Parshas Emor

This week’s Torah portion, Parshas Emor, contains one of the most challenging and breathtaking ideas in all of Torah. “Do not desecrate My holy name. I must be sanctified among the Israelites.” Leviticus 22:32. Rashi explains that this verse contains within it a positive commandment of Kiddush Hashem, sanctifying Hashem’s name, even to the point of martyrdom. And then Rashi adds something that seems puzzling at first glance. When offering oneself to martyrdom, one must do so with the firm determination to die if necessary. He who abandons himself hoping that a miracle will save him will have no miracle wrought for him.

But what is the connection between those two ideas? Why should hoping for a miracle disqualify you from experiencing it?

The Gur Aryeh provides a stunning answer. When a person surrenders themselves completely, with no backup plan, no secret hope, no calculation running in the background, they step outside of the natural order of the world entirely. Miracles, by definition, operate above nature. So only a person who has genuinely detached from nature has already entered the realm where miracles happen. The miracle was not withheld from the person who hoped. It was simply that by hoping, they never actually left the natural order in the first place, a world constrained by the chains of nature and physicality.

We live in a world where our perspective is almost entirely self-centered and nature-centered. Our fears, our calculations, our limitations, are all products of the physical world we are trapped inside. And as long as we cling to that world, even partially, we remain subject to its rules. Hashem doesn’t bend nature does not bend for someone still standing inside it. Hashem deals with every person on the level they are at.

But the moment a person genuinely lets go, stops hedging, stops holding one foot in the physical and one foot in the spiritual, something extraordinary happens. By clinging to Hashem who is higher than nature, Hashem no longer operates their lives by it’s strict laws. And it is precisely at that moment that Hashem steps in and does the impossible.

So much of our struggle comes from refusing to let go. Each of us has that challenge in some area of our lives. We cling to the natural order with its fake comforting glow of perceived predictability.

May Hashem give us the courage to loosen that grip, to cling to something higher than the world we can see, and in that merit may we all experience the impossible greatness that is waiting for us on the other side.