In both last weeks and this week’s Parshah there is a similar but subtly different command – both of which have to do with the counting of time. Last week we read, “you shall count for yourselves seven weeks….until the day after the seventh week you shall count, fifty days”. This is the Mitzvah of counting the Omer from the second day of Pesach until Shavuos – a daily counting. In this week we read, “you shall count for yourself seven cycles of Shmittah years, seven years seven times…. forty nine years… you shall sanctify the fiftieth year and proclaim freedom…” This refers to the counting of successive Shmittah years until after seven cycles you got to a Jubilee year.
The late Lord Jacobovitz used to regularly make the following powerful observation – one that is easily lost in the translation. These two acts of counting are both introduced with the phrase, “and you shall count for yourselves”. However two different expressions are used in the Hebrew. With the Omer count it says “you plural shall count for yourselves”, yet the counting of years is “you singular shall count for yourself”. The Talmud explains this difference: the counting is a duty of each individual, hence the use of the plural. But in the case of the Jubilee year counting, it is the responsibility of the Beis Din – it is the duty of the Jewish people as a whole, performed centrally on their behalf by the Beis Din. Hence the singular.
Said Lord Jacobovitz: Implicit here is an important principle of leadership. As individuals we count the days and weeks, but as leaders we must count the years. As private persons we can think about tomorrow, but in our role as leaders we must think long-term, focusing our eyes on the far horizon. Famously, when asked in the 1970s what he thought about the French Revolution in 1789, Chinese leader Zhou Enlai replied: “Too soon to say.”
The Talmud tells us, “Who is wide? One who foresees the consequences” This is the true stamp of our leaders – their ability to be long sighted. The wisest of all men, King Shlomo expressed this same sentiment in Ecclesiastes, “the wise person has his eyes in his head whereas the fool walks in darkness”. Rashi translates “in his head” as referring to “the beginning”. The wise man contemplates the end results before he begins them.
The Talmud tells us that when the Manna came down from heaven it brought with it precious stones and diamonds. The princes of each tribe took those precious stones and put them away. The masses, however, collected only the manna, ignoring the stones. Why? One would think that the masses, the simple Jews, would be the first ones to dig in and fill up their sacks with diamonds.
Rabbi Yissachar Frand, quotes an interesting observation from Rabbi Michel Twerski of Milwaukee: The economic conditions that prevailed in the wilderness were unique. No one was in need of funds. The people had everything. It was probably the only time in our history that money did not play a critical role in our lives; all of the physical needs of the people were met. They received water to their heart’s content, compliments of the Well of Miriam and the Manna came to them daily from Heaven. Their clothing did not wear out, so there was no reason to purchase new garments. “Styles” probably did not exist.
When a society has no physical needs, then what use are precious stones? There is no need to buy, so why would one need money? Thus, when the people noticed the precious stones, they lacked interest in them. Since they had no purpose for them, why should they bother? The precious stones were deemed worthless by most of the nation. Not by the our leaders! The great people among them were well aware that one day an occasion would occur in which there would be a mandate for a Tabernacle and the priestly garments, which would require these precious stones. The leaders had foresight. They saw beyond the “here” and the “now.” They saw the big picture. In that scene, precious stones were to become a necessity.
We are being taught what distinguishes the great Jew from his simple counterpart. Leadership has a perspective unlike that of common people. The ordinary Jew, sees with just his eyes. But the leader has his eyes looking into the distance on the long-term investments even at the beginning – long before the actual need has arisen.
Jewish history is replete with just such long-term thinking. When Moshe, on the eve of the exodus, focused the attention of the Jews on how they would tell the story to their children in the years to come, he was taking the first step to making education central to Judaism thereby ensuring continuity. Years later at the time of the destruction of the first temple, when Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai said to Vespasian, the Roman general leading the siege against Jerusalem, “Spare me Yavneh and its sages,” he was saving the Jewish future by ensuring that an ongoing source of Torah based spiritual and intellectual leadership would remain. This is what it means to have the foresight of a leader.
The Talmud tells of Choni who met a man planting a carob tree. He questioned the man as to how long this tree would take until it bore fruit. The man replied it took seventy years, whereupon Choni questioned why he bothered – he surely didn’t look like he was going to be around in another seventy years! The man replied, “When I came into this world I found it containing fully grown fruit bearing carob trees. Just as my ancestors planted trees for me so too I plant for my children”. This is the longsighted – counting of years that we all as leaders must have. How will what I do affect my children and grandchildren?
Good Shabbos,
Yaakov