EACH ONE BY ITS CONTINGENT,

UNDER THE INSIGNIAS OF THE FATHER'S HOUSE, SHALL THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL ENCAMP, AT A DISTANCE, AROUND THE TENT OF

APPOINTMENT, SHALL THEY ENCAMP.

(Bamidbar

2:2)

Of their fathers'

house seems superfluous; it would have been sufficient to say, Each with his standard under the insignias shall

Children of Israel

camp.

What does the

expression their fathers' house come to teach? It is similar to that

which is written (Job 36) I will make

my opinions known from afar; I will justify my Maker. When God told Moses

to assign them contingents as they desired, Moses began to worry – he said: "Now

there will be dissent among the tribes; if I tell the tribe of Judah to be

stationed in the East, he will argue 'I must have the South', and so with Reuben

and with Ephraim and every tribe – what shall I do?"

The Holy One, Blessed

Be He said: "Moses, why do you worry? They don't need you, for they themselves recognize their place. They hold a

will left by their father Jacob, telling how the contingents are to arrange

themselves, I need not add anything; they already have an arrangement established

from [the funeral of] their father Jacob, i.e., as they carried him and

surrounded his bier, so shall they surround the Tabernacle," for it was

said by Rabbi Hama bar Hanina:

"When the time came for our father Jacob to depart this world, he called

for his sons, as is written (Bereishit

49), And Jacob called for his sons and he blessed them and

commanded them in the ways of God, and they accepted upon themselves the

Kingdom of Heaven. In conclusion he said to them: 'When you carry me, accompany

me with awe and respect… How did he charge them? He told them: 'The sons of Judah,

Issachar, and Zebulon will carry my bier from the

East, Reuben, Simon, and Gad will carry my bier from the South, Ephraim, Menashe and Benjamin will carry from the West, Dan Asher,

and Naftali will carry from the North. Joseph will

not carry, for he is a king, and you must honor him. Levi shall not carry. Why?

For he will carry the Ark, and he

who carries the Ark of He Who Lives Forever, does not carry the coffin of a

dead person. If you follow my instruction, and carry my bier as I have

commanded you, God will award you insignia.' And when he died they carried him

as he instructed, as is written, And his

sons did so as he charged them. This is the meaning of I will make my

opinions known from afar; I will justify my Maker." From Jacob

they knew how to arrange the contingents – I will justify my maker – this

is The Holy One, Blessed Be He, who did favors for Israel, and in order to give

them a favor – a reward for having carried out their father's bequest – He did

not order them to arrange their contingents other than the way ordered by their

father. In this He justified them, He made no changes so as not to provide

cause for dissention, therefore it says Of their father's

house – just as they surrounded their father's bier, so

shall they encamp, thus Of their father's house shall the Children of

Israel encamp.

(Bamidbar Rabba 2)

THE ARCHITECTURE OF SHAVUOT

Mordechai Beck

It is a peculiarity of

Shavuot that it is called not after the day itself but by the process that

leads up to it. The Biblical nomenclature "Feast of Weeks" refers to

a span of time just gone – the seven weeks from Passover to the day before Shavuot

(Leviticus 23:15,

Deuteronomy 16:12). Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev

observes that in no other place do we make a blessing over something we have

already finished; blessings usually precede the deed. For the mystical Rabbi

Levi Yitzhak Shavuot is a sign of God's yearning, not to take His departure

from Israel,

but to linger in their company as it were for one more day. After having

blessed each day of the Sefirat Ha'Omer,

He wants to present us with yet a further reason to be together. Since the sages liken Shavuot to a wedding (between God and Israel),

it could be said that this period of waiting and counting is the period of

pre-nuptial anticipation.

It might further be

argued that just as Rosh HaShana is a celebration of

the Year (Mishna Rosh Hashana 1:1), and Passover of the Months (Exodus 12 :2), so

Shavuot celebrates the Week. While the former two are 'natural,' flowing from

the tempo of the solar and lunar cycles, the latter is an artificial construct,

though one that is surprisingly nigh universal. Attempts during the French

Revolution, for example, to make a 'week' of ten days failed abjectly.

The week did not, of

course, start at Sinai. The Bible itself opens with a typological week,

encompassing the creation of the universe (Genesis

1 & 2), suggesting that it was built into the very structure of the

cosmos in all its entirety. Moreover, the sages see in

"The Sixth Day" of the creation narrative a veiled reference to the

sixth day of the month of Sivan when the Torah was to be given. 

Unlike other days of

the creation only the sixth is given a direct object (Ha-Shishi

in Hebrew) suggesting to the fluid mind of the rabbis that it was already earmarked

for something special: "Said Resh Lakish: that the Holy One Blessed Be He made the creation

of the world conditional – if Israel accepted the Torah it will be sustained,

if not then I will return you to chaos and nothing ness.'" (Talmud Shabbat 88a).

The sages thus see the

festival of Shavuot as a distant echo of the creation of the world, and a

reminder that the day upon which the Torah was given was woven into the very

fabric of the primal cosmos. It is in this sense not an exclusive Torah, but

one upon which the entire world depends. Yet, since no hint of the giving of

the Torah on this day appears in the Biblical text, what is so special about a

week that it had to have its own celebration? Very possibly, the week is the

most human of the time zones that we cross in our daily lives. Months and years

are dependant on the stars in their courses; a week is fashioned out of our own

labors. In the Biblical context this has an added significance.

The Book of Genesis is

full of stories about creation and destruction. A well known midrash talks of the creation and

destruction of dozens of worlds before the present one. Even in the Genesis

narrative there are examples of destruction or near destruction – the exile of

the First Couple Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, Noah's Flood, the Tower

of Babel, the destruction of Sodom

and Gomorrah, the string of famines

that plague the patriarchs.

In Exodus, the Children

of Israel could not be further from the paradigmatic Adam and Eve; they are

broken in body and spirit. They appear incapable of even desiring release; they

no longer believe in the possibility of redemption.

According to Rashi only a fifth of them finally make it through the

Egyptian night to freedom. (Exodus 13:18).

Even when they are taken out of Egypt

they are in no state to receive God's holy Torah. They are still in state of

inner collapse.

What finally brings

them to that elevated state is the process of counting these seven weeks. In

doing so, they not only recall the days of creation; they reconstruct them. The

Book of Exodus is the book of re-creation, starting from ground up. It shows

the lowest people on earth – slaves – and demonstrates how even they can reach

higher and higher levels of purity and divine insight, but not without

preparation.

The seven weeks leading

up to the festival is thus like the construction of a building which we are

able to enter on completion. Shavuot is the goal of all the efforts made in the

seven weeks beforehand. Only when we finish a building do we understand that

its whole purpose is the space within it.

Mordechai

Beck is Jerusalem-based artist, writer and teacher.

And in that day – declares

You will serve me

out of love, not out of fear. Ishi – connotes

matrimony and youthful love; Ba'ali – connotes

mastery and fear. And our Sages explained "like a bride in her

father-in-law's home, and not like a bride in her father's house."

(Rashi)

Seven qualities

serve before the Holy Throne, and these are:

Wisdom, Righteousness and Justice, Goodness and Mercy, Truth and Peace. As is written:

And I will betroth

you forever;

I will betroth you

with righteousness and justice,

And with goodness

and with mercy,

And I will betroth

you with faithfulness,

Then shall you

shall know the Lord.

(Hosea 2:21-22 – from the haftorah for parashat Bamidbar)

Rabbi Meir said: What does Scripture mean to teach us with And you shall know the Lord? It teaches

that every man who possesses

these qualities is of one mind with the Omnipresent.

(Avot DeRabbi Natan

37:8)

The covenant between God and His people, and between the People Israel

and its God, exists and is present before God. However, the covenant is

reciprocal, and so in order that these goals be realized something is also

required of the other party – which is us.

The second chapter of Hosea (the haftorah of Bamidbar) is completely devoted to a very passionate and

moving account of this covenant. It describes the relationship between God and

the People Israel as a relationship between a man and a woman, as a marriage. It

employs terms reminiscent of the Song of Songs, which, according to tradition,

is also an extended allegory of the God-Israel relationship. It speaks of the

People Israel betraying the covenant, and of the covenant's future restoration,

which is described with great sensitivity and pathos, concluding with the

following two exalted verses: And I will betroth you forever; I will betroth you

betroth you with faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord.

And

I will betroth you –The betrothal is between God and Israel, and it stems

from the righteousness, justice, goodness, and mercy

that appear here as divine attributes…

And I will betroth you with faithfulness – It must be insisted upon that everywhere in

Scripture the term emunah [faithfulness] does

not bear the same meaning that it does in our language today [Modern Hebrew],

i.e. something like the Latin fides the English faith and the

German glaube. In Scripture, emunah always means faithfulness: And I

will betroth you with faithfulness refers to faithfulness between the

betrothed man and woman.

However,

next come three key words: ve'yada'at et hashem [and

you shall know the Lord]. Righteousness, justice, goodness,

mercy, and faithfulness are divine and eternal; they are not contingent

upon human circumstances and behavior. However, the betrothal's fulfillment

depends upon one great stipulation: and you shall know the Lord. Knowledge

of the Lord is the condition for the covenant's renewal; without it the

covenant exists only potentially and is not actualized…

Whether

or not man is aware of it, God acts for mercy, justice, and righteousness. However,

that only has significance in reality if man learns and knows it, and

accordingly: I will betroth you forever; I will betroth you with

you with faithfulness, on the condition that and you shall know the Lord.

The actualization in reality of the covenant between Israel and its God

depends on the People Israel.

(Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, z"l, He'arot le'Parshiyot ha'Shavu'a pp. 78-88)

And all the people saw the

they stood from afar.

(Shemot 20:15)

And

all the people saw the voices – I have already explained the meaning of saw

the voices, that the senses are connected to a single place. The point is that when

they saw the voices and the torches, that people are usually fearful of them.

(Ibn Ezra)

The deep meaning of the

expression saw the voices comes to teach us that the people were looking and

seeing the external aspect of things, "voices," "thunder," "torches"

and "the smoking mountain." They saw these but missed their inner

meaning and significance. That is why immediately after the great revelation there

is an additional phrase that teaches us about the entire episode: and the

people saw and trembled; so they stood from afar. This is actually the

continuation of the verse, and regarding it the Rabbi said: It is possible to

see and to tremble, and yet even so – to stand from afar.

(An idea of R. Menachem

Mendel of Kotzk, as presented in Y. Leibowitz, Sihot al Hagei Yisrael u'Mo'adav

pg. 105)

The righteous is

gone from the earth, and the upright man is no more (Micah 7:2)

On

Monday, Iyyar 5 (April 23), R. Moshe Klibanoff departed this world. Moshe was not a renowned

scholar, teacher or rabbi, nor did he head any public or communal enterprise. He

lived a seemingly ordinary life: he was born in New York City in 1926; during

his youth he became interested in Judaism and became religious; he came on aliyah in the early 1960s; married relatively late in life;

he and his wife Yonah bore and raised one daughter,

Leah; and several weeks ago died at age 80. What was it about him, then, that

left such a deep impression on so many people, so that the large number of

people who came to his funeral felt that they had lost something so precious

and beloved?

I

felt a sense of mystery about Moshe's personality, that there was a certain

secret at the core of his being. While every human being is ultimately a

mystery, carrying the secrets of his life to the grave, this seemed

particularly true of Moshe. Who was Moshe? What was the stuff of which was he

made?

I

first met Moshe in 1971 at the home of Reb Gedaliah Koenig, an old-time Breslav

hassid from Meah Shearim who was open to

teaching people from the "outside." Because Reb

Gedaliah spoke no English, Moshe served as his

translator – a task he performed in a singularly soft, cultured, and

expressive, almost musical voice.

There

were two qualities that I found particularly striking about Moshe. As one of

the eulogists at his funeral commented, he saw himself as a devotee of both Breslav and Buber. That is, he

combined a deep religiosity – meaning not only piety, in the sense of

meticulous observance of the halakhah, but also a

deep sense of the immediacy of God – with a deep love and connection to the

Western humanistic tradition, including such un-Orthodox Jewish figures as Buber. Throughout his life, Moshe maintained a lively; one

might say eclectic interest in a wide gamut of subjects. He spent many hours at

the Hebrew University library where I

would often encounter him. He was as likely to talk about the Masons and the

impact of their symbolism on the great seal of the United States, as he was to

talk about Hasidic rebbes or the Talmud. I found this

a refreshing contrast to many neophytes to Orthodox Judaism, who often seem to

abandon their former cultural orientation and interests.

Moshe

had the intellectual and spiritual vitality of a much younger person. Indeed,

when I heard of the gravity of his illness, just two days before he died, and

someone mentioned that he was over 80, I was shocked. I had never thought of

him as "an old man": there was something timeless and ageless about

him. While he was now and again beset by health problems, his mind and spirit

and interest in all aspects of life were those of a young person.

As

part of his humanistic orientation, he had a deep commitment to peace, to

rapprochement between Jews and Arabs, to universal love of humanity – again, in

strong contrast to the bon ton of the Orthodox world. One of his projects was

to print and distribute the "Prayer for Peace" by Rabbi Nathan of Nemirov (R. Nahman's Boswell),

which he had translated into both English and Arabic.

A

second striking thing about him was a kind of innocence, even naïveté;

there was in him something of the "holy fool" or "A fool of God."

By this, I of course don't mean that there was anything foolish about him: he

was a highly intelligent and educated man. Rather, he had a

certain simplicity, a sense of utter humility and self-abnegation before

God, and a rejection of the cerebral as the standard of human value. This idea

is a central theme in Braslav – one of Reb Nahman's most important stories is about the hakham

vetam, "the wise man and the fool" – but

Moshe lived this quality in an extreme way. When asked, "How are you?," he might answer, "How do I know?" He

really seems to have seen himself as "nothing" – and not just as a

rhetorical flourish. Not surprisingly, he held a particular fondness for the

figure of Reb Zusha of Hanipol, that one among the Hasidic masters who embodied

the quality of being the "holy fool." Indeed, the last shiur that Moshe Klibanoff gave

at Yakar, some time this past winter,

was in honor of Reb Zusha's

Yahrzeit.

May

his memory continue to be a source of blessing, and a model for us all.

Yehonatan Chipman

If you enjoy Shabbat Shalom, please consider contributing towards

its publication and distribution.

• Hebrew edition distributed in Israel

  $700

• English edition distributed via email $

  100

Issues may be dedicated in honor of an event, person, simcha, etc. Requests must be made 3-4 weeks in advance to

appear in the Hebrew, 10 days in advance to appear in the English email.

In Israel,

checks made out to Oz VeShalom may be sent to Oz VeShalom-P.O.B. 4433, Jerusalem

91043. Unfortunately there is no Israeli tax-exemption for local donations.

US and British tax-exempt contributions to Oz VeShalom may be made through:

New Israel

Fund, POB 91588, Washington, DC

20090-1588, USA

New Israel

Fund of Great Britain,

26 Enford Street, London

W1H 2DD, Great Britain

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE NEW ISRAEL

FUND IS NO LONGER ACCEPTING DONATIONS UNDER $100.

PEF will also channel donations and provide a tax-exemption. Donations

should be sent to P.E.F. Israel Endowment Funds, Inc., 317

Madison Ave., Suite 607, New York,

New York 10017

USA

All contributions should be marked as donor-advised to Oz ve'Shalom, the Shabbat Shalom project.

About us

Oz Veshalom-Netivot Shalom is a movement

dedicated to the advancement of a civil society in Israel.

It is committed to promoting the ideals of tolerance, pluralism, and justice,

concepts that have always been central to Jewish tradition and law.

Oz Veshalom-Netivot Shalom shares a deep attachment

to the land of Israel

and it no less views peace as a central religious value. It believes that Jews

have both the religious and the national obligation to support the pursuit of

peace. It maintains that Jewish law clearly requires us to create a fair and

just society, and that co-existence between Jews and Arabs is not an option but

an imperative.

5,000 copies of a 4 page peace oriented commentary on the weekly Torah

reading are written and published by Oz VeShalom/Netivot

Shalom and they are distributed to over 350 synagogues in Israel

and are sent overseas via email. Our web site is www.netivot-shalom.org.il.