“Moses recorded their forays as they journeyed at God’s Mouth; and these are their journeys according to their forays.” (Numbers 33:2)
In his holy writings, my brother-in-law, of blessed memory, mentions the following well-known question: Why does the verse first say “their forays as they journeyed,” and then reverse the order, with “these are their journeys according to their forays”?
We learn in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 98b); Ulla said: “Let the Messiah come, I will not see it.” Ulla foresaw the terrible suffering accompanying the birth pangs of the Messiah, and preferred not to be a witness to it.
Let us attempt to make sense of his attitude. It may well be true that there are things more terrifying than death, may the Merciful One protect us, as the Talmud (Kethuboth 33b) points out regarding torture: “If they had tortured Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah (cf. Daniel 3), they would have worshipped the idol.” It is also true, however, that torture is worse only while it endures, but before or after the suffering, which person would not rather suffer the pain than face certain death? Once the pain has passed, the person is himself again and his sins are atoned for. This is why King David praised the Holy Blessed One (Psalms 118:18) saying, “God has chastened me exceedingly, but He did not let me die.” Why then did Ulla, in anticipation of the time of suffering, say, “Let the Messiah come, I will not see it,” so that he would not have to endure the pain of the birth pangs of Messiah?
By his comment, Ulla did not mean that he wished to avoid his own suffering. He wanted to avoid witnessing all the pain of the Jewish people, because he knew he could not bear to see other people suffer so much. This was the case for Ulla in particular, because Ulla was so pious that for him Jewish suffering was unbearable. The more a person adores himself, the less love he has for fellow Jews, as he is always thinking only of himself. He is the paradigm of “I am, and none else but me.” (Isaiah 47:8) The degree to which a person can love his fellow Jews and worry about their suffering is proportionate to the degree to which he can nullify himself. A person who is full of selfish desires and self-adoration wants only to fulfill his own desires, so he cannot truly love Jewish people. Conversely, when a person nullifies himself and his desires on his own behalf, he is able to love Jews. As the Tosaphists in their commentary on the Talmud (Shabbath 13a) explain: “Ulla was a tzaddik gamur—a wholly pious man who could not even contemplate sinning or acting on his selfish impulses—and was therefore used to kissing his sister.” His love for the Jewish people was great, and so he said, “Let the Messiah come, I will not see it.”
There is another explanation. Let us attempt to understand, even at our low level of comprehension, the concept of chev’lay Mashiach, birth pangs of the Messiah. It can be explained simplistically as a way of cleansing sin before the great revelation that constitutes the coming of the Messiah. The question that asks itself, however, is why must the generation of people greeting the Messiah have to suffer for all the sins of previous generations?
After humankind’s first sin, God said to Eve (Genesis 3:16), “In despair will you give birth to children.” This was not just retribution, a punishment for sin. It is well known that all the different worlds, great or small, at all the levels that God creates them, come into being through hishtalshelut—a chain process of birth and becoming, of cause and effect. Before the sin, everything was nullified before God, and the identity of each object in the universe was not that of individual extant objects. Identity more closely resembled that of objects in the world of atzilut (archetypes), in that it was conceptual. An example of this idea continues in the sephirot in the world of atzilut. There, the sephirot have names and appear to possess some sort of identity, even though they have no existence beyond the presence of God, blessed be He, for in the world of atzilut God and His creatures are One, as is well known.
The Holy Blessed One miraculously created all the worlds, each revealing an identity that does not require individual existence, and so it was in this world also, before Adam’s sin. In the future world, as we know from the writings of the Arizal (R. Isaac Luria), this world will be elevated again to the level of atzilut. Since Adam’s sin, however, the world has been physical in an entirely selfish way, so that everything in creation experiences its own individual existence. It is therefore impossible for anything new to be born without something dying, because for something to give birth to a new revelation of God, drawing new light down into this word, it must go through a process of nullification. It is impossible for anything to reveal the Divine Light while retaining the illusion of existence, as is well known. We can watch this process in the germination of any seed that we plant. A tree’s branches, leaves, and fruit cannot be discerned in the seed, and they may be thousands or millions of times larger than the seed—but before the new tree can be revealed, the seed itself must cease to be. That is why every seed decomposes in the earth before it germinates. It is a kind of death. This is what is meant by the phrase “In despair will you give birth to children.” A woman experiences a painful process in which she relinquishes some of her physical powers, before she can give birth to a new creation. As we learn in the Midrash (Tanchuma, Tazria 6): “While squatting upon the birthing stool, ninety-nine of her groans despair unto death, while only one calls out for life.” Through the nullification of the existence of parts of herself, she prepares for God, blessed be He, to bring forth a new creation.
This would seem to explain, to the limits of our comprehension, the concept of the birth pangs of the Messiah. The redemption will be the revelation of God, when God reveals of His Light and Holiness through the Jewish people. This is why the redemption and its timing are dependent upon the Jewish people. For the Jewish people to merit that such Light be revealed through them, there has to be a nullification of their power, and these are the birth pangs of the Messiah, as it is written (Isaiah 66:9), “ ‘Shall I labor, and not give birth?’ says God.”
The Holy Blessed One is laboring to give birth through the Jewish people, and so the Jewish people suffer the birth pangs, losing their powers as part of them dies, for this is how they give birth to the Light of the Messiah. For us, it is the same as with a woman squatting on the birthing stool. We know that the strongest contractions indicate that the delivery is progressing, that the child has been revealed a little more. So also, when seeing a Jew suffering greatly with the birth pangs of the Messiah, we know that a greater part of the Light of the Messiah is being revealed through that person.
Ulla, who was a tzaddik gamur—wholly pious man, seems to be hinting to us with his words “Let the Messiah come, I will not see it” that the Messiah’s coming and Ulla’s not seeing it are not two separate issues. Ulla predicted that he himself would endure such great birth pangs, giving birth to such a large part of the Messiah, that he would expire and pass away.
It is not only the individual who dies, or the one who suffers tremendous pain, that gives birth to the great Light of the Messiah. If many people are united in pain or in fear, and one of them dies from his suffering, may the Merciful One protect us, then great Light is revealed out of all of them, because they were all together in pain, and in fear they suffered together.
This is the meaning of “Moses recorded their forays as they journeyed.” Rashi (ibid.) quoting the Midrash (Tanchuma, Massay 2), says, “A parable: The king had a son who took ill. So the king brought him to a sanitarium for treatment. On their way home, the father began enumerating all the stages of the journey to his son, saying, ‘Here we spent the night . . . here we caught cold . . . here you had a headache . . . etc.’ ”
All of the tribulations mentioned in the text, however, were birth pangs revealing the Divine Light. And so it is written “their forays as they journeyed at God’s Mouth” because the sephirah of Malkhut (Sovereignty), the revealed world, is synonymous with the mouth, as Elijah the prophet taught in his speech (Tikunei Zohar, intro. 1). The stages passed through—“here we spent the night, here we caught cold, etc.”—were forays of the Messianic Light, revealing the Malkhut—Sovereignty of Heaven, the Mouth of God. This, though, is the difference: When Moses was recording the events after the journeys and the tribulations were over, everyone could see what had issued from their journeys at the Mouth of God. The purpose was obviously to bring the Mouth of God, Malkhut, Sovereignty of Heaven, into this world through their journeying, and so it is written “their forays as they journeyed at God’s Mouth.” However, while the journeys were happening the issues were not obvious, because during the journeys they felt only the pain, so the text says “their journeys according to their forays.”
Perhaps there is yet another hint. “Moses recorded their forays as they journeyed at God’s Mouth . . .” As our teacher Moses continues to suffuse every generation, his presence grows and develops. In the future he will also be the Messiah. There is a well-known teaching from the Zohar (Raya Mehemnia, vol. II, 120b) that the first letters of the Hebrew words mah she’haya hu—“Whatever has been, is what will be”—in the verse from Ecclesiastes (1:9) spell Moses’ name, MoShHe. The implication is that Moses redeemed us once and will, no doubt, do so again. So Moses, with his writing, succeeded in achieving for every generation, and particularly for the generation of the Messiah, an immediate revelation of God’s purpose. We will endure the journey and the pain, for it will also be revealed that these issue from the Mouth of God, and the name of God will be sanctified and magnified through the salvation of the Jewish people.