THE LORD SPOKE TO MOSES IN THE

PLAINS OF MOAB, BY THE JORDAN AT JERICHO SAYING: COMMAND

THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL THAT THEY SHALL GIVE TO THE LEVITES FROM THEIR

HEREDITARY POSSESSION CITIES IN WHICH TO DWELL, AND YOU SHALL GIVE THE LEVITES

OPEN SPACES AROUND THE CITIES. THESE CITIES SHALL BE THEIRS

FOR DWELLING, AND THEIR OPEN SPACES SHALL BE FOR THEIR CATTLE, THEIR PROPERTY,

AND FOR ALL THEIR NEEDS. THE AREAS OF OPEN SPACE FOR THE

CITIES WHICH YOU SHALL GIVE TO THE LEVITES SHALL EXTEND FROM THE WALL OF THE

CITY OUTWARD, ONE THOUSAND CUBITS ALL AROUND. YOU SHALL

MEASURE FROM OUTSIDE THE CITY, TWO THOUSAND CUBITS ON THE EASTERN SIDE, TWO

THOUSAND CUBITS ON THE SOUTHERN SIDE, TWO THOUSAND CUBITS ON THE WESTERN SIDE,

AND TWO THOUSAND CUBITS ON THE NORTHERN SIDE, WITH THE CITY IN THE MIDDLE; THIS

SHALL BE YOUR CITIES' OPEN SPACES.

(Bamidbar

35:1-5)

That the Israelites were

commanded to give the Levite tribe cities in which to dwell, since they had no

portion in the land, as it is said, Command the children of Israel that they

dwell…

The rationale of this

commandment is well known, that the tribe of Levi is the most choice of the

tribes and the best prepared to serve in the Lord's House. They had no portion

with Israel of inherited fields and vineyards, but in any event they needed

towns in which they and their children and infants and all their animals could

dwell. Thanks to their high station, their able deeds, and their worthiness,

their land was chosen over the lands of all the other tribes to shelter those

who committed accidental manslaughter, since perhaps their land, which was

sanctified with their sanctity, could grant atonement. There is another

rationale for this matter, that since they were men of good heart and

knowledgeable in the higher virtues and the honored forms of wisdom, everyone

knew that they would not despise the murderer seeking refuge with them, nor

would they touch him, even if he had killed someone beloved of them or someone

from among their redeemers, since he killed them suddenly and without malice. It

was said concerning this chosen tribe: Who says of his father and mother,

"I did not see him" – that is to say: they will never do anything

that is not on the straight path and intending towards truth; their hearts will

not be inclined by love of persons, even love of father and mother and brothers

and children (love of whom is demanded and made necessary by nature), all the

more so [they would not be swayed by] the love of other, unrelated, people.

(Sefer

HaHinukh Commandment 408)

These are the marches – What is Worth Remembering?

Debbie Weissman

In fond memory

of our dear friend,

Gerald Cromer,

z"l

Whose life's

journey was cut off in its prime

Until

a year ago I thought, in my innocence, that I understood Rashi's famous comment

on the beginning of our parasha:

These

are the marches… It is

analogous to a king whose son became sick, so he took him to a far away place

to have him healed. On the way back, the father began citing all the stages of

their journey, saying to him, "Here we slept, here we were cold, here you

had a headache etc."

I thought that

it was out of love that the father (or, in analogy, God) wants to remind his

son of the various stations of the journey, perhaps in the spirit of, I

wilderness.

Last year I

happened to spend Shabbat Parashat Massei in Sydney, Australia. I prayed with

Kehillat Masada, which is served by a young rabbi of South African extraction

named Gad Krebs. Rabbi Krebs quoted a text with which I was not yet familiar – the

book Ma'ayan Beit HaSho'eva, which appeared in 1994. It was written by a

Torah scholar who had lived in the United States, Rabbi Shimon Schwab

(1908-1993). Rabbi Schwab was originally from the Torah im Derekh Eretz

community in Germany on the eve of the Second World War.

Commenting on

parashat Massei, Rabbi Schwab writes: "…we must pay attention to how

some things that do not seem to be essential…"

He says that

these apparently inessential items include, among other examples, and the

Egyptians were burying in verse 4, and how they camped in the

mountains of Abarim, in front of Nebo (verse

47). "It seems," writes Rabbi Schwab, "that it does

not come to list all of the events the Israelites experienced in their journey, but rather it comes to

People to undergo an awakening, but they did not awaken."

As

the midrash states in Bamidbar Rabbah 23:3: "He listed for them all the

places where they angered Me."

Again,

we find Rabbi Schwab writing in his commentary: "That is, "Here we

their shepherds and remained without a head… "

In

other words, far from listing the high points of Israelite faith, the stations

listed here mark the "fashlot" [Israeli slang for "fiascoes"]

that befell the Israelites on their journey. The first fashla involved

their not recognizing God's miracles, the second was their loss of enthusiasm,

the third their lack of leadership.

Instead

of continuing to use the slang term fashla, I will use an especially

meaningful Hebrew term: hahmatza [the wasting of an opportunity]. This

past Passover I was wondering about the connection between the Song of Songs

and the holiday during which it is read. The Song of Songs does not speak of a

consummated love, but rather of a missed opportunity for love. One of its

central motifs is that of, My beloved slipped away…I asked for him but did

not find him. Does the notion of hahmatza in its deeper sense serve

as a link between the Song of Songs and Passover? That is an important and

interesting question that would take us beyond the framework of the present

article.

We,

as the heirs of the Israelites who crossed the wilderness, have also inherited

their propensity for wasting important opportunities. How many opportunities

for promoting peace and social justice have we wasted over the past sixty years

of the State of Israel's existence? It seems that this year we again missed an

opportunity to transform the Sabbatical year from a time for wars between

different kashrut certifications into an education-normative experience of the

highest order.

Let

us return to Rabbi Schwab's three explanations and examine them in the light

(or perhaps the shadow) of our present situation.

a)

Failure to recognize miracles. It would be too easy to repeat the (to my mind

justified) criticism made by religious Zionism against the Ultra-Orthodox, most

of whom do not recognize the miracle of our people's return to the Land of

Israel and the ingathering of the exiles. With all of the qualms that some of

us have regarding Israeli government policies, the existence of the State of

Israel, in which we speak Hebrew and organize our lives around the Hebrew calendar,

constitutes a manifest miracle, especially since it was established just a few

years after the Holocaust. Be that as it may, I would like to mention two other

twentieth century revolutions that perhaps should also be viewed as miraculous.

The first is the feminist revolution, which empowered women in general and

Jewish women in particular. Thank God we have been privileged to see a

generation of Jewish women who are learned in Torah. May the Jewish community

learn to avail itself of the power and talent of women! The other revolution

took place within a significant segment of Christianity in its relation to the

Jewish People and tradition. True, there have been pitfalls along the way, but

it is impossible to deny the fact that there have also been successes. For more

than sixty years, organizations such as the International Conference of

Christians and Jews have sponsored welcome cooperation between members of

different faiths across the world. The "Keshet" club, a group devoted

to study and dialogue between Jews and Christians, has existed in Jerusalem for

about forty years. Many Christians come here to learn about Judaism in the Land

of the Bible. The heads of many churches are officially engaged in fighting

manifestations of anti-Semitism.

b) "Cooling

down." It is true that our messages are complex and not prone to being

formulated in facile slogans, but it is a real shame that political "moderation"

and religious tolerance and openness are seen as signaling a lack of enthusiasm

and even as involving a kind of coldness. For example, there is in Israel an

organizational framework sponsoring dialogue between rabbis, ministers, and

imams. That organization is called "Kedem." At first the word Kedem

was understood as an acronym for Kol Dati Matun ["a moderate

religious voice"]. At one point the participants themselves exclaimed,

"We are not religious moderates, we are firebrands!" The name was reinterpreted

as Kol Dati Mefayes ["a reconciling religious voice"].

It

is told of R. Haim of Brisk that his students once saw him traveling in a coach

through the streets of the town on Shabbat, a bent-over man sitting by his side.

The next day a student asked him, "Honored Rabbi, I did not know that you

were lenient regarding the laws of Shabbat!" The rabbi replied, "I am

not lenient regarding the laws of Shabbat, I am strict regarding the laws of

danger to life [pikuah nefesh]. The man who sat next to me was ill and I

brought him to a doctor." We must actually possess religious passion and

enthusiasm – only of a more humanist bent – and we must give that enthusiasm

outward expression. We are strict when it comes to the laws of human rights and

human dignity.

c) Lack

of leadership. The contemporary application is so obvious that there is no

need to waste words on it. Perhaps we have the leaders we deserve but we

certainly do not have the leaders we need. Given what I wrote above in

connection with the feminist revolution, one would have hoped the situation

would be different. Today an additional fifty percent of our people have joined

the pool of potential leaders, thus increasing the chances of our finding

deserving leaders. This does not seem to have happened in reality; perhaps we

have yet to find ways to locate the appropriate women – or their appropriate

male colleagues.

Dr. Debbie Weissman, a founder of Kehillat Yedidya, is an educator.

The Israelites' Marches: a Privilege, a

Deterioration of Faith, or an Atonement?

These are the marches – The Holy One, Blessed Be He, desired that

the stations of Israel's trek be recorded in order to publicize Israel's merit

in following Him in the desert, a land unsowed, so that they be worthy of entry

into the Land.

(Seforno ad loc)

These are the marches of the Israelites – Because they sinned when they said, These

are your gods, Israel, the Children of Israel will wander.

From this we derive that all of man's journeys are a result of blemished faith,

in the category of idolatry. If man were to believe with perfect faith that The

Holy One, Blessed Be He can provide all his needs, he would never travel. So we

see that journeys indicate imperfect faith, similar to idolatry.

(Likutei MoHaRaN

These are the marches of Children of Israel

– The midrash relates

that the wanderings of the Children of Israel from place to place are atonement

for, These are your gods, Israel, i.e., for the flaw of

idolatry. Even when there is no [active] idolatry, there is still the flaw of

idolatry, for flawed faith is also a form of idolatry, as is written (in the name of the Baal

Shem Tov) on the passage, and

you shall go astray and worship other gods. Immediately upon going astray

from The Holy One, Blessed Be He, one is guilty of idolatry, and one achieves expiation

through wanderings. "As long as there is idolatry in the world, there is

wrath in the world." (Sifrei Re'ei, quoted in Rashi). So we learn that when there is atonement for the blemish of idolatry,

the wrath is erased, and the continuation is mercy, and the basis of

mercy is in the category of, And El-Shaddai will give you mercy – "you"

– the emphasis is upon "you". The Holy One,

Blessed Be He, puts his mercy into our hands; for it may be that, from

His perspective, even great suffering and ailments are expressions of His

mercy, for all that The Holy One, Blessed Be He, brings upon man – even great

suffering – are reflections of His mercy. But we ask that He give His mercy

over to us, for we cannot understand His mercy, and we are unable to accept His

mercy. Let Him give His mercy over to us, that we have pity upon ourselves,

and according to our understanding, the simple meaning of mercy is that

we be cured of our ailments, etc.

(Likutei MoHaRaN T'nina,

62)

Moses commanded the

they please, but they shall marry only to the family of their father's tribe.

(Bamidbar

36:5-6)

whomever they please – This means

to say: they shall choose those who seem good and upright to them from among

but they shall marry only to the family of their father's

tribe. The end of the verse commanded them to marry specifically

into their father's clan. It may have been the case that those men of the sons

of Gilead who brought up the issue with Moses very much wanted to marry

Zelafhad's daughters themselves, either because of their good qualities that

were mentioned by the Sages, or in order to gain their portion of land – that

is why they made such a fuss about the matter. However, the daughters did not

want to marry them in particular, and so Moses told them: "I am not going

to force you to marry these men. Rather, I will permit you to chose whom you

please, only marry into your father's clan." This is demonstrated by the end

of the story in which it is written that they married their cousins (verse

11)

and no further mention is made of the sons of Gilead, because they had chosen

for themselves husbands from the other children of their uncle Machir and did

not want the sons of Gilead. From this we understand what Moses meant when he

said, according to the word of the Lord, and The tribe of Joseph's descendants speak justly, but did not

say "the sons of Machir speak justly." That is to say, the complaint

made by the tribe in general, that the inherited parcel of land should not be

transferred, was good and correct, while the particular request made by the

sons of Gilead to take Zelafhad's daughters as wives was not good, since it is

not proper to force them [the daughters] in this against their will.

(Rabbi Yitzhak Shemuel Reggio on Bamidbar

36:5-6)

There were no

days better for Israel than the fifteenth of Av…

(Mishnah Ta'anit 4:8)

What is the

fifteenth of Av? R. Yehudah said in the name of Shemuel: It is the day when the tribes were allowed to intermarry. How is this

derived from Scripture? This is what the Lord has commanded concerning the

Daughters of Zelafhad (Bamidbar 36) – this will only be observed in the

present generation.

(Ta'anit 30b)

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