Delegating Down to the Transcendent

This week’s Torah reading, Beha’alotcha (Numbers 8:1–12:16), unites two themes in an astounding episode: the idea of redemption—second chances—and the idea of delegation—that decision-making moves up or down from the top to the grassroots.

The episode is unique. At their own initiative, some Israelites want an answer to this question: What if I missed the first Pesach festival at the Tabernacle because I am ritually impure or traveling far from home? (Numbers 9:6-7). They ask Moses, who asks God. In other words, instead of asking for a response from a scholar, the people ask for a response to a halakhic question directly from God Himself. The tradition praises the people for taking a proactive interest in resolving a halakhic question.

The answer is that you get a second chance. If you missed the first celebration, you can do it precisely one month later (Pesach Sheni, Numbers 9:9-14). The Exodus and Wilderness stories are all about second chances. Moses runs away from his fractious people and their tyrannical oppressor—and after the burning bush, he returns to save the one from the other (Exodus 3:1-10). Moses delivers the two tablets and then has to smash them after it turns out the people have built an idolatrous golden calf in his absence (Exodus 32:15-19). He goes back up the mountain and brings a second set (Exodus 34:1-4). God promises again and again that even though His people will stray, they can repent and be returned to their land and God’s graces (Deuteronomy 30:1-5).

Perhaps fifteen hundred or so years later, we receive a radically different take on how to resolve a halakhic question. It is the supreme moment in the Talmud. A point of halakha is disputed—the kosherness of an oven (Tanur shel Aknai). A voice from heaven weighs in favor of one rabbi, Rabbi Eliezer (Bava Metzia 59b). The rest, led by Rabbi Joshua, say that halakha has to be decided by the majority; voices from God don’t count, for the Torah is “not in heaven” (Lo bashamayim hi, Deuteronomy 30:12). The Torah is now in the heart of the people. There is no more consulting directly with God. The task of creative interpretation is with the people.

What happened in between? God stopped intervening openly and visibly. There was no prophet again like Moses (Deuteronomy 34:10). There were no more revelations as at Sinai. In this week’s Torah reading, God tells Moses to start delegating downwards. Moses has complained that it is too much for one man to deal with the complaints of his people; and God says delegate downwards, enlist seventy tribal leaders to help you (Numbers 11:16-17). Earlier, at Jethro’s urging, Moses appointed judges to handle lesser disputes, further decentralizing authority (Exodus 18:13-26).

In Exodus and Numbers, God commissions the Levite priests to lead the ritual process (Numbers 3:5-10). After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, the people of Israel salvage another chance. They yearn for a top-down leader, a Mashiach, to lead their redemption, a hope that persists through centuries of exile and persecution. But in the meantime, the Torah has been shifted downwards to the ordinary people, sustained through synagogues, study houses, and communal observance. You do not have to be a descendant of the Levites. You can become a scholarly leader no matter how poor your background or where you are born.

Rabbi Akiva, a towering figure in Jewish tradition, exemplifies this democratization of Torah scholarship. Rabbi Akiva’s life and work bring together the ideas of delegation and second chances. The rabbis of the Talmudic period helped to save Jewish civilization for the two thousand years until the Jewish people again acquired their own state. Akiva himself lived a second-chance life; he was in his forties before he was able to join the academy of scholars. He was born around 50 CE in the Land of Israel, not Babylonia as initially suggested. He came from humble, possibly rural origins, and tradition holds he was a descendant of converts, not from a prominent or priestly lineage. Until his forties, Akiva was an uneducated shepherd, an am ha’aretz (ignorant of Torah), working for Kalba Savua, a wealthy Jerusalemite. He married Kalba Savua’s daughter, Rachel, who encouraged him to pursue Torah study despite his late start. They lived in extreme poverty, with the Talmud recounting how they slept in a straw-filled barn (Nedarim 50a). Akiva studied under sages like Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Joshua, eventually becoming a leading scholar whose interpretive methods shaped the Mishnah. His support for the Bar Kochba revolt and his martyrdom under Roman persecution in 135 CE further cemented his legacy as a leader for all Jews, proving that Torah leadership was open to all, regardless of wealth, lineage, or birthplace (Sanhedrin 93b, Berakhot 61b).

The Torah survives because throughout the diaspora and the remaining Jews of Israel, ordinary people preserve it and renew it. A poor man in a distant diaspora country can join a minyan, can observe a Pesach seder, ensuring the Torah’s enduring vitality.

And today? Jews are under threat—delegitimization throughout the world, and now physical threat in the diaspora, not only in Israel. Elijah the Prophet has not appeared to presage the imminent return of the Mashiach (Malachi 3:23-24). Many in the next generation are succumbing to the pressure to “pass,” to be “Jew buts”—of Jewish heritage, of Jewish extraction, Jewish but don’t support Israel.

We need leaders, but more than that, we need grassroots Jewish people—people without titles and positions—to continue to exist. Israel’s leadership today is sometimes reckless and cynical; just look at how, before the Gaza war, the government of Israel ginned up a societal schism over “judicial reform” rather than seeking a reasonable consensus.

Yet among our numbers there are ordinary people who are extraordinary.

Within Israel, men in their thirties and beyond, with jobs, wives, families, continue to sign up for reserve duty at ultimate risk.

In the Diaspora, there are extraordinary ordinary people, like Jews on campus who stand up for their faith, their people, and their homeland in the face of vicious pressures to conform.

If you want to continue to be Jewish, it helps to believe in something.

You can still draw inspiration from the best of His people.  Among them, the many ordinary children of Israel who are, in this our time, in their courage and commitment, transcendent.