Refusing to Give In

By Rabbi Nissim Lagziel

A Joke to Begin With…

At an anti-war demonstration, protesters waved signs and cried out against government policies. One demonstrator with an especially loud and dominant voice repeatedly screamed at the top of his lungs, “I won’t move from here until the war ends!” 

Just at that moment, a bicyclist came riding along and wanted to enter a nearby coffee shop. Unfortunately for him, there didn’t appear to be an available pole to chain his bike to.

He went up to the noisy protester and asked him to raise his hands. Then he chained the bicycle to his waist and started to go…

“What do you think you’re doing?” the protester asked.

“Uh, I made up to have lunch with a friend,” the bicyclist replied.

“And what about the bicycle?” the protester continued to angrily inquire.

“Don’t worry,” the bicyclist replied. “If you won’t move from here until the war is over, I can have lunch, do some shopping, and come back with plenty of time to spare…”

***

This week’s Torah portion, Parshas Beha’aloscha, is a particularly full parsha. It talks about, among many other topics, the offering of the only Korban Pesach in the desert and how a group of Jews who were tamei complained that they wanted to join too. Another episode of complaining in the parsha tells us about how the Jewish People complained about the difficult passage and the shortage of food. The harsh results of the excessive complaining were not long in coming…

One of the questions that crops up whenever we study Parshas Beha’aloscha pertains to the chronological position of the parsha in accordance with the Chumash’s timeline.

Sefer Bamidbar opens with the pasuk: “…On the first day of the second month, in the second year after the exodus from the land of Egypt”, i.e., the first of Iyar 2449. In contrast, the command to offer the Korban Pesach (appearing in this week’s Torah portion) is stated the month before… If so, why is Parshas Beha’aloscha the third parsha of Chumash Bamidbar, and not the first?

True, there is the well-known principle that “there is no chronological order in the Torah”, but what is the reason for arranging the portions this way?

Rashi quickly comes to our aid. “Why did Scripture not begin with this [chapter]? For it is a disgrace to Israel that throughout the forty years the children of Israel were in the desert, they brought only this Pesach sacrifice alone.” (Bamidbar 9:1) The Torah doesn’t want to start an entire book of the Torah with a negative episode about the Jewish People. That’s a fair answer, isn’t it?

However, a brief review of the pesukim in Chumash (Parshas Bo) reveal to us that the children of Israel were never commanded to offer the Pesach sacrifice in the desert! This command was meant to be only after they entered Eretz Yisrael:

“When Hashem will bring you to the land … He promised to your forefathers, you shall observe this service on this month.”

Hashem did command afterwards, at the first anniversary of Yetzias Mitzrayim, that the Korban be brought, but that was an exception!

If such is the case, what is the disgrace in not offering a sacrifice we were not commanded to bring? Is there a problem with not observing the laws of shmittah or not separating t’rumah and ma’aser in the wilderness?

When we learn the rest of the story of the first-and-last Korban Pesach in the desert in depth, we discover the answer to this mystery.

As the parsha continues, the Torah tells us about “men who were ritually unclean [because of contact with] a dead person” (ibid., 9:6), and came to Moshe Rabbeinu with a complaint: “Why should we be excluded so as not to bring the offering of G-d?” (ibid., 9:7)

At first glance, the complaint sounds quite reasonable, however, in the words of the holy Ohr HaChaim, “One has to understand the claim of the men who stated ‘Why should we be excluded?’ Doesn’t the reason given by their own mouths provide the answer – ‘We are ritually unclean’? What is it that they are asking? To give them a new Torah?”

So exactly what did these men want? Reform in religious affairs? A change in the Halacha?

Their status didn’t allow them to bring the Korban and that’s Hashem’s will! They should have accepted it and moved on!

It turns out that there’s no rational claim here; we’re talking about a spontaneous cry that genuinely burst out of them due to the pain of being compelled to give up on offering the Korban Pesach. This cry coming straight from the inner depths of their souls was the very thing that created a new mitzvah – the mitzvah of Pesach Sheini.

The connection between a Jew and Hashem is on two levels. In general, Hashem speaks and we do, Hashem commands and we fulfill His Will, He is the “mashpia” and we are the “mekablim.” This is a connection built upon the fulfillment of the instructions of the Torah, similar to the connection between a master and a servant or between a king and his people. By contrast, there is a deeper and more profound level – here, on this inner plane, the Jew is the “mashpia”, whereas Hashem is, so to say, the “mekabel”!

Through this genuine and heartfelt cry, a Jew is prepared to forge a connection with Hashem Himself, beyond even what was already given in the Torah. Hashem, so called, “digs deep under His Throne of Glory” and grants the pleading Jew his request and introduces into the Torah the ability to connect to Him, even where the Torah itself placed a limit!

Thus, we have the explanation for the claim made by these ritually unclean men – “Why should we be excluded?” They weren’t there to G-d forbid “reform” the Torah. On the contrary, they openly expressed their deepest wishes and personal anguish over losing the opportunity to offer the Pesach sacrifice according to the Torah. In the merit of their fervent pleas, Hashem Himself “got involved” and granted them the mitzvah of Pesach Sheini, as did the entire Jewish People for the generations that followed.

“The disgrace to Israel” is not the fact that they didn’t offer the Korban Pesach in the desert — Hashem didn’t tell them to, rather it is shameful that they didn’t ask for it, demand, and cry out that He let them offer it.

The fact that they didn’t cry out teaches us something quite simple (and shameful…) – we didn’t care about it enough.

***,

This, of course, reminds us of how much the Rebbe pleaded that every Jew should wholeheartedly ask Hashem: “Ad Mosai? How long will it be until You send us Moshiach?!”

Some expressed their criticism over the Rebbe’s conduct: “Hashem has His own plans, and He surely knows how much longer this has to continue. What good will it do if we scream? Anyway, who are we to scream – and why suddenly now, of all times? Perhaps G-d wants (ch”v) to delay the Redemption?”

We can learn the answer to this question from the Pesach Sheini episode. In this story, we see clearly the tremendous power of a Jew’s cry, what a Jew can, so to speak, lead Hashem into doing through a real honest-to-goodness plea from the heart. This cry can literally create something out of nothing, a special commandment from Hashem that was originally not meant to be given, as it were.

The same is true with the cry for the Redemption. It carries a powerful advantage. The cry itself, when it is made truthfully from the depths of our hearts, can hasten the coming of the Redemption and make it happen now! The only thing necessary is for the continuing exile to cause us actual emotional anguish. We must truly long for and anticipate the Redemption, and when the cry will be real the Redemption will come, perhaps solely in the merit of this cry. 

To conclude with a story

Once, the Rebbe Maharash went to see his sons, the Rebbe Rashab and his older brother, Rabbi Zalman Aharon, and he found them sitting and learning a section of Gemara dealing with the intricate laws of the financial claims that a Jewish maid-servant or the female Canaanite slave may present to their owner in Beis Din. The Rebbe Maharash reviewed the sugya for them in all its detail, as he noted that he hadn’t learned this sugya in twenty years!

Afterwards, the Rebbe told his sons: This sugya carries an important teaching. How is it possible that a simple slave-woman could think about all those deep arguments made by the Tanna’im and Amora’im in the Gemara on her behalf?

The answer:

When something is truly relevant to you, even a simple uneducated maidservant can provide the most profound arguments…

A Take-A-Way

Sometimes, it’s shameful to kvetch and complain. Sometimes, it’s shameful if we don’t…

Good Shabbos! ■

Based on Likkutei Sichos, Vol. 23, first sicha on Parshas Beha’aloscha