May 22nd, 2020
28 Iyyar 5780
My prayer, these days, has been focused on the vastness of time and the way that we experience the sense of unstructured, unmarked time of being home during this pandemic. This experience, the weeks that pass one after another, have felt like a large expanse. Days of Zoom calls and emails are punctuated by Shabbat, and of course, one of the main difficulties from the beginning has been the uncertainty of how long this reality will last. There has been a sense of wandering, of waiting, of letting time pass while we journey through this season.
I am thinking about our ancestors, ancient Israelites who wandered in the wilderness, and this week, we begin the book of the Torah chronicling their story of that journey. The parashah, Bemidbar, starts off in a way that highlights a stark difference from what came before it: “God spoke to Moshe from the Wilderness of Sinai.” Previously, God had been speaking to Moshe from the Mountain of Sinai, and now the conversation takes place in the Wilderness. I’ve often found myself comparing things to what was, to how things existed in Normal Times. In the Torah, we’ve gone from the peak height of the mountain to the vast expanse of the wilderness.
Medieval commentator and philosopher Ramban asks what difference there might be between God speaking to Moshe on the mountain of Sinai verses in the Wilderness, and he teaches that the laws given in Shemot and Vayikra are future-focused. Those laws deal with holiday celebrations and sacrifices, laws for when we enter the land of Israel, laws of ethics and justice and holiness. But, he teaches, in contrast to the laws from the Mountain, the laws offered in Bemidbar, in the Wilderness, are specific to the precise moment the Israelites were in, they only related to what happened in the Wilderness.
The laws given in this book are about keeping track of the people and how they should organize themselves while camping or walking. It details how they should care for one another and live in a community that is perpetually on the move, a community that is navigating a major transition. These aren’t laws given from a lofty mountain for the future, an ideal time, they are given-on-earth laws, laws given in the wilderness for wilderness life.
I am reminded, from Ramban’s teaching, that when we are in moments of vastness, moments of challenge that don’t give us strong boundaries to contour our experience, we sometimes can only exist inside of this moment, inside of this reality. We focus on our basic needs and getting through the day, we focus on our mental health and our current reality. Like the census that the Israelites are instructed to take at the beginning of the parsha, we are reminded of who is in our community and that we must reach out to them and take care of them. We’ve learned about the boundlessness of community and what we can accomplish even when not being in the same space. We’ve spent time with ourselves and learned about what makes us afraid and what can give us hope. What I realize is that while these may have been important lessons for the Israelites in the wilderness, and for us in our own wilderness, in fact, these will be lessons, too, for the future. These will be laws that we carry with us, because even in this time of wandering, this time of waiting, we are learning for the future.
Instead of focusing on the vastness of this experience, my prayer this Shabbat is that even while wandering in the Wilderness of Sinai, I hope to still see the mountain. I hope to still look, even if it seems far away, and see the peak of experience, the place that tells me to plan for the future, the place that reminds me that there are moments in time outside of this one.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Sarit
