Hashem orders the leaders of every tribe to place a staff before the aron. The following day, Aharon”s staff, representing the tribe of Levi, is discovered to have miraculously blossomed overnight. “It sprouted twigs and bore almonds” (Bamidbar 17:23).

Clearly, Hashem wished to convey a message with this miracle, but what was it? Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch explains:

Trees generally produce leaves before they produce fruit. But the almond tree is an exception. “While its brother trees are still making up their minds, it has already acted, and right from the beginning puts the goal – the production of fruit, the fruit-blossom – in the foreground, the object for which it exists and for which it then produces leaves.”

Hence the Hebrew name for almond, shaked (shekidah means diligence, industry), as the almond tree displays “eager zeal&hellipkeenness&helliphappy vigorous devotion and energy for what it has to accomplish.”

What does any of this have to do with Ahron and the tribe of Levi? Rav Hirsch explains that the almond tree”s zeal symbolizes the spirit that “ennobled the tribe of Levi to be the representative of the Divine Torah and its Sanctuary [as] it alone amongst its fellow tribes flocked to Moshe in response to the call “Mi laHashem eilai!”” And this trait “is to be inherited in its purest perfection by the elite of that tribe, Aharon and his descendants.”

Ultimately, though, all Jews must practice this trait. The almond tree only “blossoms and matures its fruit earlier than the others” (emphasis added). It “leads the way in development, which the others then follow.” Similarly, “the Levites and Aharonides lead the way in spiritual and general development of life,” but “all the other brother tribes are called on to follow and attain the same spiritual level.”

Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) – head of the Jewish community in Frankfurt, Germany for over 35 years – was a prolific writer whose ideas, passion, and brilliance helped save German Jewry from the onslaught of modernity.

Elliot Resnick, PhD, is the host of “The Elliot Resnick Show” and the editor of an upcoming work on etymological explanations in Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch”s commentary on Chumash.