This week in the Torah:
G-d commands Moses to census those Levites, from the age of thirty to fifty, who are fit to carry the Mishkan (portable sanctuary) on their forty year sojourn in the desert.
Question:
Even when an event recorded in the Torah is, physically, no longer, it lasts forever in its spiritual meaning, for the Torah is eternal. What then is the present-day relevance of the aforementioned census?
Question:
For forty years the Jews were not allowed to enter the Holy Land because they had protested it at one point. But why was this sentence applied by sojourning a desert?? Why couldn’t they stay in a civilized place and wait out the forty years there?
Answer:
There was a purpose to sojourning through the desert. Because of the sanctuary that traveled with them (carried by the Levites) the Jews settled the desert. The supernatural cloud that encompassed them killed the dangerous snakes and scorpions. And the supernatural spring, in Miriam’s merit, caused vegetation wherever they encamped. And as far as a desert being inhospitable to humans, the six hundred thousand Jews made it hospitable by indeed settling there.
All of this drew down holiness into an otherwise unholy place. And the Levites facilitated this.
Hence, the relevance:
This census, commanded by G-d, empowered the Levites to purify and sanctify their surroundings despite it being an otherwise unholy place. So too, each and every one, who Maimonides deems capable of consecrating oneself to be on the level of a Levite, can purify and sanctify one’s surroundings, whenever one simply accepts the responsibility to teach justice and charity to the public; this despite one’s surroundings originally seeming spiritually desolate. This person must realize that there is meaning to finding oneself in such surroundings. The meaning is to uplift them.
Another lesson:
Within oneself too one may find a situation of desolation. But, just like the Levites who only entered the team of sacred servants at the age of thirty, despite not having served beforehand, so too one who finds desolation in oneself must realize the empowerment endowed, regardless of the past, to make oneself into a sanctuary for the Almighty.
By turning away from evil, and by doing good.
(Based on Likkutei Sichos Vol. 13, Naso)
