Day 128

Day 130

Negative Mitzvah 135: A Priest who is not circumcised is forbidden to eat "Terumah"
Leviticus 22:10 "A tenant of the priest or a hired servant may not eat of the holy [food]"

Circumcision is the most important sign of a male's connection to HaShem. Without circumcision, the male lacks that special bond.

A non-circumcised priest may not eat "Terumah." He also is forbidden to eat other sacrificial meat.

---

Negative Mitzvah 136: An impure Priest is forbidden to eat "Terumah"
Leviticus 22:4 "Any man who is of the seed of Aaron...shall not eat of the holy [food]s, until he is pure"

A priest who has become impure may not eat from Terumah.

He must first purify himself according to the Torah's instructions and he is then allowed to eat his Terumah.

---

The chassidic master, Rabbi Meir of Premishlan lived at the foot of a steep hill. Every day, even in the winter snow and ice, he would hike over the hill to immerse and purify his body in a brook on the other side. The people considered this quite wondrous, since others could only walk around the hill -- no one dared to challenge the ice.

Until a few young men decided to put an end to this superstition. They brazenly followed Rabbi Meir as he effortlessly ascended the hill. All of them fell and were badly hurt. What was Rabbi Meir's secret? "When you are connected to Above," he explained, "you don't fall down."

When I first showed this book to friends I detected a disdain for the phrase "serving G-d" -- a concept that comes up so often. After all, servitude went out of fashion with the Emancipation. But I left the term in. After all, this is not a book about friends' thoughts or even my own thoughts -- this is about the Rebbe, and that's the term he used.

Servitude conjures a sense of surrendering one's being to another entity -- thereby imprisoning all the potential of self fulfillment you've been given. But when we talk about serving the very source of your being, the surrender of self takes on a whole new and opposite meaning. In your source, you are infinite -- as your Creator is infinite. Serving your Creator then reads as plugging in to the ultimate self, becoming one with the infinite, one with the Creator Himself.

From: Bringing Heaven Down to Earth by Tzvi Freeman - tzvif@aol.com

Day 128

Day 130