Parshas Beha’aloscha 5780
If all would have continued according to plan, Parshas Beha’aloscha would have been the last parsha of the Torah. The Jewish People should have packed their bags at Sinai, dismantled the Mishkan, and prepared for one short journey that would have brought them all directly into the Land of Israel. Moshe, Aharon, Miriam, the entire nation. Everyone would have marched from Sinai and descended upon the Holy Land just a few days later.
So how did a matter of days swell to become another 38 years? Many would be tempted to blame it on the infamous Chet HaMeraglim that we’ll read about next week. Following the sin of the spies, the Jews of that generation are condemned to meet their demise in the dessert, before ever entering the Promised Land.
But if you connect the dots back further, you find that the spies were not the beginning. No, the initial unraveling of the Jewish People’s fortunes actually begin far earlier, in this week’s parsha.
Two pesukim appear in Parshas Beha’aloscha that are curiously marked off by a backwards letter Nun before and after. These pesukim deal with the transporting and setting down of the Aron Kodesh as the Jews journeyed through the wilderness, and Chazal comment that the letters that mark them off serve to indicate their status as a completely separate book of the Torah unto themselves.
What comes after these two pesukim, then, should be viewed as being entirely distinct from what came before them. Prior to the two pesukim, we were last informed of the Jews leaving Sinai. After the two pesukim, everything falls apart.
וַיְהִ֤י הָעָם֙ כְּמִתְאֹ֣נְנִ֔ים רַ֖ע בְּאָזְנֵ֣י ה׳ וַיִּשְׁמַ֤ע ה׳ וַיִּ֣חַר אַפּ֔וֹ וַתִּבְעַר־בָּם֙ אֵ֣שׁ ה׳ וַתֹּ֖אכַל בִּקְצֵ֥ה הַֽמַּחֲנֶֽה׃
(במדבר יא:א)
The people took to complaining, and it was evil in the ears of Hashem. And Hashem heard and His wrath flared. A fire of Hashem raged against them, consuming at the outskirts of the camp.
(Bamidbar 11:1)
This is the first pasuk following the break created by the two pesukim that stand as their own independent “Sefer”. And it only gets worse from there. There are complaints about the mann, a longing to return to the food they enjoyed in Egypt, Moshe despairs of being able to lead the nation alone, and the Parsha concludes with Miriam and Aharon speaking Lashon HaRa about Moshe. It is not until next week’s parsha that the episode of the spies unfolds, along with its disastrous implications for the people.
What emerges, is that the episode of the spies is part of a longer narrative. The Torah begins a brand new Sefer in the midst of Parshas Beha’aloscha, and it is a tragic one. The dream of establishing a new society in Eretz Yisrael is pushed further and further afield through one misstep after the other, until the opportunity is entirely lost, at least for that generation.
The pasuk quoted above begins to tell the story, yet, at first blush, it tells us frustratingly little. If this is the beginning of the end for this generation’s chance at full redemption, wouldn’t a bit more detail be helpful? What did they complain about? What were their concerns, frustrations, and gripes? Couldn’t a more precise rendering equip future generations with a greater ability to avoid making the same mistakes?
I would suggest that the Torah is vague because, in truth, the details would only obscure the truth, rather than sharpen it. The reality is that it doesn’t matter what the people were complaining about, only that they were complaining. Pessimism is a mode of being—a mindset we enter into—that will feed off anything and everything if we give it oxygen to breathe. The truth is that there will always be things to complain about, always parts of our life that feel suboptimal and don’t live up to our dreams and expectations. Submitting to focus on those aspects of our lives develops a pattern of behavior that ultimately becomes all-consuming until life has unraveled, much the way it did for the generation we read about in our parsha.
.רבי אליעזר הקפר אומר הקנאה והתאוה והכבוד מוציאין את האדם מן העולם
פרקי אבות ד:כא
Rabbi Eliezer HaKafar says: Jealousy, desire, and honor remove a person from this world.
Pirkei Avos 4:21
Rav Eliyahu Dessler commented on the unusual expression used in the above quote. A person may be a sinner or a miscreant for exhibiting the behavior mentioned, but in what way is he “removed from the world”? Rav Dessler explained that the world that Hashem created is fundamentally good and happy. Contained within the world around us is all that we need to be truly satisfied and fulfilled. But when we use our energy and resources to focus on what we want, what we’re owed, and what ought to be, we detach ourselves from the reality of what we have, what we’ve been given, and how right so much already is. When we operate on this wavelength we remove ourselves from the world of happiness and goodness that Hashem has already planted us in.
This is what happened as the Jews pulled away from Sinai. The Torah is telling us that the specific nature of the complaint is immaterial. By not naming the complaint, we can more easily see our own behavior inside of it. We won’t make the mistake of assessing our lives as more difficult or our concerns more troubling, and our gripes becoming more justified as a result. Negativity may initially appear as an innocuous kvetch, but can so easily develop into a consistent mode of behavior that removes us from the world of blessing Hashem has actually placed us in.
A complaint is a step in the direction of embracing the right to maintain expectations for how the world should treat me. If this is a pattern of behavior we find ourselves submitting to, let’s catch ourselves early on. As our parsha illustrates, one complaint begets another, and another, and another. In telling a story that begins with an expression of negativity, our parsha plots a story that finishes with an unfortunate ending. Let’s write a different one for ourselves.