That Golden Peace Treaty
Parshas
Bamidbar
Posted on May 18, 2018 (5778) By Rabbi Label Lam
| Series: Dvar Torah | Level: Beginner
That Golden Peace Treaty
Rabbi Elazar said: All agree with regard to Atzeret-Shavuot, that
we require that it be also “for you,” meaning that it is a Mitzvah to eat,
drink, and rejoice on that day. What is the reason? (Pesachim 68B)
On the Holidays, how is our time to be spent? There is a dispute!
One opinion says that it is to be entirely spiritually or entirely material
(eating and rejoicing) but not both. The other side says that the day is meant
to be divided. When it comes to Shevuos everyone agrees that it should be
divided between devotion to HASHEM and eating and rejoicing? Why is the holiday
of Shevuos different?
To answer a question “why”, we need to see a thing in context. One
of the most amazing things about being a human is that we are comprised of two
completely different, disparate elements- whose needs seem almost
irreconcilable. The SOUL and the BODY-are an “odd couple” indeed. While the
BODY, like a horse, wishes to run on its horizontal plain in search of food and
phillies, the SOUL, like a rider, is much more interested in climbing
vertically in pursuit of truth and philosophy. How do we deal with this built
in human dilemma? Whose needs dominate over the other’s needs? There are four
classic approaches.
1-What we’ll call the far eastern way is an ideal that the soulful
portion dominates the physical body. The successful practitioner finds him-self
atop a mountain-aloof. His physical needs have been thoroughly quieted. He
feels almost no pain. He can sleep on a bed of nails and fast. He is divorced
from his body. Having trained himself to not to hear the whimpers of his own
physical being or the temporal world around him, he meditates in that state and
transcends the mundane.
2-The second we can refer to as the far western approach. Here the
immediate needs of the body drown out the voice of the soul until it is a frail
and thin voice, an afterthought called conscience. With plenty of continued
practice that voice can be almost entirely annihilated.
It is recorded how the Nazis were sick to their stomachs the first
time they carried out the brutal murder of Jews but after a while they could go
home and eat dinner as if nothing had happened. The callous that develops with
deeds that violate the sensibilities of the human soul grows thicker and darker
with each repeated action. Eventually the body is divorced from its soul-
Kores- cut off.
3- A third possibility encourages both spiritual and material
indulgence but alternately. This “solution” is not a solution. In fact it
complicates the human experience. The Talmud says pithily, “Oy li M’yotzri, Oy
li’ M’yitzri”- “Woe to me from my Creator (or) Woe to me from my desire!”
(Brochos 61A) Either the conscience will ache when violated or the body when
deprived. A professor Meier was able to induce neurosis in rats. How? One door
offered a food prize and the other a shock. Once the rat figured out which was
which, the psychologist switched them. Now the rat crept cautiously from door
to door uncertain whether it would receive a delight or an electric shock. At
some point the rat parks himself equidistant from both doors and chooses to
starve to death rather than risk getting a shock. OY! It’s not easy being a
laboratory rat or a person that swings easily and too often from top of the
spiritual spectrum into the abyss and back again.
4-The 4th- the middle-east emphasizes the spiritual but without
negation of the physical. A fellow asked his friend, “Why are you busy caring
for your horse all day?” He answered, “He’s a dumb horse and I’m a smart
person. He needs me!” His friend then replied, “If he’s so dumb and you’re so
smart, why don’t you get him to do things for you!?” If the soul can learn somehow to discipline the body in a sensitive and
caring way, then a peace plan can be brokered between these two giant and
competing forces. A person can happily navigate between the temporal on the
way to the eternal in a joyous way. King Solomon had said about the Torah, “Its
ways are ways of pleasantness and all its paths are peace.” (Mishlei 3:17) So
we eat cheesecake and learn Torah too on Shevuos, to honor and reaffirm that
golden peace treaty.
Chaos in the Desert
Parshas
Bamidbar
It must have been chaos in
the desert, a city planner’s nightmare, before the encampment of the Jewish
people was reorganized in the second year after the Exodus from Egypt. The new
plans called for the encampment to follow a rigidly defined grid. The people
were to be divided into four groups of three tribes and placed to the north,
south, east and west of the central hub in which the Mishkan stood. Each tribe
was assigned its precise place in the scheme of things, with its own flag and
tribal emblem.
Why did God put off the organization of the encampment until the end
of the second year of the Jewish people’s sojourn in the desert? Why did He
allow chaotic conditions to prevail for so long?
The commentators explain that it would not have been wise to create
a formal pattern of encampment during the first year. At that time, the Jewish
people were still in an early formative stage. Although they were all descended
from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, although they had all shared the common woes of
bondage in Egypt, the idea of a Jewish nationhood based on the Torah and the covenant
with G-d was still very new.
Each tribe had its own outlook and personality, which gave it a
singular perspective on Torah and Jewish issues. Had the tribes been assigned
to different sections of the encampment, there would have been a high
likelihood that their ideological differences would lead to factionalism and
dissension. At the same time, ideological differences among the tribes could
also be a potential source of great national strength. The various perspectives
could engender lively exchanges and debates. So how could the ideological
differences be used to create a strong intellectual, emotional and spiritual
vitality without leading to factionalism?
G-d’s solution was to allow the tribes to live
together in one huge, chaotic melting pot for a full year. During this time,
they would merge together into one nation indivisibly united around the core of
the holy Torah. They would bond not only as a large clan but also as partners
in the divine covenant.
But this condition could only be allowed to continue for a limited
time. Otherwise, the tribes would truly melt together into some kind of a
composite that lacked the focused strengths and virtues of each individual
tribe. Therefore, G-d instructed the tribes to separate into a structured
encampment in the second year, after the Mishkan had been built. The tribes
would thus retain their individual character and still remain bonded to the
rest of the Jewish people by their common connection to the divine Abode in
their midst.
A man enlisted in the army and was assigned to an army base, where
he made a number of new friends. After a few months of intense training, he was
transferred to another base where he was given artillery training. One of his
new friends was assigned to infantry training, while another was sent to
communications school.
“What
is going on here?” the young soldier complained to his sergeant. “If we are to
be separated, why were we thrown together in the first place? Why didn’t they
send him straight to communications school and where we fit? They knew his
aptitude when he enlisted, didn’t they?”
“They
certainly did,” said the sergeant. “Tell me, if you are called on to support
the infantry in battle with artillery fire, will you rush to do it?”
“Of
course. That is my job.”
“But
will it help at all if you know that your friend is in the infantry?”
“I
suppose it would.”
“There
you go,” said the sergeant. “Starting with all the men together leads to
greater sense of commitment.”
In our own lives, we also live in small separated
units. We are divided from each other by our interests, our professions, our
family backgrounds, our neighborhoods. But we must recognize that there is more
that binds us than divides us. We are brothers and sisters whose ancestors
stood together at Mount Sinai and heard the voice of G-d. We shared the
memories, both glorious and painful, of thousands of years of history.
Regardless of our differences, we are one people.
Text Copyright © 2010 by Rabbi Naftali Reich and Torah.org.
Rabbi Reich is on the faculty of the Ohr Somayach
Tanenbaum Education Center.
Human Nature
Parshas
Bamidbar
Posted on May 22, 2012 (5772) By Rabbi Berel
Wein | Series: Rabbi Wein | Level: Beginner
The book of Bamidbar is perhaps one of the saddest, so to speak, of
all of the Holy Scriptures. Whereas the book of Shemot, which records for us
the sin of the Golden Calf also gives us pause, it concludes with the final
construction of the Mishkan and G-d’s Presence, so to speak, resting within the
encampment of Israel. But the book of Bamidbar, which begins on a high note of
numerical accomplishment and the seemingly imminent entry of the Jewish people
into he Land of Israel, ends on a very sour note. It records the destruction of
the entire generation including its leadership without their entrance into the
Promised Land.
The narrative of the book of Bamidbar tells us of rebellion and
constant carping, military defeats and victories, false blessings, human
prejudices and personal bias. But the Torah warned us in its very first
chapters that “this is the book of human beings.” And all of the weaknesses
exhibited by Israel in the desert of Sinai, as recorded for us in the book of
Bamidbar, are definitely part of the usual human story and nature.
Over the decades that I have taught this book of Bamidbar to
students and congregants of mine, invariably many of them have then asked me
incredulously: “How could the Jewish people have behaved in such a manner?” I
cannot speak for that generation of Jews as described in the book of Bamidbar
but I wonder to myself “How can so many Jews in our generation relate to the
existence of the State of Israel in our time so cavalierly?
How do we tolerate the cruelties that our one-size-fits-all school
systems inflict on the ‘different’ child? How do we subject our daughters to
the indignities of the current matchmaking process? How, indeed!?” And my answer to myself always is that for
the great many of us, human nature trumps common sense, logic and true Torah
values. I imagine that this may have been true of the generation of the book of
Bamidbar as well.
One of the wonders of the book of Bamidbar is that the count of the
Jewish people at the end of the forty years of living in the desert was almost
exactly the same as it was at the beginning of their sojourn there when they
left Egyptian bondage. Though the
following is certainly not being proposed by me as an answer or explanation to
this unusual fact, I have always thought that this is a subtle reminder to us
that that no matter how great the experiences, no matter how magnificent the
miracles, no matter how great the leaders, human nature with all of its
strengths and weaknesses basically remains the same.
It is not only that the numbers don’t change much, the people and
the generations didn’t and don’t change much either. Human nature remains
pretty constant. But our task is to recognize that and channel our human nature
into productive and holy actions and behavior – to bend to a nobility of will
and loyalty. Only by recognizing the propensity of our nature will we be able
to accomplish this necessary and noble goal.
Shabat shalom and Chag Sameach,
Rabbi Berel Wein
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