Mending a Frightening World
I gave this drash, or homily, at Or Shalom Jewish Community in San Francisco at the (Zoom) service beginning the Sabbath on Friday, June 3, 2022, which was also the night before the holiday of Shavuot.
We live in terrifying times, for many of us the most terrifying in our lives. Climate change is accelerating, we don’t know when the global pandemic will end, political grandstanding has almost paralyzed the U.S. government, and there’s a war in Europe that reminds us how many nuclear weapons are still poised for use.
This week’s Torah portion shows us that terrifying times are nothing new. The parshah B’Midbar, meaning “in the wilderness,” begins the book of B’Midbar (called Numbers in English). The book and section begin with a census of Israelite men twenty years and up, “all those in Israel who are able to bear arms.” After all, the Israelites are expecting battles as they head into a populated land. The counting is followed by instructions for how the Israelites are to camp, with the military divisions arrayed on the four sides of the camp, while the Levites guard the Mishkan, the Tabernacle containing the Ark, in the middle of the camp. The same arrangement is prescribed both for when the Israelites are camped and for when the community is on the move.
The text does not mention women and children, but clearly they were in the camp and in the line of march when the community moved. The camp arrangement serves military purposes, and it also provides the basis for orderly and safe living while in camp. With set locations for everyone, it’s unlikely anyone will be lost or forgotten.
Let’s think about the apparent moment in which these commands are given: The Israelites have had a tumultuous time over more than a year, as Moses confronted Pharaoh with the command to release the enslaved Israelites, the work of making bricks was made harder in retaliation for the demand for freedom, the plagues descended on Egypt, and the Israelites made their escape at night, with only what they could carry. They panicked when they were caught between the sea and Pharaoh’s army, only to be rescued by an almost unbelievable miracle when the sea parted, but then they had to learn how to live in the wilderness, without Egypt’s agriculture or the water of the Nile.
Furthermore, three months after they left Egypt, they arrived at Mount Sinai and experienced yet another set of mind-blowing events, as the mountain smoked and shook, thunder and lighting blared, and the people were warned to stay at a distance “lest they die.” After that came Moses’ long absence on the mountain, which scared the people so much that they demanded an idol to reassure them, only to be punished for the Golden Calf with many deaths by the swords of the Levites and by plague.
In other words, this is a community disrupted and traumatized by the end of a way of life which may have been bitter but was known, by the loss of familiar landscapes (literal and figurative), by changes of housing and diet, and by new rules, new dangers, new punishments. They don’t know what’s coming next, and they are not sure they trust Moses or the God he speaks for. Their circumstances were very different from ours, but it’s become easier than ever for us to empathize with how they felt and why they complained so much.
As it turned out, the Israelites also didn’t really know where they were going. It would be another thirty-eight years before they crossed the Jordan, and all those men over twenty would be dead by then. They would fight some armed enemies, and they would also encounter internal enemies, from rebellion to jealousy to idolatry. We don’t know where we’re headed either, and the uncertainty is a lot of what scares us: Will things get better or worse? When? How quickly? What can we do? Can we do anything useful?
Jewish tradition teaches that there is always something we can do, that we can always act to repair the world, tikkun olam. We can not only refrain from doing wrong – from killing, stealing, lying, etc., we can also do good, protect the weak, build safe and equitable communities. We can be alert to such internal enemies as resentment, greed, apathy, and despair. We can take action to care for the environment, to cultivate peace, to build a just economy, and to welcome the stranger. In other words, we can engage in a present-day version of organizing and constructing a camp in which there is a place for everyone, in which no one is lost or forgotten. We can learn to live in the modern wilderness, even though we can’t know what will happen next.
This year, as most years, we read B’Midbar on the Shabbat before Shavuot, which starts tomorrow at sunset. Shavuot has become a holiday when we particularly celebrate those terrifying moments at Sinai, when the mountain shook and the Divine revealed itself to those traumatized refugees from Egypt. We are told that the revelation at Sinai included not only the written Torah, with its rules for living in the wilderness and for living later in the land of Israel, but also the living Torah, the Tree of Life, which continues to teach us how to live holy lives in a world our ancestors could not have imagined. This task of devoting ourselves to building a world of justice and peace is one we can even begin on Shabbat and continue on the holiday of Shavuot, studying and discussing how to take up our own stations to surround and protect the Mishkan, the dwelling place of the Divine, and thus to honor and protect all people and all of creation.