In this week’s Torah portion Beha’alotcha, there are two verses (Vayihi Binsoah Ha’aron) which are bracketed by an upside down letter nun before and after: “When the Ark was to set out, Moses would say: “Advance, O God, May Your enemies be scattered, And may Your foes flee before You!” And when it (the ark) halted, he would say: “Return, O God, You who are Israel’s myriads of thousands!”
Rashi comments: “The Torah placed a sign before and after this paragraph to inform us this is not its true place. Why then is it written right here in the Torah? In order to create a separation between the bad events before and after it.”
The bad event which follows these verses is clear: “The people complained…and then the Israelites wept and said, “If only we had meat to eat. We remember the fish that we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic…But now there is nothing at all, but this manna…” But what is so bad about the verses preceding it which read: “They marched from the mountain of God a distance of three days. The Ark of the Covenant traveled in front of them on that three days’ journey to seek out a resting place for them. And God’s cloud kept above them by day, as they moved on from camp.”
Was leaving the mountain so bad? Weren’t they supposed to in order to go to Israel? Nachmanides explains: “The bad thing which is contained in these verses of leaving the mountain is as the Medrash states: That the Jewish people left Mount Sinai with glee like a child who runs out of school when it ends. They ran saying, “God might give us more commandments (if we don’t run away now).”
Thus the two verses about the ark moving which are bracketed by the nuns, interrupt between running away from Mount Sinai where they received the Torah from God, and the Jewish people complaining in the desert for meat.
Why must the verses of the ark appear between these two episodes? Does the retreat from Sinai somehow result in their illegitimate desire and rejection of the manna? What does this have to do with the ark of the covenant?
We often think that freedom means being without rules, but if our freedom is only escaping from something and not a freedom towards some purpose then it will never be true freedom It will quickly become another type of bondage, for, the human does not really seek freedom, but purpose. Real freedom is embracing the ability to choose that which will enlarge us and make our lives more meaningful.
As Victor Frankl wrote:
“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal…Moreover, there are various masks and guises under which the existential vacuum appears. Sometimes the frustrated will to meaning is vicariously compensated for by a will to power, including the most primitive form of the will to power, the will to money. In other cases, the place of frustrated will to meaning is taken by the will to pleasure. “
The Jews must leave Sinai, but they must also take Sinai and Torah with them-these are the two sentences of vayihi binsoah ha’aron, If they just wish to escape Sinai without the ark this will result in the bad event which follows, the complaining for physical desire and a lack of appreciation for what they do have- the manna- and thus, as Frankel said, “The place of frustrated will to meaning is taken by the will to pleasure.”