WHEN

PACT…

 (Bamidbar 1:51-3)

On Correct Borders and Distances

You

shall put the Levites in charge… (Bamidbar 1:50) Why? Because they are loyal to me – even

in the hour of its dismantling and erection, I do not want others to dismantle

or erect it [the Tabernacle], but only them, as is written, When the

Tabernacle is to set out…

Could

it be that while the Levites were commanded

[to

dismantle and erect the Tabernacle], the Israelites were allowed to do

so? We learn the answer from the verse, any outsider who encroaches shall be

put to death, and also from the verse, Perverse thoughts will be far

from Me; I will know nothing of evil (Tehillim

101:4)

– this refers to the Israelites who turned aside from God and made the [golden]

calf, causing God to despise them that they not be his treasurers. Do not say

that only while on the march did the Israelites had nothing to do with it [the

Tabernacle]; even during periods of encampment they did not come near it. Only

the Levites did, as is written: The Israelites shall encamp troop by

troop…The Levites, however, shall camp around the Tabernacle of the Pact.

And

why do I warn them? That the Israelites shall distance themselves from the

Tabernacle, so that there will be no anger upon them, since they are not worthy

of coming near it, as is written, that wrath may not strike the Israelite

community, but the Levites will guard it, as is written, the Levites

shall stand guard around the Tabernacle of the Pact.

The

Israelites did accordingly; just as the Lord had commanded Moses, so they did (Bamidbar 1:54) – That is, they distanced themselves

from the Tabernacle and made room for the Levites to encamp around the

Tabernacle.

(Bamidbar Rabbah 1:12)

THE TORAH OF

THE ONE AND THE MANY

Mordechai Beck

In

the Bible, the festival of Shavuot marks the joy of the first harvesting of the

summer crops, an agricultural celebration of Nature's bounty and God's

perennial fecundity. Its primal names are the Harvest Festival, and the Feast

of the First Fruits (Exodus 23;16). In ancient times, the period

preceding Shavuot was spent by the farming community in the fields, garnering

their produce day and night. Living away from their houses, the farmers used

the days of sefirat haOmer

(the counting of the Omer) to calculate the exact date of the Shavuot pilgrim

festival, when they would dedicated a choice portion of their harvest at the Temple in Jerusalem.

The agrarian side of the festival is

beautifully caught in the Book of Ruth, which isread

on the morning of the festival and in which the harvest plays such a pivotalrole in the unfolding drama of Ruth and Boaz. Yet

behind this idyllic picture, the sages saw fit to paint another scenario, a

hidden agenda; not just a time to gather the mundane harvest, but a time torecall the season of the Giving of the Torah. This the

sages fixed on the sixth ofSivan, corresponding to

the sixth day of creation – which is unique in the openingchapter

of Genesis for having the definite article, 'yom hashishi,' which also heraldsthe

formation of the first human beings.

On this sixth day, the Torah was

offered not only to complement the creation, but also to elevate it. The

continuation of the world itself was contingent on Israel's

acceptance of the Torah at Sinai. Otherwise, God was prepared to "return the

works of creation back to chaos." (Talmud Shabbat 88a) There

is thus a strange, even disturbing undercurrent in this negotiation. Freed from

the bonds of slavery the people of Israel stand

beneath Sinai ready to accept the burden and the glory of becoming a precious

people. The Torah in all its splendor would be offered them, as a husband

offers his beloved the choicest diamond beneath the bridal canopy.

Simultaneously, they are presented with

a zero-sum equation: either you accept My offer of marriage or you will be

crushed beneath this mountain and bring the world to dust. Needless to say,

it's an offer they cannot refuse. This surrealistic image is echoed in the fact

that the Torah is given in Sinai – a land free of ownership, yet also denuded

of vegetation, of nature's bountiful harvest. This provides an eerie

counterpoint to the harvest festival which fixes the date in the Biblical text.

The experience of Sinai carries with it

both fear and desire. On the one hand, the people cry to Moses: "You talk

to us and we shall hear, and let not God speak with us, lest we die." (Ex. 20:30). Yet

a few verses earlier the people are warned to stay where they are: "lest

they break through to gaze at God, and many will perish" (Exodus 19:

21) – to

which Rashi adds – "that, out of their passion

for God, they destroy themselves, by drawing too close to the mountain." The

Sinai event thus includes the possibility of both self-destruction and transcendent

ecstacy. Sinai is rooted in the anonymous desert, but

remains tantalizingly extra-terrestrial. It should thus be no surprise that

Sinai is the occasion when time itself loses its pedantic meaning. To the

phrase "And Jethro heard" (Exodus 18:1), the

Talmud asks what did he hear that drew him to leave fertile Midian

for the wastes of the desert "Rabbi Eleazar Modai said: 'He heard the giving of the Torah. For when it

was given, it could be heard from one end of the world to the other." (Zevahim 116a). This version has Moses' father-in-law

arrive after the Sinai experience, though the verse order states that he heard

about it beforehand.beforehand.

One answer to this riddle is that

'there is no chronological order in the Torah,' a rabbinical gloss which is

applied here for the first time in the book of Exodus. Yet, prior to this

incident, the Torah does contain an apparent order (the obvious examples being

the creation saga and the history of the patriarchs). The Sinai event changes

this notion forever. If the Exodus liberated us from space, Sinai liberated us

from time.

The sense of timelessness is echoed in

the very quality of the Torah itself. In an exquisite anthology by Agnon, (translated by Michael Swirsky in

1994 for JPS as "Present at Sinai"), Judah Goldin

observes:

"The fact that Agnon

does not organize his citations chronologically is indeed his deliberate

design. It is not historical or critical literary development he is after… The

spell he is under is the unanimity of assent to the exuberance at the foot of

the Mount Sinai. From the top of the mountain

the Voice came down, audible to ancestors and descendants. Therefore they can

collaborate…"

Another notion of liberation is

suggested by the 40-day long fast that Moses undergoes to complete the

Torah-giving. In order to really receive the Torah, he has to empty himself

completely of any terrestrial needs. When he finally returns to the Israelite's

desert camp, after the second receiving of the Ten Commandments, he leaves both

his wife and the people and sets up a tent outside the camp (Exodus 33.7). He

can never again be the Moses who ascended the mountain.

For Moses, the ascent to the peak of Sinai is

the end of a long trail that begins with the first forty years of his life in

the palace of the Egyptian pharoah. It is precisely

when he kills an Egyptian taskmaster, and is discovered by his fellow Israelites

(Exodus

2.12),

that he realizes that the time has come to flee Egypt – not only physically but

also spiritually. For the next 40 years he undergoes a gradual metamorphosis. Only

when he has shed his princely image, and reached the bedrock of who he is can

he meet the people and set them free. Only when himself is free of this

psychological burden can he lead his people to the foot of Sinai and offer them

the Torah.

When Moses receives the Torah on his

own, high on the cloudy mountain top, he somehow 'represents' the Children of

Israel gathered below. Rashi makes this point clear

regarding the state of the people, of whom it is written: vayihan

sham yisrael neged hahar. "And Israel

encamped opposite the mountain." The reason the verb 'encamped' is written

in the singular according to Rashi is because at this

unique time and place they were 'like one person, with one heart.'

What may be garnered from this comment

is a hint of the importance of the one person, as personified both in the individual

figure of Moses and also in the people as a totality. In another quote from the

Agnon anthology – which might carry more than a

passing relevance for our own day – the Pekudat HaLevi observes: "Our Rabbis, the author of the Agagda, said: Had only one of them [the people] been absent

the Torah would not have been given. Rabbi Aharon HaLevi wrote:

"It is for this reason that the

Torah was given to six thousand people. It was the will of the Holy One,

blessed Be He, that the Torah be accepted by all factions, and the six hundred

thousand included all factions and opinions."

Mordechai Beck is an artist and a writer.

Take a census of the whole

male, head by head.

(Bamidbar 1:2)

The king said to Yoav, his army commander, "Make the rounds of all the

tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beer-Sheva,

and take a census of the people, so that I may know the size of the population.

(II

Samuel, 24:2)

Did David Sin?

…In

my opinion, David's sin demonstrates that he depended upon mortals and the

large size of the nation was the source of his confidence. However, it was

improper for him to trust in anything save in God alone. In addition, (as we

explained in the parasha of Ki

Tissah) the Torah commanded us to count people

indirectly, by having each man give a certain amount of money, and then

counting the total sum collected, so that no plague may come upon them

through their being counted (Shemot

30:12).

(RaLBaG on II Samuel 24:1)

…It

would seem from the chapter's (II Samuel 24) details that this census has a

military purpose, since Yoav, his army

commander and the other officers were placed in charge of it, and

only soldiers ready to draw the sword (24:9) were

counted.

One

might ask: The Torah never prohibited people from taking active steps in the

fight for survival – quite to the contrary, it demands of people work,

activity, assiduousness, and devotion of strength, energy and spirit to the

preservation of life and settlement of the world. The army which defends its

people and land from enemies are part of all this. In that case, what was the RaLBaG's (and Abravanel)'s

point…?

The

root of the matter is this: The army cannot serve as an instrument of

self-aggrandizement or as a value in itself. Rather, it is a means that

is needed only when the necessity arises.

(Prof.

Nehamah Leibowits, z"l, Iyyunim be-Sefer Bamidbar, pg. 22)

In

shall be devoted to the Lord.

(Hosea

2:20-21, from the haftorah for parashat

Bamidbar)

With righteousness and justice –

Which should guide your behavior.

And with goodness and mercy – Which

you shall receive from me in recognition of them [i.e., in recognition of your

righteousness and justice]. It is written of our father Abraham: For I have

singled him out, that he may instruct…to do what is just and right (Bereishit 18:19). In return, his sons were given

goodness and mercy from God, as it says, and [He] will show you compassion

(Devarim 13:18) and the Lord your God will maintain

for you the covenant and the goodness (Devarim

7:12).

Desist

from the just and the right, as it says, you who turn justice into wormwood

and hurl righteousness to the ground (Amos 5), and God will withdraw his

goodness and mercy, as it says, for I have withdrawn my favor from that

people, the goodness and the mercy (Jeremiah 16:5). And

when you resume doing the just and the right, as it says, Zion shall

be saved by justice (Yeshayahu

1:27)

God will add goodness and mercy to them, making a crown of the four of them

your head.

(Rashi Hosea 2:21)

The Torah is Offered Freely to

All

The

Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai (Bamidbar 1:1) – Why in the wilderness of

Sinai? From here the Sages learned: The Torah was given by way of three things;

fire, water, and wilderness.

From

whence do we know fire? Now Mount Sinai was

all in smoke (Shemot19:18).

And

water? The heavens dripped, yea, the clouds dripped water (Judges 5:4).

And

wilderness? The Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai.

And

why was it given by way of these three things?

Because

all of them are free to be taken by everyone in the world. So too, the words of

the Torah are free to be taken, as it is said, Ho, all that are thirsty come

for water (Yeshayahu 55:1).

(Bamidbar Rabbah, 1)

Acceptance of the Torah is a

Personal Decision, Made "Not in Order to Receive a Reward"

…That

is why Israel was

not given the Torah immediately after the splitting of the Red

Sea, because if they had received it after the splitting of the

Red Sea, it would have looked as if

they accepted the Torah in order to receive a reward, as a result of the great

miracles that had just been performed for them. That is why God waited a bit – meanwhile

they could partially forget the miracles performed for them, as it says, there

was no water for the community, and they complained. Afterwards, they received

the Torah, saying that they would "do it and hear it," which proves

that they accepted the Torah solely out of love for he Torah.

(From

Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev's Kedushat

Levi)

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