Enter Before Leaving - Rabbi Ori Strum

If two people get to a door at the same exact time, one is trying to enter and one is trying to leave, whether it's at a restaurant, by an elevator, or whatever it might be, the proper etiquette is to allow the one who's leaving to go first. Before you enter, you must let the other person leave. Leaving an establishment and going out is seen as the dominant position. Some even refer to this social right of way as exit [music] priority etiquette. And while this is certainly true from a socially norm and cultural perspective, in our vote of Hashem, the entering is seen as the dominant position. We give precedence to the one that is entering, not leaving. What does it mean to enter and what does it mean to leave? The Torah tells us, "Baruch ata b'vo'acha u'varuch ata b'tzeitzecha." You shall be blessed in your enterings and your comings, and you shall be blessed in your goings out and your exitings. And the commentators wonder, why is the Torah written in this order? Assuming the person is already in a home, he first needs to leave before he can enter. Yet the Torah tells us the entering, "b'vo'acha," before the leaving, "tzeitzecha." The Baal Shem Tov tells us that entering, "b'vo'acha," connotes p'nimiyus, ruchniyus, engagement in spirituality, whereas "tzeitzecha," going out, connotes gashmiyus, physicality, engagement in the physical world. And so perhaps the Torah is giving us the right value system. First and foremost, the ikar, the main thing in your life must be the b'vo'acha, it must be the p'nimiyus, it must be the spirituality. There needs to be a focus on the entering, on the coming. And only with that as our foundation, then can we go out, then can we exit and engage in the physical world. When the spirituality is our bedrock and foundation, that will infuse and channel all the goings out, all of the exiting, all of the engagement in the physical world, will infuse all of that with spirituality and meaning and purpose. And if you think about it, the shofar design and functionality actually parallels this. The powerful sound that exits from the shofar is only possible because it was first blown into. There was first an entering before there could be any exiting. Before any exiting of sound, there must be an entering of air. Before the tzeitzecha, there must be a b'vo'acha. Before we go out and engage [music] in the physical world, which is necessary, a person must infuse their lives with ruchnius, with spirituality. We have to first blow spiritual vitality into our lives. [music] And when we do, all the seemingly mundane activities that we are engaged in, they will become elevated, uplifted, and whole.