AND

NOR TAKE A CENSUS OF THEM WITH THE ISRAELITES.

(Bamidbar 1:48-49)

Do not on any account enroll the tribe of Levi

When God told Moses, "Do

not on any account enroll the tribe of Levi…," Moses was worried and

said, "Could it be that there is something wrong with my tribe, that God

does not want to count it?"

God told Moses: "I

did not tell you that. Rather, it is in order to exclude them from the decree

take a census of them with the Israelites. Why is this? Because the Levites

are Mine, and the Levites shall be Mine:

everyone who brings Me closer – I bring closer. They drew themselves near to Me, for it is said, And Moses said: "Whoever is for

the Lord, come to Me!" And all the sons of Levi joined him (Shemot 32) – They

brought Me close, so I bring them close, and the

Levites shall be Mine. It is only because they were found to be loyal to Me in that they observed My warning, You shall have no

other god… (Shemot 20). That is why they merited to be the trusted of My house: And you shall put the

Levites in charge.

(Bamidbar Rabbah 1:12)

At that very hour

the Lord and His Torah. They protected the character of the Torah; that it is

beyond human control. It saved them from the people, protecting even from those

close to it. That tribe was the tribe of Levy, now appointed as the Torah’s "guardian,"

and distinguished from the people for that purpose. It was not part of the eidah [community], but rather sanctified for eidut [a testament] which was the community’s ruling

soul. That is why they were not counted amongst the Israelites.

(Rabbi S.R. Hirsch on Bamidbar

1:48 following Levy translation)

YOUR

FOLLOWING ME IN THE DESERT

THE FORMATIVE SIGNIFICANCE OF ISRAEL'S DEVELOPMENT IN

THE DESERT

Gili Zivan

The Parasha

of Bamidbar, which opens the Book of Bamidbar, provides a propitious pretext for examining

the significance which various thinkers assigned to the story of Israel's

formation in the desert. What is the

meaning of forty years of wanderings in the desert prior to the entry into an inhabited land? Desert is the

antithesis of an inhabited land, the opposite of civilization. It is a place

where man is dependant upon God's beneficence, no less than upon man's favors.

Is it a place of freedom, or a place of fear?

Shulamit

Hareven masterfully described the atmosphere of that

desert experience, capturing something of the feelings of the Hebrews fleeing

their Egyptian masters into the great desert:

Tremendous

freedom, vast, larger than the measure of man, stood in the air. There

was no scheduled order of the day, it seemed as there was no longer any order

in the world… there was neither master nor slave. There was unthreatening

desert, and crevices… the silence could be felt. Infinite skies…

There were no sounds. A

few bleats of a flock, a few human voices in a crevice and by the water… here

and there the sharp screech of a desert bird. Their ears were cleansed of all

sounds of a settled land, of the shouts of the taskmasters . (From the trilogy "Thirst" – "The

Hater of Miracles")

What is the function of

the desert? Freedom from the sounds of Egypt? From the voices of the master and the slave? From the noises of the Nile and its magicians? What is the

import of the fact that that the first moments of Israel's formation were not

in its own land?

We shall examine this

problem through the eyes of three modern thinkers: Erich Fromm,

Franz Rosenzweig, and Yeshayahu

Leibowitz.

The psychologist and

philosopher Erich Fromm

(born in Germany in 1900, moved to the USA in 1933) saw in the wanderings of

Israel in the dawn of Jewish history evidence of Judaism's struggle against the

god of acquisitiveness. The forty years of desert wanderings are forty years of

being, of human existence which does

not seek to define itself through ownership. This is the period during which

the slaves of yesterday become aware of the development of a different sort of

relationship, human relations which are not founded upon relations of ownership

and acquisitiveness. The desert is the most important symbol of liberation from

the definition of 'self' by property:

The desert is not a

home. There are no cities. There is no property. It is the place of nomads who

have that which they need, and all that they need is life's essentials, not

belongings… life in the desert as

preparation for a life of freedom. (Erich From, Ownership or Self-Realization, p.

59, emphasis mine – G. Z.)

They gathered as

much as they needed to eat" (Shemot 16:18), the Children of Israel were not

allowed to hoard food:

Here, for the first

time, is a formulation of the principle promulgated by Marx: "Each

according to his needs." The right to receive food is determined without

limit… the second command is against hoarding, covetousness, and

acquisitiveness. The Children of Israel are forbidden to hoard anything until

morning. (Fromm,

ibid., p. 60)

The

struggle against acquisitiveness, then, is expressed through the restriction

against gathering on the Shabbat and by the command to gather a double portion

on the Sixth Day, for the Sixth Day and for the Shabbat. According to Fromm, the Sabbath is not only a day of rest; it is an

expression of life without acquisitiveness, without transfer of objects from

domain to domain, without purchase or giving over of property, without transfer

of ownership.

On the Sabbath Day, one

lives as though he possesses nothing, he is engaged in

simply being, that is to say, in

expression of his essential abilities; praying, study, eating, drinking,

singing, and loving.  (Fromm, ibid., p.61, emphasis in the original – G. Z.)

This basic element of

the Shabbat was emphasized by the philosopher and theologian, Avraham Yehoshua Heschel, in his book The Sabbath – Its Meaning for

Man Today. In his view, the Shabbat is a kind of freeze of the race for the

material; it is the "Sanctuary in time" which is erected not by "aggregation

of that which is," but by

enrichment of being. "Not

everyone who increases possessions increases individuality." (Avraham

Yehoshua Heschel, The

Sabbath, p. 11 of Hebrew edition, emphasis in the original – G.Z.)

The wanderings in the

desert, like the Shabbat, are an unusual way of life, devoid of possessions and

ownership of land. Their goal is the internalization of the idea that man is

defined not only by his possessions; in the words of Fromm,

"man is what he is, not what he

has."

Did the nation of

slaves succeed in shedding their attitudes towards ownership and

acquisitiveness in the desert? It seems that "the Children of Israel

cannot live without ownership" (Fromm, ibid., p. 62). The failure of the revolution is

also evident in the light of the behavior of the tribes entering Eretz Yisrael, and in light of

the development of Israeli monarchy. In contrast, the prophets and the sages of

the Talmud, in Fromm’s opinion, continued the

struggle against the sanctification of place and property.

A different approach to

the significance of Israel's formation in the deserts of Sinai is offered by

the Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929), author of The Star of

Redemption. Rosenzweig develops a unique historiosophy in his attempt to understand the uniqueness

of the Jewish nation in relation to the rest of the world: the Jewish people is

distinct from the nations in that "blood kinship" suffices, it does

not need land, earth, in order to express its eternal message. The Jewish

nation's religious peculiarity obliges it to rise above settlement of land,

because, although "it nourishes… it also chains." The Jewish

people, which lives in "eternity", not in "history", must

overcome the nationalist, enslaving, chains, and to give itself over to the

life of eternal faith.

The nations of the

world… they sink their roots into the night of the earth, which is in itself

dead but life-giving, and from its long existence, they draw guarantees of

their own longevity. (Rosenzweig, Star of Redemption, p.324 in Hebrew

edition).

However, he adds that

the danger lies where "a nation loves its homeland more than it loves its

life"; "If nine times this love saves the homeland from the hand of

the enemy… on the tenth time, there

will come to an end" (ibid., emphasis

mine – G. Z.). This devotion, argues Rosenzweig,

is liable to bring about the nation's end.

It seems that two

stories provide the background for Rosenzweig's harsh

vision of the land shackling its defenders to death, to the oblivion of the

nation: the story of German nationalism and its victims, as was revealed to

soldier Franz Rosenzweig, the young German-Jew

stationed in the Balkans during the First World War, and in contrast, the

Biblical story of the birth of the Jewish people, a story with a totally

different message.

The story of the Jewish

people begins with the father of the nation, Avraham,

who came from afar in obedience to the divine order to leave his land and

birthplace for a land which the Lord was to show him. Further on in the story,

we meet the Jewish nation for the first time, as it departs Egypt for the great

desert. These narratives of our genesis express, according to Rosenzweig, Israel's non-dependence upon territory, the

a-historical message and the non-nationalistic character of this people.

It is made into a

nation… in exile, first in Egypt, and later in Babylon… It always preserves

the non-dependence of a traveling knight, and as he roams in faraway places…

and longs for the native land which he left behind, he is more loyal to his land

than he was when he dwelt in it.  (Ibid, p. 324)

Rosenzweig

compares Judaism with Christianity, and claims that Judaism is comparable to

fire and has already reached the eternal, in contrast to Christianity which is

comparable to the ray of light and is charged with the mission of spreading the

truth. Therefore Christianity struggles, battles, conquers,

and lives in history. Judaism, on the other hand, having already reached the

eternal, realizes itself by its very existence. Christianity is the path

of the eternal; Judaism is the life of the eternal. Thus, Zionism is conceived by Rosenzweig

to be a dangerous striving for normalization. An abnormal nation cannot solve

its problems in a normal fashion (i.e., with the aid of territory). The Jewish

nation must build Jewish spiritual organizations, and not a Jewish state.

The last thinker, whose

views on the formation of Israel in the desert I wish to mention, is Yeshayahu Leibowitz. He,

too, notes that "the Torah was not given in the land of its mission".

(Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Seven Years of Discussions on the Weekly Parasha, p. 291) The observance of the Torah is

not dependent upon a specific land. The Torah, in the words of the Midrash, was given "in public domain", a place

not subject to private ownership, a place belonging to all. "Whoever

wishes to take [it], let him come and take [it]."

Or, in the words of another Midrash: "Just as

the desert is ownerless

property [hefker], so are the words of Torah hefker, free for all to take." The aim

of the Midrash, says Leibowitz,

is:

To dissuade those who

think that the worship of God is contingent upon Eretz

Yisrael… The Torah was given to man as man, and not to a native of Eretz

Yisrael or any other place. Eretz

Yisrael is the framework determined for the existence

of the Jewish people… but in no way are the mitzvoth and the validity of

Torah tied to territory… This must be stated in sharpest terms in opposition

to all those many good Jews, who, in their innocence, invest effort to

transform the nation of God ["Am HaShem"]

into the nation of the Land ["Am HaAretz"].

(Ibid, p. 291-292, emphasis in

the original).

In his acute style, Leibowitz, the Zionist, living in the sovereign Jewish

State, points out the danger latent in sanctification of the land. It seems

that, even without adopting Rosenzweig's

existential-mystical conception of the Jewish people, he echoes the fear of

transforming territory from means to an end.

If,

despite the historical distance of Rosenzweig's words

(who knows? Would he have revised his approach had he lived until the Shoah?) and their naïveté,

their implied warning for a nation which has long forgotten the desert

experience remains valid: The warning not to sanctify dead earth to the point

of the extinction of those who dwell upon it.

Fromm's

warning also takes on significance with our taking root in the land, becoming a

society with possessions and acquisition. Every affluent society is liable to

fall into the jaws of the golden calf. Definition of 'self' or 'the other' by

means of property and ownership is a natural tendency for a human consumer society,

but in the desert narrative – as in the concept of Shabbat – lies latent the

challenge of a different self-definition.

In conclusion, I wish

to mention another midrash in the spirit of Fromm's words, one which sees the desert as a spiritual

state, one emptied of self-esteem, a state of total attention to the voice of

the 'other' (the transcendental, or the one who is nearby).

And God said to

Moshe in the Desert Sinai – Whoever does not make himself as an ownerless desert, cannot

acquire wisdom and Torah, therefore those it say In the Desert Sinai. (Bamidbar Rabbah Parasha 1)

Only one capable of

making himself 'as a desert' to

listen to others and to the wisdom of 'the other' can – as did Moshe – hear the

voice of God speaking to him at the Desert of Sinai: "And the Lord

spoke to Moshe in the Desert Sinai…"

Dr. Gili Zivan

is the director of the Ya’akov Herzog Center for

Jewish Studies on Kibbutz Ein Tzurim.

Editor’s note: Dr. Zivan’s

article was published in an earlier edition of Shabbat Shalom (238), but since

it remains relevant, we have chosen to reprint it.

Pray

for the peace of Jerusalem; may those who love you be at peace

And Rabbi Yohanan

said: God said: I shall no enter the heavenly Jerusalem until I enter the

earthly Jerusalem. But is there a heavenly Jerusalem? There is, for it is

written, As a city joined together

(Tehillim 122).

As a

city joined together – Rabbi Yehoshua

ben Levi said: A city that makes all Israel comrades.

(Yalkut Shimoni Tehillim 879)

In the world to come, when The

Holy One, Blessed Be He will bring the exiles back to Yerushalayim,

He will return them in peace, as

is written, "Pray for the well-being of Yerushalayim;

May those who love you be at peace" (Psalms 122:6). And

it is also written, "I will extend to her peace like a stream"

(Isaiah

66:12).

(Midrash Tanhuma Tzav, 7)

Peace

is not just a matter of an ethical tendency. Working for

peace is a constant cultural effort,

sublime and powerful, work towards which all the most productive forces of the

nation should be directed. We must consider: What will be the end result of all

the ever-increasing divisions – the parties, the federations and the factions,

the organization and the minyanim, the

ideological streams and the platforms – if we do not find a single Tel-Talpiyot [Mound of trophies – a poetic reference to Yerushalayim] which will hold high the banner of all the

people, and which will unceasingly and effectively promote the unity of the

nation, smoothing out of the rifts, and the bonding of aspirations. Just as we

recognize and believe that the salvation of Israel will come through beginning

the overt end, – which

will be done by us, with the strength which God has given us to succeed – to

purchase the land, to redeem it, to work it and build it up, to conquer it with

cultural and practical conquests. So must we become more and more aware that

the spirit of God which was upon Eliyahu, "to

reconcile parents with children and children with their parents", to make peace in the world, to

resolve all controversies – of which must be revealed also in our spiritual action, action

of the entire nation, by its finest forces, scholars

who increase peace in the world.

(From a letter to the representatives of the Mizrachi to the Zionist Congress, Iggrot

HaRAYaH of Rav Kook, zt"l, letter 671)

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