From: JoshHoff@aol.com
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2008 5:48 AM
To: JoshHoff@aol.com
Subject: Netvort:parshas Behaaloscha, 5768
Who, Me ?
By Rabbi Joshua (questionably known as The Hoffer) Hoffman
In honor of Avigayil
Hefter,who was born in Yerushalayim last Friday, and her parents,my nephew
Yisroel Meir Hefter and his wife, Tova, of Yerushalayim. May she grow to be a
source of nachas to her parents,her wider family and all of klal Yisroel.
After the nation
complains to Moshe about their food provisions, and asks fort meat, Moshe asks
God to relieve him of the burden of caring for them, which, he feels is beyond
his own ability. God tells Moshe to gather seventy elders from the
congregation, and that He will come down and speak to Moshe, and increase from
his spirit onto the seventy elders. How was this supposed to help Moshe in
dealing with the people? On a simple level, these seventy elders, who were now
endowed with the ability to prophesy, would assist Moshe in dealing with the
burdens of the nation. However, we do not find, in the subsequent parshas of
the Torah, that this, in fact, ever happened. Moreover, this approach does not
explain how the frustration that Moshe had with the complaints of the people
would be alleviated. If the complaints themselves bothered him and led him to
doubt his own leadership abilities, how would the addition of seventy aids
bolster his self- image and make him realize that he could continue as their
leader?
Perhaps we can explain that Moshe was plagued by self- doubt in his own abilities
since the people did not want to follow him into the land, and therefore he
asked God to find someone else more worthy. Therefore, God wanted to
demonstrate to Moshe that he did, in fact, have the ability to lead them. He
did so by endowing the seventy elders with prophecy by merely extending the
power of prophecy that Moshe had onto the elders. Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra
explains that the process was akin to lighting many flames from a single
flame. God was trying to show Moshe that if all of these people were able to
prophecy merely by tapping into his power of prophecy, he certainly had within
him the ability to continue leading the nation. Interestingly, the Torah said
that these elders prophesied, and ' velo yasafu,' they did not continue, as
Rashi explains in one of his two interpretations. The Kesav Sofer explains that
since this prophecy was only needed for a particular time, and was not the kind
of prophecy that is attained through one's own personal development, it did not
continue beyond the time that it was actually needed. Thus, there was only a
need for these elders to prophesy at that particular moment, in order to give
encouragement to Moshe in believing in his own abilities to continue in his
leadership role.
There were two
exceptions to the case of the elders, people who merited prophesy in
their own right, and these were the two people identified in the Torah as
Eldad and Medad. As explained by Rashi, when they saw that their names were
written on slips of paper which identified those who would prophesy, they did
not deem themselves worthy , and left the vicinity of Moshe and the elders and
walked in to the area of the encampment, where they began to prophesy on their
own.As Rav Moshe Sternbuch explains in his work Ta'am Va Da'as, this means
that they attained prophesy on their own merits, following a process of self-
development . When Yehoshua heard them and went to Moshe to stop them, he
answered, " would that all the nation of God would be prophets." In
this statement, Moshe was articulating his goal for the Jewish nation, which
was for them to reach the level of prophets. Perhaps this helps explain why he
was so frustrated with their complaints over their food supply. These
complaints indicated that the people were not, in fact, striving to elevate
themselves and attain prophecy, but were rather, focused on their material
needs. The episode of the seventy elders, and the subsequent incident with
Eldad and Medad, demonstrated to Moshe that he still had the ability to lead
others to prophecy, and, moreover, that there were still people among the
nation who were themselves striving to reach a higher level in their
relationship with God, thus vindicating his deepest wishes for the nation.
.
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