Beha’alotecha – Challenging the Status Quo

Beha’alotcha 2019

Challenging the Status Quo

In Numbers 9:6-14, a group of people approaches Moses, noting that halakhah prohibited them from participating in the Passover sacrifice because they were ritually impure.  God responds that they are to bring the Passover offering a month later, on what is now known as “פסח שני,” the Second Passover.  Rashi, reflecting the midrash, notes that this bit of law could just as easily been revealed directly to Moses as part of the original law, rather than waiting for the people to approach Moses.  We are told that the reason why this law waited to be revealed was “שמגלגלין זכות ע”י זכאי because we reveal worthy things through worthy people.”[1]

Through this midrash, we learn some very important things.  First, we learn that challenging the fairness of the status quo can be a worthy endeavor.

The story also teaches a little bit about how to challenge the status quo.  Responding to an early draft of a related d’var Torah, my teacher Rabbi Leonard Levy noted that there are three times in the book of Numbers when God accommodates a challenge to the status quo.  They are (1) the פסח שני story; (2) the story of the daughters of Zelophehad, who challenge the fact that they cannot inherit the land of their father, who passed away without any sons; and (3) the story of people of the Gilad clan who fear that the accommodation of Zelophehad’s daughters will reduce the clan’s territory in Israel.  In each of these cases, the challenger is presented as “coming close” ((קרב “before” ((לפני  Moses. The challenge is presented respectfully, rather than as an attack on Moses and the Torah he represents.  On the other hand, in the unsuccessful challenges to Moses’s authority in Numbers, including the response to the negative report of the spies and Korah’s rebellion, the language is that the people “gathered” (ויקהלו) or “grumbled” (וילונו) against (על) Moses.[2]

Beyond the question of how to challenge the status quo, our story seems to speak about why to challenge the status quo.  Rabbi Levy notes that in each of the successful challenges of the status quo, the “respectful questions are motivated by a sense that the law as understood makes them feel deficient,” as expressed through the root גרע (diminished) in Num. 9:7, 27:4, and 36:3-4.  What I find interesting here is that the challenge is motivated by personal interest.  Nonetheless, because the interest of the people is in participating in doing worthy things – the Passover sacrifice and land ownership in Israel – their challenge is still considered a worthy act, so worthy that Torah is revealed through these challengers.[3]

The Second Passover story also teaches us another important thing about these very worthy challenges of the status quo.  The Torah teaches that no matter how reasonable the question and how worthy the people who present the challenge, sometimes the answer is still “No.”  This is a detail I missed about this story until just weeks ago.  I had always understood this story to be God’s agreeing with the challenge presented to Moses and thus giving the people what they wanted – a second chance to bring the Passover offering.  However, a few weeks ago I read a footnote in my teacher Hakham Isaac Sassoon’s The Status of Women in Jewish Tradition that taught me that I had missed this key detail in the story.  Hakham Sassoon describes this episode as follows:

At Numbers 9:7, men who have contracted corpse-defilement beseech Moses to allow them to participate in the Passover “at its appointed time in the midst of the children of Israel”.  Their request is turned down and instead the Second Passover is instituted.[4]

Indeed, a close read of the text reveals that God does not agree with the people’s request.  The people say to Moses “לָ֣מָּה נִגָּרַ֗ע לְבִלְתִּ֨י הַקְרִ֜ב אֶת־קָרְבַּ֤ן יְהוָה֙ בְּמֹ֣עֲד֔וֹ בְּת֖וֹךְ בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל Why should we lose out so as not to make the LORD’s sacrifice at its proper time among the Children of Israel”,[5] clearly demonstrating that what they were asking for was to make the sacrifice at its regular time along with the rest of the Israelites.

Thus, the Torah teaches us that sometimes the answer to even a worthy question is “No.”  Sometimes what is desired is simply not acceptable under halakhah.  However, as important of a lesson as this is for one who asks a question challenging the halakhic status quo, this story teaches an even more important lesson for those who respond to those challenges.

To those who answer these questions, this episode teaches what I would like to call the Rolling Stones principle of halakhic decision-making.  The Rolling Stones wisely counseled that “You can’t always get what you want.  But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.”[6]   Rather than simply responding to the people’s request, God considers the positive values behind the question and how the people’s concerns could be accommodated as best as possible within the confines of the law.  Although these people may not bring the Passover offering at its regular time, they are provided with a second date to bring the offering.  Further, God allows anyone who is unable to participate in the regular Passover, either due to ritual impurity or due to being away at the proper time, to participate in this second Passover (Num. 9:10-11), perhaps in some way accommodating those who approached Moses by providing them with a larger group of people with whom they can join in making the sacrifice.  Thus, the Torah teaches that a challenge to the status quo should not be approached as a threat to the system (or at least not only as a threat), but rather, as an opportunity to consider the positive values behind the question and how those values can be accommodated through innovative answers, even when the answer to the question presented is a “No.”[7]

Of course, this does not mean that every request needs to be accommodated in some way.  In the first place, we do not have the same leeway in decision making as God does, so there may simply be no acceptable accommodation to offer and sometimes the social danger to providing any accommodation may be too great.  At the very least, though,sincere intentions ought to be accommodated as much as possible within the confines of halakhah and sociological wisdom, even when the request cannot be completely granted.

Immediately following the Second Passover story, the Torah tells us about the Israelites traveling through the wilderness.[8]  We are told that the Tabernacle was covered by a cloud.  When the cloud lifted up, it was a signal to the people that they would travel that day.  When the cloud lowered, it was a sign that it was time to pitch the tents until the next time the cloud rose.  The Torah tells us that sometimes the cloud would descend only for the night and rise the next day so that the traveling continued.  On other occasions, the cloud would remain in place for days and even months.  And so, when the Israelites stopped moving, they did not know when they would start moving again.

It seems to me that the story of the Israelites’ travels through the wilderness is a metaphor for sociological and halakchic growth as well.  At times, society changes significantly and even repeatedly for a while, and halakhah is challenged to respond to those changes, by adopting, rejecting, or accommodating them as appropriate.  At other times, the status quo can remain for generations, centuries, and even millennia.  Once society stops growing and changing, you never know when those changes will start up again.

We live in a period of significant sociological change, as humanity re-evaluates the status quo regarding a great number of things.  Among the most prominent challenges to the status quo are our perspectives toward people based on race, gender, orientation, and special needs.  It’s as if clouds that were long descended have risen up, challenging us to begin our sociological travels, re-evaluate the status quo and internalize the very positive values of finding greater respect toward and understanding of those whom society may not have sufficiently respected and understood in the past.

Our challenge, much like the challenge of those who approached Moses, is to ask the right questions for the right reasons and in the right manner and to seek answers that recognize the positive values behind those challenges and respond in ways that seek to incorporate those values in a manner that respects the integrity of the halakhic system.  If we succeed in doing that, then we will be the worthy people about whom the midrash says “מגלגלין זכות ע”י זכאי,” helping to reveal new and worthy aspects to our Torah, and thus fulfilling our mission, להגדיל תורה ולהאדירה, to magnify Torah and to bring it everlasting glory.

[1] Rashi to Nu. 9:7, CF Sifre Num. 68 sv עמדו ואשמעה.  The literal translation is “we reveal worthy things through a worthy person.”  In context, this phrase should be probably be translated with a plural.

[2]Compare Num. 9:6 in the Second Passover story, Num. 27:1-2 regarding Zelophehad’s daughters, and Num. 36:1 regarding the elders of Gilad to the complaints after the spies’ report at Num. 14:2 and Korah’s rebellion at Num. 16:3 and 17:6-7.

[3] The phrase ‘מגלגלין זכות ע”י זכאי” is also used in regards to Zelophehad’s daughters, see BT Sanhedrin 8a, Sifre Num. 133 sv ויקרב משה את משפטן לפני ה.

[4] The Status of Women in Jewish Tradition p. 153 fn 2.

[5] Num. 9:7.

[6] Song by Keith Richards and Mick Jagger.

[7] Related to this point, Hakham Sassoon writes in The Status of Women in Jewish Tradition p. 177:

The compulsion observable in some people to hug the beaten track (even when it forks away from halakhah as discussed in our introduction), can be understood best in utilitarian, or, if you like, political terms;  group-survival being identified with fixity and standardization.  That is why where standardization and continuity are enthroned, halakhah turns into politico-halakhicsm whose primary goal is no longer the ongoing search for the divine will as revealed in Bible and Talmud.  Instead, the focus is diverted to things like conserving the status quo (as one would conserve an antique grandfather clock); staving off any boat-rocking; and getting individuals to march in lockstep.

[8] Nun. 9:15-23.