The Greatest Spiritual Force in the Universe

Parashat Ba’Midbar        Numbers 1:1 – 4:20
Haftarah Ba’Midbar         Hosea 2:1 – 22

Yearning for Return to the Zion was the Secret Life Force which kept Jews going throughout centuries of exile from the Land. Unbeknown to most people today is another remnant of Ancient Israel, a sector (in fact, 10/12ths of the entire Hebrew Israelite Nation) which is still ‘lost’ to this day, in exile for 2730 years now beyond identification, amongst the nations of the World. Yet, the same Divine Promises of Return embalmed in Torah and the Prophetic Writings of the Holy Scriptures, apply to this ‘Lost’ sector of the Nation.  Probably the most confirmative factor of the Divine eligibility of this masse of ancient Israelites which could number one billion souls at this time, is the very fact highlighted by this week’s Torah portion (at this memorable ‘Jerusalem Day’ fulfillment of Jewish yearning) of the yearning for Return also which is now responsible for the building of a silently gathering Tsunami of Returnees to their Divine Israelite Heritage.

 

INSPIRATIONAL  GUIDELINE  FOR LIFE – ‘THE YEARNING SOUL’

From the Face Book Page of Moshe Shorashim

YEARNING FOR JERUSALEM

by Moshe Kempinski

DISCLAIMER – the authors and promoters of the articles and videos that we place here are mostly not connected in any way to KOL HATOR and may well not share our views and interpretations. We do however thank them for their insight and pointers that confirm our understanding and often broaden our insight.

The secret of life is the yearning soul.

We must ask the question as to why HaShem asked that a House be built for Him, even though He clearly knew that it would be destroyed. In the same vein, why did HaShem plant Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden whilst fully knowing that they would fail and be expelled? Why did HaShem create Man and Woman as one, only to then separate them again?

The answer to all those questions is connected to “the power of yearning”. The greatest spiritual force in the Universe is yearning. The world and reality is built along a framework where perfection is displayed and then hidden, where paradise is revealed then lost. The Garden of Eden is revealed and then lost. Man and Woman are created as one and then they are separated. G-d reveals Himself in all His power and Glory during the Exodus in Egypt, and then goes into hiding. The First and Second temples are built and experienced, and then they are lost.

Spiritual existence is about the yearning to reveal that which was hidden and find that which was lost. It is that spiritual force of yearning that fixes the world and restores it to its purpose.

G-d created a reality that would provide need and imperfection and therefore fire up the yearning to restore the world to perfection.

A deeper level is found in a powerful statement by the Rebbe of Kotzk;

“Where is G-d to be found?”, He asked. His answer was that “He is found in the place where He is given entry.”

His Presence may in fact be everywhere but it is only revealed in a place that “makes room for Him” in awareness.

Yearning is the spiritual force that reveals the deepest secrets that are hidden.

Yearning is also the spiritual force that bring back into reality and perception those things that have seemingly disappeared

If one takes a cursory and objective glance at the recent history of the people of Israel and the rebirth of a Jewish commonwealth in the land of Israel, one cannot escape the resemblance to a classic Biblical text. An oppressed, dispersed and maligned people ingathered to their ancient homeland. A small, beleaguered nation fighting off multiple nations intent on their destruction. An economy that began with young pioneers fighting off malaria that has soared to unexpected heights .

One cannot ignore the two-thousand-year-old yearning to return to their beloved Jerusalem .”If I Forget thee O Jerusalem let my right hand lose its strength” was the refrain , declared, sung and cried out for countless generations. It was declared in the Ghettoes of Europe, in the Casbah’s of the Middle East, and in the hills of the Gondar province in Ethiopia. It was heard even in the concentration camps of the Nazi murderers.

That yearning then became fulfilled in a miraculous six days in the summer of 1967. A story of Biblical proportions. How can one stand idly by and not burst into song?

If you ever tasted the yearning then you have the power to sing.

Yom Yerushalayim Sameach.

Commentaries

OvadYah Avrahami –  Inspiring Reminder, thank you Moshe! Great thought to nurture in times like these when all seem to become so confusing, vain, insurmountable. Let us boost our yearning. Your initial remark urges me to comment: You wrote: ” why HaShem asked that a House be built for Him, even though He clearly knew that it would be destroyed?” A great pointer for our yearning, but in relation to Isaiah’s seven chapters (42 – 49) which describes His preparing in these Final Redemptive Times of ‘His Servant’ to be His Real Temple in which He shall dwell amongst us once again and rule in His Universal Kingdom. And this ‘Servant’ is not what we have understood it to be traditionally. These chapters define it and it can be more correctly understood in light of the virtual evidence of this developing Redemption that we experience and observe these days. Blessings!

Moshe Shorashim – The people, yes, like it says in those chapters – but a House as well in a Land set aside.

OvadYah Avrahami – Like we all need a ‘house’ to live in, sure, and buildings for our authorities. Yet, I think that this ‘Servant’ / Tabernacle concept is much overlooked – especially these Days leading up to Final Redemption. And strange that the prophet Isaiah devotes SEVEN consecutive chapters on this concept, clearly defining it for the ‘End Time’ / Final / all embracing Pinnacle of the Ages Event (Geulah) – when HaShem shall Return His Shechinah to be present with and amongst His people. Clearly, this concept does not refer to a physical Building Structure only. I am glad to receive your agreement on the Scriptural formation of such a ‘personal Temple building’ (in addition?). One gets the impression from some of HaShem’s statements thru the Prophets that THIS is the ‘Building’ that He truly desires. Is that not something which is generally overlooked and ignored by us?

 

Rabbinic Commentary on Parashat Ba’Midbar (In the Wilderness – en route to the Promised Land / Final Redemption).

Leading a Nation of Individuals

By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks from aish.com

DISCLAIMER – the authors and promoters of the articles and videos that we place here are mostly not connected in any way to KOL HATOR and may well not share our views and interpretations. We do however thank them for their insight and pointers that confirm our understanding and often broaden our insight.

Parashat Ba’Midbar        Numbers 1:1 – 4:20
Haftarah Ba’Midbar         Hosea 2:1 – 22

Bamidbar begins with a census of the Israelites. That is why this book is known in English as Numbers. What is the significance of this act of counting? And why here at the beginning of the book? Besides which, there have already been two previous censuses of the people and this is the third within the space of a single year. Surely one would have been sufficient. And does counting have anything to do with leadership?

The place to begin, is to note what appears to be a contradiction. On the one hand Rashi says that the acts of counting in the Torah are gestures of love on the part of God:

Because they (the children of Israel) are dear to Him, God counts them often. He counted them when they were about to leave Egypt. He counted them after the Golden Calf to establish how many were left. And now that He was about to cause His presence to rest on them (with the inauguration of the sanctuary), He counted them again. (Rashi to Bamidbar 1:1)

So we learn that when God initiates a census of the Israelites, it is to show that He loves them.

When, centuries later, King David counted the people, there was Divine anger and 70,000 people died.[1] How can this be, if counting is an expression of love?

The Torah is explicit in saying that taking a census of the nation is fraught with risk:

Then God said to Moses, “When you take a census of the Israelites to count them, each must give to God a ransom for his life at the time he is counted. Then no plague will come on them when you number them. (Ex. 30:11-12).

The answer to this apparent contradiction lies in the phrase the Torah uses to describe the act of counting: se’u et rosh, literally, “lift the head.” This is a strange, circumlocutory expression. Biblical Hebrew contains many verbs meaning “to count”: limnot, lifkod, lispor, lachshov. Why does the Torah not use these simple words, choosing instead the roundabout expression, “lift the heads” of the people?

The short answer is this: In any census, count or roll-call there is a tendency to focus on the total: the crowd, the multitude, the mass. Here is a nation of 60 million people, or a company with 100,000 employees or a sports crowd of 60,000. Any total tends to value the group or nation as a whole. The larger the total, the stronger is the army, the more popular the team, and the more successful the company.

Counting devalues the individual, and tends to make him or her replaceable. If one soldier dies in battle, another will take his place. If one person leaves the organisation, someone else can be hired to do his or her job.

Notoriously, too, crowds have the effect of tending to make the individual lose his or her independent judgment and follow what others are doing. We call this “herd behaviour,” and it sometimes leads to collective madness. In 1841 Charles Mackay published his classic study, Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness Of Crowds, which tells of the South Sea Bubble that cost thousands their money in the 1720s, and the tulip mania in Holland when fortunes were spent on single tulip bulbs. The Great Crashes of 1929 and 2008 had the same crowd psychology.

Another great work, Gustav Le Bon’s The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895) showed how crowds exercise a “magnetic influence” that transmutes the behaviour of individuals into a collective “group mind.” As he put it, “An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will.” People in a crowd become anonymous. Their conscience is silenced. They lose a sense of personal responsibility. Crowds are peculiarly prone to regressive behaviour, primitive reactions and instinctual behaviour. They are easily led by figures who are demagogues, playing on people’s fears and sense of victimhood. Such leaders, he said, are “especially recruited from the ranks of those morbidly nervous excitable half-deranged persons who are bordering on madness”,[2] a remarkable anticipation of Hitler. It is no accident that Le Bon’s work was published in France at a time of rising anti-Semitism and the Dreyfus trial.

Hence the significance of one remarkable feature of Judaism: its principled insistence – like no other civilisation before – on the dignity and integrity of the individual. We believe that every human being is in the image and likeness of God. The Sages said that every life is like an entire universe.[3] Maimonides says that each of us should see ourselves as if our next act could change the fate of the world.[4] Every dissenting view is carefully recorded in the Mishnah, even if the law is otherwise. Every verse of the Torah is capable, said the Sages, of seventy interpretations. No voice, no view, is silenced. Judaism never allows us to lose our individuality in the mass.

There is a wonderful blessing mentioned in the Talmud to be said on seeing 600,000 Israelites together in one place. It is: “Blessed are You, Lord … who discerns secrets.”[5] The Talmud explains that every person is different. We each have different attributes. We all think our own thoughts. Only God can enter the minds of each of us and know what we are thinking, and this is what the blessing refers to. In other words, even in a massive crowd where, to human eyes, faces blur into a mass, God still relates to us as individuals, not as members of a crowd.

That is the meaning of the phrase, “lift the head,” used in the context of a census. God tells Moses that there is a danger, when counting a nation, that each individual will feel insignificant. “What am I? What difference can I make? I am only one of millions, a mere wave in the ocean, a grain of sand on the sea-shore, dust on the surface of infinity.”

Against that, God tells Moses to lift people’s heads by showing that they each count; they matter as individuals. Indeed in Jewish law a davar she-be-minyan, something that is counted, sold individually rather than by weight, is never nullified even in a mixture of a thousand or a million others.[6] In Judaism taking a census must always be done in such a way as to signal that we are valued as individuals. We each have unique gifts. There is a contribution only I can bring. To lift someone’s head means to show them favour, to recognise them. It is a gesture of love.

There is, however, all the difference in the world between individuality and individualism. Individuality means that I am a unique and valued member of a team. Individualism means that I am not a team player at all. I am interested in myself alone, not the group. Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam gave this a famous name, noting that more people than ever in the United States are going ten-pin bowling but fewer than ever are joining teams. He called it “Bowling alone.”[7] MIT professor Sherry Turkle calls our age of Twitter, Facebook, and online (rather than face-to-face) friendships, “Alone together.”[8] Judaism values individuality, not individualism. As Hillel said, “If I am only for myself, what am I?”[9]

All this has implications for Jewish leadership. We are not in the business of counting numbers. The Jewish people always was small and yet achieved great things. Judaism has a profound mistrust of demagogic leaders who manipulate the emotions of crowds. Moses at the burning bush spoke of his inability to be eloquent. “I am not a man of words.” He thought this was a failing in a leader. In fact it was the opposite. Moses did not sway people by his oratory. Rather, he lifted them by his teaching.

A Jewish leader has to respect individuals. He or she must “lift their heads.” However large the group you lead, you must always communicate the value you place on everyone. You must never attempt to sway a crowd by appealing to the primitive emotions of fear or hate. You must never ride roughshod over the opinions of others.

It is hard to lead a nation of individuals, but this is the most challenging, empowering, inspiring leadership of all.

Shabbat Shalom.

NOTES

1. 2 Samuel 24; 1 Chronicles 21.
2. Gustav Le Bon, The Crowd, London, Fisher Unwin 1896, 134.
3. Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:4.
4. Maimonides, Hilchot Teshuvah 3:4.
5. Brachot 58a.
6. Beitsah 3b.
7. Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone, New York, Simon & Schuster, 2000.
8. Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: why we expect more from technology and less from each other, New York, Basic Books, 2011.
9. Mishnah Avot 1:14.

 

About the Author

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks is an international religious leader, philosopher, and respected moral voice. The author of over 30 books, Rabbi Sacks has received multiple awards in recognition of his work including the 2016 Templeton Prize. He is the recipient of 17 honorary doctorates, was knighted by Her Majesty The Queen in 2005 and made a Life Peer, taking his seat in the House of Lords in October 2009. He served as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013.

 

KOL HATOR Commentary

The sections between “hyphens” are quotes from the above commentary.

“Because they (the children of Israel) are dear to Him, God counts them often…”  So, without doubt, He counts them at this Time of approach to Final Redemption of ALL 12 Tribes.  What is clearly evident though, is that the House of Judah (regathered now in Israel  from the CE era 2000 year Exile) is NOT ‘counting’ this major sector of the Israelite Nation as part of the Body to Return. In fact, they have no interest in them, probably because they do not identify them as, or believe that they could possibly be part of the divided 2 Houses of Israel. They see them as pagans, idolaters, Goyim. In this they overlook the Scriptural Metaphor that indeed, this Body of unidentified Israelites, the ‘Body of ‘Yoseph’, would indeed be ‘clothed’ (as Yoseph was) as an Egyptian,

“So we learn that when God initiates a census of the Israelites, it is to show that He loves them.”  From which we learn that in order to “count” (recognize) them, requires loving them.  This is the Divine Order facing BOTH sides of the conflict between the divided two sectors of ancient Israel.  We have concluded in our several Blogs and commentaries of late that THIS may well be the Divine Intent behind this Curse of the Corona Plague which affects Jews as much as any other nation – and more so, intriguingly, the ultra religious sectors of Judaism.  In a response Rav Edelstein claimed recently that the higher death rate of ultra orthodox Haredim across the Globe was because God punishes Haredim for their sins more strictly than Jews who sin out of ignorance.

There is a fearful reprimand in this commentary against those who today, in the wake of a devastating Corona Plague, initiate negative conspiratorial theories which disrupt the already impossible situation from being handled and solved at best. “Crowds are peculiarly prone to regressive behaviour, primitive reactions and instinctual behaviour. They are easily led by figures who are demagogues, playing on people’s fears and sense of victimhood. Such leaders, he said, are ‘especially recruited from the ranks of those morbidly nervous excitable half-deranged persons who are bordering on madness’”.

“Hence the significance of one remarkable feature of Judaism: its principled insistence – like no other civilisation before – on the dignity and integrity of the individual. We believe that every human being is in the image and likeness of God. The Sages said that every life is like an entire universe.[3] Maimonides says that each of us should see ourselves as if our next act could change the fate of the world.”  Mightily empowering statements. One would wish that this was applied to ALL of humanity, All of God’s Creation out there. Sadly, since the split of the human Family into nations this ‘Love of our neighbours took on a completely different definition of ‘neighbour’. Sadly, and certainly retrogressively so (in reference to the Message of this commentary) ‘neighbour’ today refers to partisan, buddy, co-believer, co-sect member, etc. Totally converse to the unifying idiom of the original Divine Intent of a Creator Who sees His Creation as “All His Children of Whom He is the Father.”

“To lift someone’s head in counting the nation, means to show them favour, to recognise them. It is a gesture of love.” We surely have a long way to go to bring about the right conditions for Final Redemption – something which would make it superfluous for God to enforce on a loveless community.

Perhaps Corona could bring this ‘enforcement’ about?

Finally – Haftarah confirmation for this week and for this inspiring Message above:

If our commentary above sounded critical, denouncing, judgmental – then here is the Answer from the Haftarah Portion itself:

וְהָיָה מִסְפַּר בְּנֵי-יִשְׂרָאֵל, כְּחוֹל הַיָּם, אֲשֶׁר לֹא-יִמַּד, וְלֹא יִסָּפֵר; וְהָיָה בִּמְקוֹם אֲשֶׁר-יֵאָמֵר לָהֶם, לֹא-עַמִּי אַתֶּם, יֵאָמֵר לָהֶם, בְּנֵי אֵל-חָי.	1 Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, [[This cannot possibly refer to only 15 million Jews of the World]] which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass that, instead of that which was said unto them: ‘Ye are not My people’, it shall be said unto them: ‘Ye are the children of the living God.’
ב  וְנִקְבְּצוּ בְּנֵי-יְהוּדָה וּבְנֵי-יִשְׂרָאֵל, יַחְדָּו	2 And the children of Judah and the children of Israel [[TWO separate Houses]] shall be gathered together
כא  וְאֵרַשְׂתִּיךְ לִי, לְעוֹלָם; וְאֵרַשְׂתִּיךְ לִי בְּצֶדֶק וּבְמִשְׁפָּט, וּבְחֶסֶד וּבְרַחֲמִים.	21 And I will betroth thee unto Me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto Me in righteousness, and in justice, and in lovingkindness, and in compassion.
כב  וְאֵרַשְׂתִּיךְ לִי, בֶּאֱמוּנָה; וְיָדַעַתְּ, אֶת-יְהוָה.	22 And I will betroth thee unto Me in faithfulness; and thou shalt know HaShem.

Let us apply this yearning, the Greatest Force in the Universe for Life, as a Main Goal in Life. Let us nurture the Love of our Neighbours on the widest possible parameters in Life according also to Divine Intent and in imitation of the Creator’s Love for His entire Creation. He shall take care of the Judgment as He regards necessary,

Further Rabbinic commentaries on Parashat Ba’Midbar:

These formed part of the weekly KHT Newsleter. To receive the complete weekly discussion from which we gather Guidelines and Understanding, ensure that you subscribe to the weekly Newsletter without any obligations. Scroll up to Subscription form here above or use the Subscription window on all our Web Pages, top, right.

Parshat Bamidbar: You’re In! You Count!   – Reb Meir

People are Not Numbers – Parshat Bamidbar – Rabbi Yakov Nagen

 

ADDITIONAL  SOURCES OF INFO AND INSPIRATION

• For further promotions of the KOL HATOR Awakening Call for Judah to reconsider their restricting of sharing the Torah with the entire World, ref. to the Face Book Page of ‘OvadYah Avrahmi’.
• Use the Web Site Internal \search Engine. Type your key Search Words into the Search Window at the top, right side, of each web Page on this Site. Or use the Search Widow by clicking on ‘Q’ above the Menu on the KHT Web Pages.
• Scroll down further to ‘RELATED Posts” for suggested related Study Topics. Such links to related studies appear at the bottom of every KHT Web Page.