Parshas Behar-Bechukosai 5785
If you’re willing to live spontaneously, you may well find that you can bargain shop for your next vacation. As hotels, rental owners, and airlines become desperate to fill every day on the calendar and every seat on the plane, patient consumers can often snatch up deals not available during the weeks and months before. But buyer beware. You get what you pay for.
A study conducted by researchers in the Netherlands found that the anticipation of a planned trip yields up to eight additional weeks of improved mood — before the vacation ever begins. It is one expression of what scientists refer to as anticipatory happiness, the joy experienced in the present because of a pleasurable experience that looms on the horizon. A trip scheduled for August can provide joy in June and jubilation in July.
Last-minute deals may save money, but they steal from you something arguably more valuable — the pleasure of the countdown.
Parshas Behar opens with a discussion of the laws of Shemitah, prefaced with the statement that such laws were delivered “Behar Sinai—At Mount Sinai”. Of course, that introduction would be apt for a discussion of nearly any of the 613 mitzvos. Why was Shemitah, specifically, selected to be framed as one given at Har Sinai?
The Sfas Emes, Rav Yehudah Leib Aryeh Alter of Ger, explains that Shemitah and Sinai share a common theme: transcending nature. At Mattan Torah, Sinai was transformed from a barren mountain to one teeming with vegetation. This phenomenon repeats itself in the mitzvah of Shemitah. Let the land lay fallow, but expect sufficient bounty nonetheless. When Hashem’s providence is introduced into the equation, the natural order of things is transcended.
And, explains the Sfas Emes, we find a further connection, one that emerges from the first. Regarding Shemittah, there is a mitzvah to count. Bais Din is obligated to formally count the seven years leading up to Shemitah, as well as the fifty years that terminate with Yovel. And the experience of Sinai demands the same; each year we count 49 days—seven full weeks—in anticipation of arriving at Shavuos and commemorating Mattan Torah once more.
Why do we do so? The Sfas Emes explains that the reason is not altogether different from what was discovered by those Dutch researches, that the anticipation of an event draws some of its aura into the time preceding it. That to ascend into the supernatural only on Shavuos or during Shemittah itself would be a sad exercise in underachievement. When we count we remind ourselves that there is a goal worth counting towards. We anticipate. And anticipation extends the magic of the destination into the weeks leading up to it.
The Sfas Emes identifies one more area of counting: the days leading up to Shabbos. Each day at the end of Shacharis, we note the day of the week by referring to it by its place in the sequence leading up to Shabbos. And why bother? Because counting is not mere bookkeeping. It creates anticipation. And anticipation can be transformative.
When you count toward something, you are doing far more than tracking time. You are orienting yourself. Counting towards Shabbos, towards Shemittah, towards Shavuos—each orients towards a destination that lays beyond the natural realm, and transforms us into people who live for something more than the natural world, more than what the eyes can see.
An awesome event can cast its light backward and illuminate the path leading up to it with the happiness and transcendence of anticipation. If we count. Consciously. Aware of the words that we are saying, the days that we are counting, and the goal that we are marching towards.
We live in a world of instant access. With a few taps, we can have almost anything arrive at our doorstep within hours. And for all its conveniences, this frictionless existence has quietly stolen something from us. The bliss of anticipation. The savoring of what has not yet arrived. The joy of the countdown.
As we count towards the things that matter most, let’s reclaim some of the bliss of anticipation. The trip, after all, begins long before you leave.