God said to Moses, "Speak to Aaron and say to him: 'When you mount the lamps, the seven lamps shall illuminate the menorah.'" (Numbers 8:1, 2) These two simple verses begin a diverse web of instructions and stories that comprise this week's Torah portion, Parashat B’haalot’cha. They also contain a beautiful Jewish lesson about the way we should live. This lesson results from our understanding the relationship between the role of light in the Torah and the reality of time in our lives.
Light in the Torah is a symbol of holy and meaningful time. Our Jewish rituals associated with light, such as lighting Shabbat candles, the Havdalah candle, and the chanukiah, can lead us daily to live holy lives.
In Numbers, the menorah is a lampstand that contains seven lamps. Similarly, our souls contain our days-our life and times. Just as lighting the seven lamps illuminates the menorah, so living as if each of the seven days of the week were a gift to do God's work lightens our souls. Thus we can now understand the verses from Numbers in the following way: '"When you treat each of the seven days of the week as holy, you will illuminate your soul."
Each of us finds this illumination in a personal way, but an episode that occurs later in this same portion can help all of us lighten our souls. This teaching could be called "sufficiency consciousness."
In Numbers 11, we see the Hebrews encamping for the first time after departing from Sinai. We can feel their frustration. Their wandering on their way to Canaan seems endless, and they are regimented in every possible way. Their lives lack spontaneity and variety. The worst of it is the daily diet called manna-eating the same food at every meal.
To us, the manna seems to be a miracle given by God: It was found everywhere after the evening dew appeared. The midrash, in the classic book Me'am Lo'ez, says that it was tasty food and that before Shabbat, a double portion was given. But then again, the manna looked the same every day.
The Israelites' complaint, for which our ancestors suffered terribly, was: "We remember the fish that we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions and the garlic. Now our gullets are shriveled. There is nothing at all! Nothing but this manna to look to!" (Numbers 11:5-6)
The midrash suggests that the Israelites became embittered for two reasons: First, because they did not know whether the manna would descend the next day-that is, they had no faith in God; and second, because although the manna had many and varied tastes, it did not contain the five vegetables mentioned in their complaint. In other words, a plenteous miracle wasn't plenteous enough for them. They lacked "sufficiency consciousness"- the realization that they had enough to be secure.
Do we face this problem in our own lives, not in terms of food or other necessities of life but in how we use or misuse our time? We often feel that we never have enough time, or we treat our days as routine, or we miss opportunities for performing mitzvot.
In order to light the seven lamps of the menorah, to lighten our souls, to live the seven days of each week meaningfully, we are taught to have faith in God and to have "sufficiency consciousness." This parashah helps us to appreciate our blessings and to make the most of the opportunities presented to us.
Our new consciousness can light each day and the light of each day will light our souls. Then we will be able to fulfill a modern Jewish expression of the ancient commandment: "When you light the lamps, the seven lamps shall illuminate the menorah."
How many times have we told a friend something about another person or made a negative statement about someone out loud? This tends to be a common occurrence. One person hears something positive or negative about another person and then passes the information on to someone else. We also share our opinions about other people freely without thinking about the possible effect of our comments.
The words we use can have various effects on others. Miriam and Aaron discovered the repercussions of "speaking against" another-in this case Moses, their brother: "When they were in Hazeroth, Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman he had married: 'He married a Cushite woman!'" (Numbers 12:1) Although Moses did not hear this conversation, God did and was upset. Miriam was punished physically by being "stricken with snow-white scales" (Numbers 12:10), referring to leprosy, and she was removed from the camp for seven days. Aaron then appealed to Moses for forgiveness: "O my lord, account not to us the sin which we committed in our folly." (Numbers 12:11) Aaron, who was a High Priest, was not physically punished but had to live with his action and with Miriam's disfigurement.
It was not the exact words spoken by Miriam and Aaron that upset God but the fact that they had "spoken against" Moses. In fact, Dr. J. H. Hertz refers to Miriam's punishment of leprosy as "the Providential punishment for slander." The question then arises: Would the same punishment have occurred if Miriam and Aaron had discussed someone else or if someone else had spoken against another person? Nehama Leibowitz says in her commentary that "the Torah did not wish to prohibit merely explicit gossip about our fellowmen in general and the spiritual leaders of our generation in particular. It wished to prohibit any kind of talk or gossip disparaging our fellowman."
Therefore, this portion has a direct impact on our lives. When we speak against another person maliciously or just speak about another, we must be aware that our words may result in very strong consequences. The midrash teaches us that "even if all of a slander is not believed, half of it is." We should consider the consequences of our words before we utter them, and we must ask for forgiveness after we have spoken, as Aaron did. In fact, our Yom Kippur prayers state: "For transgressions against God, the Day of Atonement atones; but for transgressions of one human being against another, the Day of Atonement does not atone until they have made peace with one another." (Gates of Repentance)
May Miriam's and Aaron's actions and punishments guide us in our lives. May we avoid gossip and ask for forgiveness if we falter
B'haalot'cha, Numbers 8:1–12:16
The Torah: A Modern Commentary, pp. 1,075–1,100; Revised Edition, pp. 950–973;
The Torah: A Women's Commentary, pp. 843–868
