His offering was one silver bowl.... (Bemidbar 7:13-17)
Unique Intentions
Everyone who comes to this section of the Torah is puzzled by the fact that the Torah repeats over and over what the leader of each tribe brought, even though each brought the same exact thing. The same offering is thus stated twelve times, which is amazingly repetitious.
The Torah has not even one extra letter. But here the same words with the same ta’amei hamikra are written again and again, in full detail. There is almost no difference at all between them, aside from the name of the leader and his tribe. The Torah could have just said that the twelve leaders all brought such and such.
Early Commentators took note of this, among them Ramban and Rabbeinu Bechaye. They cited Midrashim to explain the matter.
One of the explanations brought by the Ramban is as follows:
Each of the tribes’ leaders had the idea to bring gifts for the dedication of the Altar, and each had in mind to bring the same, but Nachshon had a certain intention for bringing them, and each one of the other leaders also had in mind a certain different intention of his own.
The common explanation is that each offering was significant on its own because each leader was different from the others. Each was a unique individual and thus brought his own offering. But the Ramban is not saying that. He is not emphasizing the uniqueness of each Nasi; he is rather saying that each had a different intention, a different understanding, of the offering’s significance and meaning, and quotes Midrashim to detail this:
Nachshon had in mind to bring a קערת כסף, a silver bowl, which has the gematriya of 930. This corresponds to the years that Adam Harishon lived. And its weight was 130, corresponding to the number of his offspring.
According to a different Midrash, each tribe had a tradition handed down from Yaakov Avinu about everything that is destined to happen to it until the time of Mashiach. Thus Nachshon began by bringing an offering according to the order of kingship. The bowl and the basin corresponded to two kings destined to descend from him that will rule over the sea and the land. They are Shlomo and Melech Hamashiach. So he brought a קערה, a bowl, corresponding to the sea, which surrounds the entire world and resembles a bowl.... This was what Nachshon ben Aminadav had in mind.
Nesanel ben Tzu’ar also had the idea to bring the same gifts for the dedication, but he had a different intention. His offering was all about the Torah, since the tribe of Yissachar was praised for their wisdom in Torah. He brought a silver bowl corresponding to the Torah which is called “bread,” as it says, Go eat My bread.
Zevulun engaged in trade and exerted himself to support Yissachar, with whom he will share the reward [for Yissachar’s Torah learning]. Thus he offered a bowl, corresponding to the sea, since he dwelled by the seacoast [and engaged in maritime trade].
Along these lines, Chazal found for each tribe a special reason for the offering it brought and for the specific numbers of each item. This is why the Torah treated them all the same and detailed each tribe on its own as if the others were not mentioned.
Scheduled Uniqueness
This illustrates an important principle in avodas Hashem. There are two areas where we serve Hashem. The first is the framework, the set schedule.
For instance, a yeshivah bachur has fixed daily learning sessions. From 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM is the morning seder, and then comes lunch. From 3:30 PM to 7:00 PM is the afternoon seder and then comes supper. The night seder goes until 11:00 PM. The world in general has adopted the idea of set schedules, and this is especially true in yeshivos.
There is tremendous value in this, but it also has a drawback. The yeshivah schedule was established by Gedolei Yisrael and enjoyed great siyata d’Shamaya. However, some people claim that it caused a lot of good Jews not to grow to greatness in Torah learning because when a person lives his life according to a fixed schedule, he doesn’t have room within it to grow.
A person’s greatness is expressed mainly in his specialness, his uniqueness. The first to be “special” was Avraham Avinu:
אחד היה אברהם – “Avraham was one-of-a-kind.”
He is called אברהם העברי because the whole world was on one side and he was on the other side.
What about us?
For a person who learns in yeshivah (I am not talking about lazy people but about those who work and aspire), what is the thought that comes into his head as soon as he decides to grab hold of himself and start growing higher, to become special in some way? He decides that he will learn also in between the regular study sessions. “At night, after 11:00, when the others leave the beis midrash,” he says to himself, “I will learn until late.” Or, alternatively, “I will get up early and learn until Shacharis.” Or something else along those lines. This is his plan to be special.
I don’t want to downplay decisions like this. A person definitely needs to be special and try with all his strength to grow higher. But the idea that a person’s uniqueness is expressed only when he does exceptional things that go beyond the accepted norm is a mistake. And the proof is right here in the story of the offerings brought by the leaders of the tribes.
There were twelve leaders, twelve Nesi’im, and each one brought exactly the same thing: one silver bowl, one silver basin, one gold ladle full of incense, one bull, one ram, and so on. Everyone was the same. You could almost think that each Nasi was a robot, a nobody, just doing what everyone else does.
Surprisingly enough, in this very avodah, each one found his own identity, his own special greatness and beauty. Each Nasi was totally unique. And the Torah emphasizes how these were the most beautiful korbanos, the korbanos of dedicating the Mizbeach.
This shows that you don’t need to be different from everyone else by doing extreme things. But you do need to be special. The most beautiful avodah, the inner, true avodah, is to be special and to open one’s heart within the framework and schedule that our Rabbis of blessed memory set up for us.
A person should sit down in the beis midrash during the regular learning session and feel that he is not here because Yankel and Shmeryl are here, but because he, on his own, needs to be here. Here, he will do a different avodah, attain a different depth of understanding, and do it with a different feeling. It is as if he is the only person in this beis midrash. He is alone. He is special!
Daily Greatness
This idea is so relevant to practical life. Sometimes you see a yeshivah bachur who picks up a Sefer Tehillim at the end of the learning seder or after davening and fervently recites a few chapters of Tehillim. This is surely a good and positive thing. But the question is why does he feel a need right now to recite Tehillim?
It works like this: he finished davening or came to the end of the learning session. At this point he thinks to himself, “I need to do a little avodas Hashem, I need to give Hakadosh Baruch Hu something that comes from myself. I showed up for davening because that’s the yeshivah schedule. I had to do it. I daven because everyone davens. That’s not called my ‘avodas Hashem.’ But now that the regular seder is over, I will give something to the Ribono shel Olam.” So he starts to say Tehillim with great fervor.
According to this line of reasoning, reciting the blessing of shehakol is not avodas Hashem. And also Birkas Hamazon is not considered avodas Hashem. Neither is saying a hundred berachos a day. Only Tehillim that he recites of his own accord, those ten minutes that he dedicates from his private time – that’s avodas Hashem. And he is so happy that he had this great merit...
This is a big mistake. There is surely immense value to some extra minutes of avodas Hashem as expressed in reciting Tehillim. But this is not what builds a person. This is not the greatness of a Jew.
A person’s greatness is when he wakes up in the morning and says the same Modeh ani that his mother taught him to say when he was a young child. Every Jew says Modeh ani. But each Jew needs to find a meaning and significance in it that no other Jew in the world has. This is “your” Modeh ani.
When a person puts energy and feeling into davening the daily Shacharis, this is where greatness is. The learning and davening of the daily schedule that Hashem set up for us was not intended to be mediocre and sleepy. On the contrary, the most beautiful gadlus can come out of these regular times of davening and learning. My great father-in-law R. Mordechai Leib Mann zt”l would always say that keeping the regular yeshivah times of davening and learning is a matter of kabbalas ohl malchus Shamayim, accepting upon oneself the yoke of Heaven’s Kingship. This is what the Gedolim of previous generations had in mind when they established yeshivos as we know them today.
The holiness and greatness of a Jew is not built from grand and exceptional acts. It is built from Shabbos, from reciting Lechu neranena, from Lecha Dodi, from reciting berachos, from the everyday Shacharis. Until we get in the habit of taking proper advantage of all these regular daily avodos, all the beautiful extra things that we do won’t have the power to uplift us to true avodas Hashem.
