Yeshiva
Beit Midrash
- Torah Portion and Tanach
- Bamidbar
- Bamidbar
This is a most foreboding venue in which to give over lessons and ideas. The Torah itself describes its harshness and difficult atmosphere – a place of serpents and scorpions, shifting sands, and the absence of water. Is that the proper classroom in which to teach the Jewish people the eternal laws and values on the Torah? Would it not be more fitting to have a more congenial and comfortable setting, so that the listeners and students could more easily concentrate on the message and lesson being delivered? Yet, the Torah seemingly goes out of its way to emphasize that this was revealed and taught to Israel while they were wanderers in the inhospitable environment of the desert and wasteland of Sinai.
One of the lessons of teaching Torah in this difficult place is that this demonstrates that Torah is not to be limited by any specific locality or geography. If the Torah had been given in the land of Israel, then there would be a tendency to say that it only applies there, and that outside the land of Israel it is not incumbent upon the Jewish people to observe the Torah. The human mind attaches teachings to the environment and geographic location in which they are learned.
If it were had been given in the land of Egypt in its entirety, before the Jewish people were free from bondage, there would be room to say that it was given only to that generation of freed slaves, but that later generations that have never experienced the lashes of the Egyptian taskmasters would not be bound to keep it. Human beings are influenced not only by lessons taught in the classroom, but also by the location of the classroom itself. By teaching the Torah in the middle of nowhere, the words, so to speak, show the features and eternity of Torah in a ‘classroom’ that is not limited by any sovereignty or appealing geographic location.
As such, the lessons remain as pristine as possible, unaffected by other outside environmental influences. It is the nothingness of the desert that is the proper backdrop, and it is the greatness and eternity of the words of the Torah that continually instruct and guide our lives and values.
Rabbis in Midrash
Lessons
fast navigation
Hosha'ana Rabba FLYDUBAI & HOSHANA RABBA- ANI VAHU HOSHIA NA- I & HIM SAVE US
"Ani vaHu Hoshia Na", "I and Him, Save Us". We don't just pray to Him, but we also pray to and for ourselves that we should emulate and educate our children to have that instinctive altruism with which He created the world. President Trump seemed amused about Yaniv Hayon, our PLUMBER who confidently worked with G-d like Superman (he learned from a pilot on a TV show!) to save 174 lives on the Dubai hijacking, but we in Israel are totally accustomed already 78 years to our plumbers, teachers, garbage-men, rabbis, farmers & doctors being Hashem's shlichim! This is what Zionism is about.
