The Gift of the Wilderness: God, Torah and Israel
2 Sivan 5771 / 4 June 2011
Rabbi Daniel Cotzin Burg, Beth Am
A few years ago, a friend introduced me to a new hobby: geo-caching. Geo-caching is a fascinating new phenomenon, made possible only by the advent of digital technology, satellites and global positioning systems. Here’s the basic idea: you log on to a website to locate caches in your area, pull them up on your iPhone or plug them into your hand-held GPS and you’re ready to go! The basic idea of this modern-day "treasure-hunt" is to locate small containers or "caches" hidden in wall-cracks, under benches, magnetically stuck to the back of road signs. What’s inside? Not much really. There’s always a log, a paper list of those who have found the cache, and sometimes some small grab-bag style "tchotchke." Who puts them there? Anyone who wishes to do so. You simply have to know the rules and etiquette of the game, how to avoid being spotted by "muggles," non-cachers, and own some sort of GPS device. Where are the caches? Everywhere. There are literally hundreds in Baltimore alone. Chances are you pass several on your way to work everyday. And yet, to find these small treasures, painstakingly hidden in plain sight, can be wonderfully satisfying. It’s a chance to see new cities, new parks or intersections or neighborhoods or to look at your own neighborhood with different eyes. And I found myself wondering about the people who came before me and those who would come afterwards, because we knew that, when we found it, we were not to disturb the cache, but simply to record our names and leave it for the next person. In other words, the true magic of geo-caching is that there is no real endgame, no great riddle to solve, no earth-shattering discovery to make. Geo-caching is about the journey, plain and simple.
The Torah, in contrast, (at least ostensibly) is not about the journey, it is about the destination, the Promised Land. The Book of the Torah which we began last week is called Bamidbar, "in the wilderness." It is the heart of the journey story, thirty-eight years of wandering. But as we will learn in two weeks, this elongated journey was not, (again ostensibly) pre-ordained. The traditional explanation is that the bulk of the Israelites’ time in the wilderness was a punishment, a cautionary tale about "lack of faith," as it were, the undeserving nature of our bickering people. And yet, I want to make a different suggestion to you today. I want to explore the possibility that this extended journey was not a punishment but a gift, a chance for the nascent Jewish community to become a people so that one day they could become a nation. Bamidbar is a journey, a discovery not of answers, but of questions, not of real estate but of character. In no small way, this book forms the story of our people’s formation. It tells of hundreds of thousands of individuals, literally "be-wildered," bemoaning their lot, not sure whether to go forward or backward. And at its core, it is the story of two great leaders, brothers who would never themselves enter the Promised Land, but whose steadfast commitment to the promise of peoplehood made possible the Israelites’ eventual deliverance to the very banks of the Jordan River. Gail Sheehy once wrote, "Growth demands a temporary surrender of security." The Midbar is that surrender.
So if the wilderness was a gift of discovery, permission to focus not on the end-game but, like geo-caching, to sensitize one to the journey itself, what is it that our ancestors needed to discover? I would posit: the ancient Hebrews were called on to unearth three things, three treasures in the wilderness: Themselves, their God, and their purpose. And like any good Indiana Jones movie, each of these three treasures was to be attained by completing one of three difficult tasks.
The first treasure, and first task for the children of Israel, had to do with finding themselves. By "themselves," I don’t mean the way people often meant it when I lived in California. This is not a journey of self-discovery, not about the individual, but the collective. If the Jewish people were to survive, they would have to learn to depend on one another. Tim Cahill, founding editor of Outside Magazine, once wrote, "A journey is best measured in friends rather than miles." When the Hebrews left Egypt, they were an erev rav, a "mixed multitude." They were divided into tribes and clans. They had differing needs, conflicting agendas. The Torah acknowledges this. Rather than forced homogeny, the amalgamation of our people is one of combined assets and personalities. This is evident at the beginning of our parasha through the role differentiation between the three levitical houses of Gershon, Kehat and Merari.
And yet, though they do eventually come together, this was not simply an extravagance. A time would come when the Jewish people would realize that, to paraphrase Lincoln, their divided house could not stand. This test will become manifest in three weeks’ time in the person of Korah. Korah represents the ultimate challenge to peoplehood, the Machiavellian leader who speaks, in populist terms, the language of the "people," but whose ultimate goal is to usurp power for himself. Korah’s goals are evident in the first two words of his story: "Vayikah Korah, and Korah took." And, indeed, Korah takes many with him in his vain quest for power. And though this would not be the last time the Israelites would turn one against the other, the enduring message of this conflict is the need to find common ground. For, despite our differences, if we cannot stand together, we cannot move forward. So, I believe that it is no coincidence that just as last week’s Torah portion of Bamidbar delineates the particulars of the march and the various individual tribes having been assigned their particular places among the whole, the final portion of Numbers, describes the "masei b’nai Yisrael," the "marches of the Children of Israel" (33:1).
The second task for the Israelites was to discover their God. Of course, the entire book of Numbers speaks of our murmuring against the Almighty, demanding meat when manna was not enough, doubting God’s chosen leaders and turning to other gods. But it is this last act that the Torah views as beyond the pale. Challenging God is one thing, worshiping other gods is something else. And when this occurs, when they offer sacrifices to Baal, the god of the Moabites, vengeance is swift. And not until Pinchas, the vigilante, takes matters into his own hands does the plague against the Israelites cease. The story of Pinchas the zealot and the plague of Baal-Peor makes us uncomfortable, challenging our conception of a loving and forgiving God. Rather than focus on these legitimate questions of theodicy, for now, though, let’s ask: what might have offended God in the first place? What led to such a strong response? The test was more than one of fidelity, it was one of trust. In order to enter the Promised Land, the Jewish people would first have to understand the notion of a covenantal relationship, the mutual nature of a promise. A covenant is an eternal bond, one that relies on two agreeing parties to remain committed each to the other. The lesson of this troubling story is that, no matter what, we must be willing to continue the conversation. Complaining about the menu, questioning God’s choices, even questioning God’s existence, I would argue, are forgivable, though perhaps imprudent, offenses. The reason idolatry is the number one sin of the Bible is because it severs the connection, tearing asunder the covenantal relationship which began with Abraham. The vast expanse of the wilderness is a challenge to the forces of nihilism, an appeal to discover a single voice calling out across the void – a challenge to find God. And with this discovery, albeit the hard way, our ancestors had one more task to accomplish.
The irony of the third and final task, to find our purpose, is that it is in seeming contradiction with the journey qua journey. The reason for this, I think, is that we often confuse our purpose with our goals. To be goal-oriented is to have a solution in mind, a destination if you will: I want to be a doctor. I hope to ace that test. I plan to climb Mount Everest. Goals are wonderful things; they keep us focused on the future and encourage us to transcend our seeming limitations in order to achieve great things. The problem with goals, of course, is that we sometimes fail to reach them. This is the final challenge of the midbar: to focus on vocation rather than occupation. For example, rather than the goal of becoming a doctor, one’s purpose in life may be to bring healing to others. This, of course, can be done with or without an M.D. Likewise, reaching the peak of Mount Everest, may be an achievable goal, but what if you get sick? What if there is a storm at the summit and you have to turn back? On the other hand, if we determine that our purpose is to reach great heights, to see the world from a different or unique perspective, then we can be assured of success. As the business philosopher Jim Rohn has observed: "What you become is far more important than what you get."
So what is our purpose? What was it that the Israelites had to become in the desert? I would suggest to you that it has something to do with consistency, a certain "pride of ownership." In last week’s parasha (2:34), after describing the geographical arrangement of the tribes, the Torah offers a curious addendum; "…so they camped by their standards, and so they marched, each with his clan according to his ancestral house." So they camped… so they marched. Rashi explains that this means each tribe would remain in the same position, whether they were setting up camp or whether they were setting out on the journey once again. But several commentators take this even further. The purpose of this phrasing is to indicate that the Israelites would be the same people at home as they would be on the way, that their outer practice would be consistent with their inner selves. In other words, that they would come to lead lives infused with Torah. Many centuries later, Moses Mendelssohn would implore his followers to be "Jews in the home but men on the street." The Torah, by contrast, says: be a Jew in every moment, "when you lie down and when you rise up." And this "pride of ownership" is surely a post-Exodus achievement. Slaves cannot "own" their Judaism, because they do not "own" themselves. But free people, who freely enter into a covenantal relationship, can "walk the walk." In other words, the Jewish people in the wilderness would come to discover themselves, and the "selves" they would eventually know would be consistent with the journey they had come to embrace.
In this sense, the ancient tribes of Israel were the earliest geo-cachers. We, the readers, understand that the ultimate goal is to reach the Promised Land, but there is little indication that the community in the wilderness had this same level of awareness. Throughout their 40 long years of wandering, the Israelites discovered their purpose: to serve God through Torah and with the fullness of their collective being. The Land of Israel, the destination, is in a real way a fulfillment of this sacred purpose.
Commitment to God, a sense of purpose, and peoplehood. Three treasures in the wilderness. Or put another way: God, Torah and Israel, the great triad of Jewish life. Haverai, some Sermons have a clear take-away: Please do this. Or donate here. Or study this. Or volunteer for that. But sometimes it’s important for us to step back from the trees to see the forest. Sometimes, we need to get lost in the wilderness. Every year, around this time of year, the Torah invites us to do just that. Geo-caching is an distinctively modern hobby. It can only be done with the newest technology. And yet, it is merely the most recent manifestation of a very ancient endeavor. And the modernity of geo-caching is exactly the point. Each of us, in every generation, finds relevance in ancient truths.
As we make our way through Sefer Bamidbar, the bulk of the journey story, let us acknowledge the value of the march and the discoveries along the way. Join me as we allow the story of our ancestors to become our own story as well, meeting each new task with a renewed sense of purpose. And when we arrive, in our Torah’s ongoing narrative, at the Promised Land as we have so many times before, it will be with the confidence that we have survived and internalized the uncertainties and challenges, the landscape and lessons of the wilderness.