Dear Friends,
One Friday, a Jew arrived with his donkey at the village Shul, just as Shabbat was coming in. He approached the first person he saw walking to the Shul and asked him: “Where can I tie up my donkey? Shabbat is coming in and I still have to get to Shul.” “Go to our Rabbi,” suggested the local man, “He knows how to tie anything to the weekly Parasha.”
Thirty-three million British citizens participated yesterday in the Brexit referendum on whether Great Britain should leave the European Union or remain in it. A huge number of people cared enough to go out and influence their own future and the future of their country. A conservative like me sees this as a direct continuation of the World Wars in the past one hundred years: once more we have a confrontation between the two powers – Germany and Britain. This time it is an economic confrontation, but its basis is clearly the German’s unending desire for control vis-à-vis Great Britain’s.
From a more individual perspective, it seems that there is a division here between those nostalgic people who view the past with rosy eyes, and those who don’t. Both claimed that they want the individual to live a better life. Both sides tried to explain why their way is the way that will protect the private citizen who needs to support himself respectably and live a good life.
And here is the connection to the weekly Parasha that we read this week, Parashat Behaalotcha:
“We remembered the fish we ate in Egypt for free; the cucumbers, melons, leaks, onions and garlics” – so cried out the Israelites, who felt they had had enough of the heavenly bread, the Mann, which came down every morning and fed them.
At first glance, this looks like a normal human longing for the past in Egypt, which from the distance of time looks so much better. But Rashi on this Pasuk focuses on the specific foods mentioned by the complainers, explaining that in spite of the fact that when eating the Mann one could taste anything one wanted to taste, the taste of these particular vegetables was not included in the Mann, and the reason is very interesting: “Because they are hard on the nursing women. People tell women: Don’t eat garlic and onions because of the baby.”
So the argument was thus: Hashem deprived the people of the taste of garlic and onions because of the mothers who were nursing their children, and who had to make sure they ate good food; whereas the people claimed, why should everyone suffer because the problems of the individual? Why are all of us suffering because of a few nursing mothers who can be harmed by onion and garlic? And anyway, we’re talking about miraculous food, so Hashem should withhold these problematic vegetables only from the Mann of the nursing mothers!
This debate has always existed and will always exist: to what extent does the general public have to sacrifice its needs for the sake of the individual, if at all?
In this week’s Parasha this debate is settled to a certain extent: In holding back the above-mentioned vegetables from the Mann, the Torah preferred the good of the individual. Hashem decided to withhold certain foods from all the Mann eaters, out of concern for the nursing mothers, who want to provide their babies with healthy food. If He would have withheld only those vegetables, then that would have made those mothers uncomfortable, as they would see how others were eating nice, cold melons in the desert, when they cannot.
I will end with the Rebbe’s words at the conclusion of his explanation: “And the teaching from this is: How much one should make an effort for the sake of another individual’s good, even when we are talking about a baby.”
Shabbat Shalom,
Zalmen Wishedski