Rabbi Breit's Blog

I’ve spent this week as head of bikes at Ramah Darom, watching kids send it down big hills (sadly, for them, also bike up them), through the woods, and round the lake. It’s a thrill having a hands-on job at camp. I don’t need to tell them to pay attention. Their eyes are wide and alert as their wheels grip the road. I don’t need to remind them how beautiful it is to be here. They feel the breeze and the sun in every lap round camp. It’s almost effortless to build community. They help each other (pumping tires, carrying each others’ water bottles, encouraging the stragglers up hills — one kid even lent another his new shoes!) because that’s the only way to get where we’re going, which, incidentally, is where we started because every ride is a loop.

This week’s parsha, beha’alotecha, when you lift up, has a verse that absolutely delights me. In the process of consecrating the Temple and priests, God tells Aaron to bring the Levites in front of the entire assembled community of Israel and that all these Israelites should place their hands on the Levites, give them smicha, the same way a priest would put his hand on an offering to consecrate it or in a transfer of authority. In this way all the people physically present the Levites as their offering.

Then the Torah says “והניף אהרן את–הלוים תנופה לפני ה” “and Aaron should wave the Levites before God”. Like we wave the lulav and the etrog in the air for Sukkot, a wave offering is a kind of offering to God where the priest physically lifts the offering in the air and, as part of the ritual, moves it back and forth.

There’s no consensus on what this means for the Levites. Some rabbis think Aaron was super strong and was able to pick up and wave in the air each Levite, one by one, in one day (a testament to his excellence!). Some say it’s metaphorical. I like the idea that the Levites crowd surfed through the Israelites, who bounced them in the air as a tnufah, wave offering, under Aaron’s supervision.

Clearly I am delighted by the visual I get from that. And I’m also inspired by a truth the Torah reminds us in that verse that we might forget and that's so clear at camp. Some of the biggest, scariest, most holy work demands putting your body into it — making the first step, showing up, doing work that’s hands on. We’re so often stuck in our heads, ideating anxiously: maybe wishing we were braver or smarter or had more friends or were safer or holier or felt more belonging. May this weeks Torah be a reminder to you that sometimes the biggest transformations come what seem like small actions — showing up for someone, using your hands to lift them up, fixing their bike, or giving them a high five at the top of the hill. Shabbat shalom!