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FedTalks Parshas Behaalosecha – Rabbi R Stepsky – Transcript
As a mark of honour and privilege to Moshe Rabeinu, whose leadership and authority was now equivalent to a Jewish king, in chapter 10 of Bamidbor, Hashem commands Moshe Rabeinu to make two silver chatzotzros, two trumpets. “Ase lecho shtei chatzotzros kesef”. What was the purpose of these two silver trumpets? The Torah tells us two reasons.
Number one, “lemikro ha’edo”, to assemble the Jewish people. Or to assemble the leadership, the nesi’im. And the second reason is for the masos hamachanos, to announce the departure and the starting out of the next stage of Bne Yisroel’s journey in the desert.
These trumpets had great kedusha. Moshe Rabeinu made them himself and only Moshe Rabeinu was permitted to use them. In fact, close to Moshe Rabeinu’s death these chatzotzros, these silver shofros, were concealed so that no other leader could ever use them again. Even Yehoshua used shofros to conquer the city of Jericho.
Apart from Moshe Rabeinu’s special and unique trumpets, there were other trumpets as well, made by others, and used for different reasons, for example to stir and awaken the Jewish people during calamity, for example war, enemy attacks or a drought. And the second time it would be used, would be in the service of the offer, the sacrifices in the Beis Hamikdosh.
What is the Torah’s message? We know that the Torah is eternal. We know that there is a message for us in 2019 as well. What can we learn from these chatzotzros, these silver trumpets?
This week two individuals mentioned to me that something interesting had happened to them. The first one was: they received a phone call by mistake. They received a call, actually, from a Rov, to check, to discuss about some detail’s information for his recent donation. During the call it was discovered that the Rov had called the wrong donor, however the donor was still delighted to have a good chat with the Rov and he enjoyed it very much.
The next one is a lady. She thought she was phoning a friend, but instead, mistakenly, called another friend with the same name. Again, they hadn’t spoken for a long time and the friend who had received the call was delighted that they received this call from a friend- mistakenly, but enjoyed the opportunity to catch up with a bit of friendship.
We live in a high-tech generation, a society full of noise, beeps. I was thinking, maybe in our generation we can sound our chatzotzros, our silver trumpets. We can pick up our phone and we can ring somebody in the good old-fashioned way, just to say hello, see how you are and show that we care.
Wishing you a Good Shabbos, Shabbat Shalom.