TORAH PORTION: BEHA'ALOTCHA |
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Parashat Beha'alotcha
June 18, 2022 | 19 Sivan 5782
Torah: Numbers 8:1-12:16 | Triennial: 10:35-12:16
Haftarah: Zechariah 2:14-4:7
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In this week's Torah Sparks, you'll find a D'var Torah on the Parashah by Ilana Kurshan called "Let The Lamps Give Light", Vered Hollander-Goldfarb poses questions titled "Blisters: On the Feet or In the Soul?" and Bex Stern Rosenblatt writes a dvar haftara called "On Regifting".
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Let The Lamps Give Lights
Ilana Kurshan
This week’s parashah describes the appointment of seventy elders to help judge the people. As God tells Moshe, “I will draw upon the spirit that is on you and put it upon them,” so that the elders will share the burden of the people with Moshe (Numbers 11:17). The elders are brought to the Tent of Meeting and instilled with the prophetic spirit. Immediately following this episode, the Torah tells of two men, named Eldad and Meidad, who did not go to the Tent of Meeting but remained in the camp, where they too began to prophesy. Who are Eldad and Meidad, and what is their relationship to the seventy elders? How do the people’s leaders respond to their prophesying, and what can their response teach us about the way in which we impart and share our gifts with others?
The Talmud in tractate Sanhedrin (17a) discusses this episode in the context of the establishment of courts of law. The rabbis explain that when God told Moshe to appoint seventy elders, Moshe found himself faced with a problem. If he failed to choose the same number of elders from each tribe, he would cause envy among the tribes. Were he to choose five elders from each of the twelve tribes, he would be short ten elders; were he to choose six, he would have two extras. Moshe opted to select six from every tribe and perform a lottery to weed out the extra two. He brought seventy-two slips of paper and wrote “elder” on seventy of them, leaving two blank. Ultimately, though, the lottery proved unnecessary, because two individuals remained in the camp and did not participate; they were Eldad and Meidad, who, as we have seen, were gifted with prophecy nonetheless.
The Talmud explains that Eldad and Meidad recused themselves from the lottery because they did not consider themselves worthy of being included among the elders. On account of their humility, God rewarded them with even greater prophetic gifts. Unlike the seventy elders, who prophesied “but did not continue” (11:25), Eldad and Meidad’s prophecy was ongoing. The Talmud adds that at least according to one opinion, their prophecy foretold Moshe’s death and Joshua’s succession. No wonder, then, that Joshua became so disquieted by this episode.
The Torah relates that a certain young man, upon hearing Eldad and Meidad prophecy, ran to report this development to Moshe. When Joshua heard this report, he spoke up anxiously, “My lord Moshe, restrain them!” (11:28). But Moshe patted Joshua on the head, as it were, and explained to him, “Are you wrought up on my account? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord put his spirit upon them” (11:29). Joshua, the young heir to Moshe’s leadership, is concerned about the usurping of Moshe’s prophetic role. But Moshe, who never sought out his role, and, in fact, went to great lengths to avoid it—he hid his face from God at the burning bush, and begged God to choose someone else in his stead (see Vayikrah Rabbah 1:5)—has a very different reaction. As he sees it, the more people God’s spirit rests upon, the better.
The midrash on our parashah (Tanchuma Bemidbar 3.22) questions why Moshe did not share Joshua’s concern that Eldad and Meidad, and, in fact, all the elders, might diminish or dilute Moshe’s prophetic gifts. After all, as the Torah teaches, God “drew upon the spirit that was on Moshe and rested it on the seventy elders” (11:25). If these elders received some of Moshe’s prophetic spirit, surely that meant Moshe would have less of that prophetic spirit himself. But as the midrash poetically explains, this was not the case: “To what may Moshe be compared? To a lamp which was burning. Everyone lights up from it, but its light is in no way diminished.” Just as one lamp does not lose any of its brightness when another lamp is kindled from it, so too did Moshe not lose any of the divine spirit instilled within him. Rather than Moshe growing dimmer, the world became more radiant.
Elsewhere in the midrash (Shir HaShirim 1:3), Rabbi Akiva invokes this same metaphor to describe his experience of studying Torah from his teachers. He is in fact responding to his own teacher, Rabbi Eliezer, who has just declared that although he has learned so much Torah, it is only a fraction of all the Torah out there in the world. As Rabbi Eliezer puts it, “Even if all the seas were ink and all the reeds were pens and the heaven and earth were scrolls, and all of mankind were scribes, they would not suffice to write the Torah which I have learned; and yet I have diminished no more from it than a man would take by dipping a vial in the sea.” Rabbi Akiva hears his teacher’s metaphor and chooses to modify it somewhat: “I have taken no more from Torah than one who smells an etrog. He who smells, enjoy it, while the Etrog loses nothing. Or than one who fills his pitcher from a watercourse, or who lights one lamp from another.” Joshua, like Rabbi Eliezer, has a sense of finitude. If the elders are also prophesying, then surely there will be less of a need for Moshe. If he dips his vial in the sea of Torah, there will be less Torah out there for the taking. But Moshe, like Rabbi Akiva, has a more expansive understanding. The more of God’s people who prophesy, the more the world will be filled with God’s word. The more Torah we study, the more the world will be illuminated by Torah and redolent of its fragrance.
It takes tremendous humility and generosity of spirit to view the world like Moshe or Rabbi Akiva. Not everyone can recognize that by sharing our gifts with others, we are in fact amplifying and intensifying those gifts. Many of us mistakenly think that if others can preach or perform as well as we can, then we will no longer shine as bright. Parashat Beha’alotcha teaches us otherwise. “When you raise up the lamps,” God instructs Moshe to tell Aaron in the opening verses, “let the seven lamps give light” (8:2). Moshe, who shares these words with Aaron, knows very well about sharing his prophecy with others and allowing each light to burn bright. His words remind us that all our gifts come from God. We should not be seeking to highlight or spotlight ourselves, but to use our God-given talents to amplify and replenish the brightness of the luminous world around us.
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Blisters: On the Feet or In the Soul?
Vered Hollander-Goldfarb
Text: Bemidbar 10:33-11:1
10:33And they departed from the mount of the LORD three days' journey: and the ark… went before them… to search out a resting place for them… 11:1And the people were as murmurers, [speaking] evil in the ears of the LORD; and when the LORD heard it, His anger was kindled; and the fire of the LORD burnt among them and devoured in the uttermost part of the camp.
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What did the people do to kindle God’s anger?
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How is a person “as a murmurer (complainer)”? Why is the complaint not stated?
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How does one speak evil in the ears of the LORD? Why would one do this?
Commentary: Rashi Bemidbar 11:1
As murmurers – The term “as murmurers” denotes [people who seek] "a pretext" — they seek a pretext to separate themselves from following the Omnipresent.
- According to Rashi, what is the motive behind the murmuring?
Evil in the ears of the LORD means a pretext that was evil in the ears of the Lord; they intended that it should reach His ears and cause annoyance. They said: "Woe unto us! How weary we have become on this journey: it is now three days that we have had no rest from the wearisomeness of the march!"
- Why is this evil in the ears of God?
- What kind of crisis is developing in this verse?
Commentary: Ramban Bemidbar 11:1
The correct interpretation appears to me to be that as they got further away from Mount Sinai, which was near an inhabitable settlement, and entered the great and dreadful wilderness in their first journey, they became upset and said: "What shall we do? How shall we live in this wilderness? What shall we eat and what shall we drink? How shall we endure the trouble and the suffering, and when shall we come out of here?" The language of murmuring… is an expression indicating pain, and feeling sorry for oneself… Thus, when Scripture states that they felt anxious and upset, it has thereby already mentioned and told [the nature of] their sin… They spoke in the bitterness of their soul as do people who suffer pain, and this was evil in the sight of the Eternal, since they should have followed Him with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart by reason of the abundance of all good things which He gave them, but they behaved like people acting under duress and compulsion, murmuring, and complaining about their condition.
- According to Ramban, what is the crisis?
- Why was this evil in God’s ears?
- Rashi and Ramban assume that the people said similar things. What is the fundamental difference between their understanding of the event? Which is more severe? Why?
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On Regifting
Bex Stern Rosenblat
Leah has a rough time having kids with Jacob and she lets us know it. The names she chooses for her first four children describe her journey from desire to win Jacob’s affection to being content with what she has. She describes the names of her first two children, Reuben and Simeon, as her wanting Jacob to see, ra’ah, (from Reuben) and hear, shema, (from Simeon) her suffering. Her third child, Levi, is named for her hope that Jacob will now become attached, yelaveh, to her. The name of Judah, her fourth child, comes from the root ydh, to praise or give thanks. Something happens between the births of Levi and Judah. Leah stops wishing for Jacob’s attention and affection and starts to appreciate all that God has given to her. It is possible too that her wish is fulfilled, that finally Jacob does see her, hear her, become attached to her. Perhaps it is for this that she gives thanks.
There is, after all, something special about the tribe that descends from Levi. They become the ones to help the Israelites move from a place of wishing to a place of thanking, through their service in the Temple as we read about in this week’s parasha. They are the ones who are attached, nilvoo, to God, to the Temple. They are the ones who help the Israelites attach to or join with God. And they are specially designated to God. In order to be able to serve these functions, they must be a people apart, separated and purified in a number of ways.
Our haftarah turns this concept on its head. Describing the situation in the early days of the construction of the Second Temple, with the Jews newly back from exile, Zechariah paints a picture of how to create the world anew from the broken pieces that he finds. We read a description of the triumphant return of God to Jerusalem and the Temple. But this time, the people invited to be attached to God, to Jerusalem, to the Temple are different. It is no longer just the Levites. We read, as translated by Robert Alter, “And many nations shall join, venilvoo, the LORD on that day and become My people, and I will abide in your midst.” The nations take on the function of the Levites. They become the ones attached to God, who join God in God’s dwelling place. It’s a radical change. The Levites once were the ones designated to join the sons of Aaron in keeping the tent of meeting, and they were specifically warned that “no outsider may approach you all.” Now, those outsiders have replaced the Levites in their role as those accompanying God’s dwelling place.
This is a theme and a turn of phrase that appears in a number of post-exilic texts; we find it often at the end of the Book of Isaiah. It functions not so much as a description of what was going on at that time as it does a wish for the messianic future. Even in the darkest days of the beginning of the building of the Second Temple, we imagine ourselves in a position where we can be magnanimous. We take that which is our unique heritage, our particular gift, namely our relationship with God in Jerusalem, and share that gift with the rest of the world. These actions help to shed light on what had happened in the progression of names of Leah’s children. Something special had happened with Levi. Levi joined up, became attached, and through the connections he forged, he allowed Leah to reach Judah, a state of thanksgiving.
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