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New Rmmaum' Wvwl NM g; N" .! wnliflg-lo _ ZcoL.21(fi-~‘rj7 [’57 \‘ tax- . NewELDAD rmmaum‘ AND MEDAD wvwl NM The story of Eldad and Medad has always been one of my févourites, but underneath the surface of its seemingly straightforward narrative there lurk many difficulties, which makes it all the more intriguing. This morning, therefore, let us put it under a magnifying glass and see what we can do to sort out the problems it reveals. The background is clear:j Moses has been having a lot of trouble with the Israelites. They are a rabble of recently liberated slaves, always quarrelling, always complaining, interested in nothing but food and drink, materialistic, stiff— necked and incorrigible. Even for Moses the task of leading such a people is too much,'and he asks to be relieved of it. At this point God comes up with a solution which has previously been proposed in another form by Moses'father—in-law Jethro (Ex. 1813—26): power sharing. Let Moses appoint 7O elders to take some of the work—load off him. Chnd here comes the first questiDnQJWhy 70? To which you might reply: Why not? It is a good round number. But remember that there were twelve tribes, so one would expect to have an equal number of elders - say six - for each tribe, making a total of 72. So there is a discrepancy of two; and that may account for the seemingly supernumerary status of Eldad and Medad; which is indeed what the Rabbis Suggested. According to them, Moses did select six men from every tribe, making a total of 72, but then conducted a ballot to eliminate two of the candidates, who, seeing that they had just been unlucky, would hear no grudge (Sanh. 17a; Num.R. 15:19). ' WW is [Bore important, though, let us note whag sort of menLflpses(§51 to pick} The text saysz111u1u1 nun 1371 nn—1: nuww 1BR, "whom you know to be elders of the people, and officers over them" (Num. 11:16). That is to say, they are to be established, experienced, sound and reliable administrators. But while these qualifications may suffice for tribal leadership, when it comes to national leadership something more is needed: that requires vision, idealism, statesmanship, the ability to look beyond what is tn what should be, the ambition to reshape society according to a master plan; and of course in a Jewish context that means according to God's plan. In biblical language, what thé 70 elders need is n11. That is. the key word£§f our Torah portion, as it is also of our Haftarah. Ifijhas many méanings, including "wind" and "spirit"; but more particularly it refers to the gift of prophecy; that is, the ‘ ability to see the world as God sees it, to criticise it in HISGOJ‘ name, and to bring it intu closer accord with Hgfcwill. 50 Moses gathers the 70 elders in front of the 1u1n finu, the "Tent of Meeting" or nbEgpggeyxemgle,noun for a kind of ordination [,0 —~. —\ LIBRARYLLEGE 2 ritual which is supposed to effect a transference of H11, of prophetic authority, from Moses to them. And it works! Immediately, 1N23n11, "they prophesied" (11:25). Butfbere comes another problem, fothe text goes on, 1501 N51, and it is not certain what that means. It could be taken from the root qwu, "to come to an end", in which case the meaning would be that, having started to prophesy, they didn't stop but went on and on. But that seems unlikely, and most commentators take the word as coming from the root qu1, "to add" or "continue", in which case the phrase means just the opposite: that the elders prophesied only for a moment but did not go on. The newly acquired well of prophecy dried up almost immediately! If that is how we are supposed to read it, the implication seems to be that the n11 transference worked only momentarily; that even God can‘t transform hard-headed, hard-bitten, petty politicians all of a sudden into prophets; that you have to be born that way or else work your way up to it; that the experiment therefore failed, and consequently Moses was not able, after all, to get much help from the 70 elders, except as civil servants, but had to continue to bear the burden of top—level leadership largely alone, which is indeed what seems to have happened, to judge from the rest of the Pentateuchal narrative. But just at this point we are told, nannn u1uan 13u 11Nu‘1, that two men had stayed behind in the camp, with the implication that they — Eldad and Medad ~ should have attended the ordination ceremony at the Tent of Meeting but didn't; and this is confirmed by the informat'nn that they were n111n31, “among those who had been inscribed" - presumably on the list of the 70 names Why then were they absent? why did they disobey Moses’s summons to appear at the Tent of Meeting? Was it to their credit or to their discreditCfihat they did 5 ? According to the Rabbis, it was to their credit! They acted out of modesty! The others responded with alacrity. They were, fter all, b‘gwigs in their own tribes, so it seemed to them only natural and fitting that they should be elevated to national leadership. But Eldad and Medad, in their humility, thought themselves unworthy of so high an honour. So they crept away into the anonymity of the camp. And for their self-effacement, according to the Rabbis, they were actually commended and rewarded, for God says to them, nnuua unu ufi1an 1n11 unnx bwnn 1:" ,njnxu nu, "Because you have belittled yourselves, I will make you greater than all the rest of them“ (Sifre Num. 95). And that is why, whereas the other elders acquired the gift of prophecy only for a moment and immediately lost it, Eldad and Medad retained it for the rest of their lives (Num.R. 15:19). But this favourable View of Eldad and Medad was not shared by Joshua! HeE as you will recallzlis positively insensed by the .ll .7 2._ 3 Mail! report that they are "pruphesying in the camp" and urgesgpua 1:1« mafia, "My lord Moses_«restrain them" or "lock them up" (11:28). That, at least, is t a usual interpretatinn of another doubtful word. A different interpretation, suggested in the Talmud, is "finish them off". How? By laying 11113 1:1x, the cares of the commun'ty, upon them; that will finish them off in no time (Sanh. 173)! On that talmudic passage, incidentally, we have an evidently deeply felt comment by a Chasidic leader, the Tzaddik Isaac Zelig Morgenstern of SDlow, who died in 1940. "Then," he says, "they will realise what a hard task a Jewish leader has, for he carries on his shoulders the yoke of the community; he feels all their private and public sorrows, and becomes aware of all the subtle and hidden mental torments of the individual, and all the struggles and upheavals of the community; and then they wi11.understand that they cannot reveal all that they know" (Itturey Torah, Vol. V, p. 65):] But what exactly does Joshua have against Eldad and Medad? About that, too, there are various suggestions in our literature. According to one, they are ébuut to prophesy that Moses will die, and be succeeded by Joshua, befnre the Israelites reach the Promised Land, and he wants to spare Moses the anguish of hearing such a prophecy (Sanh. 97a). According to another, Joshua resents, on Moses' behalf, the fact that Eldad and Medad have become prophets all of a sudden, whereas he, having “ministered to Moses Since his youth" (Num. 11:28), knows what Spiritual struggles and purifications he had had to go through before attaining his ' status (Joseph Saul NathanSon in Itturey Torah, loc. cit.). But surely the best explanation is the obvious one! Joshua resents Eldad and Medad because they had absented themselves from the ritual at the Tent of Meeting. Thereforglghe n11 has not [IfifluaéHMWA been conferred on them. They have not been pkoperly ordained. ” k¢fi They have no accreditation, no title, no Ph.D.! How dare they speak as prophets in God's name? They are not authorised to do so! They are usurpers! They must be stopped. If that is the true explanation, perhaps there lies behind it the age-old struggle between, on the one hand, kings, priests and professional, so—called "cultic" prophets, who are inducted into office by some kind of sacramental rite, and, on the other, charismatic prophets, who derivé their authority from nothing but their inner religious experience and convictinn. At any rate, Joshua reacts as most human beings would react. Thayiaccept, with or without good grace, the authority of those who have been duly installed, the Establishment figures, the bureaucrats, the apparatchiks, who behave in conventional, predictable ways. They suspect and resent the individualist, the eccentric, the maverick, who challenges accepted norms and demands from individuals and societies a "quantum leap" to new 4 and higher moral attitudes. 'But that is exactly what a true prophet is, for all the greatest prophets were charismatics, and it is to them that all moral progress has been due. d. 6 O I Moses understands that. haziis why he says, 'n nu-Z: 1n1 1m un*fiu 1n11 nu 'n 1nfi—1: u N‘JJ, "would that all t d's people were prophets that the~ad would put His spirit upon thmfl' (Num. 11:29).
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