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1) "Holy Misfires"
Yehoshua wants Eldad and Meidad silenced. They are prophesying without authorization, and according to one shitah in Sanhedrin (17a), the content of their prophecy is explosive, saying there’s no way Moshe will lead the nation into Eretz Yisrael. This is a direct assault on Moshe's leadership, delivered publicly, and Yehoshua's instinct to shut it down is not petty protectiveness – It is correct!
And yet Moshe refuses. "Mi yiten v'kol am Hashem nevi'im" – would that all of Hashem's people were prophets.
Why? R. Moshe Taragin (Reclaiming Redemption) tells us to look at the context. The nation is in freefall, grumbling, craving meat, drowning in ingratitude. Klal Yisrael doesn't have a prophecy problem; they have a spiritual void! Against that backdrop, Moshe asks Yehoshua an implicit question: is the greatest danger really that religious passion is being expressed imperfectly? Yes, their fire is misdirected, but fire itself is the dream. The Midrash reads Moshe's wish as pointing toward Yoel's prophecy – v'haya acharei chen eshpoch es ruchi al kol basar – a future where nevuah belongs to the entire nation.
The dream isn't to extinguish the flame, but to build people who can carry it properly. We must be careful before we negate religious passion – even if it is misdirected. See this fascinating piece that can extend into many different messages for your kehillah.
2) Rav Soloveitchik zt"l on the Many Mentions of "Asifa" in the Parasha
Another thought about misdirection – this one is a warning.
The word asifah appears no fewer than nine times in Behaaloscha. The Rav zt"l noticed this was no coincidence. (Quoted by our distinguished chaver, R. Menachem Genack). Asifah — gathering — is the Torah's signature motif for this parshah, and it cuts two ways.
At its best, asifah is the mechanism of Klal Yisrael: the zekeinim gathered around the Ohel Moed, the people gathered to receive direction, a nation cohering around shared purpose and leadership. The asifah of the seventy elders is the fulfillment of Har Sinai — nevuah distributed, leadership broadened, the nation assembled properly.
But asifah can curdle. The same word describes how the people gathered against Moshe, assembling not toward something but actually against. It was gathering as grievance. The meraglim, soon to come in the story, catalyze precisely this: an asifah that fragments rather than unites. What defines a community is not that it gathers, but around what. The same instinct that builds a tzibur can, misdirected, destroy one.
The Rav identifies a more particular danger embedded within asifah: the indiscriminate broadening of who shapes the direction of Klal Yisrael. As the nation moves through the desert, the Erev Rav follows, carrying its distorted values wherever the people go. The concern is not gathering as such, but who gets gathered in. When asifah expands to include those who never fully committed to the covenant, Torah sensibility is gradually diluted from within. The same dynamic plays out in the extension of leadership to seventy elders; however, sanctioned from above, the broadening of the council introduces voices of unequal clarity alongside Moshe Rabbeinu's singular vision.
The question this raises is one that every generation of Jewish leadership must answer: How does a community remain genuinely open, honest before challenge, humble about what it does not know, while still holding to the conviction that not every opinion is created equal, and not every passing tendency of the surrounding culture deserves to become Torah policy? Openness is a value. But it is not the same as neutrality. The Erev Rav is a standing warning embedded in the asifah narrative itself: that a tent which never stops expanding its walls may eventually cease to be a tent at all.
3) Why Did Miriam Speak Lashon Hara?
Miriam is afflicted with tzaraas — the Torah's most pointed statement about lashon hara. She is shut outside the camp, a metzora like any other. And yet the entire nation freezes. The Aron, the Shechinah, the whole machaneh — nothing moves. Ve-ha’am lo nasa ad hei'asef Miriam. Not a single step until she returns!
Is this how we treat a sin?
R. Steinsaltz (Biblical Images) explains it beautifully, and I found it helpful for a bat mitzvah Shabbos years ago (for a girl named Miriam!). Miriam's entire life was animated by one force: achrayus for those around her. At seven years old, she stood at the Nile watching her baby brother. She convinced her parents to reunite, facilitating Moshe's birth. She led the women in shirah at the Yam. A miraculous well followed the nation in her merit. When she spoke against Moshe, she was not acting from jealousy or malice; she was being the big sister! She was being that baalas achrayus she always had been. The word ken in the pasuk, Rashi notes, signals this: whatever she said, she said without intent to harm.
The punishment then becomes a vehicle for kavod. The Sifri observes: she once waited by the Nile for her baby brother — now the entire nation waits for her. Midah kneged midah, but inverted. The very devotion that led her astray is precisely what the Torah memorializes. (Great write-up of this idea in an old Rabbi Frand print-out, too.)
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