Good Shabbos!  Are we any smarter than our grandparents were?  Are we any more intelligent than our great grandparents were? Or, might it be, that with all the knowledge and the advances we have made in the past 50 or 100 years, we are in danger of being the smartest, and at the same time perhaps the dumbest, people who ever lived?  Allow me to explain: 

As a student in yeshiva, we were taught to study a passage with its commentary, and try to understand the issue from all sides.  Nowadays, I see too many people just looking for the halacha and not interested in the how and the why.  I think part of the problem lies in the desire to “just get to the answer”, without worrying about the steps necessary to get there. 

First it was the use of calculators in school.  When I was a boy we were not permitted to use calculators to do schoolwork.  We had to work on each problem ourselves and show the work we did to get to that right answer.   Sometimes, even if the answer was not quite right, we got partial credit for doing the steps correctly.

Now children have cell phones.  As early as junior high, but certainly in high school, most every child has their own cell phone.  They may have 100 people’s contact information in their phone but ask them to tell you someone’s phone number and they will usually say they don’t know it.  “I can press a button and get it” they will say, but they seem to be training themselves not to have to remember anything. 

Recently, I attended a workshop on public speaking given by someone from Toastmasters International.  He suggested that a sermon should be no more than 7 - 8 minutes.  He said that people watch 30 minute television shows with constant commercials and have been trained to lose concentration after that time.  

Getting back to the yeshiva, we were taught to read and study a lesson or essay and to glean data from all that it said. But more and more, I find people just looking for the bottom line instead of the study which explains that final outcome. No one wants to look anything up in an encyclopedia anymore, instead they just “google” it.  People tell me they don’t have the patience to even read a book anymore.  They like condensed articles which don’t require that they focus as much attention and brainpower.  Even in yeshivos, I have seen boys save time by skimming through, for example, an English Artscroll Talmud, rather than looking it up and figuring out the Hebrew.  Sure we want the conclusion, but the steps we take to reach that conclusion are also vitally important.  

I see this lesson most clearly from an episode recounted in this week’s portion.   Korach led a rebellion against Moshe and the choice of Aaron as the high priest.  G-d commands Moshe to create a test by which he could prove that is was G-d’s will and G-d’s choice that Aaron serve in that capacity.    

Moshe was told to take a staff from each tribe, upon which the name of the leader of the tribe was to be inscribed. The tribe of Levi was to have a staff as well, inscribed with Aaron’s name.  The staffs were to be placed inside the Tabernacle, and then:  “It shall be that the man whom I shall choose, his staff will blossom.” (17:16-20)

Moshe did exactly as he was commanded.  On the next day, when he entered the Tabernacle, he found that, “the staff of Aaron had blossomed. It brought forth a blossom, sprouted a bud, and had grown ripened almonds.” (17:23) Moshe took the staffs and showed them to the nation, thus proving, once and for all, that the choice of Aaron as high priest was made by G-d and not by him.   

It is a great lesson and I am sure that all the people must have been awed by this miracle. But I have one question.  Normally, after a plant buds and flowers, the flower falls away and the fruit grows to maturity.   If Aaron’s staff had already produced ripened almonds, how did the Jews know it had budded and flowered?

 The Talmud discusses this and explains that in order for the people of Israel to realize that Aaron’s staff had budded and flowered, the flowers remained on the staff even after it the almonds fully ripened. (Yuma 52b)  The Moshav Zekeinim adds that although the Gemara doesn’t mention it, some of the buds remained on the staff as well.

But this makes the question even stronger.   We have discussed in the past that G-d does not perform miracles for no reason.   And, even when He does perform a miracle, He only does that which is necessary and no more. The question remains:  Why would G-d break the natural order of things in order for the Jews to see that the staff had buds and flowers as well as fruit?

Rabbi Moshe Feinstein explained that Hashem wanted us to realize that there is value not only in the fruit, but also in the flowers and buds which led to it. The fruit, he explains, is the final product. The buds and flowers represent the effort that led to that final outcome.   Too often people judge only by what we accomplish. Did you win or lose?  Did you make the sale?  Do you fill the seats?  Did you show a profit?

The portion is teaching us that the steps along the way must also be recognized as equally worthy and important. It is not just if we win or lose - indeed, it is how we choose to  live our lives that is equally significant. And that leads me to a second lesson from this same episode. 

To me, the fact that G-d caused buds, flowers and fruits to all appear simultaneously on the staff of Aaron is quite meaningful.  Fruit represents the future but the future is only assured when we do not forget the past which led to this cross-roads. I have spoken quite a bit lately about the communal responsibility of providing a Jewish Education for our children. But it must be an education with the timeless teachings of those who came before us.  We must always want the best for the future, but our portion reminds us that the future must be faithful to the past which enabled us to reach to where we are today.  

The budding of Aaron’s staff reminds us of the fallacy of looking forward without cherishing the past.  Korach said “Let anyone be the High Priest, for we all saw Divine Revelation together”.  But G-d chose Aaron because he had diligently worked on the steps necessary to now be worthy of this reward and Divine appointment as High Priest.

May we all go forward to a wonderful future, earned by the step by step process of being faithful to our past while living our lives with faith and devotion, and let us say, Amain.