In Israel: BeMidbar
Don’t Look!
This week’s Torah reading begins with a detailed census of Israel’s tribes. However, the Levites are not included in the census; they are listed separately afterwards.
The Torah says that there were three main clans of Levites: the Gershonites, the Kohathites, and the Merarites. Each of these clans was assigned specific duties with regard to the mishkan, the moveable sanctuary that accompanied the Israelites on their wanderings in the wilderness. The Gershonites were charged with taking care of the lower coverings of the mishkan, the tent and its coverings, and much more. The Kohathites had charge of the ark, the table, the menorah, the altars, and so forth. The Merarites were given authority over the planks of the mishkan and various other appurtenances.
The three clans’ duties were not exactly equal. The things entrusted to the Kohathites’ care were by far the holiest of all. The ark contained the Ten Commandments, written “by the finger of God” (Deut 9:10, 10:5). The table, the menorah, and the altars were of similar holiness. In fact, these things were so sacred that the Kohathites themselves were not permitted to fetch them out of their places whenever the mishkan had to be disassembled and moved to a new locale. Instead, the kohanim (priests) first had to cover these sacred objects with special coverings. Only then could the Kohathites (who, as Levites, were of a lesser degree of sanctity than the kohanim) “come and lift them” (Num 4:15).
In next week’s Torah reading, we are given one additional detail about the process of taking down the mishkan to transport it to a new location. Moses gave the Levites six wagons in which to put the various parts of the mishkan when it had to be moved. Since, as we have seen, there were three main clans of Levites, each clan ought to have gotten two wagons to transport the various parts of the mishkan that they had been assigned.
But that isn’t what happened. The Gershonites got two wagons, the Merarites got four, and the Kohathites, who were charged with transporting the holiest objects, got…none! “Let them carry [them, that is, the sacred objects] on their shoulders,” the Torah says (Num 7:9).
This seems completely counter-intuitive. If the objects assigned to the Kohathites were so sacred that the kohanim had to cover them lest the Kohathites themselves should catch a glimpse of them, how on earth were these objects now going to be carried by hand, “on the shoulders” of the Kohathites? After all, when the mishkan was moved, it was not to some place a few yards away: these were long-distance moves, as the Torah later enumerates. Would it not make sense to give the wagons first and foremost to the Kohathites, so as to make sure that nothing violated the objects’ sanctity?
And just think of those poor Kohathites trooping through the wilderness with the ark, the table, and the altars on their shoulders, mile after mile. Yet the Torah says, as if everyone would understand why, that “To the Kohathites he [Moses] did not give any wagons; since the job of [transporting] the holiest objects was entrusted to them, they would carry them on their shoulders.”
What apparently was easily understood in biblical times has largely been lost in our own. The things that are holiest must be accorded special treatment, whatever the cost in time and effort, precisely because they are the holiest. There could scarcely be any other way of understanding this passage. Indeed, the Rabbis connected this phenomenon with a certain verse from the book of Proverbs (reading it quite out of context): “If you merely glance at it, it disappears” (Prov 23:5). That is the risk with whatever is holy, and why it demands our greatest respect: “Let them carry them on their shoulders.”
Shabbat shalom!
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Outside Israel: BeHukkotai
Fortuna
There’s a word that occurs seven times in this week’s reading and nowhere else in the whole Bible. Commentators and translators are thus understandably curious about the precise meaning of this word, keri. On largely contextual grounds, some have equated keri with “opposition” and therefore translate it in all of its seven appearances (Lev 26:21, 23, 24, 27, 28, 40, and 41) as “to be hostile.” Actually, these verses all speak of “going with/in keri,” as if this involved some deliberate and ongoing behavior rather than just a static state, “being hostile.” Whichever the case, other commentators have not been convinced by this translation. Some have connected “going with/in keri,” to the word for “cold,” hence something like “to be cool towards.” But neither of these suggestions has met with widespread approval.
What seems more likely is that this usage is connected to the Hebrew root meaning “to occur,” which is typically used in a negative sense. In Ecclesiastes mikreh (“occurrence”) is a polite way of referring to a person’s death (3:19, 9:2, 3), and in post-biblical Hebrew, keri means “mishap” or “accident.” Then what does this week’s reading mean by “going in/with keri”?
My guess is hardly less speculative than anyone else’s, but this expression always reminds me of the Roman goddess of chance occurrences, Fortuna. As a goddess, Fortuna was traditionally represented as blind: her worshipers might hope to affect the outcome of things such as a child’s birth or marriage or the like, but the very blindness or fickleness of Fortuna seemed to gainsay their efforts. One might say that worshiping her was an acknowledgement that there is no order in the universe. Chance rules all: “Things can get better or things can get worse—who knows?”
If this is the sense of “going with/in keri”—believing that everything is ultimately up to chance—then such an idea is clearly opposed to the opening verse of this week’s reading (Lev 26:3), which says: “If you follow [literally, “go with”] My laws and are careful to carry out My commandments, then I will grant you abundant rainfall in its season,” and this will lead to food aplenty; along with this will come external peace and domestic tranquility. In other words, “going with My laws” is quite the opposite of “going with keri.”
I don’t think one should mistake this for a guarantee in the Torah—certainly it hasn’t proven to be such in Jewish history. Instead, it’s a commitment to reading reality in a certain way, the non-Fortuna way. What this week’s reading suggests is that “going with keri” leads to an overall process of degeneration, moving from one disaster to the next. The opposite of “going with keri,” this week’s reading says, is “going with My laws” in all their particulars, a commitment to an entirely different way of seeing. The choice, this reading says, is up to each person.
Shabbat shalom!
