Midrash on
Parashat Beha'alotcha: How to View the Sins of the
Generation of the Wilderness
Rabeynu
Meshulam, a Sephardic Sage, was an Arabian king's personal physican. The
king challenged him, "Your ancestors were very ungrateful people.
They possessed the mann, a distinguished food, resembling the good of angels.
How then could they complain about missing melons or garlic?"
"I
will give you an answer tomorrow," said Rabbi Meshulam.
When his consultation with the king ended, Rabbi Meshulam quietly walked to the
royal kitchen and commanded the cook, "I, the head physician, order you to
put the king on a special diet. Tomorrow he is not to be served garlic
with his food." After dinner, the king regularly ate garlic.
On the next day, he was not served any garlic. He summoned the chief cook
and reprimanded him for his negligence. "I received these orders from
the Jewish physician," answered the cook.
The king summoned Rabbi Meshulam and said to him angrily, "Don't you know
that I am not relaxed unless I have garlic after the meal? Why did you
order that I not be served any?"
"My master, the king," Rabbi Meshulam replied gently. "May
your ears hear what your lips just stated. You complain because for a
single meal you lacked the garlic which you customarily eat. For forty
years my ancestors were deprived of their normal food and subsisted only on mann.
How could they not have complained?"
"Your
words are true, and your Torah is true," the king acknowledged.
Considering that B'ney Yisra'el numbered about two and a half million souls and
lived forty years in a manner that constantly required the highest levels of
emunah, bitachon, and righteousness we may not condemn them.
In fact, the generation of the wilderness was more righteous than all later
generations. The Torah's harsh criticism of it is based upon the
Almighty's high expectations of the Jews of that time. Even when B'ney Yisra'el
complained, they still had emunah, as is shown by the following remark of the
Midrash: Why does the verse say that the people were "like
Complainers" (11:1), shouldn't it have said, "And the people were
Complainers"?
However, the Torah indicates that B'ney Yisra'el never complain from the depths
of their hearts. They are only momentarily overcome by the enticements of
the yetzer hara. In truth, they wish to serve Hashem. Consequently, Hashem
does not punish them "from the depth of His heart." He does not
annihilate them, but rather sends suffering to cause them to return to Him.
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Parshat Shilach
based
on Growth Through Torah by Rabbi Zelig Pliskin
The
Torah states, "And the Almighty spoke to Moshe, saying: Send for
yourself men, that they may spy out the Land of Canaan, which I am giving to the
Children of Israel; one man, one man of every tribe of their fathers you shall
send, every one a prince among them" (Numbers 13:1,2). The Torah is not
written in chronological order; there is meaning in the juxtaposition of one
section to the next.Rashi cites the Midrash Tanchuma for the reason why the
section of the Torah dealing with sending the spies to the land of Canaan is
next to the section of Miriam's speaking loshon hora (derogatory speech)
about Moshe. Even though Miriam was publicly punished for speaking against her
brother, these wicked people who witnessed her punishment did not learn a
lesson.A question arises: How could the spies be expected to learn from Miriam's
loshon hora? Miriam spoke against a person, while they spoke against a
land. Rabbi Yisroel Ordman, of Telshe Yeshiva in Lithuania, comments that one
must acquire the attribute of always seeing the good in everything. A person who
finds fault with things (meals, accommodations. etc.) will also find fault with
people. Conversely, a person who always seeks to find the good in all phenomena
will also see the good in his fellow man. That is the lesson the spies should
have learned: to notice virtues rather than seek out faults.
