Dvar Torah on Parshat Vayikra

At the end of the Book of Exodus, Moshe and the Israelites have successfully constructed the Mishkan - the Tabernacle used in the desert - from which God will continue to speak to Moshe, as He did on Mount Sinai. This week, we begin the Book of Leviticus, Vayikra, and, as expected, God speaks to Moshe: ויקרא אל משה וידבר ה' אליו מאהל מועד לאמר - "And He called to Moshe, and God spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying..." The strange thing, of course, is the use of two phrases at the opening, God first calls Moshe, and then He speaks to him. Why the double language, of first calling and then speaking?

Rashi explains that the calling is  there to tell us something about the nature of this, and, in fact, all subsequent, communications between God and Moshe. The calling indicates a relationship of love, of special closeness. Before speaking to him, God calls for Moshe.  He wants him, and only him, to listen to what He has to say. The calling indicates that God is looking for Moshe in particular to communicate personally and directly with. This becomes especially interesting when Rashi contrasts it with the way God communicates with another, very different prophet, the non-Jewish Bil'aam. When Bil'aam is called upon by the Midianites to curse the Jewish people, he responds immediately, and sets out to do this task with what looks like real relish. At one stage of this story, we are told that God "happens upon Bil'am" (ויקר אלוקים אל בלעם) (Numbers, 23, 4). Rashi points out that the word for "happened upon" -  "Vayikar"  - means that God did not call to Bil'aam, he, as it were,  bumped into him. This description conjures up a very different relationship, one lacking real rapport, real connection. God calls to Moshe, particularly, personally, before He speaks with him, to indicate the special nature, the specific nature, of their relationship. Bil'aam, on the other hand, is never called by name by God, God just runs into him. Rashi goes so far as to connect the word Vayikar with the notion of keri, which is connected to impurity.

The relationship between God and Moshe is easily understood. It is special, intimate, what we would expect between God and His prophet. God calls Moshe by name, as there is something special between the two of them. On the other hand, the casual, seemingly unimportant relationship God and Bil'aam is hard to fathom. Bil'aam is, after all, a prophet,  God speaks to him. How can such a relationship be depicted as casual, unimportant, accidental? What does it mean to have that kind of relationship with God?

To add to the strangeness, we need to notice that, in Hebrew, the difference between God specifically calling Moshe and only accidentally interacting with Bil'aam is just one letter, an aleph, which makes all the difference between ויקר and ויקרא  (Vayikar and Vayikra). To make matters worse, this aleph is traditionally written in our Torah scrolls as abnormally small, a mini-letter, as if to stress even more strongly the small difference between Moshe's and Bil'aam's experiences with God. How can this be so? The difference seems substantial, meaningful, huge. Is it, in fact, best expressed by one tiny letter's presence or absence?

Let's try to see what the difference is between Moshe's relationship to God and Bil'aam's. Moshe is introduced to us as a man with an agenda. In Egypt, long before God ever talks to him, he kills an Egyptian whom he finds beating an Israelite slave, and then tries to teach the Israelites to not fight among themselves. Later, he saves a group of sheperdesses from the rough treatment of the local shepherds. Clearly, Moshe, without being instructed by God, has a clear set of values, which he is willing to fight for. He knows what's right and what's wrong, and he is committed to actually doing the right thing.

Bil'aam, on the other hand, is first introduced to us as the man hired by the Midianites to curse the Jewish people. This is his agenda, his plan, not God's. As he travels to face the Israelites, and curse them, he hears again and again from God that this is not God's will, that the Jewish people are not to be cursed. This doesn't stop Bil'aam, who continues, again and again, to try to curse the Jews. 

It would seem that a basic difference between the two prophets is their own, self-realised, self-constructed, value system. Moshe's value system, his world view, though arrived at without prophecy from God, matches God's. On his own, he has divined what is right and wrong, what needs to be done (free the Jewish slaves, seek justice, support the oppressed), and that is why he is eventually chosen by God to make that happen. Interestingly, Moshe, when asked, at first turns down the job; in addition to knowing what the right thing to do is, he also has a healthy lack of arrogance about his ability to accomplish it. 

Bil'aam also has a world view, a set of values, a plan. His plan, however, is opposed to God's. Bil'aam wants to destroy His chosen people. He also thinks that he alone can make this happen, and challenges God's will in order to impose his own.

It is perhaps this difference that determines God's relationship to the two prophets. Moshe, whose personal understanding of right and wrong matches God's, who has managed, on his own, to construct a healthy and moral value system, is called by God to hear His will, to hear and transmit His Torah. That is why God calls on him personally, because it is Moshe, as a free-thinking individual, as a person, who has correctly arrived at an approximation of God's will for the world. God calls on Moshe, because Moshe is someone with whom God can speak, wants to speak, personally, because of their shared values. Bil'aam, on the other hand, has also, on his own, arrived at a value system, but it is cruel, selfish, opposed to God's. Therefore, when God does have a message to transmit, He does not call upon Bil'aam by name, because Bil'aam, as an individual, does not interest Him, is not connected to him.  He is of no real consequence, as he has forged for himself a personality which is in opposition to one with which God can really connect.

The fact that the Torah expresses the difference between these two realities with a mini aleph teaches us a crucial lesson. Bil'aam, somehow, is a prophet. He is a recipient of the word of God. We, too, are recipients of God's word, through the Torah. If we are Moshe-like, if we can, on our own, forge for ourselves personalities and belief systems which are in tune with the Torah's values of justice, morality, and kindness, then the words of the Torah will call to us, speak to us, individually, personally, correctly, as God called to Moshe when He spoke to him. If, like Bil'aam, the personalities we construct for ourselves are at odds with God's vision for the world, if we are, personally, selfish, mean-spirited, arrogant, uncaring, and then hear the word of God, our relationship to that word will, like Bil'aams, be accidental, casual, off-target.

The smallness of the aleph tells us how thin a line can seperate these two dynamics. We can be learning the same Torah, doing the same mitzvot, worshipping the same God, but if one fails to come to that experience as a person who, on his own, has arrived at a healthy, moral, caring world-view, who is, within himself, in tune with the underlying values of the Torah, then all of that Torah will be, as Bil'aam's communication from God was, casual, indirect, and, ultimately, unclean. 

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix