A thought on Parshas Tetzave

"...v'asisa mizbei'ach miktar ktores..." "...and you shall make an altar where incense is ignited..." (30:1) One of the most important structures in the sacred Mishkan was the mizbeach ketores, the altar where fragrant incense was offered. The avoda, the service of burning those sweet spices, was a mystical one. The smoke ascended in a plume and was representational of the Jewish people reaching forth to the Above, transcending from the material to the ethereal in our quest to feel, or to make, a sense of connectedness. Perhaps that mystical quality of this service is what prompts Rabbeinu Avigdor to offer only a short, and cryptic comment here. He moves from his analytic and halachic mode to his kabbablistic approach, leaving us to ponder his deep thought. Rabbeinu Avigdor moves into the midrashic coding of two words, which we know as notarikon. This term is from the Greek word from which our own English word "notation" stems. Notarikon dissects a word's overt meaning into a noting of its component letters. These letters are then coded or denoted into new words. He begins with the four letters in the word mizbeach (altar). They are mem, zayin, beis and ches. The mem stands for the word mechila, the zayin for zachus, the bais for bracha, and the ches for chaim. Thus we have the new words "forgiveness, merit, blessing and life." The function of the altar was to bring about, for us, those results. In turn, the four letters of ketores are kuf, tes, raish, and tof. The kuf stands for kedusha, the tes for tahara, the raish for rachamim and the tof for tikva. Thus we have the new words "sanctity, purity, mercy and hope." The incense service brought about, for us, those results. What occurs to me is that there is a unifying theme in each of these two strings of words. What connects forgiveness, merit, blessing and life is that these are all things which we are given only if we deserve them. We must deserve HaShem's forgiveness, we must deserve to be shown merit, we must deserve His bracha and we must deserve the entitlement to life in this world and in the next. Perhaps the material altar symbolizes the mortal effort which we must invest in order to deserve those Divine responses. In turn, the theme connecting sanctity, purity, mercy and hope is that these are things which we must earn. To acquire sanctity requires effort, so we work to earn that sanctity. To attain purity we must earn a level where impurity does not enter. We have to work in order to earn mercy from Above, and so too must we earn a degree of security in order to form a sense of hope for a better future. Perhaps the ethereal incense represents our efforts to rise above and beyond our corporeal state, where we can earn the higher states of sanctity, purity, mercy and hopefulness. The altar where the incense was offered served, at that mystical level, as a symbol for the devotion and dedication which we must invest in a process of spiritual ascendancy and personal refinement. Wishing you a good Shabbos and a joyous, ascendant Purim. D Fox