In Parasha ‘Beha’alotecha’ we read about an instruction given to Moses to make trumpets to be used by the temple and the people. In the temple, the trumpets were used to blow the sacrifices during the holidays and festivals, and the people were used by the trumpets during the journey in the desert, when the people were called to the tabernacle to hear the words of Moses, or when the Israelites went on a journey from one camp to another. And also for the future – when the people will be in their country and will go to war against an enemy. In all these cases there was a mitzvah to blow the trumpets.
This mitzvah seems at first glance quite marginal. Why is it necessary to give instruction on how to concentrate the people or how to go to war? What is the special thing about the
trumpets that the Jewish people were commanded to use in these cases?
The book ‘ Chinuch-Education’ is a book that was compiled in Spain in the 13th century by an unknown author. In this book, all the mitzvot in the Torah are detailed with their explanations, and it became one of the basic books of the Jewish bookcase from the Middle Ages.
“Man has a tendency to scatter. We do important things, but we don’t pay attention to them. It can be when we are doing some mitzvah – a prayer or some other mitzvah – and we find ourselves moving our lips as our thoughts wander to other realms. It can also be when we relate to others but are not focused on them. A good example of this would be a parent who is taking care of his child while at the same time messing around with the cell phone.
The purpose of blowing the trumpets was to take the person out of the wanderings of his thoughts and bring him back to the ground of reality. make him concentrate on his spiritual tasks.
When we do an action without focusing on it, we lose doubly. Usually, the act we do will be done imperfectly. If it is a prayer, we will find ourselves accidentally skipping parts of it when we are not focused on it, and if in the second example we gave – taking care of a child – the child feels well if the parent is interested in him or in other things. But there is another loss in this: the right actions we take build our personality. Every mitzvah, every good deed, every attitude towards others – shapes us as a more complete personality. When we do an act out of a scattered thought, the power of the act has expired and is not meaningful to us.
When we look at small children, we can see them playing with high concentration. It’s no wonder. After all, children are not worried about tomorrow or what happened yesterday, they don’t have a mortgage to pay or a complex relationship with the boss at work, and as writer Fulton Oursler wrote: “Thoughts are constantly moving between regretting yesterday and fearing tomorrow.” But this is the challenge we face as adults – to be able to focus on the right act, with intention and concentration, and thus do it in the best way and get the most benefit from it
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Refael Cohen