Every year, HaRav Ginsburgh teaches from one of the Chasidic masters. In 5784, it was the Ahavat Shalom, the collected teachings of Rebbe Menachem Mendel Hager, the founder of the Kosov dynasty.
In this short piece, we see how much can be learnt from a seemingly insignificant change in word order in our parashah, Naso. It was written based on the Rav’s personal notes.
These ideas first appeared in Hebrew in the Naso 5784 issue of Nifla’ot.
Parashat Naso begins with God instructing Moses to take a census of the Gershon family of the Levites as part of the general census of the Jewish people and the Tribe of Levi that the Book of Numbers begins with. For the entire people, God commanded that the census identify each individual, “according to their family, according to their ancestral house”[1] (לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָם לְבֵית אֲבֹתָם). But the census of the Levites was taken separately, and God used the opposite formulation, “according to their ancestral house, according to their family”[2] (לְבֵית אֲבֹתָם לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָם).
When taking the census of the Levites, Moses was then commanded to treat the descendants of each of Levi’s three children—Kehat, Gershon, and Merari—separately. Perhaps surprisingly, the families of Kehat and Merari, the Torah uses the formulation, “according to their family, according to their ancestral house,” but regarding the families of Gershon (with which parashat Naso begins), it uses the formulation, “according to their ancestral house, according to their families.”
The Ahavat Shalom of Kosov explains the difference between the two formulations as follows:
There are those who are close in a physical sense, and there are those who are close through the root of their souls and in a spiritual sense, and these are closer than those who are only physically close, as is known from books and authors….
This is how one should understand the verse, “do not ignore your own flesh,” that is, even if he is only a kinsman of the flesh, meaning he is close only in a physical sense, even so, you must not ignore him.
Likewise, there are those individuals who are close in both respects—in the spiritual and in the physical—where the spiritual is primary and the physical is secondary; and there are those individuals for whom it is the reverse. This is the intended meaning behind the fact that sometimes Scripture writes “according to their families, according to their ancestral houses,” and sometimes in the reverse order. “According to their families” alludes to physical closeness, while “according to their ancestral houses” refers to spiritual closeness.
Familial Brotherhood versus Spiritual Neighbors
Thus, there are two types of closeness between people. Physical closeness stemming from being family relations, requires that we not ignore one another, following the verse, “You shall not ignore your own flesh.” But spiritual brotherhood stems from the soul root and is more important. It is upon spiritual brotherhood that love and similar mentality depend.
The Ahavat Shalom references a comment made by the holy Or HaChaim on this topic. There he states that there are brothers whose mentality is different, but who share a deep bond and love with other people to whom they are not related by family. The reason he states is that people love those who are spiritually close to them more than those who are physically related. The Or HaChaim writes that the Torah describes family relations with the adjective “brotherly” (אַחְוָה) and spiritual closeness with the adjective “near.”
The No’am Elimelech, whom the Ahavat Shalom also references, writes that spiritual closeness is described using the noun “neighbor,” because souls that are close are referred to as neighbors in Paradise, i.e., in the Garden of Eden where the roots of all the souls are planted. He then writes that the example of spiritual closeness is found in the Chasidic groups, which are composed of individuals who left their families to cling to a particular rebbe and his followers because being “a close neighbor”[3] (שָׁכֵן קָרוֹב) takes precedence over being “a distant brother” (אָח רָחוֹק).
Light and Vessels
To explain this issue more deeply, let us identify spiritual closeness, or “a close neighbor” (שָׁכֵן קָרוֹב) with light—the light of the souls in Paradise—and physical closeness, which is described in the verse from Proverbs as “a distant brother” (אָח רָחוֹק) with vessels, since the body is the vessel for the soul. True peace must be made between the light of the soul and the body, which in our context means that on the one hand, close family members should look favorably at a son who has left home to join a rebbe and his followers who are from his own soul root. Likewise, the son who has left must retain good relations with his family (and thank them for raising him).
In this way, physical closeness becomes a vessel for the spiritual closeness, and when the son sits at a farbrengen with the other chasidim to whom he has devoted himself, when he says “LeChaim,” the benefit will reach his family too.
This can be illustrated numerically with the two central words of the verse, “Better a close neighbor than a brother who is distant,”[4] which are “neighbor” (שָׁכֵן) and “than a brother” (מֵאָח). When we multiply them using “particular multiplication” (the equivalent of a “dot product” in mathematics), the products are shin (ש) times mem (מ), 12000, and alef (א) times kaf (כ), 20, and chet (ח) times nun (ן), 400, and their total is 12420, which is also the product of “light” (אוֹר) and “vessel” (כְּלִי)!
We should add that oftentimes, individuals experience both types of closeness in their lives: both with their family and with their friends. The important thing is that the two types of closeness—physical and spiritual, family and spiritual circle—inter-include.
The Sons of Levi
Returning to the Levites, as noted, they are unique in that they are counted using both formulations.
For the rest of the Tribes, physical closeness is greater, but by the Levites, appropriately, spiritual closeness precedes physical closeness. One example of this is after the Sin of the Golden Calf, when Moses commanded the Levites, “Each of you, gird your sword on your loins, go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay your sibling, and your neighbor, and your kin.”[5] At first the sacramental service of God was entrusted to the firstborns who represent the superiority of physical closeness. But as a result of the Sin of the Golden Calf, the sacramental service was taken from the firstborns and given to the Levites who considered spiritual closeness paramount. Among the Levites, it was the descendants of Gershon, Levi’s firstborn son, who expressed this principle the strongest. Indeed, the Alter Rebbe of Chabad suggests that Gershon was so named, “for he banishes that which is external.”[6]
[1] . Numbers 1:2.
[2] . Ibid. 3:16.
[3] . Proverbs 27:10.
[4]. Ibid.
[5]. Exodus 32:27.
[6]. Likkutei Torah Naso 23b.
