A Joyful Burden – Parshat Bamidbar

Printable PDF available here.

Last year’s post on Bamidbar is available here.

Rav Kook (Ein Ayah, Gemara Shabbat 92a)

Aaron and his sons shall finish covering the Holy and all the vessels of the Holy when the camp is set to travel, and following that, the children of Kehat shall come to carry [them], but they shall not touch the sacred objects for [then] they will die. These are the burden of the children of Kehat for the Tent of Meeting. (Bamidbar 4:15)

[In matters of Hilchot Shabbat, one is normally only liable if they perform a prohibited act in an ordinary manner.] R. Elazar taught regarding the prohibition of carrying (lit. הוצאה) that one who carries an item above ten tefachim is liable, because we find that this is how the children of Kehat carried the sacred items of the Mishkan. (Gemara Shabbat 92a)

Unlike the angels, man’s feet are planted on terra firma, and it is the surface of this world that serves as the domain of his activity and initiative. Man cannot – and G-d does not expect him to – totally transcend his earthly nature and rise heavenward with his entire essence, with all of his existence and aspirations. G-d created us as physical beings and not angels. Our Sages expressed precisely this thought when they taught (Gemara Sukkah 5a) that the Shechina, the Divine Presence, never descended below ten tefachim above the ground, nor did Moshe or Eliahu ascended beyond ten tefachim above the ground. It appearsthat this isn’t meant only  on a literal level. Rather, our Sages are telling us not only that despite His act of revelation, G-d remains transcendent and hovers above our earthly reality, not becoming merged and constrained by it. But they are also teaching us that our human reality is limited and inseparable from the earthly world that we live in.

However, R. Elazar comes in Gemara Shabbatand provides a fuller picture. It is true that we are unable to entirely transcend our earthly nature. But our task and sacred obligation in this world rests precisely upon what we carry “above ten tefachim,” in the G-dly realm. Our task, which we must express in action and ethical values, at every moment and in every place, is to serve as bearers of G-dliness in this physical world. This is not an abberant, burdensome consciousness that bursts into our reality from the transcendent heavenly spheres. It is the most normal and natural form of existence, for which G-d has designated us and created us. This is the deeper meaning of R. Elazar’s teaching that “one who carries an item above ten tefachim is liable, because we find that this is how the children of Kehat carried the sacred items of the Mishkan.”

Food for Thought

Rav Samson Raphel Hirsch (Collected Writings Vol. 9, pg. 127): Jewish ideology does not teach destroying the earth to reach the heavens, but rather lifting up the earth toward heaven. It teaches that all earthly endeavors of man are to be a sanctuary unto God, that all the earth be raised into an altar of God, and that God’s glory descend upon earth. Heaven and earth are no longer to be contrasts; heaven and earth are to embrace; life to come is to blossom already on earth. Jewish pride consists not in overcoming death but in rising above earthly life, and adorning an earthly, fleeting life with heavenly, eternal blossoms.

Gemara Erachin (11a): The requirement for the Levites to accompany the Temple offerings with song is derived from here: “But unto the sons of Kehat he gave no wagons, because the service of the holy things belonged to them – they bore them [yisa’u] upon their shoulders” (Bamidbar7:9). By inference from that which is stated, “upon their shoulders,” don’t I already know that they “bore” them? Why must the Torah state “yisa’u”? The answer is that it conveys a deeper level of meaning, of “yisa’u” in the sense of an expression of song. And similarly, the verse states: “Take up [se’u] the melody, and sound the timbrel,” and another verse states: “They lift up [yisu] their voice, they sing for joy.”

Rav Aharon Lichtenstein (Mah Enosh”: Reflections on the Relation between Judaism and Humanism):  Judaism has regarded the nature of man in the light of a basic antinomy. On the one hand, man is a noble, even an exalted being. His spiritual potential and metaphysical worth are rooted in his tzelem Elokim, “the image of G-d” with which his Creator has invested him. The phrase is doubly significant. It describes man’s metaphysical essence, on the one hand, and it suggests a kinship on the other. “Beloved is man that he is created with an image. Particular love is manifested to him in that he is created in G-d’s image, as it is said, ‘For in the image of G-d He made man.’” Man was imbued with a transcendental spark—endowed with personality, intelligence, and freedom—because divine grace destined him for a special relation with itself. Individually and collectively, man is therefore the object of particular Providence, and, as a spiritual being, a subject capable of engaging his personality in a dialectical community with G-d.

Faith in the essential worth of man, independently considered, is basic to Judaism. As regards his relative cosmic position, however, the tradition has harbored conflicting views. Thus, Maharal placed man at the very apex of creation, while Rambam insisted the angels were ontologically superior. Similarly, Rambam strongly rejected the notion, often cherished by humanists, that the universe as a whole exists solely in order to serve man. Just as G-d willed the existence of man, so He willed that of other beings, each for its own sake…Yet numerous texts expound the very position the Rambam rejects…

On the one hand, then, man is regarded as a majestic and exalted being. And yet, on the other, we are confronted by the radical pessimism of Kohelet: “For that which befalls the sons of men befalls beasts; even one thing befalls them; as the one dies, so dies the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that man’s pre-eminence over the beast is naught, for all is vanity.” For devotees of biblical criticism, it would of course be easy to dismiss this apparent contradiction on historical grounds, to regard the conflicting statements as the contrasting expressions of individual personalities or the Zeitgeist of different periods. Not only easy, however, but facile. The Rabbis, in any event, thought otherwise. They insisted on incorporating both attitudes in adjacent passages of one of the oldest and most august of our standard prayers, the ne‘ilahrecited at the end of Yom Kippur:

What are we? What is our life? What is our goodness? What our virtue? What our help? What our strength, what our might? What can we say to Thee, Lord our G-d and G-d of our fathers? Indeed, all the heroes are as nothing in Thy sight, the men of renown as though they never existed, the wise as without knowledge, the intelligent as without insight. For the multitude of their actions is empty and the days of their life vanity in Thy sight; and man’s pre-eminence over the beast is naught, for all is vanity. Yet, from the first Thou didst single out man and acknowledged him [as worthy] to stand in Thy presence….

Rav Yehuda Amital (Jewish Values in a Changing World, pg. 195): There has been a tendency in recent years to idealize great rabbis, to the point of total disregard of their human feelings and weaknesses. The Torah presents the opposite approach: Every person has a human side, which must not be denied. Even the prophets had doubts and difficulties. The Torah recognizes that man lives in this world, and has no expectation that he behave as if he were living in an ideal and unreal universe.

Derashot haRan (#5): For a man has two orientations, an upper orientation and a lower one; when he reflects upon and perfects himself in the realm of intellect and cultivates good character, he breaks away from the terrestrial and rises upwards; and when he leaves the realm of intellect and inclines to the material, he descends downwards. This is intimated in the visions of our father Jacob in the dream of the ladder, (Bereishit 28:12): “And, behold, the angels of G-d ascending and descending on it.” It was revealed to him that that place was propitious for prophecy and that from it men could rise to perfect themselves, but that so long as they were alive it was impossible that this be a continuous, unbroken rising, but that, rather, they would rise so long as they occupied themselves with the needs of their souls and fall to the extent that they ceased from this to occupy themselves with the needs of their bodies. And the implication to be drawn from this was, as far as possible, to increase those things which abet rising and decrease those which compel falling.

Questions for Discussion/Further Thought

1. How does the gemara in Erachinin “Food for Thought” above connect to Rav Kook’s ideas?
2. Much of modern society regards religion in general, and Orthodoxy Judaism in particular, as something aberrant and abnormal. Where do we differ with them and why are they wrong?
3. Rav Kook writes that G-d does not expect people to totally transcend their physical nature. Where in the Torah or halacha do we find this expressed?
4. Is it ironic that the Torah’s message about the normalcy of man’s spiritual side is derived from the generation of the Midbar? Why or why not?
5. Where in halacha do we find the idea that one is only liable if they perform a prohibited act in an ordinary manner? Do you know anyone that has ever had to rely on this leniency in the context of hilchos shabbos?