REVEALING THE HIDDEN WISDOM OF THE MYSTIC MASTERS
From the Baal Shem Tov
גאָט באדארף מען דינען מיט יראה און שמחה. ביידע צוזאמען זיינען צוויי פריינד, וואס שיידען זיך קיינמאל נישט. יראה אָן שמחה איז מרה-שחורה.
God requires people to serve with reverence and joy. Both together are two friends who never part. Reverence without joy is depression.
A line from Theodore Roethke’s poem, “The Gentle” reads: The sleep was not deep but the waking is slow.”
This commentary on Gen. 22:16 comes to us from R’ Meir’l Premishlaner.
ויקץ יעקב משנתו
and Jacob awoke from his sleep
יעדער מענטש, אז ער שלאפט ביינאכט, וועקט זיך איבער. דער חילוק איז בלויז, אויב דער מענש איז א פרומער, א “ירא-שמים,” אז ער וועקט זיך איבער, וואשט ער תיכף די הענט און זאגט “אכן יש ה’ במקום הזה,” הויבט זיך אויף, זעצט זיך לערנען און דאווענען. איז דער מענש א פראסטער, אז ער וועקט זיך איבער אינמיטען נאכט, דרייט ער זיך איבער אויף דער אנדערער זייט און שלאפט ערשט געשמאער….
Everyone wakes up when they sleep at night. The only difference is, if a person is pious, one who reveres heaven, when he wakes up he washes his hands right away and says: “Ochn yesh hashem bamakom hazeh,” (Indeed, Gd is in this place!) He picks himself up and sits down to study and pray. When an ordinary person wakes up in the middle of the night he just rolls over on the other side and goes back to sleep.
Our parsha begins rather in the middle of a story that we left unfinished last time. To recap briefly, the Jews were living for a period of time in Shittim, and “the people began to commit harlotry with the daughters of Moab.” By this is meant that they were worshipping the wrong gods, ate the wrong foods, married the wrong people, etc. etc.
Hashem would not suffer this, and became angry. He ordered Moses to ‘Hang ‘em high!’ (paraphrased). And a bit of an odd thing happens here (as if this were not an altogether odd story to begin with), because there is an implication that the punishment for those who worshipped the Baal of Peor (a false god) were to be hanged, but at the same time, a plague arose. Only the text does not tell us this until after the fact. It appears that people who were neither hanged nor afflicted with the plague were mourning the loss of their kinsmen, while a certain Israelite was carrying on with a Midianite woman in plain sight.
Although it is wonderful to examine and unpack these verses of Torah and to study the wisdom of our Masters’ commentaries, it is also important to look at their work (and ours) from a bit broader perspective. There is significance not only in their interpretations of verses, but also in what they chose to make comments about.
In looking through this treasury, it is surprising to note that the bulk of the commentary is devoted to the first two words of the parsha. As mentioned previously, there are 36 comments on “Korach took.” There are a few comments on the exchange between Korach and Moshe, a few about the events leading up to the gathering of the staffs, and surprisingly, only one commentary in 44 (in this particular book) that deals with the flowering of Aaron’s staff.
By my way of thinking, the flowering of the staff should be getting much more air time. Afterall, that was the miracle that the entire parsha is there to set up. Why isn’t it more significant in the minds of our Masters? Or perhaps it was merely the choice of R’ Kirshenbaum, who compiled this collection, to focus so strongly on “Korach took” and barely mention the flowering of the staff. And on top of that, the one commentary that does deal with the flowering staff is not terribly insightful as far as I can see. So what does this say about this whole story?
In any case, we do have one commentary on the staff flowering, and this is it:
Digital Maggid
