we learn that we must always work to improve ourselves.  The reason the kohen gadol immerses before putting on his normal workaday clothing is that he will now be doing an even better job than he did before.  His priestly service on Yom Kippur raised him to such a high spiritual level that he is now going to be on an even higher spiritual plane even for his normal daily activities.

So, too, we learn that we can always grow and improve.  We must always be working to climb to a higher spiritual level, to keep a bit more of the Torah than we did in the past.

Pesach is the perfect time to implement this.  We can always keep it a little more strictly, a little bit better than we did last year.  If last year you did not eat bread during Pesach but you still had pasta or crackers, try this year to eat nothing leavened.  If last year you had nothing leavened on Pesach, try this year to eat all your foods certified kosher for Passover only.  If last year you attended or hosted one seder, this year attend two.  There is always some room for improvement.  One easy first step is to attend this week’s shiur on the Hagaddah!

We wish you all a Shabbat shalom and a happy and kosher Pesach!

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