Bamidbar:  Reorganization

 

This week, we start the fourth book of the Torah: Bamidbar.  The name means: in the wilderness. The book describes the travels and travails of the Israelites after the Exodus, their Odyssey to the Promised Land.  The people are going into the unknown.  They have escaped from servitude, but they have also left civilization.  They have gone from a world of oppression to a place that might not be able to sustain human life. There is a need to set up a new political structure.  

 

This journey into the insecure is everyone's life story.  A person does not clearly know where the path she chooses will lead.  The model-story, Bamidbar, has a direction: the Promised Land. But that generation cannot enter. Instead, they wander. The wandering is not aimless, but the goal is off limits.   The path leads to a new set of opportunities - for the next generation.  This is the song that never ends.

This parsha describes some of the preparations for the wandering/journey.  The people are divided into tribes and the tribes are grouped to the four directions of the compass. There is security in numbers and separating into groups increases the chance that, at least some of the Israelites, will survive an attack.   The core is protected from all directions by the four parties of the proletariat.  They surround the Levites who, in turn surround the Tabernacle and the secretariat of Kohanim. Guidance comes from the cloud and fire that hover over the Tabernacle.

The parsha contains a significant political act: the firstborn are replaced by the Levites.  The prominence of the first born seems to have been a pre-Abrahamic edict, a custom born with creation, that needs no justification.  The first book of the Torah, Genesis, is devoted to undoing the, (seemingly) natural, prominence of the firstborn.  None of the patriarchs are first born.

 

In Exodus, the prominence of being firstborn becomes a liability. The firstborn are selected to demonstrate the lethal power of the Gd of Israel. On the night of Passover, all the firstborn are condemned to  die. The Hebrews are protected by their ritual, but their designation: as reprieved from death, the mark of (firstborn) Cain, remains.  In this week’s chapter, this stigma and honor is transferred to the Levites. The implication is that the work of Divine service would have been the purview of the firstborn. That responsibility is now transferred to the tribe of Moses, the Levites. The diversity of values, that differ from family to family, can now be minimized. Perhaps there is also a mollification of intrafamily conflict based upon birth order.  All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way (Tolstoy). Creating a tribe  to perform the tasks can help steer the people in the desired directions.  

And the directions are always leading to the Promised Land and never get there.   And the directions are always changing. 

 

Come mothers and fathersThroughout the land

And don't criticizeWhat you can't understand

Your sons and your daughtersAre beyond your command

Your old road isRapidly agin'.

Please get out of the new one

If you can't lend your hand

For the times they are a-changin'.

 

 

Reworked from2018