Category: In the Wilderness

The Parashah of Chukat presents one of the most tragic and foundational moments in the Bible: the sin of the waters of strife. After Miriam’s death, the people are left without water and begin to complain.
God commands Moses and Aaron to take the staff, gather the people, and speak to the rock before their eyes. However, Moses, deep in mourning and exhausted by the constant complaints, turns to the people in anger:
"Listen now, you rebels, shall we bring forth water for you from this rock?" Instead of speaking, Moses strikes the rock twice. The water does come out, but the punishment is ruthless: Moses and Aaron will not merit leading the people to the promised land.
Rabbi Sacks explains that this was not a petty punishment, but rather a change of generations and a revolution in the concept of leadership. The generation born in the desert, the generation of freedom that was about to enter the land and build an independent society,
He no longer needed leadership of coercion, fear, and brute force (symbolized by whipping). He needed leadership of speech, persuasion, education, and patience.
The Torah here sets up an eternal warning sign against tyrannical leadership, teaching that even when a leader acts with good intentions, the use of coercion and anger disqualifies his leadership.
The historical irony is that thousands of years later, in 1611, King James I of England tried to use the Bible to achieve the exact opposite.
King James, who firmly believed in the "divine right of kings" to rule without limits, detested previous translations (like the Geneva Bible) that included marginal notes justifying rebellion against tyrants. He initiated the "King James Version" (KJV) with a clear political objective: to produce a text that would teach blind obedience to authority.
The translators were instructed to soften the text, and even diligently deleted the word "tyrant" from the Bible so that the people would not associate royal rule with tyranny.
A striking example of how this political move received a "reverse message" can be found in our case, in the chapter about the king in Deuteronomy (Chapter 17),
The Torah sets strict limitations on the king in Israel, intended to prevent the king from becoming a military and economic tyrant.
King James wanted the English people to read these verses and see them as evidence of the centrality and sacredness of the monarchy – a position of an absolute ruler who must be obeyed.
He hoped the people would understand the leader's role as one who holds the "rod of correction" and supreme authority. But he forgot that the biblical text is stronger than any translator or king.
English readers, and later the Puritans who emigrated to America, read the King James translation with critical eyes. They did not see justification for tyranny there, but precisely the opposite:
They saw that the King of Israel was limited in his power, that the Torah demanded humility from him, and that the greatest rulers (like Moses) were severely punished when they exceeded their authority and used force.
The parashah of Chukat and additional parashot reminded them that divinity is not found in royal might, but in justice and righteousness. In the end, the very text that was supposed to create obedient subjects,
Became the greatest manifesto of freedom and revolution against tyranny.
I believe this lesson from the foundational and important book of Jewish tradition is particularly important for us as Israelis these days.
The surprise that was prepared for King James attests to how politically significant and relevant the Bible is.
On the way to elections in Israel, the message of the constitutional case indicates that changing leadership is not just a matter of replacing the leader but a change in the style of leadership.
The time comes when even the leadership of a revered figure like Moses requires adaptation to a new generation of freedom rising to independent life in the Land of Israel – "to be a free nation in our land.".
In those days, in this time.

Shabbat Shalom!
Rani

I'll start with a personal confession,
The parashah 'Korach' is perhaps my least favorite parashah in the entire Torah.
This is a portion that denounces independent, critical thinking, and the right to criticize the leader, the chosen of God.,
And indeed, there are many leaders who claim to be God's chosen.
The parashah speaks out against the right of rebellion, "and they rose up before Moses" (Num. 16:2), the right of assembly: "and they gathered together against Moses" (Num. 16:3), and the right of protest.
And the text emphasizes that these are not marginal figures, but "two hundred and fifty heads of the Karaite community, men of renown" (16:2).
Moses" initial reaction: "And Moses heard, and fell on his face" (16:4).
Some commentators explain that he did so out of distress, while according to another opinion, he prostrated himself before God to ask Him to reveal to him what he should answer and what he should do. In my critical reading,
And in the spirit of current slang, Moshe's reaction was "the worst.".
However, later in the incident, when God informs Moses and Aaron of the punishment He intends to inflict upon the rebels, "they shall be separated from this community,",
"and will consume them right now" (Num. 16:22), Moses and Aaron gather themselves and this time their response is: "God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one man sin and You be wrathful with the entire community?" (Num. 16:22).
This response echoes Abraham's response in his argument with God, in his attempt to save Sodom from destruction. In Moses' case, his claim against divine judgment,
 Here is evidence of a sense of responsibility for the entire community, a collective responsibility, unlike his initial reaction, which stemmed from personal insult and selfish motives.
And Moses, in order to emphasize before the people that he is not motivated by personal reasons, says, "Hereby you shall know that the Lord has sent me to do all these deeds,
 For it is written (TLBZ 28), and it even adds, "And you shall know that these men have rejected the LORD" (TLBZ 30). The rebellion is presented as a rebellion against the LORD, and not just against the chosen of the LORD, Moses and Aaron.
And despite the terrible punishment of Korah and his company, and the divine intervention – the acceptance of Aaron's offering – the protest did not subside and even spread and intensified.
 "All the congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron, saying, 'You have killed the people of the Lord."" (Num. 17:6).
God is angry with the people and a plague breaks out, which Aaron manages to stop with the incense. But the lesson is that neither the incense gives life nor the incense causes death, but rather the will of God.
The incense, which was an expression of Aaron's election by God, now functions to save the people from the plague. God's choice of the High Priest, Aaron, is a responsibility and obligation to act for the people.
The work of the Levites in the Tabernacle is defined by Moses as the separation of the Levites from the congregation of Israel: "to bring you near to Him, to do the service of the Tabernacle of the Lord, and to stand before the congregation to minister to them" (16:9).
The word "to sacrifice," which Moses uses, has a double meaning. The Levites were brought close to the service of God, brought close to the sanctuary. But this closeness is also a sacrifice, for they are servants of the community in the sanctuary.
This is a task and mission for generations to come.
An entire chapter at the end of the Torah portion is dedicated to describing the rights and obligations of the Levites and priests, emphasizing the fact that the Levites have no inheritance like the other tribes.
They are dedicated to sacred service; their existence depends on the tithe the people are commanded to set aside for them, and they too must set aside a tithe for God – for the priests.
"They shall not share in the inheritance of the Israelites. (18:23)" God's choice of the Levites and priests is not an advantage, but a sacrifice, a calling, and a commitment.
And the desert section to my right, here and now.
If we read the Parsha of 'Korach' as a continuation of the Parsha of 'Shlach Lecha' – the Parsha of the Spies – it emerges that a period of turmoil and uncertainty breeds factionalism, jealousy, and envy.
And one can hope that as reality changes, the disputes will be settled...
And from the lesson of the portion, since holding office is not a privilege, but a dedication to holiness, rises the hope that those who serve in "holiness" and those close to power,
This proximity will also be seen as a sacrifice, of working for the good of the people and the country.

The parashah "Shelach Lecha" (in the Book of Numbers, chapters 13-15) primarily deals with the sending of the twelve spies to scout the land of Canaan, and also includes the punishment of the one who gathered wood on Shabbat and the mitzvah of tzitzit.

The sin of the spies led to the decree of 40 years of wandering in the desert. According to Yona Bar-Maoz of Bar-Ilan University, the instruction to send spies to scout the land is attributed to God, and their careful selection as well, 'all of them chiefs among the children of Israel,' was "at the command of the Lord" (Numbers 13:3). Nevertheless, the outcome of the mission was very negative and unexpected; the spies did indeed begin with praise for the land: "We came to the land to which you sent us.'
"And also milk and honey it flows and this is its fruit' (Numbers 13:27), but immediately added and argued that its conquest would be problematic: 

For the people who live in the land are very strong and the cities are very large and fortified, and we saw the descendants of the giants there. Amalek dwells in the land of the Negev, and the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the hill country. 

The sin of instilling fear in the people was not the main sin of the chosen spies, but another, surprising sin: 

and they brought up an evil report of the land The land that we passed through to explore is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people we saw in it were men of great size (Numbers 13:32). 

It seems that speaking ill of the land was particularly severe, as it could have affected the second generation of the Israelites leaving Egypt, not just the current generation, which naturally struggled to transition from a mental state of servitude to one of freedom. 

If the younger generation believes that the land is not good, as ten chosen men of good standing have said, they might even sin like their predecessors and wish to return to Egypt.

The swift death of all ten distinguished individuals, due to speaking ill of the land, convinced every listener that they had indeed lied, while Caleb and Joshua were correct in their claim: "The land is very, very good" (Numbers 14:7). 

The evil report about the land affected the spirit of the people and their sense of ability to fulfill the divine vision. Perhaps if all 12 spies, chosen by God, had returned with enthusiasm from the promised land,
And strengthening the divine promise made to them several times, that they were going to the "Land flowing with milk and honey," their listeners would have responded differently. They might have rushed enthusiastically toward the first destination that crossed their path, and the first victory would have strengthened their spirits and proven to them that conquering the entire land was possible with God's help. 

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks argued that the spies who instilled fear in the hearts of the people did so because of the difficulty of detaching themselves from the warm embrace of God, who was within the camp, protecting it through miracles, wonders, and signs, and providing them with manna. Their mentality was that of slaves who could not break free from their dependency and go to war, to human battles that would inevitably involve sacrifices. Therefore, it was necessary to eradicate the generation and raise a new generation, one that was not a generation of slaves.

And I thought about the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel, which took place on Friday, the 5th of Iyar, 5708, May 14, 1948. Ben-Gurion, a relatively old man who was already over 60, had to make a fateful decision against the backdrop of the threatening giants of his time: Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt, who threatened to invade and fight the young state. He had no divine promise, nor a promise of miracles. But he had a connection to the sources and a vision, and he made a historic decision despite the expected war with the giants.

Sovereignty in the Bible and in today's reality is not granted to a nation on a silver platter. Sovereignty requires the courage to make decisions, faith, and sacrifice.

A. The Problem: The Desert Madness Routine
Parashat Behaalotecha presents us with one of the most fascinating – and psychologically exhausting – descriptions of the life of the Children of Israel in the Sinai Desert. The Torah describes in unusual length how the entire camp moved according to the movement of the Divine Presence cloud.
"And when the cloud was lifted from over the Tabernacle, the Israelites would set out, and in the place where the cloud settled, there they would encamp. . . . Sometimes the cloud would remain from evening until morning, and when the cloud lifted in the morning, they would set out. . . . or for two days, or for a month, or for days [a year] . . ." (Numbers 9:17-22)

Try for a moment to imagine this situation on a human, everyday level. Entire families, elderly people, children, tents, animals, and possessions. You arrive at a station, unload your equipment, set up the tent, and get the kids settled for sleep. In the morning, you wake up, the cloud lifts – and you have to pack everything up and set off again. On the other hand, sometimes you are parked in a desolate, boring, and uncomfortable spot, and you are stuck there for a whole year without knowing when you'll be able to move.
There is no schedule. There is no five-year plan. There is no ability to plan for tomorrow. The Torah presents us with a reality of extreme uncertainty, nerve-wracking, and almost impossible to control.

B. The Distant View: Israeli Helplessness and Japanese Awareness
I am writing these words from Japan, where I have been for the past few months. Observing Israel from here evokes deep thoughts about this concept, uncertainty.
The current Israeli reality feels exactly like the desert in the Parshat Behaalotecha. Israeli society is living within a thick cloud of immense and exhausting uncertainty: Will war break out again in the north? What will happen with Iran? When will elections be held? The collective feeling in the country is that we have lost the ability to plan even a week ahead. This uncertainty breeds constant anxiety, deep frustration, and a sense of helplessness.
But here in Japan, in the heart of a culture of over a hundred million people, completely removed from Jewish tradition, I encountered a very different worldview.
In Japanese tradition, conceptually and culturally, there is a fundamental Buddhist concept called "Anicca" - the law of impermanence. According to it, the natural state of the world is that everything flows, changes, and is temporary. Nothing is permanent: not the political situation, not health, nor the weather. The Japanese developed an entire philosophy called Mono no aware.
(Mono no aware), meaning the awareness and sensitivity to the transience of existence
While we, in the West and in Israel, perceive impermanence as a disaster and a threat to be fought, Japanese culture actually finds beauty and inner peace in it. The most familiar example is the cherry blossom (sakura) – it is beautiful and celebrated with immense excitement precisely because it lasts a week or two and then falls. The Japanese do not try to stop the cloud or time; they practice accepting the present moment, the "here and now.".

C. The Solution: What happened at the graves of craving?
And here we return to our portion, and discover that the Torah and Japanese wisdom meet in the exact same place.
Immediately after the description of the journey following the cloud, the people in the desert broke. The psychological burden of uncertainty overwhelmed them. They became "complalers," and cried at the graves of craving: "Who will feed us meat? We remember the fish that we ate in Egypt for free... and now our soul is dried up, there is nothing but the manna before our eyes.".
Psychologically, the people are sinning by fleeing. When they are unable to bear the uncertainty of the desert, they flee into a false nostalgia for the past—for Egypt. Although they were beaten slaves there, at least everything was fixed and known in advance. They are fed up with the manna.
What is manna? Manna is the ultimate food of the "here and now." It is given out day by day, and it cannot be stored for tomorrow (because it will rot), and it requires man to rely on the present. The people hated manna because manna forced them to live in that moment, without existential guarantees for the future.
The solution that the parsha offers us—and which harmoniously resonates with Japanese Zen—is the understanding that holiness does not reside in stability and absolute security, but rather in the ability to let go of control and dwell within the present moment. The pillar of cloud was not meant to stress the people, but to train them. The desert is a tough school for accepting impermanence. God tells them, and also us: You cannot control the cloud, you cannot know when you will travel and when you will return. The only thing you can control is how you behave in this moment, within your tent, with the people beside you.

D. Conclusion: Finding Calm Within the Cloud
The complex and painful Israeli reality will not change tomorrow morning. The threats and political and security upheavals will continue to accompany us for a long time.
But perhaps, this practice of the cloud page, combined with a bit of the quiet and humility of Japanese wisdom, could offer us a little relief.
Instead of exhausting our strength on existential anxiety about a future beyond our control, or on nostalgia for a past that is no longer, we can choose to focus on the "manna" of today. In the present. In our ability to build supportive and sensitive communities, like in an Israeli house of prayer; in the ability to meet the other, to sit around a Shabbat table, to listen, and to find moments of peace, sanity, and holiness within the fleeting nature of the journey.
The external reality may not change immediately, but who knows – our full and stable presence within the "now" can, in the end, wonderfully impact tomorrow. Shabbat Shalom

Parshat Naso, the second parsha in the Book of Numbers, continues the preparations for the dedication ceremony of the Tabernacle.
At the beginning, the sons of the tribe of Levi are counted, who were chosen to carry the tabernacle from place to place. Their very small number in relation to the other tribes presents difficulties in itself, and also in relation to the number of firstborns (22,273), which the Levites replace (out of over 600,000 Israelites, only one in 27 or more is counted as a firstborn).
The portion concludes with the dedication of the altar and the sacrifices of the tribal princes, and the list of gifts brought by each prince is repeated exactly 12 times (perhaps to show that the size of the tribe does not matter, or alternatively, that none of them were willing to have their name omitted from the list of gifts).
In the middle are three eclectic portions concerning ritual purity and impurity (the command to remove lepers and other impure persons from the camp, the laws of the Nazirite, and the strangest of all, the "Sotah portion" dealing with a magical ritual to identify women suspected of adultery).
The trial process of a woman who strayed refers to a woman who was warned to stop isolating herself with a man who is not her husband, yet she was found to persist in this behavior and is therefore suspected of adultery. During the ritual, she is required to drink bitter waters into which verses of imprecation (the curse) from the Torah portion (Numbers 5:18-22) are erased from a parchment. These verses include the text, among others, 'May the LORD make you a curse and an oath among your people, when the LORD causes your thigh to waste away and your belly to swell. May these bitter waters that bring a curse enter your body, causing your belly to swell and your thigh to waste away.' Drinking the bitter waters ends in one of two outcomes: either the woman emerges unharmed from the event, thereby proving her innocence and gaining a healthy offspring and renewed trust in her marriage, or she experiences severe pain and even dies if she is guilty. In any case, this is a supernatural process that includes many elements that contradict fundamental principles of legal process and justice according to Halakha.
First, unlike ordinary legal proceedings, which the relevant parties must attend, a woman suspected of adultery has the right to refuse to participate in the ceremony. In such a case, she is permitted to agree to the decision to dissolve her marriage and forfeit any right to payments due to her by virtue of the marriage contract (Mishnah Sota 4:2).
This is surprising because if the court had convicted her of adultery, she could have been sentenced to death – yet she is given the option to avoid legal proceedings if that is her wish.
Furthermore, direct intervention by the Creator in a dispute between man and his fellow man is not found in any other instance (and as Ramban notes (Numbers 5:20), this is the only commandment in the Torah whose fulfillment, in the case where the woman is found guilty, depends on a miracle). After drinking the bitter waters, "her belly swelled and her thigh fell away." In all matters between one man and another, we find a clear procedure whereby the responsibility for judgment in cases between man and his fellow man is given solely to the judges sitting in the courts (Deuteronomy 17:11). And perhaps this is also the place to mention that even in matters between man and the Creator, the Sages have removed the Creator's opinion from the discussion (Bava Metzia 59b - the oven of Akhnai).
Why, then, does the Creator of the world have a role in resolving this particular conflict?
Rabbi Aharon Soloveitchik believes that the purpose of the ceremony is the opposite of what is apparent, and when one carefully reads Tractate Sotah, it appears that its purpose is actually the rehabilitation of the relationship between husband and wife.
According to Rabbi Soloveitchik, the entire ceremony is a complex psychodrama designed to provide an opportunity to salvage a marriage on the line. If the wife is at fault, she has a low-risk alternative in the choice not to participate in the ceremony and instead to dissolve her marriage. Conversely, if she is not at fault, the ceremony gives her the opportunity to face the risk and show that she is confident in her marital fidelity.
The ceremony is not in line with the rules because its goals are not legal (and therefore the partner suspected of an affair is not a participant in the process at all) but rather rehabilitative, and it creates a platform for the dissolution or rehabilitation of the marriage.
And in contemplation of our present day. In the Mishnah (Sotah, 9:9) it is written that at a certain point, 'the waters of bitterness ceased' due to the changing needs and realities among the Jewish people. Similarly, the mitzvah of yibbum (levirate marriage), which was practiced and accepted in the past in cases where a married man died without children, has disappeared, and in our time, the default option is to perform chalitzah, which exempts the widow from marrying her deceased husband's brother.
It seems that as norms change, the adherence to the Torah and the preservation of its values are adapted to our changing world, and there is room to adapt current Halakha in other areas, such as agunot and refusal to grant a get.
On second thought - perhaps all the great effort surrounding the breakup of a single family stems from the Sages" answer to the existential question, "So what do you do all day?"
The Midrash (Genesis Rabbah 68:4) tells of a matron who asked Rabbi Yossi ben Chalaphta what the Holy One, Blessed be He, has been doing since the creation of the world. Rabbi Yossi replied: 'He sits and matches couples: This man's daughter with that man, this man's wife with that man, this man's money with that man.'.

The matron scorned the answer, claiming that matchmaking was an easy task she could perform herself. Rabbi Yosi replied to her: "If it is easy in your eyes, it is difficult before the Holy One, blessed be He, like the parting of the Red Sea.".
God of the universe sees his work falling apart and decides to intervene.
In previous parshiyot, I mentioned the importance of leadership that knows how to stand by essentials when facing a major event (Abraham in the argument over the fate of Sodom, Moses in "Blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book, which thou hast written" after the sin of the calf). Parshat Sotah shows us an example where the Creator commands to erase His name (erasing the verses that include God's name into the bitter waters) from the book in order to save one household.
And from here – to our lives.
While success is not guaranteed, if the Creator is willing to have His name erased in the case of a wayward woman to promote harmony and prevent injustice, surely we are called to do our part to ensure justice for those who have been wronged and for harmony to prevail in our homes.
Shabbat Shalom!

What we read this week in Parshat Bamidbar echoes our current reality. A year and a month after leaving Egypt, the Children of Israel are in the Sinai Desert. Now they are beginning to organize. God speaks to Moses in the Tent of Meeting and asks him and Aaron to take a census of all the congregation of the Children of Israel, according to their families. This is a broad bureaucratic undertaking; each family is assigned a chief of staff, who is mentioned by name.

Whom do they count in the census? Only the males! Twenty years old and above, who are eligible for military service. (This refers to those fit to serve, not those who have completed their service and are leaving the army, as is common in modern Hebrew.) The text provides a meticulous breakdown and summary of the numbers of those counted, the name of the tribe and the families composing it, its structure, and its roles. This census is detailed for each of the tribes: Reuben, Simeon, Gad, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph (Ephraim and Manasseh), Benjamin, Dan, Asher, Naphtali... until the tribe of Levi is reached.

Here God gives a completely different instruction: "But you shall not take a census of the tribe of Levi, nor count them among the children of Israel. Instead, you shall assign the Levites to the tabernacle of the testimony, and to all its furnishings, and to all that belongs to it. They shall carry the tabernacle and all its furnishings, and they shall serve it, and they shall encamp around the tabernacle..." (Chapter 1; 49-50)

The Levites receive a different task, not one for army veterans. The descendants of Levi are entrusted with the Tabernacle; they must carry the Tabernacle and its vessels and are obligated to camp around it and serve in it. Any descendant of another tribe who approaches the place will die.

The Children of Israel accept the decision and organize themselves for camping. Each tribe is marked by its own flag and receives instructions on where to camp.

In contrast to the census of the rest of the Israelites, the census of the descendants of Levi is detailed by their families: Gershon, Kehath, and Merari. And from which tribe? They are counted not from the age of twenty, like the rest of the Israelites, but from one month old. The text specifies precisely the role of each family and where they are encamped to guard the Tabernacle. The descriptions of their duties for sacred use are numerous and beautiful: they removed ashes from the altar, covered it with curtains of blue and badger skins, and mentioned are censers, forks, and various vessels for carrying out the task. The extensive detail suggests that this was a very important task, but it was also dangerous. God commands that the descendants of Kehath be protected so that they not be struck down for approaching the Tent of Meeting in the Holy Tabernacle.

Let's bring this up to the present day. Do you think modern-day Haredim see themselves as if they, like the tribe of Levi, have been exempted from the obligation of military service that the rest of the Bnei Yisrael have? Is the root of the matter here, in the Parashat Bamidbar? Do Haredim today believe that they, and only they, have been entrusted with the role of guarding the Bnei Yisrael, the work of the Mishkan, the Torah, and God? In your opinion, is the task of preserving the heritage of the people of Israel solely in their hands?

I want to suggest that we, the Zionist sons of Israel, also have a significant role in preserving heritage and preserving the people of Israel. Lift your heads and stand tall!

Today's Zionists revived the existence of the people of Israel in their land: we have become, for example, "Bnei Dan," people of "Mateh Asher," "IDF veterans." Zionists brought the Hebrew language back to being a spoken language, thereby preserving the Hebrew tradition, which also allows us all to read the Bible in its original language and keep the Torah as a foundational text in our lives. And also – the Zionist Jews returned the use of beautiful Hebrew names that we encounter here in the Parashah of Bamidbar: Nachshon, Amminadab, Nathanael, Eliab, Elizur, Zuriel, Elisaph, Ammihud, Pedahzur, Abidan, Nadab, Abihu, Labani, Gersoni, and many, many more...

So, in my opinion, the preservation of the heritage of the Children of Israel and the people of Israel is also in our hands, the Israeli Zionists of the twenty-first century. With all due respect.

At the same time, my true hope is to reach a comprehensive understanding that every tribe in the people of Israel has a role in preserving our heritage. The whole is indeed greater than the sum of its parts. We must find the connector, the common good, or at least strive to reach it.