By Yitzhaq Hayut-Man Parashat beha’alotekha (Numbers 8:1-12:16) The Beha’alotekha portion contains two singularities that distinguish it, by its name and its form, from the other portions in the Torah. This concerns the form of the name of the parashah and a special section of two sentences in Numbers chapter 10, which are framed in a singular manner, and which allows to see them as an additional book of Torah. In our view, these singularities provide keys for the understanding of the Parashah and of the Torah in general.
There are many topics in the Parashah that are ostensibly unrelated or even contradictory. The beginning of the Parashah, till the frames section, deals with lighting the lamps of the candelabra, by setting and sanctifying the Levites to their tasks, the second Passover, the cloud that adhered to the Tabernacle, the trumpets, the order of journeying, the attempt to have Moshe’s father in law to stay and the journeying following the Cloud. There comes the framed section where Mosheh speaks ceremonially to the Lord. After that we learn of the heavy load upon Moshe, the intention to `put upon them part of the spirit upon Mosheh so that “they shall bear the burden of the people with thee that thou bear it not thyself alone” (11:17) and the complaints of the people and especially their craving for meat. The overall story of Israel becomes “the spiritualization of the Flesh” – which is, as we shall soon see, raising and ascent in the “Soul Dimension”. Therefore the Parashah placed the carnal issues alongside the actions of spiritual ascent. Thus the seventy elders prophesied – and immediately repaired to eat and drink.
The Name “Beha’alotekha”
The first verse of the Parashah is rendered in the Koren translation (and likewise others) as “when thou (Aharon) lightest the lamps, the seven lamps shall give light towards the body of the candlestick”. But this misses the essential point given by the key word “beha’alotekha et hanerot” – literally “as you will be raising the lamps” and miss the discussion of this raising in the Rabbinical literature. While there are many Torah Portions named as an action, but this Parashah is no named “va’Ya’al” (he raised/would raise) or “ha’ale!” (raise up!), but “beha’alotekha” (“as/while you will be raising”) – that is a condition: as you will raise the (six) lamps – the seven lamps will light in concert. There is something good that is adumbrated by the configuration of the light. When the six peripheral lamps (of the branches of the Candlestick) are lit, they should turn “towards the face of the Candelabrum” (el mul pnei ha’Menorah), that is, towards the central lamp. The candelabrum collects the lights and sparkles that arrive from six sources and lifts them up. The entire candelabra with its central candlestick shaft and its branches is a pattern of seven lights: six peripheral ones, that may signify six perspectives, projections or explanations of the sensory world, and the central lamp shines in the space that is formed through the inclusion and integration (hitkalelut) of the six sides.
The candelabra of the Tabernacle thus recalls the acts of the Creation, the process of the six days of action and the seventh day – the day of the Shabbat rest that expands and raises the soul. The six peripheral lights are associated in the Qabbalah with the six Sefirot that are called ‘six directions’ (vav qetsavot) – that correspond to Right, Left, Forward, backward, up down, and which pertain to the six faces of cubical (3D) space. The aiming of the lights and the raising of the lights in the candelabra are a physical model that represents some mental processes – of the individual and the community – processes of the concentration of attention from the concrete (3D) world and raising it to the Soul dimensions (5D)[1] – it may even be claimed that this process of lifting – ha’ala’ah – amounts to a process of divination – ha’alahah. In the following we shall see that the sanctification of the Levites and the prophetic experience of the 70 elders assumed a similar pattern.
The Framed Section
The Parashah contains a short passage framed back and forth by sort of brackets made of the inverted letter Nun (?): “and it came to pass, when the ark set forward, that Mosheh said, rise up, Lord, and let thy enemies be scattered, and those who hate thee flee before thee. And when it rested, he said, Return, Lord, to the tens of thousands thousands of Yisra’el” (Numbers 10:35-36). These two enclosed verses comprise thus a whole book of the Torah,[2] “the Inner Book”, and thereby the Pentateuch turns into a Torah of seven books – four till Numbers 10, the additional framed one, and then the rest of Numbers as a book and the Book of Deuteronomy. In the first of the framed sentences there are twelve words and it deals with journeying and wars, and in the second sentence there are seven words and it deals with rest and fruitful plenitude. These numbers, twelve and seven, are particularly sacred and appear in various forms in the Torah in order to point at the basic structure of sanctification. In the former Parashah, Nasoh, there comes a section that repeats itself twelve times in exactly the same words, where only the name of the tribe and its leader are changed. In this Parashah the subject is the Levites, the team of the Tabernacle, who join the twelve tribes and unifies the twelve tribes via the Tabernacle, whereas the Tabernacle itself is like Shabbat and rest from contentions.
There are two special activities among the many topics of the Parashah that have a certain resemblance to the raising of the lamps: one is the taking the Levites as offerings and “uplifting” or “raising” them (hanafah), the other is the emanation/induction of Moshe’s prophetic spirit upon the seventy elders and leaders. First there were dedicated the Levites, carriers of the ark, which is Aharon’s domain, and later there are taken up the seventy elders and leaders to share Mosheh’s burden.
The Ordination of the Levites and their Uplifting
“And thou shalt bring the Levites before the Lord, and the children of Yisra’el shall put their hands upon the Levites” (8:10). Again, the Koren and other translations miss essential points, it is really “draw the Levites near” – vehiqravta – which literally means “thou shalt sacrifice” – rather than just “bring” them before the Lord and it is ritually laying, rather than just putting, the hands – semikhah – upon the Levites. There are here ritualistic drawing-near/sacrificing – haqravah – and laying of hands as ordination – Semikhah – that is, that actually the Levites were made sacrifices for the whole community of Yisra’el! No less. This is actually a certain type of human sacrifices. The original sacrifice to the God of Yisra’el was a human sacrifice – Yitzhaq our forefather. Animal sacrifices, like of the ram on that occasion, were kind of substitute to this human sacrifice. But it is important to check closely and to remember that the instructions to Abraham were not to slaughter his son, but merely “take now thy son, … and lift him up there – veha’alehu le’olah (?????? ?????)” (Gen. 22:2), which is usually translated as “offer him as burnt offering”, but literally means “uplift him”. Something much like that was told to Mosheh in Sinai, “And take thou to thee – haqrev elekha – literally “draw/sacrifice to you” – Aharon thy brother and his sons” (Exodus 28:1), and it is very clear that the intention was not to slaughter them. Here, in Parashat beha’alotekha we learn of haqravah (nearing/sacrificing) and the hanafa (uplifting) of the Levites, that is the equivalent of their haala’ah le’olah.[3]
Two Semikhot (ordination) and three uplifting/raisings of the Levites are given in the Parashah: “and Aharon shall uplift/offer the Levites before the Lord for an uplift /offering of the children of Yisra’el, that they may execute the services of the Lord” (8:11), and then “thou shal set the levites before Aharon, and before his sons, and lift/offer them (vehenafta otam) for a “wave offering”/uplifting (Tenufa) to the Lord (8:13), “and after that shall the Levites go in to do the services of the Tent of Meeting; and thou shalt cleanse then, and offer/uplift them (vehenafta otam) for an offering/upraising (Tenufa)” (8:15). It is commanded once of Aharon and apparently twice upon Mosheh (singly or through Aharon and his sons) to lift up almost the entire tribe of Levi.
The Semikhah (ordination) is the laying of the hands over the head of the ordained, the sacrifice, in order to turn him to the messenger for the Israelite. The Israelite trusts – somekh – the Levite to take his request upon himself and would be capable of getting near to the Lord (in spite of all hazards) and deliver the request to Him. The Levite’s laying of hands upon the sacrificial animal is so that it will serve as substitute for the Levite, whereas their physical uplifting raises the soul upwards.
“and Aharon shall uplift/offer the Levites before the Lord for an uplift /offering”. Apparently one can wonder: how could the single Aharon lift “eight thousand, five hundred and eighty” Levites? (Num. 4:48).[4] It is of course possible to explain this as a mere metaphor, but there is also the possibility that Aharon was so “charged with spiritual energy” that his touching the receiver sent that Levite to levitate in the air. There are many testimonies of Shamans, Yogis and Christian saints who levitated in the air and of spiritual teachers whose touch could send the disciple on an astral journey.
Anyway, the conception of the raising of sacrifices by the Levites and the elders as parallel to the raising of the lights in the Candelabrum is very meaningful for studying the nature of sacrifices in the future Temple.
The emanation/induction of the prophetic spirit upon the seventy elders
The basic pattern of the gathering from the twelve tribal domains to the center that is characterized by the number seven[5] was applied in the gathering of the seventy elders and leaders – seven Minyans assembled from all the Twelve Tribes of Yisra’el – in a circle around the Tent of Meeting in order to induce in them something of the prophetic holy spirit that usually dwelled upon Mosheh alone.
The aim of the gathering was as stated before it, that Mosheh would not remain alone in carrying the burden of the entire people, but that the elders and leaders will share the burden with him. And even though this eventually became a one-off event – “they prophesied, but continued not” (11:25), yet the hope of Moshe was “would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put His spirit upon them” (11:29).
This event is a certain replay to the preparation to the receiving of the Torah in Parashat Mishpatim, “Then Mosheh went up, and Aharon, Nadav and Avihu, and seventy of the elders of Yisra’el. And they saw the God of Yisra’el, and there was under his feet a kind of paved work of sapphire stone, and it were the very heaven for clearness. And upon the nobles of the children of Yisra’el he laid not his hand, and they beheld God, and did eat and drink” (Ex. 24:9-11). There was a certain difference between the two occasions: in the first they saw whatever they saw on the background of “the very heaven for clearness”, skies without clouds, whereas in the second spectacle the Lord descended to them in a cloud – a lower and more common degree in epiphany.
The seventy elders together with the two, Moshe and Aharon who are already connected to holiness are together 72, and in Hebrew letter-ciphers AB, which literally means “a Cloud”.[6] We have already seen that AB is connected with the divine Name with a “filling” of the letter Y’od (Y’od w’aw D’alet, H’e Y’od, W’aw Y’od W’aw, H’e Y’od), where the Y’od of the Tetragrammaton signifies the supernal world of Divine Atzilut (Immanence). The epiphany of the Lord before the elders was, like the majority of epiphanies of the Lord beAv haAnan – “in a thick cloud” (Ex. 19:9) – from the Av haAnan to the Av elders.[7]
The Lights Show over the Tabernacled
In Parashat Beha’alotekha we find the setting of lights over the Tabernacle: “and on the day that the tabernacle was erected the cloud covered the tabernacle, namely, the tent of the testimony; and at evening there was upon the tabernacle as it were the appearance of fire, until the morning. So it was always, the cloud covered it by day and the appearance of fire by night” (9:15-16). This description reminds us of course the pillar of cloud and pillar of fire that accompanied the children of Yisra’el at the exodus, as well as at the Sinai Epiphany. But from the erection of the tabernacle and onwards, the cloud would accompany the children of Yisra’el in all their travels in the desert and would guide them in a way that apparently is the resultant of their aims, or the complement to that resultant. But the overall direction of the many travels and its continuation in he future is towards Jerusalem and the Temple, and also the Temple was at times characterized by a pillar of smoke (it is possible to regard the pillars in Solomon’s Temple, Yakhin and Bo’az, a reminder and perhaps substitute to the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire of the exodus).
The tabernacle did not need the glories of the temple, because its great glory was the configuration of the Cloud of Glory. “The appearance of fire” (keMar’eh Esh) means lights, something like the fire-like light that Moshe had beheld in the thorn that burnt and was not consumed.
The Inner Torah Book and the Future Tabernacle
The “inner book” that we found, which prays and praises the ark as the representative of the Lord, carries significance for all the paragraphs before and after it. The ark was the definite point of contact between Yisra’el and their God. Eventually the ark was taken out for wars, as happened when it was captured by the Philistines – but the eternal hope is for its return to its resting place in Tsion/Zion, the return for the cosmic Shabbat “in the place that He will choose”.. “And when it rested, he said, Return, Lord, to the tens of thousands thousands of Yisra’el” (Num. 10:36). “tens of thousands thousands of Yisra’el” means tens of millions of Israelites. This comes together with Mosheh’s hope in his testimony “The Lord God of your fathers make you a thousand times so many more as you are” (Deut. 1:11). In spite of all of Moshe’s burden, this is his still-greater hope – not for six hundred thousand but for a Yisra’el of 600 million was his hope.
Yet for the guidance of such an immense future audience something of the scale of the tabernacle or the temple of Solomon would not suffice. The insights in this Parashah as well as in the book of Exodus give inspiration for a possible pattern for the future tabernacle of temple – to erect a gigantic holographic Cloud-and-Light show over the Jerusalem Temple Mount or the place of the Mishkan – like a stationary pillar of Cloud and inside it a gigantic virtual Menorah (Candelabrum). The analogue to “the work of the Levites” will be the collection and assembly of “Light sacrifices” brought by pilgrims from all over the world.[8]
Link to the Re-Genesis Now Project
[1] According to Sefer Yetsirah, God created a five-dimensional world, of Olam (3D space), Shanah (time dimension) and a soul dimension of several degrees – Nefesh, Ru’ah, Neshamah, Hayah & Yehidah. See Arie Kaplan’s translation and comments on Sefer Yetsirah and/or appendix B for our Genesis Exegesis.
[2] Shabbat 115b-116a, Sifri for the Parashah.
[3] In the Qabbalah the Levites are akin to the Patriarch Yitzhaq (Isaac), both of whom represent the Sefirah of Din/Judgment, whereas the Kohanim/priests are akin to Abraham in representing the Sefirah of Hesed/Mercy. The Aqedah (Binding of Isaac) is the binding together of the Sefirot of Mercy and Judgment and their combination in the ritual.
[4] The number of the Levites, 8,580 = 5x11x12x13, which means that they are intermediaries for organizing of people on the basis of 5, 11, 12 and 13 perspectives (in associating the Levites with the 12 Tribes of Yisra’el, they divide 8,580/12 = 715 Levites engaged in the connection of a certain tribe with the Tabernacle or the Temple of the Lord). 8,580 is the square root of 73,616,400, or nearly 74 million. This gives an idea of the potential order of size of the community of “the tens of thousands thousands” mentioned with the rest of the ark.
[5] This is part of “The New Jerusalem Diagram” that is already implied in the first verse of the Torah (see appendix C to the exegesis of the Parashah of Genesis.
[6] The subject of the Cloud and the Clouds of Glory will be treated in the Exegesis to Exodus. We already offer related articles on “Preparing the Coming Epiphany” and “Clouds of Glory in the Virtual Temple”.
[7] The Gematria of “AB” is 72, whereas the Gematria of Anan (cloud) is (when counting the final letter N’un with value of 600) is 720. The raising by factor of 10 signifies a raising of dimension (units are marked as zero dimensional points upon a line, which is one-dimensional; tens signify additional dimension that turns the line to surface, hundreds signify an additional raising of dimension to volume, whereas thousands already raise to the fourth dimension).
[8] See essays on the cloud and lights at the Temple mentioned in comment 6.
