Yaakov Hibbert Presents… Perks of the Job

This week’s Parshah sees the Levites assuming their new status as the substitutes for the firstborn in serving Hashem and transporting the Tabernacle. The ritual which inducted them into their new jobs is introduced with Moshe summoning them to their charge. Hand in hand with their job at the Tabernacle and later on in the Temple, the tribe of Levi was summoned to be the Rabbonim and teachers of the nation, as Moshe says in his final words to the tribe of Levi, “They shall teach Your ordinances to Yaakov and Your Torah to Yisroel; they shall place incenses before your presence, and burnt offerings on Your Altar”.

We read how Moshe is instructed to ‘take’ the Levites, which the Medresh explains to mean, “entice them with words”. Explains Rashi; “take them with words by saying ‘you are fortunate in that you will be privileged to be ’shamoshim’ – attendants to Hashem”. A ’Shamesh’ is a worker, a ‘shlack’, a caretaker.

Rav Gifter asked; surely you may have thought that the way to convince the Levites to step up to their job was to tell about the perks of the job, the benefits; free tithes from the entire nation, the honour they will receive – but the work load? Why does Moshe use that as the selling point to entice them into their new job?

Suggested Rav Gifter that we are being taught that it is absolutely forbidden to package the Torah [or any Mitzvah] as something that it is not. To define the job as teaching Torah or the work in the Tabernacle as the by-product of the job then you have undermined the essence of what the job is. The Mitzvah at hand is not the reward – that may be a helpful impetus but it is not what the Mitzvah is.

Granted the Talmud tells us that “a person should always be involved in Torah and Mitzvahs even though he has an ulterior motive, because after performing it for ulterior reasons, one is liable to begin doing it for the sake of the Mitzvah itself”. But one has to be wary of defining the Torah as the perk.

Rav Gifter brought an example of an organisation which in order to help pull people through its doors advertised Torah as Mysticism. This he claimed was to distort what the Torah is; to misrepresent its essence.

Ulterior motives are great as stepping stones to get us started but the ultimate goal has got to be to act without the incentive. A young boy may be tempted to learn Torah with the ancient custom of licking honey off the ‘Aleph Bais’ letters, but hopefully a yeshiva student doesn’t learn [only] because he will make a barbeque when he completes the tractate! To be constantly interested and obsessed with what I can get out of Judaism is a particular dangerous ideology.

The Chasam Sofer [1762-1839] beautifully suggests that the concept that we should strive to keep our Judaism without the ulterior motives is at the root of the Blessing we say at every Bris and Pidyon Haben. We say, “Just as he has entered into the Bris so too he should enter in Torah, Marriage and good deeds”. Just as the Bris which is painful and the Pidyon Haben which costs money where performed with no ulterior motive other than to perform the Mitzvah of Hashem, so too the child is blessed that his whole life should be full of serving G-d without the focus on the incentives.

Let’s finish with a quote from Irving Bunim in Ethics from Sinai on learning Torah ‘lishmah’ – for its own sake: “The word ‘lishmah’ literally means ‘to its name’. Stemming from the word horah (instruct), the Torah’s name signifies ‘teaching’. Study Torah that it may teach you. Open your heart and mind to its inspiration. Let it form the pattern of your life”.

Good Shabbos,

Yaakov