Beha’alotcha - Real enthusiasm vs. excitement because of proximity
Numbers 8:1 - 12:16 | Zechariah 2:14 - 4:7
Summary: When someone is excited, you have to wonder - are they actually excited, or are they excited because they are near someone else who is contagiously excited. The only way to find out is to put some space between them. And when the Jews move away from Mt. Sinai, they discover that they are actually not that excited.
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When Jewish candles are “lit”, we use the word l’hadlik - to kindle. But when the priest lit the candles in the Temple, his task was not to l’hadlik them but to “raise them up” - l’ha’alot. The difference between them is in whether the match makes contact with the wick. If it does - this is l’hadlik. It is what we are doing when a flammable substance is directly set on fire. If the match is held near the wick, and the wick warms up until it combusts - this is l’ha’alot.
A Jewish flame - both literal and figurative - is a LaHaVa. Thus, Jewish enthusiasm, the heat of the heart, is called hitLaHaVut.
What makes a heart enthusiastic? One might say: when it is set on fire! But this is inaccurate. When you set a heart on fire, you do not know if it is actually enthusiastic. Maybe it just looks like it is enthusiastic because it is proximous to a match that is on fire, when actually, it is only on fire because it was forced to be on fire. We have no idea whether it is enthusiastic.
As parents, as teachers, as preachers and influencers, we are challenged to generate enthusiasm. Not to say we need people to be shouting and screaming. But we need people to be enthusiastic enough about the thing we’re teaching/modeling/preaching that they will do it on their own.
But we are vulnerable to the mistaken perception that, because someone is on fire, they are enthusiastic and their heart is truly in it. You find out the truth when you walk away. You withdraw the match and walk away and check in later on and see whether they have taken up the cause on their own. You look for a space in which they could go either way and you see whether the choices they make reflect some amount of buy-in to the cause.
Of course, who wants to face that? Who wants to admit that their efforts to set the world on fire have been ineffective or counterproductive? Answer: someone who actually wants to know. Such a person will withdraw the match and then look and see, and then maybe ask: “What can I do (or not do) to help you find your fire?”
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You’d think, after a year at Sinai, the Jewish people would be on fire with enthusiasm. So it’s somewhat shocking that, as soon as they move away from the place where God showed them the Torah, everything breaks down. Having eaten angel food for more than a year now, they suddenly demand meat! Didn’t that year of eating manna show them what it’s like to eat holiness? I guess they weren’t as enthusiastic as we thought.
The people demand meat and Moshe is exasperated. “Where will I get meat for a million people? And anyway, I cannot take the burden of these people! Did I birth them, such that now I have to nurse them? If this is the way it’s going to go, just kill me!” Wait - this is Moshe who stolidly demanded God’s forgiveness for a people who worshipped a gold cow forty days after God showed them the Torah? Does he still care about them? Does he still have energy to mediate between them and God?
And Aharon and Miriam - Moshe’s deepest allies. Family! Suddenly they don’t think he’s such a big prophet after all!?! Suddenly they’ve got some opinions about his marriage that they just have to vent? Are they on his side, or not? Can he rely on them?
All of this is shocking. What it tells us is that so much of what kept the Jewish people together and aligned and properly behaved was not because they had been transformed and were now on fire with enthusiasm. It was actually the proximity to the match - Sinai - that made it look like they were on fire. But they weren’t. In fact, you wonder, did anything change at Sinai?
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As frustrating and confusing as that is, it is good to know. It is good to have a clear-eyed picture of how it’s actually going. As long as the thing looks like its on fire with enthusiasm you can pretend that you’re going about it perfectly and everything’s fine. But when you take in the facts, you can set a new course. When scaffolds fall apart, you get to see what sticks.
The challenge is to keep trying to build that enthusiasm, even after you see what is actually going on. When it becomes clear that, in fact, the marriage and the friendship and the practice and the community and the initiative and the project are not having the fabulous effect you thought they’d be having, how do you take the hard news, reorient, and great back to it?
Clearly many people, because of a combination of disappointment, shame, and disillusionment, simply throw in the towel at such moments - just when they have some actual data indicating what they need to actually do!
Yes, of course it’s hard. Maybe even devastating. But this is what we’re here to do. When we can, we need to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and stand toward the flame and try to catch fire again.
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Feel free to stop here if you like. I’m going to keep going because, well, I’m a bit on fire about this week’s parsha and I want to write it down.
Notice that the Jewish people have a literal pillar of fire traveling with them in the wilderness. And their camp is arrayed in such a way that they have perpetual proximity to that fire. In fact, they can move toward it. Yes, they have to be prepared for that, but it is there and they can get closer to it if they like.
This would require that they experience clarity about needing to be closer to the fire. So often, when people cool down to a relationship, a project, etc. they simply walk away from it, or rationalize some kind of half-baked (not enough fire!) approach. But this is the time when you go toward the fire and bring an olah offering (same word as the one used to describe how the priest lights the candles in the Temple). That is the ancient ritual way of saying “I want to go higher.” If only people could implement such a thing in their family or company or prayer-life - “God. It’s fine. I’m here. I’m willing to show up. But it’s cold, and I want it to be hot. I want to go higher.”
(Too many Jews have accepted that old canard that Jewish life and practice doesn’t have to be on fire, and that it’s actually about showing up every day, and slow and steady wins the race and all that - this boloney was taught by people who are not on fire and are trying to justify their lukewarm intensity. Hate to say it, friends, but if you’re not on fire and don’t provide a match for your kids and students to warm up by, their Jewish future may not go the way you expect it to.)
The flame is available. The altar is going. The pillar of fire is there.
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There’s only one thing standing between the Jewish people and the fire at the center of the camp - the Levi’im. Ironically, this tribe is tasked with preventing people from entering the Mishkan. They were a literal counterforce to people’s desire to be set on fire. This is essential because, again, the goal is not to be set on fire by the flame, but to be near the fire and set one’s self alight. So the Levi’im are there to maintain the gap so that people do the right amount of work on their own. The Shem M’Shmuel explains that this also served to increase their desire to be close to the flame - and this is what we need.
There is deep instruction to be gained from this. As teachers, parents, preachers, etc. - bearers of some flame or other - we should conscious of how to create a counterforce, a conscious and positive limiting of access to “the flame” - whatever it is. Notice the way so many Jewish institutions and concepts perpetuate this message of radical inclusion. Standards are brought lower and lower in order to make sure everyone has access. This feels right, in some way, but has the negative effect of not helping generate desire.
As an example, I had one rabbi who told his children they don’t get to be at the Shabbat table unless they fully participate in conversation, plus whatever else was expected. This serves as a powerful model of pushback - not in order to exclude but in order to cultivate sustained enthusiasm. It’s hard to do.