Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph

Our Torah reading for this week opens with God telling Moses to instruct Aaron on the lighting of the seven branched menorah. The text continues, “Aaron did so….” The sage Rashi comments on this text. “This verse comes to praise Aaron that he did not change.”

What does Rashi mean, “That he did not change”? Does it mean that Aaron is praised for carrying out his task exactly as Moses had described? But why would this, in particular, be praiseworthy? Does not Aaron carry out every task assigned to him exactly as Moses describes?

Perhaps we can best understand Rashi’s comment if we consider the task at hand. Every day for the rest of his life Aaron would be responsible for lighting the Menorah in the Mishkan. This involved preparing the wicks and filling each of the seven cups with oil. He then had to light each of the seven wicks. This could be tedious work. Doing this day in and day out could become dull and routine. One could accomplish the task pretty much without thinking of what one was doing. Over the 39 years that Aaron lit the Menorah, he would have performed the same tasks, in the exact same way, over 14,000 times. Yet Aaron approached this task each time with the same enthusiasm as he did when he lit the menorah for the very first time. According to the Kotzker rebbe, this is the meaning of the verse “Aaron did not change”. Aaron’s attitude never changed. He approached each day with the same level of excitement and focus as he did on the very first day that he lit the menorah.

Olympic Gold Medalist Mary Lou Retton once said, “Each of us has fire in our hearts for something. It’s our goal in life to find it and keep it lit.” May we all find our passion and be able to approach it with the same joy and enthusiasm as Aaron did, each and every day of our lives.

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