ויהי בנסע הארון
Adapted from Rabbi Braun’s sermon in 5767
Every Shabbat and Yom Tov morning, as we open the ark to take out the Torah, we sing together:
וַיְהִי בִּנְסֽוֹעַ הָאָרֹן וַיֹּֽאמֶר מֹשֶׁה, קוּמָה, יְיָ, וְיָפֻֽצוּ אֹיְבֶֽיךָ, וְיָנֻֽסוּ מְשַׂנְאֶֽיךָ מִפָּנֶֽיךָ. כִּי מִצִּיּוֹן תֵּצֵא תוֹרָה, וּדְבַר יְיָ מִירוּשָׁלָֽיִם. בָּרוּךְ שֶׁנָּתַן תּוֹרָה לְעַמּוֹ יִשְׂרָאֵל בִּקְדֻשָּׁתוֹ.
It always strikes me when I watch the person who is called up waits for the exact right moment to open the ark- and the sequence seems to be that first you open the ark and then you begin to sing. While there is nothing wrong with that perse I sense that people feel that the words ויהי בנסע הארון actually mean “as we open the ark”. That of course is simply incorrect.
Now stop for a minute and think to yourself. I have been in shul for countless shabbatot during my lifetime. I have sung these words nearly as many times and I sing them with feeling and emotion, but do I know what they mean?
It is simply amazing that we can go through these motions mechanical and by rote and we never stop to think about what we are saying and why.
That is what we are going to do this morning. I will explain to you where these words come from, what the words mean, and then suggest an explanation as to why we say them as we take out the Torah.
Where they come from is the easy part. I hope you realized that
וַיְהִי בִּנְסֽוֹעַ Comes from the Torah reading that we all heard this morning. כִּי מִצִּיּוֹן, comes from the Prophet Isaiah and בָּרוּךְ שֶׁנָּתַןis not from scripture at all.
The verse from the Torah means: 35. And it came to pass, when the ark set forward, that Moses said, Rise up, Lord, and let your enemies be scattered; and let them who hate you flee before you. The verse from Isaiah – because from Zion shall come forth Torah and the word of God from Jerusalem. And the non-scriptural piece reads – Blessed is God who gave the Torah to his people Israel in their holiness.
Now we first have a problem! What does the Torah coming from Jerusalem and our thanks for the Torah have to do with the ark going forward and our enemies being destroyed? And now that we know what vayehi binsoa means, why is that an appropriate prayer to recite as we open the ark? We know exactly where the Torah is going to be placed – right there on the shulchan; we are not going to war with it and our ark is not moving, I hope! Why these verses?
As is the case with most of our prayers if you want to really understand them you have to look at and understand the verses in their context in the Tanach, or Bible.
The first thing that you will notice when you find our pesukim in the torah is that they are bracketed off by two backward nuns! The Parsha is highlighted as its own unit. To understand why that is and to understand the full impact of our pesukim you need to look at them in the context of the entire parsha of Beha’alotcha.
When you read the parsha it appears at first to be a collection of unrelated stories. First you come upon the lighting of the menorah, then the purification of the Levi’im. Next you read about Pesach Sheni, the makeup date for the Pascal
offering. After that we read of the travel instructions, the trumpets and the travels of the people. Next comes a strange interlude with Yitro, then our two verses containing a description of the ark’s travels and then the complainers who wanted meat. What in the world to all these stories have in common?
In a famous shiur delivered by Rabbi Soloveitchik in the old Moriah synagogue in the 60’s the Rav asked that very question. I hear the tape about 15 years ago and his answer was so clear and so true that it left you wondering how it wasn’t clear the first time that you read it and the Rav ensured that you could never read the parsha again without seeing it through his eyes.
Parshat Behaalotcha says the Rav is the story as it should have been but was not. It was the story of the Jews triumphant march into the land of Canaan in the second month of the second year after the Jews left Egypt. The story begins with the lighting of the candles to complete the dedication of the tabernacle. Then the Leviim are separated and purified so they can carry that tabernacle through the desert. And now the Jews are ready to march but there was a group of people that wanted to be included in the covenant but were impure at the time of Pesach and so they petition Moshe to have a second chance and are granted it. Now the Jews are ready to go to Israel, all they need are travel instructions thus we read of those instructions- when the follow the cloud that rests upon the Tent of Meeting and we read of the trumpets that were blown to alert the people that it was time to travel. And then we read of the travels. The March has begun! And then we have our pesukim- as the ark travels God will clear the way for us by wiping out our enemies. The very next thing that we should read about is the Jews entering the land and God fighting that war for them.
But the Jews complain that they want meat. Can you imagine? The very moment that the journey should begin, you could taste the land and our conquest of it, and the Jews come with this material and physical desire and complaint! What a tragedy. After that it is all downhill; we read of Miriam and Aaron’s sin which delays the people again until we get to the spies next week and then we have to wait 38 more years to enter the land!
Our psukim of vayehi binsoa represent hopes dashed, the ideal unrealized, the march stopped dead in its tracks. Thus is it bracketed off to show what should have been and the nuns are backward to show us that what should have been was not! Now you understand vayehi binsoa!
But now that we understand it we really have to wonder, why choose to recite these verses before we read the Torah?
Maybe these pesukim set the tone for the Torah reading. As we take the Torah out and prepare to read it we are reminded of what could have been and should have been and maybe we are being taught that they only way back to that ideal is through the Torah and a focus on Hashem and our Torah. The Jews in the desert missed the boat and the journey because they focused on the material when they should have focused on the spiritual and the failed to appreciate the gift that God was bestowing upon them.
Every week we take out the Torah and read from it and these verses are our reminder: this is the way back, don’t blow it again! Remember that the road to Israel is so that Torah may flow from Jerusalem- the focus is spiritual and not physical. Then we bless Hashem for giving us the Torah- lest we forget to appreciate the gift!
That is what should run through your mind every week as you sing vayehi binsoa ha’aron!
