Parashat Behaalotekha

The Doorkeeper's Dilemma - Who Deserves Access to Holiness?

When Eldad and Medad began prophesying without Moses' official authorization, Joshua demanded they be imprisoned for lacking proper credentials. But Moses responded with his famous declaration: "Would that all of God's people were prophets, that God would put His spirit upon them." This incident crystallizes a fundamental disagreement that has echoed throughout Jewish history: should Torah, prophecy, and spiritual growth be restricted to a worthy elite, or opened to all who seek it? This same debate played out between Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai over whether to teach Torah only to the wealthy or to the poor as well. Later in Yavneh, Rabban Gamliel's doorkeeper prevented anyone "whose inside is not the same as his outside" from entering the study hall. The irony was that this policy often deterred precisely those with broken hearts who genuinely thirsted for Torah, while admitting only those supremely confident in their own righteousness.

Moses' position wasn't mere tolerance but a fundamental principle about the nature of the Jewish people. When God offered to destroy the nation after the Golden Calf and start fresh with Moses alone, Moses refused, saying "Blot me out from the book You have written." He understood that the choice wasn't between perfect people and imperfect ones, but between building a religion for exceptional individuals versus creating a path accessible to ordinary people - even those who sin through ignorance or weakness. Moses fought for the Jewish people as a national community that includes "all types," not a hand-picked collection of spiritual superstars. This wasn't because he condoned sin or lowered standards, but because he believed everyone deserved access to growth and meaning, regardless of their starting point.

Paradoxically, Moses himself struggled to relate to ordinary people's concerns -When Moses says despairingly, “I am not able to bear this entire people myself alone, for it is too much for me” (Num. 11:14), it is because he looks upon the people who say “give us meat” in this same way. He cannot understand how people can cry over mundane things; it seems impossible to him. So he says, “I cannot deal with them.” Their complaints about onions and garlic seemed as trivial to him as children fighting over candy wrappers. Yet despite his frustration with their "smallness," he refused to abandon them or limit Torah to those he could better understand. His vision was radical: not just seventy prophets, but 600,000 prophets - as many as possible. He knew that prophecy is difficult and most prophets suffered greatly, but he believed that spiritual greatness should be the aspiration for everyone, not the privilege of a few. Even today, this tension remains: do we settle for minimal religious observance from most people, or do we dare to expect - and demand - that everyone reach for their highest spiritual potential?

 Questions to Contemplate

If you truly believed Moses' vision that everyone could be a prophet, how would it change your expectations of yourself and others? What holds you back from pursuing your own spiritual potential more seriously?