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Bamidbar 5767

The great journey is almost at hand. After emerging from slavery in Egypt, standing at Sinai and almost blowing it, and then receiving not only the Torah but the transportable indwelling, revelatory Presence accompanying us in the Mishkan, Am Yisrael is almost ready to depart. Just got to make a few last preparations, count all the soldier-types and array them around the MIshkan, make sure everyone knows his place, and, oh yes, let's be certain those worker-bee Levites are set to disassemble, transport and reassemble the MIshkan. Let's see, three Levite families, Kehat, Gershon and Merari. Kehat gets to carry the holy vessels of the Mishkan. But, not so fast, Kehatim. First, the Kohanim have to cover the holy vessels with beautiful, protective coverings, each one with its own double cover, and only then may you come and raise onto your shoulders the wooden staves running through the rings on the Holy Table, the Holy Candelbrum, the Golden Altar and, of course, the holiest of all, the Ark of the Covenant.

Having waited their turn, the families of Gershon and Merari get to carry the...

Wait a second - the parashah ends! The other two Levitical families will have to wait till next week, in Parashat Naso, in order to get their assignments. This division of the parashot is strange, cutting off as it does brother from brother! The choice of ending Parashat B'midbar with charge to the Kehatim is all the stranger when we read the last few verses of the parashah:

"Hashem spoke to Moshe and Aharon saying, 'Do not cut off the tribe of the families of Kehat from amongst the Levites! Do this for them that they not die when they approach the holiest things. Aharaon and his sons will come and place them, each man, at his task and with his (covered) burden. That they not come to see a gulp of the holiness and DIE"


That's how the parashat ends! This, even though we have a very specific practice NOT to end even an aliyah, let alone a parashah, on a downer. By ending with these word, not only do we make next week's parashat, Naso, the longest parashat in the Torah, but we do precisely what Hashem says NOT to do - we CUT OFF the Kehatim from their brethren, the families of Gershon and Merari!!

The key, it would seem, in the word which I translated above as gulp. The Hebrew text reads, "v'lo yavo'u lir'ot k'vala' et ha kodesh vametu".

There are several approaches to translating this unusual usage.

1) "That they not come to see even for an instant the holiness, and die". Shadal translates this way, where k'vala' is translated literally, "a swallow's worth", indicated the briefest of intervals.

2) "That they not come to see while the holy apparatus is being broken down, and die". Here, k'vala' is understood as meaning "to destroy, take apart". This approach is mentioned by Ibn Ezra, and leans heavily upon the the emphasis placed upon coming to see.

3) Most commentators prefer: "That they not come to see while the holiness is being swallowed". The holy vessels are being "swallowed", figuratively into the ornate coverings which both protect and hide them.

Imagine what it was like to be a member of the family of Kehat. You give the people Moshe and Aharon, whose sons are separated off to become priests. Your cousins get to do all the really cool, spiritual stuff, and you're close, oh so close, you carry those holy, holy vessels, you feel them your shoulder, you want so much to get closer, just to take a peek...

The mystics teach that we should read, "as the Holy is being swallow up". When the Mishkan was broken into its part, when the fabulous dynamic unity of structure and soul was taken to pieces due to the need to move on, Hashem gathered His Shekhina back into the secret recesses of the Divine. Seeing the intensified Holy Indwelling just as it vacates the created realm would be such an overwhelmingly sad, life-draining moment that no one could survive it. No, don't let your brothers act rashly, Aharon and Moshe, pull the Kehatim back from the brink!!

The dangers of the encounter with the holy are real, as real for us as we seek high and low, inside and out for contact with the Divine, as they were for the Kehatim. Sometimes we need to be pulled back, told "no", sometimes we can't go where others must.

We are taught that the Aron carried its bearers. The Aron should have been so heavy as to be almost unmovable, but tradition has it that those who carried the holy vessels fairly glided over the desert floor.

If we could only feel that Holiness riding on our own shoulders, lifting us even as we bear it into our life, step after step, bringing our own indispensable piece of the overarching organic structure which is life.

We don't need to gulp down our own piece of holiness, it's already tapping into our own lives and empowering the entire universe with our light.

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