Dvar Torah on Parshat Bamidbar

One of the interesting things about getting old (hey, I’m 60, show some respect!) is realizing how much things have changed. Many of today’s most often used words simply did not exist when I was a kid; in fact, they’ve only been around since I hit middle age. Google, web site, cell phone, text message, megabytes; the list is long. Many other words did exist, but who ever used them? Jihad, terrorist, global warming, shoe bomber (I’m trying to think of some pleasant things but am not succeeding – I got it – sushi, and quinoa).

Then there were other words which were in use back in the day, but had very different meanings, or applications. I would guess that when I was a kid, the word “identity” was probably most used in sentences which had the names Clark Kent or Bruce Wayne in them, and was usually preceded by the word “secret”. Today, identity is one of the most bandied-about words in the English language, and is seen as a key to understanding and dealing with individuals and groups. Jewish identity, in particular, is a very hot issue. Deciding how I will identify as a Jew, what are the major and minor elements of my Jewishness, what do I choose to include or exclude when constructing my identity, are all central issues in our community.

Although it is true that, years ago, we simply didn’t talk this way, that doesn’t mean we were not busy building our identities. In fact, in this week’s parsha, Bamidbar, there is a fascinating meditation on one of the basic questions we face when thinking about our identities: where do I locate my essential connection to my people? After all, there have been all kinds of Jews, with changing forms of identities and worldviews, for thousands of years, long before there were Christians, Muslims, rappers, hipsters, or New Age-types. Today, when thinking about what kind of Jew one wants to be, when deciding what, in the large array of Jewish options and styles, I want to emphasize for myself, I have a lot to choose from. I can root myself way back in the distant past, or look to something more contemporary. I can see the events of the 20th century – the Shoah, the birth of the State of Israel – as central to my Jewish life, or I can choose to anchor my relationship with Judaism with one or more of the Chassidic masters of the 18th and 19th centuries. I can see my local synagogue and Rabbi as the epicenter of my Jewish experience, or view Jerusalem, or 19th century Poland, or the Lower East Side of NY in the early 1900’s, or Fez in the 1800’s, or Woody Allen’s films, as the source of my Jewish inspiration and identity. This week’s parsha has something to say about this embarrassment of riches. 

In Parshat Bamidbar we are told that that the 12 Tribes of Israel, as they traveled through the desert from Egypt to Israel, were arranged in a specific order, demarcated by four flags. Every three tribes were positioned in one direction, north, south, east, or west, around the Tabernacle at the center of the camp. The flag flying at each of the four directions, marking that area as belonging to three specific tribes, was the flag of the leading one of the three tribes in each group. For example, east of the Tabernacle was the flag of the tribe of Yehudah, around which assembled the tribes of Yehudah, Issachar, and Zevulun. To the west, under the flag of Ephraim, were the tribes of Ephraim, Menashe, and Binyamin. At each of the four directions there was a similar arrangement: three tribes under the flag of the one, leading tribe.

The Torah instructs Moshe to arrange all this in the following way: "And the Lord spoke to Moshe and Aharon, saying: 'Each man under his flag, with signs, according to his family, will the children of Israel encamp...'". The commentaries have difficulty with the words "with signs" ("b'otot" in Hebrew) as it seems unnecessary: surely the flag is sign enough, what are these seemingly additional “signs” for?

Rashi offers two explanations. The first posits that, in addition to the four flags positioned around the Tabernacle, there were additional banners attached to each flag, each in the color of one of the tribes, so that each additional tribe could see to which flag it was connected. These banners were in the colors of the 12 precious stones in the High Priest's breastplate, each of which had the name of a different tribe incised in it.  The breastplate was used to supply divine direction to the people – when fateful questions needed to be answered, some of the letters inscribed on the stones in the breastplate – the names of the tribes – would light up up, supplying the high priest with instruction (for a more detailed explanation see the Dvar Torah about the Urim V’tumim in Parshat Tezaveh for 2002). Each tribe knew the color of its precious stone, saw a banner in that color attached to the flag, and knew that that was its place.  Those colored banners are the “signs” in our verse.

Rashi's second explanation is this: The “signs” mentioned here is actually the historical source of the arrangement of the tribes.  These “signs” had been given to the tribes years before, by Yaakov. Before he died, he told his sons the order of who should bear his coffin from Egypt to burial in Israel: Yehuda, Issachar and Zevulun on the east side, etc. The Torah’s division of the tribes here follows the original funeral instructions given by Yaakov to his children. The “signs” doesn’t relate to the individual banners in the colors of each tribe, or any other physical symbol. Rather, they explain the origin of the arrangement of the tribes around the four flags: Yaakov’s funeral.

What is the difference between these two interpretations of the “signs”? Why does Rashi bring both?  I think that the two understandings relate to the identity construction we spoke of earlier. These flags are, like all flags, symbols of a group’s identity. As Theodore Herzl pointed out in a letter to Baron Hirsch, an important supporter of early Jewish agricultural settlements in Israel, a flag is not just a rag on a stick. It contains and expresses a group’s identity, self-understanding, and history. The two understandings of the tribal flags that Rashi brings reflect two elements of the way we construct and understand our “tribal” identities.

The colored banners are about the present. The colors of each banner, taken from the stones in the priest’s breastplate, are about a tribe’s current, ongoing relationship to God and the Jewish people – letters of their names, inscribed on the stones, supply important, current information from God to the High Priest and the nation.  The color of their stone on the breastplate is all about the ongoing, unfolding nature of a tribe’s relationship with God and the world, their current place in the Jewish scheme of things, in the Jewish conversation with God about its destiny. 

The second possibility, that the “signs” were the order of the tribes positions as they carried Yaakov’s coffin, speaks to the understanding that our identities are based on our relationship to our past, our roots.  It is in relation to our forefather Yaakov that we understand who we are, and where we stand. The flag, which symbolizes the tribal identity, points the members of the tribe to a connection to their past, to the last of their forefathers, and their relationship to him, to exile in Egypt, and to the promised land to which they were taking Yaakov for burial.

The two understandings are not mutually exclusive, and I think Rashi brings them both to tell us that these are the two poles of group identity: a connection to our past, to the great figures and events which are the foundation of who we are, and a relationship to the present; the ongoing attempt, through our contemporary institutions (in this case the Temple, priesthood, and breastplate) to move ahead as Jews, to continue the journey we began as the sons and daughters of Yaakov.

The tribes were meant to relate to their flags – the symbols of their identities, of their place in the Jewish nation and the world – on these two levels: their connection to Yaakov and the past, and the ongoing relationship with God and the Temple in the present. We, too, build our identities most successfully when we manage to marry the past in which we are rooted, and the present, in which we act. An overemphasis on one or the other could result in a stilted, hollow identity, lacking the richness and wholeness inherent in a more balanced array of sources for our Jewish identities.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix