Previous Commentaries

By Rabbi Rami Pavolotzky,
B’nei Israel Congregation, Costa Rica

Translated by Inés Baum - Proofreading by Ellen Zindler

On this week’s parashah, Beha-alot’kha, two stories appear that seem to be somehow contradictory. On the one hand, we have the description of how God revealed Himself to the entire people in the wilderness, by letting them feel His presence at the Mishkan, Tabernacle. He appeared as a “column of cloud” during the day and as a “pillar of fire” at night. This image shows how the divine presence stood beside the people of Israel at all times, as a mother does with her small child.

On the other hand, there appears the famous story of kibroth hatta’avah, literally “graves of greed”. This is a bitter and sensitive episode: the people in the desert angrily demand from Moses to be given meat, since they wanted to eat as they ate in Egypt, when they were slaves. Moses succumbs to anger and depression, and even asks God to let him die, seeing that he cannot fulfill the task with which he was entrusted: leading an ungrateful and rebellious people.

I said at the beginning that these two stories seem to be contradictory. The people that enjoy the privilege of witnessing the daily miracle of God’s visible presence on Earth are the same people who get fed up with the wilderness food, despising their budding freedom, and ask to be returned to the slavery and polytheism of Egypt in order to eat better. Then we ask ourselves: how can someone who witnesses a miracle forget about it so fast? Is a miracle so unworthy that even the craving for meat outshines it?

It seems that the people who witnessed the greatest and most numerous miracles just couldn’t keep their faith, they couldn’t believe. The generation that saw with their own eyes the most sublime miracles, quickly lost their faith in God. But on the other hand, we know dozens of subsequent generations that lived through fateful times, lives marked by hate, persecution and hunger, and who were nonetheless giants in their faith.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz, a contemporary scholar, draws a great lesson from this dramatic paradox. Faith does not depend on miracles, for our will to keep on living has nothing to do with them. According to Leibowitz, from the religious point of view miracles have no relevance. Faith is not something that comes from the outside to the hearts of men, but rather something that can only grow and be fruitful when it sprouts from the soul of men.

There is a well-known custom in prayer, which consists of covering our eyes when the Shema is recited. Precisely when we declare our faith in God as Jews, we have our eyes closed, as to signify that our faith in God does not depend on any vision, but rather has to do with looking into ourselves, into the depths of our being. Healthy faith has nothing to do with miracles, but with people’s will to live their life in a different way, acknowledging that they are not masters of their surroundings, submitting their free will to a system of behaviors and customs.

Perhaps we should stop expecting miracles and begin to act with honesty and pure hearts. It is clear that miracles cannot change our faith, but our faith can surely change the world. Perhaps, it is something we can try.

This Parashah commentary was done by the Union of Jewish Congregations of Latin America and the Caribbean, and may be reproduced quoting its source.
To subscribe or unsubscribe to the Torah commentary, send an e-mail to: ujcl.communications.department@gmail.com.
If you wish to dedicate the commentary to the memory of a loved one, or in honor of some family event, contact us at: ujcl.communications.department@gmail.com

Forwarded by Rabbi Gustavo Kraselnik, from Kol Shearith Israel Congregation, Panama.
Translated by Inés Baum and proofread by Ellen Zindler, from B’nei Israel Congregation, Costa Rica.

Copyright © 2001, 2002 UJCL