Parashat Behaalotcha: Our Unique Trumpet Call

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: “Make two silver trumpets, hammered out of beaten metal. They shall serve you to summon the congregation (edah) and to alert the camps (machanot) to prepare for the journey.” Numbers 10:1–2

Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik (1903–1993), known as "the Rav," was a prominent American Orthodox rabbi, Talmudist, and philosopher. He was one of the early voices of what came to be known as Modern Orthodoxy, though in my view, it often blurs with the more traditional wing of Conservative Judaism.

Rav Soloveitchik wrote a famous essay titled Kol Dodi Dofek, a Jewish reflection on the meaning of suffering. He teaches that there are two ways in which people form groups—be it a community, a society, or a nation. The first is when people face a common enemy. They unite for mutual protection. Like animals that gather in herds or flocks to shield themselves from predators, we do this out of survival. That kind of group is called a machané—a camp, a defensive formation.

There is, however, another kind of association, entirely different. People may come together because they share a vision, an aspiration, a set of ideals. This is the meaning of edah—a congregation. The word edah is linked to ed, meaning witness. Edot (unlike chukim and mishpatim) are mitzvot that testify to Jewish beliefs—like how Shabbat bears witness to Creation, or Pesach to Divine involvement in history. An edah is not about protection; it's about purpose. People join to create something that could never be achieved alone. A true congregation is a society built around a shared mission—a common good.

Rav Soloveitchik tells us these are not merely two types of groups but two fundamentally different ways of existing in the world. A camp forms in reaction to external threats. A congregation forms by inner conviction. One is reactive, the other proactive. One is about surviving the past; the other, about shaping the future. Camps exist in the animal kingdom. Congregations are uniquely human. They are born from the human ability to dream, to speak, to communicate, to imagine a better world, and to collaborate toward its realization.

The Jewish people have experienced both modes. In Egypt, our ancestors were a machané, forged by slavery and suffering. They were not Egyptians; they were Hebrews—a word that likely means "from the other side," strangers, outsiders. From that time forward, Jews have been united by circumstance. Our story is too often written in tears. Rav Soloveitchik calls this the covenant of fate (brit goral).

Yet this shared fate is not entirely negative. It forges a profound sense of collective identity: what binds us is deeper than what divides us.

"Our destiny does not distinguish between rich and poor… or between the pious and the assimilated. Even when we speak different languages, even when we live in distant lands… we share one destiny."

Shared destiny leads to shared suffering. When we pray for the healing of one, we pray “for all the sick of Israel.” When we comfort a mourner, we do so “among all the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.” We cry together. We rejoice together. The very idea of a minyan draws us into this sacred interconnection.

And that shared sorrow leads to shared responsibility: “All Jews are responsible for one another.”

These are all dimensions of the covenant forged in the pain of Egyptian bondage. But there is another layer to Jewish identity. Soloveitchik calls it the covenant of faith (brit ye’ud)—the one entered at Mount Sinai. This defines Israel not as an object of history but as a subject of purpose: "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Exodus 19:6).

Under this covenant, we are not defined by what others do to us but by the role we choose to play in history. In Egypt, we didn’t choose slavery—it was imposed on us. But at Sinai, we did choose to become God's people when we declared, “We will do and we will listen” (Exodus 24:7). Fate, calling, vocation, purpose, mission—these do not build a machané. They form an edah.

Our task as a people of faith is to be witnesses to the presence of God—through the lives we lead (Torah), and the path we carve through history.

Most nations are forged by long historical experience—by what happens to them, more than what they choose. These fall under the category of machané. Religions, by contrast, are defined by belief and purpose. They form as edot. What is unique about Judaism is how it binds these seemingly opposite identities. Many nations contain multiple religions. Many religions span multiple nations. Only in Judaism are nation and religion fully intertwined.

For nearly two millennia, Jews were scattered across the world. Yet we saw ourselves—and were seen by others—as a nation: the first global nation. It was not geography or language that held us together. Jews didn’t share a common vernacular. Rashi spoke French. Maimonides, Arabic. Rashi lived among Christians; Maimonides, among Muslims. Even our fates diverged. While Jews in Spain thrived during their Golden Age, Jews in northern Europe were massacred by Crusaders. In the 15th century, as Jews were expelled from Spain, those in Poland enjoyed a rare springtime of tolerance.

What held us together was a shared faith. When that faith was shattered by the trauma of European emancipation and the rise of racial antisemitism, many Jews lost that spiritual anchor. But the events of the 20th century—persecution, pogroms, the Holocaust, followed by the birth of the State of Israel and its continued struggle for survival—restored the covenant of fate. When Jews were divided by faith, they were reunited by destiny.

In the last two centuries, Jewish life has fragmented into different edot: Orthodox and Progressive, religious and secular, splintering further into isolated sects and subcultures. The State of Israel today is going through a painful social and political fracture. But in moments of crisis, we still know how to respond to the call of collective responsibility—because Jewish destiny remains indivisible. No Jew is truly an island. We are bound together by the strands of collective memory, and these threads can still lead us back to shared destiny.

This duality is echoed this week in the opening of Parshat Behaalotecha, which commands: "Make two silver trumpets. Hammer them out of a single piece of metal. They shall serve to summon the congregation (edah) and to cause the camps (machanot) to journey" (Numbers 10:2).

Sometimes the trumpet calls us to stand as a machané, as the people who remember what it means to be vulnerable. Other times, it calls us to rise as an edah, as those who chose to be God's people. We are, in a sense, His ambassadors—tasked with making His presence real in the world through lives of justice and sacred purpose.

Today, perhaps the trumpet sounding is very real: Jewish lives are once again in danger—both in Israel and the Diaspora. This danger comes from those who claim to be children of Abraham, yet assert that only they, not us, are the rightful heirs, and who see it as their mission to bend the world to their belief.

Yesterday, Israel took the courageous—and controversial—step of striking Iran. This is not just Israel’s dilemma. It is a moment that tests the conscience and courage of the entire free world.

Whether the silver trumpets call us to stand guard as a camp (machané) or to rise with purpose as a congregation (edah), they remind us who we are—a people bound by both fate and faith. In this moment, the trumpets are not only summoning Israel. They are sounding for all humanity: to awaken, to act, and to unite in that same sacred combination of Camp and Congregation.

Let us pray to the Lord together for a world that knows how to answer the call of these trumpets. May we learn to come together across our divisions, in spite of our differences. And above all, may the Lord continue to "spread over us the shelter of Your peace"—Ufros aleinu sukat shlomecha—so that once and for all, we may live in peace. In Israel. And everywhere around the world.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Gustavo Geier