06 Jun PARSHAS BEHAALOSCHA AHARON’S GREATNESS: FORTY YEARS OF CONSISTENCY:

Aharon’s Greatness:
Forty Years of
Consistency
There is a very famous
comment of Rashi on
the pasuk [verse] in this
week’s Parsha “And Aharon did
so.” [Bamidbar 8:3] Rashi states: “This
teaches that he did not deviate” (melamed
shelo shinah). These few words of Rashi
have been the springboard for countless
homiletic expositions by commentaries and
expounders of Chumash throughout the ages.
The obvious question is: What novelty is
there in telling us that Aharon did exactly as
he was commanded by G-d, in terms of the
practice of lighting the Menorah? Of course
Aharon did what G-d told him to do!
Rav Elya Meir Bloch explains that the
novelty of Aharon not changing is simply
that he did the same thing daily for almost
forty years.
Let us think to ourselves – what mitzvah have
we done day in day out for the last forty
years? There are not many items that fall into
this category. True, some of us can say that
we have put on Tefillin every day

(except Shabbos and Yom Tov) for the last
forty years. But there are not many things
that a person can say he has done consistently
for such a long period of time. How many
people can say “I have never missed a minyan
in the last 40 years?” or even “I have never
missed the zman [proper time for] Krias
Shma once in the last 40 years?” It is not so
simple.
The praise of Aharon is that he did the same
thing for 40 years without fail. That is
greatness!
Upside Down Nuns Separate Between
Two Sections of Punishment
There is another very famous passage
in Parshas BeHa’aloscha: the two verses
which begin with the words “And it was
when the Ark traveled, Moshe stated…” and
“And when it came to rest he would
say…” [Bamidbar 10:35-36].
The Talmud records the tradition that these
two pasukim are set off by a pair of inverted
letter Nuns. Rashi quotes
the Gemara [Shabbos 116] that the purpose
of these upside down Nuns is to separate
between one section of punishment and
another.

Which are the sections of punishment
(pur-oniyos)? According to some
Rishonim, the first section of
punishment is the fact that “They
traveled from the Mountain
of Hashem a three day
journey.” [Bamidbar 10:33]
The Talmud describes their departure
from Mt. Sinai “as a child running
away from the school house.” The
Ramban adds that they were afraid that
if they stayed at Har Sinai any longer,
the Almighty would pile upon them
additional mitzvos.
The second section of punishment is that of
the ‘misoninim’ [complainers]. Rashi
explains that their complaint centered around
the fact that they had to travel so far during
the three days of travel.
The Ramban notes that the reason for the
separation of the sections of punishment by
the pasukim regarding the travel of the Ark
was so that there would not be three
consecutive sections of punishment that
would establish a ‘Chazakah’ [a precedent
setting chain of events] for punishment.
What is the ‘third’ section that the Ramban
is referring to? It is the murmuring of
the Ayrev Rav [mixed multitude] that
prompted the Children of Israel to
desire and complain about the lack of
meat.
But according to this Ramban, we
would have expected the pause of the
upside-down Nuns to come between
the second and third incidents. If that
were the case, the pause would
effectively stop the ‘Chazakah’ from
taking effect. In fact, however, the
separation comes between the first two
incidents, when there was not yet an
imminent chazakah.
What does the Ramban mean?
I saw a very interesting insight from
Rabbi Zev Leff. The Almighty is
particularly annoyed by inconsistency,
i.e. hypocrisy. Hashem can deal less
harshly with a person who may be bad,
but who is at least consistent in his evil
ways. But a person who demonstrates
hypocrisy and inconsistency really
riles the Almighty.
This is reminiscent of
the Medrash regarding Yosef’s first
question to his brothers after revealing
himself to them: “Is my father still
alive?” [Bereishis 45:3]
The Medrash comments: “Woe to us
from the Day of Judgment. Woe to us
from the day of humiliation. The Tribes
had no answer to Yosef’s chastisement.”
What was the chastisement? It was
their hypocrisy. Their whole
interchange with Yosef had been that

they could not bring down Binyamin, because
if they separated him from his father, their
poor old father would die. Yosef challenges
them, “If you are so worried about your poor
father, why weren’t you worried about him
twenty some years ago, when you separated
him from his favorite son?”
Return to the sections of punishment here in
our Parsha, what was the people’s second
complaint? “We are traveling too fast.” The
significance of that complaint cannot be
appreciated without considering the next
section. They were not concerned about
traveling so fast when they fled Mt. Sinai –
like a child running away from the
schoolhouse. When they were worried about
receiving more mitzvos, they knew how to
travel very quickly for a great distance. No
one said a peep about “too fast” in that
situation. Suddenly, a few days later, they are
worried that they are going “too fast.” This is
inconsistent. It is hypocritical. When they
were acting for THEMSELVES, it is not “too
fast,” but when it is for G-D, it is “too fast.”
That is why the pause is between the first
and second punishments. The glaring
inconsistency in their deeds is manifest in the
sharp contrast between these two sections. In
order to dull the contrast, so to speak, we
needed a pause between these two sections.
We must always bear in mind the hypocrisy
of glaring inconsistencies in our deeds. We
are inconsistent when we complain that we
don’t have enough money for this tzedaka or
for that religious need and then we go spend
great sums on other things that are perhaps
not so important.
The Almighty can understand that a person
may not have money. The Torah excuses one
facing circumstances beyond his control
[Ownes Rachmana patrei]. However, when
we have money for ‘this’ but not for ‘that,’
the Almighty does not deal well with that, so
to speak.
The same applies when a person says that he
has no time to learn or to do chessed, but he
has time for other crazy endeavors. Not
having time is a reasonable excuse, but when
one really does have time for much less
important matters, we are not dealing with
lack of time but with hypocrisy.