Reflections from Rabbi Ellis

We are now in the third Parsha of the book of Bamidbar. The last two Parshiot have been all over the place in terms of chronology and content. For two weeks we’ve had an eclectic mix of narrative and Mitzvot, slowly building to this week’s Parsha in which the Children of Israel start their triumphant journey to the promised land. Finally the young nation takes its first unsure steps and we fall flat on our face. 

My initial reaction is to blame it on atrophy, we’ve been sitting in camp for nearly a full year, we have forgotten what it’s like to be on the move. These are just early missteps, these failures will be the source of our future success. The problem with this theory is that the data doesn’t support it. Things don’t go great this week, but things gett worse not better in next Parsha. Over the next two Parshiot, which close out our first forty years in the desert, the Children of Israel don’t scrape together a single win. The failures of this week’s Parsha give birth to greater failure not success.

In the second Aliyah of our Parsha Moshe purifies and dedicates the Levites. The Levite were not priests, they had responsibilities to the Temple, but did not serve any role in the rituals or sacrifices performed there. Rather the Torah states explicitly that the Levites were to serve in place of the first-borns of the children of Israel. G!d makes clear that the Levite’s role is to mediate between the Children of Israel and the Temple in order to protect the Children of Israel. At their dedication the Levites are charged to take care of the Children of Israel and to protect them from the plagues that G!d will send in response to inappropriate action on the part of the Children of Israel. 

What then happens in our Parsha? Twice the Children of Israel are struck by a plague that kills many people. What do the Levites do to preempt or protect the people from plague? Nothing! The Levites were the religious leadership of Israel, the first Rabbis, G!d puts their dedication in the beginning of this week’s Parsha specifically to show that they did not perform their function.

The mistakes, failures and rebellions that the Children of Israel perpetuate in their first two years in the desert are because of failure of leadership, religious leadership specifically. It is not as if there was a simple solution to the challenges that the nation presents. They are a people close to G!d but starved of spiritual connection. Healing this wound would have taken engagement, contact and follow up, it would have required the Levites to spend most of their time out of their camp exposing them to spiritual and ethical challenges; worst of all it would have presented them with situations that challenged their assumptions and ideology. It was the challenge they were created for and they turned away from it. The Levites failed to risk changing themselves and so they could not change the nation. 

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Yehoshua Ellis