36 | JUNE 1 • 2023
T
he parshah of Naso
seems, on the face of
it, to be a heteroge-
neous collection of utterly
unrelated items. First there
is the account
of the Levitical
families of
Gershon and
Merari and their
tasks in carry-
ing parts of the
Tabernacle when
the Israelites
journeyed. Then,
after two brief laws about
removing unclean people
from the camp and about
restitution, there comes the
strange ordeal of the Sotah,
the woman suspected by her
husband of adultery.
Next comes the law of the
Nazirite, the person who
voluntarily and usually for a
fixed period took on himself
special holiness restrictions,
among them the renunciation
of wine and grape products,
of haircuts, and of defilement
by contact with a dead body.
This is followed, again
seemingly with no connec-
tion, by one of the oldest
prayers in the world still in
continuous use: the priestly
blessings. Then, with inex-
plicable repetitiousness,
comes the account of the gifts
brought by the princes of
each tribe at the dedication
of the Tabernacle, a series of
long paragraphs repeated no
less than 12 times, since each
prince brought an identical
offering.
Why does the Torah spend
so much time describing an
event that could have been
stated far more briefly by
naming the princes and then
simply telling us generically
that each brought a silver
dish, a silver basin and so
on? The question that over-
shadows all others, though,
is: What is the logic of this
apparently disconnected
series?
The answer lies in the last
word of the priestly bless-
ing: shalom, peace. In a long
analysis, the 15th-century
Spanish Jewish commentator
Rabbi Isaac Arama explains
that shalom does not mean
merely the absence of war or
strife. It means completeness,
perfection, the harmonious
working of a complex system,
integrated diversity, a state
in which everything is in its
proper place, and all is at one
with the physical and ethical
laws governing the universe.
“Peace is the thread of
grace issuing from Him,
may He be exalted, stringing
together all beings, supernal,
intermediate and lower. It
underlies and sustains the
reality and unique existence
of each.” AkeIdat Yitzhak, ch.
74
Similarly, Isaac Abarbanel
writes: “That is why God is
called peace, because it is He
who binds the world together
and orders all things accord-
ing to their particular char-
acter and posture. For when
things are in their proper
order, peace will reign.”
Abarbanel, Commentary to
Avot 2:12
This is a concept of peace
heavily dependent on the
vision of Genesis 1, in which
God brings order out of tohu
va-vohu, chaos, creating a
world in which each object
and life form has its place.
Peace exists where each ele-
ment in the system is valued
as a vital part of the system as
a whole and where there is no
discord between them.
THE IMPORTANCE
OF PEACE
The various provisions of
parshat Naso are all about
bringing peace in this sense.
The most obvious case is
that of the Sotah, the woman
suspected by her husband
of adultery. What struck the
Sages most forcibly about the
ritual of the Sotah is the fact
that it involved obliterating
the name of God, something
strictly forbidden under other
circumstances. The officiating
priest recited a curse includ-
ing God’s name, wrote it on
a parchment scroll, and then
dissolved the writing into
specially prepared water. The
Sages inferred from this that
God was willing to renounce
His own honor, allowing His
name to be effaced “in order
to make peace between hus-
band and wife” by clearing
an innocent woman from
suspicion.
Though the ordeal was
eventually abolished by Rabbi
Johanan ben Zakkai after the
destruction of the Second
Temple, the law served as a
reminder as to how import-
ant domestic peace is in the
Jewish scale of values.
The passage relating to the
Levitical families of Gershon
and Merari signals that they
were given a role of honor
in transporting items of the
Tabernacle during the peo-
ple’s journeys through the
wilderness. Evidently, they
were satisfied with this honor,
Rabbi Lord
Jonathan
Sacks
SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH
The Pursuit of Peace