Nasso 1

This dvar torah is for the refuah shelaima for Rav Bredva, Shlomo Leib Ben Miriam who is having a procedure done today. May he have a refuah shelaima.

The Nesiim:

As we all know basically after the fifth aliyah of this week's parsha the same few pasukim are repeated with a slight change. These pasukim are speaking about the korbonot brought by the Nesiim (princes) of Bnei Yisrael in the desert. What happened was during the building of the mishkan the people collecting came first to the nesiim and asked them if they wanted to give anything. The nesiim said that whatever was not given by bnei yisrael they would give after. The Jews in their immense generosity gave all that was needed plus much more leaving the nesiim to give the one thing no one else could give, the twelve stones for the eifod. Now after the mishkan was completed Hashem was giving the Nesiim the chance to make up for last time by being among the first to first korbonot. If any of us were in their place it would make sense for us to give as much as we could. Since last time we messed up by not giving so much we would give as much as we can. If this would happen nowadays the Nesiim would each try to bring the biggest korbon. After one gave millions of dollars, the next would give tens of millions, the next hundreds of millions, etc. But what happened then they each gave the exact same thing. Why? This is to show many things, two of those ideas are that:
1) In Judaism it is not about outdoing you friend, everyone has the same goal in life, to serve Hashem, not making yourself look like hte greatest person for giving charity.

2) If each of the nesiim would have given something different then this would have caused jealousy amongst them, to avoid this each gave the same thing.

If instead of working to outdo our friends we work together to serve Hashem it will greatly increase our love for each other and our love for Hashem.

There is a mashal about a very poor village. The village heard that the king of the country was coming to visit. A committee was put together to raise funds to buy the king a beautiful gift. The price to be part of the gift was .05 cents. Each person gave their five cents and they were able to buy the king a new chariot. The day had arrived when the king was supposed to come and the village was about to present the king with his new chariot. All of a sudden out of the crowd ran a man. He jumped up on stage and said that before the community gives their gift he wants to give his. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a dime. The kings says "a dime, you give me a little dime!?" The man answers "but everyone else in the community only gave in a nickel for your present I am giving double everyone else!" The king answered "while it may be true that each of the people here are giving less than you when their money is put together it is no longer just a nickel." I believe that this is why after all of the nesiim give their korbon the torah repeats what was given to show that it is not about how much or how little one gives but rather that we do it without trying to be better then someone else.