In Naso we hear how the chieftains of Israel, the heads of the tribes, came to Moses on the day that he finished the portable temple, the Mishkan, in the desert (Numbers 7:1). Each, starting with Nachson ben Aminadav from the tribe of Judah, brought an extremely useful offering to give to a man who had just supervised the building of a huge portable tabernacle which was going to have to be carried around the wilderness for who knows how long – something to transport it in. The Chieftains brought six heavy carts and twelve oxen to pull them.
Moses then gave the carts and oxen to the Levites, who were going to be responsible for transporting and setting up the tabernacle, wherever the children of Israel rested on their wanderings. He divided the carts and oxen up among three out of the four Levite clans but one of them, the Children of Kehat, did not get a set of cart and oxen. They were going to have to schlepp. Now you might think that the children of Kehat would have been most unhappy about this. Indeed they were going to have to carry their part of the Tabernacle on their shoulders – and as it turned out, they were going to have to do this for 38 more years of desert wandering.
Our commentator Rashi, who taught in France in the eleventh Century, tells us that they were not displeased at all for the Kehatites had a special responsibility. It was their job to carry on their shoulders the very objects that enabled our Jewish religion to be passed down, the Ark of the Covenant, containing the Ten commandments, the Table and the Candlesticks and the altars and all the vessels which the priests, the Cohanim, used to perform the service of God in the tabernacle. Clearly it would not do to chuck these into the back of a wagon and let some oxen tug them along. Ox carts were fine for the pillars and the curtains and the door hangings, but for the vessels of the Temple service and of our religious memory, only the shoulder of a dedicated Israelite would do.
Rabbi Morris Adler was especially struck by the verse which told us that the Bnei Kehat carried their load by shoulder (Numbers 7:9), he said, “It seems to me, as I read this verse and re-read it, that we are being told not only about a detail of transportation but that we are being instructed in a very important matter. When it comes to the very heart of religion, we must not try to find – and cannot really find- a substitute for our own shoulders. We cannot transfer to anybody else, or to anything else, the obligations that rest exclusively upon ourselves. There are things that others cannot do for us.
The Benei Kehat, the Children of Kehat – the “family that carried the ark of the covenant” – had a challenging responsibility (Numbers 7:9); They had to carry the ark upon their own bodies; they had to feel its weight; they could not seek means to make the burden easier. Religion, too, is a burden (a joyful burden) and it also is a discipline ( a fulfilling discipline – which can give every week, every year of your life, meaning as you follow the Jewish cycle of celebration and commemoration.). Anyone who seeks to carry a faith easily, shouldering no special tasks, making no distinctive sacrifices, will have a religion that is neither true nor helpful.’’ (M Adler, The Voice, q in Plaut Chumash p945).
Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman, Professor of Liturgy at Hebrew Union College and expert in Synagogue development, teaches about four dangers for a Synagogue.
(See http://urj.org/worship/worshipwithjoy/letuslearn/s15alchet/) These are the dangers of acting as a paediatric Shul – where everything we do is for the benefit of children or at a child’s level but we fail to challenge ourselves religiously as adults. Of being an ethnic shul, where Jewish ethnicity and just the need to survive as Jews is seen as enough but the contemporary relevance and deep content of that Judaism is never addressed. Of being a corporate shul where we are efficient and have a great bureaucracy among our staff but do not shoulder the responsibility of the mitzvot of care for each other ourselves, all head and no heart. Of being a consumer shul where we expect the shul to do and provide things for us – all validly Jewish but based on the same way that we relate say to a health club rather than to a family.
Challenging and escaping all of these dangers requires all of us to be like the Bene Kehat: putting our shoulder under what Judaism asks of us, lifting up the burden and walking with it proudly and supporting each other to make the challenge easier to bear. Vicarious Judaism, where the responsibilities of Jewish life and community are expected to be done only by others or by those whom we pay, is Judaism with the holy vessels thrown into the ox cart to travel on ahead without us.
Rabbi Mark Goldsmith, Senior Rabbi of Edgware and Hendon Reform Synagogue. He teaches Homiletics and Jewish Life Cycle at Leo Baeck College. He gained his Semichah from Leo Baeck College in 1996 and since then served the then Woodford Progressive Synagogue, Finchley Progressive Synagogue and Alyth Synagogue.
The views expressed in this D’var Torah do not necessarily reflect the position of Leo Baeck College.