The Beracha of Shevet Levi in Parashat ve-Zot Ha-Berachah is quite difficult to understand from a number of perspectives. It begins as follows:

And of Levi he said:

Let Your Thummim and Urim be with Your faithful,

Whom You tested at Massah,

      Challenged at the waters of Meribah. (Deut. 33:8)

      Keli Yaqar (R. Solomon Ephraim Luntzshitz), understands that Moshe’s berachah must first of all be understood as a response to Ya‘akov’s berachah (or, if you will, non-berachah) of his sons Shimon and Levi in Sefer Bereshit.

      The relevant verses in Parashat Va-Yehi read as follows:

      Simeon and Levi are a pair;

      Their weapons are tools of lawlessness.

      Let not my person enter their council;

      Or my being be joined to their company.

      For when angry they slay men,

      And when pleased they maim oxen.

      Cursed be their anger so fierce,

      And their wrath so relentless.

      I will divide them in Jacob,

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            Scatter them in Israel. (Genesis 49:7)

      
      
      
      
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  

Keli Yaqar understands that Jacob’s curse of Levi’s (and Shimon’s) anger apparently had the effect of intensifying a propensity that was already there. Thus, Jacob in effect prophesied that there would be at least one famous Levite in subsequent Israelite history who would succumb to the sin of anger.

This leads us to the sin of Moses. Rambam, in Shemonah Peraqim famously understood that the sin of Moses was not smiting the rock (instead of speaking to it) per se; it was, rather, his rage at yelling at the children of Israel and exclaiming Listen, you rebels!  (Numbers 20:10).With this we begin to understand the references to Massah and Meribah in the blessing of Moses to the tribe of Levi. But what needs to be understood is how the recollection of Moses’ own sin is a blessing to the tribe.

Keli Yaqar advances a striking interpretation.  Why, indeed, he asks did Moses succumb to the sin of anger at Mei Meribah? It was (at least partly), because of Jacob’s curse, which had the effect of intensifying Levi’s descendants’ propensity towards anger. Thus, after Moses had yelled at the children of Israel, the prophecy of Jacob had already dome true! There would be no need for it to be instantiated again.

Moshe was, in effect, praying to God and requesting the following, “Please God, let the curse of Jacob regarding anger be fulfilled and done with already, so no other Levite would have to succumb to the curse of anger in the manner that I did.”

Keli Yaqar adds that as the members of Shevet Levi were destined to be the teachers of Israel, and anger could lead to a mistake in halakhah, God forbid, there is an additional and special reason for the curse of anger to be dispensed with once and for all. Keli Yaqar refers to the celebrated prayer that Jews recite right before Rosh Ha-Shanah: tikhleh Shanah ve-qillelotehah: let the “year” with its curses end, and let the punishment of Moshe be the kapparah for all the members of Shevet Levi (and Shimon, for that matter) for all eternity.

With this prayer, Moses was truly acting selflessly, accepting his own personal responsibility for his own failure, but pleading that no other individual would have to suffer as he did. He demonstrated that he was Rabban Shel Yisrael not just with his intellect, but with his kindness as goodness as well.