This week’s parsha backtracks in time to the first Pesach (Passover)
which takes place in the Sinai Desert on the 14th day of Nisan, a year
after the Exodus from Egypt. As they did the night before leaving Egypt, the Children
of Israel offer a lamb or young goat to G-d as a Pesach sacrifice.
Some are not able to participate in this mitzvah (commandment)
because they have become ritually impure from contact with a human corpse. They
ask Moshe why they should be excluded, deprived of the opportunity to perform
the mitzvah. Moshe asks G-d for instructions. “The L-rd spoke to Moshe,
saying…any person who becomes unclean from [contact with] the dead, or is on a
distant journey, whether among you or in future generations, he shall make a
Pesach sacrifice for the L-rd. In the second month [Iyar], on the fourteenth
day, in the afternoon, they shall make it.”
Why was Pesach Sheni (the second Pesach) not commanded
directly by G-d in Torah from the very start, as were other holy days?
Rabbis Yisroel and Osher Anshel Jungreis give the following response:
“The holiday of Pesach Sheni was not decreed as were all our other holidays
because it is one holiday that G-d could not legislate until the people
themselves desired it. A second chance must spring from the sincere yearning
of those who wish for it.”
It follows that if G-d is willing to give us a second chance,
and even creates a holiday to celebrate this concept, we should extend the same
courtesy to ourselves and to the people in our lives. “Pesach Sheni
testifies that no matter how far we may have strayed…G-d will always accept us if
we indicate our yearning to come home…We can reinvent ourselves, or we can
remain mired in our failures.”
As parents, we sometimes make mistakes, and we sometimes see
our children make mistakes. In most cases, if we or our children have a sincere
desire for a second chance, and are truly willing to reflect on the misstep and
to change direction, failures can be reversed.
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