A very interesting event followed the suppression of the Korach rebellion. Hashem gave Moshe the following commandment: “Speak to the Children of Israel and take from them one staff for each father’s house, from all their leaders according to their fathers’ house, twelve staffs; each man’s name shall you inscribe on his staff. And the name of Aharon shall you inscribe on the staff of Levi, for there shall be one staff for the head of their fathers’ house. You shall lay them in the Tent of Meeting before the Testimony, where I meet with you. It shall be that the man whom I shall choose – his staff will blossom; thus I shall cause to subside from upon Me the complaints of the Children of Israel, which they complain against you.” [Bamidbar 17:17-20]
Moshe did as he was instructed. Every tribal leader gave a staff, including Aaron who gave his staff to represent the Tribe of Kohen-Levi. Moshe placed the 12 staffs in the Ohel Moed, before the Aron [Ark], as he was commanded.
By the next morning, the staff of Aharon, representing the Tribe of Levi, had indeed blossomed: “...It brought forth a blossom, sprouted a bud and almonds ripened.” [Bamidbar 17:23]
On a fruit bearing tree, first a little flower blossoms, then there is a little bud and then the fruit grows from that bud. This is what happened with Aharon’s staff. Aharon was the “winner”, so to speak, in the “Contest of Staffs”.
From reading the pasukim [verses] superficially, you would assume that all three things – the blossom, the bud, and the almonds – occurred within the Ohel Moed. However, the Rashba”m, in his Torah commentary, interprets differently. The Rashba”m says that the next morning, when Moshe removed the staffs from the Ohel Moed, the only thing unique about Aharon’s staff was that it contained flower blossoms. (“And it was on the morrow and Moshe came into the Tent of the Testimony and behold Aharon’s staff from the House of Levi gave forth a flower...” [Bamidbar 17:23])
According to the Rashbam, the blossoming of the bud and the appearance of the almonds happened in public “before the eyes of all of Israel” after Moshe removed it from the Ohel Moed. The Rashba”m argues that if all three stages occurred at once in the Ohel Moed, out of sight of the people, then no one would have been aware of the stages of flowering and of blossoming. They would have only seen the final product -– the almonds –- and there would be no point for the Torah to mention the first two stages.
The Rosh Yeshiva of Gateshead asks – according to the Rashbam – why was it necessity to put the staff of Aharon in the Ohel Moed in the first place? Leave all the staffs out in the open, visible to everyone, and let them all watch the whole process transpire: The flower, the budding, and finally the almonds. The Gateshead Rosh Yeshiva answers that it is important for any living thing to come from the best possible source. In spirituality, the holier an item is in its original genesis, the holier the subsequent item will be.
The reason the original flower had to bloom in the Ohel Moed is that a flower that begins to grow “Lifnei Hashem” [before G-d] has an impact on all the subsequent fruit. If the environment in which it got its start is “Lifnei Hashem” then all subsequent growth will be a different type of growth.
This is a profound lesson. It is a lesson in terms of having children. It is a lesson in terms of raising children. It is a lesson in terms of making sure the foundation and the original structure of a child’s education is set up under the best of all possible circumstances. To buttress his point, he cites a Talmudic passage in Tractate Gittin. The Gemara discusses a tree in which the roots grow in Eretz Yisrael and the branches are in Chutz L’Aretz [outside of the Land of Israel]. The fruit of the tree are actually over the border but the original roots grow in Israel. The Gemara wants to know whether the status of the fruit is that of “fruits of the Land of Israel” or “fruits from outside the Land of Israel.” The ruling is that as long as the roots were planted in holy soil, the fruits -– wherever they grow – are “holy,” requiring separation of Terumos and Ma’asros [Gifts to the Kohen and Levi]. When the roots are holy, the fruit is holy.
We learn from this Gemara that beginnings are crucial in determining spiritual identity. This is why it was so crucial that the original budding of the flower — which was symbolic of the seed of Aharon for all future generations — took place within the confines of the Ohel Moed, “Lifnei Hashem”. This makes people into different people and fruit into different fruit, because they blossomed initially in the Ohel Moed, before the L-rd.
