One of my favorite books about time management is entitled The Power of Full Engagement, a book that views managing one’s life as a challenge of how spend our mental and physical energy, as opposed to how we manage individual tasks. In particular, the authors argue that we manage our energy through creating what they call “positive rituals,” or routinized behaviors that convey a high sense of purpose. The authors write:
“Positive energy rituals are powerful on three levels. They help us to insure that we effectively manage energy in the service of whatever mission we are on. They reduce the need to rely on our limited conscious will and discipline to take action. Finally, rituals are a powerful means by which to translate our values and priorities into action— to embody what matters most to us in our everyday behaviors” (Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, The Power of Full Engagement, Chapter 10: Taking Action- The Power of Positive Rituals).
In this passage, the authors remind us that every small act can become a meaningful ritual if the act becomes related to a deeper purpose we attempt to achieve by means of performing the ritual. This idea is embraced in Parshat Tzav, where our commentators explain how we even the most minute ritual can contain within it the seeds of greater transformation and growth.
Famously, the Torah commands that kohanim pay careful attention to each aspect of service in the mishkan, and Parshat Tzav specifically describes how they should tend to the burnt offering on the altar, even proscribing how one should tend to the altar’s ashes. The parasha states:
“8 The Lord said to Moses: 9 “Give Aaron and his sons this command: ‘These are the regulations for the burnt offering: The burnt offering is to remain on the altar hearth throughout the night, till morning, and the fire must be kept burning on the altar. 10 The priest shall then put on his linen clothes, with linen undergarments next to his body, and shall remove the ashes of the burnt offering that the fire has consumed on the altar and place them beside the altar. 11 Then he is to take off these clothes and put on others, and carry the ashes outside the camp to a place that is ceremonially clean” (Vayikra 6:8-11).
In modernity, it might seem peculiar the parasha specifically states that the kohanim must remove the ashes from the altar wearing fine clothes. However, our rabbinic commentators see this small detail as paradigmatic of the way in which all people should approach the service of God.
In a medieval commentary, the Spanish commentator Rabbeinu Bahya writes that we can interpret the kohanim’s service of the ashes typologically, and see their service a God in the performance of this offering as a model for all service of God. He writes:
“We see that even for the menial task of lifting the ashes, the Torah commands the Kohen to wear graceful holy garments. The lesson to be learned from this is that all ritual or religious assignments should be carried out in a worthy and decorous manner, and that we should humble ourselves for the glory of God, blessed be He, to perform exacting tasks...” (Rabbeinu Bahya ben Asher on Vayikra 6).
According to Rabbeinu Bahya, the fact that the kohanim were required to tend to even seemingly meaningless tasks such as lifting ashes off the mishkan must compel us to see every aspect of divine service as requiring our full and undivided attention.
Later commentaries expanded upon the idea reflected in Rabbeinu Bahya’s commentary, and argue that we can learn essential lessons about the importance of personal renewal in divine service based on the kohanim’s service in the mishkan. In a Hasidic commentary, Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Ger, otherwise known as the Sefat Emet analogizes service on the alter to daily tefillah, specifically noting the challenge of making prayer meaningful each and every day. He writes:
“This is the purpose of human worship. Each day a new light comes down upon those who serve God, as Scripture says: “And the priest upon those who serve God, as the Scripture says: “And the priest shall burn wood upon it each morning, each morning” (6:5). So too, it is written, “in His goodness He renews each day” (Prayerbook). This love comes to us as a gift of divine grace. Something of this light should remain imprinted on the heart throughout the day and night, “it may not go out”...The commandment here to remove the ashes hints that as we burn up the waste in our lives we are uplifted each day, and then we are given a new light. This redemptive process is with us every single day...” (Sefat Emet on Vayikra 6:1, 6, in The Language of Truth: The Torah Commentary of the Sefat Emet, ed. Arthur Green, 154).
In this commentary, the Sefat Emet draws our attention to the fact that since sacrificial worship was the way the biblical Israelites served God, and thereby was the primary means for divine engagement, the service of the altar teaches us how to engage with tefillah, which is our means of divine service in a world without a temple. Just as the Torah required that the fire on the altar to be constantly tended as a reminder of the spiritual possibilities of each day, so too must every Jew see daily tefillah as an opportunity to begin a new spiritual journey.
Similarly, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, considered by many to be the intellectual forefather of modern Orthodox Judaism, the service of the altar can not only provide us a model for thinking about tefillah, but all mitzvot. Regarding this, he writes:
“The daily service begins with the lifting of the ashes, terumat hadeshen, recalling the previous day’s service and their unfailing remembrance of God. However, the clearing away of the ashes signifies that each new day renews our commitment to comply with all that is incumbent upon us. We must perform our daily observe of mitzvot with a new zest, as if we had never performed them before” (Samson Raphael Hirsch, from Nehama Leibowitz, New Studies in Vayikra, 69).
Hirsch emphasizes the biblical and rabbinic conceptions of how scrupulously the kohanim tended to the offering on the altar, even showing zest and enthusiasm for such menial tasks as removing the ashes from the altar. By extension, if the kohanim saw even the removal of the ashes as an opportunity to show passion for divine service, how much more so should each of us tend to any aspect of Jewish lives with a similar passion?
Without question, every Jewish person needs to be mindful of how their Jewish practice can be stifled when monotony becomes the norm for how they approach any individual mitzvah. By extension, Parshat Tzav’s description of the terumat hadeshen reminds us that the more we succeed in viewing each and every Jewish act as a positive rituals that facilitates divine connection, the better will be able to find freshness and newness in our Jewish lives. May each of us embrace the task of challenging ourselves and our children to every Jewish act as a as a ritual that provides us meaning and focus, raising ourselves up in our relationship with God and one another.
Shabbat Shalom!
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