Time for introspection – How long will we shun HaShem’s Purpose?

With fear and doubts commonly experienced by all in these uncertain and certainly threatening times, we have to ask ourselves:  “Is HaShem against us or are we against Him?”  Is He deferring His Return to ‘live amongst His People’ and rule in His Universal Kingdom, or are we upholding the Return of His Shechinah by not complying with His directives and authorisation to prepare and co-operate with His formation of ‘His Servant’ to become His Light to the Nations?  Ref. “The Servant of G-d”.

Parashat commentary;

Loneliness and Faith

 By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks;  aish.com

Parashat Beha’alotkha   Numbers 8:1 – 12:16
Haftarah Beha’alotkha       Zechariah 2:14 – 4:7

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I have long been intrigued by one passage in this week’s parsha. After a lengthy stay in the Sinai desert, the people are about to begin the second part of their journey. They are no longer travelling from but travelling to. They are no longer escaping from Egypt; they are journeying toward the Promised Land.

The Torah inserts a long preface to this story: it takes the first ten chapters of Bamidbar. The people are counted. They are gathered, tribe by tribe, around the Tabernacle, in the order in which they are going to march. Preparations are made to purify the camp. Silver trumpets are made to assemble the people and to give them the signal to move on. Then finally the journey begins.

What follows is a momentous anti-climax. First there is an unspecified complaint (Num. 11:1-3). Then we read: “The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, “If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost—also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!” (Num. 11:4-6).

The people seem to have forgotten that in Egypt they had been slaves, oppressed, their male children killed, and that they had cried out to be freed by God. The memory Jewish tradition has preserved of the food they ate in Egypt was the bread of affliction and the taste of bitterness, not meat and fish. As for their remark that they ate the food at no cost, it did cost them something: their liberty.

There was something monstrous about this behaviour of the people and it induced in Moses what today we would call a breakdown:

He asked the Lord, “Why have you brought this trouble on Your servant? What have I done to displease You that You put the burden of all these people on me?  Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth? … I cannot carry all these people by myself; the burden is too heavy for me. If this is how You are going to treat me, please go ahead and kill me—if I have found favour in Your eyes—and do not let me face my own ruin.” (Num. 11:11-15)

This was the lowest point in Moses’ career. The Torah does not tell us directly what was happening to him, but we can infer it from God’s reply. He tells him to appoint seventy elders who would share the burden of leadership. Hence we must deduce that Moses was suffering from lack of companionship. He had become the lonely man of faith.

He was not the only person in Tanach who felt so alone that he prayed to die. So did Elijah when Jezebel issued a warrant for his arrest and death after his confrontation with the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 19:4). So did Jeremiah when the people repeatedly failed to heed his warnings (Jer. 20:14-18). So did Jonah when God forgave the people of Nineveh, seemingly making nonsense of his warning that in forty days the city would be destroyed (Jon. 4:1-3). The Prophets felt alone and unheard. They carried a heavy burden of solitude. They felt they could not go on.

Few books explore this territory more profoundly than Psalms. Time and again we hear King David’s despair:

I am worn out from my groaning.

All night long I flood my bed with weeping

and drench my couch with tears. (Ps. 6:6)

 

How long, Lord? Will You forget me forever?

How long will You hide Your face from me? (Ps. 13:1-2)

 

My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?

Why are You so far from saving me so far from my cries of anguish? (Ps. 22:2)

 

Out of the depths I cry to You, Lord… (Ps. 130:1)

 

And there are many more psalms in a similar vein.

Something similar can be traced in modern times. Rav Kook, when he arrived in Israel, wrote, “There is no one, young or old, with whom I can share my thoughts, who is able to comprehend my viewpoint, and this wearies me greatly.”[1]

Even more candid was the late Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik. Near the beginning of his famous essay The Lonely Man of Faith, he writes, starkly: “I am lonely.” He continues, “I am lonely because at times I feel rejected and thrust away by everybody, not excluding my most intimate friends.”

At times of loneliness, I have found great solace in these passages. They told me I was not alone in feeling alone. Other people had been here before me.

Moses, Elijah, Jeremiah, Jonah and King David were among the greatest spiritual leaders who ever lived. Such, though, is the psychological realism of Tanach that we are given a glimpse into their souls. They were outstanding individuals, but they were still human, not superhuman. Judaism consistently avoided one of the greatest temptations of religion: to blur the boundary between heaven and earth, turning heroes into gods or demigods. The most remarkable figures of Judaism’s early history did not find their tasks easy. They never lost faith, but sometimes it was strained almost to breaking point. It is the uncompromising honesty of Tanach that makes it so compelling.

The psychological crises they experienced were understandable. They were undertaking almost impossible tasks. Moses was trying to turn a generation forged in slavery into a free and responsible people. Elijah was one of the first Prophets to criticise kings. Jeremiah had to tell the people what they did not want to hear. Jonah had to face the fact that Divine forgiveness extends even to Israel’s enemies and can overturn prophecies of doom. David had to wrestle with political, military and spiritual challenges as well as an unruly personal life.

By telling us of their strife of the spirit, Tanach is conveying something of immense consequence. In their isolation, loneliness, and deep despair, these figures cried out to God “from the depths,” and God answered them. He did not make their lives easier. But He did help them feel they were not alone.

Their very loneliness brought them into an unparalleled closeness to God. In our parsha, in the next chapter, God Himself defended Moses’ honour against the slights of Miriam and Aaron. After wishing to die, Elijah encountered God on Mount Horeb in a “still, small voice.” Jeremiah found the strength to continue to prophesy, and Jonah was given a lesson in compassion by God Himself. Separated from their contemporaries, they were united with God. They discovered the deep spirituality of solitude.

Many are feeling lonely, anxious, isolated, deprived of company. To help, Natan Sharansky put out a video describing how he endured his years of loneliness in the Soviet Gulag as a prisoner of the KGB. From dozens of reports from those who endured it, including the late John McCain, solitary confinement is the most terrifying punishment of all. In the Torah, the first time the words “not good” appear are in the sentence “It is not good for man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18).

But there are uses of adversity, and consolation in loneliness. When we feel alone, we are not alone, because the great heroes of the human spirit felt this way at times – Moses, David, Elijah and Jonah. So did modern masters like Rav Kook and Rabbi Soloveitchik. It was precisely their loneliness that allowed them to develop a deeper relationship with God. Plumbing the depths, they reached the heights. They met God in the silence of the soul and felt themselves embraced.

I believe that isolation contains, within it, spiritual possibilities. We can use it to deepen our spirituality. We can read the book of Psalms, re-engaging with some of the greatest religious poetry the world has ever known. We can pray more deeply from the heart. And we can find solace in the stories of Moses and others who had moments of despair but who came through them, their faith strengthened by their intense encounter with the Divine. It is when we feel most alone that we discover that we are not alone, “for You are with me.”

Shabbat Shalom

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks

[1] Igrot ha-Ra’ayah 1, 128.
[2] Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, Doubleday, 1992, 3.

 

KOL HATOR Commentary:

OvadYah’s Song Contribution this week:

Title: Eli, Eli (My G-d, my G-d!)

by OvadYah Avrahami

“How long, my G-d?
will you still have to wait
on Thy People to wake
and conform to Thy Will?
You urge us to build
a Temple to hold
Your Presence, we’re told
when Your Promise unfolds.”

 

You can listen to the accompanying music here (MP3): How long, Eli

 

This week’s Haftarah:

Commentary by OvadYah Avrahami

Haftarah Beha’alotkha       Zechariah 2:14 – 4:7

Our reprimand for introspection is confirmed in this Haftarah.  It shows up the tardiness on the side of Judah who claims the Torah exclusively for Jews who generally do not wish to share it with the re-awakening Ephraimites (from the House of 10-Israel) who are still in exile and need to RETURN to Torah, to the Nation of HaShem and to the Land to formulate the restored and re-united 12-Tribed Kingdom of Israel. On the Ephraimite side, they need to realize also that they have totally lost their Hebraic and Torah identity and need to “bow to” the Mechoqeck (Click for full review) authority of Judah (the Jews) for learning Torah.

Zech. 2

יד  רָנִּי וְשִׂמְחִי, בַּת-צִיּוֹן–כִּי הִנְנִי-בָא וְשָׁכַנְתִּי בְתוֹכֵךְ, נְאֻם-יְהוָה.	14 ‘Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion; for, lo, I come, and I will dwell in the midst of thee, saith HaShem.
טו  וְנִלְווּ גוֹיִם רַבִּים אֶל-יְהוָה בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא, וְהָיוּ לִי לְעָם; וְשָׁכַנְתִּי בְתוֹכֵךְ–וְיָדַעַתְּ, כִּי-יְהוָה צְבָאוֹת שְׁלָחַנִי אֵלָיִךְ.	15 And many nations shall join themselves to HaShem in that day, and shall be My people, and I will dwell in the midst of thee’

 

This Divine Promise and claim of “many nations” joined to Him underlies the awesome “Blessing of Avraham” – which encompasses the entire ultimate Divine Plane for humanity, His Creation, of which He prides Himself the concerned, faithful, loving Father.

SEVEN terms are used in 20 direct Divine Promises recorded in the Torah alone to define who the ultimate beneficiaries of Avraham’s Blessing would be. See the diagram below:

Ref.  to the full article on the Blessing of Avraham for a comprehensive extract of all 20 sections in Torah in Hebrew and 50 English Bible translations.

2000 years of persecution have come upon Judah for holding on to and proclaiming the Torah to the Nations during the Roman Empire times. This has caused Judah to withdraw into self-protection mode and guarding the Torah just for themselves. The Final Redemption which will transpire as the “Blessing to Avraham” of uncountable masses of descendants amongst the nations is, however, dependant on Judah’s acknowledgement and acceptance of their long lost brothers – and these long lost brothers and sisters, after 2700 years amongst the pagan nations need to extricate themselves from the pagan religions which they have become involved in during their exile amongst the nations.

There is a well-documented concept amongst the Rabbis, that HaShem has caused the exile of Israel amongst the nations so that in the End time, their return to Torah will serve as a Testimony amongst the nations of the Creator’s Torah Will and Purpose for humanity.

So, there should not be despair about HaShem’s seeming disinterest in our welfare and about the deadlock that has been developing regarding the reconciliation of the division and hostilities between Judah and the nations amongst whom multi-millions of lost Ten Tribers and Lost Jews are still exiled. (Ref. https://www.kolhator.com/the-lost-and-captive-jewish-child-and-their-return-to-jewish-identity-and-the-land-of-israel/  ).

 

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