A. Background of Pesach Sheni
This week’s Torah reading repeats the mitzvah of Pesach a second time (Source 1). In the second year after the Jewish people left Egypt, a group approached Moses with a grievance: “We are ritually impure; why must we lose out on the Passover offering?” (Source 2)
Who were these ritually impure people for whom G-d made “Pesach Sheni,” a second Passover, and in what merit? The Talmud presents three opinions: (a) They were Joseph’s pallbearers, (b) Mishael and Eltzafan, who brought their cousins out of the Tabernacle after they died bringing a “foreign fire” to G-d, or (c) people who had become defiled by contact with a regular corpse.
B. An Extraordinary Complaint
The Rebbe explains that their complaint was that G-d created an impossibility: He commanded that on the 14th of Nissan every Jew must personally bring a Passover offering — an action that requires one to be in a ritually pure state. At the same time, G-d designed His world such that at any given time there will certainly be at least several people in an impure state.
G-d acknowledged the validity of their complaint and gave them a Second Passover.
C. The Lesson
This “bug” in the system seems to still be an issue today. G-d demands that we be a holy nation, keep Shabbat, eat kosher, and observe all the mitzvot, but at the same time, He places us in a materialistic world where this seems impossible.
G-d’s response gives us the answer: Even if it seems like living in this world and keeping Torah and mitzvot is very difficult, if a Jew really wants to, and complains to G-d “why must we lose out,” G-d give him the ability to observe all of the mitzvot.
