A Trick of the Light - Commentary on Parashat Beha'alotcha
Weekly Torah reflections from Matthew Schultz, a rabbinical student at Hebrew College.
In Parashat Beha’alotcha, Aaron is commanded to light the menorah. A second Pesach is instituted. The people demand that Moses supply them with meat. Moses appoints seventy elders to assist him in the burden of governing the people. Miriam speaks ill of Moses, and is punished.
According to a the midrash (Bamidbar Rabbah 12:6), the Divine Presence departed from Eden when Adam sinned, and it did not descend again until the Tabernacle was erected.
This is only one way in which the Tabernacle, which was completed in last week’s portion, is compared by the sages to the garden of Eden. The Tabernacle was full of images of cherubim, which recall the cherubim posted at the entrance of the garden to prevent Adam and Eve from returning. The Menorah, discussed in this portion, was related to the tree of life. The garden’s entrance was in the east, just as the Tabernacle’s entrance was in the east.
The parallelisms are suggestive but not exact. It’s better this way. Otherwise, it would be too cute. The text evokes rather than references.
As with in the Garden of Eden, things go wrong right away.
The people lust after meat and complain to God.
Moses despairs of his fate and prays for death.
Miriam grows jealous of her brother Moses’ high status and speaks against him with Aaron.
Like Eve before her, Miriam is cast out. Unlike Eve, her punishment is only temporary. Her kinsman wait patiently for her punishment to end. After seven days, she is let back in.
Unlike the Eden story, we end not with catastrophe, but with repentance and repair.
According to the commentator Radak, this is actually how the original Eden story ended as well.
Commenting on the flaming sword that prevented Adam from returning to Eden, he wrote that it was merely a hallucination, “something imaginary, flashes of the spectacle.”
When Adam had returned to God through deep spiritual work—teshuvah—the illusion would disappear, “and he would return to the garden from time to time, alternating between performing work there and working the soil outside.”
There is something so tender about this image of Adam returning to the garden “from time to time” to tend to it. We see here that the great crisis of the expulsion from Eden, that which left creation broken and incomplete, was nothing but a trick of the light—a spectacle.
This is our situation. At first glance things seem grave. We have no Eden. We have no Tabernacle. We wonder when God will come and heal this world and dwell in it once again.
But with will and grace, we can do teshuvah—the spiritual work of returning to God, returning to our people, and returning to wholeness—that will allow us to see that this too is just a trick of the light.
Brilliant as always and so moving!