Pursuing Peace
What is the logic of Parashat Naso? It seems, on the face of it, to be a heterogeneous collection of utterly unrelated items. First there is the account of the Levitical families of Gershon and Merari and their tasks in carrying parts of the Tabernacle when the Israelites journeyed. Then, after two brief laws about removing unclean people from the camp and about restitution, there comes the strange ordeal of the sota, the woman suspected by her husband of adultery. Next comes the law of the Nazirite, who, as we saw earlier, voluntarily and usually for a fixed period took upon himself special holiness restrictions, among them the renunciation of wine and grape products, haircuts, and defilement by contact with a dead body.
This is followed, again seemingly with no connection, by one of the oldest prayers in the world still in continuous use, the priestly blessings. Then, with almost inexplicable repetitiousness, comes the account of the gifts brought by the princes of each tribe at the dedication of the Tabernacle, a series of long paragraphs repeated no less than twelve times, despite the fact that each prince brought an identical offering.
Why does the Torah spend so much time describing an event that could have been stated far more briefly by naming the princes and then simply telling us generically that each brought a silver dish, a silver basin, and so on? The rabbis made the assumption that every word of the Torah is meaningful. It tells us something we need to know, and does so in the fewest possible words. So the repetitiousness of this particular passage cries out for explanation.
The question that overshadows all others, though, is: What is the logic of this apparently disconnected series? The answer we will find time and again in Numbers, more than in any other book of the Torah, lies in the close connection between law and narrative. Law in Judaism is not random, arbitrary. It is not there simply because God wills it. The Torah wants us to understand why the law is as it is, and it does so by telling a story – a story about events in the past that did not turn out as they should have, and to which law is the antidote, the remedy, the tikkun. So it is here.
In the previous essay we spoke about the priestly blessings, with their concluding line, “The Lord turn His face towards you and give you peace” (Num. 6:26). It is no accident that the concluding word of this highly structured blessing is shalom, translated here as “peace.” However, the translation is not precise. In English, peace means the absence of war, freedom from disturbance, calm, tranquillity, restfulness, and the like. In Hebrew, shalom means more than that.
In a long analysis, the fifteenth-century Spanish Jewish commentator Rabbi Isaac Arama explains that shalom does not mean merely the absence of strife. It means completeness, perfection, the harmonious working of a complex system, integrated diversity, a state in which everything is in its proper place and all is at one with the physical and ethical laws governing the universe: “Peace is the thread of grace issuing from Him, may He be exalted, stringing together all beings, supernal, intermediate, and lower. It underlies and sustains the reality and unique existence of each.”1Isaac Arama, Akedat Yitzḥak, ch. 74.
Similarly, Isaac Abrabanel writes, “That is why God is called ‘Peace,’ because it is He who binds the world together and orders all things according to their particular character and posture. For when things are in their proper order, peace will reign” (commentary to Mishna Avot 2:12).
This is a concept of peace heavily dependent on the vision of Genesis 1, in which God brings order out of tohu vavohu, chaos, creating a world in which each object and life form has its place. Peace exists where each element in the system is valued as a vital part of the system as a whole and where there is no discord between them.
In this vein, the nineteenth-century commentator Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (Germany, 1808–1888) explained the conclusion of the story of creation in Genesis 1. Six times, God sees what He has made and pronounces it “good.” On the seventh occasion, we read, “God saw all that He had made, and behold it was very good” (Gen. 1:31). What is the difference between “good” and “very good”? “Good,” said Hirsch, means good in itself. “Very good” means good in its totality. It is a reference to the harmony of the universe despite its complexity (commentary to Gen. 1:31).
That is the theological background to the biblical concept of shalom. Whereas the ancient myths of all other cultures saw reality in terms of the clash of primal forces, Judaism saw God as the-Unity-that-creates-diversity. Shalom is the harmonious coexistence of otherwise conflicting individuals, tribes, and nations, each with their distinctive nature and unique contribution to the totality of humankind. Shalom is thus not uniformity but integrated diversity.
The philosopher Joseph Albo (Spain, 1380–1444) saw conflict at the heart of physical/metaphysical existence. Everything that exists is a composite of different elements, each of which seeks to overcome the others. Thus, the need to establish peace is a constant requirement of physical being:
Each opposing element seeks to overcome and vanquish the other, and once it has overcome the other, it will not rest until it has absolutely destroyed it and wiped it out of existence, and the composite object will thus cease to exist…. Conciliation between these two opposing elements is called peace, and on its account being is sustained, and the composite entity can continue to exist.2Joseph Albo, Sefer HaIkkarim III, ch. 51. For an essay on this theme, see Aviezer Ravitsky, “Peace,” in Contemporary Jewish Religious Thought, ed. Arthur A. Cohen and Paul Mendes-Flohr (New York: Scribners, 1987), 685–702.
The various provisions of Parashat Naso are all about bringing peace where there is actual or potential conflict within families or communities. The most obvious case is that of the sota, the woman suspected by her husband of adultery – a situation fraught with danger of violence and abuse. What struck the sages most forcibly about the ritual of the sota is the fact that it involved obliterating the name of God, something strictly forbidden under other circumstances. The officiating priest recited a curse including God’s name, wrote it on a parchment scroll, and then dissolved the writing into specially prepared water. The sages inferred from this that God was willing to renounce His own honour, allowing His name to be effaced “in order to make peace between husband and wife” by clearing an innocent woman from suspicion.3Sifre, Parashat Naso 42.
Though the ordeal was eventually abolished by Rabban Yoḥanan b. Zakkai after the destruction of the Second Temple, the law served as a reminder as to how important domestic peace is in the Jewish scale of values.
The passage relating to the Levitical families of Gershon and Merari signals that they were given a role of honour in transporting items of the Tabernacle during the people’s journeys through the wilderness. Evidently they were satisfied with this honour, unlike the family of Kehat, detailed at the end of the previous parasha, one of whose number, Korah, eventually instigated a rebellion against Moses and Aaron.
Likewise, the long account of the offerings of the princes of the twelve tribes is a dramatic way of indicating that each was considered important enough to merit its own passage in the Torah. People will do destructive things if they feel slighted and not given their due role and recognition. Again the case of Korah and his allies is proof of this. By giving the Levitical families and the princes of the tribes their share of honour and attention, the Torah is telling us how important it is to preserve the harmony of the nation by honouring all.
The case of the Nazirite is in some ways the most interesting. There is an internal conflict within Judaism: on the one hand, there is a strong emphasis on the equal dignity of everyone in the eyes of God; on the other, there exists a religious elite in the form of the tribe of Levi in general and the kohanim, the priests, in particular. It seems that the law of the Nazirite was a way of opening up the possibility to non-priests of a special sanctity close to, though not precisely identical with, that of the priests themselves. This too is a way of avoiding the damaging resentments that can occur when people find themselves excluded by birth from certain forms of status within the community.
If this analysis is correct, then a single theme binds the laws and narrative of this parasha: the theme of making special efforts to preserve or restore peace between people. Peace is easily damaged and hard to repair. Much of the rest of the book of Numbers is a set of variations on the theme of internal dissension and strife. So has Jewish history been as a whole.
The fact that these laws are stated before the narratives of conflict that dominate many of the later chapters of Numbers is an instance of the principle that “God creates the cure before the disease.”4Midrash Lekaḥ Tov, Exodus 3:1.
Parashat Naso tells us that we have to go the extra mile in bringing peace between husband and wife, between leaders of the community, and among laypeople who aspire to a more-than-usual state of sanctity. We have to make sure that all the tribes who participate in a ceremony such as the inauguration of the Tabernacle get equal attention, even if it means repeating the description twelve times.
Shalom has such a rich meaning in Hebrew – harmony between conflicting elements, each of which has its distinctive part to play in the integrated diversity of the whole. Thus the laws that illustrate the pursuit of peace are clustered together at the beginning of Numbers, the book that more than any other in the Torah documents the conflicts and self-inflicted injuries of the Israelites in the wilderness.
The Jewish solution is not strong government, central control, and the imposition of uniformity. To the contrary, it is valuing diversity as the way to achieve shlemut, “wholeness, perfection,” and thus shalom as calibrated harmony between the various elements, each with its role, each in its place.
It is no accident that the priestly blessings end – as do the vast majority of Jewish prayers – with a prayer for peace. Peace, said the rabbis, is one of the names of God Himself, and Maimonides writes that the whole Torah was given to make peace in the world.5Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Ḥanukka 4:14.
Parashat Naso is a series of practical lessons in how to ensure, as far as possible, that everyone feels recognised and respected, and that suspicion is defused and dissolved.
We have to work for peace, not just pray for it.