Be Like the Wilderness (Shabbat Bamidbar)

We are approaching Shavuot, our second since the onset of pandemic.

Weeks ago, on Passover, we recounted our ancestors’ joy and awe as they left slavery in Egypt, crossed the Sea of Reeds to freedom! We recall all the wondrous first tastes of the freedom we’ve had since getting vaccinated. For me: making challah with my niece, going out to dinner with my grandma, schmoozing with many of you in-person.

And now, we are poised to celebrate our ancestors’ grand gathering at Mt. Sinai. Between these miraculous moments of exodus and revelation, we, strangely, turn to the book of Bamidbar, a title which simply translates as “In the Wilderness.” This book tells the story of our ancestors’ wanderings through physical and spiritual wilderness.

As the Israelites enter the wilderness, they begin to complain: they don’t like the food, there’s not enough to drink. Some look forward to gathering at Sinai — yearn for a future that they can only imagine. others want to return to Egypt – to how things used to be. Often we prefer what we know to what we don’t.

So we can understand why the Israelites fight against the wilderness, against the feeling of being between one big moment, one place, and another. They just want to get to the Promised Land, and settle down and get on with life! We, too, struggle as we, though moving in the right direction, inch slowly toward something resembling “normal” life.

The Talmud teaches that the way to relate to the wilderness, though it’s extremely challenging at times, is to — rather than fight the wilderness — instead make ourselves like the wilderness, open to receiving each experience, the joyful and the difficult, with an open heart, listening for what we could learn from it.

When we do this, the Talmud says, Torah is given to us as a gift.

So, as we approach Shavuot, we are reminded life is lived not in the biggest moments of our own stories. Life is lived here, in the space of mostly ordinary moments — tinted, over the last year or so with a heightened awareness of our fragility, and life’s uncertainty.

The reason we read Bamidbar right before Shavuot — before this holiday of revelation — is because the most sacred teaching in our tradition was revealed to us in a place of openness and uncertainty. This is where God speaks to us, if we’re listening:

Not in a special time or place, but in the moments in between.

May we all be blessed to receive the Torah, the wisdom, we need to move forward in this time of continued anxiety, as yet ungrieved losses, and new opportunities.

Amen.