Running Away from Har Sinai Like Immature Schoolchildren
After spending close to a year at Har Sinai after the giving of the Torah, the Jewish people finally left in Parshas Beha’aloscha. The Ramban writes that they departed gleefully, like a child running away from school, which is difficult to understand. The Torah clearly states (9:17-18) that all their travels in the wilderness were directed by Hashem. They remained encamped at Har Sinai until the Ananei HaKavod (Clouds of Glory) signalled that it was time to move on. If so, how can they be criticized for leaving Har Sinai when they were merely following Hashem’s guidance?
Rav Isaac Sher writes that the Jews in that generation were righteous and on an extremely high spiritual level. Most of the sins the Torah tells us about them were not sins of action but the intentions of their hearts. It is unfathomable that the same people who saw the Shechinah (Divine Presence) when they crossed the Yam Suf, received the Torah, and built the Mishkan should suddenly run away like immature schoolchildren. Rather, Rav Sher explains that although they did not physically run away from the mountain, they also did not exhibit any feelings of sadness over their parting. Even if they were eager to reach Eretz Yisroel, they still should have displayed a sense of reluctance that the time had arrived to leave this momentous location.
As a contemporary application of this concept, Rav Mordechai Druk notes that when we discover that there is a bris mila or chosson in our morning minyan and Tachanun will therefore not be said, many people feel a certain childish sense of joy just like a giddy student running home after the last bell, and even more so if it is a Monday or Thursday when the longer Tachanun would have been said. Although we are merely following the ruling of the Shulchan Aruch that Tachanun be skipped in this situation, we should still feel a sense of loss that we are missing an opportunity to say a tefillah that protects us from calamity and misfortune.
Rav Yisroel Reisman cites the commentary of Rav Shimon Schwab on Sefer Yeshaya (43), where he laments the widespread practice of quickly rattling off the lengthy Tachanun of Monday and Thursday and people looking forward to the calendar days on which it is omitted. Instead, we should say it carefully and with extra kavonah [focus], cognizant that this powerful tefillah has helped sustain us throughout our lengthy exile. He adds that rushing through Tachanun without the appropriate concentration is an example of what Chazal criticize (Berachos 6b) as exalted mitzvos and prayers that people do not appreciate and treat with contempt – like a blithe schoolchild yearning to be free. (R’ Ozer Alport)
