students of all sorts gathered around him to perhaps get a handle on "desire", the "holy erotic", etc, until this teacher himself entirely self destructed (taking some victims along with him down an ugly path). It is no wonder then, that Hassidic teachings on desire are found where one might least expect them, perhaps its an area that must always be approached by sneak attack. We too will begin with a classical teaching and then move carefully towards a more direct encounter with the subject, in two essays that grapple with the concept from different angles. (In fact, a third essay on this thorny subject, is in preparation, dealing with the line about Moshe being more humble, anav, than all others).

There is an often cited teaching of the Magid of Mezeritch, in teaching 32 of the Magid Devarim L'Yaakov. Verse 10:2 presents a command to Moshe, in which he should forge two horns, hatzoterot, made of silver, for various communicative purposes, such as calling the leadership together, or moving the camps, during the Israelite's sojourn in the desert. The Magid presents an entire teaching based on three words in this verse that appear to be totally removed from any connection to the actual narrative. He suggests that the term hatzotzerot is derived from the phrase "hatzi tzurot", which means "half forms"- man alone, material man, is only half formed, only half actualized, is only "dam", blood, physicality. However, with the introduction of Gd consciousness into one's life, symbolized by the Hebrew letter "aleph", which is commonly read to stand for the term "alufo shel olam", meaning leader or teacher of the world, the word adam is formed (as opposed to simply dam), thus formulating a fully formed form. Thus, it is in the coming together of these two halves (dam and aleph) in themselves lacking, that a much greater unity is created. This, the Maggid explains, is achieved through "kesef", silver, (the hatzotzrot are made of silver), the word kessef being derived from the term kissuf, desire; a properly directed desire towards Gd leads to a union, a state of oneness and wholeness, a mutual resolution of the yearning by both sides of the relationship.

This theme, of the unity being formed as the balanced encounter of two disparate elements which need one another, is developed in another section of the perasha by the Kedushat Levi in his discussion of the manna (I adopt the anglicised form rather than the Hebrew term man, due to its confusing homonymity). The manna is described in the text as having the taste of the "Gad" seed, "Gad" to the Kedushat Levi being an acrostic for Gomel Dalim (redeeming the poor): The manna is described by Talmud in Yoma 75. as bearing any flavor the eater desired for, thus, to the Kedushat Levi the manna was an meeting of a physical object, the raw substrate of the manna, in encounter with the desire of the Israelite eating it; one side provides the physical, one side the spiritual, just like in the interaction of the rich man and the poor man- the rich man gives a physical item, and receives spiritual quanta in return. So the manna is like the redemption of the poor, which is actually mutually constructive to all parties involved.

The problem is, that the awakening of desire can lead to unforseen results- in English the phrase "awakening of desire" can be rephrased using the term "arousal", which suggests a whole other class of wants. "Desire" is a central concept to Lacanian analysis, in which "desire" is defined as a want that can never be fully satiated, as opposed to a"need". "Desire" is a complex phenomena which arises out of the eternal insufficiency of post castration development, with the remnants of the presymbolic Desire for the Mother manifesting themselves as eternally unfulfilled desire, after the process Lacan labels "the Name of the Father" has symbolized amorphous baby existence into the construct and constraints associated with Language. The "symptom", the unfulfilled desire manifested, is to some degree a manifestation, an overflow, of elements of this presymbolic desire, which can, by definition, never be fulfilled. In other words, the early baby period, in which the baby sees the world and the mother and food and itself all as one big unseperated unit, is left behind once the infant learns to see itself as an individuated autonomous entity, a process that involves language and a recognition that being part of the world means seeing one's self as one might be seen in a mirror, from "without" rather than "within". Yearnings for the earlier predifferentiated state are manifested as "desire".

An interesting application of this concept of "desire" and its relation to the realm of general culture is found in Zizek's "The Sublime Object of Ideology" . In his discussion of Lacan's neologism for the symptom, sinthome, (which is defined by Zizek as "a certain signifying formation penetrated with enjoyment: it is a signifier as a bearer of jouis-sense, enjoyment-in-sense"), Zizek discusses antisemitism as being a result of the failure of society to live up to the people's desires. In other words, all sorts of people have all sorts of demands on society, in terms of how it should function and what it should accomplish. When "society" fails to provide that which everyone wants from it, for the real can never adequately fulfill all the contradictory demands that desire demands of it, then a "reason" for this failure must be created, that reason historically frequently being "the Jew", guilty of whatever inadequacy causes the given society to "not work". Currently, we can see this in the ways that certain failures in Israeli society are frequently blamed on the "Haredim", etc. ]

At any rate, the idea is that once desire was awakened within the manna itself given that the manna could support any taste format "desired", this "desire" aroused all sorts of other more problematic and eventually even lurid desires, as the BT Shabbat 130. and Yoma 75. inform us- suddenly the people had (probably false) memories of fish as described later in 11:5, which led, as derived by the Talmud from verse 11:10 describing the crying over families , to the people yearning for incest! It was prescient of the Noam Elimelech to point to this latent message in the otherwise straightforward sounding demand (in other words, why would the Talmud insinuate a yearning for incest when the text specifically tells us what it was the people seemed to be clamoring for) as a trace evoked in Moshe's prayer reflecting off their demands, an early example of transference.

So what we have here is an example of a poor balance or match between the two hatzi tzurot, the twin aspects of reality and desire, ruchani and gashmi, that need to be coordinated. Where can we see a proper alignment to serve as a positive example? Right at the beginning of the perasha.

The Meor Eynaim begins his exposition on the first verse of the perasha, dealing with commandment to Aharon to light up the menorah, by explaining the meaning of the teaching in Avot 4:2: The reward for doing a mitzvah is a mitzvah. What this means, he explains, in anticipation of Franz Rozenzweig, is that by perfoming any "mitzvah" one achieves a state of "tzavta" (same root to the two words in Hebrew), which means "communion" with Gd who commanded. In fact, the word "mitzvah" itself, contains the last two letters of the name of Gd overtly (vav, heh), and the first two letters (yud, heh) as well covertly- if you flip the mem and tzadi of the word mitzvah, via the gematria function called "atbash" (aleph= tav, bet= shin, etc), you get yod and heh, which together with the vav and he originally at the end of the word "mitzvah" spells out the Tetragrammaton. The need for this message to be stated in a reading requiring an overt and a covert deciphering is to teach us that true fulfillment of every action requires this same linkage of overt action and covert intention. This is linked to the opening statement of our perasha- Behaalotcha et hanerot: When you light up the nerot, (mitzvot are called nerot in Mishle 6:23), you must strive toward the pnei hamenorah, that is, to the penimiyut, the inner essence of the mitzvah, which is ultimately establishment of tzavta, of communion, between Gd and man. When praxis and ideology are in proper alignment, then world transformation can be effected. When desire is still subject to fantasy, the symptom is unleashed. The Zera Kodesh (R. Naftali of Ropschitz) points out that those who clamored for meat are labeled asafsuf, rabble. He explains that these people griping must have been rabble and not good citizens, because people of faith do not have false desires, as their faith they would lead them to recognize the superfluity of unnecessary desires (the man of faith would think "if I'm lacking something, it must be part of a greater plan and I probably don't have this now for a reason").

Once "desire" is aroused in an uncontrollable manner, then even the leadership is at risk- the Tiferet Shelomo reads the final episode of this perasha, wherein Miriam and Aharon accuse Moshe of improper family life and are then punished, as also being a result of the awakening of desires by the manna failure. According to his reading, the fact that there was an awakening among the people of a desire for forbidden sexual activity implies that there was an equivalent failure in Moshe's home life, for had Moshe, as the leader and tzaddik, had a perfected home life then that desire would have been quarantined and deleted, thus neutralizing the desire so that it would not be possible for the people to yearn for it! Of interest, being a unique reading of the word "anav", humble, The Tiferet Shelomo reads into the Torah's defense of Moshe, which states that Moshe was "anav meod mekol ha'adam", humble beyond any person, was meant to suggest that Moshe's home life was correct with respect to "onah", familial obligations, which contains the same letters as anav').

Perhaps, recognition of the theme of properly directed desire running through several segments of this perasha, is involved in the Zohar's beginning its teachings on this perasha with the quote from Psalm 19:6, describing the sun as being "like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber". The Zohar describes the sefira of Tiferet, core sefira of the supernal worlds, as the "groom", signified by the sun, as emerging with enlightenment from transmitted from the higher sefira of Binah. Having been elevated to this high spiritual state, Tiferet brings about a correct alignment of all the divine emanations and thus achieves unity with the lower worlds, the Shekhina, the "bride". This alignment of upper and lower, inner and outer, is the goal of the Cohen when he lights the menorah in the proper conjunction of outer practice and inner feeling. Properly channeled desire must be coupled with transformative human practice, like the bride and groom. Perhaps this is reflected in the verse's astronomical image, of the perfect sphere arced by the sun. The perfect sphere is the fulfillment of the coming together of the two half spheres, creating a mathematically perfect whole, a circle. Is this not, as well, the symbolism behind' the wedding ring?

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