This is, in truth, personal. Each and every Jew rejoices with the hachnasas sefer Torah because each and every Jew can truly and deeply know that he has a letter in it. Each can correctly claim, “It is mine!”
Who would ever ask a yid at his son’s or grandson’s bar mitzvah or wedding, “Why are you so happy? Why do you dance with such a lightness and joy?”
Why?
Because this is a celebration of what is mine! It is besori! This is my flesh and blood! So it is that each and every yid is so mesameiach at a hachnasas sefer Torah. This is mine! This is my letter!
Each and every Jew commands a place at this table.
* * *
The source of the mitzvah to write a sefer Torah is in Vayelech, veata kisvu lachem es ha’shira hazos. These words conjure up the fullness of the simcha associated with the mitzvah. But, on either side of this mighty and joyful pasuk are words that fill us not with joy but with fear and trembling.
In this same parasha, we find Moshe Rabeinu nearing the end of his life. He tells the Levi’im whose task it was to carry the Aron, to take this sefer torah “ve samtam oso mitzad aron bris Hashem Elokeichem, vehoyo sham lecha l’eid.” Take this sefer Torah – exactly which sefer Torah remains to be revealed – and place it next to the tablets and, “it shall serve on to you forever as a witness.”
The Da’as Zekeinim, citing a Midrash, teaches that Moshe Rabeinu was instructed to place a copy of the sefer Torah with each tribe – twelve copies. It was the thirteenth copy that was to be placed next to the Luchos in the Aron. But when exactly did God instruct Moshe to place that thirteenth sefer Torah into the Aron?
On zayin Adar! On the seventh of Adar.
Thousands of years ago, Moshe Rabeinu was born on zayin Adar. It is also the date of his yahrzeit. It is also the yahrzeit of the sainted Kalever rebbe. Clary has often told me of how her father, Reb Shiya z’l, would wait all year to go to the Kalever’s yahrzeit. “Men furt kein kaliv.” We’re going to Kalev.
Zayin Adar. A day filled with awe and kedusha.
* * *
Zayin Adar. A day profound and holy. The day Clary and I dedicated our Torah.
Zayin Adar. We placed a Torah in the “Aron next to the luchos.”
The Midrash and Dass Zekeinim say that, “on that day, zayin Adar yorad gavriel…” – the Angel Gabriel descended and took the sefer Torah of Moshe Rabeinu and brought it up on high to the Heavenly Court so that the malochim (angels) would know how great a tzadik Moshe Rabeinu was!
Moshe Rabeinu was soon to leave this world. He joyfully placed the sefer Torah in the Aron. Velo od – but that is not all! The Tzadikim up in the heaven took that sefer Torah and read in it, every single sheini v’chamishi, (Monday and Thursday) every Shabbos, and on roshei chodoshim and yomim tovim.
Just imagine !
My beloved parents. Clary’s beloved parents. My brother-in-law, Yaakov Nussbaum, the kinderlach, Clary’s five siblings who perished oh so terribly young in Auschwitz’s fiery hell. And Esther’ke. Each of them, all of them, gathered together in shomayim and, standing before the Heavenly gathering, they proclaim, “unsere kinderlech oben gebracht a neie sefer torah” – our children have sent up a new sefer Torah!”
They will read from it! Our joy is overwhelming, almost incomprehensible. In the moment we make this gift, the moment we fulfill this mitzvah, we hold hands with our parents and our loved ones; they, to welcome the sefer Torah up in the Heaven, we, to welcome it here.
