Parshat Bamidbar/Shavu’ot 5773 Schedule

Weekly Words of Torah

Flags, Mishkan & Unity

Insights into Parshat Bamidbar of Mr. Binyomin Avraham Barman of Yeshivat Sha’alvim, by Rav Re’uven Ungar of Sha’alvim.

“וידבר ד’ אל משה וגו’…..בשנה השנית לצאתם מארץ מצרים לאמר”
“Hashem spoke to Moshe etc….. in the second year after their exodus from the land of Egypt, saying,” (Bamidbar 1:1)

Rashi on this pasuk explains the reason why B’nei Yisrael were counted as often as three times in one year was because of their dearness to Hashem.

Rav Yaakov Kaminetsky in his Sefer Emet L’Yaakov advances a wonderful explanation of this specific counting instance. It is clear in the Torah that the Jewish people are counted after having established their camps. Rav Yaakov asks: why didn’t B’nei Yisrael set up camps immediately upon leaving Egypt? Didn’t we learn from two pesukim in Sefer Shemot (“and the children of Israel were going out with an upraised arm” [Shemot 14:8] & “the children of Israel were armed when they went up from the land of Egypt” [Shemot 13:18]) that we didn’t leave like a nation who flees from their master, rather a free nation? So why did we wait a full year to set up the flags for the camps if we are so free?

Flags are a symbol of separation. Every country has their own flag, which symbolizes that they are independent. Every flag has a different color and picture, which symbolizes its uniqueness. Medrash Rabah explains that each tribe’s color was one of the colors on the Kohein Gadol’s Choshen (breastplate) and each picture differentiated a special characteristic of that tribe or a special goal that the tribe represents. All this expresses how setting up flags separates us from everyone else. Rav Yaakov explains that as a nation who just gained freedom after being in slavery in Egypt, we don’t want to start rift between each other immediately after crossing the Nile River. However, he questions: So why did we wait a full year to set up our flags?

Rav Kaminetsky maintains that B’nei Yisrael couldn’t have set up a camp until there was structure among our nation. Once B’nei Yisrael built a Mishkan (Tabernacle), if we then set up the camps around the Mishkan, there won’t be any feeling of separation among one another. How is this so? Every tribe will not be forced to separate because every tribe will have a special watchman and then there won’t be any worry of separation. This is compared to a human being. When we are created, we Baruch Hashem have our ears on either end of our head in order to hear while having eyes in the front of our face in order to see. Though they are near each other, they will certainly work together as one. The same rule applies for a nation. When a nation surrounds a central point, there is no way that they’ll separate. Therefore, since B’nei Yisrael didn’t have that central point (of the Mishkan) yet to surround each camp, they were incapable to install the camps. Once the time of the first month of the second year arrived, we established a Mishkan and in result, we could then begin putting up flags for each group because we know that we are a subdivision of something greater in the middle.

The Gemara in Sanhedrin 90a (recited prior to learning of Pirkei Avot) says as follows: “כל ישראל יש להם חלק לעולם הבא”-“Every Jew has for them a portion to the world to come”. The common phrase should say that every Jew should have a portion IN the world to come. Why does this Gemara say “to”? The Avodat Yisrael answers that it is not that every person has his or her own portion in the world to come. Rather, every person has their own path for what they have to do in order to get to the world to come.

It is very clear to see here how a nation CAN be unified while being so diverse. Each tribe had special qualities, yet the Mishkan was the one commonality that united all of B’nei Yisrael. One can take this lesson of a diverse type of unity and apply it to our Jewish people today. Just like the Mishkan united B’nei Yisrael back in the desert after leaving Egypt, so too it is Torah that pulls us closer to the world to come. Every Jew can connect through Torah. The diversity factor hasn’t changed. You can go into a Shul and find one Jew with a Gemara, while the four others next to him are learning Seforim on Halacha, Machshavah, Tanach and Mussar. As we approach Shavuot, let us remember how blessed we are to receive a Torah and try to keep connecting to it to help strengthen the amazing unity we have as a nation together serving our one and only G-d with Simcha!