Bamidbar – Mountains vs. Deserts

This weeks פרשה starts a new theme. Until now, we were dealing with a nation of slaves that had been freed and ultimately ended up creating a habitat for God in their world. ספר ויקרא closes with the words אלה המצוות אשר צוה יהוה את משה אל בני ישראל בהר סיני. And 4 blank lines later we start this week’s פרשה with the words, וידבר יהוה אל משה במדבר סיני … לאמר. What is interesting is that we are still in סיני and still technically at the mountain since we only travelled on the 20^th of אייר and this פסוק happened on the 1^st of אייר, but the Torah refers to the nation now being in the desert, in מדבר סיני, as opposed to at the mountain, at הר סיני.

We know that this ספר is called ספר הפיקודים since the Jews get counted, and as we’ve said before, the counting itself is not primary in ספר במדבר as much as the message of counting is. The message that each person matters and each one of us is unique and special. And that is why this ספר is full of stories of individuals, because even in a nation of millions each person is critically important and necessary. I heard a beautiful משול for this: a composer that would listen to a piece of music that he wrote which is played with a 100-piece orchestra is able to tell when one of the musicians is missing, even though to the untrained ear you can’t really tell that there is an empty seat and that someone is missing. Or if someone is writing a computer program and would leave out one line, the whole program would run differently and not necessarily function.

The whole פרשה deals with concepts of counting, camping and traveling. How many Jews were in each שבט, how to set up the camp, which tribes were together, how to take down the משכן, which family of kohanim were responsible for what, and how many לווים and kohanim there were. But there is one small section of 4 פסוקים that doesn’t seem to fit. The פסוק says ואלה תולדות אהרן ומשה ביום דבר יהוה אל משה בהר סיני. And the next פסוק lists the 4 sons of Aharon, נדב, אביהו, אלעזר and איתמר. The 3^rd פסוק says these were the names of the sons of Aharon as they filled their hands to serve. And the 4^th פסוק tells the story of how נדב and אביהו dies when they brought an אש זרה before hashem in מדבר סיני and Elazar and Isamar were appointed after them.

Chazal ask the obvious question of why the Torah says ואלה תולדות אהרן ומשה if it only tells us about the sons of Aharon? And the conclusion is that Torah is trying to teach us that anyone who teaches someone else’s children Torah, it is as if he has given birth to them and they are his own children.

Some questions: 1- why is this message taught specifically with נדב, אביהו, and Moshe? 2- why is it brought here if it doesn’t fit at all with the theme of the rest of the פרשה? 3- notice the contrast of the first פסוק when it says ביום דבר יהוה אל משה בהר סיני and the last פסוק which says that נדב and אביהו died מדבר סיני. Moshe taught נדב and אביהו Torah at the foot of הר סיני, and the משכן was also erected at the foot of the mountain, so why the difference in language?

I think the answer to all these questions is based on the fact that humans are by nature a very complicated mixture of spiritual and physical entities and therefore we will always have “mountain” days and “desert” days. Some mornings everything just goes right. You wake up early, and you feel like you can climb a mountain and conquer the world. Everything goes smoothly, and it is easy to see Hashem in your life. But some days it’s a battle from the get go. You feel stranded in a desert and each move takes a ton of energy and just sucks the life out of you. You feel parched for water and it is impossible to see Hashem. But the reason why the Torah was given on top of a mountain in the middle of a desert is to show that the Torah applies to both locations and mindsets. You can use the Torah to climb the highest mountain and work with the Torah to march your way through a desert.

Rabbi Fohrman has a beautiful explanation that נדב and אביהו’s problem was that they saw Moshe encountering Hashem on הר סיני and they tried to replicate the experience and encounter Hashem in the משכן. But they were no longer on הר סיני, they were in מדבר סיני, and you can’t just walk into the קדש קדשים in מדבר סיני. We were meant to make a משכן in מדבר סיני that perceptualized הר סיני and are meant to know that Hashem lives among us but that translates into something different than what actually happened on הר סיני. הר סיני itself was too awesome and powerful to live with constantly, so Hashem concentrated His שכינה into the קדש קדשים and gave specific rules about how to encounter Him. In the desert we are meant to find Hashem in the typical and mundane, not in the awesome fire show that was the giving of the Torah on הר סיני.

I think nowadays we also can get a message about the difference between הר סיני and מדבר סיני. The point of this specific פרשה and this entire ספר is to teach how special each person is within the nation of Israel. And as part of that message these 4 פסוקים are stuck in, to give us two messages:

1- even on your desert days, Hashem is with you. You can always look towards the משכן inside of you and feel the warmth of Hashem’s love coming from there. Hashem took the incredibly awesome and powerful experience of הר סיני and compacted it into the משכן in מדבר סיני and told us that we are not to try and be ultra-holy. We are supposed to live in our camps with the rules that Hashem gave us and follow in His ways and that is how to perpetuate הר סיני.

2- the message of these פסוקים according to חז”ל is that someone who teaches someone else Torah becomes like his parent. And we know this from the fact that Moshe taught אהרן’s sons Torah and they are considered his תולדות. But let’s go back one step, who taught Moshe Torah? Hashem did. Which would mean that Hashem is like Moshe’s parent. And in fact, Hashem told all of us the first 2 דברות, in which all the 10 דברות were contained, and we know that all the Torah was contained in the 10 דברות. This means that we all learnt Torah from Hashem, and that brings us to the amazing fact that Hashem is our parent. Not only because he created us but also on the dimension of teaching. And that message is central to feeling individually important and to מתן תורה itself. As פרשת במדבר leads into Shavuos and we accept the Torah again for the next year, let’s all take a minute to realize that Hashem is our Father in heaven and will always love us and care for us, and that each of us is indispensable to the Jewish nation.