Reply To: Short & Sweet

Bamidbar: Different Parts of the Same Whole

The Shelah writes in the name of the Arizal that just as there were four different groups of Shevatim in the midbar, each under their own flag, so to there are four different groups of Jews each with their own Minhagim. (He lists the groups of his day as Sephardim, Ashkenazim, Catalonians, and Italians.) There have always been different paths in עבודת השם, and this diversity is clearly by design. No one group can do everything perfectly.

R’ Yaakov Kamenetsky points out that the Jews were not given their different flags when they first left Mitzrayim as an independent people. Instead, Hashem waited until after they had received the Torah and built the Mishkan. He explains that only once we had the ultimate unifier, a Torah and a Mishkan at the center of our lives, could we focus on our individual strengths. Once we had this shared sense of mission, we could focus on our individual part of the plan without risking tearing the nation apart.

לע״נ דוד חיים בן ישראל דוב הכהן
לע״נ ר׳ חיים דוב בן ר׳ בןציון שלום