B’HALOTECHA
B’halotecha “When you put up” (chapters 8-12) is a transitional parsha that sees our ancestors get the last commandments about how to move the mishkan and then, ready, set action, actually start their journey from Mt. Sinai towards the Promised Land. They have spent a large part of Exodus, the entirety of Leviticus and the first 9 chapters and part of the tenth in Numbers at the foot of Sinai.
Chapter 8 discusses purifying the Levites so they can move the mishkan. Chapter 9 talks about how to observe Pesach if you have been ritually polluted so can’t offer sacrifices when Pesach actually occurs and talks about the Israelites moving when the cloud containing YHVH isn’t covering the mishkan, and staying put when the cloud is covering it. The people move erratically, sometimes staying still for days, sometimes travelling all day and all night. Chapter 10 sees the people finally moving and the departure of Reuel, Moses’ father in law to return to his own lands. If you thought Moses’ father in law is named Jethro, you are correct. I think the most logical conclusion is that we have two different source texts, one in which the man is named Jethro, and one in which he is named Reuel, and we get both versions in our edited text. Chapter 11 sees the people grumbling about being in the desert and how good they had it in Egypt. YHVH gets angry and starts burning the camp. The people ask Moses to intervene on his behalf and he does, as I will discuss more below.
Chapter 12 represents a complete shift. Aaron and Miriam speak against Moses, complaining both that Moses has taken a Cushite wife (who may or may not be a second wife. I suspect this, like the case with Reuel/Jethro is a blend of different source texts. Arguably more importantly, Aaron and Miriam think Moses is claiming a monopoly on prophesy. YHVH gets angry again on behalf of Moses and turns Miriam’s skin white, what is usually mistranslated as leprosy. Aaron apologizes, Moses cries out to YHVH to heal her and she is healed after seven days outside of camp.
I want to discuss four themes.
Moses and leadership
Humility
Three kinds of connection to the divine
Spontaneous prayer
Moses is a reluctant leader with no natural feel for leadership. I’ve spent a lot of years thinking about and being a leader. I can say with great confidence that good leadership makes a difference and that it involves a variety of skills, some of which come much more easily to some of us than they do to others. I’ve been around enough bad leaders to also know that bad leadership can sink institutions that would be stable under even mediocre leadership. Leadership matters.
Moses was raised around leaders, growing up in the Pharoah’s household, but he has no feel for leadership. He also has little desire to lead. In my experience, people being forced to lead who don’t want to is something that really does not work. Moses lack of desire to lead is reinforced in this parsha. This has been a throughline in his story, from his very initial reluctance to accept the job of freeing the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. You’ll also recall that at first in Exodus he is trying to be the judge for all cases, big and small, until his father in law (Jethro in this case), tells him “the thing you are doing is not good.” (18:17) and Jethro tells him how to organize the legal system (18:17-26). Now in our parsha, after the people complain to Moses about YHVH’s fires and Moses successfully intervenes, he says to YHVH “I’m not able, I, by myself, to carry this entire people, because it is too heavy for me. And if this is how you treat me, kill me, if I have found favor in your eyes, and let me not see my suffering.” (11:14-15). Obviously, there is some hyperbole here, but it seems to me that this is a man who is desperate to be shed of his leadership role.
Too many leaders are in it for the power or the paycheck or the ego gratification of being the top dog associated with being a leader. Both Israel and the United States have a leader or aspiring leader who is largely motivated by staying out of prison. But that’s not Moses. When prophecy is granted to the elders, as we’ll see below, Moses is relieved. When Aaron and Miriam are angry because they think Moses is hoarding the prophetic power, he isn’t mad at them at all (YHVH is, but that’s a different story).
There’s way too much top down leadership where leaders believe that what they are supposed to do is tell other people what to do. But that’s not Moses either. I can think of no example where Moses speaks in his own name and demands obedience; it is always about YHVH.
Then there are people in positions of leadership who lack a vision of where the organization should go and how they can help facilitate that—and those people wind up being buffeted about by the other egos present. I certainly have experienced that as a person put into leadership positions at times in my life. This feels closer to the issue with Moses. Does he have a vision of a holy people? The only vision that seems authentic to him is his intolerance of the oppression of his people by the Egyptians, but otherwise it seems like he is some kind of pawn in the hands of YHVH, the actor who has a vision.
Great leaders spend a lot of time listening and validating everyone with whom they work. They are able to articulate a vision that they can successfully sell to their constituents whom they gladfully serve. They are able to create cohesive organizations that mostly share an orientation towards common goals and thus minimize the grumbling of the ever present discontent. Does any of that sound like the Moses we’ve seen so far? Spoiler alert, it doesn’t get any better.
Now, I know this isn’t the usual reading of Moses, the greatest prophet who ever lived, the man closest to the divine, the lawgiver of Israel. Moshe Rabbeinu, Moses our Rabbi. But a person can be a great prophet and a lousy leader.
Do you agree with my assessment about Moses and leadership? Why or why not? In what contexts, if any, do you see yourself as a leader and in what contexts does leadership sound like the last thing in the world you would ever want to do? What makes someone a good leader? Great leader? Think of the examples you’ve known in your life.
Moses is truly humble. After Moses complains to YHVH about how much he hates leading the Israelites, Moses gathers the elders at YHVH’s instruction and “YHVH came down in a cloud and spoke to him and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy men of the elders. And it was when the spirit rested on them and they prophesied. Then they did not do it anymore” (11:25). However, two of them continued to prophesy and Joshua urged Moses to stop them from prophesying. “And Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for me? And who would make it so that all of YHVH’s people were prophets.” (11:29). We see here someone who has no interest in defending the perks of his position but wants more people to grow and have the power of prophesy.
This is reinforced in Chapter 12. Aaron and Miriam complain “has YHVH only spoken through Moses? Hasn’t he also spoken through us?” (12:2). This is pure projection, since Moses would be perfectly happy to continue to have them prophesy as we saw in his rebuke of Joshua above.
Here is the man who has the most direct connection with the divine imaginable, the person closest to YHVH in history, but there’s no evidence that it ever swells his head. As we are told “And the man Moses was very humble, more than every human who was on the face of the earth.” (12:3) To me, the humility of Moses is an absolutely outstanding spiritual trait.
There are some circumstances where we are too humble, some where we are too prideful. Sometimes we need to cultivate humility, sometimes our pride and our egos. There’s a famous story about a Hasidic Rebbe named Simcha Bunim who carried a two faced coin in his pocket. One side said “the world was created for me.” The other side said “I am but dust and ashes.” He’d pull out the coin and look at the side that delivered the spiritual message he thought he needed.
One way that we as a society are consistently too arrogant is in our approach to the more than human world. We have adopted an instrumental approach to the world and we act as if there won’t be unintended consequences to our actions that will bite us in the butt. I believe in a radical reorientation towards the more than human world for spiritual reasons, BUT I also think that we should adopt a much more humble attitude towards the ecosystems upon which our lives depend for purely practical reasons. A predictable ecosystem without Category 5 hurricanes or ten thousand year floods or record shattering heat waves every few years is a great blessing.
In what ways or what circumstances are you too arrogant? In what ways or circumstances are you too humble? Under what circumstances are you, to quote Goldilocks, just right? What do you think about our approach to the more than human world in terms of our arrogance?
We are given three kinds of connection with the divine in this parsha. These aren’t the only possible kinds of connections, but they are all significant.
One kind of connection is a mediated connection, as represented by the people complaining in Chapter 11. When YHVH starts a fire at the edge of camp, “the people cried out to Moses, and Moses prayed to YHVH and the fire subsided.” (11:2). The people don’t pray directly to the divine.
Prophecy is a second kind of connection with the divine. “If there be a prophet among you, I YHVH, shall be known to him in a vision, in a dream I shall speak through him.” (12:6). A person can only prophesy if s/he has been touched by the divine. This happens precisely in this parsha with the seventy elders who YHVH rested his spirit on them and they prophesied. (11:25). It also happens with the two who continue to prophesy that Joshua objects to and then again with Miriam and Aaron’s complaint, both discussed above.
Moses offers what is viewed in Jewish tradition as a unique connection to the divine. “Mouth to Mouth I shall speak through him, and vision and not in enigmas and he will [uniquely] see the form of YHVH.” (12: 6-8). Moses, the text is saying, is given clear visions.
There’s a long tradition of leaving visions and communication with the divine for religious specialists. The obvious drawback is that we have therefore cut off the possibility of connecting with the divine in a more direct and meaningful way.
Prophecy isn’t defined in this parsha, of course. But if we think about it generally in the Hebrew Bible, it has to do with being in a trance and with saying things about the future of the people. A core problem that Medieval Jewish thought paid a lot of attention to is the question of distinguishing true from false prophets because they basically look the same in terms of the kinds of things they say and how they say them. What’s the difference between the revered Prophets of the Hebrew Bible and the prophet proclaiming on the street corner?
Visions and revelation are often ambiguous, unlike what Moses receives according to the text. You wouldn’t know this reading the Prophetic books of the Bible, but it certainly is my experience. My friend who got the vision of leading Jews back into connection with the wilderness—great what does that mean? Bill Plotkin gets a vision of himself as a cocoon weaver—now what? Visions, in my experience, often don’t come with marching orders. Ambiguity is a highlight of visions. I had a vision of me officiating a burial in a funerary tomb in ancient Israel and not knowing what to do. This occured to me like a true vision. However, it was and is completely unclear to me what I am supposed to do with this vision. And, as the medieval thinkers struggled with, I’m not sure how I would distinguish a false vision from a true vision.
When, if at all, do you seek mediated communication with the divine? Have you ever experienced visions that you believed were communications from the divine? Was the message you were given enigmatic in any way? How did the message relate to others, if at all?
Moses offers a simple and totally spontaneous prayer after Miriam contracts her skin disease from YHVH. He says, simply, El Na Rafa Na La. Literally, “God, please, heal, please her.” (12:13 Fox translates this as “Oh God, pray, heal her, pray” capturing the repetition of Na. This prayer is unique in our text for simply asking for something concrete and unambiguous that is perceived to be beyond human ability to make happen. The best equivalent to this in the rest of the Hebrew Bible is Hannah’s prayer to be blessed with a son (I Samuel, Chapter 1)
We are used to much longer prayer with a written text—lots and lots and lots and lots of words. We are taught to praise and only then do we request. Our text doesn’t have long and complex prayers, but it sure has long and complex sacrifices. This prayer is as heartfelt as they come (or so it seems to me) and is really simple, without the complexity we humans often create. Sometimes what we want is really simple and straightforward.
What is it you really want for yourself, for the people closest to you? Now express this in ten words or less. Go outside and offer this prayer.
QUESTIONS
Do you agree with my assessment about Moses and leadership? Why or why not? In what contexts, if any, do you see yourself as a leader and in what contexts does leadership sound like the last thing in the world you would ever want to do? What makes someone a good leader? Great leader? Think of the examples you’ve known in your life.
How do you think of humility as a spiritual trait? There are some circumstances where we are too humble, some where we are too prideful. Sometimes we need to cultivate humility, sometimes our pride and our egos. Where do you fall on this continuum and in what circumstances? What do you think about our approach to the more than human world in terms of our arrogance?
When, if at all, do you seek mediated communication with the divine? Have you ever experienced visions that you believed were communications from the divine? Was the message you were given enigmatic in any way? How did the message relate to others, if at all?
What is it you really want for yourself, for the people closest to you? Now express this in ten words or less. Go outside and offer this prayer.
