You, no doubt, have noticed that life is not one uninterrupted ascent toward fulfillment and success. I'm stating the obvious here.

We don't live in straight lines. Rather, our journey in life tends to be a series of triumphs and defeats, advances and retreats, stumbles and awkward moments of brushing the dust off our bruised knees and resuming. That's how life works for me. You, too?

There is a Jewish word for this entire process of failing and trying again. We call it t'shuvah. It is a word that we associate with seeking forgiveness on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and we usually translate it as "atonement." But the Hebrew word has a slightly different nuance than the English. T'shuvah literally means "returning." We have fallen down, or gotten diverted onto the wrong path, we have recognized our error, made our amends, and returned to the right way. That is t'shuvah. 

But life's stumbles are not always because of our errors, mistakes and sins. Sometimes — as the saying might go — "stuff happens." There are those moments when our lives go skidding off the road, not because of our poor driving, but because the road itself is hazardous. Surely, those are the moments when we can cry up to heaven and declare, "It's not my fault!" Right? 

On the other hand, what good would that do?

When fate and the world conspire against us, and we fail as a result, the process is largely the same as it is when we are at fault. Instead of screaming, we recognize what has happened, we acknowledge any portion of the fault that is ours, and we return back to the path.

That is the process described in this week's Torah portion (Beha'alotecha) for people who, through no fault of their own, were not able to participate in the Passover ritual. In the time when the Temple stood, a person had to be in a state of ritual purity in order to offer the Paschal lamb and partake in the meal. A person who was in a state of ritual impurity because of contact with a dead body, was not permitted to perform this central ritual of the holiday. 

This is what the Torah says about such a person:

There are a number of things interesting about this passage that offers a "do over" for people who missed Passover through no fault of their own. First of all, it required a petition from those affected to establish the rule. When life throws you a setback, it is okay to advocate your cause and seek an equitable solution. But also notice that Moses asks the petitioners to wait — Moses literally tells them to "stand" while he seeks an answer to their question — and they obey in silence. Being wronged by circumstances does not excuse impatience or self-pitying complaint.

The second interesting thing here is that Moses does not know the answer to the petitioners' question. He has to ask God. According to a classical midrash (Sifre Shelach 113), this is one of the four occasions on which Moses' mastery of the law failed him and he had to consult with God for an answer. (The other incidents are concerning the inheritance of the daughters of Zelophehad in Numbers 27:5, the man who gathered wood on the Sabbath in Numbers 15:34-35, and the blasphemy of the son of Shelomith in Leviticus 24:12). There is something about faultless suffering that is hidden from human understanding. Only God knows why innocent people are punished by unfortunate circumstances, and only God can provide a solution to their plight.

I also am struck by the way that God's answer includes a situation not included in the question. The problem presented by the petitioners and by Moses only concerned people who missed the Passover offering because they were in a state of ritual impurity. God's solution, though, also includes people who were on distant journeys. God does not want us to think only about our own unfortunate circumstance, but also to have compassion for people who face different hardships. We should not plead our own case without considering those who face other difficulties.

Finally, it is interesting that the people who have been forced to miss Passover by an act of God have only one limited opportunity to make up for it. We might have expected God and Moses to say that they could offer their Paschal do-over as soon as they returned to a state of ritual purity, but that is not the case. They only can make the offering on one specific day, called Pesach Sheini, the "Second Passover," that falls exactly one month after the first day of Passover. 

What could this teach us? Perhaps it reminds us that we do not get to make up our own rules when we perceive that the rules have failed us. Life is not always fair, but that does not excuse us from acknowledging that we still have an obligation to live within boundaries.

We do get second chances in life. The Torah recognizes that, whether we are at fault or not, we all need to be able to brush ourselves off when we hit setbacks, and to try again. Even more, we should not hesitate to seek a fair resolution when life treats us unfairly. Yet, the Torah also insists that life's setbacks should not dampen our resolve to act with patience, acceptance, compassion, integrity and self-discipline. Even a do-over must be done well.


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So, it is poetically just that this week's Torah portion (Beha'alotecha) takes on the issue of religious authority. Eldad and Medad are two men who receive the power of prophecy outside of the formal “chain of command” established by Moses. Curiously, Moses is the first to give legitimacy to the way they speak for God.

Adonai told Moses, “Gather for Me seventy of Israel’s elders of whom you know to be elders and officers of the people, and bring them to the Tent of Meeting and let them take their place there with you. I will come down and speak with you there, and I will take some of the spirit that is on you and put it upon them. They shall share the burden of the people with you, and you shall not bear it alone… Then Adonai came down in a cloud and spoke to him. God drew upon the spirit that was on him and put it upon the seventy elders. And when the spirit rested upon them, they spoke in ecstasy, but did not continue. 

Two men, one named Eldad and the other Medad, had remained in camp. Yet the spirit rested upon them—they were among those recorded, but they had not gone out to the Tent—and they spoke in ecstasy in the camp. A youth ran out and told Moses, saying, “Eldad and Medad are playing the prophet in the camp!” Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ attendant from his youth, spoke up and said, “My lord Moses, restrain them!” But Moses said to him, “Are you upset on my behalf? Who has the power to make all of Adonai’s people into prophets? It is Adonai who has placed God’s spirit upon them!” (Numbers 11:16-17; 25-29)

Moses makes it clear that the authority to speak for God does not necessarily flow from him or from any human authority. If we believe that God has the power to make the divine will known through human beings, God has the power to choose the agents of prophecy without regard to human institutions. 

You may notice that there is an interesting ambiguity in the story. Why did Eldad and Medad not come to the Tent of Meeting if they were among the elders chosen by Moses? Why does the text say that God took some of Moses’ spirit and “put it upon the seventy elders”? If Eldad and Medad were missing, should the text not have said only sixty-eight?

There is a beautiful midrash on this story that explains the seeming inconsistency and, also, explains the merit by which Eldad and Medad were considered true prophets (Midrash Bamidbar Rabbah 15:19). According to the midrash, Moses had a problem with the number of elders that God had specified. There were twelve tribes and each tribe would want to have equal representation among the elders, but seventy is not equally divisible by twelve. Two tribes would only have five representative and the other ten would have six. 

In attempting to solve the numerical problem, Moses instituted a lottery. Seventy-two pieces of paper were placed in a jar. Seventy pieces had the word “elder” written on them; two pieces were left blank. Moses chose six representatives from each of the twelve tribes and asked each of the seventy-two to draw a piece of paper from the jar. Only those who drew the word “elder” would be invited to join Moses in the Tent of Meeting.

Eldad and Medad were two of the seventy-two representatives chosen by Moses, but they withdrew from the lottery because they did not believe themselves to be worthy of the honor. The midrash says that, because of their modesty, they were deemed to be the most worthy of all the elders. God rewarded them with the greatest prophetic gift, allowing them to see events forty years into the future. 

According to the Midrash, this is the reason why Joshua asked Moses to silence them. Eldad and Medad were the first to prophesy that Moses would die in the wilderness and that Joshua would be the one to bring the Israelites into the Land of Israel. It would not be the last time that someone tried to silence a prophet for telling the truth.

Who gets to speak for God? Who gets to play the prophet? 

According to our tradition, it is not only the ones who have been elected and chosen by human beings. Sometimes, the voice of God has to come to us from outside of the chain of command. Sometimes, prophets need to be able to say things that are not so welcome by the powers that be. It takes leaders of true wisdom to listen to God’s voice coming from outside official channels. It takes leaders of true modesty to overcome the tendency to hear those words as a threat to their authority. 

In Israel today, there is an Orthodox Rabbinate that is not listening. The challenge for them is to step back from the tendency to hear liberal Jewish voices as a threat. It is to recognize that, for a portion of the Jewish people, Reform and Conservative Judaism speaks with the ecstasy of Eldad and Medad. It is their challenge to remember that it is God, not human beings, who has the power to make each one of us into a prophet.

There is, of course, also a message for liberal Jews in this lesson. Our legitimacy depends upon our willingness to act with humility. It is too easy to see the struggle with the Orthodox Rabbinate only in political terms—a struggle that can only have winners and losers in a test of power. Like Eldad and Medad, we should find our greatest struggle in wrestling with ourselves and questioning our own worthiness. 

It is through that struggle that we may find ourselves able to hear the voice of God, not from some human-appointed authority, but as a growing presence within our own lives.


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