Consider ‘Keter LaAvadim,’ a crown for slaves
So many self-help books talk about vision. About dreaming big, setting goals, having the tenacity to pursue them no matter what stands in your way. And yet so many people walk through life doing exactly the opposite. They pinch here, get tangled up in small grievances and petty calculations there, and lose sight entirely of who they are actually trying to become.
Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook has a name for this. In Orot HaKodesh he writes that one of the greatest dangers facing a person is confinement of thought, what the tradition calls mochin de’katnus.
The antidote, Rav Kook teaches, is to lift your thought and your will toward something larger, toward mochin de’gadlus, an expansiveness of mind where real vision becomes possible. The bigger the vision, he writes, the greater the joy, and the more a person merits divine blessing.
There is an old parable about a beggar who bought a lottery ticket. Someone asked him if he won, what is the first thing he would do with the money. He thought about it and said, I would hire a guard to keep the other beggar away from the shul entrance so I could have all the congregants to myself.
Now obviously, if he won the lottery, he would never need to stand outside a shul again. But his imagination was so locked into his present reality that even his wildest dreams were confined by it. He simply could not picture a life that looked fundamentally different from the one he already had. That is mochin de’katnus.
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Parshas Acharei Mos details the avodah of Yom Kippur at length, and while Yom Kippur may feel like a distant concern in the middle of the Omer, there is a passage in the Gemara connected to this parsha that speaks directly to where we stand right now.
The Mishnah in Maseches Rosh Hashana (1:1) teaches that the first of Tishrei marks the new year for several cycles, among them the Yovel, the Jubilee year, the fiftieth year in which all Hebrew slaves go free. But the Gemara raises a difficulty. An explicit verse in Vayikra (25:9) states that the shofar is sounded and the slaves are released on Yom Kippur, not Rosh Hashana. So which is it?
The Gemara in Rosh Hashana (8b) resolves it in a remarkable way. Both are true, but they describe two different moments. From Rosh Hashana, the slave is no longer under the master’s authority. Free to come and go as they please.
But they do not yet go home. Instead they stay in the master’s house through the ten days leading to Yom Kippur, and during that time they sing and dance and celebrate, and the Gemara tells us they wear a crown on their head. Only on Yom Kippur do they finally walk out the door and return home.
It is a strange image. This person was a slave yesterday. They sit at the very bottom of the social ladder, one step above nothing. No property, no standing, no title to their name. And we are telling them to put a crown on their head? Who exactly are they kidding?
But that is precisely the point.
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The crown is not a description of where they have been. It is a vision of where they are going. We place that crown on their head because they need to feel it, to inhabit it, to let their imagination stretch far enough to believe that this new 50 year cycle can look entirely different from the last one. We are asking them to trade in their mochin de’katnus for something bigger.
We are in the Omer right now, the weeks between Pesach and Shavuos, a period our tradition frames as one of genuine personal growth, a steady climb toward receiving the Torah anew. And if we are honest with ourselves, all of us carry something we have been meaning to work on. Habits we are not proud of, relationships that have grown a little cold, a version of ourselves we have been meaning to become for a while now.
So the question worth sitting with is what is your vision as we count toward Shavuos.
Maybe it is kivud av va’em. You have been meaning to call more, to visit, to show up with more patience and more warmth. For the next few weeks, put that crown on your head. Pick up the phone. Make the visit. Try on what it actually feels like to be the child your parents deserve.
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Maybe your dream is greater honesty, cleaner dealings, more integrity in the quiet moments where no one is watching. Start this week. Let these days be the stretch where you wear that crown and act with the dignity you are capable of.
Maybe it is your davening. Your learning. The way you treat the people who sit closest to you at the Shabbos table. The middos you have been working on for years without quite getting there.
I know the voice. It says who am I kidding. I will manage for a week and then slide right back into my old patterns. Maybe. But that is not a reason to shrink. The Gemara is not telling the slave they have arrived. It is telling them to feel what arrival looks like, so the dream becomes real enough to actually pursue. The crown comes before the palace.
We are all counting toward Shavuos, trekking toward that mountain, refining ourselves for Matan Torah. So close your eyes for a moment and picture it. Picture yourself standing at the foot of Har Sinai, ready to receive the Torah, the best version of yourself. That is your vision. Put the crown on your head and start walking toward it.
Rabbi Benny Berlin is spiritual leader of BACH in Long Beach, www.bachlongbeach.com.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
