Parshas Bamidbar 5786 "Bamidbar Sinai Be'ohel Moed" - The Proper Preparation for Matan Torah

00:00 Speaker 1 There is a story: When they came to arrest the Alter Rebbe and take him to prison, in the well-known imprisonment associated with 19 Kislev—it was in the middle of Sukkos—the police came to take him away. The first thing the Alter Rebbe did was run. He went out through a side door and fled the house, and they could not find him. The Rebbe relates the story in detail in Reshimos Hayoman, notes in which the Rebbe recorded stories he heard from his father-in-law, the Frierdiker Rebbe. The account there says that the Alter Rebbe initially fled. He ran to the cemetery in the town of Liozna and hid there. They could not find him. While he was there, the Alter Rebbe asked them to summon the chossid Reb Shmuel Munkes. Reb Shmuel Munkes was one of the Alter Rebbe’s great chassidim, and many stories are told about him. He was very sharp, and outwardly he even seemed like a wild man, but he was a deeply elevated Jew, a great tzaddik. The Alter Rebbe called Reb Shmuel Munkes and said to him: “Reb Shmuel, they have come to take me to prison. Should I go or not?” In other words, should he show himself so they could take him? The Alter

01:34 Speaker 1 Rebbe certainly knew that they would come looking for him and would not stop. He could remain where he was without their finding him. The question was whether he should show himself so they could take him to prison. “Should I go to prison or not?” Reb Shmuel Munkes told the Alter Rebbe that yes, he should go. The Alter Rebbe asked him: “Why do you think so?” Reb Shmuel replied: “Because if you are a Rebbe, this whole imprisonment cannot harm you at all. And if, G-d forbid, you are not a Rebbe, do you know where you belong? In prison!” “Why?” “Because who gave you permission to take the pleasure of this world away from thousands of chassidim?” In other words, Reb Shmuel Munkes told the Alter Rebbe that since he was a Rebbe, going to prison would certainly bring only good—only good things would come of it. No one would be harmed, and nothing bad would happen. But then, in his characteristic way of speaking, he added: “But if you are not a Rebbe, who gave you permission to take the pleasure of this world away from thousands of chassidim?” What does it mean that the Rebbe took the pleasure of this world away from thousands of chassidim? In the weekly parsha, Parshas Bamidbar, we find

02:59 Speaker 1 right at the beginning: “And Hashem spoke to Moshe and Aharon in the Sinai Desert, in the Tent of Meeting.” The Torah goes on to tell us what happens in Parshas Bamidbar, which itself is called “Bamidbar,” and the entire book, Sefer Bamidbar, is named for the words “in the Sinai Desert, in the Tent of Meeting.” It then discusses the census of the Jewish people. As Rashi immediately points out: “Because they are dear to Him, He counts them at every opportunity.” He counts them—[unclear]—and the census is the subject throughout the parsha. The Alter Rebbe asks a simple question: Why does it say here, “in the Sinai Desert, in the Tent of Meeting”? It seems entirely unnecessary. Don’t we know that the Jewish people were in the Sinai Desert then? We have just come from Sefer Vayikra, and Sefer Vayikra is [unclear] at Mount Sinai. Throughout, it speaks about the Jewish people while they are still at Sinai. We find in the parshiyos that the Jewish people arrived at Mount Sinai in Parshas Yisro, and they have not yet left. “In the third month ... on this day they came to the Sinai Desert.” We are not even speaking here about the moment they arrived. They stayed there for a full year, and [unclear] took place there. Only in Parshas Behaaloscha do we learn that the Jewish people continued their journey: “We are setting out.” Until then, the Jewish people were indeed in the Sinai Desert. What,

04:36 Speaker 1 then, is the reason the Torah emphasizes again that they were in the Sinai Desert and in the Tent of Meeting? We already know all this. This, too, is explained in Chassidus. The Alter Rebbe explains the whole matter in Likkutei Torah: These words contain everything a Jew needs to know about the giving of the Torah. The words “in the Sinai Desert,” “in the Tent of Meeting,” contain the entire point the Torah wants to tell us about how dear the Jewish people are to Hashem. These are two general aspects of a Jew’s service. There is the Sinai Desert, and there is the Tent of Meeting. The Alter Rebbe explains: the Sinai Desert is the aspect of “turn away from evil”; the Tent of Meeting is the aspect of “do good.” Why? The Gemara asks: “Sinai—why was it called Sinai?” Why are the desert and the mountain, Mount Sinai, called that? Sinai is one of the mountain’s names. It is also called Chorev, and it has other names. But the best-known name, the one used in the Chumash, is specifically Mount Sinai. The Gemara says: “Sinai—because hatred descended upon the nations of the world.” The mountain brought hatred upon the nations of the world. We need to understand what the Gemara means here,

06:05 Speaker 1 and there are a number of explanations. What does “hatred descended upon the nations of the world” mean? According to Chassidus, though, “the nations of the world” here means goyishkeit. And what is goyishkeit? It refers to all the concerns of this world: physical matters, material matters, worldly matters. That is what is meant by “the nations of the world,” by goyishkeit. As a number of maamarim explain, “the gentile within you” is a person’s own gentile, the animal soul. That is the gentile within him, with its concern for this world, for physical and material things, its eye turned toward this world. The giving of the Torah brought about a need for Jews to have a hatred of the “nations of the world”—a hatred of the physical and material concerns of this world, of all these aspects of goyishkeit. For him, they are out of the question; he wants no connection to them, and he separates himself from them. Only after there is a “Sinai Desert” can there be a “Tent of Meeting.” What does the word moed, “meeting,” mean? It comes from the word “I will meet with you.” “I will meet with you” expresses connection, attachment, daas. It is the idea of connecting with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. For a Jew to have a “Tent of Meeting,” to have that “I will meet with you”—to unite and connect with Hakadosh Boruch Hu through Torah study and the observance of mitzvos. This is daas of G-dliness, the quality of daas. The Alter Rebbe says in Tanya that daas means attachment and connection.

07:35 Speaker 1 In other words, connecting with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That is the service of “do good.” But it requires a prerequisite: first must come the “Sinai Desert.” A person must become like a desert, entirely clear and empty of material and physical concerns, and hate the goyishkeit and materialism of the nations of the world. In this connection, there is a story about the chossid Reb Shmuel Munkes, whom we have been discussing. When people speak of Reb Shmuel Munkes, they tell how he came to the Alter Rebbe. In one of the Rebbe’s notes, in his diary, he relates the story at length. When Reb Shmuel Munkes first came to the Alter Rebbe, he arrived in Liozna. It was the middle of the night and dark. He looked for somewhere to go and saw a lit house. In the middle of the night, when all the other houses were dark, he saw a house with a light on. He went up and knocked. It was the Alter Rebbe’s house. The Alter Rebbe came out and asked: “What is it?” He replied: “I’m a Jew. I’ve come looking for a place where I can lie down and sleep. Where can I stay?” The Alter Rebbe said: “There are houses here in town.” And the chossid, Reb Shmuel Munkes, said to the Alter Rebbe:

08:50 Speaker 1 “Rebbe, what is this? This isn’t a Jewish home, this isn’t a Jewish home.” The Alter Rebbe said to him: “In another moment I’ll call a gentile to throw you out.” Reb Shmuel Munkes said to the Alter Rebbe: “Rebbe, my gentile is stronger than your gentile,” and he burst into tears. That is how the story goes. When the Alter Rebbe saw this, he said: “Now, you see, I recognized him.” That is how the Frierdiker Rebbe told the story: “Yes, he recognized him.” In other words, he recognized that this was a Jew searching for truth, searching for something deeper. He opened the door and let him in, and that is how Reb Shmuel Munkes became a chossid of the Alter Rebbe. The Rebbe once told this story at a farbrengen and asked: “How could this be? The Alter Rebbe didn’t open the door for him?” It is a good question. Reb Shmuel Munkes arrived in the middle of the night. A Jew knocks on the door and wants a place to sleep, and the Alter Rebbe says he will throw him out, that he will send for a gentile. Why didn’t he open the door for him right away? Reb Shmuel Munkes noticed that he had not opened the door immediately. But the Alter Rebbe wanted to test him, to see whether Reb Shmuel Munkes had come there merely because he was looking for a place to sleep. Reb Shmuel Munkes came to Liozna because he was searching for Chassidus, searching for truth, searching for

10:07 Speaker 1 G-dliness. The Alter Rebbe wanted to see whether he was truly seeking the truth, seeking G-dliness, or simply looking to make life easier for himself. The Alter Rebbe said to him, “I’ll call my gentile.” That is, “the gentile within you”—the gentile, the animal soul. And Reb Shmuel Munkes said, “My gentile is even stronger than yours.” This awakened in Reb Shmuel Munkes the understanding that the whole purpose of Chassidus is to drive out the gentile—one’s own gentile, “the gentile within you.” That is what he was telling the Alter Rebbe, and that is the true story the Rebbe revealed to us. He arrived in the town, and it was dark. Darkness means the darkness of the world, the darkness of exile, the darkness of the body and the animal soul. But at the Alter Rebbe’s home he saw light. He saw that there was the light of Chassidus, that the Alter Rebbe’s light was shining. So he knocked on the door, because he wanted to find more of that light. When he told the Alter Rebbe, “My gentile is stronger than yours,” he meant that there was indeed a gentile within him, but he wanted to be rid of it. And the Alter Rebbe opened the door and gave him the light—gave him Chassidus. That is what the parsha means when it says, “In the wilderness of Sinai.” To be ready to receive the

11:28 Speaker 1 Torah—and, as discussed in a number of places, this relates to the counting of the Jewish people. What does counting the Jewish people mean? Rashi says, “Because they are dear to Him, He counts them.” What does Chassidus say about this? What does “Because they are dear to Him, He counts them” mean? Counting reveals a Jew’s special quality, the reality of a Jew: that a Jew is something whole. Halachah establishes—in the language of our Sages—that something counted is not nullified. Something counted has importance, and therefore it cannot be nullified. A Jew is something counted. Hashem makes him something counted. Something counted has greater importance and can never be nullified—not in sixty, not in a thousand, and not in ten thousand. Nothing can nullify him. This shows that a Jew is not nullified in exile. Despite the world and the non-Jews around them, nothing can nullify the Jews, because of the strength of their existence. So we ask: What is required for a Jew to have this strength, this importance, this dearness—and for the dearness of the Jewish people to be revealed? This requires a preparation even during exile. And what is that preparation? “The wilderness of Sinai”—where hatred descended to the world. There must be hatred of the ways of the nations, of materialism, of physicality, and of the concerns of this world. That is the preparation for becoming a vessel for the Geulah.

12:58 Speaker 1 In light of this, we can understand the question raised by the well-known story about the Maggid of Mezritch. There is a letter the Alter Rebbe wrote to Reb Avraham the Angel after the Maggid of Mezritch’s passing. Immediately after his passing, some chassidim were very concerned about his son, Reb Avraham the Angel, who was, as his name suggests, an angel. He was a holy man, an angel of G-d; he lived in the spiritual realm and had risen entirely above the concerns of this world. The chassidim saw that he was not taking care of his health, that he fasted often and practiced self-denial, and so on. The Alter Rebbe, together with other chassidim who had been students of the Maggid, wrote him a letter that was later published. In it they set out their concerns and told him that the Maggid of Mezritch had said—as they had received from the holy Maggid—that a small hole in the body is a large hole in the soul. In other words, when a person does not take care of his health, is not careful, and afflicts himself with fasting and self-denial, that small hole in the body leads to a large hole in the soul. It may prevent him, G-d forbid, from serving Hashem properly and create a great deficiency in his soul. That is what they asked of Reb Avraham the Angel: to take care of his health, to eat properly, and so on, and not to harm his health, because one needs to be healthy and physically strong. And the Rebbe

14:23 Speaker 1 asks at a farbrengen on Shabbos Parshas Bamidbar, the eve of Rosh Chodesh Sivan: At first glance, how does this fit with what we learn in today’s parsha? The parsha says specifically, “In the wilderness of Sinai”—where hatred descended to the world: there must be hatred of the concerns of this world, and physical concerns must be rejected. Yet here, it seems, we are told exactly the opposite: that a small hole in the body is a large hole in the soul. This is also connected to the teaching he cites in the words of our Sages: “The strength of the body is the weakness of the soul; the strength of the soul is the weakness of the body.” When a person’s body is strong, that weakens the soul, G-d forbid. And when the soul is strong, that weakens the body. Again, one teaching seems to contradict the other. Here we are told to care for the body and take care that there be no hole in it, G-d forbid—to have a healthy body and not harm it through fasting and self-denial. As is well known, the Baal Shem Tov also taught, “You shall surely help him”: one must care for the body’s health, so that it is healthy and whole. And as the Rambam writes in Hilchos Deos, “Maintaining a healthy and sound body is among the ways of Hashem.” We must serve Hashem with a healthy and sound body. Yet here we are told the opposite: that there must be “Sinai,” and that there must be “weakness of the body.” How do these two ideas fit together? In response,

15:52 Speaker 1 there is an explanation that these are two separate things. One concerns the very existence of the physical body and the physical world, and in this respect one must care for the body’s health. One must eat, drink, sleep, and look after the body so that it remains healthy. “You shall surely help him”—one must serve Hashem with the body, as the Alter Rebbe taught:

20:15 Speaker 2 to be a happy chossid and a healthy chossid, and to receive the Torah with joy and inwardly.