Parashath Mas‘ei Numbers (XXXIII,1-XXXVI,13) 7/29/11

A.

אלה מסעי בני ישראל אשר יצאו מארץ מצרים לצבאותם ביד משה ואהרן: (“These [are] the journeys of the bënei Yisra’él who left the land of Egypt in their organized groups by the hand of Moshe and Aharon”). So begins our parasha’s recapitulation of Israel’s wanderings in the desert.

Since these very wanderings have been the main focus of a rather substantial part of the Torah as we have read it week on week up until now, the question presents itself: Why is this recapitulation necessary? What does it add to the account which we have already learnt?

Rashi is bothered by this question, and answers with the Midrash Tanhuma that it serves להודיע חסדיו של מקום כו' משל למלך שהי' בנו חולה והוליכו למקום רחוק לרפאותו כיון שהיו חוזרים התחיל אביו מונה כל המסעות אמר כאן ישננו כאן הוקרנו כאן חששת את ראשך וכו' (“to tell of G-d’s kindnesses... a parable of a king whose son was ill, and he sent him to a far-off place to heal him; when they were returning his father began counting all the stages: Here we slept; here we caught cold; here you suffered a headache....”).

The Book of Exodus opens: ואלה שמות בני ישראל הבאים מצרימה וגו' (“And these [are] the names of the bënei Yisra’él coming to Egypt....”), and the midrash comments by contrasting vë-élle with the conjunctive prefix usually translated “and” with élle (“these”): אלה פסל את הראשונים ואלה מוסיף שבח על הראשונים "אלה תולדות השמים והארץ" פסל לתוהו ובוהו "ואלה שמות" הוסיף שבח על שבעים נפש שנאמר למעלה שכולם היו צדיקים (“‘Élle ’ renders inadequate [pasal] the preceding, ‘vë-élle’ adds praise to the preceding; ‘these are the results of the heavens and the earth’ [Genesis II, 4] renders inadequate the [earlier account of] chaos; ‘and these are the names’ heaps praise upon those seventy souls, for it was said above that all of them were tzaddiqim”; שמות רבה פ"א סי' ב').

Based on this principle, then, it appears that our restatement of the mas‘ei Yisra’él in some fashion invalidates what went before. How does it do that?

B.

The Zohar says of this period: ולא אשתכח חרבא תקיפא בכל עלמא בר ההוא מדבר דתברו חילי' ותקפי' ישראל ארבעים שנה כמה דאת אמר "המוליכך במדבר הגדול והנורא" בההוא מדברא שלטא סיטרא אחרא ובעל כרחי' אזלו ישראל עלי' וחברו חילי' ארבעין שנין ואי ישראל ישתכחו זכאין באינון ארבעין שנין הוה מתעברא ההוא סטרא אחרא מעלמא (“And you will not find a greater waste in all the world than that desert in which Israel broke the strength and effectiveness of [the yétzer ha-ra‘] over forty years, as you say, ‘[Ha-Shem, Who] makes you walk in the great and awful desert’ [Deuteronomy VIII, 15]; in that desert, the Other Side [Sitra Ahara] ruled, and against their will, Israel went into it and gathered its strength over forty years; and if Israel are found meritorious in those forty years, that Sitra Ahara would pass from the world....”; ח"ב קנ"ז. ועיי' ניצוצי אורות שם בשם ר' חיים ויטאל).

Israel entered the desert initially with great joy, fresh from the miraculous rescue from the tyranny of Egypt, and the total submission to the unbounded hedonism which characterized the Egyptian civilization. They were on their way to Mattan Torah, the only guarantor of freedom from hedonistic enslavement, as Hazal famously tell us: "חרות על הלחות" אל תקרא "חרות" אלא "חירות" שאין לך בן חורין אלא מי שעוסק בתלמוד תורה (“‘Engraved upon the tablets’ [Exodus XXXII, 12], read not ‘engraved’ [haruth], but ‘freedom’ [héruth], for none is free save one who engages in Torah study”; אבות פ"ו ה"ג).

When Israel prepared to leave the foot of Sinai after Mattan Torah, they were convinced that they were heading straight for the Holy Land to institute the rule of Torah in this world, as Moshe told his father-in-law: נסעים אנחנו אל המקום אשר אמר ד' אותו אתן לכם ווגו' (“...We are traveling to the place about which Ha-Shem said. I shall give it to you....”; Numbers X, 29).

But, of course, that is not what happened; Moshe sent a scouting expedition into the Holy Land, and they came back with a despairing report of a rich and fertile land whose inhabitants were militarily unconquerable. Only Yëhoshua‘ bin Nun and Kalév ben Yëfunneh dissented from this, the lashon ha-ra‘of the “majority report” brought the waiting bënei Yisra’él to panic, leading to the Divine decree that the generation who had grown up enslaved to the Egyptians, exposed to their inimical culture, would have to perish in the desert. Hence (as the passage from the Zohar cited supra tells us), “against their will” Israel were consigned to the desert, for the last 28 of the 42 stations on the way which our parasha recapitulates.

But the necessary passing of the slave generation, and readying of a new generation of free men prepared to embrace Yëhoshua‘ and Kalév’s “minority report” and proceed with the conquest, is not by itself what made this journey unique, such that it “invalidates” any earlier journey.

C.

The Or ha-Hayyim explains that the “gathering of strength” to which the Zohar refers consisted of collecting ניצוצות דקדושה, “sparks of sanctity” which existed in the howling wastes of this uniquely desolate place. The place was, he tells us, so desolate because it had been previously inhabited by Yishma‘él, Avraham’s first son with Hagar (cf. Genesis XXI, 20). Life in Avraham’s household, Hazal tell us, imbued Yishma‘él with a שאיפה דקדושה, an “ambition for sanctity”, such that he even imagined himself greater than Yitzhaq, his half-brother (עיי' למשל סנהדרין פ"ט:, מדרש תנחומא פרשת וירא סי' י"ח, בראשית רבה פנ"ג סי' ט"ו ופנ"ח סי' ד' ועוד).

However, his weakness of character (his mother, recall, was an Egyptian) rendered him incapable of resisting the only slightly less corrosive character of the related Këna‘ani culture (cf. ibid., 9, Rashi ad loc.) even whilst still benefiting from proximity to the luminous characters of Avraham and Sara. Left to himself in the desert, he declined, and what sanctity he had brought to the wilderness went foul, and became something else. In terms of the Holy Language, what had previously been qadosh (“holy”) had become qadésh, an untranslatable stative form which refers to the prostitution and perversion of sanctity (cf. the word’s use in, e.g., Numbers XVII, 2 and Deuteronomy XXIII, 18), for sanctity is not a state, but a process, and as in any process, one is either progressing or regressing; to be in a “state”, at a stand-still, is to be regressing without acknowledging it.

Yishma‘él, then had in effect “stranded” these sparks of sanctity in the inhospitable wasteland, and they needed to be gathered up, clarified, and returned to their proper condition. Only a Holy Nation who had been through the כור ברזל, the “iron furnace” of Egypt and Egypt’s culture could attempt such a feat, and thereby break and tame the rampant yétzer ha-ra‘ whose culmination, at the end of 26 heedless, lawless generations before Mattan Torah was the wanton hedonism of the Egyptians and Këna‘anim. With their unique, unprecedented desert sojourn, Israel broke the power of this “Other Side” forever, through the redemptive power of Torah, realised in tëshuva.

D.

This also serves both to explain the circumstances of the exile of the individual nëshama in the body in this world, as R’ Hayyim Vital comments on the Zohar supra,and also those of Israel’s present, prolonged exile, for as is often the case, such events have both individual and collective, national implications.

Both exiles are against our will, brought on by Divine decree, in the national case occasioned by the terrible sin of sin’ath hinnam, “groundless hatred” during the Second Temple period (עיי' יומא ט.); the Béyth ha-Miqdash was ruined, and the Holy Nation scattered; even those who remained within the borders of the Holy Land (and dwell there to this day) are included in this exile, for the destruction of the béyth ha-Miqdash heralded the distancing of the Shëchina, the Divine Presence, from our world.

But like the 40-year sojourn in the desert, the purpose of this national exile has likewise been far deeper and more profound; the gathering and clarification of the “sparks of sanctity” spread round the world by the adherents of Western Civilization, heirs of ‘Ésav through Edom, and those remaining sparks of the Yishmë‘élim, as well as the spreading of the light of Torah throughout the world, illuminating its gloom, and drawing to it those who would be drawn (ועיי' בענין זה למשל מכות ט., ריטב"א ורמב"ן שם, רמב"ם הל' מלכים פ"ח הל' י'-י"א, טור יו"ד שס"ז בית יוסף שם ועוד הרבה).

It has been a long exile; as we are now in the Three Weeks, leading up to the anniversary of the Temple’s destruction, we must intensify our tëfilloth, our efforts at tëshuva, to bring it to as successful a conclusion as that forty-year desert sojourn so long ago, and prepare for its restoration and our return home.