Beha'alotekha (Numbers 8:1-12:16) June 18, 2022/19 Sivan 5782

I really wanted to talk about quails this week. I'm going to talk at greater length about other things, but I'm going to start with the quails. Beha'alotekha is home to my favorite story in the whole Torah. The Israelites are agitating, complaining that they are sick of eating manna and want meat. Moses, unable to deal with all the kvetching, goes to God and says "If this is the treatment You intend me to receive, then I beg of you, please kill me now and free me from this suffering." To this, God engages in a bit of phenomenal trolling. God doesn't just give the whining Israelites meat to eat for a day, or two days, or even a week. No, God promises that they will have meat until they cannot stomach it anymore and it is coming out their nostrils. Overnight, a massive flock of quail is dumped on the camp, leaving a layer of fowl two cubits deep, so that the least successful quail gatherer collected 10 homers over the course of a month-long quail-pocalypse. For those of you not up on your obscure biblical measurements, 10 homers is a little bit over 58 gallons, coming out to a weight of 470 lbs of quail, and that's just the one who gathered the fewest quail. In the middle of the quail story, the parashah relates the actual topic of this week's d'var Torah.

So, after Moses goes to God to ask to be put out of his misery but before the bird blizzard, God instructs Moses to assemble a group of seventy elders who will get to share the prophetic gift and therefore delegate hearing the people's complaints. Two of the elders, Eldad and Medad, didn't go to the meeting, and they start prophesying ecstatically in the camp. A young assistant of Moses (some traditions identify him as his son Gershom) comes in to alert Moses to this incidence of unprovoked prophecy in the camp, and Joshua, who was there as Moses's aide de camp, suggests that the men should be imprisoned. As it happens, Rashi suggests that the reason for Joshua's reaction is that the prophecy of Eldad and Medad was that Moses would die in the wilderness and it would be Joshua who would succeed him and lead the Israelites into the Promised Land. Moses, however, rejects the suggestion of his aide, saying "Are you so jealous on my account? If only all of God's nation could be prophets." From there, the narrative jumps to the payoff of the complaints about meat - a hurricane of quails, the chief complainers are suddenly stricken down by God before they can eat, and the Israelites move on to their next camp.

At the next camp, Miriam and Aaron slander Moses and his wife Tzipporah, who the Torah only calls "the Cushite woman [Moses] had married". God summons all three siblings to the Tabernacle, where Aaron and Miriam are scolded for their speech against Moses, and Miriam is punished with tzara'at, the supernatural skin affliction typically translated as leprosy. Moses appeals to God to heal his older sister, and God acquiesces, though she must wait a week before being healed and readmitted to the Israelite camp. Interestingly, tradition indicates that Miriam's slander against her brother was not a criticism of his wife, but rather a defense of her. It is brought down in commentaries and midrashim that, upon taking the role of Prophet-in-Chief and the direct communication that comes with such an office, Moses essentially abandoned his family so as to always be available to God whenever revelation might come, and Miriam, the story goes, was criticizing Moses for not properly fulfilling his duties as a father and husband, serving the public at the expense of his family. If she was driven by benevolent intentions, then why was she punished so harshly? While she was right to be concerned about her sister-in-law and nephews, she should have brought those concerns to Moses personally rather than invite public scorn on him. In a previous d'var Torah, we discussed the idea that public shaming of others is seen as a major act of wrongdoing, even if we are speaking the truth, and even if it is done with the best of intentions. The same thing applies here; we don't change people's behaviors by publicly insulting and demeaning them. The best way to bring about a change in someone's actions is to speak to them directly about it.

In both the episode of Eldad and Medad and the situation with his siblings, Moses exhibits tremendous humility. In fact, the Torah even says of him, "The man, Moses, was the most humble of all people." For those given fantastic gifts, whether physical ability, great knowledge, material wealth, or prophetic visions, it is easy to let those tremendous blessings go to our heads and view them as proof of our superiority, to be jealously guarded lest other people gain the same blessings. But that is not the message this portion is trying to send us. When Joshua takes umbrage at the prophesying of Eldad and Medad, Moses's response is to wish the wonderful gift could be given to everyone. If we have been blessed in one area, we should not see other people receiving the same blessing as somehow taking away from ours. On the contrary, we should take pride in enabling others to reach our levels of success or even surpass us. Life is not a zero-sum endeavor. Someone else being lifted up does not push us down and pushing someone down does not make us any taller. Indeed, the successes of those whom we teach and guide along their paths reflect upon us as if they were our own. Whenever a newly-certified officer at my work does something particularly well, among the first questions that people ask is "Who trained them?" Even though the praise is rightfully heaped on the person who did the thing, their glory is immediately connected to their mentor. As a trainer myself, it is my goal to elevate my trainees to my level of ability, and I take pride in their success. While I don't purport to be as profound a leader as Moses, I do understand his mindset here.

Even though he was the chief prophet and the civil leader at the time, Moses knew that he was not going to be around forever. Indeed, some understand him as already knowing that he will not lead the Israelites into the Promised Land. In view of that, he is trying to prepare the nation for the eventual transition of authority to Joshua and his successors as leaders of the Israelites. But it is not just the nation that needs to be prepared for the transition. Moses must prepare Joshua to lead. This is why his rejection of the suggestion to imprison Eldad and Medad is not just a general one but specifically directed at his protégé, to teach him the value of humility in leadership. Taking the mantle of leadership for the sake of your own ego is not a recipe for success. This is especially important in the context of Moses's dual role as chieftain and teacher. To lead or to teach requires one to subordinate one's sense of importance to the needs of those being led or taught, and how much more so when one is both leading and teaching. In the Broadway musical Hamilton, the character of George Washington explains his decision to retire from the presidency after two terms, despite his popularity and the fact that the American people would likely continue to elect him for as long as he lived, by saying that stepping down and handing the reins to a new leader ensures that nation is prepared to move on and engrains the peaceful transition of power in society. Moses is doing the inverse here. He is preparing the new crop of leaders for the roles into which they will step. By demonstrating the humility and sense of service expected of a leader, Moses is leading and teaching by example, ensuring that his successors will be ready to meet the challenge of helping the Israelite nation survive the generations.