Are You on Automatic Pilot?
Life is about appreciating all the gifts that were given to us by our forebears. But true life requires that we do not rely on those gifts. We must roll up our own sleeves and forge ahead to bring Moshiach! BAMIDBAR BAMIDBAR
What’s Your Pedigree?
In the beginning of this week’s parsha, Bamidbar—which is also the beginning of the fourth book of the Torah—the Torah records G-d’s commandment to Moses to count the Jewish people:
The Midrash Tanchuma applies the verse in the book of Psalms to this event:
He (G-d) has not done so for other nations, and they do not know His ordinances.
These enigmatic words of the Midrash beg for an explanation. The verse from Psalms that the Midrash cites refers to the BAMIDBAR commandments of the Torah; that they were given exclusively to the Jewish nation and not to the other nations. What connection does that have with the counting of the Jewish nation?
To understand the message of the Midrash we must cite another Midrashic comment that refers to the complaint some of the nations had to G-d for having given the Torah to the Jewish people exclusively:
When Israel received the Torah, the nations of the world were jealous and they said, “why were these people more deserving than those?” G-d immediately suppressed their complaints and said to them: “Bring your genealogical documents as the Children of Israel did.”
In other words, the Midrash informs us that our eligibility to receive the Torah is based on our ability to trace our ancestry back to the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
BAMIDBAR
Thus, the original statement of the Midrash that links the giving of the Torah to the counting of the Jewish people is understood.
By counting the Jewish people, which involved tracing their ancestry back to the Patriarchs, G-d had a sound response to the complaint of the nations. G-d chose to give the Torah to the Jewish people exclusively because they have such an illustrious genealogy.
Our Children or Our Parents?
At first glance, though, this Midrashic insight seems to contradict another one that asserts that G-d would not have given the Torah on the grounds that they had such illustrious ancestors. The Midrash records G-d’s demand of the Jewish people to produce guarantors as a prerequisite for them to receive the Torah. G-d declined to accept their proposal that their prophets and forefathers would be the guarantors. Only when they offered their children did G-d consent to give them the Torah.
BAMIDBAR
From this Midrashic commentary it appears that having a good pedigree does not suffice. How do we reconcile this with the earlier Midrashic comment that G-d focused on their genealogy as the reason He chose to give the Torah to the Jewish people?
One can resolve this apparent contradiction by drawing a distinction between the way we needed to validate our eligibility to receive the Torah and the way G-d had to defend His selection of the Jewish people to the other nations.
If G-d would have told the other nations that the Jewish people were chosen because of their promise to educate their children, they too would have made that promise. The only argument they could not refute was that they did not have a good track record of transmitting values to their children. They could not point to any ancestors that succeeded in perpetuating the seven commandments that were given to Noah after the flood. How then could they be trusted to transmit the Torah that they BAMIDBAR requested to their children and grandchildren?
Internalizing Torah
When G-d approached the Jewish people, He was not content with them pointing to their ancestors as guarantors.
To be sure, having that noble and virtuous ancestry greatly enhanced the probability that they would continue in their path. But that would not suffice. Because without the guarantee that the parents will make a concerted effort to raise their children in the path of Torah, relying on the past—even if it were to work, which is not a foregone conclusion—would makes the survival of Judaism an automatic process. Jews would just glide effortlessly down the road to perfection.
G-d wants our input and toil into the process and not just rely that we inherited the power and energy from earlier generations. Neither does G-d want us to rely on our prophets and great leaders. G-d’s wants every BAMIDBAR individual to be part of the process of receiving and internalizing the Torah.
This explains the Chassidic greeting for the upcoming Festival of Shavuos, the anniversary of the giving of the Torah at Sinai:
May you receive the Torah with joy and inwardness.
The term “inwardness” implies that the Torah cannot be a superficial matter that is passed down as a tradition. Torah must be internalized by each individual as if he or she was the only person to have ever received the Torah. When we receive the Torah with true joy it is the indication that for us Torah is alive and not just a relic of the past.
There is a well-known story of a chasid who asked his Rebbe—the Tzemach Tzedek, the third Rebbe of Chabad—for a blessing that his child be raised in a good and conducive atmosphere so that he would “automatically” become a G-d fearing Jew. The Rebbe was clearly not happy with that request. His sharp response to this chasid was that his grandfather, the Alter Rebbe (the founder of BAMIDBAR the Chabad movement), and his father-in-law and uncle, the Mitteler Rebbe, toiled for so many years to remove the term “automatic” from the lexicon of Chassidism.
From Sinai to Moshiach
The giving of the Torah at Sinai marked the beginning of a journey that is supposed to end with the coming of Moshiach. The revelation at Mount Sinai brought the Divine presence into this world. However, that revelation was concealed and it was up to us to devote our lives to bring the Divine back into the physical world we inhabit.
This is why we were given the Mitzvos. They are physical actions ordained by G-d to make even the physical world a “dwelling place” for G-d.
The final Redemption is when this process is completed and the world will permanently reflect its Divine source. It is when the world will be in total harmony with the Divine.
BAMIDBAR
However, even as we stand today at the end of the journey, on the very threshold of the final Redemption through Moshiach—it might occur to us that it is not so crucial to invest our own sweat and toil in order to usher in the Messianic Age.
We may argue that we have thousands of years of tradition behind us. We have the cumulative benefits of thousands of years of self-sacrificing efforts of our ancestors. We can therefore erroneously conclude that it suffices for us to be passive. Minimal efforts could be enough. Why not rest on our laurels and let the momentum of the past—the spiritual tsunamis of the past—push us over the top into the Messianic Age?
To dispel this “argument” the Rebbe—over twenty-five years ago in an historic talk given on the 28th day of Nissan, 5751—told us that he has done all that he was capable of doing to bring the Redemption. Now, he declared, he was passing it on to us. “Do all you can,” the Rebbe stated, “to bring the Redemption.”
BAMIDBAR
The Rebbe exhorted us then to exercise our stubbornness and stiff-necked personalities as Jews to bring about the Redemption.
To be sure, we are blessed with all of the resources bequeathed to us by our forebears and prophets. We have all of the blessings of the Rebbe and other great leaders all the way back to the Patriarchs and Matriarchs.
G-d can therefore certainly turn to the other nations and say to them, paraphrasing the abovementioned Midrashic comment about the giving of the Torah:
Look at their pedigree. Look at what they have accomplished over the last three thousand years plus. They have accepted the responsibility of accepting the Torah and through thick and thin of exile they persevered. They are a most deserving people to be redeemed and once and for all free of all the hatred and jealousy directed towards them!
Yet, we have to say to G-d, “We make our commitment to you that we will not rely on BAMIDBAR the past our solely on the efforts of our leaders. We will instill our faith in You, in your Torah and in Moshiach into the hearts and minds of our children. They will see that we are not passive in our dedication to making Your plan for the world come to fruition!”
BAMIDBAR
From the book Light from the Future: Parshas Bamidbar by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.
