Rebellion and Response

Rabbi Melanie Aron

June 28, 2003

Why is the Torah so full of stories of rebellion and conflict? More particularly, why is the book of Numbers, which tells about the Israelites wandering in the desert, so focused on challenges to Moses' authority and God's response to those challenges?

Week after week, we read about the Israelites complaining, treating Moses with disrespect, moaning about present conditions and reminiscing about a better life in Egypt. It seems strange that those who had recently been slaves could talk about their house of bondage as a land flowing with milk and honey, a place of fish and leeks and cucumbers. Further it is not just the masses who complain, even the leaders rebel, the heads of the tribes and the officers. Miriam and Aaron, Moses' brother and sister, complain about Moses, challenging Moses' authority with their words: did not God speak to us as well?

In this week's Torah portion, as David described, the rebellion is lead by Moses's nephew Korach, a privileged member of the community, a person who already has a great deal of authority and prestige. In Korach's absolute defeat, Moses's authority is stressed once again.

Surely something else must have happened during the 40 years of desert wanderings, besides rebellion and reprisal? Why is the Torah so focused on this type of story?

Dr David Sperling, a professor of Biblical studies at the Hebrew Union College in New York, believes that the Torah's focus on these stories of rebellion, stems from the time when the Torah gained prominence as a scriptural document. He argues that this happened during the period just after the Babylonian Exile, when the second commonwealth was in its formative years.

Remembering our history, in 586 BCE the Babylonians conquered Judea, breaching the walls of Jerusalem and destroying the Temple. They took the leaders of the people, the priests and the upper classes into Exile to Babylonia where they lived, in relative comfort, if psychic disorientation, for 70 years. Then when the Persians conquered Babylonia, Cyrus the Great, gave the Jews permission to return to their land and rebuild their Temple.

During the 70 years of Exile the Jewish people learned to "sing the Lord's song in a strange land." They developed new customs and practices and began to understand being Jewish in a different way. When some of these Exiles returned home, there was a clash with those who had never left. Dr. Sperling believes that the Biblical stories stories of Moses and the rebellions in the desert were retold to teach a lesson to the rebels of their own generation. Ezra and Nehemiah wanted the Torah, their Torah, the compilation of earlier traditions which was a creation of the Exile, to be viewed as more authoritative than any other popular teaching. They viewed the Torah as the words of the greatest prophet of all, Moses.

We know from the writings of Ezra and Nehemiah that there were others considered prophets by the people at this time, and that their teachings were not always consonant with the Torah. By lifting up Moses' authority, the importance of the Torah was also stressed.

Dr. Sperling's theory explains one inconsistency that has always bothered me. The people's longing for Egypt, has never made any sense to me. How could slaves long for the country of their enslavement? How could the memory of harsh servitude disappear so quickly? Perhaps the expressions of longing for Egypt were a projection of the Exiles longing for Babylonia, a place of Exile but also a land of leeks, and cucumbers, of great material wealth, especially as compared to the Canaan they returned to, which was primitive and poor.

In general Jewish tradition takes a very positive view of challenging authority. We have no dogma and the Talmud is a record of discussions and disputations. Prophets and rabbis alike, challenge God and are admired for their audacity.

But in this period of the return to Judea in the 6th century BCE there was danger that dissension within the community would lead to a failure of the efforts to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and re-establish a stable community. For at least some of the leaders of the Jewish people at that time, it seemed necessary to have an authority that would be respected by all. Some say that David Ben Gurion felt the same way in the years preceding the establishment of the modern state of Israel. Certainly his opponents criticized him as being less than open to argument and opposition.

These issues of authority and rebellion take on a new meaning this year, in an America that has faced dangers unprecedented in our history and has heard the call of those urge unity at all costs.