A quick note as Shabbat Mattot closes, on Bemidbar 31:49 - 52:
[After battle, the commanders came to Moshe] and they said to Moshe, Your servants took a headcount of the men of the battle who were under our command, and there was not missing of us a man. So we have brought an offering for H' each man what he found - a vessel of gold, an anklet, or bracelet, ring, earring, or body ornament, to provide atonement for our souls before H'.
And the gold they brought was 16,750 shekels - an enormous amount of gold.
We see here a potential perfect act:
1. Not a single man dies in the battle; and
2. In recognition of the miracle, the heroic returnees instinctually give thanks and offer up what is most precious to them - the gold spoils, totaling an enormous amount taken directly to the ohel (and for which we never really find out what happens).
I'm honestly sick and tired of the mantra I've been hearing for years that "perfection isn't possible, as soon as you reach one level, you must climb to the next, it's a journey until the day you die." It's always not squared well against teaching from perhaps other religions in which enlightenment, for example, is possible.
I think, as always (in the Jewish tradition) it's both - we can keep striving and always reach a higher level, but at the same time, we should not be so fearful to say that perfection - either temporary or long-lasting - is possible. If the men could come back without losing a single soul and sua sponte make a perfect offering which is accepted and taken straight to the Tent (can you think of another offering in which this is done?), surely that sort of perfection is available to us - both in a perfect life (familial, professional, even spiritual?) and spontaneous acts of perfection (in addition to the very much planned and intentional mitzvot).
A beautiful lesson that, as always, the Torah provides way more flexibility, openness, freedom, spontaneity, and joyous victory and gratitude than perhaps I once thought.
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