Here we go again…….. i’m not sure if i have enlightened u on the “source” of my divrey torah (not the “source” ur thinking of jaymat!!!), pretty much i see a vague idea somewhere and then i just “develop” it, and so on the one hand i don’t want ppl to think i actually thought of it all on my own, on the other hand i don’t wanna quote where the source is, cuz more often than not, by the time i’m done with it it actually has nothing to do with the original idea i saw. so let’s just call them “very loosely based divrey torah”!
Hashem instructs moshe to erect a serpent, which will help bring the ending of the plague, and hashem adds a very interesting detail into this commandment, he asks moshe to build the serpent out of his OWN money! huh?
Let’s backtrack a bit, why did the entire plague begin? cuz bney yisroel spoke badly against hashem and moshe, “blaming” them for taking bney yisroel out of mitzrayim just in order to die in the midbar, and so , at least partially, the reason the ppl were being punished was cuz they did moshe bad, and so why in the world would he have to suffer a financial loss in order to stop their suffering? they should be the ones to pay! in fact they should pay for the serpent and give him 10000000 dollars (not that much these days, cuz of the dollars situation, does that mean america is on it’s way down? NAH impossible, i mean it is such a huge superpower it can never fall apart right? just ask the egyptians, romans, greeks, mongols and soviets………) in damages. So what exactly was the meaning of this quite perplexing request hashem made of moses?
How bout we try this:- we (i.e me) make a very serious mistake in a very common situation, when we see someone do bad we immediately hate the person as apposed to hating his actions, we fail to realize that as jews we r supposed to understand that deep down each person is good, and it’s just the outer coating which sometimes gets rotten.
And this too:- we also make a very big mistake when we apologise for something we did wrong, we apologise as part of the apologising ceremony, very rarely actually meaning it, very rarely actually regretting the original back action which we did.
Now put those 2 factors together…..and what do u get? 2 totally unrelated factors!!!!
And so that is what hashem was requesting from moshe- hashem “realized” that in this case bney yisroel make a sincere apology, they fully understood the severity of their actions, they fully understood that they were being punished cuz they sinned, and they truly regretted and felt bad for what they said against hashem and moshe. As a result of that moshe had no right (not that earlier he had a right, and obviously not that earlier he actually bore a grudge) to bear a grudge to bney yisrol, so much that he should be willing to even suffer a loss just in order to ensure their return to health and safety!
This idea goes both ways- when u apologise to someone (whether g-d or someone who just thinks he is g-d) u have to do it in a way so sincere that the person ur apologising to will feel comfortable giving u money for something related to the very bad action which they did towards u in the beginning, u should make it such a true apology that the person u hurt should feel as if the wrongdoing which u originally did never even happened. Only that type of apology can be considered a true apology!
But the same goes for the opposite situation where someone is apologising to u! u have to realize that the person is truly apologizing (and even if he isn’t u have to try your best to feel as if he is) and u have no right, need or point of being annoyed anymore, to the degree that u would even be willing to pay for his recovery from the punishment he suffered for what he did to u in the first place.
But we have to take it even further, and not just “not bear a grudge” but to realize that there really is absolutely no reason to be angry anymore, after the person apologized there is no “bad” around anymore, a superficial bad action was done by an internally good person, and as soon as that person removed the dirty speck from his surface…….. all that is left is good.
That is what hashem was trying to teach us via moshe, and moshe obliged without any problems cuz he understood that in reality after bney yisroel apologized and realized their wrongdoing there really was no reason to be angry/annoyed at them at all!!!!! not easy…..but so so important!!