naso

The posuk says ביום השני הקריב נתנאל בן צוער נשיא יששכר, on the second day the leader of Yissachar, הקרב את קרבנו brought his offering. Then the Torah goes on to enumerate the same offering that was brought by the leader of Yehuda & goes over the same thing twelve times, once for each of the tribes. Then it does a recount of all the totals. We know that the Torah doesn't use any extra words, so why over here does it use hundreds of extra words when it could have just enumerated one offering & said and so did each one of the leaders bring on his day. Why did it have to go thru each one separately? There was a story told about the students of הגרא"ז מלצר. They were in his house when one of them looked out the window & thought he saw the גרי"ז coming up the steps. He called out "Rebbi the רב מבריסק is on his way into the house". Immediately הגרא"ז מלצר went & put on his shabbos jacket & ran out to greet his distinguished guest. However, it quickly became apparent that this guest wasn't the רב מבריסק, but just a regular guy who happened to at first glance, look like the רב מבריסק. Interestingly enough, הגרא"ז מלצר didn't miss a beat or change his demeanor whatsoever. He gave this man the royal treatment, brought him up to sit at the head of the table, & offered him any food or drink he wanted. Bewildered, the man said I came to you just to get a letter of recommendation. When the man left הגרא"ז מלצר walked him all the way downstairs until the street. When he came back up his students asked, why did you do that? Why did you accord this man so much honor? He answered that in reality, the mitzva of הכנסת אורחים is a great mitzva, & the mitzva of honoring another Jew is also very great. We should treat every jew like he's the greatest rabbi just like Avraham treated his guests, even though he thought they were arabs. Unfortunately, continued הגרא"ז מלצר, the mitzvos have become light in our eyes & we distinguish between Jews. So now when I had the chance, when I was prepared to honor the גאון הדור, should I let the chance to do the mitzva of הכנסת אורחים in its proper form escape me just because the guest is a regular guy? More than that, who knows if he's a regular guy? Do we really know the value of any Jew? This is why the Torah enumerated each & every tribe's offering, so that no one should be slighted. It show us, says the רמבן, how far the Torah goes so that each person's honor is upheld & to show that each one's offering was special. No matter how much greater one tribe was, each one's offering was identical & was just as important, to teach us that no matter what tribe we come from we have to treat each other with respect for in ה's eyes we're all equal!