"Torah Lights"
 
Video Insights on the Parsha
 
 by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin

Efrat, Israel – “Make for you two trumpets of silver; of hammered work shall you make them, and they shall be unto you for the summoning of the congregations and for causing the camps to set forward” (Numbers 10:2).

Beha’alotcha, our biblical portion this week, uses two words (mahanot and eda) to describe the gathering of Israelites and two words (t’rua and t’kiya) to describe the sounds their trumpets are to make: the trumpets shall summon the 'camps' (mahanot) as well as the 'community' (eda, literally the ‘witness congregation’) of Israel; in time of war they shall sound the broken, weeping t'rua, whereas in times of festival they shall sound the firm, exultant t'kiya.  

My revered teacher Rav J.B. Soloveitchik defined each form of assemblage: the encampment of Israel involved herding together as a form of protection against enemies and difficult conditions, (mahaneh is biblically used for protective army encampment, as in Genesis 32:8,9); the eda or witness community of Israel suggests a united purpose, a mission to the world. Similarly my rebbe distinguished between the t'rua, which signals fear, and the t'kiya a firm, exultant sound reflecting victory.  

These different terms - and realities of national existence - hark back to two covenants which formed us: The Covenant between the Pieces and The Covenant at Sinai.  

The Covenant between the Pieces (Genesis 15) established Israel's nationhood. It guarantees Abraham progeny and delineates the boundaries of the homeland his descendants would inherit. It takes place after a war that Abraham fights, contains an element of great fear (15:12), and foretells a period of affliction in a foreign land. But at the same time it guarantees eternal survival and eventual occupation of the Promised Land. This is what Rav Soloveitchik calls the covenant of fate. After all, an individual neither chooses the family or nation-state into which he/she is born nor the persecution he/she may be singled out to suffer. But within the dimensions of such realities, familial solidarity and the haven of secure boundaries will always enable us to survive despite the challenges and obstacles.

The Covenant at Sinai (Exodus 19, 20) went one step further, turning our fate into destiny and inspiring – even imbuing – our nation with a national purpose, a Divinely rooted system of universal morality and ethics. To this end we were given 613 commandments, enabling us to become a holy nation and a teacher of morality and peace. This second covenant was not inflicted on us; indeed, it's only after we volunteered to internalize the laws that the Almighty agreed to enter into such a relationship (Exodus 24:7, 8).  

The first covenant was our covenant of fate, the formation of the encampment of Jacob, the fearful, trembling sounds of the t'rua which encourages us to seek refuge in the solidarity of a family/nation/state united against inimical forces. The second covenant was our covenant of destiny, the recruitment of Israel as God's witnesses, the exultant t'kiya which expresses the resolve of a people imbued with a divine mission, united for the purpose of  perfecting the world.  

From this perspective, we can well understand the initial description of the Rosh Hashana shofar blowing as 'a day of the broken, weeping sound' (Yom t'rua yiheyeh lachem - Numbers 29:1), since Rosh Hashana - the anniversary of the creation of the world - brought us into a not-yet-redeemed world, replete with suffering. But on Rosh Hashana we add the exultant t'kiya sound whose source is the redemption of the Jubilee Year, the culmination of seven continuous seven-year cycles when everyone is free and secure in his/her homestead, and which serves as a metaphor for world redemption and salvation (Leviticus 25: 8-10).  

The very word 'shofar' means beautiful and complete; the victorious t'kiya sound comes to remind us that by acts of repentance we have the ability to change this vale of tears, to perfect the world under the kingship of the divine. Rav Soloveitchik maintains that this is particularly true when it comes to our national covenant, since our greatest challenge is to transform fate into destiny, our persecuted encampment into a nation of God's witnesses dedicated to redeeming the world with love and peace. And in our creation of the State of Israel from the ashes of Auschwitz, we did in fact demonstrate our ability to sublimate enslavement into a firm resolve to reestablish ourselves as a free nation founded on democratic principles and dedicated to rooting out terrorism everywhere.  

As it applies to the national sphere, so too it applies to the personal sphere. Every individual is born to a certain set of parents in a certain place at a certain time, and is subject to certain genetic limitations; all these factors comprise the individual's fate.  

However, to turn fate into destiny, to take lemons and make lemonade, is the greatest challenge of anyone's life. Whenever I feel stymied or dismayed by the 'un-luck of the draw,' I think of Rav Moshe Ebstein, whose response to the reality that the children born into his family were born deaf was to establish an international Yeshiva for the Deaf, the first of its kind. And I think of young Dassie Rabinovitch, a teenager whose response to her fatal cancer diagnosis was to start giving lectures to high-school students on how her illness made her appreciate each moment of life and how her chemotherapy brought her closer to God.

Instead of cursing the darkness we must concentrate on making light; the sobbing t’ruah sound of our hearts must turn into a victorious tekiyah shout of faith in our G-d of redemption.

Shabbat Shalom

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