Molding the 'Riffraff' Into a Coherent Nation
The Portion NUMBERS 8:1-12:16

By GIL TROY

The Forward, JUNE 8, 2001

The name of this week's portion, Beha'alotecha refers to how Aaron, as high priest, would light the menorah of the Tabernacle having arranged the wicks so that the seven candlesticks would generate one common light. That is why Jews embrace the venerable menorah as a national and religious symbol. Just as seven days form a week, so, too, the Jewish people unite as one in their nationhood.

Alas, as we all know today, that unity is easier preached than achieved. The portion takes note of the difficulty of uniting the people, at one point characterizing them as "murmurers" and "riffraff" (Numbers 11:1, 11:4).

In the portion, the children of Israel leave Sinai after having sojourned there for more than 10 months for a trek through the wilderness that eventually will lead them to the Promised Land.

This is a critical milestone in Jewish history: Liberated from bondage in Egypt, granted the Ten Commandments, the Jewish people now marches as a nation toward its homeland. Inevitably, in living as a nation, in entering history, the Jews face challenges. The people — the "riffraff" — again yearns for the good old days in Egypt, pining to eat all the delicacies available there. Moses organizes his 70 elders to govern. Two of the elders, Eldad and Medad, continue to prophesize after the other elders have stopped. Joshua urges Moses to rebuke the two. Moses replies in Numbers 11:29: "Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, that the Lord would put this spirit upon them!"

What a powerful lesson Moses teaches his eventual successor — and all of us. Moses refuses to see life, leadership, nationhood, his power and Jewish nationalism as a zero-sum game in which one person's gain is another's loss. Rejecting that narrow worldview, Moses teaches that more is more. Ideals such as love, honor, friendship, peace, justice, harmony, truth and trust shrivel in a tit-for-tat, either-or world. Such concepts flourish in a world of mutuality and community.

The Torah contrasts Moses' generosity with the pettiness of his people and his relatives. The riffraff, the childish children of Israel, get what they demanded and then some. Having protested the slim culinary pickings in the desert, they get a bounty of quail. Many gorge on the delicacy and die.

Meanwhile, Moses' own family suffers from that far-too-common domestic affliction: jealousy. Not understanding that, especially in a family, more is more, glory for one does not diminish the others, Miriam and Aaron claim to be God's prophets as well as Moses. They also gossip about their Cushite sister-in-law Tzipporah, because she is different.

God affirms Moses as His prophet, and strikes Miriam, the instigator, with leprosy. Humbled, Aaron asks for help from Moses, who then beseeches God to cure Miriam.

With Moses' expansive leadership demonstrated, affirmed and secured, the Jewish people can now take "their first journey, according to the commandment of the Lord by the hand of Moses" (10:14) into the wilderness of Paran. They have the building blocks of nationhood, the recipe for Jewish greatness. They have religious faith in God and national leadership from Moses. They have ethics and power. They are just like other nations but different, transcendent. They have learned that nationalism is a tool that can be used for good or bad, that the story of Jewish nationalism cannot be separated from Jewish faith or Jewish good works.

A portion that flirts with dualities is in fact organic, like the nation, and like the menorah. The Jewish people plunge into history on this note of unity and integration. We see in this portion that what moderns distinguish as nationalism and religion and ethics, our ancestors simply called Judaism. Let us hope that in these challenging times, when we so often fall into the either-or of religious versus secular, ethics versus power, Zionist versus non-Zionist, nationalist versus humanist, we reject false choices and learn from Moses that more indeed can be more.

Mr. Troy is professor of history at McGill University in Montreal.