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EACH ONE BY ITS CONTINGENT,
UNDER THE INSIGNIAS OF THE FATHER'S HOUSE, SHALL THE CHILDREN OF
(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
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
(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
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
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
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
the Lord - You will call Me Ishi [my man], And no more will you call me Ba'ali
[my husband-master].
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
with righteousness and justice, and with goodness and with mercy, and I will
betroth you with faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord.
And
I will betroth you –The betrothal is between God and
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
righteousness and justice, and with goodness and with mercy, and I will betroth
you with faithfulness, on the condition that and you shall know the Lord.
The actualization in reality of the covenant between
(Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, z"l, He'arot le'Parshiyot ha'Shavu'a pp. 78-88)
And all the people saw the
voices and the torches, the sound of the shofar, and
the smoking mountain, and the people saw and trembled; so
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)
Our condolences to our member
Leah Klibanoff upon the death of her father,
Rabbi Moshe Klibanoff
z'l,
A
man of truth, justice, kindness, and peace.
May Heaven console you in your
commitment to the values of justice and peace.
The Editorial Board of Shabbat
Shalom
Oz Ve'Shalom
- Netivot Shalom
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
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
Shabbat Shalom is
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