Mattos Massai

Dear friends,

When I learned world history in elementary school, Napoleon was presented as quite a heroic figure. Determined. Brilliant strategist. Visionary. These were the words used to describe a man whose name has come to mean something far more positive – it is one of my favorite desserts. 

The reason that I was thinking about the Little Man with ambition is that the current war in Ukraine recalls so many wars fought for no definable reason.  Of course, there is always the raw gaavah that demands to further glorify yourself via the country that is on your side, but whether your side wins or loses many lives will be lost, and the people of the embattled country are not usually affected very much down the road. Will the lives of the Russians or Ukrainians be different 20 years from now?

There are exceptions, and they are at least as important and as real as the anti-war message that I just conveyed.

The problem with the above statement is that it isn’t always true. If the Allies had lost WW2, if Civil War had a different end (not that it is comparable to the unspeakable horrors of the holocaust) things would have worked out differently.

The war against the Midianites still affects you today.

I can hear the “huh?” all the way in Har Nof, followed by some of you asking, “What war?”

The war I am talking about was fought in the last stages of the Jew’s stay in the desert. It was a strike ordered by Hashem. The enemy was the Midianites who had reached the point of surrender to the animalistic urge to WIN. To reach the goal they prostituted their daughters to entice Jewish men for one reason and one reason only. They wanted to destroy us as a nation from the inside. Their “enemy” was any whisper of kedushah that could drown out the Midianite hedonism that was their only principle. Yes, you got it right. The only principle was “don’t have any principles”. This is why they hired Bilaam – The war was not about territory or fear of conquest.  Midian was not part of territorial Eretz Yisrael and there was no reason for them to fear the Jews. Except for one. If and when they leave the desert and begin living normal lives, planting, building, and creating a society based on serving G-d, Midian’s core beliefs would be threatened, and their need for supremacy defeated and rendered irrelevant.
The result of the wars was shocking. The Jewish officers reported no men dead or missing. The cause? It was a war that G-d commanded, and He required that each tribe send 1000 men... They put the Midianites face-to-face with the representatives of the people who are everything that they are not. The victory was absolute – and this is why it has something to do with you.

After the war was fought, we were given the laws of how to make non-kosher dishes and utensils kosher. What that tells you is that the eating implements we use are defined by their exposure to non-kosher food, but can be “returned” through koshering them. There is more – even if a particular utensil was made by a non-Jew, it needs to be immersed. What can possibly be spiritually compromising about a coffee cup? What are these laws telling you?

The basic premise is that we Jews live in the real world, which is a world in which physical reality is on the page. Higher consciousness is part of what and how you eat, sleep, dress, and more. When you recognize that nothing can exist without Hashem willing it into existence (even for a split second) you will come to realize that nothing (even the snack you may be eating or envisioning as you read this letter) is only physical. Yes, it occupies space, exists in time but there is more to it than what you see. It is connected to the Source of life. The connection isn’t less real because it is invisible. If anything, its invisibility tells you that it is limited by time/space. When you use the material world as a stepping stone to connect yourself to the Source of life via the physical object at hand two things happen. One is that you are more aware. The other is that the object has fulfilled the purpose for which it was created.

Going back to Midian. To them, the entire purpose of food for them was nourishment and pleasure. No connection. No gratitude. No recognition of what the spiritual effect could be. Worse still, their relationship to food could be reflective of their entire way of life.

The way to make a utensil kosher follows the way it became non-kosher. If the medium used in cooking was water, it has to be koshered by being dipped in boiling water. If it was via dry heat, it is koshered by dry heat. There is a message there.

You follow the parshah, and you come to the laws of the cities of refuge. These are cities that are open as places where a person who committed a murder through negligence is obligated to go. After his trial (and his being found guilty of murder through negligence), he is sentenced to the cities of refuge where he must reside until the death of the Kohen Gadol of his time. He would be surrounded by Levites (since the cities were designated from the Levitate cities) where they would be in an exalted environment to heal the kind of spiritual insensitivity that would lead to being the kind of person who can find himself in the unenviable position of knowing that the difference between life and death can be just giving the other person’s life the value it deserves. You too can be made “kosher”. Put yourself in a good environment, re-sensitize yourself, and give yourself the message that new beginnings are possible if you want them to happen.

The Parshah, (and Chumash bamidbar) ends with a listing of 42 stops the Jews made while travelling to Eretz Yisrael in the desert. The trek took 40 years. The number 42 isn’t random. There are 42 words in the first chapter of the Shema – the one that begins with “And you shall love Hashem”. This parallels the fact that your life and mine are composed of many journeys   that all have meaning, and all can lead to love of Hashem, even when you have to “kosher” yourself after a jaunt in spiritual Midian... When you see some progress, you can always incentivize yourself with a Napolean, conquered by your yetzer tov, upon which you say a brachah with all your heart!

Love,
Tziporah