(לה) וַיְהִי בִּנְסֹעַ הָאָרֹן וַיֹּאמֶר משֶׁה קוּמָה יְהֹוָה וְיָפֻצוּ אֹיְבֶיךָ וְיָנֻסוּ מְשַׂנְאֶיךָ מִפָּנֶיךָ:
(לו) וּבְנֻחֹה יֹאמַר שׁוּבָה יְהֹוָה רִבֲבוֹת אַלְפֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל:
vay'hi binso'a ha'aron vayomer moshe: kuma hashem v'yafutzu oy'vecha v'yanusu m'san'echa mipanecha
uv'nuho yomar: shuvah hashem riv'vot alfey yisrael
When the ark was to set out, Moses would say,
"Rise, O Lord, may your enemies be scattered and may your foes flee before You"
And when it was put down, he would say,
"Rest, O Lord of Israel's myriads of thousands"
A nun-friend of mine was rather surprised when I told her I was planning to write about Numbers 10:35-36: "Enemies scattering?" she wrote, and I'm not sure whether it was the subject of enmity or the violence (or fear of it) required to scatter them that upset her, or maybe she assumed that I was simply adding a few verses to the longish list of passages I wish would disappear, and she's a traditionalist...well, I'm not going to censor it, but I'm also not willing to turn this prayer in a central pillar of faith,sefer hashuv bifney atzmo (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 116a; actually, the inverted letters -- nunim m'nuzarot -- that bracket these two verses do suggest an ancient form of anti-virus quarantine!).
Etz Hayim (p. 826) starts off trying to shift the physical danger into the past: "During our years of wandering, exile and persecution, when we were (my emphasis) vulnerable to those who sought to do us harm, our prayer was (again, my emphasis), 'Advance [sic], O Lord! May your enemies be scattered!'" However, our vigilance has only moved to the spiritual: "During tranquil times, when the danger is not persecution but assimilation, our prayer is a homiletic interpretation of verse 36: 'O Lord, return the thousands of Israel who have strayed'" (notice how the editors reduce the verse's astronomical order of magnitude -- 10 to the 7th power -- to an almost trivial amount). But finally, Etz Hayim keeps the midrash from Sifrei (and popularized by Rashi) current when it asks, and answers: "Does God have enemies? Anyone who hates the Jewish people because we strive to do the will of God is an enemy of God" (nota bene: "because we strive to do the will of God" is -- perhaps unfortunately-- an editorial novum).
So, is this yet another utterance of the default sentiment in all religions: "God is on our side"? Nehama Leibovitz provides some relief by bringing the following snippet (the original is oh, so wordy...) from Samson Rafael Hirsch's Torah commentary (Frankfurt, 19th century):
"Moses knew that enemies would arise to the Torah from the word go, since justice and loving the Other are completely contrary to the decrees of tyrants and their aggression..." and not once in over a page and a half of commentary does he imply that we and the Torah are one, or that its enemies are our enemies or visa versa.
We are so prone to take advantage of the presence of Jewish worshippers and spoonfeed a pro-active political agenda that originates in certain corridors of power that we hardly notice the jingoistic force of singing these verses during the Torah service (last week I heard a prayer sung to the melody of Hatikva...); does our demeanor resonate "tranquil times" and do our texts reflect the nuances of our tradition, which certainly contains fantasies of divine violence against "them", but an authentic voice such as Hirsch as well? We move right on from Kuma Hashem (verse 35) to Ki mitziyon (Isaiah 2: 3b); I can't recall where I experienced it, but I was thrilled when I discovered somewhere out there they keep going till the end of the next verse as well: "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore".
A final note of subversion: I was suddenly struck (or maybe what my father wrote, "This song is only a prayer (the imperative "Arise", "Rest" are not written in the usual form, "kum," "shuv", but are lengthened to "kumah," "shuvah" and thus may be expressing a wish," Numbers, JPS, p. 375) by the similarity of this language to the words Elijah puts into the mouths of the Ba'al worshippers:
"It was already noon, and Elijah made fun of them, saying, "Cry out in a loud voice, he's a god, maybe he's busy, maybe he's on a journey, or maybe he's sleeping and must be wakened!" (I Kings 18:27)
It's almost as if God is a reluctant warrior whom Moses has to beseech to go out to battle (actually, Moses was wont to say this whenever the ark arose, not only in battle, which suggests a default setting of belligerence...hmmmm); and once set in motion, there's inertia to overcome, to get God back to non-violence...(kevan shenitan rashut l'hash'hit --once the slaughter begins, look out! -- the danger that Israel found itself in when the Angel of Death was killing the Egyptian first-born --
ואתם לא תצאו איש מפתח ביתו עד בקר כיון שניתן רשות למשחית אינו מבחין בין צדיקים לרשעים ולא עוד אלא שמתחיל מן הצדיקים תחלה שנאמר והכרתי ממך צדיק ורשע)
Life in the desert, according to this passage, was not a beach (that's the clean version), and we should choose our prayers carefully.
Shabbat shalom,
Jeremy
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