The Pshat Heard 'Round the World

Where does one start? This week’s parashah, Beha’alotecha, is packed with more narrative episodes demanding our careful attention than any parashah since perhaps way back deep in Bereshit. Independent stories, each, or at least seemingly, at first blush. It opens with yet another account of the lighting of the menorah, and continues with the dedication and investiture of the Levites, the event occasioning the law of Pesach Sheni, the description of the CPS (Cloud Positioning System) of guidance through the desert, the commandment to craft two silver trumpets to disperse the encampment or assemble the people (see last years pshat on the inner meaning of the trumpets), an account of first setting forth from Mt. Sinai as the people stretched out into marching order, the appeal to Chovav (Moshe’s father-in-law? Brother-in-law? Dispute between Ibn Ezra and Ramban) to guide them through the desert (what, divine clouds aren’t good enough?) …. STOP! All of a sudden, the storie...

B'ha'alotecha is one of the most jam-packed, event- filled parashiyot in the entire Torah. For weeks, now, we've been preparaing to set forth on our journey from Mt. Sinai through the desert to Eretz Yisrael, and now, we finally shove off! But, wait, there's so many last minute things to arrange. So the first few passages of the parasha deal with taking care of all the final details. Then comes the famous "reversed nuns ", the words contained therein bracketing our reading of the Torah each week, a two-verse passage which, we are told, is a complete "book" on its own, breaking up the book of B'midbar into two very difference "halves", and....we're off!! But one of the matters that must be tended to is the question of - - - where are we going, and how are we getting there? We know we're headed to Eretz Yisrael, but this was before Google Maps and third-generation GPS cellphones. We need to know which diirection, for how l...