Parshas Beha'aloscha 5760 Your Heart's Desire 

                     By Rabbi Joshua (desirously known as The Hoffer) Hoffman

In this week's parsha, we learn of a unique kind of mitzvah, that of Pesach Sheni, the second instance of bringing the Korban Pesach, or the Pesach sacrifice. The Torah tells us that if someone was, at the time the regular Pesach sacrifice was brought on the fourteenth of Nisan, unable to fulfill the mitzvah because he was in an impure state or too distant from the sanctuary, he is given a second chance to fulfill it a month later, on the fourteenth of Iyar. This mitzvah originally came about through a case of some people who, as the Torah describes it,  had become impure through contact with a human corpse, and were unable to bring the Korban Pesach in the wilderness. They came to Moshe and asked why they should be deprived of this mitzvah. Moshe, unaware of what to do, asked God, Who instructed him in the mitzvah of Pesach Sheni. We find no other such mitzvah in the Torah, in which a person who fails to perform the basic mitzvah at its regular time is given another chance to fulfill it at a later time. Because these people felt a loss in missing out on fulfilling the mitzvah along with their fellow Jews, and expressed this sense of loss to Moshe, a new mitzvah was given to the Jewish people.

   The midrash (Sifrei) asks, who were these people who helped generate the divine response presenting the people with the mitzvah of Pesach Sheni? According to one opinion, these were the people who carried the coffin of Yosef. One may ask, why is it important to know who these people were, and, further, of what significance is it that these people were the bearers of Yosef's coffin? The  Chidushei HaRim says that since this was the only case in which we find a mitzvah generated by the desire to make up for missing a mitzvah, we wish to know who exactly these people were. His great-grandson, the author of  Imrei Emes, goes further and says that, had more such people been amongst the Jewish people in the wilderness, they would have been able to bring the regular Pesach sacrifice every year during their sojourn there, rather than only in the first year, as actually occurred. The Talmud does explain that the reason the sacrifice was not brought during the subsequent years was that the people could not perform bris milah during those years due to their constant state of travel or preparedness for travel. Still, had they expressed a desire to bring the Korban Pesach, a way would have been found, just as it had been found in the case of Yosef's pall bearers. Although this is not mentioned by the Imrei Emes, it is interesting to note that the Ramban on parshas Korach writes that the nation was punished in the time of King David with a plague because it had not expressed a desire to build the Temple. Had they expressed such a desire, writes the Ramban, it would have been built long before it was. Apparently, then, both the existence of the Temple and the performance of the sacrifices the are intricately connected with an expression of a strong desire to realize them. This makes sense when we remember the words of Rabbi Menachem Kasher, who said that the sacrificial service itself is a supreme expression of our love for God and our willingness to give our lives over to Him, in acknowledgment that He is the very source of our existence. We still, however, need to understand the significance of the act that it was people involved with transporting Yosef's remains who were the ones to express their desire to bring the Korban Pesach.

   There is another mitzvah that is grounded in a deeply-rooted desire for its realization, and that is the mitzvah of settling the Holy Land. This idea is brought out by the seventeenth century kabbalist Rabbi Elazar Azkiri in his work Sefer Charedim. He mentions the opinion of the Tannaitic work Seder Olam that Avraham went to the Holy Land twice, once when he was seventy, and again when he was seventy-five. The purpose of Avraham's initial visit, he writes, was to implant within him a desire and love for the land, so that when God would tell him "go forth from your land" he would be animated by that desire. Interestingly, it was descendants of Yosef who would later express great love for the land. In parshas Pinchas we read of the daughters of Zelafchad, a man who died in the wilderness without any sons, who came to Moshe and asked that they be given their father's portion in the land. The rabbis attributed their love for the land to their descending from Yosef. The midrash in Devorim Rabbah, moreover, notes the contrast between Moshe and Yosef, in that Moshe did not merit to be buried in the land of Israel while Yosef did. The reason for this, says the midrash, is that Moshe, when referred to by the daughters of Yisro as an Egyptian, did not protest, Yosef, when vilified in Pharaoh's court for being a Hebrew, an Ivri, from the land across the river, embraced that identity. Yosef further demonstrated his love for the land when he asked his brothers to bury him there. It was his descendants, the daughters of Zelafchad, who argued to Moshe, ' lama yigara shem avinu," why should the name of our father be removed, using almost the same expression as Yosef's pall bearers who argued 'lama nigara,' why should we be removed, or deprived of the mitzvah of Korban Pesach. Thus, it was Yosef and his descendants who were identified with the two areas of Torah which constitute the culmination of the exodus from Egypt, whose ultimate goal was to serve God on the highest level in the land of Israel, in the Temple. By their nature, these mitzvos need to be done with enthusiasm, and serve as models for all of our mitzvah performance. It was Yosef who embraced his Jewish identity in the face of the many adversities he encountered in Egypt, who paved the way for his descendants.

  The midrash, as cited by Rashi to parshas Veyeitzei, tells us that once Yosef was born to Rachel, Ya'akov was able to leave the house of Lavan and begin his return to the Holy Land.  The reason for this, says the midrash, is because Ya'akov foresaw that the descendants of Eisav could only be defeated by the descendants of Rachel. Why is this so? Rabbi Yehoshua of Kutna writes that Eisav, too, was animated by a great enthusiasm in his wanton lifestyle. This is the meaning of Ya'akov's comment to Eisav, as recorded in the midrash, that, while in Lavan's house, he kept all of the mitzvos and did not learn from his evil deeds. Why did Ya'akov say that he did not learn from Lavan's evil deeds. If he already said that he kept all the mitzvos? The answer is that Ya'akov was telling Eisav that although he did keep all the mitzvos while in Lavan's house, he did not do them with the enthusiasm that Lavan sinned with, and, therefore, Eisav need not fear him. As we noted in netvort to Pesach, Rav Kook writes that we can derive something positive from idolaters, despite the depraved nature of their belief system, and that is the enthusiasm with which they act on it. In order to defeat Eisav, to demonstrate God's sovereignty to all the world's inhabitants, we need to serve Him with the level of enthusiasm that was displayed by Yosef, by his pall bearers, and by his descendants, the daughters of Zelafchad. It is in this sense, perhaps, that the rabbis said, that the seed of Eisav will fall only at the hands of the descendants of Rachel.