Last week, we completed the Book of Leviticus, and this week we begin the Book of Numbers. In English we call the this fourth book of the Torah “Numbers”- and it’s a fitting title as a lot of the book is all about counting. God instructs Moses and the Israelites to count the number of able-bodied men who are a part of the Israelite camp as they eventually will have to fight to enter the Promised Land.
In Hebrew the book is called “Bamidbar”- in the desert—and this is the title I prefer. I like the desert. I like the desert in California where I lived for 25 years and I like the desert in Israel. They are very, very different sorts of deserts, but they both offer a certain sense of lonely beauty and opportunity for thought and contemplation.
A few years ago, I rode my mountain bike as part of a fund raiser for Reform Judaism in Israel from Jerusalem to Eilat. To get to Eilat we had to cross large swaths of the desert. Dry, dusty, and hot desert with the sound of our group’s bicycle tires on the jagged dry desert floor and the hot Israeli wind singing through the vacant landscape.
In the evening in the desert you can escape from the sights and sounds of the cities and encounter the heavens in all of its glory. Stars and planets, the moon, the galaxies suspended above you. The stars make no noise--- they neither sing nor speak—but their blinking light reminds us that the earth and the heavens belong to God.
The desert is a wild, desolate place, but it is also a place where we encounter Torah, we experience vulnerability, and the escaping slaves come together as a people. My friend and colleague Rabbi Zoe Klein wrote a beautiful poem in which she explores the desert as a place of discovery.
In the next weeks, together we will discover the desert. We will encounter miracle and marvel, we will encounter truth, we will encounter each other and we will encounter God.
There are three regions in each of our souls,
There is Egypt, there is the Desert, and there is the Promised Land.
Many of us have glimpsed our Egypt,
Or perhaps some are still there,
Wearing the chains,
Bearing the burdens of fear, insecurity,
Doubt, and weakness,
Mustering the strength to clamber up . . .
Still fewer of us have glimpsed our Promised Land,
Our destiny,
Fulfillment of dreams,
Our fruitfulness, our blossoming,
Our purpose,
We talk of Egypt often . . .
Every holiday, every prayer service,
Mentions we once were slaves,
Recalls our hardships under Pharaoh.
We talk of the Promised Land often,
Every holiday, every prayer service,
Longs for Israel,
For the Voice to come forth from Zion,
We turn to the east,
Reminisce Jerusalem.
But rarely do we talk of, or pray about, the Desert . . .
Yet that is the region in which most of us are,
Pushing forward in the wilderness,
Dragging our footsteps across that forty year stretch
Of pristine, barren, moonscape,
It is there we encounter truth,
It is there we encounter miracle,
We are nomads still,
At the shore of some sparkling oasis,
And we sing our nomad song . . .