WHEN THE TABERNACLE IS

TO SET OUT, THE LEVITES SHALL TAKE IT DOWN, AND WHEN THE TABERNACLE IS TO BE

PITCHED, THE LEVITES SHALL SET IT UP; ANY OUTSIDER WHO ENCROACHES SHALL BE PUT

TO DEATH. THE ISRAELITES SHALL ENCAMP TROOP BY TROOP, EACH MAN WITH THIS DIVISION

AND EACH UNDER HIS STANDARD. BUT THE LEVITES SHALL ENCAMP AROUND THE TABERNACLE

OF THE PACT, THAT WRATH NOT STRIKE THE ISRAELITE COMMUNITY; THE LEVITES SHALL

STAND GUARD AROUND THE TABERNACLE OF THE PACT.

(Bamidbar 1:51-53)

Another story is told

of a gentile who was passing behind the House of Study and overheard the voice

of a scribe reciting [the verse] These are

the Ephod. He said: "To whom were these instructions given?" They

answered him: "To the High Priest." The gentile said: "I shall

go and convert myself so that they appoint me High Priest."

He came before Shammai. He said to him: "Convert me on condition that

you appoint me High Priest." He pushed him away

with the builder's cubit he was holding.

He came before Hillel, who converted him. Hillel

said to him: "Is it not so that only one acquainted with the conventions

of monarchy is appointed king?" The convert went and studied. When he

reached the passage And the stranger who

comes near shall die he asked: "To whom does this passage refer?"

He replied: "Even to David, King of Israel."

The gentile analyzed

his situation with a kal va'chomer. "If Israel, who are called Sons of the

Omnipresent, and because of His love for them he called them Israel, My

firstborn son, are nonetheless subject to [the law of] And the stranger

who comes near shall die – a convert who comes but with his stick and pack,

all the more so!"

He came before Shammai: He said to him: "In your estimation, am I

worthy of being a High Priest? Does it not say in the Torah: And the

stranger who comes near shall die?"

He came before Hillel. He said to him: "Hillel

the humble, may blessings be heaped upon your head, for you brought me beneath

the wings of the Divine Presence."

One day, the three of

them happened to meet. The convert said: "Shammai's

strictness sought to drive us from the world; Hillel's

humility gathered us under the wings of the Divine Presence."

(Shabbat 31a)

Let Us Go to the Wilderness

Avigdor Shinan

While the Torah's account of the

Israelites' wanderings in the wilderness on their way to Canaan begins in the

book of Shemot and continues through Vayikra, it is the book of Bamidbar

– which we currently have begun to read – that relates the major events that

occurred during those forty years. The wilderness is mentioned many more times

in this book than in any other book of the Torah. Its accepted title (Bamidbar = in the wilderness), which is of

course taken from the book's opening verse, is quite appropriate to its content

and language. Ancient sources do refer to the book as Sefer

Va'yedaber [The Book of "Then Spoke"]

(i.e.,

Midrash Bereishit

Rabbah 64:8), but the more usual title

likely reflects the feeling that the wilderness rather than speech is of chief

importance here.

What was the wilderness for our

Sages? How is it depicted in the Mishnah, the midrashim, and the Talmud? The

wilderness stands for three things in this literature: danger, freedom, and

wonder.

Danger. How is this so? In those days

the wilderness's special conditions and remoteness from civilization made it a

dangerous place to be. One was obligated to bless God upon emerging from the

wilderness unscathed. When setting out the foundations for the prayer known to

us as Birkat Ha'Gomel,

the Babylonian Talmud (Berakhot 54b)

states that, "Four must give thanks: those who travel by sea, who travel through wildernesses, one

who was ill and recovered, and one who came out of prison."

Freedom. How

is this so? The Sages emphasize that the wilderness lacks boundaries and

belongs to no one; it is all a public domain and everything in it can be taken

freely by all. It is a place of complete ownerlessness,

but not of complete anarchy. When the Sages wanted to explain why the Torah was

given in the wilderness, they sought similarities and connections between the

Torah and the wilderness, teaching us that, "Just as the wilderness has no

end – so too there is no end to words of the Torah' (Yalkut Shimoni, Yitro, 273), and they said that, "The Torah

was given in three things – in fire, in water, and in the wilderness… just as

fire, water, and the wilderness are free for the taking, so too the words of

the Torah are free for the taking" (Bamidbar

Rabbah 1:7). Infinity, free-for-the-taking,

liberty and freedom are characteristics of the wilderness.

Wonder.

How

is this so? It is a place beyond human settlement, a place where conventional

law does not apply, a place where water has sprung from a stone and manna

descended from heaven, where the bitter waters were made sweet and the people

were wrapped in clouds of glory. It is a place where wonders and miracles can

always be expected; the Sages injected even more miracles and wonders into the

biblical stories and also told of wondrous happenings in the wilderness of their

own day, as in the adventures of Rabbah bar bar Hannah, some of which took place in the wilderness.

The wilderness is a most

dangerous place. In it, life depends on God's grace and salvation. It is a

place where it is very easy to transgress laws and slide into anarchy and sin. According

to the Torah, God chose this place to transform a nation of slaves into a

chosen people, often by setting up challenges to galvanize them. This is also

the place where He chose His messengers, subjecting them to various trials. So,

for instance, tradition speaks of the election of Moses and David – the father

of all prophets and the first among kings – by testing their abilities as

shepherds in the wilderness:

The Lord tests the

righteous (Psalms 11:5). How does He test him? Through

the tending of sheep. He tested David with the sheep, and found him to

be a good shepherd, as is written and took him from the sheepfolds (78:70). What is meant by sheepfolds? It is like

the verse And the people held back from

bringing (Shemot 36:6) (Trans. note: The

Hebrew for sheepfold – michla'a – and

for held back – va'yichlu – share the common

root אלכ). He

would pen up the large sheep and take the smaller sheep out to pasture first,

so that they could feed on the tender grass. Then he would take out the oldest

sheep, which would eat the tougher grass. Finally he would take out the young

adult sheep, which would eat the toughest grass. The Holy One, Blessed be He said: "Whoever knows how to tend sheep, each

according to its ability, let him come and lead my people." Thus it is

written: He brought him from minding the nursing ewes to tend His people,

Jacob (Psalms 78:71). Moses was also tested

by means of sheep. Our Rabbis said: When he tended Jethro's

sheep in the wilderness, a kid escaped and he

ran after it until he reached a sheltered spot. Upon reaching shelter, a pool

of water appeared, and the goat stopped to drink. When Moses arrived, he said "I

was not aware that you ran away from me because of thirst." He carried it on

his shoulders. The Holy One blessed be He said: "You

are merciful in tending mortals' sheep, by your life, you shall tend my sheep,

Israel." (Shemot

Rabba 2:2)

The formation of the people as

worthy of their name and status required conditions of extreme isolation, free

of any stable ties to other peoples and cultures, and of constant testing and

effort, challenge following upon challenge. The notion that a new people and a

new religion could only take form in the wilderness underlies many midrashic traditions relating to Abraham, the nation's

father. He took in guests in the wilderness, taking them under the wings of the

Divine Presence. Thus a new religion and faith was born, as we see in the

haggadic tradition relating to Abraham's performance of righteousness [tzedaka] and justice [mishpat]

(Bereishit 18:19). According to the author of the

midrash, tzedaka

refers to soft means of persuasion, while mishpat

refers to harder, more aggressive tactics. Abraham used both means to

enlist people in the new faith:

Abraham would receive passersby [in the

wilderness]. While they drank and ate, he would tell them: "Say the

blessing." They would say to him, "What should we say?" He said:

"Blessed be the God of the world, for we have

eaten of His [food]. If [the guest] agreed to say the blessing – he would eat

and drink and go on his way, but if he did not agree, he [Abraham] would tell

him: "Pay what you owe!" And he [the guest] would say, "What

must I pay?" He would tell him: "A log of wine goes for ten polerin [a large sum of money] and a pound of meat

costs ten polerin, and a loaf of bread costs

ten polerin. Who gives you wine in the

wilderness? Who gives you meat in the wilderness? Who gives you bread in the

wilderness?" One who saw that he had gotten himself into trouble would

His [food]." Thus it is written: first tzedaka

Biblical Israel was not the only

group to undergo most of its genesis and formation in the wilderness. The Dead

Sea sect – whoever they were – escaped to the wilderness in order to separate from

the sinful populace and isolate themselves there to study Torah, to pray, and

to practice asceticism while awaiting the end of the world and the revelation

of the light of their own salvation. The literary traditions regarding

Christianity's origins offer similar examples, such as that of John the

Baptist, who would "preach in the wilderness" (Matthew 3:1) his

call to recognize the coming kingdom of God. It turns out that in the context

of ancient Judaism in the Land of Israel, one needed that element of "wilderness"

in order to deliver a new message of change. Islam was also born of the

wilderness, and Jews who wrote in the age of their encounter with the new

religion were certainly awake to this fact.

Who is

this rising up from the desert, leaning upon her beloved? These

are among the expressions used by the author of the biblical Song of Songs to

describe the special affection that binds man and woman, lover and beloved. The

Sages lent a new and surprising dimension to the Song of Songs, reading it as a

love song between the God of Israel – the lover – and his beloved – the

congregation of Israel. Almost the entire book was interpreted in this spirit. Thus

the midrash understood the

words Who is this rising up from the desert, leaning upon her beloved? as referring to the beloved Israel, leaving the wilderness. The

expression rising up was understood metaphorically as referring to

spiritual elevation and exaltation. The midrash

states: "Who is this rising up from the desert – its excellences

come from the wilderness." The midrash

continues to number the nation's excellences, tying each to the wilderness: "The

Torah is from the wilderness, the Tabernacle is from the wilderness, the

Sanhedrin is from the wilderness" and so on. The midrash concludes with the statement that "all

the good gifts that the Holy One blessed be He gave to Israel are from the

wilderness (Shir Ha'Shirim Rabba 3:4). According to this, the wilderness

serves as the source of the Jewish People's spiritual wealth and power.

The roar of the celebration of

the State of Israel's fifty-eighth Independence Day is still ringing in our

ears, and it is hard not to mention the opening words of the Declaration of

Independence in this context: "The Land of Israel was the birthplace of

the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was

shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of

national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of

Books." I do not intend to disagree with the authors of this important

document, but the classical Jewish sources teach us that according to the Sages

it was the wilderness – the place that is not a place – which served as a

cradle for the Jewish People and all that is good about it came from the

wilderness. And so it shall be in the future: "Now there are no trees in

the wilderness, but in the future there shall be, for it is said I shall give

forth a cedar in the wilderness. Now it is all sand and has no roads… in the

future there will be a road there, for it is said, I shall place a road in the

wilderness (Tanhuma Masa'ei

3). We witness the settlement of the wilderness and the planting of trees

there with our own eyes. May we know to continue making it blossom, for "the

Holy One blessed be He said, ‘This desert is better than all the countries'"

(following

Tanhuma Bamidbar

2).

Prof. Avigdor Shinan

teaches in the Department of Hebrew Literature of the Hebrew University in

Jerusalem

Take

listing the names, every male, head by head.

(Bamidbar 1:2)

The

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