Parashat Bamidbar
June 3, 2022 | 4 Sivan 5782
Torah: Numbers 1:1-4:20 | Triennial: 3:14-4:20
Haftarah: Hosea 2:1-22
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In this week's Torah Sparks, you'll find a D'var Torah on the Parashah by Ilana Kurshan called "Flags at the Shabbat Table", Vered Hollander-Goldfarb poses questions titled "It's Not What You Say, But How You Say It" and Bex Stern Rosenblatt writes a dvar haftara called "Missing Mothers".
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Flags at the Shabbat Table
Ilana Kurshan
Every Friday night my family sits at a long rectangular table set for Shabbat. It is the only night of the week when we all sit down to eat together for an extended period of time, and the kids enjoy decorating the table with special cloth napkins, tiny silver Kiddush cups engraved with each child’s name, and an embroidered challah cover. But until very recently, every Friday night, just as we imagined the angels entering our halcyon home to bless us, the kids would break out into a fierce argument over who got to sit where. Everyone wanted to sit next to Abba at the head of the table; no one wanted to sit next to the toddler, who threw his food; the twins didn’t want to sit side-by-side because they were already in an argument about something else…. Eventually, frustrated by the arguing, we instructed the kids to make place cards with their names, and to choose where they wanted to sit ahead of time, hours before Shabbat began.
To our surprise, the kids took this project very seriously. Using cardboard from recycled cereal boxes, they made place cards which they folded over in half, so each could stand upright like a tent. On one side they wrote their names, in multiple colors and with elaborate scripts. On the other side, they drew miniature pictures that represented who they were and what they enjoyed doing – a violin, a girl turning a cartwheel, a dog on a leash, a unicorn. Before Shabbat they discussed who would sit where and set their place cards on the table, also making place cards for their parents and for any guests who would be joining us. By the time the angels arrived, the table was decorated with a colorful array of illustrated cards that looked like banners or flags.
In this week’s parashah we learn that the Israelites traveled through the wilderness arranged in a fixed formation, like a troop of soldiers or a marching band. At the center of the camp was the Tabernacle (also known as Ohel Moed, the Tent of Meeting) with the holy ark, surrounded by the encampment of the Levites. The other twelve tribes were arranged on all four sides of the Levite-encircled Tabernacle, with three on each side: Judah, Issachar, and Zevulun to the east, Reuven, Shimon, and Gad to the south, Ephraim Menashe, and Benjamin to the west, and Dan, Asher, and Naftali to the north. Each tribe had to create a flag that typified that tribe, decorated in vibrant hues; according to Rashi (on Numbers 2:2), the colors of each flag corresponded to the emblematic color of that tribe’s stone in the high priest’s breastplate. The members of each tribe would then see their flag and know to encamp beneath it, as per God’s words to Moshe and Aaron in our parashah: “The Israelites shall camp each with his flag, under the banners of their ancestral house; they shall camp around the Tent of Meeting'' (Numbers 2:2).
The midrash teaches that Moshe, upon hearing God’s instructions regarding the arrangement of the Israelite encampment, worried that perhaps the tribes would argue with one another. Moshe said to God, “There is going to be dissension among the tribes. If I tell the tribe of Judah to encamp in the east, they will say: It is impossible for us to encamp anywhere but in the south. And so each and every tribe would act like that one.” Moshe was concerned that the children of Israel, like my children on Friday afternoons, would break out in a fierce argument over who went where. God assured him that this will not happen, because the flags would serve as an indication of where they are meant to camp. “They do not need you in this matter,” God told Moshe. “They will recognize their dwellings by themselves” (Tanchuma Bemidbar 1.12).
Moreover, God assured Moshe, the tribes would not question the arrangement of their flags because it was, in fact, their father Jacob who instructed them regarding this arrangement. When Jacob was about to die, he told his children that they alone were responsible for carrying his body to the land of Canaan: “No Egyptian should be allowed to touch my bier” (Tanchuma Bemidbar 1.12). The midrash explains that as Jacob blessed each son at the end of the book of Genesis, he also told him on which side of his bier they were supposed to stand. The arrangement of the sons around Jacob’s bier was identical to the arrangement of the tribes around the Tabernacle, which is why the brothers didn’t argue: “They already have their father’s arrangements in their hands,” the midrash explains.
In Hebrew, the same word—aron—is used for both “bier” and “ark.” The tribes arranged themselves around one aron in the exact same way as they arranged themselves around the other. The ark thus became as dear and precious to them as their beloved, esteemed father. By means of this analogy, the tribes realized that encamping according to formation in the wilderness was a weighty responsibility – as well as an act of love. The midrash links the use of the term “flag” (degel) in our parashah—"each with his flag, under the banners of their ancestral house”—to the use of this same term in the Song of Songs (2:4): “He brought me into the banquet house, and his flag over me is love.” The rabbis teach that during the revelation at Sinai, twenty-two thousand chariots of angels descended, and they all arranged themselves according to flags. When Israel saw this colorful array, they also yearned to have flags: “They said: O that we might be arranged with flags like them!” (Tanchuma Bemidbar 2:1). God, seeing their tremendous love and longing for Him, instructed Moshe to tell the people, “Go make those flags, like the ones for which they have yearned.” And so the arrangement of the Israelites around the Tabernacle, like the arrangement of the sons around Jacob’s bier, was a display of their devotion.
In this midrash, it is the children of Israel who gaze and marvel at the angels, wishing to imitate their spectacular array. In our home, I hope that as we sing Shalom Aleichem each Friday night, the angels will gaze and marvel at our table. I hope they will see colorful place card flags at each seat, and children who no longer argue over who sits where. I hope that before they depart our calm home, they will bestow upon us their blessing.
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It's Not What You Say, But How You Say It
Vered Hollander-Goldfarb
On Sunday and Monday, we will be celebrating Shavuot when the story of Ruth is read.
Text: Ruth 2:1-7
1There was a relative of Naomi’s husband… his name was Boaz. 2 And Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, “Please let me go to the field, and glean… after him in whose sight I may find favor.” And she said to her, “Go, my daughter.” …4Now behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem…5Then Boaz said to his servant who oversaw the reapers, “Whose young woman is this?” 6And the servant… answered and said, “It is the young Moabite woman who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab. 7And she said, ‘Please let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves.’ So, she came and has continued from morning until now her rest in the house is little.”
- Gleaning in the field for discarded grain is the right of the poor people. However, the reality might have been more complicated. What is Boaz, the field owner, asking about Ruth? Why? Why is he asking the overseer?
- How does the overseer seem to feel about Ruth? How might he have interpreted Boaz’s question?
Midrash Ruth Rabba 4
“Whose is this young woman?” – did he not know who she was? Rather, once he saw that she was pleasant and her actions were fine, he began asking about her: All the women would bend at the waist and gather, and this one would sit and gather. All the women would raise their skirts, and she would lower her skirts.
- According to this midrash, why is Boaz asking about Ruth?
- What reality of the atmosphere in the field can be gathered from the description of the other women?
Commentary: R. Joseph Kara Ruth 2:4-7
Then Boaz said to his servant who oversaw the reapers, “Whose young woman is this?” It is customary that when someone…harvests his field he appoints a supervisor so that no stranger will enter to collect within his field during the harvest, only his relatives. So, when Boaz arrived, he did not ask about the other girls whom he recognized and did not tell off his supervisor for letting those girls gather only about Ruth, who seemed like a stranger to him, did he get cross and asked whose young woman is this? as if to tell him off for letting her gather. And the servant… answered and said, “It is the young Moabite woman who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab" - as if to tell him: this one too came because of the family relation.
- What tone does Boaz use according to this reading?
- Which reading do you agree with? Why? (If you want to, continue to read chapter 2, and see.)
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Missing Mothers
Bex Stern Rosenblat
The Book of Numbers begins with a list of names, a genealogy organized by line of descent. We read of the twelve men chosen to help conduct a census, each of them introduced by clan and by the name of their fathers. Likewise, we read of the chieftains of the tribes, each introduced as the son of his father. And we hear mention, once more, of the sons of Aaron, Nadav and Avihu, who left behind no sons when they died before God for bringing foreign fire. The counting of Israel is centered on the father-son relationship. The whole concept of tribe arises from it. It’s a beautiful thing, a son so much a product of his father’s upbringing that it quite literally defines who they are. It seems to match reality to the commandment to honor father and mother. But someone is missing. Where are the mothers?
We find a mother, Gomer, in our haftarah, Hosea 2. We tell the story of her children's relationship with her. It is a story that seems to be totally lacking in honor. God commands the prophet, Hosea, to marry a woman of harlotries and he has children with her. God commands that Hosea name each of the children symbolically - Jezreel (the site of a massacre), No Compassion, and Not My People. Likewise, Gomer’s name may have meaning. It could mean ending, the one who ends the relationship between God and Israel. It also could have sexually explicit meaning, the one who helps men to finish.
It gets even worse. In our haftarah, we read the command to these poorly named children to turn against their mother. They are commanded to riv, to rebuke, reprimand, open a legal case against their mother. It seems anathema to the whole structure of the Israelite people. How could children do this to a parent? According to many of the medieval commentators, the Book of Hosea happens only on a metaphorical level - Gomer does not exist or, at least, Hosea does not in face marry a prostitute. She serves only as a symbol of Israel having gone astray from God, having whored after other nations. However, even if this is the case, we are still constructing a metaphor in which it is right and proper for children to insult and shame their mother when she acts inappropriately.
As the chapter continues, it becomes clear that it is through chastisement, through being put back into that same wilderness for which the Book of Numbers is named, that Gomer, and thus Israel metaphorically, can be returned to a state in which they can be honored. The haftarah ends with a beautiful covenantal ceremony, a re-wedding of God and Israel.
But what are we to do with this? How can we understand the commandment to honor father AND mother with the reality that fathers are often honored and mothers are rebuked by their own children while God cheers from the sidelines? An answer can be found in the daughter of the text, (Not) Compassionate. Hidden in her name is the word meaning womb. She is the embodiment of female-ness. We move from Gomer, the finisher, the end of the genealogy, to Womb, the one who provides continuation of the generations by means of compassion. Hosea presents the dystopian world in existence, the world of scorned mothers, side-by-side with a utopian world of compassion as the foundation of covenant, of relationship between God and Israel, spouses, and parent and child. We read the bad with the good and work to bring the good into reality.
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