Parashat Massei recalls the passing of Aharon the High Priest and the brother of Moses and Miriam. He passed away in the last year of the Israelites journey through the wilderness on the 1st day of Av. Aharon’s exact date of passing is the only documented in the Pentateuch explicitly. It also works out that almost every year, the 1st day of Av falls in either the week before or after we read parashat Massei!
Let us go through some of Aharon's defining character traits and see those that correspond to the sefirah of crown (keter). [In the original class, Rav Ginsburgh also surveyed the character traits corresponding to the intellectual sefirot: wisdom, understanding, and knowledge. See class from 14th of Av, 5777].
Pleasurable Love of Delights
Aharon, with his love of peace and pursuit of peace, represents the epitome of love between souls. Chasidic thought speaks of several types of love. The first type is known as simple, natural love of the heart. This is what is referred to as the sefirah of loving-kindness, pushing a person to do good unto others. This is Abraham's love, the man of loving-kindness. It is also referred to as “worldly love” (אַהֲבַת עוֹלָם), love that is revealed when we meditate upon God's Presence in reality, in the world, focusing on the goodness that He does for all. This is the most basic level of love.
The next type of love is referred to as “great love” (אַהֲבָה רַבָּה), which has no bounds. It corresponds to the mother principle—the sefirah of understanding. It precedes the Six Days of Creation and therefore is infinite. This is the love usually identified with Aharon. Although the High Priest’s love is based on Abraham’s love, because it is a derivative of and comes after the Giving of the Torah, it allows Aharon (and anyone else attaining it) to reach an even higher level than Abraham.
The third and highest level of love is the type associated with the sefirah of crown and the super-consciousness and is called “love of delights” (אַהֲבָה בְּתַעֲנוּגִים). This phrase comes from the Song of Songs in the verse, “How beautiful and how pleasant you are, O’ love of delights”[1] (מַה יָּפִית וּמַה נָּעַמְתְּ אַהֲבָה בַּתַּעֲנוּגִים). This love is pure delight and pleasure, which is described in Kabbalah as stemming from the place in which God takes delight in Himself. This type of love represents the connection between a bride and a groom, which symbolizes the connection between the soul’s root and God.
Aharon and Love
There is a special connection between Aharon and love. The values of the four letters that make up “Aharaon” (אַהֲרֹן) are 1, 5, 200, and 50. Their total is 256 or 16 squared or 4 to the fourth power, or 2 to the 8th power. But let us consider the values of the letters of Aharon in reduced numbering (מִסְפָּר קָטָן). The 1 and 5 remain the same, while 200 becomes 2, and 50 becomes 5. If we translate these numbers back into letters we get, 1, 5, 2, 5, which are the values of the four letters of “love” (אַהֲבָה). The kernel essence of Aharon is thus pure love.
Another mathematical phenomenon called individual-multiplication (הַכָּאָה פְּרָטִית) demonstrates Aharon’s affinity to love. This method requires us to multiply the letters of “love” and “Aharon” with one another, in order (like in a dot-product in mathematics): the first letter of Aharon (alef) with the first letter of “love” (alef), equals 1, the second letter (hei) with the second letter (hei), equals 25, the third letter (reish) with the third letter (beit) equals 400, and the fourth letter (nun) with the fourth letter (hei) is 250. The sum of all four products is 676, or 26—the value of God’s essential Name, Havayah (י-הוה)—squared. When the addition, multiplication, or individual-multiplication (הַכָּאָה פְּרָטִית) of two words produces a square number, it illustrates in a mathematical way that the two words are connected in the most complete and perfect form. In addition, the average value of each of the individual multiplications is 13—the value of “love” (אַהֲבָה)—squared. Nothing could show us more that Aharon’s love is the most complete and relates to the love in the crown as well.
Aharon’s special connection to love and his ability to bring it to others are especially connected to his yahrzeit on Rosh Chodesh Av, the day that begins the Nine Days of mourning over the Temple’s destruction. Just as the Temple was destroyed because of blind hatred, it will be rebuilt through the love Aharon represents.
Self-Sacrifice
Aharon is related to the crown in other ways as well. Sometimes you learn about the source of a soul from its flaws. Something that for a certain soul is a blemish or a flaw is a pointer for the Arizal to indicate where that soul came from, because the individual who has that soul must rectify its source. As great as Aharon was, and as much as he was the epitome of love, something went wrong with him: He by mistake caused the Jewish people to create the Golden Calf. He allowed the people to sin, which is why the Torah says the Golden Calf was made by Aharon.
Some of the events of that tragic event are not completely explicit in the Torah (but the Torah hints to them). Aharon had a nephew whose name was Hur, the son of his sister Miriam. We first meet Hur when Moses sends Joshua to fight Amalek. Moses goes up the mountain and lifts his arms with Aharon and Hur supporting them, so that Joshua could vanquish Amalek. Later, Moses leaves Aharon together with Hur in charge before he ascends Mt. Sinai to receive the Torah. But later, Hur is nowhere to be found.[2]
What happened to Hur? The sages say that Hur tried to act responsibly and rebuke the people for wanting the Golden Calf. As a result, they murdered him. Aharon saw this and realized that his fate would be the same if he tried to stop the people from pursuing this idolatry. All this is described in the Talmud.
The Reincarnations of Aharon and Hur
Now, we turn to Kabbalah to complete the picture. Abraham had two brothers: Nachor and Haran. The last three letters of Nachor (נָחוֹר) spell Hur (חוּר). Haran’s name (הָרָן) is the same as the last three letters of Aharon (אַהֲרֹן), while his first letter, the alef, he received from Adam (אָדָם), which begins with an alef.
What was Haran’s story? When Abraham was thrown into the furnace by King Nimrod for having broken the idols in his father’s shop, Haran too was challenged. Does he believe in Abraham's mission to rid the world of idolatry and pursue one God, or will he succumb to Nimrod. Abraham miraculously survived. Watching this Haran said to himself, if Abraham comes out of the furnace, I will believe in His one God and I will join him. But, if he is killed, I will renounce Abraham’s faith. When Abraham emerged unscathed, Nimrod asked Haran who he was going to follow. Haran answered, “I am with Abraham,” thinking that he too would emerge alive. But, because he wasn't willing and ready to give up his life for his faith (he expected to be saved), he died in the furnace. His sin was that he did not have true self-sacrifice, like Abraham. When a person is truly ready to give up his life for his faith in one God, he must have no expectations. He must be fully willing to sacrifice himself. If he expects a miracle, no miracle comes. If he does not expect it, God will save him. Haran was on the verge of becoming a righteous convert and part of Abraham's people.
The Arizal teaches that Haran’s soul was given another chance to demonstrate self-sacrifice by being included in Aharon. Aharon should have been willing to give up his life, like Hur, to prevent the making of the Golden Calf. If he would have done that, he would have completely rectified Haran, which would mean that a tremendous percentage of mankind that stems from that soul root of Haran would have also been rectified, and all would have converted to Judaism. Aharon believed that it was enough that Hur, who also had a spark of Haran, had sacrificed himself.
Aharon’s behavior in this case represents a flaw in his crown since self-sacrifice originates in the soul’s super-rational level—the sefirah of crown. That is also why he made a mistake, because it is super-rational. At this level, a person is certainly susceptible to mistakes.
Aharon As the Line of Primordial Light
So far, we have seen two things related to crown: the mistake in not sacrificing himself and the highest level of love. What else is related to the crown in Aharon's figure? Aharon is the soul, or source (מָאוֹר) that reveals the God, i.e., God’s infinite light, to the Jewish people. The crown is called "the source of light" (מָאוֹר) and the light that comes out of it represents the conscious levels of the soul. In Psalms it says, “With Your light, we shall see light”[3] (בְּאוֹרְךָ נִרְאֶה אוֹר), which can also be translated as, “With Your light, we shall see revelation.” The word “see” (נִרְאֶה) is a permutation of “Aharon” (אַהֲרֹן). Aharon has the power to reveal God’s light even from before the initial contraction—alluded to in the word, “[with] Your light” (בְּאוֹרְךָ)—and reveal it to all. Aharon thus takes the infinite light from before the contraction and brings it down in a ray into the vacuum where all of reality stands is called the beginning of the kav (line). This initial part of the line of primordial light that enters the empty void where the world is created is considered the crown of creation and it is Aharon’s soul that has the power to reveal it.
A better-known manifestation of Aharon’s soul power to reveal the crown of Creation is found in his power to bless the people with the Priestly Blessing. The priests, when they bless the Jewish people, they are commanded to do so with love. Another explicit connection between Aharon and love. If you have love, you can bless and your blessing is potent. Without love a blessing is empty. The Aharon’s blessings emerge from the crown of Creation.
Choice and Nearness
One final characteristic of Aharon related to the crown is found in the verse, “Happy is the man You choose and bring near”[4] (אַשְׁרֵי תִּבְחַר וּתְקָרֵב). There are many souls that are chosen and many that are brought near, but Aharon is the only soul who is both chosen and brought near. Abraham for instance was chosen, but he was brought near. He came close through the virtue of his own Divine service. God wanted Abraham to bring himself closer to God. The same is true of Jacob. Even Moses was chosen but not brought near. Likewise, King David.
There are other souls that God brings near but does not treat as chosen. Those are the souls of the righteous converts, or of true ba'alei teshuvah among the Jewish people. The two examples that the sages give are Jethro whose conversion facilitated the Giving of the Torah. The second example is Rachav, who ended up converting and marrying Joshua after she was saved from Jericho. To be chosen means to be chosen from birth. We learn from this that we are responsible for bringing the souls of the converts near. If there is any source in the Torah that we should reach out to potential converts, then this is it. We need to be able to identify who is a potential convert and once we see their sincerity and seriousness in becoming Jewish, we should not wait until they decide to pursue a path of conversion to reach out to them.
Once again, Aharon is the only individual who was both chosen (from birth) to be a High Priest and who is brought near. The Torah describes that it was Moses who was commanded to bring Aharon near, “You shall bring your brother Aharon near”[5] (וְאַתָּה הַקְרֵב אֵלֶיךָ אֶת אַהֲרֹן אָחִיךָ). Moses needed to bring him near because he was not ready to bring himself forward to become the High Priest. Moshe had to pull him in. Aharon is thus the happiest soul in the world for having been both chosen and brought near. The state of happiness (אֹשֶׁר) that Aharon has is a crown property. The two acts of being chosen and being brought near relate to the wisdom and understanding of the crown.
Putting all these attributes in Aharon's crown together, we get the following model:
| letter of Havayah | sefirah within the crown | Aharon’s characteristic |
| tip of yud | crown | Did not sacrifice himself to prevent the construction of the Golden Calf |
| yud and hei | wisdom & understanding | Love of delights |
| vav | beauty | Blessing the Priestly Blessing with love |
| hei | kingdom | Satisfaction of being chosen and brought near |
Aharon did not sacrifice himself to prevent the making of the Golden Calf. Although it might not have prevented the Israelites from going ahead with the Golden Calf and its idolatry (as we see that Hur’s sacrifice did not stop it from happening), it would have rectified Haran’s soul, which is what God wanted from him. This is the crown of the crown.
The love of delights corresponds to wisdom and understanding of the crown. Both wisdom and understanding are related to delight or pleasure, but the difference is that in wisdom, there is no experience of pleasure, while in understanding there is. They are alluded to in the phrase, “A source of delight day by day”[6] (שַׁעֲשׁוּעִים יוֹם יוֹם), where the two “days” each correspond to either wisdom or understanding.
That Aharon is the source of the line of light that comes down from before the primordial contraction corresponds to the sefirah of beauty and clearly to the letter vav (whose form is a line) in Havayah. The Priestly Blessing which manifests this also corresponds to the sefirah of loving-kindness that is part of the vav in Havayah.
Finally, the state of utter satisfaction that Aharon has from being both chosen and brought near is in the kingdom of the crown. Normally, satisfaction is a negative experience, as it tends to dampen enthusiasm and to increase egocentricity. However, in this case, by knowing that both his chosen status and his nearness are from Above, his satisfaction is rectified and complete.
[1]. Songs of Songs 7:7.
[2]. He appears once more in the lineage of Bezalel, the artisan who was in charge of making the Tabernacle.
[3]. Psalms 36:10.
[4]. Psalms 65:5.
[5]. Exodus 28:1.
[6]. Proverbs 8:30.
