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The Importance of Hishtadlut

By: SFW Students & Alumna
Miriam Sragow (SFW '09)

This week’s parsha begins “Chumash HaPekudim”, “the book of countings”. Even though we call the book and the parsha “Bemidbar,” it’s hard to avoid noticing the many countings in the book, and certainly in this parsha.

One of those countings occurs in Perek 3, where Hashem tells Moshe to count all the Levi males aged one month and over. In Pasuk 16, the Torah tells us that Moshe did as he was commanded, but the Torah uses two phrases to refer to the command. It says both “al pi Hashem” and “ka’asher tzuva”. What is the need for this extra phrase? Isn’t it obvious that if Moshe was obeying the word of Hashem, he was doing it because Hashem commanded him to?

Rashi brings an interesting idea here. Rashi inserts a conversation between Moshe and Hashem that the Torah does not record. He says that after this command to count, Moshe exclaimed to Hashem: “How can I possibly go into their tents to count their children?! This would be completely immodest!” Hashem responded by saying: “You do what you are supposed to do and I will do what I need to do.” So Moshe went to the people’s tents and as he arrived at the entrances, a bat kol would come out from shamayim and tell him the number of children inside so he did not need to go in. The Gur Aryeh explains that Rashi is implying here that, as the tanchuma says, “al pi Hashem” does not mean that Moshe followed Hashem’s instructions, but rather that he did it according to the information provided by the Heavenly voice.

           This is a very nice idea, but how do chazal know that this conversation between Hashem and Moshe actually happened? We don’t find any mention of it anywhere else in torah! So did chazal “make it up”?

            Our teacher, Mrs. Krohn, taught us that when chazal do something like this, they are not necessarily claiming that the story actually occurred. It may or may not have, but that is not the point of them writing it. Obviously they were not there at the time that this happened to know what had gone on. However, they do this is to bring out a message. These messages are actually Torah m’Sinai and all chazal are doing is connecting these messages to words in the torah in order to give them over in a more memorable way.

             Perhaps one of the ideas that chazal were trying to teach from here is that we never need to worry or question Hashem’s commands and ways. Hashem taught Moshe that when we just do what He wants from us, even though the task may seem strange or hard, He will always guide us and hold our hand in order to help us reach the goal. Hashem just wants us to do our part and then He will help us the rest of the way.

There’s a question one could ask about this drash. If Hashem knew that this act of counting the children would be immodest for Moshe to do and therefore He would end up telling Moshe the number at the entrances to the tents anyway, then why couldn’t Hashem have just told Moshe how many Leviim there were in total without Moshe having to go anywhere? Why did He have to make Moshe walk around to each tent to give him the information?

I think the answer to this is a continuation of chazal’s massage. All Hashem wanted was for Moshe to put in a little of his own hishtadlut and then Hashem would happily help him the rest of the way. We can’t expect to be given everything we need. Hashem wants to help us and wants to give us our desires but we need to help Him help us. The most amazing thing is that Hashem even gave us the exact rules of what we need to do in order for Him to help us. All we need to do is follow the Torah. Therefore, we should all put in our personal efforts and follow the words of Hashem to the fullest so that we will hopefully be zoche to much help, guidance and bracha from Hashem.

~Shabbat Shalom!