Good Shabbos!
Thank you to Rabbi Weissman for inviting me, to the board and to
the entire community. Both Sarah and I have felt the extremely warm welcome
that the Plainview community is known for. I’ve already met a number of you,
but we – speaking for both Sarah and myself – would love to meet everyone here.
We will do our best to come and find you, but if we don’t get around to
everyone, please come and introduce yourselves.
Behaloscha is one of the most troubling Parshiyot in the Torah. It
is the climactic moment in which the way the Jews act flips from positive to
negative. Since Shemot the Jews have been reaching new spiritual highs. They
were taken from Egypt, marched through the splitting on of the sea, and
accepted the Torah on Har Sinai with a wonderous spectacle of fire and
lighting. In this weeks Parsha, we have the story of Pesach Sheni where some
Jews were impure and therefore could not do Pesach, and asked to have a
replacement day so they could also have the same spiritual high. But as the
Jews prepare to enter the land of – something detrimental happens. The Jews
start complaining. For the rest of Bamidbar we have complaint after complaint
and the question is what happened. What changed? How are we supposed to look at
the Jews – the same ones who went through the greatest miracles of all times –
who are now complaining about the Ma’an – the heavenly bread, lack of
meat and water?
The Torah
introduces the topic of the complaints of the Jews by describing them as “misonenim.”
The simple translation that your chumash will have is “complainers.” However, this
word is rarely used elsewhere in the Tanach which makes it very hard to
translate. The classical commentators all try to give an exact translation of
the word:
· Rashi explains misonen – singular of misonenim – as similar to “misLonen’,
which would mean a baseless complaint.
· Ibn Ezra feels that the word misonen is similar to an ‘ovon’
– a spiritual misdeed – in which case the aleph and ayin are exchanged.
However,
interpretation of the Kli Yakar is extremely powerful and sheds light on
the way we need to perceive change. He translates the word ‘misonenim’ as
related to the word ‘onen’, which is a person who has just heard about
the death of an immediate relative. The Jews were ‘mourning’ the fact that they
were now restricted from many previously acceptable activities now that they
had received the Torah. They felt constricted by all the commandments and in
this overwhelmed mindset produced all these complaints.
However,
according to the Kli Yakar, why would the Torah not use the term ‘aveil’
instead of ‘onen’?
I heard a beautiful explanation from Rabbi Ya’akov Horowitz.
There is a major difference between an aveil and an onen.
The avel is a person during the shiva period. They need to sit on
the floor and mourn their loss. However, the aveilus period only begins
after the burial, when the news has already been largely processed by the
mourners. The onen, on the other hand, is the person who just heard the
news and has had no time to process yet. They are in complete shock and mental
devastation. In Rav Soloveichik’s words, they are so mentally disctracted that
they are like a minor and therefore patur from all mitzvot. This
person has no emotional ability to do mitzvot which is why the Torah
makes him patur.
The Jews went from being slaves in Egypt – the lowest place in
terms of morality and spirituality – to the greatest spiritual heights at the
foot of Har Sinai in only a few weeks. There was no time for them to process
this change.
It is in this parsha that they start feeling the shock of
what happened – and so to say “the rubber meets the road”. They reacted to the
change in and understandably emotionally overwhelmed way. This is why the Torah
prefaces all the stories of the complaints with “Vayehi ha’om kemisonenim”
The nation was similar to onenim. Just as a mourner is in a state of
shock by the sudden death of a loved one, so too, the Jews in the desert were
stunned by their meteoric rise from penniless slaves to a prosperous group of
noble men and women who were given the sacred mission of becoming Hashem’s
Chosen People.
Hashem is telling us that while the Jews did not act proper by
complaining, we need to put the stories into perspective by realizing shock
that they went through – they were onenim.
In a similar vein, a study was recently conducted on lottery
winners – five and ten years after they had won million-dollar-plus jackpots –
and a shocking percentage of the people reported that their lives had
disintegrated. It happened too quickly, they said, and they simply were not
prepared to deal with their great fortune. It was like a thirsty person
drinking from a fire hydrant with the water running full force.
While the grandeur of the Jews leaving Egypt was incredible and we
celebrate it every Pesach, this parsha shows us that the Jews were not truly
ready for such a fast transition. It is for that reason they would not be the
generation that conquered the land of Israel. It would be their children who
grew up with the Torah and the restrictions and obligations that would be
better suited to enter the land of Israel.
Transition is difficult. This can be from different stages of child
development to taking on new levels of Torah observance. The Torah is telling
us the importance of working on ourselves step by step. Taking on too much or
transitioning to quickly in usually unsustainable.
I hear that this week is celebrating the recent school graduates.
Mazal Tov on such an amazing milestone and I wish you success in your continued
journeys. As you continue your journey, remember, you are not expected to
become perfect overnight or to do things as fast as possible. It is about
absorbing everything at the right pace.
David Hamelech said this very nicely in Mishlei
“ה֭וֹן מֵהֶ֣בֶל יִמְעָ֑ט וְקֹבֵ֖ץ עַל־יָ֣ד יַרְבֶּֽה׃”
“He who takes
much at once will lose it all, but if you collect bit by bit it will grow.”
Good Shabbos.