WHAT IS the only festival that is repeated twice on different dates of the year? This parashah reveals that it is the festival of Pesach. An interesting and even surprising point is that the repetition of this festival arose at the request of a group of people who were impure during the first Pesach, (the state of purity is a requirement for offering animals), or people who were not in Yerushalaim to bring the animal to the temple. These people, knowing the importance of this offering, did not want to miss the opportunity, so they addressed Moses and Aaron asking them: We also want to perform this mitzvah like all the children of Israel, why do we have to be less than our brothers! Moses listened to their complaints and asked them to wait until they heard God’s word on the matter. And so, surprisingly, God accepted their request and added to His Holy Torah a new mitzvah that was a consequence of Am Israel’s request. I believe that a valuable lesson we can learn from the above is that it doesn’t matter what your state of mind is, or if you are “on a journey” and feel far from God, because if He was willing to add a law in His Torah to express His love and mercy towards His “impure” children or those who were on a journey, the only thing we have to do is to manifest our desire to be close to Him.